Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Language, Identity & Politics
FORUM CONTRIBUTIONS ON:
The Arab Digital Vanguard Orwell and the Diction of War Hindi as a National Language The Flemish Movement Devolution of the Welsh Language With an Introduction by Eric Langenbacher ALSO FEATURING:
Disintegration Theory and the EU Standoff in the South China Sea First Brain Drain in the United States INTERVIEWS WITH:
Chuck Hagel Madeleine Albright E dmund A. W alsh S chool
of
F oreign S ervice
W inter /S pring 2012 • $9.95
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Winter/Spring 2012, Volume XIII, Number 1
1
Editors’ Note
Forum: Language, Identity & Politics 3
Introduction
ERIC LANGENBACHER
The relationship between language and international affairs is crucial and operates on several levels. This issue’s Forum investigates the intersection between language, culture, identity, and politics.
7
Orwell and the Diction of War Language, Rhetoric, and the Linguistic Properties of Violence
15
The Welsh Language Devolution and International Relations
23
The Flemish Movement On the Intersection of Language and Politics in the Dutch-Speaking Part of Belgium
ANDREW N. RUBIN
DIARMAIT MAC GIOLLA CHRÍOST
JEROEN DEWULF
33
The Arab Digital Vanguard How a Decade of Blogging Contributed to a Year of Revolution
43
The Effectiveness of Establishing Hindi as a National Language
JILLIAN YORK
LAKHAN GUSAIN
Politics&Diplomacy 51
Disintegration Theory International Implications of Europe’s Crisis JAN ZIELONKA
In the midst of crisis, the EU stands at a pivotal moment in its brief history. With both abrupt disintegration and a transition into federalism on the table, a third path—one embracing a new medievalism – potentially provides a cure for that which ails Europe.
Conflict&Security 61
The Sino-Vietnamese Standoff in the South China Sea JOHN D. CIORCIARI AND JESSICA CHEN WEISS
Recent flare-ups in tension between China and Vietnam have brought territorial disputes in the South China Sea to renewed prominence. The fragile situation could escalate into further confrontation and conflict in the absence of multiparty talks and stronger codes of conduct.
Winter/Spring 2012 [ i]
Culture&Society Ethnic Federalism in Nepal Risks and Opportunities
71
DEV RAJ DAHAL AND YUBARAJ GHIMIRE
Some groups within Nepal have advocated for a federal system of governance based on ethnic divisions. The authors argue that ethnic federalism is not a suitable solution for the country. Instead, they recommend a model of federalism based on inclusiveness and cooperation that would guarantee the mutually beneficial coexistence of Nepalis.
Law&Ethics 79
NGOs, IGOs, and International Law Gaining Credibility and Legitimacy through Lobbying and Results SIGFRIDO BURGOS CĂ CERES
In an age of fragmented normative governance, NGOs have come to play an increasingly important role in the determinations of more traditional legal authorities. By working in conjunction with states and IGOs, they continue to gain legitimacy as global actors and redefine the standards for international law and operation.
Business&Economics 89
The First Brain Drain in the United States VIVEK WADHWA
The United States is experiencing its first brain drain. American policymakers need to reform U.S. immigration policies to allow greater numbers of high-skilled immigrants to live and work in the United States, to stem an increasing flow of American-educated returnees to China, India, and other swiftly growing competitors.
Science&Technology 97
Seeing Like a Slum Towards Open, Deliberative Development KEVIN P. DONOVAN
Making information more transparent in international development initiatives is most promising when accompanied by changes in the institutional arrangements of power, such as those supported by theorists of deliberative development.
Books 105
Wallerstein’s Eurocentric World-System J.R. MCNEILL
A review of The Modern World-System. IV. Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789-1914 by Immanuel Wallerstein.
Cover & page 3 photo credits: StockPodium
[ii] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Contents
View from the Ground 111
Thanksgiving in a Place Called Chiapas MICHAEL MEANEY
Enlightened by his research work and travel in Chiapas, Mexico, Mike Meaney explores the consequences of free trade agreements such as NAFTA on cultural identity. Highlighting the unique identity of Mexican indigenous groups, Meaney wrestles with the complex relationship between free trade and the preservation of native ways of life.
119
American Aid and Human Rights in the Philippines CHRISTIAN PANGILINAN
The Philippines suffers from continued systemic human rights violations. The author, who has worked for a non-governmental organization in the Philippines, argues that the United States should use its leverage to compel the Philippine government to combat human rights abuses.
A Look Back 127 On Political Virtue: A Discussion of Prudence and Fortitude in U.S. Governance CHUCK HAGEL
The Journal sits down with former Senator Chuck Hagel to listen to his perspective on a number of the current pressing issues of U.S. foreign policy: the 2012 presidential elections, engagement in the Middle East, and the ongoing debate regarding the obligation of the United States to protect civilians across the globe.
135 A Changing Game: Politics and Foreign Affairs MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
The Journal talks with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about her views on the present progression of U.S. foreign policy and the understanding her career has brought about therein.
Winter/Spring 2012 [ iii]
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
Sikander Kiani, Michael Brannagan
MANAGING EDITORS
Kenneth Anderson, William Handel, Vail Kohnert-Yount Matt Schubert, Katharine Stonehill
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Roanne Lee
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FORUM EDITORS EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITORS EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CONFLICT & SECURITY EDITOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS CULTURE & SOCIETY EDITOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS LAW & ETHICS EDITOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS POLITICS & DIPLOMACY EDITOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT BOOKS EDITOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT VIEW FROM THE GROUND EDITOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT A LOOK BACK EDITOR OPERATIONS ASSOCIATE ADVERTISING ASSOCIATE BUSINESS INTERNS WEBMASTER GJIA ONLINE EDITORS EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS DESIGN ASSISTANT ADVANCEMENT MANAGER ADVANCEMENT STRATEGISTS
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Mary DeBree, Medha Raj Elizabeth Blazey, Elaine Colligan, Nora McGann Doug Proctor, Meredith Strike Gina Park Gillian Evans Christian Chung, Barrett Helmer Daye Lee Aliza Appelbaum, Mary Grace Reich Caroline Puckowski Michael Lopesciolo, Matt Sullivan Alexandra Lencznarowicz Paul Lindemann Katie Hoffmann Meghan Anand Elizabeth Saam Masha Goncharova Ben Mishkin Elena Malik Kevin Sullivan Andrew Guiang Aleksa Miskinis Yekaterina Gourinovitch, Kira Kern, Jenna Sackler Jeffrey Caso Gedeon Hanft. Jen Steffensen Lucas Chan, Jon Coumes, Sumitha Kutty, Kevin Sullivan Alex Pommier Vail Kohnert-Yount Georgia Pelletier, Alex Pommier David Abshire, Susan Bennett, H.R.H. Felipe de Borb贸n, Cara DiMassa, Robert L. Gallucci, Michael Mazarr, Jennifer Ward, Fareed Zakaria Charles Dolgas, Charles king, Mark Lagon, Eric Langenbacher, Catherine Lotrionte, John McNeil, Kathryn Olesko, George Shambaugh, Charles Weiss, Jennifer Windsor
[iv] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
The
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Summer/Fall 2011 [ v]
Notice to Contributors
Articles submitted to the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs must be original, must not draw substantially from articles previously published by the author, and must not be simultaneously submitted to any other publication. Articles should be around 3,000 words in length. Manuscripts must be typewritten and double-spaced in Microsoft™ Word® format, with margins of at least one inch. Authors should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. Articles may be submitted by e-mail (gjia@georgetown.edu) or by U.S. mail; those sent by U.S. mail must include both a soft copy on a compact disc and a hard copy. Full names of authors, a two-sentence biography, and contact information including addresses with zip codes, telephone numbers, facsimile numbers, and e-mail addresses must accompany each submission. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs will consider all manuscripts submitted, but assumes no obligation regarding publication. All material submitted is returnable at the discretion of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (ISSN 1526-0054; ISBN 0-9824354-2-8) is published two times a year by the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 301 Intercultural Center, Washington, DC 20057. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC. Annual subscriptions are payable by check or money order. Domestic: $16.00; foreign: $24.00; Canada: $18.00; institutions: $40.00. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Subscriptions Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service 301 Intercultural Center Washington, DC 20057 Telephone (202) 687-5696 Facsimile (202) 687-1571 e-mail: gjia@georgetown.edu http://journal.georgetown.edu All articles copyright © 2012 by Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University except when otherwise expressly indicated. For all articles to which it holds copyright, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service permits copies to be made for classroom use, provided the following: (1) the user notifies the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs of the number and purpose of the copies, (2) the author and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs are identified, (3) the proper notice of copyright is affixed to each copy. Except when otherwise expressly provided, the copyright holder for every article in this issue for which the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs does not hold copyright grants permission for copies of that article for classroom use, provided that the user notifies the author and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the author and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs are identified in the article, and that proper notice of copyright is affixed to each copy. For reprinting permission for purposes other than classroom use, please contact Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Permissions, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, 301 Intercultural Center, Washington, DC 20057. Email: gjia@georgetown.edu The views expressed in the articles in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs do not necessarily represent those of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the editors and staff of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, or Georgetown University. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, editors and staff of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and Georgetown University bear no responsibility for the views expressed in the following pages.
[vi] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Editors’ Note
Language determines, to a large extent, who we are and how we relate to others. Clay Shirky has claimed that the way in which we communicate, and thus interact with others, is currently undergoing the most dramatic revolution in history. The nature of communication networks is shifting from a one-way method of conveying policy to a dialogue among governments, non-state actors, and any individual who is eloquent enough to portray compelling messages. Joseph Nye believes that power is the ability to achieve desired outcomes, and for this definition, language that inspires intended action is power. Diplomatic practitioners convey meaning through careful selection of words, but in engaging more entities than ever before, they must ensure that their words effectively support their national interests. Language and the subtlety of effective communication have never been more important for international actors. The domestic politics of language carry profound international implications. The Forum considers how the rapid disintegration of powerful governments throughout the Middle East has demonstrated the political potency of people who do not simply receive government messages, but possess the ability to speak back and engage each other with relative impunity. Historical dialogue over the politics of language in India, Belgium, and the United Kingdom has shaped national character and the priorities that diplomats place on their interactions with other nations. The importance of language and usage of words to carry out diplomacy is also emphasized in other articles beyond the Forum. Dahal and Ghimire explain how a model of ethnic federation may not be feasible in Nepal, where language plays a critical role in the fragmentation of the population. Senator Hagel, commenting on tough U.S. foreign policy challenges, hints at the importance of responsible dialogue in the context of fragile U.S.-Pakistan relations. This issue of the Journal covers a range of topics with lasting importance to these tense times in international relations. Zielonka suggests that, in Europe, the Westphalia system itself may hang in the balance as new, complex political and economic relationships emerge from the euro zone crisis. Ciorciari and Weiss focus on the South China Sea as a key to the future of international influence in Asia, and one which requires the leadership of a skilled mediator. Wadhwa describes the difficult decisions the United States must face as it seeks to balance political opinions on immigration with the need to attract and retain innovative, energetic people who can contribute to the country’s global competitiveness. We hope that this issue of the Journal entertains and informs our readership. We have undertaken a number of initiatives this year to supplement the Journal’s print issue. Readers can now enjoy reading up to five articles from previous issues online. Further, through our blog and various online sections on the revamped website, we hope to provide a constant platform for timely analyses and discussion on issues that shape our world. Michael Brannagan
Sikander Kiani Winter/Spring 2012 [ 1 ]
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Call for Papers The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs is accepting submissions for the Summer/Fall 2012 issue. The submission deadline is 18 August 2012. Articles must be about 3,000 words in length. They should have the intellectual vigor to meet the highest scholarly standard, but written with the clarity to attract a broad audience. For submission details please refer to our website: http://journal.georgetown.edu/submissions/
Forum GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Language, Identity & Politics The relationship between language and international affairs is crucial and operates on several levels. Most obviously, foreign relations and diplomacy operate with and through words. Usually, the necessary communiqués, proclamations, and associated translation/interpretation work as intended. But there are times when diplomatic communication breaks down. Sometimes these blunders are innocuous, even risible. For example, in March 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a big red button to her Russian counterpart at a news conference. Playing off of the oft-repeated desire of the new Obama administration to rejuvenate U.S.-Russian relations, the button was supposed to say “perezagruzka” (reset), but instead “peregruzka” was used, which means overload or overcharged. The media everywhere had a field day. In 2006, during President Hu Jintao’s visit to the White House an interpreter announced the national anthem as that of the Republic of China (Taiwan) instead of the People’s Republic of China.
7 Orwell and the Diction of War Language, Rhetoric, and the Linguistic Properties of Violence ANDREW N. RUBIN
15 The Welsh Language
Devolution and International Relations
DIARMAIT MAC GIOLLA CHRÍOST
23 The Flemish Movement
On the Intersection of Language and Politics in the Dutch-Speaking Part of Belgium JEROEN DEWULF
33 The Arab Digital Vanguard
How a Decade of Blogging Contributed to a Year of Revolution JILLIAN YORK
43 The Effectiveness of
Establishing Hindi as a National Language LAKHAN GUSAIN
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 3]
INTRODUCTION
Given the sensitivities of the Chinese regime to the issue of Taiwan, this was a major gaffe. Perhaps the most memorable such event was President Carter’s trip to Poland in 1977, when his interpreter grossly mistranslated various phrases. For example, Carter said that he wanted to understand Poles’ desires for the future, but this came out as “I desire the Poles.” At times, the interpreter also spoke Russian—in a country that had suffered from unwanted Russian intervention for hundreds of years. Such incidents—humorous as they may be—are also not without consequence. U.S. communication with Russia and China continues to be strained. Carter’s disastrous Polish visit reinforced his hapless reputation, thus diminishing his political capital at home and abroad. Political actors have also constantly used and wilfully exploited language in international relations. After a seemingly courteous interaction between Prussian King Wilhelm I and the French Ambassador in July 1870, Otto von Bismarck “edited” the subsequently named Ems Dispatch to make the encounter seem insulting both to the French and to the Prussian King. This was intended (successfully) to manipulate French public opinion and Napoleon III’s government into declaring war on Prussia, which enabled Bismarck to defeat the French and unify Germany, which subsequently led to deepening enmity between the two countries, and eventually, to the outbreak of two world wars. A few decades later, intentionally misleading media reporting from Cuba in 1898 helped to persuade the U.S. government to intervene and fight the Spanish-American war. Yet, language impacts international relations on another, deeper level.
[ 4 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Harkening back to the “linguistic turn” in philosophy of the 1960s and 1970s, with its basic contention that language shapes reality (and that there is no reality independent from our ability to name and classify it), as well as the (contested) Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which asserts that specific and unique elements of a language structure belief systems and worldviews, constructivist scholars in the field of international relations over the last generation have investigated the social and discursive construction of international realities. Specifically, in contrast to realist or liberal approaches to international relations, which stress ever-present material factors and invariant interests, these scholars argue that interests are socially constructed, and that identities are major motivating forces in foreign policy decision making and all forms of international interactions. This is another way of saying that culture matters. Culture can be defined as “a framework that organizes the world, locates the self and others in it, makes sense of the actions and interpreting the motives of others, grounds an analysis of interests, links collective identities to political action, and motivates people and groups toward some actions and away from others.”1 Or as David Laitin puts it, culture entails points of concern to be debated, a widely shared “grammar” defining the problems and framing debates.2 Obviously, any culture is greatly determined by the language we use to represent the world and to define our own identities. Conversely, understanding international partners entails a comprehension of their culture and worldview as articulated through their language and translated through our own. The intersection between language, culture, and international affairs are
LANGENBACHER
the concerns investigated by the contributors to the Forum in this issue of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Andrew Rubin revisits George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” Focusing mainly on contemporary military terminology, Rubin argues that due to specific contemporary abuses of language that are committed for political reasons, Orwell’s essay about wordiness, lack of originality, and abstraction has more relevance now than ever. In a case study of the renascent Welsh language, Diarmait Mac Giolla Chriost examines a number of areas of language policy in which the Welsh government is active in order to demonstrate how a local, devolved field of government functions in international relations. The author discusses the role that the Welsh language has played and continues to play in the rejuvenation of Welsh regional identity and in terms of Wales’s relationship with Argentina, the Republic of Ireland, and China. Arguing that Flemish nationalism has never been stronger, Jeroen DeWulf presents an analysis of the Flemish movement’s ideology, goals, achievements and its relevance to the current tensions between French-speaking Wallonia and Dutchspeaking Flanders. He shows how the empowerment of this movement has changed the very nature of Belgian governance institutions and national identity, while also complicating the renegotiation of identities in light of
Language, Identity & Politics
the substantial immigration that has transpired over recent decades. Jillian York, in an examination of the relationship between technology and language, explains how the creation of a common language in the Arab blogosphere has contributed to what she terms “a transnational community of sorts.” She shows how the creation of a digital national and transnational network has affected protest and change in the Middle East and North Africa both before and during the “Arab Spring,” while simultaneously assessing the potential and drawbacks of such discursive and organizational changes. Finally, Lakhan Gusain, who claims that Hindi, as a language, has never been as confident and independent as it is today, discusses the effectiveness of establishing Hindi as a national language in India. The creation of a standard Hindi language and its competition with other regional and national languages (such as English) reveals much about the political structures and national identity of contemporary India. An understanding of these linguistic changes is essential to grasp the culture and identity of this case, as it surges in international influence.
Eric Langenbacher
is Director of Honors and Special Programs and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government, Georgetown University.
NOTES
1 Marc Howard Ross, “Culture and Identity in Comparative Political Analysis,” In Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and Structure, edited by M. Lichbach and A. Zuckerman. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 42. 2 David D. Laitin and Aaron Wildavsky, “Political Culture and Political Preferences,” American Political Science Review 82, No. 2 (1988): 589-597, p. 590.
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 5]
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Language, Identity & Politics
Orwell and the Diction of War
Language, Rhetoric, and the Linguistic Properties of Violence Andrew N. Rubin Sixty-five years after Orwell wrote “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell’s argument about the state of the English language has more relevance than it did when it was originally published in 1946 in Cyril Connolly’s magazine, Horizon. Since then, the world has undergone monumental technological changes, many of which Orwell foresaw. With the rise of instant communication and other forms of mass communication that lend themselves to the abbreviation and curtailment of thought, we should be more attentive to how the use of language has transformed our capacity for critical thought, just as we should be equally concerned with the ways in which dominant modes of thinking have reshaped the very language that we use. Belonging to a long tradition of cultural criticism that took root in the late eighteenth century in response to both the industrialization and democratization of European society, Orwell’s essay claimed that the English language was in a state of decay. Undermined by the indiscriminate use of worn-out phrases, useless and meaningless words, and lazy, prefabricated constructions, modern English, Orwell argued, was in the grip of a dialectics that ensured the widespread use of empty abstractions that masked the realities of
Andrew N. Rubin is an assistant professor of English at Georgetown University. He is the author of Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture and the Cold War (Princeton University Press, forthcoming in 2012), and Adorno: A Critical Reader (Bedford, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002). He has also written for The Nation, The New Statesman, The South Atlantic Quarterly, and Alif: A Journal of Comparative Poetics.
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 7 ]
ORWELL AND THE DICTION OF WAR
human experience and generally distorted political reality. The question of linguistic decadence was a deeply felt preoccupation for Orwell in the 1940s. It was frequently the subject of his “As I Please” columns that he wrote for the Tribune, and it was of course central to his imagination of “newspeak” in Nineteen EightyFour. Throughout the forties, his literary notebooks revealed that, much like Jonathan Swift, he kept long and extensive lists of dead and dying metaphors and meaningless and hackneyed phrases that had entered the English language from French, Latin, and German. Of all of his linguistic commentaries, “Politics and the English Language” remains his most important statement on the relationship between ideology, politics and language. According to Orwell, a general tendency arose within international politics in the 1940s of relying heavily on imprecise prose. The predominance of a particular style and structure of political thought had, he observed, fostered the spread of prefabricated phrases that distorted, concealed, and obfuscated reality because of their vagueness. The tendency of modern prose entailed a movement away from the concrete and the objective. For him, modern writing no longer consisted of choosing words for their exact meaning and then inventing images to make that meaning clear, but rather, it entailed the recycling of phrases. The trouble with this reliance on phrases was that it considerably narrowed and scattered the range of thought. He wrote: When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bes-
[ 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
tial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder–one often has the curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling that suddenly becomes stronger at the moments when the light catches the speaker’s eyes spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them…A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine.1 Orwell observed that public writers and political leaders had been blinded by their use of prefabricated phrases. He argued that they had utterly lost their agency as well as their capacity to choose particular words to clarify and objectify material reality. Such phrases, Orwell wrote, “will construct your sentences for you, even think your thoughts for you, and they will perform the important service of concealing your meaning even from yourself.”2 Rhetorical devices and conventions like dying metaphors, false limbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words were, according to Orwell, the primary habits that contributed to the distortion and obfuscation of meaning in modern English and international politics. Dying metaphors—such as the talk of axis of evil, peace, and regime change in our time—are phrases that have lost their evocative power yet continue to circulate unthinkingly within the English language because they spare writers the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Pretentious diction—words such as phenomenon, element, individual, objective, categorical, virtual, basic, primary, effective, and promote— are words that give the
RUBIN
impression of a scientific impartiality to what are in fact skewed judgments. Adjectives such as historic, unforgettable, inevitable, veritable, and groundbreaking are routinely uttered to refer to events that are hardly historic, unforgettable, or inevitable. Expressions such as, “Britain’s historic defense of the Falklands and its inevitable defeat of Argentina” could be said, as Orwell would have remarked, to “dignify the sordid processes of international politics.”3 Of all the infelicitous habits that Orwell identifies, none is perhaps more significant to international affairs than his description of the usage of empty rhetoric such as democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, and justice. These all share the confounding complexity of possessing several different meanings that cannot be reconciled with one another. If the principle of democracy refers to the full participation of citi-
Language, Identity & Politics
democrats until they were no longer of use to the United States, at which point, they were described as authoritarian leaders and abusers of human rights, which they of course always were.4 As Orwell observed: In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.5 Orwell would have no doubt observed that events such as the military invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel’s forty-four
Of all the infelicitous habits that Orwell identifies, none is perhaps more significant to international affairs than his description of the usage of empty rhetoric such as democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, and justice. zens in the election of public officials whom they choose to form a government, in our current reality, democracy has come to mean whatever suits the United States strategically. It is essentially a word that designates any nation whose policies conform to the strategic objectives of the United States. Former leaders such as Ferdinand Marcos, Jean Claude-Duvalier, Chun Doo-hwan, and Suharto were all once embraced as
years of military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the United States’ detention of enemy combatants held without habeas corpus or due process in Guantanamo and Bagram are actions that can only be defended by a language and rhetoric that camouflage a brute and cruel reality.6 Otherwise, who with any clear conscience could defend airstrikes on defenseless and impoverished villages with cluster
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 9]
ORWELL AND THE DICTION OF WAR
bombs and incendiary weapons? Who possesses the malice to justify the mass displacement of civilians from their homes by millions? And who can sincerely defend the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that are in violation of the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment? Instead, urban centers are neutralized or pacified. The murder of innocent human beings and civilians is collateral damage. The bombing of poor towns from fifteen thousand feet in the air is described as a surgical strike, not a relentless bombing campaign that unloads thousands of tons of explosives and cluster bombs that, if undetonated, transform entire fields of crops and
kinetic operations.”7 Military “newspeak” is hardly a new or isolated phenomenon. Warfare, violence, torture, and destruction demand the invention of new euphemisms to enable their perpetration. No one mourns, for example, collateral damage or worries that they will be taking part in a kinetic operation. When asked how to characterize the U.S. involvement in Libya, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes declared, “I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone. Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end.”8 A few weeks earlier, the National Security
Warfare, violence, torture, and destruction demand the invention of new euphemisms to enable their perpetration. orchards into a wasteland of landmines.
Advisor, Tom Donilon, had repeated Rhodes’ understanding of the physThe New Rhetoric of War. War ics of the conflict as a kinetic operation these days has largely become a sanitized declaring that “military steps—and they affair fought at a distance by remote can be kinetic and non-kinetic, obviously control with drones and smart weapons, and the full range—are not the only methreported on by embedded journalists od by which we and the international whose views are largely shaped by the community are pressuring Qaddafi.”9 rhetoric of the very officials who decide In Donilon’s imagination, war apparwhat these reporters can and cannot ently is not, as international law would see. Asked recently by the Associated have it, “armed conflict,” but defined Press how the coalition forces were pre- by movement or kinesis. Kinesis, after pared to protect the inadvertent killing all, is not about getting killed or killof civilians in Libya, Admiral Samuel ing other human beings, or invading Locklear, commander of the Joint Task distant lands. It is not about shelling Force Odyssey Dawn, remarked, “The civilians inadvertently, destroying the coalition brings together a wide array infrastructure of a country, or leaving a of capabilities that allow us to minimize nation in ruins to decay with the bodthe collateral damage when we have to take ies of the dead. Kinesis is about motion;
[ 1 0] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
RUBIN
using it to describe armed conflict conceals what Walt Whitman called “war’s red business.” Even the former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, said recently that in Libya “we are involved in a limited kinetic action.”10 There was a precedent to Gates’ choice of words. As Bob Woodward has observed, kinetic action emerged as a technical term to describe armed conflict shortly after 9/11. In Bush at War, he wrote: “For many days the war cabinet had been dancing around the basic question: how long could they wait after September 11 before the United States started going kinetic, as they often termed it, against al-Qaeda in a visible way?”11 According to the Washington Post, “Rumsfeld is said to have pushed for a presidential directive that would contain clearer definitions and authority for the Pentagon to carry out its kinetic missions abroad.”12 Kinesis transforms the realities of armed conflict into an action that is invisible and concealed, part of a feeble attempt to place armed conflict outside the bounds of international law. Euphemisms such as kinetic action belong to a similar category of terms as the description of prisoners of war as detainees, who lack even the status of an individual charged with a crime, which exempts them from judicial oversight in that they do not even have the status of a human being.13 As Elaine Scarry has observed, the very structure of war and torture requires that injury and brutal interrogation remain concealed or at least displaced. The logic of war, she argues, requires both the infliction of massive injury and “the eventual disowning of the injury so that its attributes can be transferred elsewhere.” Hence, the injured are the
Language, Identity & Politics
disavowed byproducts of war and the metaphor becomes part of a structural logic whereby the concealed wounding of the human body can “come to be the freedom or ideological autonomy or moral legitimacy of a country.”14 In a more subtle way, words such as totalitarianism, Islam, and the West are abstract generalizations that create their own vocabularies and styles of thought, which together establish new opportunities for discourses to be repeated with little reference to the actual human consequences of policies that have made the twentieth century, in the words of Eric Hobsbawm, the most violent in human history.15 Such abstractions are utterly meaningless. Islam is not a singular form of belief, but the religion of over one billion Muslims who by no means think or practice Islam in the same way. The West, too, is not monolithic, singular, or homogeneous. To speak possessively about Western values, for example, conceals a history of overlapping experiences and cultural zones of contact that allow us to understand that the so-called West is composed of intermingling and interdependent relationships between peoples from different cultures that are part of human history. If specific words like totalitarianism have become vague and imprecise, empty phrases like the War on Terror or the War on Drugs only thicken the haziness of thought. Examine either of these phrases closely and you will soon realize that you are in the presence of words constructed by minds that cannot express their thoughts very clearly. When scrutinizing the phrase the War on Drugs, it is not unreasonable to wonder what drugs the war is on. The repetitive concealment, distortion, and misrep-
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ORWELL AND THE DICTION OF WAR
resentation of events are consolidated by a rhetoric that relies upon abstract generalizations and euphemisms that structure, package and control discussion, despite the appearance of variety, diversity, and history.
Conclusion. A critical and atten-
tive awareness to political rhetoric may help to discern how the prevailing discourse is replete with euphemisms and prepackaged phrases that help to keep the human consequences of war camouflaged and at a distance, permitting us to live in states of denial inherent to our time. Patterns of thought and reified phrases, such as global leadership, are hardly designed to stimulate thought. They instead lull us into accepting the very attitudes that are used to justify the domination of distant lands through the use of force, political collaboration, or economic dependence. It is perhaps a central feature of modernity that a critical and attentive awareness to political rhetoric may help to discern how the prevailing discourse permits us to live in states of denial inherent to our time. In this regard the philologist plays a critical social function, dismantling and resisting conventions of thought, rhetorical practices, and cognitive structures that are repeated by a handful of self-declared experts who carry a disproportionate amount of authority, shaped largely by corporate and military interests—not by skepticism, free and open inquiry, and critical thought. Our age, as Eric Hobsbawm observes, is “a century of extremes.”16 It may seem quaint to suggest that nothing other than the study of lan-
[ 1 2] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
guage and literature can help reinvent a vocabulary for alternative forms of knowledge that might very well lead us out of this state of perpetual crisis. As the late critic Richard Poirier wrote in The Renewal of Literature: Unlike works of music, dance, paintings or films, literature depends for its principle or essential resource on materials that it must share in an utterly gregarious way with the society at large and with its history. None can teach us so much about what words do to us and how, in turn, we might try to do something to them which will perhaps modify the order of things on which they depend for their meaning. To literature is left the distinction that it invites the reader into a dialectic relationship to words with an intensity allowable nowhere else.17 In our age then, the intellectual and the philologist bear the responsibility of providing an analysis of the placement of words and their deployment in social and physical place. Therefore, Orwell’s essay on language has hardly lost its relevance. In a world that has suddenly witnessed the modes of social communication multiply in ways that were scarcely imaginable even a decade ago, Orwell’s critical attention to words and their deployment in social space can raise us above the debased rhetoric that usurps consciousness and disables critique. Perhaps then we will more fully realize how warfare is concealed by metaphors and metonymies that help to maintain the alienation of language from reality and ourselves from the world in which live.
RUBIN
Language, Identity & Politics
NOTES
1 George Orwell, The Complete Works of George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Peter Davison, ed., (London: Secker & Warburg, 1998), 17: 427. Hereafter CWGO. 2 Ibid., 17:427. 3 Ibid., 17:424. 4 David D. Newsom, former U.S. Underssecretary of State for Political Affairs, wrote in 1983 of the “democracy the United States established in the Phillipines.” In spite of Marcos’ persistent violation of human rights, including his government’s assassination of its major opposition leader, Newsom somehow found it consistent with the realities on the ground to claim, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that under Marcos there was “freedom of expression, freedom of choice, and a established basis for succession to the presidency.” [Christian Science Monitor (September 1983): 23]. Several days after Newsom made his comment, the opposition leader Senator Jose Diokono, head of the Movement for National Rights and Sovereignty, claimed that the U.S. was providing support to his organization to help to maintain the “façade of democracy.” [Christian Science Monitor (February 1984): 2]. A comparison to U.S. views on the regime of Chun Doo-hwan in South Korea reveals a similar pattern. On a visit to Seoul in 1986, Secretary of State George P. Shultz praised the government of Chun Doo-hwan, who seized power in South Korea in 1980, only to soon thereafter be widely criticized for his imposition of martial law and his brutish repression of the democratic movement. Despite the authoritarian nature of the U.S.’s South Korean ally, Shultz had little difficulty turning a blind eye towards Chun Doo-hwan’s penchant for censorship and his far from gentle response to student protests. More interested in maintaining a strategic relationship with the Hwan government than suspending the millions dollars of aid to encourage the dictator to embrace some form of democratic government, which would most likely involve Hwan ouster, Schultz confidently declared that South Korea was doing a “terrific job in … institutionalizing democracy.” Meanwhile, outside the meeting between the officials, several thousand workers and students clashed violently with police in the town of Inchon. It was the most incendiary protest that the country had seen under Hwan’s rule. [“Shultz Arives in Seoul, Praises South Korean Government,” The Washington Post, 7 May 1986.] Other dictators have been routinely praised as beacons of democracy in spite of their poor record of respecting even the most basic of human rights. On his first visit to Indonesia in 1986, president Reagan spoke highly of Suharto’s government’s global role as a “most responsible influence in world affairs.” Overlooking Suharto’s decades of brutal repression in East Timor that claimed over 102,800 lives according to the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation in the occupied territories, a White House
spokesman regarded the Indonesian government as fulfilling, “a great humanitarian service” by allowing refugees leaving the war-torn country of East Timor to enter Indonesia. [“Reagan Faces Balancing Trip in Asia,” The Washington Post, 27 April 1986] 5 CWGO, 17:425. 6 Ilan Pappé, The Bureaucracy of Evil: The History of the Israeli Occupation (Arizona: Oneworld, 2011); Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008); Adam Horowitz and others, The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (New York: Nation Books, 2011); Avi Shlaim, Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (New York: Verso, 2010). International Committee for the Red Cross, “ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross,” Internet, http://www. nybooks.com/media/doc/2010/04/22/icrc-report. pdf, 14 February 2007, (date accessed: September 23, 2011); David Cole, “They Did Authorize Torture, But…” Internet, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/ archives/2010/apr/08/they-did-authorize-torturebut/ (date accessed: ); David Cole, “Getting Away with Torture,” Internet, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/ archives/2010/jan/14/getting-away-with-torture/, 14 January 2010, (date accessed: September 23, 2011 ). 7 “DOD News Briefing with Adm. Locklear via Telephone from USS Mount Whitney,” Internet, http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript. aspx?transcriptid=4793, 22 March 2011, (date accessed: September 23, 2011 ). 8 “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs Dan Restrepo and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes,” Internet, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2011/03/23/press-briefing-press-secretaryjay-carney-senior-director-western-hemisp, 23 March 2011, (date accessed: September 23, 2011 ). 9 “Briefing by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes on Libya and the Middle East,” Internet, http:// www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/10/ briefing-national-security-advisor-tom-donilonand-deputy-national-secur, 10 March 2011, (date accessed: September 23, 2011) 10 “Gates Defends U.S. Libya Involvement,” The Wall Street Journal, Internet http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/06/19/gates-defends-u-s-libya-involvement/, June 2011, (date accessed: September 23, 2011). 11 Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 150 [emphasis mine] 12 Jim Hoagland, “Terror Turf Wars,” The Washington Post, Internet http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/ AR2006041401899.html, 16 Apri 2006, (date accessed: ). [emphasis mine]
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13 This linguistic designation, which emerged in the form of a military order issued on 11 November 2001 by President Bush, effectively elided the legal status of the detained individual, who neither stood accused of committing a crime nor was considered a prisoner of war, subject to the protocols of the Geneva Convention. Exceptional measures, such as Bush’s military decree, have, as Giorgio Agamben argues, not only become the fundamental practice of states in the twenty-first century, but they have also radically transformed the structure of traditional constitutional forms, inhabiting a zone of uncertainty between democracy and absolutism. As a structure by which the law incorporates human life by means of its own
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suspension as the law, the state of exception has thus become the dominant paradigm of government in the early twenty-first century. See Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, Kevin Attell (trans) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 3–5. 14 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 81. 15 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994). 16 Hobsbawm, 3. 17 Richard Poirier, The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).
Language, Identity & Poltics
The Welsh Language
Devolution and International Relations Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost Wales voted by the narrowest of margins in favor of devolution in the referendum of 1997.1 50.3 percent voted in favor with 49.7 percent voting against (the turnout was 50.1 percent), thereby stipulating the creation of the National Assembly for Wales (NAfW). The Welsh language was on the precise list of fields devolved to the NAfW as identified in the Government of Wales Act of 1998, and subsequently expanded upon under the Government of Wales Act of 2006. Since then, with the successful passage of the Welsh Language Legislative Competence Order in 2009, the UK Parliament in Westminster has granted the NAfW power to introduce primary legislation with regard to the Welsh language. The NAfW has used this newfound power to pass the Welsh Language Measure of 2011 and create the potentially influential new public office of the Welsh Language Commissioner. This reshaping of the Welsh language policy landscape is not, however, merely of parochial interest. While competency in international relations has not been devolved to the NAfW and is a reserved matter (a power retained by the UK Parliament), the Welsh language nonetheless provides an arena in which the Welsh Government in the NAfW is able to play a role in international relations. Specifically,
Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost is a Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Welsh. He has been commissioned to provide expert advice on language issues to various governmental and non-governmental organizations, including the UK Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland. He is author of Language, Identity and Conflict and The Irish Language in Ireland.
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THE WELSH LANGUAGE
language has become a salient feature of Welsh international relations through the British-Irish Council, the WalesArgentina program, and the UK-China human rights dialogue.
Contemporary Demography.
According to the data derived from the 2001 UK Census [most recent at time of publication], the Welsh language is spoken by 582,368 individuals aged 3 and over in Wales—around 20.8 percent of the total population.2 This represents a modest increase from 1991 (508,098) and 1981 (503,532).3 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of Welsh-speakers in Wales was decreasing steadily.4 There are many reasons for this small but perhaps significant turnaround, including the introduction of Welsh as a compulsory subject in the National Curriculum of Wales in 1988, the imposition of a duty via the Welsh Language Act of 1993 for public authorities to deliver public services in Welsh, the creation of the Welsh Language Board as a regulatory body for the Welsh language in 1993, and the development of a vibrant Welsh language televisual and broadcast media economic sector in Wales following the foundation of the Welsh language television channel S4C in 1982. While the numbers of Welsh-speakers are growing in the urban and historically Anglicized parts of Wales, the Welsh language remains strongest in the west and north of Wales. In the context of the UK as a whole, which is estimated to have a total population of over 62 million, however, Welsh remains a minority language.5
The British-Irish Council. The British-Irish Council (BIC) was estab[ 1 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
lished under the Belfast Agreement of 1998 that brought peace to Northern Ireland. Active since 1999, it is one of several intergovernmental mechanisms that link the UK Government with the various devolved administrations of the UK, namely the British-Irish Council, the Joint Ministerial Committee, the Memorandum of Understanding between the UK Government and the devolved administrations, and the Bilateral Concordats between the devolved administrations and UK government departments. BIC membership is comprised of sovereign governments the UK and the Republic of Ireland, devolved administrations Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and UK Crown dependencies Guernsey, the Isle of Man, and Jersey. According to the Belfast Agreement, the aim of BIC is to promote harmonious working relations between these various polities. One of its duties is to preserve indigenous, minority, and lesser-used languages. It was agreed at the third BIC summit in 2002 that the Welsh government would be responsible for leading this effort and that the Welsh Language Board would coordinate the work of BIC on behalf of the Welsh government. Most recently, the Welsh government has determined that when the office of the Welsh Language Commissioner comes into being, and the Welsh Language Board therefore ceases to exist, the coordinating role fulfilled by the Welsh Language Board will be taken up by the Welsh government, rather than by the Welsh Language Commissioner. At the first Ministerial meeting of BIC, held in 2006, it was decided to focus on three fields: language transmission within the
MAC GIOLLA CHRÍOST
family, adult education provision, and information and communication technologies (ICT). Since then, BIC organizations have identified models of best practice, explored how such models can be transferred between jurisdictions, and identified gaps in knowledge at a series of workshops and expert seminars, including one on ICT held in Cardiff in 2007 and a further Cardiffbased seminar on adult education held in 2008. Some commentators have rightly pointed out that these intergovernmental mechanisms are beginning to suffer some stress as devolution in
Language, Identity & Poltics
enviously upon the political reality of an independent Irish state.8,9 This is somewhat reversed in the context of BIC and Wales’ leadership in the area of indigenous, minority and lesserused languages. Here, Wales is a model to be imitated because of the successful regeneration of the Welsh language. The current positive position of the Welsh language contrasts in different ways with that of the indigenous Celtic languages of Ireland and Scotland. For example, while the Irish language may enjoy elevated constitutional status in the Republic of Ireland, its retreat as the language of everyday use in the
Some commentators have rightly pointed
out that these intergovernmental mechanisms are beginning to suffer some stress as devolution in the UK progresses further. the UK progresses further.6 In particular, the case of the release of the ‘Lockerbie bomber’ on compassionate grounds and the resulting difficulties between the Scottish Government and the UK Government brought these tensions to the foreground.7 The work of BIC specifically, however, remains quite uncontroversial. Indeed, it can be argued that it provides an important international stage for the Welsh government to positively project itself and Wales more generally. The Welsh language is precisely the reason for this. It has often been pointed out, especially amongst Welsh nationalists, that the form of devolution in Wales pales in comparison to that of Scotland and Northern Ireland, and historically Welsh nationalism has looked
Gaeltacht (the historical heartland of Irish in Ireland) continues apace.10 Irish in Northern Ireland is undergoing a revival, but one which is politically divisive.11 Meanwhile, Scottish Gaelic continues its apparently inexorable and possibly terminal decline.12 Thus, Welsh language policy has become a model for others, not only directly informing recent language legislation in the Republic of Ireland (Official Languages Act 2003) and Scotland (Gaelic Language [Scotland] Act 2005), but also influencing the framework of language policy in Northern Ireland and the ongoing campaign for an Irish Language Act there.13
The Wales-Argentina Program. The second example of the Winter/Spring 2012 [ 1 7 ]
THE WELSH LANGUAGE
Welsh language functioning in the context of international relations is specific to Argentina. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Welshspeaking emigrants from various parts of Wales settled in the Patagonia region of Argentina to create a Welsh language community which, in contrast to Wales itself, would be safe from the increasingly pervasive influence of the English language.14 This Welsh-speaking colony (‘y Wladfa’ in Welsh) was almost entirely devastated during the course of the twentieth century because no further Welsh-speaking migrants settled in Patagonia after the outbreak of World War I. Furthermore, the Argentine Government increasingly intervened in
to a program of activities, centered on the Welsh language, aimed at strengthening the historical link between Patagonia and Wales. This was formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding under the remit of the Welsh government’s European and External Affairs Division.16 The international dimension to this link is underscored by the substantive support provided to it by the British Council, an organization that describes itself as “the UK’s international cultural relations body.”17 The range of activities is analytically and comprehensively described in a series of Annual Reports written since 2001.18 Briefly, the Welsh government and the British Council,
The Welsh government has provided
substantial financial and logistical support to a program of activities…aimed at strengthening the historical link between Patagonia and Wales. the everyday life of the Welsh community. This included, most importantly, the introduction of compulsory Spanish-medium education.15 The Welsh language might have disappeared entirely in Patagonia by the end of the twentieth century if not for a revolution in the ease of global communication and travel, as well as the advent of devolved government to Wales. During the 1990s, the newly created NAfW of the Welsh government used Patagonia as a way to catapult Wales onto the international stage. Since 1997, the Welsh government has provided substantial financial and logistical support
[ 1 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
along with the Wales Argentina Society, support the work of Welsh language teachers and teaching assistants working in Patagonia and enable Argentines to travel to Wales and observe teaching practices in Welsh medium schools and adult Welsh language classes. These bodies, along with the Welsh Language Board, Urdd Gobaith Cymru and Mentrau Iaith Cymru, also support Menter Patagonia, a community-based organization aimed at organizing Welsh language activities in informal contexts. Significantly, the British Embassy in Buenos Aires plays a role in raising awareness and highlighting this peculiar
MAC GIOLLA CHRÍOST
international relationship. It is noted on their website, for example, that the ‘Welsh language project’ was a distinctive feature of the Smithsonian Folk Festival 2009 in which Wales was the featured nation. They anticipate commemorating the sesquicentennial anniversary of original Welsh settlement in Argentina in 2015.19
The UK-China Human Rights Dialogue. The third example aris-
es from the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) UK-China Human Rights Dialogue between the UK government and the government of China, established in 1997 in the context of a wider EU initiative as a platform for the two governments to discuss human rights issues.20 The Welsh language has been a substantive feature of this dialogue, in particular the remarkable growth of the language in the statutory education sector, driven both by parental demand for Welsh-medium education and by UK government and NAfW policy drivers. The UK government, however, has been rather reticent on using the Welsh language in education. The UK government believes that while human rights are a high priority in international relations, ‘private channels offer the best chance of delivering meaningful change on issues that are often viewed as sensitive by the Chinese government.’21 Many human rights NGOs, however, have been critical of the UK’s and EU’s ‘private channels’ approach to this dialogue. In an interview published online, representatives of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Federation for Human Rights confirmed that they
Language, Identity & Poltics
would remain involved in the UK-China dialogue on human rights but are unhappy with its inherent lack of transparency and accountability.22 Indeed, a measure of how reticent the UK government is about the precise content of its meetings with the Chinese government on human rights issues is apparent in the very limited response by the FCO Minister of State in the UK Parliament to a question on the actual issues discussed at a recent meeting: Mr. Jeremy Browne: The UKChina Human Rights Dialogue on 13-14 January 2011 involved discussions on the full range of human rights issues. This included the rights of detainees, migrant rights, capital punishment, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, China’s plans for ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the situation in Tibet and Xinjiang and a number of individual cases. There were also detailed expert discussions on the role of police in criminal trials and the use of minority languages in education. The Chinese delegation did not give us any commitments on human rights in Tibet.23 The meeting in question was the latest session of the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue held in London on the 14-15 January 2011, where the case of the Welsh language in the UK was used as an example of good practice of minority languages in education. Of course, the status of minority languages in China has become a vexed policy issue.24 After the roundtable session, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the UK noted that
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 1 9]
THE WELSH LANGUAGE
the dialogue was ‘frank, thorough and constructive’ and included a visit by the Chinese delegation to Wales.25 The reformulation of public policy with regard to the Welsh language in the education system in Wales is seen as a largely successful and important factor in the regeneration of the language in society more generally.26 It is almost impossible to measure what impact, if any, this exchange between the UK and China on the Welsh language in education has had, or might have, in the future in China. The immediate impact upon the Welsh language is that it is seen, once again, to function as a unique means of setting Wales in a positive manner on the international stage.
Conclusion. Under the conditions of the contemporary form of globalization, states and societies are more immediately and intimately inter-connected. One prominent effect has been a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of contact between hegemonic global languages, such as English, and myriad smaller languages. For
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many actors in language policy, this globalizing feature is inherently threatening, heralding an era of the mass death of thousands of languages.27 This is not, however, necessarily inevitable. The Welsh language has survived in the English language’s own backyard from its ascent as the language of British Imperial domination throughout the nineteenth century, and then as the language of a globally ascendant United States during the twentieth century. Indeed, the Welsh language has begun to flourish as the English language’s neighbor of greatest longevity. Moreover, an emerging feature of this revival of Welsh is the capacity of the language to enable Wales to play its own particular role in international affairs, whether as a model for language policy and planning in the context of the British-Irish Council, post-Imperial partner to Argentina and the historical Welsh-language ‘colony’ in Patagonia, or resonant and distinctively Welsh part of the human rights dialogue between the UK and China.
MAC GIOLLA CHRÍOST
Language, Identity & Poltics
NOTES
1 Richard Wyn Jones and Bethan Lewis, “The Welsh Devolution Referendum.” Politics 19.1 (1999): 37-46. 2 Welsh Language Board, Cyfrifiad 2001: Prif Ystadegau am y Gymraeg. (Cardiff: Welsh Language Board, 2003). 3 Ibid. 4 John Aitchison and Harold Carter, Language, Economy and Society. The Changing Fortunes of the Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000). 5 Office for National Statistics, “Population Estimates,” Internet, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/ nugget.asp?id=6 (date accessed: 20 August 2011). 6 Daniel Kenealy, “Concordats and International Relations: Binding in honour only?” Regional and Federal Studies 21.5 (forthcoming). 7 Ibid.,1-2. 8 For example, Phillip Cooke and Nick Clifton, “Visionary, precautionary and constrained ‘varieties of devolution’ in the economic governance of the devolved UK territories.” Regional Studies 39.4 (2005): 437-451 9 See, for example, “Scottish and Welsh nationalists. Freedom comes dropping slow.” The Economist, April 17 1997 10 Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, The Irish Language in Ireland. From Goídel to Globalisation. (London: Routledge, 2005). 11 Ibid. 12 Wilson McLeod, (ed.) Revitalising Gaelic in Scotland: Policy, Planning and Public Discourse. (Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2006). 13 Belfast Telegraph, “Irish Language Act to be revived.” The Belfast Telegraph, May 26 (2011), Internet, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/localnational/northern-ireland/irish-language-act-to-berevived-16004646.html (date accessed: 20 August 2011). 14 Glyn Williams, The Welsh in Patagonia. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991). 15 Ibid. 16 Further information on this can be found on the Welsh Government’s website under ‘International
‘Affairs’ at, Internet, http://wales.gov.uk/topics/international/internationalaffairs/?lang=en (date accessed: 20 August 2011). 17 British Council, Internet, http://www.britishcouncil.org/new/about-us/ (date accessed: 22 August 2011). 18 These reports are available at the British Council’s website at, Internet, http://www.britishcouncil. org/wales-education-welsh-language-project.htm (date accessed: 20 August 2011). 19 Internet, http://ukinargentina.fco.gov.uk/en/ visiting-uk/wales/wales-chubut/chubut-wales-links (date accessed: 20 August 2011). 20 Information on the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue is available at, Internet, http://eeas.europa. eu/delegations/china/eu_china/political_relations/ humain_rights_dialogue/index_en.htm (date accessed: 2 August 2011). 21 British Embassy Beijing, Internet: http:// ukinchina.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/working-withchina/HumanRights/ (date accessed: 22 August 2011). 22 “The EU-China Human Rights Dialogue: Perspectives from NGO Representatives,” Internet, http://www.hrichina.org/crf/article/3263 (date accessed: 22 August 2011). 23 House of Commons Hansard, Written Answers to Questions, Monday 24 January 2011, Column 17W, China: Human Rights. http://www.publications. parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110124/ text/110124w0001.htm (date accessed: 2 August 2011). 24 Ben Blanchard, “China’s minority languages face threat of extinction,” Reuters March 11, 2010, Internet, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/12/uschina-languages-idUSTRE62B0EW20100312 (date accessed: 3 October 2011). 25 Chinese Embassy in the UK, Internet, http:// www.chinese-embassy.org.uk/eng/zygx/t788939.html (date accessed: 22 August 2011). 26 Colin H. Williams, Language Revitalization: Policy and Planning in Wales. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000). 27 See, for example, some contributions to Nik Coupland, (ed.) The Handbook of Language and Globalization. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 21 ]
Ea c hS e c t i on.Ev e r yI s s ue .OneJ our na l .
f ormor ei nf or ma t i onort os ub s c r i b e v i s i tht t p: / / j our na l . g e or g e t own. e duore ma i lg j i a @g e or g e t own. e du
n o wf e a t u r i n g b i we e k l y s h o r t e s s a y s , c o mme n t a r i e s a n da n a l y s e s o n l i n e
Language, Identity & Politics
The Flemish Movement
On the Intersection of Language and Politics in the DutchSpeaking Part of Belgium Jeroen Dewulf The results of the 2010 federal elections in Belgium show a growing divide between the French-speaking south (Wallonia) and the Dutch-speaking north (Flanders) of the country. In the north, the Flemish nationalist party, the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), achieved a landslide victory in its campaign for complete autonomy for Flanders. Never in the history of Belgium has Flemish nationalism been politically stronger than it is today. A secession of Flanders from Belgium is no longer an inconceivable scenario. The N-VA has its roots in the “Flemish Movement,” a collective term for a plurality of people and organizations that have pushed for greater Flemish autonomy since Belgium gained independence in 1830. This article presents an analysis of this movement and its ideology, goals, achievements, and relevance to the current political crisis.
Jeroen Dewulf is Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies, UC Berkeley. He holds a Ph.D. in German Literature from the University of Bern, Switzerland. His research focuses on European Studies and Postcolonial Studies. In 2010, he was distinguished by the Hellman Family Faculty Fund as one of the “Best of Berkeley Researchers.”
Belgian Independence. Throughout the eighteenth
century, French was the language of the elite in what was once called the Southern Netherlands.1 Even in the northern and traditionally Dutch-speaking provinces, upper-class
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THE FLEMISH MOVEMENT
families provided an exclusively French education to their children. The bourgeoisie considered French the language of cultural refinement and progress and regarded the use of Dutch as provincial. Not surprisingly, when the Southern Netherlands became the independent Kingdom of Belgium in 1830, it was ruled as a francophone nation. The bourgeoisie that had come to power was strongly influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution. Thus, they defined Belgian identity from a political perspective, viewing themselves as a
more important concerns than matters of linguistic pride. People were accustomed to the fact that the elite spoke French, and would rather attempt to stammer a few words in French when interacting with a member of the bourgeoisie than demand the right to be addressed in their own language.
The Flemish Movement as a Cultural Movement. In the early years of Belgium, the only form of protest against the nation’s language policy came from a small circle of middleclass intellectuals known as “flamin-
In the early years of Belgium, the only
form of protest against the nation’s language policy came from a small circle of middleclass intellectuals known as ‘flamingants.’ plurality of citizens united by the idea of freedom. As they wished, however, to emphasize the uniqueness of Belgian identity, the bourgeoisie also added an ethnic element to its otherwise purely political concept. To differentiate the Belgian identity from the French identity, they highlighted the glorious medieval history of the country’s northern provinces and reinterpreted the attachment to liberty in the once mighty County of Flanders as the authentic spirit of Belgium. Despite the fact that about 57 percent of Belgian citizens spoke Dutch and 42 percent spoke French, there was little protest against the country’s language policy.2 The population in the poor Dutch-speaking north had
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gants.” The word “flamingant,” which they used with pride, had originally been a nickname used in the francophone press to ridicule the ambitions of those who were participants in the “Flemish Movement.” Members of the Flemish movement were strongly influenced by German Romanticism and the ideas of Herder in particular. Despite the fact that Belgium’s Dutch-speaking provinces had never before coalesced around a political or cultural entity, the movement claimed that its inhabitants formed a specific people, a “volk.” They referred to these provinces with the medieval term “Flanders” and to its inhabitants as “the Flemish.” The flamingants argued that a specific “Flemish spirit” existed in Flemish mentality, morality, traditions,
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and above all, language. Accordingly, Prudens van Duyse’s verse, “Language is the essence of a people,” became the movement’s slogan.3 The Flemish flag and anthem adopted by the movement were inspired by Hendrik Conscience’s The Lion of Flanders (1838). This historical novel appealed to Flemish pride,and it questioned why the ruling bourgeoisie praised Flemish culture and history but rejected the Flemish language. There were three different factions within the movement. One group deplored the independence of Belgium and privileged contact with the Netherlands. Another group supported the liberal Belgian constitution and wanted to improve the new nation by making it officially bilingual. A third group of Catholic conservatives preferred Flemish regionalism and rejected influences from France as potentially immoral and influences from the Netherlands as potentially Protestant. Although they all agreed that the steady “Frenchification” of Flanders had to be stopped, they disagreed on the type of language to be used. In 1844, the fierce debate between those who favored the creation of a Flemish variant of Dutch based on local dialects and those who wanted to use the official Dutch language of the Netherlands was resolved in favor of the latter. Although the Flemish Movement played an essential role in maintaining concern for the Dutch language and in popularizing the terms “Flanders” and “Flemish,” its message did not reach the masses. In this respect, it lagged far behind the Socialist Movement in Belgium. Socialist leaders had initially remained sceptical about the Flemish Movement, fearing that demands for
Language, Identity & Politics
linguistic reforms might divide, rather than unite, Belgium’s working class. Indirectly, however, the Socialist Movement was responsible for the growth of the Flemish Movement. Through massive strikes, it successfully forced the bourgeoisie to expand their political franchise in 1893 and, as a result, political parties had to cater to voters who only spoke Dutch. This enabled the Flemish Movement to act as a pressure group.4 By the end of the nineteenth century, the Socialist Movement increasingly included demands for both social and linguistic reforms. Socialist “flamingants” like August Vermeylen, however, insisted that, in order to obtain concrete results, the Flemish Movement must focus on social injustice in Flanders.
The Flemish Movement as a Political Movement. Lodewijk de
Raet, co-founder in 1892 of the Flemish People’s Party (VVP), the first Flemish nationalist party, played a decisive role in the transformation of the Flemish Movement from a cultural movement to a political one. As an economist, de Raet believed that the recovery of Flemish self-esteem required the formation of an economic elite, and so he insisted on the importance of a Dutch-speaking university in Flanders. De Raet’s plans corresponded to an economic shift in Belgium from the South to the North. By the end of the nineteenth century, the once lucrative metallurgic industry in the Frenchspeaking South was suffering due to competition with the German Ruhr, while the expansion of the port of Antwerp attracted increasing numbers of investors to Flanders. Flanders not only
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offered a direct connection to the sea. It also had an abundance of cheap, obedient workers who found their intellectual guidance in the Catholic Church rather than in the socialist union, as was the case in the South. While the economy in Flanders boomed, the South fell into a recession. This economic shift made the Flemish more confident, which was reflected in slogans such as “I’m proud to be Flemish!” or “In Flanders, Flemish!” Not accidentally, Antwerp was the first Flemish city to adopt Dutch as its official language in 1866. Since then, it has remained the center of “flamingantism.” International changes also boosted the ambitions of the movement. Following its defeat by Germany in the Battle of Sedan in 1870, France lost much of its international prestige. French culture, which formerly stood for progress and cultural refinement, was increasingly considered outmoded, and even decadent. Germany, on the other hand, was at the height of its prestige. Inspired by the rise of Germany, young members of the Flemish Movement adopted German nationalist rhetoric espousing the superiority of the “Kulturnation,” a nation defined by a single ethnicity and language. They were no longer content with having Dutch and French equal in Belgium and called for the exclusive use of Dutch in Flanders. Radical “flamingants” now even demanded Flemish independence. These hardliners formed a minority in the movement and, under normal circumstances, would not have been able to influence governmental policies. Moderate “flamingants,” on the other hand, looked for compromises and achieved a major success in 1898
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when the Equality Law, which recognized Dutch as equal to French in judicial matters, was passed.
The Flemish Movement in World War I and II. This pro-
cess of moderate reform was violently interrupted in 1914 when German troops invaded neutral Belgium and occupied most of its territory; only in the extreme west of Flanders did Belgian troops manage to resist. With its “Flamenpolitik,” the German occupier attempted to divide Belgium along ethnic lines in the hope of winning Flemish support. While most “flamingants” refused to collaborate, some hardliners in the movement seized the opportunity to push through a radical reform of Belgium. Shortly before the end of the war, these “activists” even declared the independence of Flanders. Due to collaboration of some of its members with the Germans the movement lost much of its credibility and was marginalized in the wave of Belgian patriotism that erupted after Germany’s defeat. World War I was more than just a matter of collaboration and patriotism. Militarily, it revealed the weaknesses of the traditional Belgian model; frustrations among Flemish soldiers that almost all higher officials in the army were exclusively French-speaking led to the development of a protest movement. Members of this “ Front Movement” vented their anger in an “Open Letter” to King Albert I calling for linguistic reforms with the words, “We will shed our blood, but we demand respect.”5 Unlike the “activists,” the “frontists” evoked considerable sympathy among the Flemish population. However, the
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ization offered an opportunity to preserve a socialist economic model with strong state support against increasing Flemish pressure for a more liberaloriented model. While federalist ideas had never been strong in the south, André Renards’ “Walloon Movement” that combined socialism with regionalism gained massive popular support.7 The Walloon desire for autonomy on economic policy and the Flemish desire for autonomy at a linguistic level enabled a 1960 agreement on the establishment of autonomous economic regions and linguistic communities. In 1963, a linguistic boundary was established under Flemish pressure, dividing once and for all exclusively Dutch-speaking Flanders from exclusively French-speaking Walloon territory. The main victim of this agreement was the French-speaking minority in Flanders, which was forced to adapt to an exclusively Dutch- speaking environment.8 Only in some villages, located on the language border and around Brussels, were members of the French-speaking minority in Flanders given the right to request municipal services in their language. In 1968, the last symbol of a bilingual Flanders, the Catholic University of Louvain, was split in two. The old university became solely Dutch speaking and a new, exclusively francophone one was built on the opposite side of the linguistic border. The tensions The Federalization of Bel- between Dutch and French speakers gium. By the late 1950s, a change in over the division of Louvain Univerthe political mood in the French speak- sity led to the end of unitary political ing south paved the way for the gradual parties, considerably complicating the federalization of Belgium. Influential formation of national coalition govmembers of the powerful socialist trade ernments.9 union had come to realize that federalWithin Belgium’s federal structure,
widespread expectation that the government would introduce linguistic reforms as a sign of gratitude for the Flemish sacrifices was not met. On the contrary, reforms that had seemed reasonable to an increasing number of politicians before the war were now deemed unpatriotic.6 Building on Flemish discontent with politicians’ obstructive attitude, moderate “flamingants,” such as the Catholic Frans van Cauwelaert and the socialist Camille Huysmans, managed to push through a “minimum program” by 1930 for linguistic reforms in the fields of administration, justice, defense, and education. This included the creation of an exclusively Dutch-speaking university in Ghent. For the hardliners, this was too little too late. Anti-Belgian resentment prompted these radicals to revive the old dream of uniting all Dutch speakers, both from Flanders and the Netherlands, in one nation to be called “Dietsland.” Their hopes of winning German support for this idea in return for collaboration during World War II were in vain. Despite collaboration with the Flemish National Alliance (VNV), Hitler prohibited all pro-Dietsland propaganda in occupied Belgium, as it interfered with his own plans. After the liberation in 1944, a new upsurge of Belgian patriotism paralyzed further reforms.
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Brussels, the country’s capital, and the nation’s small German-speaking area remained anomalies. While Wallonia and Flanders were granted the combined status of community and region, Brussels only received the status of region and the German-speaking area only that of community. Although historically Flemish and exclusively Dutch-speaking, Brussels had become a predominantly Frenchspeaking city. Despite the fact that Flemish politicians had chosen Brussels as the political capital of the Flemish region, they nevertheless agreed with their Francophone counterparts to give Brussels the exceptional status as
mous region were not realized. The German-speaking community was only granted the status of community, which restricted the jurisdiction of its government to linguistic and cultural matters. In terms of social and economic affairs, it remained under the dominion of the region of Wallonia.10
The Belgian Labyrinth. Today’s
Belgium is thus a political patchwork shaped by two opposing interpretations of identity. The Belgian State—represented by the federal government and the monarchy—still reflects a common Belgian identity. The communities, however, are established according to
Today’s Belgium is thus a political patchwork shaped by two opposing interpretations of identity. The Belgian State—represented by the federal government and the monarchy— still reflects a common Belgian identity. a bilingual region next to monolingual Wallonia and Flanders. Brussels, therefore, became Belgium’s third autonomous region, albeit with a bilingual government. In linguistic and cultural matters, Brussels remained under the combined jurisdiction of the Flemish and Walloon communities. Besides Dutch (with 6.5 million native speakers) and French (with 4.5 million native speakers), German is also an official language in Belgium. The hopes of Belgium’s small German-speaking community, consisting of only 75,000 native speakers, that their area in the far southeast of the country would also become an autono-
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linguistic criteria, reflecting a German model of identity based on a Romantic interpretation of nationalism. The regions form a combination of both interpretations. The federalization process undoubtedly stimulated the development of a Flemish identity.11 The consequent desire for more regional autonomy has fueled opposition against financial transfers from Flanders to Wallonia to sustain Belgium’s royal social welfare system. Concerned about weakening national solidarity, French-speaking politicians have been trying to halt the federalization process in recent years. Instead of playing the card of Walloon
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In 2001, the VU was rechristened as the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA). The leaders of the N-VA did not consider the party strong enough to campaign independently and therefore initially formed an alliance with the Flemish Christian Democrats (CD&V). Due to this alliance, the CD&V sharpened its Flemish profile in the run-up to the 2007 federal elections, which it ultimately won. Once in government, however, the CD&V failed to deliver the promised state reform to provide the region with greater political autonomy. Under the new leadership of Bart De Wever, the N-VA broke the alliance and decided to campaign separately in the A Divided Flemish Movement. subsequent elections. This risky deciIn 1978, the Flemish Movement sion paid off: Flemish voters turned itself became divided when a group massively to N-VA in the 2010 federal of anti-Belgian hardliners abandoned elections, making it the strongest politthe Flemish nationalist party People’s ical force in Belgium. Similar to the Flemish Christian Union (VU) and founded the Flemish Bloc (VB). Under the leadership of Democrats, Dewinter’s party suffered Filip Dewinter, the VB began to pri- dramatic losses because of the N-VA’s oritize the migration issue over Flem- spectacular growth.12 Due to subseish nationalism in the 1980s. Dewinter quent internal quarrels, the VB that not only opposed a French-speaking was once considered a model of success minority in Flanders, but any non- in European radical right-wing circles Flemish minority. With aggressive anti- now faces electoral insignificance. immigration campaigns under the slogan “Our Own People First,” Dewin- A new State Reform. The landter’s party eventually became larger slide victory of the N-VA in the 2010 than the moderate VU. elections led to widespread expectaInspired by Dewinter’s radical dis- tions that Flanders would considercourse, some hardliners within the ably expand its political autonomy. movement suggested that Flanders The N-VA demanded state reform as should unilaterally declare its inde- a precondition for its participation in pendence, even at the cost of losing a new federal government. However, Brussels. To them, this predominantly after thirteen months of fruitless negofrancophone city with a large Muslim tiations with Francophone parties, the immigrant population represented a N-VA dropped out. burden, rather than an asset, for FlanBy that time, Belgium had already ders. surpassed the world record in the numregionalism, they rather try to preserve as much “Belgium” as possible and to strengthen the links between Wallonia and Brussels. The hope that federalization would put an end to conflicts between the linguistic communities proved to be in vain. Belgium’s complex structure— referred to as the “Belgian Labyrinth”— thwarts political coherence and constantly causes new conflicts of interest. These conflicts are fed by the absence of a clear agreement over the total amount of political competences that should transfer from federal to regional jurisdiction.
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ish identity, the decade old struggle against French influence has left its mark. When facing challenges caused by immigration, the Flemish Movement tends to adopt a defensive rather than a receptive attitude. Even though they are Dutch-speaking, descendants of predominantly Turkish and Moroccan immigrants have difficulty finding a place in today’s Flanders.13 Ironically, after decades of Flemish struggle for autonomy, these new inhabitants of Flanders tend to identify more with a multilingual Belgian identity than with a monolingual Flemish identity. The immigrants’ indifference to the Flemish cause comes as no surprise. One of the greatest weaknesses of the movement has been its lack of concern with strategies to incorporate newcomers into its identity model. The failure to reach out to the large immigrant population could be considered a betrayal of the emancipatory creed of the movement and its history of championing both linguistic and social concerns. It also represents a missed opportunity for the Flemish Movement to reinvent itself. The continuous fixation on one single language and cultural tradition for Flanders risks making the movement irrelevant in the long term. In order to redefine its identity model for Flanders, the movement might find inspiration in Vermeylen’s internationally-oriented slogan, “We want to be Flemish in order to become Europeans,”14 rather than in the provincial The Flemish Movement in a sounding, “In Flanders, Flemish!” This international orientation natuGlobalized World. While the transformation of Flanders from a once rally includes the preservation of Bruspoor region to one of Europe’s wealth- sels as Flanders’ unquestionable capital. iest is as impressive as the construction Brussels is not only the key to Belgium’s of a confident Dutch-speaking Flem- future but also to that of Flanders. If it ber of days needed to form a new coalition government after elections. Never in modern history had a democratic nation been governed by an interim government for such a long period. Since the N-VA was considered too big to exclude, but too radical to include in Belgium’s federal coalition government, there seemed to be no solution to the crisis. Spurred by a dramatic speech by King Albert II on 21 July 2011, Belgium’s National Holiday, the remaining Flemish parties (Christian-Democrats, Liberals, Socialists, and Greens) continued the negotiations without the N-VA. On 12 October 2011, they finally achieved an agreement with their francophone counterparts based on moderate state reform. This agreement paved the way for a new federal coalition government formed by six parties (the Flemish and Francophone Christian-Democrats, Liberals and Socialists) under the leadership of French-speaking socialist Elio Di Rupo. Although Flanders will be able to moderately expand its autonomy under this reform, it remains to be seen whether the agreement will satisfy the Flemish constituency. The N-VA immediately labeled it a missed opportunity for Flanders, and Flemish media commentators almost unanimously agreed that in order to function properly the Belgian federal state will soon need a new, more radical state reform.
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ment to language and regional identity. Whether the new state reform will put an end to tensions between Belgium’s linguistic communities remains to be seen. The choice of Di Rupo, whose fluency in Dutch is limited, as Belgium’s new prime minister, might upset many in Flanders. As the son of Italian immigrants and a member of Conclusion. Never in the history of Belgium’s gay community, however, Di Belgium has the Flemish Movement Rupo is familiar with the hardships that been politically stronger than today. minority groups face. This personal As the political success of the N-VA experience may perhaps lead to a better indicates, Flemish nationalism has not understanding of the historical grievbecome irrelevant as a consequence of ances of the Flemish Movement and European integration and globaliza- possibly a new style of governing that tion. Frustrations over past humilia- succeeds in the herculean task of keeptions have been transmitted from gen- ing Belgium’s linguistic communities eration to generation, which explains united in one nation. the persistence of an emotional attachabandons Brussels in order to become independent, Flanders condemns itself to a provincial existence. The urgently needed redefinition of Flanders’ identity concept goes hand-in-hand with the need to strengthen the region’s attachment to Brussels as its window to the world.
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NOTES
1 B.C. Donaldson, A Linguistic History of Holland and Belgium (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983): 24. 2 Kris Deschouwer, The Politics of Belgium: Governing a Divided Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) 28. 3 “De taal is gansch het Volk.” Prudens van Duyse, “Aen België,” Prudens van Duyses nagelaten gedichten in ’t licht gegeven, Jan van Beers and Emanuel Hiel, eds., (Roeselare: De Seyn Verhougstraete, 1892) 1 : 201. 4 Patrick Hossay, Contentions of Nationhood: Nationalist Movements, Political Conflict, and Social Change in Flanders, Scotland, and French Canada (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002) 148. 5 “Wij zijn nog bereid om ons bloed te storten, maar wij eisen respect.” Adiel Debeucelaere, “Open Letter to the Belgian King Albert I,” The Flemish Movement: A Documentary History, Theo Hermans, ed., (London: The Athlone Press, 1992), 236. 6 Jan Craeybeckx, “From the Great Depression to World War II,” Political History of Belgium from 1830 onwards, Els Witte, Jan Craeybeckx and Alain Meynen, eds., (Brussels: VUB University Press, 2000), 125. 7 Maarten van Ginderachter, Le chant du coq: nation et nationalisme en Wallonie depuis 1880 (Ghent: Academia Press, 2005), 26. 8 Armel Wynants, “The Belgian Language Law in Administrative Matters,” Multilingualism and Government. Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Former Yugoslavia, South Africa,
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Kas Deprez and Theo du Plessis, eds., (Pretoria: Van Schaik Publishers, 2000), 36. 9 Jaak Billiet, Bart Maddens and André-Paul Frognier, “Does Belgium (Still) Exist? Differences in Political Culture between Flemings and Walloons,” West European Politics, 29, no. 5 (Nov. 2006): 914. 10 Jeroen Dewulf, “The last Belgians? The German-Speaking Community in Belgium,” Luc Devoldere, ed., The Low Countries. Arts and Society in Flanders and the Netherlands (Rekkem: Ons Erfdeel, 2009) 210. 11 Lode Wils, Van de Belgische naar de Vlaamse natie. Een geschiedenis van de Vlaamse beweging (Leuven: Acco, 2009) 328. 12 Teun Pauwels, “Explaining the Strange Decline of the Populist Radical Right Vlaams Belang in Belgium: The Impact of Permanent Opposition,” Acta Politica, vol. 46 (2011): 61. 13 Bambi Ceuppens and Marie-Claire Foblets, “The Flemish Case: A Monolingual Region in a Multilingual Federal State,” in Regional Identity and Diversity in Europe: Experience in Wales, Silesia and Flanders, David M. Smith and Enid Wistrich, eds., (London: Federal Trust, 2007) 117. 14 “Wij willen Vlamingen zijn, om Europeërs te worden.” August Vermeylen, “Vlaamse en Europese Beweging,” Verzameld werk, Herman Teirlinck, ed., (Brussels: Uitgeversmaatschappij A. Manteau, 1951) 2:170.
Language, Identity & Politics
The Arab Digital Vanguard
How a Decade of Blogging Contributed to a Year of Revolution Jillian York “Social media has created a sort of alternate space for reviving a dormant public consciousness into a sentient, dynamic social discourse” -Hani Morsi, Egyptian blogger
A History. In 1991, just four years after Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali rose to power as president, Tunisia became the first country in the Arab world to connect to the Internet. The public had access by 1996, though its vast democratizing benefits were to be short-lived. That same year, the L’Agence Tunisienne d’Internet (Tunisian Internet Agency, or ATI) was established. Among its first mandates was the introduction of censorship. Over the course of the next decade the region began to trickle online, with Saudi Arabia and Syria amongst the last to connect. Swept up by the global technology bubble, in Cairo and Beirut, Amman and Abu Dhabi, entrepreneurs, seeing the communicative potential of the pre-Web 2.0 Internet, began developing email services, job-search sites, and perhaps most importantly, web forums. Such forums became sources of unreported news, discussion, social commentary, and political debate, paving the way for the
Jillian C. York is the Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She writes regularly about free expression, politics, and the Internet, with particular focus on the Arab world. She is on the Board of Directors of Global Voices Online, and has written for a variety of publications, including Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Bloomberg.
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region’s future bloggers. In countries where political discussion was taboo and crossing red lines—such as discussion of the ruling family, or debates about Islam—resulted in persecution of journalists, web forums created new spaces, outside of society, where political discussion was relatively safe.
The Lede, to “make benefit glorious discussion of daily news”—a reference to popular film of the time Borat. Other mainstream newspapers in the United States were quick to follow. The same could not be said for the Arab world. In 2007, one prominent Palestinian blogger noted, “such per-
The Arab blogosphere... is unique in
that its common language has created a transnational community of sorts. sonalities in the Arab world do not The Rise of the Blog. Though yet generally have blogs.”5 Rather, online diaries are nearly as old as the the blogging demographic was viewed Web itself, the blog is a turn of the cen- as “young, technologically-oriented, tury phenomenon. In 1997, American and politically unengaged.”6 Nonewriter Jorn Barger coined the term theless, observers would soon note the “weblog,” which was later shortened to accommodation of political and social “blog” and turned into a verb by Evan debate—and activism—throughout the Williams, a co-founder of the Blogger region’s blogosphere. This developand Twitter services.1 ment coincided with two major factors: By 2006, and despite consid- rapidly increasing Internet penetraerably low Internet penetration rates tion in a number of countries, and the throughout the Arab world, blogging explosion of social networking sites like picked up among the region’s online Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. The Arab blogosphere, though bilinelite, with an estimated 25,000 blogs.2 By 2009, in the peak of the microb- gual (and trilingual in the Maghreb and logging era, researchers cited closer to Lebanon, with many bloggers writing 35,000 “active” blogs.3 Egypt has been in French), is unique in that its comat the forefront of the Arab blogo- mon language has created a transnasphere, with an estimated 1,500 blog- tional community of sorts. Though gers in 2005, more than half of whom researchers have found the blogosphere to be organized largely around countrywrote in Arabic.4 By the mid-2000s blogging became based networks, bloggers are increasan activity not only of ordinary Internet ingly communicating across borders. users, but also of celebrities, news com- Transnational activist networks have mentators, and journalists in the Unit- formed as well, often around common ed States and Europe. In late 2006, bonds such as resistance to dictatorship the New York Times first launched its blog, and censorship.7
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The Age of Social Media. In were introduced. The advent of Twitter
September 2006, Facebook opened its doors to the world. The site’s multitude of features and its unique “social graph” formulation proved useful to youth the world over.8 By the end of 2007, the site had more than 50 million active users; by January 2011, that number had grown to 650 million.9 That same year saw the launch of another platform: Twitter. Designed to accommodate messages of up to 140 Roman characters, what Twitter lacked in features it made up for in simplicity. Allowing users to “tweet” from mobile phones made the platform even more accessible, increasing its global appeal. In August 2007, nearly a year after the platform’s launch, the emergence of “hashtags” (the “#” symbol appended to a short word or phrase used by many for the purpose of aggregating information) contributed to Twitter’s success. This allowed groups to easily organize around a single topic.10 The use of hashtags for organizing would later elevate Twitter’s status globally during the 2009 Iranian elections.11 A third tool that revolutionized digital activism was YouTube. Created in 2005 and purchased by Google for $1.65 billion in late 2006, YouTube was quickly dubbed the “people’s network” by Time magazine, which named “You” its person of the year. The magazine credited the video-sharing platform and other social sites with presenting the “opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding.”12 First used for entertainment, social sites experienced rapid growth in the region and later became politicized as new features, such as Facebook’s “Groups” and “Pages” functionalities,
allowed activists to further spread content hosted on Facebook, YouTube, and elsewhere, attracting greater attention to causes in a centralized location. In May 2006, the arrest of prominent Egyptian blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah (also known as Alaa Ahmed Seif El Islam) spurred the blogosphere into action. Just three days after his May 7 arrest, the Global Voices Online community—to which Fattah was tangentially connected—launched a campaign to “Google bomb for Alaa,” encouraging users to manipulate search engine results to draw further attention to their cause.13 This particular method, in addition to the transnational nature of Global Voices, not only raised international awareness of Fattah’s arrest, but also had the unintentional effect of creating a meme. Campaigns for the freedom of other arrested bloggers have crossed borders and spread as far as Morocco and Syria, and continue to utilize some of the methods and style of the “Free Alaa” campaign.14 Global Voices, created as a media site in 2005, later expanded into a robust community, which came to include a number of prominent bloggers and activists from the Arab world and beyond.15 The community has often mobilized around common causes, such as the persecution of bloggers. While the community created within Global Voices is important, its primary function—that of delivering information from the blogospheres to a general readership—has also had an impact on citizen journalism. Translators for the site have brought Arabic blog content to a mainstream audience, spurring numerous imitators and inspiring oth-
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er translation projects. While blogs allowed ordinary Arabs to “re-engage with politics, hone their analytical and argumentative skills, and escape the state-driven red lines which even the most independent of Arab media are forced to acknowledge,” the rise of social media sites afforded even more opportunities for burgeoning activists.16 Nascent tools like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook offered new opportunities for existing activists to approach and gain attention for their causes. Activists embraced them with relish. While the arrests of more than a dozen bloggers and journalists in Egypt between 2006 and 2007 drew international ire, other bloggers were able take advantage of these newfound platforms to raise awareness of the longstanding issue of torture by Egyptian police. Award-winning human rights activist and blogger Wael Abbas rose to international prominence in 2007, when YouTube shut down his account for containing “inappropriate material.” Abbas had posted hundreds of videos containing images of torture and police brutality over the course of several years.17 YouTube eventually restored his account; in fact, Abbas’s story may have served to shift the company’s policies. In May 2011, while addressing the platform’s policies in light of videos from Libya, YouTube Manager of News Olivia Ma said, “Normally, this type of violence would violate our community guidelines and terms of service and we would remove it … however, we have a clause in our community guidelines that makes an exception for videos that are educational, documentary, or sci-
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entific in nature … So, we will actually adjust our policies in real time to adapt to situations.”18 Like Abbas, blogger Noha Atef helped bring national attention to the torture experienced by Egyptians at the hands of authorities. Atef, who started blogging about brutality in 2006, has stated that many Egyptians were unaware of torture and that “[this] social disagreement to torture is crucial to stop it.”19 Atef’s blog, Torture in Egypt, helped spawn later efforts such as Piggipedia, a Flickr photo pool to which Egyptians posted photos of State Security officers.20 By 2007 digital activism was popularized in Morocco as well with the advent of the “Targuist sniper,” a citizen journalist in the south of the country who, armed only with a video camera, sparked a national debate by capturing police bribery and uploading the footage to YouTube.21 The Arab country in which digital activism has perhaps had the most profound effect, however, is Tunisia. Despite the early onset of censorship, Tunisia’s Internet penetration rose fairly quickly, reaching nearly 10 percent by 2005.22 At the same time, the country’s blogosphere—which was perhaps the first to emerge in the region with the creation of online magazine TUNeZINE in 2000—was quickly growing. A sampling of blog posts from 2006 indicates a diverse group of bloggers discussing topics ranging from the World Cup to normalization between Tunisia and Israel.23 Although blogging initially allowed Tunisians to trespass some of the red lines that journalists could not, netsavvy authorities quickly caught on and, in an effort to scare bloggers into
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Al Jazeera’s coverage, as well as the broadcasts of France24 and other channels, reached beyond Tunisia’s borders and captivated the region’s attention, leading bloggers and pundits alike to surmise that the uprisings might have a domino effect.27 Indeed, by January 15 a Facebook page set up in honor of young torture victim Khaled Said, whose June 2010 death brought even greater attention to police brutality in Egypt, called for a Day of Rage on the 5 January 2011 Police Day. Inspired by their Tunisian counterparts, who on 14 January succeeded in ousting Ben Ali, Egypt’s bloggers began debating their own revolutionary goals.28 While established bloggers turned to the known medium to disseminate and debate ideas, a considerable number of Egyptians turned to Twitter, first to promote the 25 January protests under the hashtag “#jan25,” then later to live-tweet from protests throughout the country. Twitter’s popularity as a protest tool during the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian elections had not gone unnoticed throughout the region. Egyptians had observed how CNN and other media outlets relied upon short-form tweets to report on on-theground actions.29 Translation played an important role The Domino Effect. In the final weeks of 2010, Tunisia became the site in bringing content from the streets of an unexpected uprising. Sparked by to a broader audience. Though many the self-immolation of the young fruit prominent activists in Tunisia and vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, protests Egypt chose to use French and English quickly spread across the country, with respectively, a considerable amount of demonstrators eventually demanding an content written solely in Arabic was end to the Ben Ali regime. With inter- also posted to Twitter and Facebook. national media largely prevented from Projects like Global Voices, as well as entering the country, bloggers stepped Meedan, have sought to bring Arabic in, uploading photos and videos and blog and social media content to mainstream readership.30 publishing analysis of the events. silence, made Tunisia the first country to arrest a blogger. On 4 June 2000, Zouhair Yahyaoui, the creator of TUNeZINE, was arrested after initiating an online poll inviting readers to vote on whether Tunisia was “a republic, a kingdom, a zoo, or a prison.”24 As blogger arrests increased, the combination of their frequency and increasing censorship of websites (including most video-sharing platforms) led Tunisian bloggers to form a movement for free expression. Though often neglected by international rights organizations in favor of countries like China and Iran, by the late 2000s Tunisia had become among the worst in the world in respect to online censorship, surpassing other authoritarian states such as Syria.25 But it was perhaps the blocking of video-sharing sites, YouTube and DailyMotion, that caused a countrywide firestorm. As commentator Ethan Zuckerman later surmised in what would become known as the Cute Cat Theory, “Blocking banal content on the Internet is a self-defeating proposition. It teaches people how to become dissidents.”26 In Tunisia, and certainly elsewhere, these lessons set the stage for what was to come.
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Translation played its most vital role when Egyptians were cut off from the Internet on 27 January.31 In response to the shutdown, protest supporters quickly sprang into action in an effort to provide dialup and other connections out of the country. One project created in the aftermath was Speak2Tweet. The service, which was created by Google and Twitter, allowed users to call an international number and leave a voice message, which would then be uploaded to the Internet and posted to Twitter.32 As Arabic language messages began to flow in, several ad-hoc translation projects were cobbled together, including one by Alive, an Egyptian media project, which utilized a public Google spreadsheet to crowd-source translations.33
on the use of Twitter and Facebook for organizing protests, the effects of the tools on amplifying citizen accounts and attracting international attention was becoming increasingly apparent. While international attention from the West helped spur diplomatic dealings in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the entry of NATO forces into Libya and the placement of sanctions on Syria, transnational attention and cooperation from within the Arab region undoubtedly led to collective action.35 Nevertheless, international attention should not be linked solely to action. Videos emerging from Syria over the course of the past few months have solidified what was already known, but often overlooked-the sheer despotism of the Assad regime. The act of witness-
What to many seemed sudden, how-
ever, was in fact the culmination of nearly a decade of efforts. As the domino effect began to take hold, with protests spreading first to Bahrain and Morocco, then to Libya, Syria, and beyond, it became clear that the term “Twitter revolution� was honest and relevant. Organizers in Bahrain (#Bahrain, #feb14, #lulu), Libya (#feb17), Syria (#syria, #daraa, #mar15), Tunisia (#sidibouzid), and Morocco (#feb20) selected hashtags to popularize their causes on Twitter; the hashtags they created were later spotted on t-shirts and in street protests.34 Hashtags have, in many cases, become short-form symbols of protest. Although reports placed emphasis
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ing raw events that were previously only available via the reports of foreign correspondents and censored of their most disturbing elements has undoubtedly shifted the thinking of individuals and state actors alike.
A Decade of Efforts. The year
2011 will go down in history as the year that changed the face of the Arab world. From the early triumphs of January and February to the ongoing conflicts in Libya, Yemen, and Syria, and the nascent movements in Algeria and Kuwait, alien observers would not be blamed for thinking that a sudden
YORK
fever had befallen the region. What to many seemed sudden, however, was in fact the culmination of nearly a decade of efforts. For Egyptian anti-torture workers, Tunisian free expression activists, labor unions, and human rights organizations, revolution was an inevitability that would occur when the timing was right. Tunisian activist Sami Ben Gharbia, who spent thirteen years in exile, calls the role of the Internet during the Tunisian revolution “the work of at least a decade,” noting that Tunisians who were already activists in the traditional sense then became bloggers. These bloggers subsequently engaged in online and offline organizing, forming a movement against online censorship.36 The viewpoints of individuals like Ben Gharbia appear in sharp contrast to those of the mainstream media, which have relied heavily on the narrative that the opportunities for connectivity made available by digital tools sparked revolution. In reality, it seems the opposite: activists who had before been stifled by censorship and restrictions on movement embraced digital tools to assist in organizing that had previously proved difficult. While the use of such tools has clearly proved conducive to change in some places, it has accomplished little—or perhaps even worked against opposition forces—in others. The factors that contribute to the success of digitally enhanced organizing are vast. One is Internet penetration, which likely has a success threshold, but seems to have mattered little in Bahrain where, despite 88 percent Internet penetration, the opposition has seen little suc-
Language, Identity & Politics
cess.37 There are of course countless offline factors: the level of press freedom in a country, economic comfort of its citizens, and the divide between urban and rural communities. The most important factor is perhaps reflected in Ben Gharbia’s words, “[The networks built by Tunisian activists online] fostered the spirit of change and the shockwave that we witnessed in the region after the Tunisian revolution.”38 The fact that Tunisians had spent up to a decade building online networks left them well prepared for leveraging those networks when the opportunity for revolt presented itself. In contrast, Syria, which has a small active blogosphere and somewhat lower Internet penetration, lacks the cohesiveness found in Tunisia’s online community. When coupled with a strong, anti-opposition online diaspora, this creates difficulty for activists attempting to mobilize other citizens using online tools.
Harnessing the Flow of Information. There are, however, no easy answers to the question of how to harness the flow of information for the greater good. Nevertheless, international analysts, foreign governments, and even technology companies would be well advised to listen beyond the analysis of Western pundits. Instead, they should pay attention to the very source: voices emanating from the citizen journalists and documentarians at the heart of the uprising. As digital tools are used increasingly for worldwide activism, there are a number of issues at stake. First and foremost is the question of freedom of speech. The arrests of bloggers over
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the course of the last decade in various regions of the world is indicative of the fear struck into the hearts of dictators and less dictatorial politicians by the rise of citizen voices. More troubling, bloggers and social media users are increasingly tracked and censored by their governments, often with the assistance of Western-built technology. In Libya, for example, it was recently uncovered that the regime had been using surveillance technologies built by French company Amesys, a subsidiary of Bull SA.39 The governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain all use SmartFilter, a filtering tool built by American company McAfee. In Syria, logs released by hacktivist group Telecomix indicate the use of deep packet inspection technology by American company Bluecoat.40 The U.S. Department of State’s “Internet freedom” policies put forward the rhetoric of online freedom for all, but the export of surveillance and censorship technologies to authoritarian regimes by American companies puts the gravity of such policies at risk. Therefore, steps should be taken to regulate the sale of such technologies. Another concern is that of statesponsored online propaganda, the most famous example of which is China’s 50 Cent Army, which first emerged in 2008.41 Since then, more examples have emerged from the Twitter trolls and site defacements of Syria’s Electronic Army.42 Indeed, such attempts at propaganda muddy the playing field and make
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it harder to discern genuine voices. They may also silence critics. Using the “#Bahrain” hashtag in support of the opposition, for example, frequently results in a torrent of responses ranging from violent threats to “corrective” statements in support of the regime, discouraging users from expressing support.43 Finally, there is the ever-present question of activism versus what some have called “slactivism.” As evidenced by the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, on-the-ground action, not social media, was the primary catalyst in bringing down the regimes. Therefore, in cases where online demonstration has exceeded offline—such as, perhaps, the protests surrounding the 2009 Iranian elections—there can be false hope for success. Social media activists must remain wary of what writer Eli Pariser has dubbed “the filter bubble,” thus ensuring they do not overestimate support for their cause.44 There are, nonetheless, plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Social media has created an unprecedented environment in which like-minded individuals and disparate networks are able to connect across geographical boundaries, which will no doubt allow new movements to flourish. The ability of youth to communicate across both linguistic and geographic barriers is sure to have as-yet-unfathomable effects. It is therefore even more imperative that networks remain open and speech remains unfettered.
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NOTES
1 Jenna Wortham, “After 10 Years of Blogs, the Future’s Brighter Than Ever,” Wired, Internet, http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/ news/2007/12/blog_anniversary. 2 Marc Lynch, “Blogging the New Arab Public,” Arab Media & Society 1 (2007), Internet http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=10. 3 Bruce Etling, et al., “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent,” New Media & Society vol. 12 no. 8 (2010): 1225-1243. 4 Marc Lynch, “Blogging the New Arab Public,” Arab Media & Society 1 (2007), Internet http://www. arabmediasociety.com/?article=10. 5 Haitham Sabbah, “Blogging in the Arab World,” Sabbah Report (blog), Internet, http://sabbah.biz/mt/ archives/2005/10/06/blogging-in-the-arab-world/. 6 Marc Lynch, “Blogging the New Arab Public,” Arab Media & Society 1 (2007), Internet http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=10. 7 Ibid. Lara Setrakian, “The Arab Digital Vanguard: Cyber Activists Reshape the Middle East – The US/ Saudi Arms Deal – Water Woes, Water Wars?”,ABC News, Internet, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2010/09/the-arab-digital-vanguard-cyberactivists-remaking-the-middle-east-billion-dollarbullets-why-americ/. 8 Facebook’s “social graph” has been described as “the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related.” 9 Facebook Timeline, Internet, https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline. 10 Marshall Kirkpatrick, “The First Hashtag Ever Tweeted on Twitter – They Sure Have Come a Long Way,” ReadWriteWeb, Internet, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_first_hashtag_ever_tweeted_ on_twitter_-_they_s.php. 11 Lev Grossman, “Iran Protests: Twitter, the Medium of the Movement,” Internet, http://www. time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00. html. 12 “Google to Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock,” Google Press Release, Internet, http://www. google.com/press/pressrel/google_youtube.html. Lev Grossman, “You—Yes, You—Are TIME’s Person of the Year,” TIME, Internet, http://www.time. com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570810,00.html. 13 Haitham Sabbah, “Google-bombing for Alaa: Press Release,” Sabbah Report (blog), Internet, http:// sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2006/05/10/google-bombing-for-alaa-press-release/. Internet search engines determine ranking of a site according to how many sites link to it; therefore, by linking a particular word or phrase to a URL, individuals can—en masse—manipulate search engine results. 14 Prominent examples include the Free Kareem (http://www.freekareem.org) and Free Monem (http://www.freekareem.org/2007/04/18/anotheregyptian-blogger-detained-abdul-monem/) cam-
paigns, involving two very different individuals—one an atheist, the other a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—whose campaigning teams supported one another. 15 Global Voices Online, About, Internet, http:// globalvoicesonline.org/about/. 16 Marc Lynch, “Blogging the New Arab Public,” Arab Media & Society 1 (2007), Internet http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=10. 17 CNN World, “YouTube shuts down Egyptian antitorture activist’s account,” Internet, http://articles. cnn.com/2007-11-29/world/youtube.activist_1_youtube-videos-police-brutality?_s=PM:WORLD. 18 Andy Plesser, “YouTube Is Managing Graphic, Violent Videos From The Middle East With Community Help,” Business Insider, May 6, 2011, Internet, http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-06/ entertainment/30063062_1_videos-youtube-beettv. 19 Jillian Kestler-D’Amours, “Calm, Cunning And Courageous: Noha Atef Speak Out For Victims Of Torture,” Friday Bulletin, Internet, http://fridaybulletin.com/?p=1773. 20 Torture in Egypt, Internet, http://tortureinegypt.net/. Mark Allen Peterson, “Egypt’s Piggipedia: Transparency as Resistance,” Connected in Cairo (blog), Internet, http://connectedincairo.com/2011/03/11/egyptspiggipedia-transparency-as-resistance/. 21 Layal Abdo, “Morocco’s ‘video sniper’ sparks a new trend,” Menassat, Internet, http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/2107-moroccos-videosniper-sparks-new-trend. 22 International Telecommunications Union 2005 Statistics, Internet, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/ Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportName=/ WTI/InformationTechnologyPublic&Report Format=HTML4.0&RP_intYear=2005&RP_ intLanguageID=1&RP_bitLiveData=False. 23 Mohamed Marwen, “Echoes from the Tunisian blogosphere,” Global Voices Online, Internet, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2006/05/29/echoes-from-thetunisian-blogosphere-19/. 24 Threatened Voices, Profile: Zouhair Yahyaoui, http://threatened.globalvoicesonline.org/blogger/ zouhair-yahyaoui. 25 OpenNet Initiative, “Country Profile: Tunisia,” Internet, http://opennet.net/research/profiles/ tunisia. 26 Ethan Zuckerman, “The Cute Cat Theory Talk at ETech,” My Heart’s in Accra (blog), Internet, http:// www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/03/08/thecute-cat-theory-talk-at-etech/. 27 Jillian C. York, “Arab World: After Tunisia, Who’s Next?” Global Voices Online, Internet, http:// globalvoicesonline.org/2011/01/16/arab-world-aftertunisia-whos-next/. 28 Tarek Amr, “Egypt: Will January 25 be the Day of the Egyptian Intifada?” Internet, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/01/23/egypt-will-january-
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25-be-the-day-of-the-egyptian-intifada/. 29 Lev Grossman, “Iran Protests: Twitter, the Medium of the Movement,” Internet, http://www. time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00. html. 30 Meedan, http://meedan.net 31 James Cowie, “Egypt Leaves the Internet,” Renesys Blog, Internet, http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/01/ egypt-leaves-the-internet.shtml. 32 The Official Google Blog, “Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard,” Internet, http://googleblog.blogspot. com/2011/01/some-weekend-work-that-will-hopefully.html. 33 Chad Catacchio, “Alive in Egypt site launched to display translated voice messages from @Speak2Tweet,” Internet, http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/02/01/ alive-in-egypt-site-launched-to-display-translatedvoice-messages-from-speak2tweet/. 34 I have personally compiled photographs of offline hashtag appearances here: http://jilliancyork. com/2011/10/16/hashtagging-real-life/. 35 The framework presented within the paper “Blogs and Bullets: New Media in Contentious Politics” (available here: http://www.usip.org/files/ resources/pw65.pdf) sets forth a useful framework for analyzing the role of blogs and other new media; a useful analysis of the report may be found here (http:// whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2011/03/blogs-andbullets-breaking-down-social-media.html). 36 Bilal Randeree, “Inside the ‘Arab Spring’,” Al Jazeera English, Internet, http://english.aljazeera.net/ indepth/features/2011/07/201177101959751184. html. 37 Andrew Trench, “Predicting a revolution based
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on internet penetration,” Andrew Trench (blog), Internet, http://www.andrewtrench.com/2011/02/02/predicting-revolution-based-internet-penetration/. 38 Bilal Randeree, “Inside the ‘Arab Spring’,” Al Jazeera English, Internet, http://english.aljazeera.net/ indepth/features/2011/07/201177101959751184. html. 39 Wall Street Journal, “Foreign Firms Helped Gadhafi Spy on Libyans,” Internet, http://online.wsj. com/article/SB10001424053111904199404576538 721260166388.html?mod=WSJEurope_hpp_LEFTTopStories. 40 Leila Nachawati, “BlueCoat: US technology surveilling Syrian citizens online,” Internet, http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2011/10/10/ bluecoat-us-technology-surveilling-syrian-citizensonline/ 41 Michael Bristow, “China’s internet ‘spin doctors’,” BBC News, Internet, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/7783640.stm. 42 Helmi Noman, “Syrian Electronic Army: Disruptive Attacks and Hyped Targets,” Internet, http:// www.infowar-monitor.net/2011/06/syrian-electronic-army-disruptive-attacks-and-hyped-targets/. 43 J. David Goodman, “’Twitter Trolls’ Haunt Discussions of Bahrain Online,” Internet, http:// thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/twitter-trollshaunt-discussions-of-bahrain-online/. 44 The “filter bubble” as described by Eli Pariser is the “personal ecosystem of information that’s been catered by [the algorithms of sites like Google and Facebook] to who they think you are.” (http://www. theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/10/the-filter-bubble/181427/).
Language, Identity & Politics
The Effectiveness of Establishing Hindi as a National Language Lakhan Gusain Hindi has gained popularity since its adoption as an official language of the Indian Union in 1950. Hindi established itself as a prominent language in India over the last sixty-two years, and is now the mother tongue of over 422 million speakers in India alone.1 Hindi is an important language not just at local, regional, national, and international levels, but also in administration, governance, education, media, and literature in ten of the twenty-eight Indian states and three Union Territories.2 Great efforts by the Indian government and tremendous contributions by Hindi cinema, also known as Bollywood, have driven Hindi to its status as a widely used language.3 Above all, it constitutes a lingua franca among the speakers of closely related languages such as Braj, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Bundeli, Magahi, and a large number of languages spoken in the plains of Punjab and Haryana, and the hills of Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal. In addition, Hindi is considered a lingua franca among the speakers of more distantly related languages such as Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, and Nepali.4 Many people assume that Hindi is the national language of India, but it is interesting to note that neither the Constitution of India nor any Indian law define a national language.5
Lakhan Gusain is a professor of linguistics at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include intersection between natural language and national security, language documentation, descriptive grammar, and rare and endangered languages in South Asia. His most recent publication, A Reference Grammar of Balochi, is forthcoming.
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Despite its overwhelming presence in the country, there is nothing on record to suggest that any provision has been made to declare Hindi as the national language of India.6 This article will discuss the history of Hindi before and after Indian independence in 1947, Constituent Assembly debates for making it a national language, anti-Hindi agitations in the southern states and compromises, federal efforts in promoting and propagating it as an official language, and finally, Hindi’s emergence as a language of masses.
Need of a National Language.
Years before India’s independence from the British in 1947, English was used for official purposes both at the federal and at various state levels.7 The leaders of the prospective independent Indian nation sought to establish a single Indian national language through which to unify the people and promote national integration. Though initially the colonial language—English—united the elite and political leaders for a national movement, a common language was considered essential for unifying the country, mobilizing the masses, and developing national literature.8 Keeping this in mind, Gandhi pointed out five requirements for any language to be accepted as the national language: (i) It should be easy to learn for government officials. (ii) It should be capable of serving as a medium of religious, economic, and political intercourse throughout India. (iii) It should be the speech of the majority of the inhabitants of India. (iv) It should be easy to learn for the whole of the country. (v) In choosing this language, consider-
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ations of temporary or passing interests should not count.9 In response to Gandhi’s suggestions, the Indian National Congress, a leading political party fighting for the rights of the Indian masses, in its 1925 Karachi session decided that Hindustani— which refers to the blended form of Hindi and Urdu spoken in the Indian subcontinent—should be the lingua franca of the nation. A few years later, the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan modified the resolution of the Congress and suggested that Hindi should be adopted. The Sammelan was a powerful body of nationalist intellectuals engaged in educational activities. This body developed an extensive network of examinations in different provinces of India, thus playing a significant role in the popularization and spread of Hindi.10 The Sammelan’s decision was a source of consternation for Muslim members of the Congress who keenly desired a settlement, but they were disappointed by the Sammelan’s resolution. At the Indore city session, the decision of the Sammelan was confirmed and the result was a worsened communal tangle. The establishment of the Hindi Prachar Sabha in 1918 and the intensification of attempts to propagate Hindi led to a reaction. The Muslim League, a political party of Indian Muslims founded in 1906 that led the demand for the partition of India, in turn decided that Urdu—as a symbol of Muslim identity—should be the lingua franca of India. Mahatma Gandhi, the prominent leader of the Congress, established the Hindustani Prachar Sabha in 1942 and pledged its support for a Hindustani language, a middle path between Hindi and Urdu. On the
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Persian, in Muslim courts.15 By the middle of the nineteenth century, Hindustani became the dominant medium of communication and literary activity, irrespective of religion and caste.16 When the British colonized India from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, they used the History of Hindustani-Hindi- words ‘Hindustani’ and ‘Urdu’ interUrdu: Eleventh Century to changeably.17 The term Hindustani 1947. Sanskrit was the dominant lan- was used by British officials and was the guage spoken, in its different varieties, official language of British India and in the northern parts of what is called the British Raj up until the partition of the Indian Subcontinent. Over time India in 1947.18 it developed into twenty-seven Apabhramshas (corrupt forms).12 Hindi Hindi through Constituent evolved from the Khariboli dialect of Assembly: 1947-1950. The the Saurseni Apabhramsha vernacu- Indian Constituent Assembly was establars spoken in North India around the lished on 9 December 1946 in order to eleventh century.13 This language was draft a Constitution of India. The issue given the name ‘Hindavi’—the language of adoption of a national language was of Hind or India—by Persian speaking fiercely debated before the members invaders who overran northern parts of the Constituent Assembly. As the of India and established what is known demand for Pakistan became promias the Delhi Sultanate.14 The Delhi nent, Urdu was aligned with Muslim Sultanate was succeeded by the Mughal identity and was discarded for further Empire in 1526. With the capture of consideration. After the partition and Delhi—the seat of power of the Indian the subsequent emigration of millions subcontinent—it was the local Hin- of Muslims, Hindu leaders in Congress davi or Khariboli or ‘upright speech’ saw little need for Gandhi’s concessions of the Delhi city and its adjacent areas, to Muslims. They accordingly focused together with considerable numbers of on Hindi and left Urdu and HinduPersian words in the lingua franca of stani to their own fates.19 Now in the Mughal Empire, which came to form arena, two groups were left: on one the local element. As an emerging com- side were the members from the Hindi/ mon dialect, Hindavi absorbed large Hindustani speaking northern states of numbers of Persian, Arabic, and Tur- India and on the other side were the kic words. As Mughal conquests grew it members from the non-Hindi/Hinduspread as a lingua franca across much of stani speaking southern states of India. northern India. Written in the Perso- The pro-Hindi/Hindustani group was Arabic script, it remained the primary further divided into two camps: the lingua franca of northern India for the Hindi camp (Purushottam Das Tandon next four centuries and achieved the and Seth Govind Das) and the Hinstatus of a literary language, alongside dustani camp (Jawaharlal Nehru and question of what should be the lingua franca, there were now three claimants: Hindustani, Hindi, and Urdu.11 In order to appreciate the linguistic situation, the origin and similarities or differences between Hindustani, Hindi, and Urdu are important to understand.
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Mahatma Gandhi). The pro-Hindi/ Hindustani group moved a large number of amendments and argued for adopting Hindi or Hindustani as the sole national language. The anti-Hindi group, comprising T.T. Krishnamachari, G. Durgabai, T.A. Ramalingam Chettiar, N.G. Ranga, N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar and S.V. Krishnamurthy Rao, opposed adoption of Hindi or Hindustani as the national language and favored retaining English as the official language.20 After three years of debate, the assembly arrived at a compromise. This 1949 compromise, called the Munshi-Ayyangar formula, struck a balance between the demands of all groups. The name of the language was accepted as Hindi but the protagonists of Hindustani were comforted with a directive clause. In that clause itself, those who were the champions of Sanskritized Hindi were appeased because Sanskrit would be the primary source of vocabulary, while at the same time the words from other languages would not be boycotted.21 Part XVII of the Indian Constitution was drafted according to this compromise. It made no mention of a national language. Instead, it defined only the Official Languages of the Union. The Constitution of India, which came into effect on 26 January 1950, stated that the Official Language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script, in the hope that it would facilitate regional communication and encourage national unity. The Constitution also provided for continuing the use of English in official work of the Union for a period of fifteen years (i.e., up to 26 January 1965). The objective of this provision was to replace English
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by gradually phasing in Hindi.22 Soon after the Constitution was adopted on 26 January 1950, efforts were made to propagate Hindi for official usage.23 It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the central government, with state governments free to function in languages of their own choice. In accordance with the fifteen-year plan, instructions were given to go ahead with the linguistic changeover. Communication between the Center and the states was to be in Hindi, except for the non-Hindi states, which would receive an accompanying English translation.24
Opposition to Hindi: 19501967. The adoption of English as
the official language along with Hindi was heavily criticized by pro-Hindi politicians, like Balkrishna Sharma and Purushottam Das Tandon, who demanded that Hindi should be made the sole national language. As 26 January 1965 approached, the anti-Hindi agitation, especially in Madras state and other parts of southern India, grew in numbers and urgency. At the same time, pro-Hindi groups in the north staged demonstrations that attacked English imperialism and urged the Union government to move ahead with the shift to Hindi. Therefore, due to widespread resistance movements to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, a compromise was worked out that led to the passage of the Official Languages Act (1963). The Act provided for the continued use of English, indefinitely, for all official purposes. But it was also plagued by the equally adamant and opposing pro-Hindi and anti-Hindi forces. Because of these and
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other factors working against the promotion of Hindi, neither the planned changeover from English to Hindi as the official language nor the envisioned rise of Hindi as the national language occurred. The Three Language Formula was devised and referred to learning three languages—Hindi, English and one regional language—within the school system.25 This means that English and Hindi share the de facto status of the language of All-Union business. The third language that many Indians must learn is determined by the state in which they are living. The medium of instruction through primary school is in the official language of the state. Ironically, the Three Language Formula was not strictly enforced either in non-Hindi speaking areas in southern India or Hindi-speaking areas in northern India. The changes to public service exams were impractical and not well received by government officials. The only real concession to the south was the assurance that the Official Languages Act 1963 would be modified.26 Any effort to follow through with that pledge, however, faced stiff resistance from the pro-Hindi lobby composed of members of Hindi speaking provinces like Algu Rai Sastri, R.V. Dhulekar, Balkrishna Sharma, Purushottam Das Tandon, (all from United Provinces), Babunath Gupta (Bihar), Hari Vinayak Pataskar (Bombay) and Seth Govind Das (Central Provinces and Berar). They moved a large number of pro-Hindi amendments and argued for adopting Hindi as the sole national language.27 The Congress’ working committee, on 24 February 1965, finally agreed to a resolution, which stated that the position of English as an official language
Language, Identity & Politics
would not change unless all states consented to it. It also amounted to slowing down Hindization, conducting public service exams in all regional languages, and a strong implementation of the Three Language Formula in Hindi and non-Hindi speaking states.28 Finally, the Official Languages (Amendment) Act 1967 came into effect to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This ensured the current “virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism” of the Indian Republic.29 The India-Pakistan war in 1965 pushed the language issue to the background for only a short while, but the second war with Pakistan in 1971 compounded this effect. Before Bangladesh became an independent nation in 1971, it was part of Pakistan (called East Pakistan). Although Islamic identity was the main reason that Bangladesh became part of Pakistan rather than India in 1947, the imposition of Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, on Bengalis was a major factor in the split between Pakistan and Bangladesh.30 After 1971, rather than taking up the issue of a national or official language, Indian language policy has focused on promoting regional languages by enlisting them in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution on India. The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which specifically addresses linguistic issues, contained a list of scheduled languages, originally fourteen at the time of independence. Inclusion of a language in the Eighth Schedule meant that the language was entitled to representation on the Official Languages Commission, and that the language would be one of the bases that would be drawn upon to enrich Hindi, the
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official language of the Union. The list has since, however, acquired further significance. Sindhi was added in 1967, increasing the number to fifteen. Three more languages were enlisted
be underestimated. Films have introduced Hindi at the colloquial level and facilitated its use and understanding in southern India. As late as 1967 traveling south of Mumbai meant one was enter-
The evolution of Hindi has been truly
dynamic over the last twenty-five years after the waning of linguistic nationalism in southern India. in 1992 and four in 2003 thereby expanding the number of languages on the list to twenty-two. This step was taken in order to counter resentment among the masses on a linguistic basis.31
Hindi after Indian Economic Reforms: 1990-2011. Against
the backdrop of growing importance of Indian markets due to Indian economic reforms beginning in the early 1990s, Hindi has benefited tremendously due to its significance in the research, technical, and corporate world.32 Because Hindi is spoken by a large number of people of Indian origin in a variety of places across the world, Hindi is now taught in academic institutions in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and the European Union.33 The evolution of Hindi has been truly dynamic over the last twenty-five years after the waning of linguistic nationalism in southern India. Along with this comes the necessity of knowing Hindi not only to find jobs but also to adapt to societies in other states.34 The pervasive effect of Hindi language films throughout the country, especially in the south, cannot
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ing a no-Hindi land; this is no longer true. The less traditional use of Hindi in colloquial exchanges has been transmitted to Hindi language television channels, the majority of which do not employ the classic grammatical form of Hindi, with the exception of stateowned Doordarshan. This has been a positive development for the spread of Hindi even in non-Hindi states. In a way, the colloquialized Hindi in use throughout the country has removed the language’s elitist character. The recognition and growth of the use of regional languages in non-Hindi states has been remarkable with the increase in the political, bureaucratic, social and economic profile of hitherto marginalized groups like the Dalits and lower classes. Their participation in government services, education, small businesses, and real estate has increased thanks to the use of the regional language. At the state level it is the regional language that determines the flow of economic activity. While this will prevent Hindi from becoming a unique national language, the regional languages have ultimately enriched and ‘proselytized’ Hindi itself in the image
GUSAIN
Language, Identity & Politics
of a diverse cultural country. English, been as recognized and widely used as it however, remains the paramount lan- is today. In the past it struggled for its guage of business and government. It nominal identity (Hindustani or Hinis difficult to imagine it supplanted in davi). Though India earned her indewake of the informational technology pendence and identity, Hindi struggled revolution, which has swept the country for its own identity as a lingua franca, over the last twelve years. Corporate official, or national language of India. India also deals in English and knowl- Today, it is not only a lingua franca but edge of the language at the popular level also an official language in India. Ironically, it is not only a national language has become imperative.35 In brief, though having a vast popu- but also an international language, spolation as her speakers, Hindi has never ken and loved beyond its place of birth. NOTES
1 Census of India, Internet, http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/ Language/Statement1.htm (date accessed 15 August 2011). 2 Rama Kant Agnihotri. Hindi: An Essential Grammar (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 3. 3 Indian Entertainment Channels, Internet, http://www.indianetzone.com/3/indian_entertainment_channels.htm (date accessed 14 August 2011). 4 Rama Kant Agnihotri. Hindi: An Essential Grammar (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). 3. 5 Press Trust of India “Inclusion of Hindi in national curriculum,” Internet, http://ibnlive. in.com/news/inclusion-of-hindi-in-national-curriculum-oz-govt/163911-2.html (date accessed 19 August 2011); 6 “Hindi, Not a National Language: Court,” The Hindu, Internet, http://www.thehindu.com/news/ national/article94695.ece (date accessed 15 August 2011). 7 Jason Baldridge, “Reconciling Linguistic Diversity: The History and the Future of Language Policy in India,” Internet, http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~jason2/ papers/natlang.htm (date accessed 30 July 2011) 8 Hans R. Dua, “The National Language and the Ex-Colonial Language as Rivals: The Case of India,” International Political Science Review, 14, no.3 (1993): 293308. 9 Jyotirindra Dasgupta. Language Conflict and National Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 109. 10 Hans R. Dua, “The National Language and the Ex-Colonial Language as Rivals: The Case of India,” International Political Science Review.14, no.3 (1993): 293308. 11 Tara Chand. The Problem of Hindustani (Allahabad: Indian Periodical Limited, 1944). 12 Amaresh Datta, ed., The Encyclopaedia Of Indian Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1988), 2: 1469.
13 Keith Brown and Sarah Ogilvie, eds., Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World Oxford: Elsevier (2009) 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Rama Kant Agnihotri. Hindi: An Essential Grammar (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 6. 17 Gopi Chand Narang. In Urdu: An Essential Grammar by Ruth Laila Schmidt (London: Routledge, 1999). xiv. 18 Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. “A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part I: Naming and Placing a Literary Culture,” in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Sheldon Pollock, ed., (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 806. 19 Jason Baldridge, “Reconciling Linguistic Diversity: The History and the Future of Language Policy in India,” Internet, http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~jason2/ papers/natlang.htm (date accessed 30 July 2011) 20 E. Annamalai. Language Movements Against Hindi as An Official Language (Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 1979). 21 Constituent Assembly Debates, Internet, http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/constituent/vol9p33c. html (date accessed 22 August 2011). 22 Wikisource. “Constitution of India/Part XVII,” Internet, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_ of_India/Part_XVII (date accessed 29 August 2011). 23 Kanchan Chandra, “Ethnic Bargains, Group Instability, and Social Choice Theory,” Internet. http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/chandra/ps2001.pdf (date accessed 15 August 2011). 24 Bipan Chandra. India after independence (Penguin Books, 1989), 96. 25 Jyotirindra Dasgupta. Language Conflict and National Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 236. Hans R. Dua The National Language and the Ex-Colonial Language as Rivals: The Case of India. International Political
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Science Review. Vol. 14, No.3 (1993). 293-308. 26 David D. Laitin. Language policy and political strategy in India. Policy Sciences 1989. 22:415-436, 1989. 27 Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu, Internet, http://www.enotes.com/topic/Anti-Hindi_agitations_ of_Tamil_Nadu?print=1#cite_note-prasad1-34 (date accessed 15 August 2011). 28 Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu, Internet, http://www.enotes.com/topic/Anti-Hindi_agitations_of_Tamil_Nadu?print=1#cite_note-prasad1-34 (date accessed 15 August 2011). 29 Bipan Chandra. India after independence (Penguin Books, 1989), 96. 30 Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, S. N. Sridhar. Language in South Asia (London: Cambridge University Press, 2008 ).128. 31 Language in India, Internet, http://www.languageinindia.com/april2002/constitutionofindia. html (date accessed 30 July 2011) 32 John William, The Rise of the Indian Econ-
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omy, Internet, http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/ item/2006/0406/will/williamson_india.html (date accessed 17 August 2011); Language in India, Internet, http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2003/globalization.html (date accessed 15 August 2011). 33 Hindi is gaining popularity over Sanskrit among Germans, The Hindu, Internet, http://www. thehindu.com/news/article615719.ece (date accessed 18 August 2011). 34 Including Australia, Bangladesh, Belize, Botswana, Canada, Ethiopia, Fiji, Germany, Guyana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Surinam, Trinidad, the United Arab Emirates, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States, West Indies, Yemen, and Zambia. 35 Rama Kant Agnihotri. Hindi: An Essential Grammar (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 5.
Politics&Diplomacy Disintegration Theory
International Implications of Europe’s Crisis Jan Zielonka Introduction. Europe is in crisis again. The common
currency is under enormous pressure, levels of debt are high, and economic growth is sluggish. As a result, the public is confused, fearful, and increasingly angry. Populist politics are on the rise. Moreover, the European Union (EU) is unable to halt these negative developments. This leads one to ask if European integration is about to end, and how disintegration will progress if it does. To answer the first question, one might need an astrologer. To answer the second question, one would need to establish a theory of European disintegration. So far, we only have numerous theories of European integration. We can, however, entertain some possible scenarios of disintegration and assess their international implications. This article will examine three such scenarios: abrupt disintegration; a jump into federation; and a new medievalism, which is the most likely and benign scenario.
Jan Zielonka is a professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford and a Ralf Dahrendorf Fellow at St Antony’s College. His main research interests are in the fields of media, democracy, political institutions, and the history of political ideas. He has published numerous works on the European Union’s foreign policies.
Why Europe Is Important. The EU has been a for-
midable international actor in many ways, so its crisis is bound to have serious implications. First of all, European integration has kept the ever-growing number of member
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states linked to each other within a tight institutional framework. These countries fought bloody wars with each other for centuries, and now they only fight diplomatic wars at successive meetings of the European Council. Put differently, the EU framework has institutionalized, if not pacified, inter-state relations by becoming the most crucial center of European political and economic debates where national policies meet and part. Second, the EU exerted a stabilizing influence over its neighbors in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and North Africa. Numerous states in these regions are dependent on the EU’s financial and technical assistance. Some of them hope to improve their fortunes by joining the EU. Third, the EU is a global economic and normative power. No economy in the world can ignore the EU with its nearly 500 million inhabitants, a quarter of the world’s GNP, and around 40 percent of world merchandise exports. Moreover, European norms and regulations are progressively being adopted across the world, especially in such areas as financial markets, data privacy, food and health protection, the environment, and criminal justice.1 Fourth, the EU is the largest provider of developmental aid. In 2006 the EU paid out for this purpose over 2 billion euros, representing over 40 percent of official aid internationally.2 A large part of the underdeveloped world is thus dependent on the EU’s strength and willingness to help. Fifth, the EU is one of the most important partners of the United States. Soldiers from EU member states fight side-by-side American troops in
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various parts of the world. The EU shares and supports the American global policy of promoting democracy and free markets. China, Russia, India, and Brazil may well be rising powers, but none of them share American values to the extent that Europeans do. All these nets of relations and interdependencies will be affected by Europe’s current crisis. Of course, much would depend on the nature and severity of the crisis. The Greek insolvency and its threat to the common currency are considered the most problematic, but Europe’s crisis ought to be seen in a broader historical context.
Assessing the Crisis. In a world dominated by the media and its affinity for spectacle and entertainment, politics is chiefly about crises, which can be categorized into many types. The half-century old history of European integration is full of various crises and some of them appeared more dramatic than the current spectacle of confusion, paralysis, and chaos. For instance, in 1966, General Charles de Gaulle refused to attend the European Council’s meetings, causing a so-called “empty chairs crisis” that lasted for seven months.3 Today, no European leader tries to imitate General de Gaulle. In fact, they try to maintain, if not enhance, cooperation between European states. The problem is that this cooperation has not produced the expected results, instead generating public uneasiness about integration. For example, EU leaders have repeatedly confirmed their willingness to keep the euro alive and have beefed up rescue packages for troubled economies within the euro zone, yet none of these efforts
ZIELONKA
have stabilized financial markets. From a longer historical perspective, the EU does not perform much better. Economic growth has stagnated, or even regressed, since the launch of the two most important economic projects: the Single Market Program and the European Monetary Union.4 Similar problems with EU effectiveness can be observed in other fields. For instance, the 1995 Schengen Agreement has not been able to tame immigration into the EU, hence the populist backlash that has occurred in various countries. For instance, under the pressure of an antiimmigration lobby, Denmark decided
Politics&Diplomacy
consumers, and their labor forces. This is not to excuse European weaknesses and failures, but to refer to a broader geopolitical context and to the conceptual or even ideological confusion characterizing the current stage of history. It is also important to use relative rather than absolute criteria when evaluating the effectiveness of European policies. The United States of America is the world’s most formidable economic and security actor, yet it fails to cope effectively with the credit crunch, immigration, or local warlords in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan. Can one expect the EU to fare any better
The EU is still an institutional rather than
socio-political construction and can hardly compete for public loyalty with its composite parts, nation states.
than the United States in coping with these challenges? Making this sort of comparison has limits, however. If the government of the United States does not perform well, the American public is likely to give its mandate to another party or president. It has no option or intention to vote for the dissolution of the United Qualifying the Crisis. It is impor- States. In Europe, the public has little tant to keep in mind, however, that influence on the EU complex governassessing performance and efficiency mental structure. The public, however, is always a matter of degree. A lot can press their respective national leaddepends on the evaluator’s expecta- ers to leave the European Union, and tions and imagination. There are no this can prompt dissolution of the EU. ready-made blueprints for coping with Put differently, the United States does the current economic crisis, and since not need to justify its existence the way the crisis has a global nature, Europe’s the EU does. The EU is still an institufortunes are very much in the hands of tional rather than socio-political conAmerican and Chinese investors, their struction and can hardly compete for to beef up controls on its borders with Germany in July 2011. Although the Danish government made it clear that it does not intend to leave the Schengen cooperative framework, the move has attracted a lot of media attention and raised speculations about the end of the Schengen framework.5
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public loyalty with its composite parts— nation states. Its legitimacy rests on efficiency, not democracy or cultural (national) identity. Unlike the United States, the EU loses its main reason for existence when institutions become inefficient.6 This brings us to the topic of disintegration.
Abrupt Disintegration. The
to form an alliance to balance it. Since chaos is a haven for populist politics, nationalism would thrive. The politics of territorial claims and financial recriminations would ensue. Assuming it happens, disintegration will make smaller countries particularly nervous. Slovenia will again fear Italy, Portugal will have anxiety about Spain, and Lithuania will look with suspicion visá-vis Poland. Poland in turn will fear Germany and Russia. With the EU’s disintegration, the relative power and influence of Russia will increase dramatically. Turkey will become a more potent European actor with serious implications for Greece and Cyprus in particular. EU disintegration will also represent a boost for populist politicians in Serbia, Belarus, and Ukraine. It will dash hopes for Europe’s stabilizing impact on North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. It will diminish, or eliminate Europe’s contribution to development aid for poor parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The U.S. government will also be confronted with daunting dilemmas and costs. For Washington, a policy of benign neglect toward European conflicts will no longer be a workable option. Poland’s Finance Minister, Jacek Rostowski, recently alleged that war could well be the outcome of this scenario.8 It is difficult to dismiss such a pessimistic opinion because the scenario of abrupt disintegration assumes that political leaders would lose control over the rapidly evolving situation.
abrupt scenario of disintegration assumes some kind of external shock that generates anarchy beyond any political control. German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently declared, “the plunge of the euro would imply the collapse of Europe.”7 Her comment was probably right. The collapse of the euro is likely to prompt a spiral of events fatal for the entire project of European integration. A fury of mutual accusations, retaliations, and recriminations will generate conflict and chaos. Outbursts of nationalism and partisan squabbles will be the order of the day, with small states increasingly fearing large states, and large states trying to balance each other. Germany would be the most prominent suspect in the ensuing blame game, and this is why Ms. Merkel is so keen to avoid this scenario. The fact is, however, that neither Ms. Merkel nor any other European leader is able to steer this rapidly evolving chapter of European history. Ms. Merkel was lucky that the German Constitutional Court stopped short of judging the Greek bailout unconstitutional, but she may be less lucky with the financial markets hammering the euro. The international implications of this scenario would be devastating. Jump into Federation. Europe’s Some countries would try to bandwagon political leaders may well be slow, stubbehind Germany, and others would try born, and ineffective, but they do not
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need to lose control over the events presently transpiring on the continent. In fact, the history of European integration shows that crises may well generate a sense of common purpose necessary for new cooperative initiatives.
Politics&Diplomacy
trol its constitutive parts. The European Commission has a limited impact on the EU course of politics dominated by member states, especially large ones. Moreover, it is far from certain that a European super-state, if created, would
The history of European integration
shows that crises may well generate a sense of common purpose necessary for new cooperative initiatives. For instance, the Balkan crises are said to have led France and Great Britain to create the St. Malo framework for Europe’s common defense, and 9/11 gave Europe an impulse to closer integration in the field of Justice and Home Affairs. The current financial crisis has also mobilized Europe’s leaders to get serious about the creation of European economic governance. President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso had this scenario in mind when he rallied members of the European Parliament behind the idea of a more profound political, economic, and fiscal union. “I am convinced we need deeper and more results-driven integration,” he forcefully argued, adding, “let me be clear: this has to be within the Community system. A system based purely on intergovernmental cooperation has not worked in the past and will not work in the future.”9 In his view, “What we need now is a new, unifying impulse - ‘un nouveau moment fédérateur.’”10 The fact is, however, that diversity rather than unity abounds in the present-day Union and the European governance center is too weak to con-
ever deliver on its promises. A federation of many distinct entities, however interdependent, would always be at pains trying to identify a set of common interests guiding its policies. It would only work if composed of a few likeminded and like-looking European states. Such a core Europe would create a new dividing line across the continent, raising fear and suspicion. Some of the current EU member states would be worried about being excluded from the core while others would fear that joining the core would subject them to domination by other core members. In other words, a jump into federation is not likely to stabilize relations among European states and may well be a source of serious international dispute. Implications for non-EU states could also be negative. It would be much more difficult for Turkey or Serbia to join such a new European federation. Such an entity might be a more robust economic and military actor, but this would scare rather than please some of Europe’s neighbors. Russia and Turkey, in particular, may be prompted to balancing and deter-
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don, Luxembourg, Parma, and Copenhagen. Different European states are members of different networks with distinct rules and membership criteria. For instance, non EU-states such as Norway and Iceland are part of Schengen, while EU states like Bulgaria and the United Kingdom are not, albeit for different reasons. European citizens and commercial enterprises are subject to various regional, national, European, and international jurisdictions. Political loyalties are multiple and split. For instance, Catalonia falls under the jurisdiction of Madrid, Barcelona, Frankfurt, or Brussels, depending on New Medievalism. This scenario the issue. It is even trickier to deterassumes acceleration of a differentiated mine the cultural and political loyintegration in concentric circles. Inte- alty of Catalonians.14 European valgration will intensify in some fields, but ues and norms shape the international it will remain weak in others. Different strategies, institutions, and policies of integrative frameworks will have differ- European states, and they demand that ent members. By the same token, the citizens across Europe behave as good EU will get further from, rather than democrats and capitalists. closer towards, the federative paradigm, The current crisis has already generwhich envisages the overlap between ated a system of polycentric authority, legal, administrative, economic, and plural allegiances, asymmetrical suzermilitary regimes within given borders ainties, and anomalous enclaves that and under one central authority.11 The reminds one of medieval times.15 The EU will get closer to the medieval para- IMF has nothing to do formally with digm that foresees overlapping author- the EU, yet it has been deeply involved ity, multiple loyalties, fuzzy borders, in steering European economies, and a duality of competing universal and orchestrating rescue packages for claims.12 Greece and other troubled economies In contemporary Europe, author- of the euro zone. The U.S. government ity and loyalties are already split into formally has no seat at the EU table, yet multiple, overlapping arenas. There its encouragements and threats have is no overlap, however, between its determined numerous European decifunctional competencies and territorial sions. The U.S. Treasury Secretary, constituencies.13 The European Presi- Timothy Geithner, even attended a dency moves to another country every recent meeting of EU finance minissix months. Key European institutions ters in Poland—an unprecedented move are not just in Brussels, but also in indeed. There are even signs suggesting Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Vienna, Lon- that China may get involved in Europering efforts when Europe becomes less benign. The United States may find the new European federation more assertive, competitive, and united in purpose. Such a Europe would certainly be more capable of burden sharing with the United States, but not necessarily eager to do so, especially if France and Germany were at the steering wheel of the European federation. Therefore, a European federation is not a very likely outcome of the current crisis, and it would have more negative, than positive international implications if it materialized.
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an economic decision-making.16 Within Europe, new asymmetrical power arrangements have also overshadowed arrangements based on formal rules. For instance, reforms of individual EU countries’ finances have been prepared in Frankfurt by the European Central Bank, with national parliaments only giving them their formal blessing. Such examples neither suggest a scenario of disintegration, nor integration along the federative path. New medievalism would not eliminate conflicts between European states, but conflicts would likely to be primarily about exclusion from the European core and abuse of agreed procedures, rather than borders and territorial gains. We would observe fierce, but institutionalized collective bargaining, rather than balance of power politics envisaged by the two other scenarios. EU neighbors would find it easier to join some of the European networks, or make claims on their resources. The EU is not likely to become a coherent international actor with sizable military might under this scenario. Hence, it could continue exporting its “good” laws and norms without imposing its direct rule on the
Politics&Diplomacy
frustrated by the complexity of European decision-making, but Washington would find it easier to steer European politics through friendly capitals. Politics based on norms rather than swords could certainly be more prominent under this scenario, but it would not be particularly purposeful, quick, or bold.
Conclusions. None of these sce-
narios envisages a bright future for the EU. It would be naïve to assume that crises lead necessarily to a stronger, rather than weaker Europe. The federative scenario seems most unlikely given the existing diversity and divisions in Europe. While the medieval scenario, and the scenario of abrupt disintegration would result in entirely different political structures from each other, they both have the potential to take place. There is no doubt that new medievalism will generate less negative international implications than abrupt disintegration. and if so, Europe should try to make this scenario happen. This would require several mental and practical adjustments in the way the EU is run at present. The EU would have to embrace, rather than combat diversity
The purpose of European policies should be deliberative problem solving and mutual learning and not necessarily convergence and homogenization. external environment. Other powers would not feel threatened by such a medieval EU and would therefore have no reason for balancing, or deterring it. The United States may at times feel
and flexible governance. Integration would have to be contained to only a few selected fields such as trade, competition, or even energy policy, while foreign and defense policy for instance
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would stay in the hands of individual states. Soft, rather than hard, laws would need to be the norm. This means that compliance with European laws and directives would be chiefly voluntary, and the European Commission would use incentives rather than sanctions to stimulate such compliance. The purpose of European policies should be deliberative problem solving and mutual learning and not necessarily convergence and homogenization. External actors such as Turkey or Ukraine would have to be granted more access to EU decision-making before they become fully-fledged EU members. The EU should not claim the monopoly for wisdom in its vast periphery, but should instead try to work closely with major regional players. Pluralism, openness, diversity, and flexibility should be seen as assets in the integration project, because they increase the ability to learn and enhance legitimacy. Pluralism and flexibility do not imply total freedom, free riding, or “anything goes” policies. Integration
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would only make sense if it contributes to the maintenance of collective order, the achievement of collective goals, and the collective process of rule formation. There are, however, various ways of achieving these ends. The Union needs some form of central government, but it does not need a unitary government structured like a pyramid. The Union needs a sort of constitutional order, but this order can leave room for a large degree of flexibility and differentiation. The Union needs to provide some guidance and steering, but this does not need to prevent compromise and accommodation in the formulation and implementation of its policies. The Union needs common external policies, but they can well be carried out by informal coalitions of European and non-European states. A century or two from now historians would tell us which facts and choices determined Europe’s fortunes. In the meantime, we can only rely on theorists, unless one prefers consulting fortune-tellers.
ZIELONKA
Politics&Diplomacy
NOTES
1 David Bach and Abraham Newman, “The European Regulatory State and Global Public Policy: Micro-institutions, Micro Influence,” Journal of European Public Policy 14, no. 6 (2007): 827-46. 2 “Council of the European Union: Humanitarian Aid,” Internet, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ policies/eu-development-policy-%28ec-wbesite%29/ main-themes/humanitarian-aid.aspx?lang=en (date accessed: 4 November 2011). 3 Andrew Moravcsik, “De Gaulle between Grain and Grandeur: The Political Economy of French EC Policy, 1958-1970 (Part 2),” Journal of Cold War Studies 2, no. 3 (2000): 117-142. 4 “Eurostat: Real GDP Growth Rate – Volume,” Internet, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/ table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tsi eb020 (date accessed: 4 November 2011). 5 Denmark’s move enforced custom controls, but fell short of reintroducing passport controls that would violate the 1995 Schengen Agreement. The Schengen Agreement abolished internal borders, and enabled passport-free movement inside much of Western Europe. For the 2011 Danish move see: “Schengen State Denmark Beefs up Border Controls,” BBC News Europe, 5 July 2011, Internet, http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/world-europe-14028112 (date accessed: 4 November 2011). 6 Giandomenico Majone, Europe as the Would-be World Power. The EU at Fifty, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Paul Taylor, The End of European Integration, (London: Routledge, 2008). 7 Angela Merkel, “Es Geht Um Sehr Viel,” interview by the RBB-Inforadio, 13 September 2011, Internet, http://www.inforadio.de/programm/schema/sendungen/vis_a_vis/201109/163404.html (date accessed: 5 November 2011). See also: “Merkel Warnt Vor Kontrollverlust der Politik,” Sueddeutsche, 13 September 2011, Internet, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/ politik/merkel-o-merkel-warnt-vor-kontrollverlustder-politik-1.1142713(date accessed: 5 November 2011). 8 Tomasz Bielecki, “Wojna Idzie,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 15 September, 2011, Internet, http://wyborcza.pl/1,75968,10290674,Wojna_idzie_.html (date
accessed: 4 November 2011). 9 José Manuel Durão Barroso, “Speech by President Barroso to the European Parliament during the Debate on the Economic Crises and the Euro European Parliament Plenary Session,” Strasbourg, 14 September 2011, Internet, http://europa.eu/rapid/ pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/11/572& format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage =en (date accessed: 5 November 2011). The so-called ‘Community Method’ guarantees the central role of the European Commission as guardian and agent of the common European interest. See Helen Wallace, William Wallace and Mark Polack, eds., Policy-Making in the European Union, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 10 Ibid. 11 Stefano Bartolini, Restructuring Europe: Center Formation, System Building, and Political Structuring between the Nation State and the European Union, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 12 Jörg Friedrichs, “The Meaning of New Medievalism,” European Journal of International Relations 7, no. 4 (2001): 475. 13 Sebastian Princen and Michèle Knodt, “Introduction: Puzzles and Prospects in Theorizing the EU,” in eds. Sebastian Princen and Michèle Knodt, Understanding the European Union’s External Relations (London: Routledge, 2003): 204. 14 Luis Moreno, Ana Arriba, and Araceli Serrano, “Multiple Identities in Decentralized Spain: The Case of Catalonia,” Regional and Federal Studies 8, no. 3 (1998): 65-88. John Loughlin, “Regional Autonomy and State Paradigm Shifts in Western Europe,” Regional and Federal Studies 10, no. 2 (2000): 10-34. 15 John Gerard Ruggie, “Review: Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Towards a Neorealist Synthesis,” World Politics 16 Tania Branigan, “China Says Emerging Economies Will Not Play ‘Good Samaritans’ to Europe,” The Guardian, 27 October, 2011, Internet, http://www. guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/27/china-emerging-economies-europe (date accessed: 4 November 2011).
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 59]
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Conflict&Security The Sino-Vietnamese Standoff in the South China Sea John D. Ciorciari and Jessica Chen Weiss The past summer was a tempestuous one for Sino-Vietnamese relations. In May and June 2011, Vietnam accused China of deliberately cutting the cables of oil exploration vessels in the western Spratly Islands, calling the second incident a “premeditated and carefully calculated” attack. China responded by accusing Vietnam of “gravely violating” its sovereignty by conducting “invasive activities.”1 Both sides flexed their muscles by holding naval exercises in the disputed area, and Chinese state-owned media warned Vietnam of possible military “counterstrikes.”2 In July, Vietnam reported that Chinese forces beat a Vietnamese fishing captain and drove his ship out of disputed waters.3 In Hanoi and Ho Chih Minh City, protesters vented anger at China in a series of rare public demonstrations. Tensions arguably reached their most dangerous level since the two former Cold War adversaries normalized relations in 1991. Both China and Vietnam have sought to mobilize diplomatic support abroad and manage rising nationalism at home. Vietnam has been more successful at courting international support, but in broadcasting its grievances it has aroused nationalist forces at home and abroad that could jeopardize a negotiated solution. China is also constrained,
John D. Ciorciari is an assistant professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, and author of The Limits of Alignment: Southeast Asia and the Great Powers since 1975 (Georgetown University Press, 2010). Jessica Chen Weiss is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University and author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (book manuscript under review).
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 61 ]
THE SINO-VIETNAMESE STANDOFF IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
criticized for its “assertive” behavior abroad while facing domestic demands to take a harder line. Both states recently agreed to return to the negotiating table, but they remain far apart on questions of territorial sovereignty, and the dispute continues to feed into powerful currents of nationalism and popular frustration in both countries. These domestic forces exacerbate the difficult task of forging a peaceful resolution to the complex multiparty dispute in the South China Sea.
A Mounting Dispute. The Sino-
Vietnamese feud is part of a tangled web of competing sovereignty claims to the Paracel and Spratly chains and surrounding South China Sea. Chi-
The real prizes are the vital sea-lanes and fishing areas beside them and the energy-rich seabed below. International law provides no easy resolution. Applying the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which all claimants except Taiwan have signed, would first require determining who owns the various land formations. If all claimants consented, they could submit their disputes to the International Court of Justice or International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. China has refused to do so, however, as the most powerful claimant with the most to lose. In 1992, China passed a law declaring ownership of nearly the entire South China Sea.4 The Association
The Sino-Vietnamese feud is part of a
tangled web of competing sovereignty claims. na has occupied the Paracels—a cluster of roughly 30 islets, sandbanks, and reefs—since 1974, when China attacked and expelled South Vietnamese forces. The more complex Spratly dispute pertains to hundreds of small islands, reefs, cays, atolls, and other land formations south of the Paracels, closest to the shores of Malaysian Borneo and the Philippines. China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim all the Spratlys, while the Philippines and Malaysia claim territories close to their respective shores, and Brunei claims part of the seabed. China and Vietnam fought briefly when Chinese personnel moved onto several reefs in 1988. Today all claimants save Brunei occupy some of the land features, which have little value themselves.
[ 6 2 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which Vietnam later joined in 1995, issued a declaration advocating peaceful dispute resolution and a regional code of conduct.5 ASEAN also issued an unprecedented call for U.S. forces to remain engaged in the region and took steps to accommodate the U.S. Seventh Fleet through a system of “places not bases” that continues to facilitate the regular deployment of U.S. vessels in the region.6 China temporarily backed off, saying it would “shelve” the issues and pursue peaceful negotiations.7 In 1995, however, China built a small military installation on Mischief Reef and sent patrols to other disputed reefs and shoals. The Philippines responded by re-energizing defense ties
CIORCIARI AND WEISS
with the United States and tabling a draft code of conduct with Vietnam at the 1999 ASEAN Summit. Seeking to improve Sino-ASEAN relations and concerned about U.S. re-engagement, Beijing signed the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea,8 which called on parties to resolve disputes peacefully, “exercise self-restraint,” and adopt a code of conduct.9 Several years of relative calm followed. Since 2009, tensions have risen sharply. Rising economic stakes are partly responsible. Although the amount of energy resources is uncertain, one Chinese estimate suggests that 213 billion barrels of oil could lie beneath the seabed—comparable to the reserves of Kuwait and vastly exceeding a 1994 U.S. government estimate of 28 billion barrels.10 Experts also believe the seabed is rich in natural gas deposits, further encouraging claimants to prevent rivals from establishing footholds. The South China Sea is also a central thoroughfare (and potential jugular vein) for Asia’s booming maritime trade. Moreover, many coastal fishing communities earn their livelihoods from the disputed waters, adding to the dispute’s political and economic sensitivity. A related cause for tension is China’s growing naval power, which has given it the capability and evident willingness to enforce its claims more assertively. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has pursued robust expansion and modernization over the past decade, often in a non-transparent manner that increases concerns among China’s neighbors. In early 2008, Western defense analysts discovered a
Conflict&Security
new naval base on Hainan Island that could house nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.11 Since 2009, Chinese ships—often armed vessels bearing no explicit naval insignia—have expanded patrols and intimidated fishermen and energy exploration boats on numerous occasions. In 2011, China announced the launch of its first aircraft carrier. The PLAN’s capabilities remain limited beside the U.S. Navy but cast a formidable shadow across other claimants in the South China Sea. Most analysts forecast significant further PLAN expansion. Eager to defend their interests against a rising China, smaller states have tried to boost their own naval capabilities—exemplified by Vietnam’s recent $3.2 billion purchase of six Kilo-class Russian submarines—and have tried to exercise de facto sovereignty by conducting oil and gas exploration or fishing in waters they believe to be their own. They have sought to pool their clout diplomatically and enlist U.S. support. U.S. policy is crucial because the U.S. Navy alone has the capabilities to credibly counterbalance the rapidly modernizing PLAN in the years ahead. Although the United States has no evident intent to wage war over the Paracels or Spratlys, its interests in maintaining freedom of navigation and preventing Chinese regional hegemony have inclined the United States to favor the weaker claimants. China has bristled at its neighbors’ balancing efforts, which it perceives as a form of neo-containment, setting off a modest spiral of diplomatic and military measures and countermeasures. From China’s perspective, it has been far too accommodating in the past,
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 63]
THE SINO-VIETNAMESE STANDOFF IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
2011, Chinese defense minister Liang Guanglie was greeted with a chorus of concerns about the South China Sea. The dispute was also featured in talks at the East Asia Summit in Bali the following month. Vietnam has loudly broadcast incidents of alleged Chinese attacks on energy exploration vessels and fishermen, helping draw interAsymmetric Diplomatic Strat- national media attention to the issue egies. In addition to seeking long- and portray China as the aggressor. term support for their claims, both Although some officials around the China and Vietnam face the immedi- region have privately criticized Vietnam ate diplomatic challenge of convincing for provoking Chinese anger, ASEAN third parties to take their sides. China has largely supported Vietnam in callcontends that Vietnam’s needless prov- ing for a multilateral resolution. Vietnam has also had some success ocation has upset the peace. Vietnam “internationalizing” the issue, largely counters by framing the problem as one of unchecked Chinese aggression. due to convergent U.S. strategic interThe two countries’ diplomatic strate- ests. At the July 2010 ASEAN Regional gies essentially mirror one another, Forum in Hanoi, U.S. Secretary of reflecting the material power asymme- State Hillary Clinton declared that the try between them. Vietnam’s strategy, United States had a “national interest” as in the 1990s, is to “multilateralize” in the South China Sea.12 In July 2011, the dispute by raising it in region- Vietnam’s navy held a non-combat al forums and “internationalize” the training exercise with U.S. forces and issue by involving the United States and signed a military medical cooperation other major powers. China sees multi- agreement afterward. Both developparty talks as a way for its smaller neigh- ments are signs of the most significant bors to gang up on China, with the defense opening between the two in United States, Japan, India, and others decades.13 PetroVietnam, the state-run hovering behind them. China instead oil and gas monopoly, has forged partseeks to keep the dispute in bilateral nerships with U.S. and other Western channels, where it can use its superior oil firms, both for commercial reasons military and economic might to extract and to give foreign powers a stake in the concessions. territorial dispute. To date, Vietnam has been more Vietnam has skillfully navigated the successful than China in its diplomatic triangular relationship with China and efforts. Vietnam used its rotating chair- the United States, using U.S. engagemanship of ASEAN to focus attention ment and bilateral talks with Beijing to on the dispute. The Philippines and keep tensions under control. By elevatothers have also helped push the item ing the dispute with China only after onto regional agendas. During his first Clinton’s speech signaled a renewal visit to the Shangri-La dialogue in June of U.S. interest, Vietnamese leaders allowing Vietnam and other nations to revise the status quo unilaterally. China sees its recent actions as standing up for its rightful interests. This is one reason why conflict between Vietnam and China over the South China Sea is so dangerous: each side believes in the legitimacy of its claims and actions.
[ 6 4 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
CIORCIARI AND WEISS
avoided the missteps of other leaders who have sought U.S. assistance, such as Taiwan’s Chen Shui-bian, who earned the wrath of the Bush administration for exacerbating tensions with China despite U.S. warnings.
Conflict&Security
scare China away from serious multilateral engagement, justify large PLAN budget requests, fuel nationalism in China, and reduce space for face-saving compromise. A more confident China could also attempt to call Vietnam’s
China has been relatively isolated on the
issue and has had to play diplomatic defense. By contrast, China has been relatively isolated on the issue and has had to play diplomatic defense. At the Shangri-La dialogue, Liang insisted that China will follow “the path of peaceful development” and will “never seek hegemony or military expansion.”14 Such statements have not stemmed the flow of accusations from its neighbors, especially when coupled with stern Chinese warnings and continued maritime incidents. Beijing has tried to block multilateral initiatives, resisting proposals to bring the dispute to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and dragging its feet on a binding code of conduct. It did, however, ink a set of non-binding guidelines with ASEAN in July 2011.15 Beijing has also tried to deter “internationalization,” criticizing the timing of the recent U.S.-Vietnam naval exercises and publicly warning Hanoi and other capitals that Beijing “firmly opposes attempts to internationalize the South China Sea issue, which should only be resolved bilaterally.”16 Although Vietnam has been somewhat more effective than China in framing the dispute diplomatically, Hanoi’s strategy is not without risks. Balancing too assertively against Beijing could
bluff by testing the extent of the U.S. security commitment. Although U.S. policy favors the smaller South China Sea claimants, the extent of help the United States would offer in a crisis is uncertain. Even absent war, China can punish Vietnam economically. China accounts for roughly $20 billion in twoway trade, rapidly climbing investment, and substantial aid for infrastructure and other projects in Vietnam.17 These concerns may explain why Vietnam has recently returned to bilateral talks with China, signing an October 2011 agreement to resolve the issue peacefully and setting up a new bilateral hotline to deal with crises.18
Rising Nationalist Forces. In managing the dispute, both China and especially Vietnam have had to consider domestic political pressures. Following the Sino-Vietnamese maritime altercation in May 2011, Vietnamese protesters took to the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chih Minh City. In contrast to similar anti-Chinese demonstrations in 2007, which Vietnamese authorities dispersed after two weekends, the 2011 protests were largely tolerated for eleven consecutive weekends. The Vietnamese government denied organizing Winter/Spring 2012 [ 65]
THE SINO-VIETNAMESE STANDOFF IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
them. In early June, Deputy Minister of Defense Nguyen Chi Vinh described the protests as “totally spontaneous” and added that the rallies “should not happen again.”19 Nevertheless, the authorities allowed additional protests to occur the following week.20 The government was loath to crack down, partly afraid of appearing “anti-nationalistic” and perhaps hoping the protests would communicate to China and international audiences the extent of public outrage in Vietnam.21 In late June, evidently concerned that protests could turn against the government or further complicate Sino-Vietnamese relations, Vietnamese authorities issued a joint press release with their Chinese counterparts that emphasized “the need to steer public opinions along the correct direction, avoiding comments and deeds that harm the friendship and trust of the two countries.”22 By then, however, the protests had significant momentum, and demonstrators began accusing the government of being too soft on China. In July, twenty prominent intellectuals petitioned the Communist Party politburo and chairman of the National Assembly, arguing that only sweeping political reforms would prevent Chinese “penetration and disruption of all aspects of our economic, political and cultural life.”23 Days later, police broke up a protest beside the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi, arresting approximately fiftyfive people—underscoring the sincerity of the government’s expressed desire to quell protests.24 A few hundred people nevertheless marched in Hanoi the following week, with some angry at the government crackdown.25 The Hanoi police chief issued a public explanation
[ 6 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
and apology, which protesters interpreted as an indication that they would be allowed to proceed, and demonstrations recommenced in Hanoi in early August.26 Vietnam’s decision to allow the protests has drawn attention to the dispute and generated sympathetic international media coverage, perhaps helping legitimize Vietnamese pleas for international support.27 Some Vietnamese demonstrators have criticized their leaders for being too weak, however, which may reduce the government’s ability to compromise. In theory, this could form part of a deliberate strategy, but it is unclear whether the Vietnamese demonstrations have induced China to back down. In this regard, China may view Vietnam’s protests through the lens of its own experience with nationalist protests. Its exhortations to control public opinion stem from a belief that Vietnam’s anti-China demonstrations are carefully managed, reflecting real popular anger that has nonetheless been fed over the years by official history textbooks. As Professor Pan Jin’e of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences noted in June: What Vietnamese officials are saying may be intended for China to hear, but mostly it is intended for their domestic public. Indeed, in July Vietnam will hold the next round of legislative elections, which will elect the next premier.... The conflicts in Sino-Vietnamese history have created a deep sense of estrangement among Vietnamese. Their history textbooks have always called China an invader, historically
CIORCIARI AND WEISS
Conflict&Security
ger of escalation. Small-scale altercations, unilateral exploration of seabed resources, and expanded naval patrols and exercises will likely continue to occur as both sides jockey for a stronger negotiating position and seek to appease domestic political audiences. The greatest danger is that such skirmishes at sea will refract through domestic politics in both China and Vietnam, reducing options for a negotiated settlement and raising the risk of political and military escalation. Each spat strengthens the hands of interest groups within China—such as nationalists in the PLAN, energy companies, and provincial governments—that seek to enforce claims in the South China Sea more assertively. In Vietnam, future clashes will arouse further public anger and frustration with the Communist Party. In both states, the temptation to indulge or accommodate domestic nationalist demands and aligned interest groups will be strong, raising the likelihood of conflict. A peaceful resolution will require Implications Going Forward. In the near term, major armed conflict both governments to manage nationalappears unlikely. Although Vietnam is ism responsibly. In the past, both have clearly outmatched in military capa- used nationalist narratives to direct bilities, using force would also carry public ire outward and bolster their substantial risks for Beijing. The use of domestic legitimacy. Both have also force would undermine China’s charm used nationalism to draw international offensive in Southeast Asia, which has attention and signal their resolve. If already worn thin. Defending the dis- both sides continue to do so, the room tant Spratly Islands would be difficult for compromise will shrink, increasing for the PLAN, especially if the United the risk of military escalation. Similar principles apply to China’s Sates came to its rivals’ aid. Armed conflict would also scuttle proposed relations with other Asian states on plans for joint energy exploration and its periphery. Many such states, like Vietnam, are actively engaged in efforts development. Despite the economic and security to “internationalize” disputes through costs of conflict in the South China regional bodies and limited alignment Sea, there remains a significant dan- with the United States. Their strategies up through the 70s and 80s. Vietnamese youth have grown up reading this kind of history, so naturally they feel an enmity toward China.28 Given Vietnam’s past willingness and ability to shut down online and offline expressions of nationalism, the most recent rounds of anti-China protests in Vietnam do not appear to have compelled a change in Chinese thinking. If anything, they may be stoking nationalism in China. The official Chinese press has paid only modest attention to the protests in Vietnam, but commercial media outlets have covered the dispute heavily. Considerable anger at Vietnam is apparent in Chinese chat rooms, where nationalists accuse Beijing of being too accommodating toward their smaller southern neighbor. In late July, Chinese nationalist activists circulated an online petition condemning the non-binding guidelines between China and ASEAN as “treasonous.”29
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 67 ]
THE SINO-VIETNAMESE STANDOFF IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
carry many of the same strengths and hazards as Vietnam’s. The Philippine government has rechristened the South China Sea the “West Philippine Sea,” taken a strident line against China, and sought assurances from its U.S. treaty allies. Taiwan has announced
conflict. Whether China will agree to the plan is in question. In late October, the Global Times, a nationalist subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily, warned that China would start with multilateral diplomacy but that oth-
The United States has a pivotal role—not in
confronting China directly, but in even-handedly enforcing the key principles of freedom of navigation and peaceful dispute resolution. plans to deploy missile boats to the Spratly Islands. Malaysia and Indonesia have pushed for ASEAN states to come together and discuss their conflicting claims. Small protests in the Philippines suggest that nationalism is rising elsewhere in Asia, encouraged by fiery political rhetoric. Those domestic dynamics pose the greatest dangers of conflict in the South China Sea. Negotiating a solution will require rising above domestic politics and mixing bilateral and regional talks, perhaps involving ad hoc groups nested within the broader East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum. In October 2011, Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang agreed to support a Philippine proposal to establish a multilaterally negotiated “Zone of Peace, Freedom, Friendship, and Cooperation” in the South China Sea. The proposal aims to demilitarize the disputed area, set more binding rules of conduct, and engage the parties in joint development schemes and other forms of cooperation that could deliver the seabed’s payoffs without embroiling the region in
[ 6 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
er claimants should “prepare for the sound of cannons” if others did not change their approach, as “that may be the only way for the disputes in the seas to be resolved.”30 Asked whether the editorial represented official policy, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu only stated that Chinese “media have the right to comment and editorialize, and we trust that they will report truthfully, objectively, and responsibly.”31 The United States has a pivotal role— not in confronting China, but in supporting the principles of freedom of navigation and peaceful dispute resolution. The goal of diplomacy should not be to achieve a definitive one-off settlement, which is highly unlikely. It should instead be to manage the dispute responsibly and provide political space and incentives for the leaders of China, Vietnam, and other claimants to invest in cooperative measures and avoid embroiling the region in conflict. Multilateral talks toward a stronger code of conduct are a good place to start.
CIORCIARI AND WEISS
Conflict&Security
NOTES
1 “Vietnam plans live-fire drill amid South China Sea row,” BBC News Asia-Pacific, 10 June 2011. 2 “China Must React to Vietnam’s Provocation,” Global Times (China), 21 June 2011. 3 “Vietnam: Chinese Soldiers Attack Fishermen,” Associated Press, 13 July 2011. 4 Law on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone of the People’s Republic of China (adopted at the 24th meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, 25 February 1992), Internet, http://www. un.org/Depts/los/LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/ PDFFILES/CHN_1992_Law.pdf (date accessed: 8 November 2011). 5 “ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea” (Manila, Philippines, 22 July 1992), Internet, http:// www.asean.org/5233.htm, (date accessed: 8 November 2011). 6 Lisolette Odgaard, “Holding the reign? The US and the emerging security structure in SouthEast Asia” (paper prepared for the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Chicago, IL, 20-24 February 2001; Edward A. Olsen and David Winterford, “Asian Multilateralism: Implications for U.S. Policy,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 6, no. 1 (1994). 7 “Qian Qichen Denies China Wants to Fill a ‘Vacuum’ in Southeast Asia,” Xinhua News Agency, 21 July 1992. 8 Leszek Buszynski, “ASEAN, the Declaration of Conduct, and the South China Sea,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 25: no. 3 (2003): 354-359. 9 “Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea” (Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 4 November 2002), paragraphs 4-5, Internet, http://www.aseansec.org/13163.htm (date accessed: 8 November 2011). 10 U.S. Energy Information Administration, “South China Sea,” Country Analysis Briefs (March 2008), 4. 11 Thomas Harding, “Chinese nuclear submarine base,” The Telegraph (London), 1 May 2008. 12 Hillary Clinton, “Remarks at the ASEAN Regional Forum,” (Hanoi, Vietnam, 23 July 2010), Internet, http://www.state.gov/secretary/ rm/2010/07/145095.htm (date accessed: 8 November 2011). 13 Patrick Barta, “U.S., Vietnam in Exercises Amid Tensions with China,” Wall Street Journal, 16 July 2011; “U.S., Vietnam agree 1st formal military ties,” China Daily, 3 August 2011. 14 Gen. Liang Guanglie, “A Better Future through Security Cooperation” (address at the 2011 Shangri-la Dialogue, Singapore, 5 June 2011), Internet, http:// www.iiss.org/conferences/the-shangri-la-dialogue/ shangri-la-dialogue-2011/speeches/fourth-plena-
ry-session/general-liang-guanglie-english/ (date accessed: 8 November 2011). 15 Daniel Ten Kate and Karl Lester M. Yap, “China, Asean Guidelines in Disputed Sea Shift ‘Status Quo,’” Bloomberg, 21 July 2011. 16 “China Opposes Playing Up South China Sea Issue, China Daily, 15 June 2011; and “U.S. military exercises ‘inappropriate’: China,” China Post (Taiwan), 12 July 2011. 17 “Vietnam,” in Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2010 (Manila: Asian Development Bank, 2010). 18 “China, Vietnam sign deal to resolve sea dispute,” Associated Press, 12 October 2011. 19 Nga Pham, “Vietnam’s anger over China maritime moves,” BBC News, 6 June 2011. 20 John Ruwitch, “Vietnam allows second antiChina protest in Hanoi,” Reuters, 12 June 2011. 21 Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Official, interview with the authors, Hanoi, 8 August 2011. 22 “Vietnam-China Joint Press Release,” Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper, 26 June 2011. 23 David Brown, “Vietnam leaders taken to task on China,” Asia Times, 21 July 2011. 24 Helen Clark, “In U-Turn, Anti-China Protesters Are Told to Go Home in Hanoi,” TIME, 18 July 2011. 25 “Anti-China protests enter eighth week despite police crackdown,” Deutshce Presse-Agentur, 24 July 2011. 26 John Ruwitch, “New Hanoi anti-China rally tests tolerance of protests,” Reuters, 7 August 2011; Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Official, interview with the authors, Hanoi, 8 August 2011. 27 “Fresh anti-China rally in Vietnam,” Agence France Presse, 7 August 2011; Junichi Fukasawa and Makiko Yanada, “Anti-China feelings rising in Vietnam,” The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo), 16 June 2011; “Vietnamese Protest China Amid Rising Tensions,” Wall Street Journal Asia, 19 June 2011. 28 Phoenix TV, interview on “Global Connection” (huanqiu lianxian) program, 10 June 2011, Internet, http:// news.ifeng.com/mainland/special/nanhaizhengduan/ content-1/detail_2011_06/11/6953541_0.shtml (date accessed: 30 June 2011) (translated by Jessica Weiss). 29 “Petition regarding our country’s treasonous diplomatic document on the South China Sea,” Internet, http://www.cfdd.org.cn/bbs/thread-75679-1-1. html (date accessed: 11 August 2011). 30 “China paper warns of ‘sound of cannons’ in sea disputes,” Reuters, 25 October 2011. 31 Pepople’s Republic of China Foreign Ministry Regular Press Briefing (translated by Jessica Weiss), 25 October 2011, http://www.mfa.gov.cn/chn/gxh/tyb/ fyrbt/jzhsl/t870511.htm (date accessed: 27 October 2011).
Winter/Spring 2012 [ 69]
Is Oil a Strategic Commodity? Oil has a bloody history. The ghost of petroleum often hovers in the background of military conflicts—even of wars fought ostensibly to secure the blessings of liberty and democracy. In No War for Oil, foreign-policy analyst Ivan Eland examines the troubled legacy of wars and military actions undertaken to secure access to oil, and reaches a conclusion profoundly at odds with the conventional thinking about oil and economic security. Contrary to the beliefs shared by the architects of U.S. foreign policy for most of the past century. The choice is not whether to prepare to fight oil wars or to risk losing energy resources that power the American economy—that’s a false alternative, Eland shows. Rather, the choice is whether or not to continue to devote increasingly costly resources to military and diplomatic policies that are both unnecessary and detrimental to the economic and political interests of the American people. Readers of No War for Oil will come away with a solid understanding of the flaws in conventional thinking—unexamined nostrums shared by liberals and conservatives alike— about oil security and the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf.
N
EW
Pages | . ()
“No War for Oil is a tour de force of history, myth-busting, and sturdy policy analysis. This book could not be more valuable or more timely.” — . , Professor of Political Science, Duke University “Here at long last is a book that explodes all of the myths underlying the use of military force to protect the global flow of oil. No War for Oil not only provides an invaluable account of the misguided policies that have led to ever-increasing U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, but also shows how the de-militarization of U.S. energy policy would better serve the nation’s long-term interests.” — . , Professor of Peace and World Security Studies, Hampshire College “In No War for Oil, Ivan Eland provides a catalog of sharply argued rebuttals of the many myths that pervade Americans’ understanding of oil and national security.” — , Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas “Ivan Eland has produced a devastating indictment of the ‘oil rationale’ for the intrusive, counterproductive U.S. military presence in the Middle East.” — , Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
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Culture&Society Ethnic Federalism in Nepal Risks and Opportunities
Dev Raj Dahal and Yubaraj Ghimire Years of gradual political reform culminated in the April 2006 movement for democracy, which brought a formal end to Nepal’s 240-year-old monarchy and raised the aspirations of different ethnic, caste, and regional groups—more sharply this time than ever before. Key actors of the change fueled this ambition by declaring that the new Nepal would be a secular, federal, democratic republic. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN-M), which launched an armed rebellion against the state, continues to dictate the political agenda as the largest party in the Constituent Assembly (CA). It vigorously demands that Nepal’s federalism be drawn primarily on ethnic lines. But this has generated a hostile response among several constituencies, which indicates that federalism in Nepal faces challenges. Although the 601-member CA elected in April 2008 pledged to deliver the new constitution by 28 May 2010, it has not yet been successful. The CA has consumed an extra fifteen months by amending the Interim Constitution of 2007, but there are still twenty-two contentious issues remaining, which include forms of governance, electoral reform, and federalism.1 Specifically, the federal-state power dynamic has yet to be resolved. Included in this question
Dev Raj Dahal is the head of the Nepal office of FriedrichEbert-Stiftung. He was an associate professor of political science at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu and former visiting research rcholar at the East Asian Institute, University of California at Berkeley.
Yubaraj Ghimire is the editor of The Reporter Weekly. He is a regular columnist for The Indian Express. He has served as editor of the Kathmandu Post, Kantipur Daily and has worked for the BBC World Service in London.
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is the degree of autonomy that will be given to the provinces. These stumbling blocks are not altogether surprising, for similar governance models have encountered difficulties like these in the past. Ethnic grievances are widely considered to be a major source of political conflict within multi-ethnic states.2 As a result, many post-conflict countries—such as South Africa, Bosnia, Sudan, Iraq, and Nepal—have accepted federalism as an institutional device to resolve ethnic conflict without weakening the power of the central government, ostensibly creating democracy based on a balance between self-rule and shared governance. India, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico have successfully managed their federalism. These success stories, however, should not be viewed as an unconditional endorsement of ethnic federalism due to the many complications in Nepal’s case.
Diverse Ethnic Makeup: A Historical Perspective. Located between India and China, Nepal has a population of 30 million, which can be classified into three ethnic types: Aryans, Tibeto-Mongolian Janajatis, and indigenous tribal groups.3 All of these groups maintain links with people of the same ethnicity across the borders of India and China, which adds further layers of complexity to the country’s demographic composition. The Aryans—who come from both the hill region and Tarai—are settled in fertile lands, hills, and valleys. Language separates the different groups of Aryans, despite their common ethnicity and race. Among the Aryans, Dalits, who make up 13 percent of the nation’s
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population, are the most deprived.4 Their position at the bottom of the caste hierarchy has robbed them of their human dignity and respectable social status for many years and under all regimes. The people of Tarai-Madhesh (referred to henceforth as Madheshi) are another prominent group that resides in the Tarai region of the southern flatlands. This fertile region accounts for 17 percent of the country’s geographical area and 48 percent of the total population.5 Meanwhile, the Janajatis are united by ethnicity but divided by religion and language. The indigenous people— such as the Tharus and others—practice Hinduism, maintain diverse cultures and lifestyles, and speak several dialects. Further empirical data quantify this plurality; Nepal is home to 103 ethnic and caste groups and 92 languages, with Nepali serving as the lingua franca. While 80.6 percent of the population is Hindu, other faiths remain: 10.7 percent of the population is Buddhist, 3.7 percent is Kiranti, and 2.2 percent is Muslim. The remaining Nepalese practice a broad range of local faiths.6 Previous regimes have sought to create uniformity out of this diversity. Prithvi Narayan Shah, the founder of modern Nepal, envisioned it as a “common garden of all Nepalese” and brought three clusters of forty-nine microstates under a single flag in 1768.7 The Rana oligarchy, which ruled Nepal from 1856 until 1950, subsequently introduced Sanskritization (the adoption of high caste culture by lower castes), the Nepalization of language, and the administrative outreach of the state in society for the collection of tax revenue and the imposition of law and
DAHAL AND GHIMIRE
order. The overthrow of the oligarchy and the establishment of a multi-party democracy in 1950 provided an environment for Dalits, Janajatis, indigenous peoples, and Madheshis to vent their grievances and seek a larger role in the democratic nation-building process. For a period of time, the state responded positively, albeit not adequately, to their demands. This experiment was, however, aborted in 1960 with the establishment of an assertive monarchy in the midst of internecine conflict among the parties. At this time, King Mahendra introduced the partyless Panchayat system, which lasted for thirty years. He adopted the melting pot approach in the belief that all Nepalese should be given a single identity: Nepali. He attempted to achieve this goal through an emphasis on unifying symbols such as the unitary polity, the monarchy, the Nepali language, Nepali dress, and Hinduism. The advent of democratic reforms in 1990 gave ethnic groups an environment to air their grievances against the unitary polity. The Maoists advocated the replacement of the standing political system with the one-party People’s Republic in 1996. To subvert the system, they prepared a forty-point action plan and used insurgency as a means to achieve it. They wanted to create ethnic autonomy, end ethnic suppression, and establish linguistic equality and a regional devolution of power. Although they did not fully achieve their political objectives, the protracted, violent struggle gave them some traction and legitimacy in domestic politics. Ultimately, they joined the peace process following the signing of
Culture&Society
the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in November 2006.8 This signified that they renounced the use of violence and accepted democracy and pluralism. To fulfill that commitment, they worked with pro-democracy forces to dislodge the monarchy. Despite this apparent progress, many obstacles still stand in the way of a stable political system. Given the collective failure to deliver a constitution on time, the Maoists—along with other political parties—stand discredited and have not yet proven themselves trustworthy. Fragmentation, weak state authority, and uncertainty regarding the new identity of the federal democratic republic characterize the political mood. These factors have created a sense of urgency about reconsidering the Maoist approach, along with the concept of ethnic federalism. As a counter-weight to the Maoists, certain ethnic groups have organized politically in order to advocate for their interests. While Dalits demand social equality and opportunity, the Madheshis often lobby for regional autonomy, official recognition of their languages, and an enhanced share in the political structure. Currently, about half a dozen political parties from the Tarai-Madhesh region have joined together as the United Democratic Madheshi Front (UDMF) to press for these demands. Similarly, fifty-nine hill-based ethnic groups and indigenous peoples have together formed the National Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN). They argue that their organized strength gives them leverage to negotiate with the state for an equitable share of resources and for self-rule. NEFIN fears that the forma-
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nicity, however, may simply perpetuate old inequalities and bitter divisions. Attempts at a division of Nepal into provinces have encountered opposition. The CA Committee on Restructuring of the State and Distribution of Power (CRSDP) submitted a report to the House in January 2010 recommending that Nepal have fourteen autonomous provinces with the right to self-determination.9 This recomThe Case Against Ethnic Fed- mendation requires the support of a eralism. Federalism seeks to strike a two-thirds majority in the House to be balance between shared-rule, in which a part of the constitution, and given provinces participate in decision-mak- strong opposition from other parties, ing at the central level, and self-rule, its fate remains uncertain. The CRSDP’s proposal for fourteen in which provinces possess autonomous powers to exercise their right to self- provinces is opposed by various parties development. In this way, federalism and local inhabitants. Most notably, calls for a pluralistic approach. This the Chhetris (the largest Hindu caste will be challenging because demarcat- group with an 18 percent share of the tion of a state-structuring commission might have to take into account the widely scattered sentiments against ethnicity-based federalism. As such, NEFIN activists are putting pressure on UCPN-M to form a small committee of experts sympathizing with their cause rather than a full commission, as announced earlier. Still, many political parties insist on the commission.
The challenge lies in sincerely addressing
class, ethnic, gender, caste, and regional disparities and associated problems. ing new provinces to address notions of historical discrimination may invite dangerous consequences and even trigger a backlash. There are manifestations of such grievances, and many caste groups have emerged to oppose such a drawing of provincial lines. The challenge lies in sincerely addressing class, ethnic, gender, caste, and regional disparities and associated problems. A well-designed system would offer fair opportunities to promote the peaceful co-existence of various communities and the thriving of their respective languages, literatures, scripts, arts, and cultures. A federal system based on eth-
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national population), the Dalits (the second largest group with 13 percent), and the Bahuns (the third largest group with 12.5 percent) do not have provinces allotted to them.10 Such a lack of consistency and inclusiveness in the federal approach threatens to isolate many ethnic groups. A perceived loss of identity may lead to domino effects and a continuous demand for the creation of states, one state after another. A nationwide opinion poll conducted by Inter-Disciplinary Analysts (IDA) from 10 to 30 June 2011 suggested that, in contrast to earlier trends, 72 percent of the people would rather be identi-
DAHAL AND GHIMIRE
fied as Nepalis than by their ethnicity.11 The political leaders’ loss of credibility has frustrated the populace. Nepalis, regardless of their associations with ethnic origin, culture, or religion, are proud of their common legacy, which includes the bravery they demonstrated in two world wars, along with the fact that Nepal is among the seventeen countries that have never had a foreign power rule over them.12 There are fears that ethnic federalism will fragment that legacy. There is also an economic reason discouraging Nepal from going ethnofederal. The contribution of tax to GDP is only 12 percent, which is not sufficient to run even a unitary state.13 Economists have argued that ethnic federalism will fragment the internal market and the scale of the economy, making Nepal unable to compete with India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.14 About 81 percent of government revenue in 2005 was generated by only four out of a total seventy-five districts: Kathmandu, Parsa, Morang, and Rupandehi. The remaining districts generated only 19 percent of revenue.15 Devolving power could undermine the combined economic strength of these various regions.
The Way Forward: Alternatives to Ethnic Federalism and Complications. While ethnic fed-
eralism does not suit Nepal, perhaps a model of federalism based on crossethnicity cooperation could work. In the case of resource distribution, the multiple locations of resources and the need for adaptation to climate change require cooperative federal provinces. Under such an arrangement, the prov-
Culture&Society
inces should be characterized by the devolution of power and resources to local units of self-governance on the basis of geographic location. The Nepali Congress (NC), which has historically combined its struggle for democracy with a quest to preserve Nepali nationalism, advocates for the creation of six cooperative federal provinces with a strong center having authority on foreign affairs, defense, currency, trade, and international agreements. Cooperation between rich and poor provinces would be a key to avoiding conflict. For that reason, federalism based on geography, social cooperation, economic viability, and political factors could lead to stability in a way that ethnic federalism could not. Social inclusiveness would be a hallmark of a cooperative federal system. Social inclusion has already been a success to a certain degree. The CA has adopted the socially inclusive, mixed election system that yielded a successful outcome for various classes of people, including ethnic groups. For example, women secured 33.22 percent of total CA seats, while Dalits gained 8.17 percent. Ethnic and indigenous communities took 33.39 percent of the seats, less developed regions took 3.83 percent, Madheshis took 34.09 percent, and high caste and Bahun-Chhetri took 33.09 percent.16 Despite the apparent success and potential viability of such an arrangement, social inclusiveness across ethnic lines presents a litany of complications. For one thing, some minority groups remain excluded. The most marginalized twenty minority groups have been left out, giving the impression that the big parties are not truly promoting
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democratic pluralism and that they are not concerned about the lowest socioeconomic classes. Fears among these marginalized peoples and the resistance put up by various caste and political groups reveal the complications of inclusiveness. In addition, the Aryans, who consider their history to be much more deeply rooted than that of other ethnic and indigenous groups, feel that the entire inclusiveness exercise is aimed at robbing them of their history and displacing them from any future as stakeholders in the country. In addition to the risk of marginal-
of the ethnic cauldron in Nepal has become problematic. Given the Madheshi parties’ demand for a big autonomous province, they have not shown any interest in cooperative federalism. At the same time, many groups stand to benefit from cooperative federalism. The region still has many minorities, including the hill people and Muslims, who desire an inclusive form of politics and an end to the caste, class, and gender discrimination that is deeper there than in the hills.
Conclusion. Carving out federal
While ethnic federalism does not suit
Nepal, perhaps a model of federalism based on cross-ethnicity cooperation could work. ization, there are complications within the dominant communities as well. Some groups are wary about blurring traditional ethnic divisions. The Tharus in Madhesh refuse to be part of the Madhesh province and want their own province in order to promote their distinct cultural, linguistic, and religious identity. They are scared to join the Madhesh groups, especially after the people of hill origin were driven away by the locals en masse during the Madheshi agitation in 2007. The Madheshis insist on a large federal province, which would reinforce ethnic divisions. This example illustrates the fact that it may be difficult to move beyond the question of ethnicity. In fact, ethnic conflict intensifies in times of economic crisis and political uncertainty, a scenario that typifies contemporary Nepal.17 Unsurprisingly, management
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states in Nepal has become a Sisyphean task, delaying the completion of both the peace-building and constitutiondrafting processes. The democratic nation-building process demands the primacy of civic identity over ethnic, indigenous, and Madheshi identities. Only the transformation of ethnic and cultural identity into a fused national identity through civic education and inclusion can prevent the tendency to ethicize and radicalize others and stoke feelings of animosity and conflict.18 Ethnic federalism has bred mistrust because it is projected as the right of one dominant ethnic group at the cost of others. The ethnic elites’ tendency to actively seek special privileges for themselves along the lines of self-determination, autonomy, and prior-use rights is widely opposed. The migration of populations within
DAHAL AND GHIMIRE
various parts of the country and abroad has made their settlement mixed. Nepalese living outside the country are united by the Nepali language irrespective of caste, class, ethnic and religious distinctions. Internally, however, they remain divided and use their diverging identities to claim power and resources by emphasizing differences. The current fragmentation demonstrates that this approach is unproductive. Nepal must develop a constitutional mechanism to accommodate ethnic dif-
Culture&Society
ferences through a geographically and economically viable form of federalism. Such a system would protect minorities by avoiding the excesses of a winner-takes-all system and would provide incentives for Nepalis to muster a primary loyalty to the state and a secondary loyalty to subsidiary identities. Transcending multiple identities for the creation of community within the state is essential to guaranteeing the mutually beneficial coexistence of Nepalis.
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NOTES
1 Negotiations concerning the remaining 22 constitutional issues continue. 2 Ted Robert Gurr, “Why Do Minorities Rebel? The Worldwide Geography of Ethnopolitical Conflicts and Their Challenge to Global Security,” in Federalism Against Ethnicity?, Guenther Bachler, ed., (Zurich: Verlag Ruegger, 1997), 9. 3 Yubraj Sangroula, “Diversity, Rights and Unity,” in Creating the New Constitution: A Guide for Nepali Citizens, Yash Ghai and Jill Cottrell, eds., (Stockholm: International Institute for Democratic and Electoral Assitance, 2008), 93. 4 United Nations Development Program, Nepal Human Development Report 2009, (Kathmandu: UNDP, 2009), 43-44. 5 Farah Cheah, “Inclusive Democracy for Madhesi: The Quest for Identity, Rights and Representation,” Institute of South Asian Studies, (Singapore, 2008), 6. 6 Constitutional Assembly Committee on Restructuring of the State and Distribution of Power, “Concept Paper and Preliminary Draft Report” (in Nepali), (Kathmandu: CRSDP, 2009), 23. 7 Leo E. Rose and John T. Scholz, Nepal: Profile of a Himalayan Kingdom, (New Delhi: Selectbook Syndicate, 1980), 16-17. 8 Peace Secretariat, Comprehensive Peace Agreement 2006, (Kathmandu: Peace Secretariat, 2006). 9 Limbuwan, Kirant, Sherpa, Newa, Magarat, Tamsaling, and Tamuan provinces have ethnic names. The population-share of the dominant ethnic group in these provinces is as follows: 27 percent Limbu, 34 percent Rai, 36 percent Sherpa, 36 percent Newar, 34 percent Magar, 44 percent Tamangs, and 32 percent Gurung, respectively. Lumbini-Awadh-Tharuwan and Mithila-Bhojpura-Koch-Awadh provinces have linguistic and territorial names and are composed of 26 percent Tharu and 49 percent Madheshi, respec-
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tively. Sunkoshi, Narayani, Khaptad, Jadan, and Karnali provinces are named after geographical features and rivers and are composed of 26 percent Chhetri, 27 percent Bahun, 54 percent Chhetri, 38 percent Chhetri, and 42 percent Chhetri, respectively. 10 CA Committee on Restructuring of the State and Distribution of Power, Concept Paper and Preliminary Draft Report (in Nepali) (Kathmandu: CRSDP, 2009). 11 “Survey,” New Spotlight 5, no. 6 (19 August 2011): 5. 12 Anand Aditya, “Critical Barriers in Creating a Functional State in Nepal.” Presented at National Seminar organized by FES and Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies, Kathmandu, 28 December 2010. 13 Chandra Dev Bhatta, “Creating a Functional State: Redefining the Labor-Capital Relationship in Nepal,” in Trade Unions and the Global Crisis: Labors Visions, Strategies and Responses, Melisa Serrano, Edlira Xhafa, and Michael Fichter, eds., (Geneva: ILO and Global Labor University, 2011), 161. 14 Ram Sharan Mahat, “Challenges of Federal System,” (in Nepali) (unpublished report, Kathmandu, 2011), 7-8. 15 Lovise Aalen and Magnus Hatlebaak, “Ethnic and Fiscal Federalism in Nepal,” (report commissioned by the Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, July 2008), 7. 16 Dev Raj Dahal, “Election and Conflict in Nepal: Country Analysis,” FES International Policy Analysis, (Kathmandu: FES Nepal, 2010), 8-9. 17 Nanda R. Shrestha and Dev Raj Dahal, “Nepal,” in Nations and Nationalism: A Global Historical Review, Guntram H. Herb and David H. Kaplan, eds., (Oxford: ABC/CLIO, 2008), 1809. 18 Svante E. Cornell, “Autonomy as a Source of Conflict: Caucasian Conflicts in Theoretical Perspective,” World Politics 54, no. 2 (January 2002): 245-56.
Law&Ethics NGOs, IGOs, and International Law
Gaining Credibility and Legitimacy through Lobbying and Results Sigfrido Burgos Cรกceres With the creation of the League of Nations, followed by the establishment of the United Nations, and forty-four years later, the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, the twentieth century has witnessed a dynamic evolution of the international legal order from traditional international law between sovereign states towards a contemporary international law open to a myriad of new actors. This new system affords action groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), transnational networks, multinational corporations, and even individuals a place in the new order, which suggests that states no longer have a monopoly on international intercourse. These actors have come to play increasing roles in international relations and, accordingly, international legal norms and rules have evolved to engage them.1 This essay discusses the influential role of NGOs in the decisions of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) within the realm of international law. The existing evidence suggests that NGOs have had substantially greater impact upon IGOs when they were allowed to participate and provide feedback. NGOs can be defined as groups of individuals or societies that are freely created by private initiative to pursue
Sigfrido Burgos Cรกceres is a Unit Coordinator at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in Rome, Italy. The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the FAO and the UN.
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specific interests without seeking to make a profit. In the context of international law, NGOs working on legal and normative issues contribute to the development, interpretation, judicial application, and enforcement of international norms.2 NGOs increasingly are assisting with elements of international and national legal operating systems, particularly with monitoring and implementation of legal instruments.3 In the context of governance and project design and implementation, NGOs provide information, conduct research, and propose and evaluate policies that impact national or international negotiations.4 For example, an important advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons by the International Court of Justice resulted from a ten-year effort by the World Court Project, an NGO. NGOs became consultative parties in intergovernmental discussions after the Second World War as Article 71 of the UN Charter established consultative practices regarding NGOs. Gradually, consultations became an established practice throughout the UN system.5 Moreover, article V(2) of the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization stipulates that the General Council may make appropriate arrangements for consultation and cooperation with relevant NGOs. By 1996, the Council had adopted guidelines specifying the scope of intercourse between NGOs and the WTO secretariat. While it is true that they are not allowed into the actual negotiating forum, NGOs have been increasingly granted significantly wider roles in proceedings through amicus curiae briefs and have, as time progresses, become
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galvanizing forces in the decentralization process of normative and operational authority across the globe.6
The Variegated Roles of NGOs in the International Arena. In
addition to IGOs and states, modern governance takes place through NGOs and informal networks that can be either private or public. These forms of governance derive credibility, legitimacy, and prestige not from their institutional strength but from their altruism, dynamism, and flexibility in addressing new concerns, issues, and problems with fewer start-up costs than traditional structures.7 NGOs can use rhetorical persuasion to influence behaviors and values of agencies, corporations, states, and individuals.8 NGOs act as solvents against the strictures of sovereignty. Consider the series of World Conferences convened by the UN from 1992 to 2001, where delegates from governments, IGOs, and NGOs met in both regional groupings and plenary sessions to discuss differences and draft policy documents to be issued.9 A good example illustrating the linkages between NGOs, IGOs, and international law is the UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, Egypt in 1994. Numerous NGOs attended and made statements that influenced the final program of action adopted by the UN. IGOs act in the broad interest of global populations, whereas NGOs defend more focused ideals. The local, issue-specific, and voluntary character of NGOs makes them a useful bridge between national communities and international institutions. Traditionally, NGOs were only involved in
BURGOS
the process of creating norms: they raised the salience of global concerns, issues, and problems, made themespecific presentations, and helped draft treaties. They generally accomplished these tasks by working through national delegations. Today, however, NGOs are strategically positioned to assume increasingly complex roles in the implementation of norms, especially in areas in which specialized expertise is required.10 Consequently, NGOs have begun to directly foster accords, promote the creation of IGOs, and lobby worldwide to gain consent on stronger international codes, norms, and standards.11 A shift in focus away from the con-
Law&Ethics
The notable prominence of racial and women’s issues on international agendas, the adoption of treaties such as the Landmines Convention, and the consensus-based statute for an International Criminal Court are examples of strategic state-NGO alliances that came as a result of well-organized political lobbying.14 For example, the strategic partnership reached between NGOs and the Canadian government to promote a convention to ban the use of antipersonnel landmines illustrates the collaborations undertaken in international legal processes, thereby giving new actors a role in lawmaking and subsequent implementations.15 In international climate affairs, the Alliance
NGOs are strategically positioned to
assume increasingly complex roles in the implementation of norms. cerns of states and into those of communities and individuals has created opportunities for NGOs to play more dynamic roles as substitutes or supplements to international legal operating systems.12 In reaction to this shift, commentators and observers acknowledge the positive influence that NGOs have had on contemporary international codes, norms, and standards in areas such as social and economic justice, peace, civil rights, participatory democracy, ethnic and social diversity, nonviolent conflict resolution, indigenous rights, long-term sustainable development, biodiversity and environmental protections, gender and race equality, human rights, humanitarian affairs, and the wellbeing of individuals.13
of Small Island States (AOSIS) became one of the most vocal participants in the negotiations for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 and its 1997 Kyoto Protocol and is now widely recognized as one of the key players in the climate change regime.16 In some sensitive areas, IGOs have contributed to the heightened prominence of NGOs as they have relentlessly sought to circumvent governments where they have experienced difficulties or outright blockage. In cases where cash-strapped states seem less able to agree on inconvenient standards or willing to meet the financial requirements of norm monitoring and implementation, IGOs have opted to tap the
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have begun to accord privileges and rights to NGOs that were traditionally granted only to IGOs. This does not happen without criticism. Many commentators have called for NGOs to be more accountable and transparent. Some also call for a consultation process that assures all NGOs a fair attempt to influence policy, regardless of the wealth of their home nation.19 Similarly, the involvement of NGOs in negotiations has sometimes led governments to formulate and implement NGOs Transforming Rhetoric impractical agreements. An additional into Action. NGOs tend to be more concern is that the exertion of preseffective in influencing external actors sure on negotiations by single-interest because they are somewhat informal NGOs makes it harder to generate groups that are strongly cohesive and a genuine common interest and to highly recognized by specialists in vari- implement norms that reflect the conous policy spheres. The bottom-up cerns of multiple stakeholders.20
large pool of private wealth available through the intermediation of NGOs and their philanthropic funding.17 In cases where states are less willing to conduct the duties imposed by international legal operating systems and have reneged on supporting large IGOs that could perform oversight and compliance functions, NGOs have oftentimes been called upon to pick up the slack, generally as subcontractors to IGO efforts.
The increased participation of NGOs in international discourse reflects the changing state of global democracy. approach embraced by NGOs acknowledges and exploits the fact that such arrangements can exist outside of the realm of formalistic government. This field-level method can produce great normative and regulatory effects as existing actors belonging to interrelated groups are expected to behave consistently and predictably.18 For example, during and after highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks in Cambodia, CARE and Vétérinaires Sans Frontières lobbied IGOs to drop livelihood-disruptive disease control measures from the official recommendations submitted to government officials. In many instances, governments
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The increased participation of NGOs in international discourse reflects the changing state of global democracy. A number of surveys in developing countries have shown that respondents seem to trust NGOs working in their territories more than their own governments. Policymakers increasingly listen to the opinions and views of their citizens, oftentimes by supporting NGOs or following NGO positions.21 This suggests that NGOs carry considerable political weight. The kind of pressure an NGO can put on governments can persuade them to change policies and official positions. Also, given the fact that NGOs often have measurable
BURGOS
impacts on policy designs and domestic politics, they are encouraged to further influence IGOs. In fact, scholars consider the growing and significant roles that NGOs play in intergovernmental negotiations as practical experiments in democratizing intergovernmental decision-making.22 Under the premise that these organizations represent various constituencies bound by common interests, knowledge, and values, NGOs are invited to attend conferences, consultations, seminars, symposiums, meetings, and workshops. They function in a variety of roles, serving as technical experts, helping to develop draft conventions or policies, participating in plenary sessions, and engaging in several parallel forums designed to strengthen their connections with other actors. This increased participation of NGOs in national, regional, and international forums reflects broader changes in the nature of contemporary intercourse in diplomacy, international law, and politics. To this end, it is illustrative that NGOs engage directly in one of the most traditional diplomatic activities: formal interstate negotiations.23 Consider the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), a health organization based in New York City, which circulated an influential Women’s Declaration that was incorporated in official documents at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Additionally, in some issue areas, NGOs have acquired significant authority in the eyes of national and transnational actors. A good example is Amnesty International, a human rights group, which began in 1961 with letter-writing
Law&Ethics
efforts to free individuals imprisoned for the nonviolent expression of opinions. Since then, and especially within the past two decades, Amnesty International has developed the capacity to conduct research, write and release reports, and analyze global patterns of human rights violations, empowering it to be a source of record in UN sessions and other halls of power. But direct engagements were not always the case. As Anne-Marie Clark notes, “Historically, operations by NGOs have been dependent upon interstate organizations for the provision of channels of action. Nevertheless, partly due to the limitations on participation and expression inherent when international forums are largely controlled by states, these NGOs devised ‘new channels of action’ that allowed them more freedom.”24 Thusly, NGOs present a solution to the problem of missing legislatures—the lack of laws on accountability and representativeness of decision making processes— by arguing that they speak for global civil society and therefore ensure that the global polity remains democratic and accountable, though NGOs themselves are not accountable themselves to any constitutional process.25 It is important to recognize that because international, regional, and national agreements provide working frameworks rather than fixed statements of absolute norms, NGOs have a much wider range of instances and opportunities to influence the development of both the normative and operating systems within IGOs. The evolving authority of NGOs, by virtue of their unique ability and capacity to investigate and research pressing
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issues, empowers them. In fact, networks of national and international NGOs work to hold governments accountable to international norms and standards. Other NGOs, such as CARE, OXFAM, and Save the Children, establish socioeconomic development projects and administer economic and humanitarian aid with funding from private contributors and philanthropic bodies. While these NGOs may either directly challenge governments or complement government-provided services, they nearly always act in conjunction with the relevant geopolitical authorities.26 Examples of this interaction span the advocacy gamut. NGOs influence government decisions to develop domestic policies to protect key resources and help them negotiate treaties.27 Some NGOs have become extremely skilled at mounting pressures on governments through a two-pronged approach: feeding information into pertinent public and governmental channels for discussion on the one hand, and distributing and promoting potentially useful legislative instruments on the other. For example, Global Trade Watch, a division of Public Citizen - a consumer advocacy NGO created in 1972 - played a central role in the successful derailing of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in 1998 and the demonstrations in Seattle in 1999. Tellingly, it is often through such activities engaged by NGOs that newly created norms become formalized and develop meaningful impact. This process changes the scope of state sovereignty, as it reconstitutes the relationship between the state, its citizens, and international actors.28
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Harmonizing Costs and Benefits. The increasingly active stance of
NGOs on the international plane raises questions concerning their position under international law. In the past, this debate has focused on the question of NGOs having international legal personality. Clearly, states enjoy all aspects of international legal personality, but this is not necessarily the case for non-state actors. Whereas IGOs usually have treaty-making capacities, they cannot invoke jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice or of regional human rights courts. Recently, the term ‘legal status’ of NGOs has been defined as a broad concept that embraces a number of initiatives, practices, and provisions that can be used by NGOs for acting and participating in national and international legal contexts, irrespective of the field to which the concern belongs.29 With their ‘on the ground’ presence, NGOs are capable and willing to provide supplemental capacities to other NGOs, host states, and IGOs, helping them keep abreast with specific details and advancements in highly technical areas or reporting on the impacts of interventions in distant geographical locations that are difficult to reach. The success of NGOs in influencing IGOs provides a clear example of the new power that communities or individuals armed with expert information, linked by technologies, organized into a sociopolitical network with well-funded budgets, and working in alliance with governments can wield. This power should not be underestimated given that local constituencies trust NGOs to share their beliefs, ideas, and views and to represent their interests.
BURGOS
The trust deposited on NGOs is hard earned and well placed. It arises from the fact that local NGOs are more familiar with the concerns, problems, and solutions in rural and urban communities and have relations with other baseline actors. Also, locals get to see NGO representatives far more often than government employees or IGO staffers. This presence and interaction makes NGOs much more acquainted with the demands, desires, and needs of people and groups than the formal, national agencies created to do so on an official basis. While it is clear that the public sector can no longer function effectively with-
Law&Ethics
law and politics as frictionless. Ripinsky and van den Bossche note that criticism has typically come in the form of noting the ‘undemocratic’ nature of NGOs. Locals do not choose them, yet NGOs claim to be fighting for various issues at the behest of the people.31 Also, the rising number of NGOs is interpreted as indicating and elucidating certain failures of states and markets to provide all the requirements of societies, thus undermining the traditional roles of governments. The rapid emergence of NGOs also gives rise to situations where citizens feel their elected representatives do not listen to them as much as to the
NGOs are transitioning organizational
constructs that bring the ruled closer to the rulers as vehicles that wield bottom-up influence. out the cooperation and participation of the private sector and the involvement of citizens, it remains true that the private sector is similarly incapable of solving all problems without the infrastructure and coordination that states and international institutions provide. This is an important point to consider as the roles of NGOs expand further. Given that transfers of responsibilities from state to non-state actors are increasingly occurring, there must be broad recognition that their obligations to citizens are limited and their functionalities are bound to funding streams.30 It would be naĂŻve to blindly accept the advent of NGOs as actors influencing
interests and petitions of lobby groups. In North America, NGOs have gained ground with corporations. For example, the NGO Environmental Defense influenced TXU Corp., a large Texas power company, to commit millions of dollars to energy efficient programs. But some criticize how NGOs have used their financial capacity, while others see them as vehicles for privatizing economic assistance, making it less accountable to either governments or local people because of a lack of clear governance structures. The criticisms and concerns leveled at NGOs arise due to an overly optimistic perception of their ability and capacity to carry out not only a wide
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range of quasi-normative tasks, but also of operating system activities. NGOs are neither replacements for failing states nor “Band-Aids” for institutional and structural deficiencies, but are instead actors that have evolved to assume new responsibilities. In the end, a real threat to the established rules, authority, and order is the potential fragmentation of information, resources, influence, and decision making which are funda-
mental requisites for the evolution of embracive, inclusive, and prosperous civil societies. It is in this sense that NGOs are transitioning organizational constructs that bring the ruled closer to the rulers as vehicles that wield bottomup influence. The future of international and national legislation must be prepared to adapt if it is to adequately take these changes to the dynamic structure of global governance into account.
NOTES
1 Charlotte Ku and Paul F. Diehl. International Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). 2 Steve Charnovitz, “Nongovernmental Organizations and International Law,” American Journal of International Law (2006): 348-372. 3 Cynthia Price-Cohen, “The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations in the Drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Human Rights Quarterly (1990): 137-147. 4 T. Princen and M. Finger. Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local with the Global (New York: Routledge, 1994). 5 Steve Charnovitz, “Participation of Nongovernmental Organizations in the World Trade Organization,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law (1996b): 331-357. 6 Pascal Lamy, “The Place of the WTO and Its Law in the International Legal Order,” in International Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Charlotte Ku and Paul F. Diehl, eds., (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). 7 Keohane, Robert and Joseph F. Nye, “Introduction,” in Governance in a Globalizing World, Joseph F. Nye and John D. Donohue, eds., (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). 8 R. Lipschutz and J. Mayer. Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance: The Politics of Nature from Place to Planet (Albany: State University New York Press, 1996). 9 Steve Charnovitz, “Two Centuries of Participation: NGOs and International Governance,” Michigan Journal of International Law (1996a): 183-267. 10 Janet Koven-Levit, “A Bottom-Up Approach to International Lawmaking: The Tale of Three Trade Finance Instruments,” Yale Journal of International Law (2005): 125-209. 11 Steve Charnovitz, “Nongovernmental Organizations and International Law,” American Journal of International Law (2006): 348-372. 12 Charlotte Ku and Paul F. Diehl. International Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Boulder and London:
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Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). 13 Diane Otto, “Nongovernmental Organizations in the United Nations System: The Emerging Role of International Civil Society,” Human Rights Quarterly (1996): 140-151. 14 Charlotte Ku and John Gamble, “International Law—New Actors and New Technologies: Center Stage for NGOs?,” Law and Policy in International Business (2000): 221-262. 15 Charlotte Ku and Paul F. Diehl. International Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). 16 Carola Betzold, “Borrowing Power to Influence International Negotiations: AOSIS in the Climate Change Regime, 1990-1997,” Politics (2010): 131-148. 17 Charlotte Ku and Paul F. Diehl. International Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). 18 Anne-Marie Slaughter. A New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 19 Steve Charnovitz, “Two Centuries of Participation: NGOs and International Governance,” Michigan Journal of International Law (1996a): 183-267. 20 Steve Charnovitz, “Participation of Nongovernmental Organizations in the World Trade Organization,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law (1996b): 331-357. 21 Peter Spiroa, “New Global Communities: Nongovernmental Organizations in International Decision Making Institutions,” The Washington Quarterly (1995): 45-56. 22 Alnoor Ebrahim. NGOs and Organizational Change: Discourse, Reporting, and Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 23 Michele Betsill and Elisabeth Corell. NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations (Boston: MIT Press, 2008). 24 Anne-Marie Clark, “Non-Governmental Organizations and Their Influence on International Society,” Journal of International Affairs (1995): 507-525. 25 Jeremy Rabkin. Law Without Nations? Why Consti-
BURGOS
tutional Government Requires Sovereign States (Princeton and Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 2005). 26 Peter Spiroa, “New Global Communities: Nongovernmental Organizations in International Decision Making Institutions,” The Washington Quarterly (1995): 45-56. 27 Michele Betsill and Elisabeth Corell. NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations (Boston: MIT Press, 2008). 28 Anne-Marie Clark, “Non-Governmental Organizations and Their Influence on International
Law&Ethics
Society,” Journal of International Affairs (1995): 507-525. 29 Pierre-Marie Dupuy and Luisa Vierucci. NGOs in International Law: Efficiency in Flexibility? (Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008). 30 Charlotte Ku and Paul F. Diehl. International Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). 31 Sergey Ripinsky and Peter van den Bossche. NGO Involvement in International Organizations: A Legal Analysis (London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2007).
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Business&Economics The First Brain Drain in the United States Vivek Wadhwa Given the poor health of its economy and the rise of competitors like China and India, the United States needs high-skilled immigrants more than ever. After all, it is these immigrants who have fueled the country’s technology boom and boosted its global advantage. Yet, American political leaders are so deeply embroiled in debates about the plight of low-skilled workers who have entered the country illegally, that immigration itself has become a political quagmire. There is a complete stalemate on immigration reform. Meanwhile, the number of high-skilled immigrants in the United States who are waiting to gain legal permanent residence now exceeds one million. The wait time for new immigrants from India in this category is now estimated to be seventy years.1 The result is that fewer high-skilled workers are coming to the United States, and the country is experiencing its first brain drain. The economic growth that could be taking place in the United States is now occurring in India and China. Consider that of all engineering and technology companies established in the United States between 1995 and 2005, 25.3 percent had at least one immigrant as a key founder. In Silicon Valley, this proportion was 52.4 percent. More than
Vivek Wadhwa is Vice President of Academics and Innovation at Singularity University, a fellow at the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, and a visiting scholar at UCBerkeley’s School of Information. He is an executive in residence/ adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and contributes regularly to The Washington Post and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
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half of these founders initially came to the United States to study. Very few, 1.6 percent, came for the sole purpose of starting a company. They typically founded companies after working and residing in the United States for an average of thirteen years. This means that with the backlog of skilled workers waiting for legal permanent residence today, immigrants who would be starting companies are instead caught in “immigration limbo.” The temporary work visas these immigrants hold actually restrict them from working for the companies they start.2 The results of this backlog and the United States’ flawed immigration policies were painfully evident during my recent visits to China and India in September of 2011. My most recent visit was to Tsinghua University, in Beijing, China, to teach an entrepreneurship program run by UC-Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship. The students there were very much like my students in the United States—smart, ambitious, and open minded—but even more hungry for knowledge, more passionate about completing advanced degrees, and more motivated to become entrepreneurs. They were very eager to come to the United States to study. They saw education as the best path from poverty to prosperity. Entrepreneurship, for these students, was a way to rise above “the system” and to become their own bosses. But unlike previous generations of Chinese students, the Tsinghua students did not plan to come and stay in the United States. After receiving an American education, they planned to take their knowledge back to China—
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where they are wanted. Most would readily start their companies in Silicon Valley or work in the United States after they graduate. But all have heard horror stories from their friends about the challenges that foreign students in the United States face in getting visas and jobs, so they will not even try. They know that many of the country’s leading companies have stopped interviewing foreign students due to the difficulty in obtaining visas and potential backlash for hiring foreigners. Given this, graduates see better opportunities in China and have no reason to consider staying in the United States. I joined the Masters of Engineering Management program at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University in 2005. When I asked foreign students in the graduating class whether they planned to stay permanently in the United States, the vast majority said they did. A few told me they wanted to work in the United States for a few years before deciding whether to make it their home. I have been asking the same question of my students every year since. Now students ask what I mean by “permanently,” or ask for reasons they should stay. It is now customary for students to start looking for opportunities in their home countries well before they graduate, then seek a one-or twoyear internship to gain work experience in the United States before heading home. To validate the anecdotal data we had gathered, my research team at Duke, Harvard, and UC-Berkeley surveyed 1,224 foreign nationals who were studying in U.S. institutions of higher learning or who had graduated by the end of the 2008 academic school year.3
WADHWA
We confirmed that very few foreign students now plan to stay in the United States permanently—only 6 percent of Indian, 10 percent of Chinese, and 15 percent of European students intend to remain after obtaining their degrees. The most important findings were:
Business&Economics
were in the United States. • Most foreign students are more optimistic about their home countries’ economic future than that of the United States—7 percent of Chinese students, 9 percent of European students, and 25 percent of Indian
The world’s best and brightest now view
the United States as a decreasingly attractive place to live and work…The United States has to start competing for the best global talent. • A leading reason for students’ intentions to depart is the fear that they will not be able to find a job in the United States upon graduation—a fear fueled by their growing belief that the U.S. economy will lag behind average global growth rates. • A significant majority of foreign students—85 percent of Indian and Chinese and 72 percent of European—are concerned about obtaining work visas. And 74 percent of Indian, 76 percent of Chinese, and 58 percent of European students are worried about obtaining jobs in their respective fields within the United States. • Chinese students, in particular, strongly feel that the best employment prospects lie in their home country. 52 percent (in comparison with 32 percent of Indian and 26 percent of Europeans) said that their home country offered the best job opportunities. This contrasts starkly with the belief held by a majority of skilled immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s that the best opportunities
students stated that they believe the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. 74 percent of Chinese students and 86 percent of Indian students felt that the best days for their home countries’ economy lie ahead. • Most foreign students have entrepreneurial ambitions: 64 percent of Indian, 66 percent of European, and 68 percent of Chinese students indicated that they want to start a business within the next decade. For Indian and Chinese students, the majority (53 percent and 55 percent respectively) hope to start businesses in their home countries, while only 35 percent of European students wish to open a business in their home country.
What Does this Mean? The
world’s best and brightest now view the United States as a decreasingly attractive place to live and work. After receiving American degrees, they often have better opportunities in their home countries than they have in the United States. The country cannot take it for granted
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that everyone wants to come here—the United States has to start competing for the best global talent.
Entrepreneurship in India and China: Catalyzed by Returnees. I have been traveling frequently to
China and India over the past few years to research their education programs for engineers along with their entrepreneurship ecosystems. While in China, I met with small business owners in an effort to get an update on the local entrepreneurship scene. I also observed the impact that returnees from the United States are having on the local economies. In a nutshell, I learned that entrepreneurship is exploding in both countries and that they are beginning to innovate like the United States does. In technology entrepreneurship, success often comes after several failed attempts to start a company. In both China and India, there used to be such a strong taboo associated with failure and such low social esteem granted to start-ups that parents would discourage their children from becoming entrepreneurs. Failed entrepreneurs were considered outcasts and would rarely be given a second chance. This is rapidly changing. Wealthy entrepreneurs from the first generation of Chinese and Indian technology start-ups now serve as role models for aspiring youth. These unconventional examples of success have encouraged greater acceptance of entrepreneurial risk from parents. Prospective entrepreneurs are also much more ambitious and confident than their parents were, and they increasingly connect with each other and their counterparts in other corners of the world through social
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networks, enhanced by recent advances in social media. The most important catalyst of entrepreneurship in China and India is the tide of returnees from the West—particularly from the United States. Tens of thousands of highly educated and experienced entrepreneurs, along with students from top universities, have been returning home over the past few years and teaching locals about the ways of the West. They are causing a rapid change in local cultural values and fertilizing the entrepreneurial landscape, while building bridges to the West via social networks. If you visit start-up incubators in Beijing or Bangalore or attend technology start-up events, you find that 30 to 40 percent of the start-up enterprises are founded by returnees. These returnees are teaching locals how to build world-class companies and how to innovate in a competitive international environment. In almost every highgrowth tech company in China, returnees occupy senior management positions. In scientific research, returnees hold lead positions in top research labs.4 These scientists are beginning to make breakthroughs at an accelerated pace. They are acting as a catalyst for innovation and economic growth in China and India. This is a good thing for India and China and will produce long-term dividends for the United States by creating a two-way “brain circulation.”5 It will expand American markets and spread American values—also good things. But the greatest economic growth and job creation will take place in India and China. There is a high likelihood that Google-class companies will begin to
WADHWA
emerge from those countries instead of from the United States and that Silicon Valley will, for the first time, face competition from the non-Western world. Many people believe that the United States is the most entrepreneurial country on earth, providing better opportunities for entrepreneurs than countries such as India and China. To learn more about the entrepreneurship scene and how returnees from the United States are faring once back home in China and India, my team at Duke, UC-Berkeley, and Harvard surveyed 153 skilled immigrants who had returned to India to start companies and 111 who had returned to China.6 This is what we learned: • The most significant factors drawing both Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs home were economic opportunities, access to local markets, and family ties. More than 60 percent of Indian and 90 percent of Chinese entrepreneurs said that
Business&Economics
• Surprisingly, 72 percent of Indian and 81 percent of Chinese returnees said that the opportunities to start their own businesses were better in their home countries. The majority of entrepreneurs (54 percent of Indian, 68 percent of Chinese) found opportunities for professional growth to be faster at home than in the United States. For most (56 percent of Indian and 59 percent of Chinese) returnees, the quality of life was better than—or at least equal to—what they had enjoyed in the United States.
What Does this Mean? The Unit-
ed States is losing its perceived advantage in fostering entrepreneurship. It will need to compete to attract the world’s best entrepreneurs as it moves forward—people such as the legendary venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and Google founder Sergey Brin.
72 percent of Indian and 81 percent of
Chinese returnees said that the opportunities to start their own businesses were better in their home countries. the availability of economic opportunities in their home countries had been a major factor in their return. 53 percent of Indian and 78 percent of Chinese entrepreneurs had been lured by the attraction of producing for local markets. 76 percent of Indian entrepreneurs and 51 percent of Chinese entrepreneurs cited family ties as a factor that had brought them back home.
The First American Brain Drain and the Economic Cost of the United States’ Flawed Immigration Policies. The United States has always been a land of immigrants. Throughout its history the country has benefitted from an outflow of talent from the rest of the world. The United States has never experienced a brain drain and does not even recognize its symptoms. Diagnosed or not,
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however, the symptoms exist today. Just as there are millions of people around the world trying to come to the United States, there is an outflow of highlyskilled talent in progress that is fuelling the economic growth of countries such as India and China. In 2006, my research team at Duke and UC-Berkeley surveyed 2,053 technology and engineering firms founded nationwide between 1995 and 2005.7 As highlighted earlier in this paper, we found that 25.3 percent had a chief executive or lead technologist who was foreign-born. We estimated that in 2005, tech companies founded by immigrants generated $52 billion in revenue and employed 450,000 workers in the United States. Our research revealed that in 2006, foreign nationals residing in the United States were named as inventors or co-inventors in 25.6 percent of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) patent applications filed from the United States, and immigrants had been critical to the success of some of the country’s largest companies.8 For example, they contributed to 72 percent of the total patent filings at Qualcomm, 65 percent of those at Merck, 64 percent at General Electric, and 60 percent at Cisco Systems. More than 40 percent of the international patent applications filed by the U.S. government were authored by foreign nationals. An important question arose from the data. Why had foreign-national patent filings increased so dramatically in such a short time frame—by 337 percent from 1998 to 2006? To explain this increase and understand the correlation with immigration trends, we
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developed a methodology to estimate the inventors’ countries of origin. No such data are currently available from the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). What we found was shocking: as of 30 September 2006, there were 500,040 principals in the main employmentbased categories and an additional 555,044 family members awaiting legal permanent-resident status in the United States. The backlog had been building since the mid 1990s. The reason for the increasing backlog is that only 120,000 visas are available per year in key visa categories for skilled workers, with no more than 7 percent to be allocated to immigrants from any one country. The result is that immigrants from populous countries such as India and China have the same number of visas (8,400) available as those from low-population countries such as Iceland and Costa Rica. The “New Immigrant Survey”—a nationally representative longitudinal study of new legal immigrants—collected extensive data on the U.S. immigrant cohort of 2003. It found that the process of applying for permanent residence is so arduous that approximately 17.4 percent of new legal immigrants became depressed as a result of the visa process. Approximately 21.7 percent of new legal immigrants and 34.5 percent of “employment principals” either plan to leave the United States or are uncertain about remaining in the country. Based on the long, growing queue and high percentage of immigrants who felt aggrieved by the immigration process, we concluded that the potential exists for a sizeable reverse migration of
WADHWA
skilled workers from the United States to their home countries or other countries, such as Canada, that welcome them. In August 2007, my associates and I at the Kauffman Foundation published our paper titled “Intellectual Property, the Immigration Backlog, and a Reverse Brain-Drain: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part III,” which details these issues and our predictions. Indeed, dozens of front page articles in major newspapers, CBS and NBC TV prime-time segments, reports from the Chinese government, and investigative visits to India and China have now substantiated our fears that students and skilled workers are returning home in record numbers, and the trend is accelerating.
What Does this Mean? The Unit-
ed States is giving an unintentional gift to China, India, and other rapidly developing nations by causing highly educated and skilled workers, frustrated by long waits for visas, to return home. The country is exporting critical sources of its own growth and competitiveness.
Can the U.S. Reverse the Tide?
There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle at this point, but the United States can give its high-tech companies a fighting chance to compete globally by enabling them to retain the skilled immigrants that are currently working for them and to hire the people that want to work for them. Students may say they want to return home, but once they have worked in American industries and founded their own businesses, it becomes increasingly difficult to do so. The one million high-skilled work-
Business&Economics
ers and their families who are waiting for green cards have already made a decision that they want to stay in the United States permanently. The only thing holding them back is the U.S. government. Instead of forcing them to leave, it should: • Increase the number of visas that are offered to skilled workers in the EB1, EB2 and EB3 categories. To clear the backlog and to give the economy a boost, the conversion of temporary visas to permanent residencies could be tied to the purchase of a house of $250,000 or more in value. • Eliminate per-country limits on all visas. These are historical relics that were designed to limit the entry of people from certain high-population countries. They no longer make sense. • Provide permanent-resident visas for graduates of top U.S. colleges. Considering that among U.S. postgraduate engineering and science students, nearly half of masters and most PhD students are foreign nationals, it makes sense to encourage these students to stay in the United States after graduation. Though it will not guarantee that they will stay, it will certainly make it more likely. To limit abuse of this program, it should only apply to degree holders from research universities or universities with established and wellregarded science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs. And it should be tied to a requirement that students receive job offers from legitimate U.S. corporations. • Create a “Startup Visa,” which provides entry visas for foreign entre-
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from countries that have learned its ways and benefitted from its flawed immigration policies. The low-skilled, undocumented workers that American lawmakers are battling over will still be here for as long as it takes to achieve Conclusion. The United States has political consensus. The high-skilled to realize that it is no longer the only doctors, scientists, and engineers will land of opportunity for high-skilled be long gone. workers. It faces brutal competition preneurs to start companies in the United States, and offers them legal permanent residence once their startups employ a significant number of American workers.
NOTES
1 Stuart Anderson, “Keeping Talent in America,” National Foundation for American Policy, October 2011, Internet, http://www.nfap.com/pdf/Keeping_Talent_In_ America_NFAP_October_2011.pdf. (date accessed: October 2011). 2 Vivek Wadhwa, “On Immigration, a step in the right direction,” Washington Post, August 3, 2011, Internet, http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ on-immigration-a-step-in-the-right-direction/2011/08/03/gIQA2bGgsI_story.html. (date accessed: October 2011). 3 Vivek Wadhwa, AnnaLee Saxenian, Richard B. Freeman and Alex Salkever, “Losing the World’s Best and Brightest: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Part V, Social Science Research Network, March 19, 2009, Internet, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1362012. (date accessed: October 2011). 4 Sharon LaFraniere, “Fighting Trend, China Is Luring Scientists Home,” New York Times, Jan 6, 2010, Internet, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/ asia/07scholar.html. (date accessed: October 2011). 5 Annalee Saxenian, “From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation: Transnational Communities and
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Regional Upgrading in India and China,” Studies in Comparative International Development Vol. 40, No. 2 (2005): 35-61. 6 Vivek Wadhwa, Sonali Jain, AnnaLee Saxenian, Gary Gereffi and Huiyao Wang, “The Grass is Indeed Greener in India and China for Returnee Entrepreneurs: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Part VI, Social Science Research Network, April 8, 2011, Internet, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1824670. (date accessed: October 2011). 7 Vivek Wadhwa, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ben Rissing and Gary Gereffi, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Part I,” Duke Science, Technology & Innovation Paper No. 23, Social Science Research Network, January 4, 2007, Internet, http://ssrn.com/abstract=990152. (date accessed: October 2011). 8 Vivek Wadhwa, Guillermina Jasso, Ben Rissing, Gary Gereffi and Richard B. Freeman, “Intellectual Property, the Immigration Backlog, and a Reverse Brain-Drain: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” Part III, Social Science Research Network, August 22, 2007, Internet, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1008366. (date accessed: October 2011).
Science&Technology Seeing Like a Slum
Towards Open, Deliberative Development Kevin P. Donovan In a 2010 speech, the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, announced “nothing short of an entirely new approach” to development, centered on “open data, open knowledge, and open solutions.”1 Through commitments to making data and processes transparent, the most prominent international development organization in the world made a strong claim that open information would “democratize development.” And it is not alone. Major donors have joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative in a commitment to publish what they fund, and dozens of countries—predominantly non-industrialized—have joined the Open Government Partnership to improve government through transparency. Proponents of this movement argue that transparency, the ability to legally and technically access and use information, in development initiatives will lead to better results through gains in efficiency and accountability. As it matures, the movement for transparency in development must reflect critically on how it may reach its promise and overcome its shortcomings. With the process in its infancy, this concept not yet widespread, but it is beginning to take hold. While the World Bank is explicitly linking
Kevin P. Donovan is studying digital technology and democratic engagement as a Fulbright scholar in Cape Town, South Africa.
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tation of a technological system, then it will serve to further marginalization, and the potential benefits of technology cannot be realized until power is more equally distributed in society. Thus, Feenberg calls for the democratization of both technology and politics. The failure to link technological questions to normative political questions can Critical Theory of Technology. lead to undesirable outcomes. The growth of the transparency movement is closely tied to the rapid dif- Digitization of Land Tenure. fusion of information and commu- The Bhoomi e-government project nication technologies (ICT) that are undertaken in Karnataka, India, is one used to capture, process, and make example of a transparency initiative available transparent information. with deleterious outcomes.4 The proAlthough it is common to consider gram sought to digitize records of land ICT as a “democratizing” technology ownership and make them available that enhances human freedom, philos- through computer kiosks for a small ophers of technology are less sanguine fee, thus removing the traditional midabout its effects, and the literature is dlemen, who were widely considered largely disconnected from the develop- corrupt and inefficient.
transparency to citizen engagement and collaboration through its concept of “open development,” scholars are quick to note that transparency is “necessary but insufficient” for reforms.2 Connecting the movement for transparency to theories of political change will enhance development practices.
While in theory, the initiative was intended to democratize access to information, in practice the result was to empower the empowered. ment community. One point of widespread agreement is that the impact of a technology is “underdetermined” and is therefore dependent upon the wider context in which it is developed and used. Andrew Feenberg’s “critical theory of technology” emphasizes that technology is frequently placed in the service of dominant or privileged groups.3 Depending on the social context in which technology arises and is used, it can be employed in biased or discriminatory ways. If a sufficiently large portion of the population is not involved in the design and implemen-
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By 2001, it had computerized 20 million records of land ownership of 6.7 million farmers, but the consequences of this formalization and centralization have been criticized as regressive.5 Already well-off populations were best able to capitalize on the new system due to their existing capacity and ability to adapt.6 Before the Bhoomi project, “bribes were locally negotiated and affordable, and these were usually differentiated by large and small farmers and linked to complex obligatory relationships in the village.” With formalization and centralization
DONOVAN
through the Bhoomi project, however, small and marginal farmers stood “almost no chance” of influencing the system. Instead, the land market was “increasingly dominated by large players.” While in theory, the initiative was intended to democratize access to information, in practice the result was to empower the empowered. Businesses and relatively wealthy individuals were “able to directly translate their enhanced access to the information along with their already available access to capital and professional skills into unequal contests around land titles, court actions, offers of purchase and so on for self-benefit and to further marginalize those already marginalized.”7 The technical approach to land digitization was divorced from questions of political participation, especially of the poor. This approach exacerbated inequality, contrary to the goals of the initiative.
Legibility, Simplification and Power. James Scott’s (1998) Seeing
Like a State suggested that the adverse impact of programs like Bhoomi arises from a tendency—even imperative—for the bureaucratic apparatus of modern states to make society legible through simplification. The idiosyncrasies and complexities of communities serve as a significant barrier to the ability of governments to extract taxes, conscript soldiers, and maintain political control. Local residents understand the complexity of their community due to prolonged exposure. States, however, operate over a multitude of communities and attempt to eliminate diversity of cultural norms through standardiza-
Science&Technology
tion. The result is a “static and schematic” form of society, much like the way in which digitizing land tenure records required conforming to a certain way of farm ownership. Eliminating illegibility in this way reduces the public’s political autonomy because it enables powerful entities to act on a greater scale. Scott argued, “A thoroughly legible society eliminates local monopolies of information and creates a kind of national transparency through the uniformity of codes, identities, statistics, regulations and measures. At the same time it is likely to create new positional advantages for those at the apex who have the knowledge and access to easily decipher the new state-created format.” Although local communities do have elites, the position arises more from capacity than from knowledge, because the latter is relatively equally distributed. What changes through state simplification is that information becomes accessible on a larger scale, one where community ties are less influential. Influential development thinkers have blamed the complexity of land tenure practices for the persistence of poverty, but viewing the Bhoomi experience in light of Scott’s approach suggests that formalizing property is far more value-laden than typically considered.8 This is because formalization necessarily involves standardization, thus altering the political autonomy of individuals and communities. As the case of Bhoomi shows, even though the intended output was accomplished (digitalization of land records), an uncritical examination of the context of transparency—especially local power dynamics—can result in outcomes that
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take action to reach development goals. Engaging ordinary citizens serves to “elicit and aggregate local knowledge,” thus avoiding the simplifications inherent in centralized decision-making.11 Attention to local power dynamics is key to the success of this approach. Because structural political changes can disrupt existing interests, they will Deliberative Development and often be resisted. Furthermore, as eviCountervailing Power. Seeing Like denced in the Bhoomi case, the elite a State is concerned specifically with will both seek to design changes in their development efforts that have resulted interests and have a better capacity to in disaster, such as Stalin’s forced col- adapt to any changes. Because of this, lectivization that resulted in millions of Fung suggests that approaches such as deaths. Relative to this, Bhoomi is hard- deliberative development, which create ly catastrophic. In Scott’s reckoning, “spaces for change,” will only succeed development disasters arise when sim- if countervailing powers exist to chalplification is combined with ideological lenge dominant interests.12 Stimulatblinders and an uncontested authori- ing countervailing power, unfortunatetarian government. India’s democracy ly, is not straightforward; it remains therefore creates space for a counter- “unclear just how groups, in particular, vailing power that limits catastrophic gain power in deliberative settings.”13 simplification. A body of development and political theory emphasizes the Development as a “Wicked” importance of countervailing power in Problem. Emphasis on the indereaching desirable outcomes, but it is terminacy of development processes is largely disconnected from the trans- an important strength of deliberative parency movement. Uniting the two approaches. It emphasizes multiplicity literatures presents a fruitful avenue for to avoid the tendency of the developscholarship and practice. ment industry to implement technical Peter Evans’s concept of “deliberative fixes, thus creating situations where development” links the “institutional “the solution is the problem.”14 turn” in development studies with theIn some cases, technical fixes are ories of politics that emphasize delib- appropriate, but misdiagnosing noneration, or “the resolution of problems technical problems as such can be highof collective choice through public rea- ly problematic. In contrast to Weinsoning.”10 Deliberative development berg, who believed “profound and avoids imposing “blueprints based on infinitely complicated social problems” idealized versions of Anglo-American could be reduced to “quick technoinstitutions, the applicability of which logical fixes,” Rittel and Webber argued is presumed to transcend national cir- that there existed two fundamentalcumstances and culture.” It relies on ly different types of problems in the the participation of ordinary people to world.15 “Tame” problems, those genare objectionable (marginalization of poor farmers). Though we should not romanticize customary systems of tenure that “are usually riven with inequalities,” we should instead use these lessons to design ongoing solutions that address the shortcomings of both the old and the new.9
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erally found in the natural sciences, are clearly definable, and are separable from other problems. “Wicked” problems, in contrast, are difficult to define due to interconnections with higherlevel problems. This leads to no end in solving them, especially because solutions are not objectively right or wrong, but rather judged by individuals as good or bad. The problems that transparency initiatives seek to solve—such as corruption and accountability—are fundamentally wicked problems, so they require more than just information or data. Instead, they require the participation of a wide variety of individuals in processes that do not privilege the elite. Deliberative approaches to development emphasize that it is an unending process marked by “change and contestation.”16 They bring to the fore what might otherwise elude efforts where technology is instrumental, such as transparency. An interdisciplinary approach will retain the technical expertise necessary for implementing transparency while emphasizing the process-oriented, wicked nature of the problem being tackled.
The Making of a Success Story? In Full Disclosure, Fung, Graham, and
Weil note the emerging trend of “collaborative transparency,” which “will allow citizens to initiate transparency systems and to use deeply textured and varied information that is responsive to their diverse needs.”17 As ICTs have become more affordable, transparency has become the purview of citizens, as opposed to just corporations and governments. This trend is global, even affect-
Science&Technology
ing the poorest populations, such as the slum in Nairobi where the eponymous Map Kibera project was developed. This project, organized by the GroundTruth Initiative, was “initiated in response to the lack of available map data and other public, open, and shared information about one of the world’s most-known slums: Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya.” Although Kibera “was not actually unmapped… none of the existing maps were shared with the public or used by Kibera’s residents.” While some questioned the need for such a project—after all, locals know their surroundings intimately—the organizers of the project believed that a lack of information “[left] the population disempowered and unable to use information to solve” their problems.18 To create an open map of Kibera, local citizens were taught how to use technology such as GPS. Within a short period, they were able to relatively quickly produce both digital and paper maps of the informal settlement, including points of interest such as “clinics, toilets, water points, NGO offices, electric lights, and some businesses.” In time, the Map Kibera effort led to a more expansive project that supported citizen reporting and began to map other informal settlements in a similarly participatory and open manner. Though still young, Map Kibera provides a promising example of how transparency initiatives and deliberative development can be combined. Although it began as an example of misdiagnosing a wicked problem (Kibera’s poverty and marginalization) as a tame one (insufficient information availability), Map Kibera has admirably grown beyond a reductionist approach.
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Simply mapping the local knowledge of Kibera could have, in fact, led to the type of regressive outcomes that critics of Bhoomi emphasized. To use Scott’s terminology, community mapping may serve to eliminate the illegibility that usually privileges local knowledge over outside knowledge. As argued above, when not accompanied by appropriate institutional adjustments, allowing more powerful entities to see like a slum could benefit those already in power.19 Instead of presuming the change will
wrote, “The question is whether we choose, for any given problem, a primarily social or a technical solution, or some combination. It is the distribution of solutions that is of concern.”21 Despite this promising approach, Map Kibera found that turning information “into a community resource and tool was more difficult” than originally presumed. Part of this was due to continued marginalization of Kibera and the program. Although the mapping and community media efforts have been an effective way for Kiberans “to
Real progress in linking transparency
to deliberative development will come when participation includes both ordinary and elite stakeholders. arise solely from the mapped information in addition to information provision, however, Map Kibera has pursued a broader agenda. It has created organizational structures that encourage local ownership of the project and meeting the needs of Kibera. One prominent example is the community reporting services, which arose as the mapping was culminating and the project began to consider Kibera’s entire communications environment to create institutions that used information as a component of broader social change. In doing so, Map Kibera reflected the sentiment of Fung, et al., who said, “as transformative as they can be, communication and information technologies will not, however, allow transparency policies to escape the political, economic, and regulatory dynamics that govern” all such initiatives.20 As Bowker, et al.,
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express voice, contest dominant norms, and get recognized by different and more powerful groups,” deliberative routines that create such a space must be introduced for “heightened associational contact between [disparate] groups in formalized settings.”22 These settings are places where individuals of different capacities and power can meet, contest, and collaborate—a process that is marked by “collaborative countervailing power.”23 Thus far, despite a partnership with UNICEF, Map Kibera has been able to institutionalize interaction with more powerful entities. Real progress in linking transparency to deliberative development will come when participation includes both ordinary and elite stakeholders. Map Kibera will serve as an excellent test case to measure this emerging form of development intervention.
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enact desired projects. Information Conclusion. The true promise of the should convene participants, suffuse movement for transparency in develop- their decision-making, and assist in ment will come not by merely making enacting policies. Unfortunately, there information available. Instead, trans- is not enough research on deliberative parency must be linked with delib- development and consequently a pauerative development. Diverse strands of city of understanding on the operation theory and empirics, from the philoso- or outcomes. Even less work has been phy of technology to the political soci- done on how access to information ology of development, converge on the can fuel deliberative development, and importance of addressing the underly- much more is needed on the emering dynamics of power when attempting gent practice. Academics, researchers, to enact social change. The nascent but and development practitioners have accelerating field of open development a unique opportunity to significantly improve the lives of the poor through would do well to heed those lessons. Transparency is at its most promis- an exploration of the best ways to link ing when the stimulus and sustenance open information and deliberative for processes encourage diverse par- development. ticipants to come together to plan and NOTES
1 Robert B. Zoellick, “Democratizing Development Economics.” Speech, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. 29 Sept. 2010. 2 Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil. Full Disclosure: the Perils and Promise of Transparency, (New York: Cambridge, 2007). 3 Andrew Freenberg, Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity, (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2010) 4 Solomon Benjamin, R. Bhuvaneswari, and P. Rajan, Bhoomi: ‘E-Governance’, Or, An Anti-Politics Machine Necessary to Globalize Bangalore? (Rep. CASUM, Jan. 2007), Internet, http://casumm.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/bhoomi-e-governance.pdf (date accessed: 8 Nov. 11) 5 Rajeev Chawla, and Subhash Batnagar, Online Delivery of Land Titles to Rural Farmers in Karnataka, India, (Rep. Shanghai: World Bank, 2004). 6 Solomon Benjamin, R. Bhuvaneswari, and P. Rajan. Bhoomi: ‘E-Governance’, Or, An Anti-Politics Machine Necessary to Globalize Bangalore? (Rep. CASUM, Jan. 2007), Internet, http://casumm.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/bhoomi-e-governance.pdf (date accessed: 8 Nov. 11) 7 Michael Gurstein, “Open Data: Empowering the Empowered or Effective Data Use for Everyone?” Gurstein’s Community Informatics, 2 September 2010, Internet, https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/ open-data-empowering-the-empowered-or-effective-data-use-for-everyone/ (date accessed: 08 Nov 2011).
8 Hernando DeSoto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, (New York: Basic, 2000) 9 James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, (New Haven: Yale, 1998). 10 P. Evans, Development as Institutional Change: The Pitfalls of Monocropping and the Potentials of Deliberation, Studies in Comparative International Development, 38, no. 4 (2004): 30-52. Joshua Cohen, The Economic Basis of Deliberative Democracy. Social Philosophy and Policy 6, no. 2 (1989):25-. 11 Dani Rodrick, “Institutions For High-Quality Growth: What They Are And How To Acquire Them,” CEPR Discussion Papers 2370, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers, 2000. A. Fung Collaboration and Countervailing Power: Making Participatory Governance Work (2002) Internet, www.archonfung.net. 12 A. Fung Collaboration and Countervailing Power: Making Participatory Governance Work. 2002. Internet, www.archonfung.net. 13 Michael Woolcock and Christopher Gibson. “Empowerment, Deliberative Development and Local Level Politics in Indonesia: Participatory Projects as a Source of Countervailing Power” Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper No. 8. (October 30, 2007). 14 L. Pritchett and Michael Woolcock. “Solutions When the Solution Is the Problem: Arraying the
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Disarray in Development.” World Development 32, no. 2 (2004): 191-212. 15 A. M. Weinberg,“Can technology replace social engineering?” (W. B. Thompson, Ed.) Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 22, no. 10 (1991): 41-48. Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” pp. 155–169, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc., Amsterdam, (1973). 16 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, (New York: Knopf, 1999). Patrick Barron, Rachael Diprose, and Michael Woolcock. Contesting Development: Participatory Projects and Local Conflict Dynamics in Indonesia, (New Haven, Conn.: Yale, 2011). 17 Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil, Full Disclosure: the Perils and Promise of Transparency, (New York: Cambridge, 2007). 18 Erica Hagen, “Mapping Change,” Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization 6, no. 1 (2011): 69-100. 19 In fact, Google has replicated the model of open mapping to a degree that one founder of Map
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Kibera accused the firm of unethical “exploitation of open communities” Maron, Mikel. “We Need to Stop Google’s Exploitation of Open Communities.” Web log post. Brain Off. 11 Apr. 2011. Internet, http:// brainoff.com/weblog/2011/04/11/1635. 20 Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil, Full Disclosure: the Perils and Promise of Transparency. (New York: Cambridge, 2007). 21 Geoffrey C. Bowker, Karen Baker, Florence Millerand and David Ribes (2010) ‘Towards Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in a Networked Environment’, in J.D. Hunsinger, M. Allen and L. Klastrup (eds), International Handbook of Internet Research: Springer. 22 Michael Woolcock and Christopher Gibson. “Empowerment, Deliberative Development and Local Level Politics in Indonesia: Participatory Projects as a Source of Countervailing Power” Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper No. 8. (30 October 2007). 23 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright. Deepening Democracy Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance, (London: Verso, 2003).
Books Wallerstein’s Eurocentric World-System Review by J.R. McNeill Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern World-System. IV. Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789-1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 396 pp. $65.00 In a welcome development, the University of California Press has released the latest volume in Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World-System. It has simultaneously republished the first three volumes, which made their first appearances in 1974, 1980 and 1989 with Academic Press. The first three volumes come with new prologues in which Wallerstein explains the origin of his project and reflects on the critiques that emerged over the years. He finds, in retrospect, that his views have remained essentially consistent since the early 1970s. The new prologues will be very useful for scholars and students hoping to get a quick orientation to Wallerstein’s thought. Wallerstein is one of the titans of modern social science. He began his professional career in sociology as an analyst of decolonization in Africa and of what he came to call antisystemic struggles taking place in Africa. From the middle 1950s until the early 1970s this was his calling. He served as president of the African Studies Association. By 1971-
J.R. McNeill is a professor of history at Georgetown University. His most recent book Mosquito Empires: War and Ecology in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), won the Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association.
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72, however, he was writing an entirely different sort of scholarship. In search of the origins of the capitalist system he turned to Europe in the sixteenth century (beginning around 1450 in his chronology). The resulting book, volume I of The Modern World-System, met with considerable acclaim. It challenged established Weberian categories of analysis, took history seriously, and offered a more grounded and rigorous argument about the nature of what was then often called ‘underdevelopment.’ Since that time, Wallerstein’s outlook has attracted many admirers (and critics). His influence and standing are such that institutions in twelve countries have awarded him honorary degrees and universities in eight countries have hosted him as visiting professor. His views have acquired a global reach and proved especially appealing to scholars in Latin America, southern Europe, and Africa. His ideas also spanned audiences throughout the social sciences, although far fewer trained in economics and political sciences than in sociology, anthropology, and history approve of them. Probably even archeology has more Wallersteinians than does economics. In an age of academic specialization, virtually no one has been influential across disciplines. This volume, unlike its predecessors, is mainly about ideology. It says rather little about the changing economic organization of the world-economy and next to nothing about Kondratieff cycles, which are so prominent in the earlier volumes. (By ‘world-economy’ Wallerstein does not mean the global economy, but rather a capitalist subset thereof, born in Western Europe in the long sixteenth century, expanding
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in fits and starts ever after, doomed to ultimate collapse, and destined to be followed by a socialist order.) Rather, it is about the victory of one ideology, centrist liberalism, over its plausible rivals, socialism and conservatism. In his vocabulary, conservatism in the nineteenth century was an intellectual and political movement dedicated to turning back the clock to the Old Regime before the French Revolution; liberalism refers to a doctrine of rational and cautious reformism aimed at maximizing human happiness; and socialism is the ambition to accelerate social progress by fighting hard against those who resist it. Conservatism did not have much of a chance once the French Revolution had unleashed the principles of equality and the acceptability of social change. Socialism undermined itself through division and timidity. Liberalism won. An ideology, in his vocabulary, is a thinly disguised political program—or metastrategy as he once puts it—for dealing with “modernity.” Accordingly, there were no ideologies before the French Revolution and religious worldviews do not count. (This means neither the Roman Empire nor the Inkas had an ideology; his choice of definition puts Wallerstein at odds with almost everyone who studies the world before the French Revolution.) Like its predecessors, this volume consists of long chapters with long, discursive footnotes, based on extensive reading in the published literature. Its prose is less than spellbinding, and occasionally too abstract for easy comprehension, but it is always organized. Each paragraph has a first sentence that leaves no doubt about what will be discussed next.
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The argument is pursued in five main chapters. The first treats liberalism as an ideology born of the French Revolution. The second concerns the creation of states constructed on the basis of liberalism in Britain and France up to 1830. The third deals with challenges to the liberal order from the working class, mainly in Britain and France. The fourth takes up the theme of citizenship, who should have political rights and who should not, also in Britain and France. This chapter takes Wallerstein into territory that critics of his earlier volumes admonished him for neglecting: gender, race, and to a lesser extent, ethnicity. The fifth and final substantive chapter considers the foundation of the social sciences and the discipline of history in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, mainly in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States. Centrist liberalism won, says Wallerstein, by capturing the leading states of the world-system after 1815, by beating back challenges from other ideologies, indeed co-opting them, by defining citizenship in ways that cast out certain groups, and by creating, in the social sciences, “structures of knowledge” that legitimated, and continue to legitimate, its hegemony in the intellectual marketplace. The geographical scope of the book will disappoint many readers accustomed to Wallerstein’s long reach. About 90 percent of the discussion concerns Britain or France. The periphery, semi-periphery, and external areas of previous volumes scarcely make an appearance. Imperialism hardly figures. The justification for this is that the triumph of centrist liberalism occurred first in Britain and
Books
France. So crucial parts of the capitalist core by 1914, such as the United States, Germany, and Japan, are almost always off stage—Japan is scarcely mentioned. Wallerstein regards the French Revolution as the defining event for the nineteenth century, one which put new issues on the table that politics and culture thereafter had to face. This viewpoint is more sustainable when one concentrates on France and Britain than if one follows the triumph of centrist liberalism in the nineteenth century to, say, Canada or Australia. As in Volume III, Wallerstein dismisses the Industrial Revolution as no revolution at all, merely another phase in the evolution of the world-economy. This escalation of the French Revolution and denial of the Industrial Revolution puts Wallerstein at odds with most recent interpretations of the nineteenth century world, a position in which he seems to delight. Many readers of the earlier volumes, myself included, often found them too confined to economic relations. Volume IV will not arouse the same criticism. It is about ideas, society, and politics. It deploys the concept of “geoculture,” a term Wallerstein has used for two decades now to mean the dominant ideology of the capitalist core. It explores the outlook of thinkers from the early and mid-nineteenth century, figures once important to Marxist and marxisant debates, but now half, or more than half, forgotten. (Readers who have forgotten, or never known, about de Maistre or the Guesdists will be at sea from time to time.) Ideas and intellectual culture figured tangentially in the earlier volumes but are front and center here.
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Wallerstein read deeply into the historical literature on nineteenth-century ideas and social movements in Britain and France. But he did most of the reading several years ago: about 60 percent of his references are to works from the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s; he cites more work from the 1950s than from the 1990s; and scholarship from the 2000s accounts for about 1 percent of his references, and well under that for the first four chapters. It is admirable that he is as versed as he is in the scholarship of the early part of the twentieth century, which too many authors now dismiss as not worth con-
French Revolution fades into the background. These are prominent books. Ignoring them altogether is a curious approach, especially given Wallerstein’s usual willingness to challenge any and every author fearlessly. My guess, then, is that he did almost all his reading for Volume IV some years ago. Chapter five, for which Wallerstein has read some recent scholarship, is for me the most interesting part of the book. As early as 1974, Wallerstein showed some interest in the “structures of knowledge,” the categories and vocabulary through which we understand the world of the present and the
It is about the victory of one ideology,
centrist liberalism, over its plausible rivals, socialism and conservatism. sulting. But Wallerstein has not come to grips at all with major works of recent years that offer influential visions of the nineteenth century. For example, C.A. Bayly’s The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (2004) and Ken Pomeranz, The Great Divergence (2000). Bayly offers powerful arguments about the nature and origins of modernity, ones that seem to me fully incompatible with Wallerstein’s. Bayly finds its origins in the full range of human interactions around the world, not in Britain and France exclusively, and not as reaction to the French Revolution primarily. Pomeranz’s book argues forcefully for the significance of industrialization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century as a world-changing development, emphasizing the eccentricity of the British experience. The
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past. He has consistently chafed, and rightly so I think, at the isolationism of each academic social science discipline, at the dominion of Weberian schemas in most social science, and the ahistorical abstractions of almost all professional economics. Here he explores the origins and early development of history, economics, sociology, and political science as tools for understanding late nineteenth-century Europe, and understanding it in ways congenial to late nineteenth-century liberalism. In each of these discussions he proceeds country by country, always featuring France and Britain, but with journeys to Germany and the United States as needed. The treatment of political science concerns its institutionalization at Sciences Po in Paris, at Columbia University in New York, and at the
MCNEILL
LSE in London. The segments on history, sociology, and economics, however, concern the prevailing ideas of the early giants in these fields. Then, in a section entitled “The Non-Western World,” Wallerstein discusses anthropology and Oriental studies, presented as part of a strategy to understand the world outside the core in order to control it. Despite its title, this section does not deal with structures of knowledge outside the Western world—for Wallerstein this is less important because what thinkers in Japan or the Ottoman Empire were up to did not inform or consolidate the victory of centrist liberalism. The synopses of the emergence of these academic disciplines in Europe
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and the United States are not original I expect (they draw on the prior work of others), but taken together and put in the context of the politics and society of Western Europe ca. 1870-1910, they make for a very persuasive presentation. The book ends with a very short summary of its argument. It begins with a fairly short summary of volumes I-III. Harried scholars and students preparing for exams will be especially thankful for these sections of the book. But reading it in full will be worth their time. All readers will find something to disagree with, as readers long have with Wallerstein, but much to admire as well.
* Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online © 2011 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. The article was modified slightly to conform to the Journal’s stylistic requirements.
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View from the Ground Thanksgiving in a Place Called Chiapas Michael Meaney Thanksgiving 2010. No turkey. No gravy. No pumpkin pie. Instead: armed men in ski masks, hitchhiking through the mountains, and a Catholic church filled with incense and two thousand candles. I divided the holiday between two villages near San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. Both of these villages are notable for their distinct cultures. The first place I visited, Oventic, is operated by indigenous rebels who seized autonomy through the 1994 rebellion by the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (the Zapatistas) in protest of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The second place, San Juan de Chamula, is operated by local political bosses and village elders, who serve as the leaders of a distinct belief system that mixes Catholicism and indigenous spirituality into a literally intoxicating local religion. In Oventic and San Juan, I encountered a part of Mexico desperately trying to preserve its identity. In the first village, this was achieved by blending revolutionary Marxism with indigenous identity. In the second city, identity preservation took the form of integrating Catholicism into the local religious context, bringing parishioners closer to their unique understanding of God.
Michael Meaney is a senior in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. In 2010, as a Lisa J. Raines Fellow, he spent time in Arizona and Mexico City, and completed a project titled “Liberalization in a World of Patronage: NAFTA and the Mexican Worker.� During his junior year, he studied abroad at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
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onward, a complex relationship evolved between specific sectors of the Mexican economy and the Mexican government. Through corrupt bargains with the Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI) regime, various sectors of the economy carved out an entrenched role for themselves in Mexican politics. The PRI regime gave benefits to targeted sectors of the economy in exchange for electoral support. The relationship was maintained through barriers to trade, welfare benefits, and the discouraging of intra-industry competition. Almost like a benevolent Leviathan, the PRI became a well-disposed dictatorship during its reign.2 Agriculture benefited from and contributed to the system initially instituted by the PRI. From the 1930s through the 1970s, agriculture was a primary source of foreign exchange for Mexico—consistently delivering positive trade balances. From the 1960s through the 1980s, two prominent agricultural support programs, the ejido program and the National Company for Public Sustenance (CONASUPO), were the key mechanisms through which the government supported agriculture.3 Mexican agriculture, however, began a process of transformation in the early 1980s, as Mexico faced a severe balance of payments crisis. Unfortunately, the sector has been on the decline ever since. As Mexico began its process of modernization to correct past economHistorical Background and ic mismanagement, the grossly ineffiNAFTA. To understand Oventic and cient and undercapitalized agriculture San Juan, one should understand the industry experienced substantial transseventy-some odd years of the Mexican formations. Market oriented reforms experience leading up to the Zapatis- prepared the way for NAFTA, which ta rebellion. From the beginnings of was ultimately the keystone of economic the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and liberalization. Prominent agricultural My time in Chiapas provided me the opportunity to evaluate the concept of “contesting citizenship,” a term coined by Deborah Yashar, professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. This phrase typifies the recent phenomenon of indigenous political movements across Latin America. For centuries, indigenous populations have been considered passive, myopic, and backward. But, as the world has grown increasingly interconnected and the global economy more liberalized, indigenous resistance movements have emerged. These peoples challenge the assumed notion of passivity; they contest the “historical scholarly conclusions about the politicization of ethnic cleavages.”1 My time in Chiapas provided me a new perspective on the intersection of NAFTA, indigenous identity, and globalization—topics I had studied as a researcher, but only in Lauinger Library at Georgetown University and never on the ground. Through my experiences during Thanksgiving 2010, I began to understand more coherently what I had previously understood only from the perspective of an undergraduate student and researcher. In visiting with people and bearing witness to their everyday difficulties in Mexico, my academic work became far more profound because it became far more human.
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MEANEY
support programs, including the ejido program and CONASUPO, were put on a path toward liquidation. Of all the groups expected to suffer as a result of liberalization, indigenous farmers were to pay perhaps the heaviest costs. Without the government programs, they could not remain viable. On 1 January 1994, the day NAFTA took effect, the Zapatistas declared war on the Mexican government to protest the free trade deal. They claimed that NAFTA would only further marginalize the indigenous poor. The people
View from the Ground
ize the agricultural market, making it that much harder for indigenous peoples in places like Chiapas to survive. The opposition was also driven in part by a demand for the increased democratization of Mexico. After seventy years of political domination by the PRI, the Zapatistas believed Mexico deserved a more representational and diverse government. Longing for the realization of land rights promised by the seventeenth amendment of the 1917 Mexican constitution, the rebels demanded autonomy from the Mexican govern-
They [Zapatistas] wanted to draw the world’s attention to NAFTA, which they believed would increase the gap between the rich and the poor. of Chiapas—where nearly 40 percent of the population is indigenous, and 99 of 118 municipalities are at or below the poverty line—fell into the category that would suffer.4 On that day, three thousand revolutionary soldiers stormed San Cristobal. They freed prisoners, set fire to numerous government buildings, and tried to take control of the city. The next day, the Mexican military intervened and inflicted great loses on the rebels. On 12 January, the armed conflict ended when the Catholic Diocese of San Cristobal negotiated a ceasefire. Led primarily by spokesman Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatistas initially sought to instigate revolution all across Mexico. They wanted to draw the world’s attention to NAFTA, which they believed would increase the gap between the rich and the poor. The free trade agreement would further liberal-
ment to control their land and natural resources and, at the same time, to keep intact their own cultural identity.5
My Visit to Chiapas. In exploring Oventic and San Juan, I realized how important cultural identity and freedom from interference are to the various indigenous peoples of Chiapas. When I arrived at the entrance to Oventic with my exchange friends, three men in ski masks, one of them armed, greeted us at the gate. Ten minutes of skeptical questioning proceeded. Where are you from? Why are you here? What do you know about the movement? At first, it struck me as odd that the Zapatistas would be so skeptical of people who had come to explore their village. It soon became clear that they had good reason to be. For one, Oventic is an autonomous region and travWinter/Spring 2012 [ 1 1 3]
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eling there is somewhat analogous to traveling to another country. Also, the Zapatistas are actually quite media savvy. During the revolution, Subcomandante Marcos was known for his telegenic charisma. The Zapatistas remain preoccupied with how the outside world perceives them, and they do not want visitors with cameras recording potentially damaging images. We waited for twenty minutes while the men appeared to discuss letting us enter with their leaders. After showing our passports, we eventually gained entry. We were given a brisk twentyminute tour of the village. Our guide was amiable enough, and his Spanish was fluent (not especially common in the indigenous villages of Chiapas, where most people speak only a native dialect). Our guide did not spend much time telling us his opinions on NAFTA or explaining the political transformation that took place in the region afterward. He was instead rather terse. “This is where people live.” “This is where our leadership meets.” (We were certainly not allowed in.) “This is where our children go to school.” The poverty was stunning. There was no running water in the bathrooms, and the villagers lived in cottage-like shacks. But the modest gains made by the Zapatista rebellion were evident too. The Mexican government had since helped bring electricity, ambulances, a health clinic, and a school to the village. Our guide instructed us not to take pictures of the village except for the large mural paintings of Che Guevara, Marcos, and other ideological heroes of the group. The guide did, however, encourage us to purchase Zapatista memorabilia—a mildly ironic concept,
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considering that the group’s ideology is based on a blend of indigenous beliefs and Marxist socialism. Not all villages that achieved de facto autonomy through rebellion are governed by Zapatistas. These are the villages that remain under the control of political bosses and village elders. Our next stop in Chiapas was to one of these villages, San Juan de Chamula. Our transportation options were limited. We could have waited an indefinite amount of time for the San Cristobal bus to pick us up. We could have walked. Or we could have hitched a ride with a local. My slightly more adventurous Australian friend did not even consider it a choice: he flagged down the first pick-up truck to pass by, asked for a ride, and then jumped in the bed of the truck. The rest of us followed. The forty-five minute drive through the mountains was beautiful, albeit slightly terrifying. After a quick lunch at a local eatery, we headed to the church in the main square. One of our history teachers in Mexico City had told us that entering the church in San Juan was like entering another world. Of course, I expected her description to be exaggerated. I was wrong. On the outside, the cathedral appeared to be a typical colonial Catholic church. On the inside, it could not have been more different. Instead of pews and pulpits, the church was filled with kneeling worshipers chanting in Tzotzil. Crowded around thousands of burning candles and surrounded by life-size statues of major Catholic saints, the people of San Juan de Chamula had gathered here to practice their unique blend of indigenous
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beliefs and Catholicism. At these ceremonies, curanderos (medicine men) diagnose physical and psychological ailments, suggest remedies, and lead the worshippers. Chanting prayers, making sacrificial offerings (including animals from time to time), and drinking Coca-Cola and a sugarcane-based liquor blend with the basic tenets of Catholicism to create a mystifying syncretic religion that is nearly impossible for outsiders to understand. The centuries-long blending of Mayan spirituality with Catholic ritual has left in place an emergent belief system that only those immersed in the environment could begin to appreciate. Through visiting the village, I observed that these people identify less with the cultural identity of Mexico than they do with the cultural identity of the civilizations that inhabited the area centuries before Mexico was born. The people of Oventic and San Juan aspire to the ideals that unify most of human kind. They want security for their families. They want to practice their own beliefs. They want to put food on the table and provide a good life for their children. Given the treatment of the indigenous in Mexico, it is not a stretch to draw a path dependant relationship between historical oppression and indigenous skepticism of the government. It then makes sense that these people choose not to live as Mexicans in Mexico City do, but instead as armed revolutionaries or spiritual mystics, seeking to preserve their identity. The fact remains that the crop fields in the hills of Chiapas would benefit from the type of modernization that NAFTA sought to bring. It is a sad reality that these adaptations never took
View from the Ground
place. Inefficient farming practices still lead to resources being squandered, but these sorts of concerns are absent from the minds of the people in Oventic and San Juan de Chamula. They are concerned instead with being allowed to practice their culture and raise their children as they see fit. They are concerned with being allowed to be themselves.
Negative Externalities? The story of the Zapatista rebels and other villagers in Chiapas highlights a broader, more intensely debated topic in modern international affairs: the effects of globalization driven by neo-liberal economic policies on indigenous peoples. The Zapatista rebellion sought to shed light not only on the plight of Mexico’s indigenous poor but, more generally, on all poor people marginalized by the thrust of globalization. The effect of globalization—the further integration of world markets and the subsequent cultural spillovers that result—is a fiercely debated topic. In short, the controversy arises from two seemingly incompatible understandings of free trade. From David Ricardo to Paul Krugman, most established economists have always defended free trade. Indeed, for all the concepts economists disagree about; close to 90 percent believe free trade to be beneficial.6 The underlying idea is that specialization determined by comparative advantage in productivity raises the welfare of consumers between trading nations. Competition leads to lower prices and greater product choice.7 On the other hand, politicians, pundits, and activists alike attack free trade as a cause of job loss, wage suppression, Winter/Spring 2012 [ 1 1 5]
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and low-quality commercial products. Some also criticize free trade as a new form of colonialism—the idea that wealthier countries take advantage of poor ones for low-cost primary goods and cheap labor. It is claimed that the benefits of free trade arise from dreadful working conditions, low accessibility to technology, and exploitation of low wages.8 Deborah Yashar explores indigenous demands for the rights to preserve their cultures and territories and achieve greater political autonomy within Latin American societies. This political organization has coincided with the movement toward liberalization in Latin
intensive industries would benefit, and that land-intensive industries would suffer—were largely substantiated. The maquiladora industry added nearly half a million jobs in the decade after NAFTA’s passage, and real wages increased by 22 percent. During the same time period, nearly 1.5 million farmers lost their jobs and suffered wage losses of 25 percent.10 Of all places in Mexico, Chiapas stood to lose the most from NAFTA. About a quarter of the population of Chiapas are indigenous people of Mayan decent. Most are rural farmers, cultivating small farms situated in the hills and mountains. These are the
Of all places in Mexico, Chiapas stood to lose the most from NAFTA. About a quarter of the population of Chiapas are indigenous people of Mayan decent. America. Yashar argues that indigenous movements have emerged to challenge the disadvantages of their contemporary citizenship in Latin America. Political liberalization has given these groups an unprecedented ability to mobilize. Yet, at the same time, economic liberalization has limited the access to state-provided resources on which these populations had come to rely.9 My research project, “Liberalization in a World of Patronage: NAFTA and the Mexican Worker,” considered the effect of NAFTA on two specific sectors of the Mexican economy: agriculture and maquiladoras (low-skill manufacturing). Through this work, I learned that the economic expectations for NAFTA—that low-skill, capital-
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farms that for forty years received government subsidies to maintain viability. After NAFTA, these comparatively unproductive farms stood no chance of competing with their larger, more technologically advanced counterparts in the United States.11 The Zapatista rebellion failed to instigate the country-wide political chaos it was intended to, but the message of the movement was heard. Instead of seeking out and persecuting the rebel leaders, the Mexican government negotiated with them. In 1996, the San Andres Accords were signed between the Mexican government and the Zapatista rebels.12 Although it has not yet been entirely fulfilled, the agreement guaranteed the Zapatistas
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View from the Ground
people that free trade claims to help in the long run may have no interest in participating in free trade at all. This loss of culture and this top-down model of improving quality of life might be understood as just another iteration of indigenous oppression. This was something that I could not have learned in A Different Thanksgiving. the classroom. It is something I could Trained at Georgetown and a general have learned only from my experience adherent to neoliberal economics, I on the ground. After returning from the mountain have grown accustomed to viewing the world with a sort of “Washington Con- villages, my exchange friends and I had sensus” mindset—one in which free a typical evening filled with nourishing trade is always beneficial in the long food and enriching conversation. That run and should therefore be sought night, in reflecting on my abnormal after despite the temporary hardship Thanksgiving experience, I could not it may cause. I still believe this. But help but think of the original feast my experience in Chiapas made many at Plymouth Rock, celebrated by the of the nuanced arguments against free Pilgrims. The original Thanksgiving trade come into sharp relief. My multi- celebrated a kind of redemption—pragfaceted college education provided matic, economic, and hard-earned. me the lens through which I filtered This is our American identity. But these experiences. I drew on knowledge during Thanksgiving 2010 in Oventic gained from my international econom- and San Juan, I came to understand ics classes and my research work. Oven- a different type of redemption—one tic and San Juan de Chamula taught rooted in collective consciousness and me that, despite the relative gains from spiritual transcendence, instead of in trade that people may accrue in the long individuality and self-reliance. I will run, a sense of culture and identity loss never forget the lessons I drew from the can be associated with the costs of eco- vivid and indelible Thanksgiving I spent nomic development. Some of the very with the indigenous peoples of Chiapas. and other indigenous villagers the right to own land and set up self-governing communities. The Mexican government has since set up a number of social development programs in Chiapas in order to increase access to better health care and education.
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NOTES
1 Deborah Yashar, “Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democracy in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 31, no. 1 (2005): 23. 2 Jorge Dominguez, “The Perfect Dictatorship? Comparing Authoritarian Rule in South Korea and in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico” (unpublished paper, Harvard University, 2002), Internet, http:// www.wcfia.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/690__The Perfect Dictatorship.pdf (date accessed: 5 November 2011). 3 Yunez-Naude, “The Dismantling of CONASUPO: a Mexican State Trader in Agriculture,” (research paper, El Colegio de Mexico), Internet, http://www. reap.ucdavis.edu/research/CONASUPO.pdf (date accessed: 5 November 2011). 4 Lawrence R. Alschuler, “The Chiapas Rebellion: An Analysis According to the Structural Theory of Revolution,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe 10, no. 2 (1998-1999), Internet, http://www1. tau.ac.il/eial/index.php?option=com_content&task=vi ew&id=585&Itemid=233 (date accessed: 5 November 2011). 5 Patrick H. O’Neil, Karl Fields, and Don Share, Cases in Comparative Politics (New York: Norton, 2006), 377.
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6 Robert Whaples, “Do Economists Agree on Anything? Yes!” The Economists’ Voice 3, no. 9 (2006): article 1. 7 Library of Economics and Liberty, “Comparative Advantage,” Internet, http://www.econlib.org/ library/Topics/Details/comparativeadvantage.html (date accessed: 24 February 2011). 8 Jackie Lopez, “The Campaign Against NAFTA: An Irrational Attack on Free Trade,” (paper in International Economics, Duke University, Spring 2009), 4-6. 9 Deborah Yashar, “Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democracy in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 31, no. 1 (2005): 23-24. 10 Mike Meaney, “Liberalization in a World of Patronage: NAFTA and the Mexican Worker,” (forthcoming paper in Mentis Vita Pro Vita Mundi, Georgetown University, Fall 2012). 11 Sipaz, “Facts About Chiapas: Indegenous Peoples,” Internet, http://www.sipaz.org/data/chis_en_02. htm (date accessed: 24 February 2011). 12 United States Institute of Peace, “Peace Agreements: Chiapas (Mexico),” Internet, http://www.usip. org/publications/peace-agreements-chiapas-mexico (date accessed: 5 November 2011).
View from the Ground
American Aid and Human Rights in the Philippines Christian Pangilinan U.S. Acquiescence and Military Human Rights Abuses in the Philippines. The streets of Catmaran, a small town in Northern Samar province in the Philippines, seem wide compared to those of the capital, Manila. There is almost no traffic. Instead of dense rows of aluminumroofed shacks, rough concrete houses, and stalls with plastic signs for soda and cell phone companies, green farms and bahay kubo, traditional thatch houses on stilts, border the roads. At first glance, the beaches look idyllic. Although Catmaran appears tranquil, this impression is deceptive. “When you look at it, it looks so peaceful,” says a professor at a local university, “but you do not realize that there is violence.” Indeed, despite initial appearances, signs that not all is well quickly appear. The province has few outside visitors. Its beautiful beaches are empty. The local airport lies next to a Philippine military camp, and checkpoints surround Catmaran on land. Philippine army trucks transport stone-faced soldiers carrying M-16 rifles. In reality, life in Samar is punctuated by violence. Samar is one of the sites of a decades-old conflict between the Communist New People’s Army and the government that continues to claim the lives of soldiers and civilians. Since
Christian Pangilinan graduated with a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in May 2011. Immediately after graduating, he interned with The Asia Foundation’s Human Rights Unit in Manila, Philippines. He is currently working as a Dean’s Fellow at the Law Center and returns to human rights work in January 2012.
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the 1970s, the New People’s Army has waged an armed rebellion, characterized by the brutal and corrupt administration of President Ferdinand Marcos, throughout the Philippines. Even after Marcos’s fall and the return to democracy under Corazon Aquino in 1986, the rebellion has continued, interrupted by occasional ceasefires. Efforts by the military and government-sanctioned paramilitary groups, despite the use of brutal force, have not brought an end to the conflict. I currently work in Samar on behalf of the Philippine office of the Asia Foundation, an American non-governmental organization (NGO), because the province is one of several in the Philippines where civilians were allegedly murdered by government troops in incidents far from the battlefield. Since 2001, government troops have been tagged in the killings or disappearances of persons associated with the country’s political left. In Samar, these victims have included priests, professors, and journalists. In most cases, justice remains elusive. When I came to work for the Asia Foundation in 2011, I was a Filipino expatriate fresh out of U.S. law school. I took pride in being part of a U.S. effort to address human rights in the Philippines. My time in law school, where I was surrounded by passionate Americans hoping to be civil rights and poverty lawyers, had reshaped my perception of the United States. If I had never left the Philippines, I would have probably thought differently. There, a common nationalist line is that the United States, which held the Philippines as a territory for fifty years, cannot be trusted. I have now come to
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believe that the United States is well intentioned. I continue to believe in the good intentions of the United States, but my time in the Philippines has also led me to conclude that U.S. priorities have also had a profound negative impact on which human rights obligations the Philippine government has taken seriously. Since 9/11, the United States has combined increased foreign aid and military financing to the Philippines with a lack of serious penalties for the Philippine government’s failure to improve its record on military abuses. Regrettably, the Philippine government’s inaction has stymied efforts to end extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The United States has acquiesced to these human rights failures. This is not to say that the United States has been silent. Ambassadors have repeatedly called on the Philippine government to end killings and disappearances. As an intern with the Asia Foundation’s Law and Human Rights Unit, I participated in the American response to this issue: a USAID-funded program intended to promote human rights both by encouraging the government to prosecute the perpetrators and by improving the ability of grassroots organizations to take independent action. Yet, I have learned the unfortunate reality that, even under the new president, Benigno Aquino III, these efforts have had only a modest impact. Not only have prosecutions stalled, but the killings have continued. One conclusion to draw from this is that the United States cannot do anything to stop the killings and disappearances. Right now, this is the prevailing
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view. Ending military human rights abuses is set to disappear from the U.S. agenda for the Philippines. This is the wrong decision. If the United States truly wants the Philippines to hold to account those responsible for military abuses, it must tell the Philippine government that failure to act will have consequences. The United States holds significant leverage as the Philippines’s principal military partner and one of
View From the Ground
government—including the military. A Philippine partner had set up these task forces in several provinces. They were intended to be assistance centers for victims of human rights violations and their families. When I arrived, the questions I had in mind about the project were mainly about numbers. How many victims had sought help from the task force? What kind of help did they get? Had any cases moved forward? I
If the United States truly wants the
Philippines to hold to account those responsible for military abuses, it must tell the Philippine government that failure to act will have consequences. was optimistic. The participation of the military and the government in a group designed to address human rights issues seemed like a hopeful sign. As I spoke to the workshop’s organizA Frustrated Human Rights ers, I realized that the numbers were Movement. Isang bala ka lang (you are actually poor. The military participated, just one bullet): this is how one nun but that did not mean people stopped in the city of Davao described the kind fearing it. Even worse, human rights of threats that Philippine advocates for violations continued in the province. human rights face. The Philippines When we arrived, we were told that the does not lack brave advocates. Little military had allegedly responded to the effective oversight of the military, how- rebels’ use of landmines earlier in the ever, means even those who make sac- year by using farmers as human shields rifices for human rights in the Philip- while they searched for those responpines can stir up only so much trouble sible. The incident remained an allebefore they run the risk of becoming gation because no one had been there to document it. Armed gunmen had victims themselves. I went to Northern Samar early in my recently shot one of the province’s most time with the Foundation to observe a prominent human rights advocates, a workshop run by a local group consist- Catholic priest who had organized local ing of representatives from the Roman law students and brought them into the Catholic Church, local schools, and the interior of the province to document its main sources of foreign aid. There is reason to believe that greater penalties for human rights abuses will push the government to take action.
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human rights abuse cases.1 In the face of conditions like these, the courage of human rights advocates in the Philippines is inspiring. In Northern Samar, a group of Catholic nuns had become leaders in the effort to encourage an end to the violence. In Davao, I met another brave nun who thought a sample affidavit in which a man complained of being threatened multiple times by armed men was tame. Elsewhere in the Philippines, USAIDfunded programs have enabled these
of the victims of the government’s antiCommunist campaign. Her killer had been identified as an enlisted soldier. The same soldier had been tagged as the killer in several other incidents in the province. All the incidents had taken place during the tenure of the same general, Jovito Palparan, who had also commanded in Northern Samar when extrajudicial killings were at their worst there. Palparan is now a member of Congress and is not facing any official investigations.3
Despite these encouraging examples,
the general lack of progress [on human rights] remains undeniable. advocates. For example, U.S. foreign aid for human rights has improved the forensic capacity of Philippine doctors and community health practitioners working with the country’s Commission on Human Rights. Foreign aid has also funded the work of journalists— another at-risk group—to keep track of and investigate cases of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture around the country. Despite these encouraging examples, the general lack of progress remains undeniable. In the province of Pampanga, north of Manila, I met the son of a female captain of a barangay, the smallest Philippine administrative unit, who had been gunned down by submachine guns while leaving a council meeting. He told us that his mother had been in her sixties when she died.2 She had been targeted, it seems, because of leftist political affiliations from long ago, making her characteristic of many
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Human rights advocates are frustrated. They had hoped for change with President Aquino when he came to power in 2010. Aquino is, after all, the son of President Corazon Aquino, a democracy icon whose role in the People Power Revolution of 1986 was a source of pride for Filipinos everywhere. At first glance, the younger Aquino seemed like a promising contrast to his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who had revived the government’s all-out war against rebel groups in the latter half of her presidency. Despite positive expectations, the younger Aquino delivered little of what he promised.4 The government has not dismantled government-sanctioned paramilitary groups.5 A promise to prosecute perpetrators of extrajudicial killings has not led to convictions. Not one person responsible for an extrajudicial killing that took place during the new president’s term has
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been convicted.6 The new administration of President Aquino, Filipinos widely believe, lacks a real agenda of its own and has largely maintained the status quo.
Insufficient Criticism. Impunity
for extrajudicial killings has not gone unnoticed by human rights groups and governments. Human Rights Watch regularly releases reports whose accounts of the failures of the justice system have become discouragingly repetitive.7 The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions issued a scathing report that suggested the military was in “a state of denial” about its involvement in human rights abuses.8 Government involvement has been shown in documents issued to military personnel involved in killings and in testimony from victims. A military informant has spoken out about orders he received from a senior officer to shoot civilians and disguise it as a New People’s Army execution.9 Although the United States has contributed to programs to address human rights abuses in the Philippines, this is insufficient. It does nothing of substance in the Philippines when it comes to the most serious human rights abuses, namely the extrajudicial killings of Filipino civilians by the government and the military. Official U.S. criticism of the Philippine government is not strong. State Department reports have mitigated the blame for human rights violations by the government by suggesting that the blame was to be shared with rebel groups.10 In 2007, when the killings were at their height, a State Department representative lauded the record of President Arroyo.11 The
View From the Ground
state of the Philippines, he said, was a “positive picture” marred by the “[o]ne negative factor” of extrajudicial killings. The State Department emphasized that the Philippines was an American partner against “al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.”12 That much was true. Under President Arroyo, the Philippines joined President Bush’s coalition of the willing, earning favor and foreign aid from Washington. In 2003, President Bush addressed the Philippine Congress, declaring the Philippines’s history under American rule a model for Iraq. Bush did not mention that the U.S. acquisition of the Philippines provoked intense controversy in the United States and led to a prolonged armed conflict against those Filipinos who sought immediate independence. His speech saw the world in black and white: good guys against bad guys— those fighting “terror” and those who “support terror.” The Philippines, said Bush, was on the U.S. side and would receive assistance. He made no mention of human rights or the military’s need to respect them.13 The Bush administration revived U.S. military aid to the Philippines, which had waned in the 1990s when the Philippine Senate refused to extend leases for U.S. military bases. During the Bush administration, the Philippines hosted U.S. military advisors who participated in the hunt for the Jema’ah Islamiyah-linked Abu Sayyaf group.14 With U.S. help, the Philippine army finally scored victories against Abu Sayyaf. At home, President Bush referred to the Philippines as one of the sites of the global “War on Terror,” which the United States and its allies would
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win.15 The prominence of this military partnership led to little criticism of the Philippine military’s human rights record. In the last decade, U.S. foreign aid to the Philippines increased significantly. Hovering between 130 and 140 million dollars a year, it makes up a large chunk of U.S. foreign aid to East Asia.16 A large percentage of that amount is foreign military financing for the Philippine military—worth between fifteen and thirty million dollars a year.17 Now, aid to the Philippines may increase substantially if the Philippines receives an added 400 million dollars over five years through its compact with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a federal agency promoting economic growth and poverty reduction. Meanwhile, the sole penalty for the continuation of extrajudicial killings that the Philippines faces is the threatened withholding of two to three million dollars in military financing, unless the Secretary of State reports that the Philippines is making genuine efforts to address human rights violations by the military. This penalty was applied in 2008, when two million dollars were withheld.18 That penalty is only a small fraction of U.S. aid and is not enough to compel change. The penalty is so small that many human rights advocates in the Philippines are not even aware of it. By contrast, when it comes to human trafficking, U.S. pressure on the Philippines is great. Had the State Department not upgraded the Philippines from the list of “Tier 2 Watch List” countries that were not making headway in efforts to end human trafficking, the Philippines could have forfeited
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its Millennium Challenge Corporation grant and other U.S. aid.19 Hence, as for human trafficking, the Philippines had much to lose. The government responded: an inter-agency task force led by the vice-president was created. Prosecutions and convictions increased and are now widely publicized. At his second state of the nation address, President Aquino showed a photograph of himself with Secretary Hillary Clinton and boasted of having met the State Department’s standards.20 Where the United States has applied sufficient pressure, the Philippine government has acted, and with greater effort and attention than it has done where American pressure is absent—as is the case with military human rights abuses.
The Need for Action from the Top. Human rights NGOs like the
Asia Foundation have made only a modest impact on extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Perhaps it is because the results have been too hard to quantify that promoting human rights is now set to vanish from USAID’s agenda for the Philippines. Programs like those of the Foundation may have increased awareness of human rights issues and increased the capacity of civil society to respond to them, but they have not been able to end the abuses on their own. Frustrating outcomes like this might suggest that American foreign aid to help promote human rights is ineffective and even dangerous. Foreign aid might just provide cover to the Philippine government so that it can claim to protect human rights without doing so in practice. To think that the United States can do nothing and therefore might as well
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do nothing is the wrong conclusion. The Aquino administration’s commitment to ending military abuses is already wavering. If it is rewarded with aid despite its human rights record, what little incentive it has to stop military abuses will be weakened even more. The Philippines does, however, have a record of responding to U.S. pressure—as it has done with respect to human trafficking—when this pressure comes with consequences. Aid programs, like those administered by the Asia Foundation, can take measures to stop military abuses. They can help journalists, lawyers, and community groups. What aid programs have not been able to do is apply pressure to the top of the government hierarchy and force a transformation in its attitudes and policy. The United States should not give up on human rights in the Philippines until it has done everything it can. Although progress has been slow, this is not because Philippine human rights advocates, churches, and civil society groups have not taken advantage of what help the United States and others have provided. At every workshop and program funded by USAID that I attended, I was told by participants how much “we really need this.” Americans can take pride in the help that they have given, but they should express
View From the Ground
their disappointment with the Philippine government’s failure to act. By telling the Philippine government that it must stop the killings or forfeit a larger chunk of its aid from the United States, the United States can force the Aquino administration to require the armed forces to genuinely address human rights violations by its members.
Common Ground. As an expatri-
ate, I did not spend much of my young adult life in the Philippines. When I went to law school in the United States, I was impressed with the dedication and passion of my American classmates for their deeply felt political and social beliefs. My time in the Philippines has showed me that many Filipinos are just as passionate about promoting just causes and improving the future of their country. In Catmaran, a Catholic nun expressed faith, in spite of everything that has happened in Samar, in the basic goodwill of Filipinos. She could think of nowhere else, she said, that could ever be her home. The United States can help Filipino human rights advocates. And it does not have to do that much. The United States does not need to teach Filipinos to care about human rights. Filipinos already do. Filipinos need only U.S. help to sustain them.
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NOTES
1 Katungon-Sinirangan Bisayas, “Human rights advocate priest killed,” Internet, http://www. samarnews.com/news_clips14/news240.htm (date accessed: 27 August 2011). 2 Son of deceased barangay captain, interview with Christian Pangilinan, San Fernando, Pampanga, July 2011. 3 Lira Dalangin-Fernandez, “Congressman Palparan enters House,” Internet, http://newsinfo. inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20090427201720/Congressman-Palparan-enters-House (date accessed: 27 August 2011). 4 Amnesty International, “Progress, Stagnation, Regression? The State of Human Rights in the Philippines under Aquino (2011),” Internet, http:// www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA35/002/2011/ en/3e92fa59-e3f4-4096-8f4f-b18da70e7669/ asa350022011en.pdf (date accessed: 27 August 2011). 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Human Rights Watch, “Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines (2007),” Internet, http://www.hrw.org/en/ reports/2007/06/27/scared-silent-0 (date accessed: 27 August 2011); Human Rights Watch, “No Justice Just Adds to the Pain: Killings, Disappearances, and Impunity in the Philippines (2011),” Internet, http://www.hrw.org/en/node/100305/section/1 (date accessed: 27 August 2011). 8 Philip Alston. UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions, Mission to the Philippines,” Internet, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/ doc/UNDOC/GEN/G08/130/01/PDF/G0813001. pdf?OpenElement. 9 Secretary of Defense v. Manalo, G.R. No. 180906 (Philippine Supreme Court, 7 October 2008). See note 7 for additional information. 10 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “2008 Human Rights Report: Philippines,” 25 February 2009, Internet, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/ eap/119054.htm (date accessed: 28 August 2011).
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11 “Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines: Strategies to End the Violence,” (statement of Eric G. John, Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State, before the Senate Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 103rd Cong., 2007), 4-8. 12 Ibid., 4. 13 George W. Bush, “Address to the Joint Session of the Philippine Congress,” 18 October 2003, Internet, http://www.samarnews.com/presidents_radio_ address/bushspeech.htm (date accessed: 28 August 2011). 14 Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Foreign Aid to East and South Asia: Selected Recipients 22,” 1 May 2008, Internet, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/ organization/105177.pdf (date accessed: 28 August 2011). 15 George W. Bush, “Speech at the National Defense University,” 8 March 2005, Internet, http:// www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/03.08.05. html (date accessed: 28 August 2011). 16 Congressional Research Service, “The Republic of the Philippines and U.S. Interests,” Internet, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33233.pdf (date accessed: 28 August 2011), 9; Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Foreign Aid to East and South Asia: Selected Recipients,” Internet, http://fpc.state.gov/ documents/organization/81357.pdf (date accessed: 1 November 2011), 8. 17 Congressional Research Service, “The Republic of the Philippines and U.S. Interests,” 9. Congressional Research Services, “U.S. Foreign Aid to East and South Asia: Selected Recipients,” 23. 18 Congressional Research Services, “The Republic of the Philippines and U.S. Interests,” 8. 19 Ibid., 20. 20 Benigno S. Aquino III, State of the Nation Address, (House of Representatives, Quezon City, 25 July 2011) (English translation), Internet, http://www. gov.ph/2011/07/25/benigno-s-aquino-iii-secondstate-of-the-nation-address-july-25-2011-en/, (date accessed: 8 November 2011).
A Look Back On Political Virtue
A Discussion of Prudence and Fortitude in U.S. Governance with Senator Chuck Hagel In the midst of the dynamic transfers of multipolar power that have come to define the twenty-first century’s global political schema, Chuck Hagel comments on some of the most pressing foreign policy dilemmas the United States will have to face in the years ahead. Utilizing his perspective as a former senator and his present involvement in various governmental advisory capacities as a guide, Senator Hagel discusses his views on how the United States can salvage its international respect and direction in spite of a drastically changed diplomatic landscape.
GJIA: Congressional approval ratings continue to sag to alarmingly low rates. Accusations of groups more concerned with partisan politics than supporting the American people continue to fly. What is going wrong in Washington? Hagel: The Republicans have hung onto this mantra of no new taxes. They think that we can get our way out of this fourteen trillion dollar mess solely by cutting spending. That kind of obstinacy is failing the country at a critical time. We are living in the most historic and unprecedented diffusion of economic power that has ever existed. It is not a matter of us falling back, but rather a matter more of other countries catching up—countries that we should embrace and work
Chuck Hagel served as United States Senator from Nebraska from 1997-2009. He is currently Chairman of the Atlantic Council, Co-Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, along with many other positions. He has recently released a book on U.S. politics and foreign policy entitled America: Our Next Chapter.
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with. That means more stability, more security, more markets for us, and better relationships in the world. We have to adjust to a new paradigm of reality. A new world order is being built right now. I am not sure the leaders of this country understand that. We are defining a twenty first century world. The last time we did this was right after World War II. There are different dynamics now. Back then we [United States] essentially wrote the world plan because there was no one else. Every other economy was in shambles. That is not the way it is being rewritten today. The old paradigms are not accurate anymore because of globalization and technology. But you know, we will get through this. The United States is better than what we are seeing. America deserves better, and America will demand better of its leaders.
ly at its lowest recorded confidence level since polling began. You get those numbers back up by first engaging with the people in a very clear, open, and honest way. You do it by putting forth options and proposals on how to fix the problem. You do not regain the confidence of the people by continuing to try to debase the opposing party. You listen more; you show tolerance. This idea of a zero-sum game, “I’m right, you’re wrong” is complete nonsense. Democracies only work through a consensus, they cannot work any other way. Leaders have to reach out, listen, cooperate, and be brutally honest about where we are with our big problems. They need to find common interests and avenues where they can work with all of the political constituencies to fix the problem at hand.
A new world order is being built right
now. I’m not sure the leaders of this country understand that. GJIA: You certainly seem to hold a lot of faith in the U.S. system. How can the government regain the trust of the nation and work cohesively to produce effective policy, both domestic and foreign? Hagel: Well first, leaders lead through a currency of trust and confidence. When that currency has been debased or lost, a nation flounders. Trust is not just an indispensable part of leadership, but also a part of a society. Every institution in this country is present[ 1 28 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
GJIA: Improved political leadership does seem to be necessary to United States’ recovery of governmental trust. In that light, of the current Republican hopefuls, who do you think has the best vision for the United States? Who do you think deserves the Republican Party nomination? Hagel: My quick, succinct, easy answer is “I don’t know.” That is why you have primaries; that is why you have a lengthy process. There is a lot of nonsense that floats in and out. The media is respon-
HAGEL
A Look Back
man has come undone because it overreached. We ran up more than six trillion dollars in debt in the last ten years fighting the two longest wars in the history of our nation. This is the first time in our history that we have fought wars without tax increases. We did this to ourselves. I always thought that our foreign policy was wrong in that we never thought through what the ultimate objective of these endeavors was. The 2007 Iraq War “surge” is a good example of this confusion. There was very little question that if we overloaded the zone with superior American firepower, no one in the world resist, but what was the strategic objective? We confused tactical victory with strategic objectives. You need tactics to get to your strategic objective, but it was not good enough to reply with “Well we’re going to bring democracy to Iraq.” No nation is capable of doing that. We should have learned that from Vietnam at the very least. If the government is going to commit a nation to war, it had better be damn clear where its interests lie. We never really were. We either GJIA: Examining past presidencies lied or misrepresented Iraq. That is for comparison, you were highly criti- why I absolutely believe that declarcal of President Bush’s “ping-pong” ing war is a vital facet of the engageforeign policy. Has the Obama admin- ment process. We have not declared istration’s actions been comparable or war since December 1941. It would do you think the President has utilized sober up those who have the constitutional responsibility–Congress, not the a more consistent strategy? President–to the reality of committing Hagel: Obama has been more con- our nation to conflict. sistent. I think he has reached out in a more diplomatic and restrained man- GJIA: Speaking of Iraq, you have also ner. I think one thing that is painful for been a vocal critic of this protracted a great nation like the United States, conflict since its inception. Do you made especially apparent during the think that President Obama has made Bush years, is the temptation to over- the right decision to end our engagereach. Every empire in the history of ment? sible for a good deal of that with the silly questions they ask. But the system does work; in the end it generally produces probably the best suited and best qualified candidates. As we get closer to the actual Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, candidates will be forced to get out their real plans and ideas regarding how we should deal with the kind of foreign policies that have gotten very little attention thus far. Especially at a time like this when our economy is in trouble, our focus is always going to be domestic first. We really haven’t heard much from the candidates about what are we going to do about the Middle East. And are we going to stay in Afghanistan? What are we going to do about Iraq and Pakistan and Iran and North Korea? There is a long way to go. I have not engaged in any political activities and nor do I intend to over the next year. Now I observe, and I have my opinions and thoughts, but I think it is really up to the voters and we will see what happens.
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Hagel: The Bush Administration signed the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, so President Obama is just following that mandate. There were questions: Do we leave troops? How many? What will their mission be? He [President Obama] had to deal with those. But I think he made exactly the right decisions. The future of Iraq will be determined by the Iraqi people. It will not be determined by our troops or by us. The most we can do for any country is to assist it in taking control of its own destiny, whether it is Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. We cannot impose democracy, we cannot impose Western values, and we cannot impose market economies. These orders work well for us, I strongly believe in them, and I think the world would be better off if we had more, but the decision to pursue such direction is ultimately up to the people of the countries in question. Every history, culture, and nation is different, and we have run into a lot of trouble when we try to dictate. President Bush, who I like very much and get along with personally, said that we were going to bring democracy to Iraq, that it would flower, and that we would soon have democracies all over the Middle East. I thought that very peculiar. Other than Israel, all of our strongest allies in the Middle East are monarchies: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, and the Gulf states. I always wonder what the kings thought of that statement. Regardless, we have learned a very painful, difficult lesson over the last ten years. We paid a high price in blood and treasure and undermined our own interests in the world. [ 1 30] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
GJIA: Regarding the United States’ other war, you have described the U.S. role in Afghanistan as one of nation building—a drastic deviation from its initial intentions there. Given the U.S. history in the region, dating back to the 1970s, how can it safely extract itself upon fulfilling its objectives, while simultaneously assuring that the infrastructure left behind is not left vulnerable to extremist encroachment as it was in the 1980s? Hagel: You cannot guarantee any-
thing unless you want to keep troops there indefinitely. And it cannot just be five or ten thousand; Afghanistan is a big country. We fulfilled the original objective and mission in taking the Taliban out of power and assuring as much as possible that al-Qaeda had no training camps within two years. You have to factor in the reality of the long term. You cannot sustain bases and 100,000 troops, while NATO has 50,000 and none of them ever wanted to be in there. Ultimately, it is all up to the Afghani people. We are doing as much as we can to help them build up their own country, but in the end, we have a very limited capacity. All you need to do is to go there a couple of times, spend a few days flying around, and you start to understand the historical, cultural, and tribal realities. One of the first things we did when we landed in Afghanistan is take the different militias–the Northern Alliance, the Pashtuns–arm them and try to patch an alliance together. Each one of those alliances responded in their own selfinterest, which is predictable. We never really understood that. We gave them
HAGEL
new arms. We gave them money. It was the same thing we did in with the Sunni Awakening. We gave young Sunnis five hundred dollars a month not to kill us. We put 130,000 young Sunni warriors, who were killing us up to that point, on our payroll for two or three years. And our leaders never leveled with the American public. There was no tactical point. The longer you stay, the deeper your investment becomes. Every six
A Look Back
actually the Biden-Kerry-Hagel Bill. The three of us were in Pakistan to monitor the elections in 2008, and that is when we wrote the legislation. When I decided to not seek reelection, I essentially handed it off to [Senator Richard] Lugar as he agreed with what we were trying to do. First, you have got to recognize the reality in Pakistan. I do not think there is any way the United States can just dis-
We put 130,000 young Sunni warriors,
who were killing us up to that point, on our payroll for two or three years. And our leaders never leveled with the American public. months, the generals, just like those in Vietnam, would say, “We’re making good progress, but it’s very fragile. We’re going to need more time, more troops, and more money.” It is now the eleventh year in Afghanistan, and the ninth year in Iraq that we are finally leaving.
continue relations with Pakistan. I do not see how that would be in our interest. The intersection of China, India, and Pakistan is the most dangerous in the world. Three nuclear powers—all unpredictable, especially Pakistan—with cultural hatreds, religious hatreds, and tribal hatreds, render the geopolitical dynamics of the region more combusGJIA: Pakistan clearly has significant tible than any other place on the planet. influence on the complex dynamics you All this has to be factored in. We cannot discuss. In 2009, the Atlantic Council just walk away from such a relationendorsed the Kerry-Lugar Bill, saying ship. We also cannot have troops in that it was vital to stability in Pakistan. Pakistan, for obvious reasons. We work What do you think about that level of in other ways: through assistance profinancial assistance from the United grams, through training programs, and States? Should it be maintained or is through mutual exchange programs. In 1985, the United States cut off all it time for the United States to realmilitary relationships with Pakistan for ize, given recent developments, that Pakistan is “The Ally from Hell?” What thirteen years because they had tested a should be the U.S. government’s future nuclear weapon and not told us. This engagement with the Pakistani regime period hurt us far worse than it did Pakistan because we lost any influence and military? over the situation there. Relationships Hagel: The Kerry-Lugar Bill was with foreign military officers are vital.
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For example, in the Egyptian revolution many of the generals were trained in the United States. Our officers, Mike Mullen and others, could call those top generals and tell them, “General, you don’t want to turn the machine guns on those people in Cairo. You know better than that.” The problem is that this thirteen-year period produced all the current generals in Pakistan. General [Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani is the last one there we can deal with. To say that this situation is not ideal would be a gross understatement. Recently, I did not think it was very wise to publically embarrass the Pakistan foreign ministry in front of
more recent actions in states like Libya and Uganda, what direction should United States’ policy on protecting global civilians from genocide and war crimes take in the coming years?
Hagel: Every country is different. Every situation is unique. As a country, we focus on where we can have the most influence to do what we can to protect human rights. We focus on how we can best affect that change through the present internal institutions, allies, and regional powers. In some cases, military action operation is appropriate. Libya is a good example of this, though there was great debate within NATO
We have to figure out how to use the tools
at our disposal to affect a desirable outcome... We have to be prudent. We cannot fix it all. its own people—it is never the right course of action. We have an incredible amount to lose if things come undone in Pakistan. We get almost all of our provisions into Afghanistan through Pakistan. Our supply route starts in Karachi. Then we pay off all the bandits along the way, but we do not tell the American public that. Ever so often, they will destroy fifteen tankers just to let us know that we are behind on their payments or that they are still in charge. We are completely at their mercy. These complex dynamics make Pakistan the most difficult foreign policy problem we have.
GJIA: In summation, given all you have discussed on present U.S. engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan and our [ 1 32 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
about engagement. Some of the biggest NATO members, including Germany and Poland, were absolutely opposed to direct intervention. The lesson we have learned is that we have limitations to our power. People ask me, “Why doesn’t the President do something about Syria?” What would you have him to do? Do you want him to go to war with Syria? Do you want him to bomb Syria? Do you want him to send troops to Syria? We do not have any troops left anywhere. You have to figure out each situation based on its own dynamics. [Former Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright’s famous toolbox concept certainly applies here. We have to figure out how to use the tools at our disposal to affect a desirable outcome. Not all tools will fit all situations. We have to be
HAGEL
wise and smart. And, most importantly, we have to be prudent. We cannot fix it all. There are massacres going on around the world, especially in Eastern Africa. Why does not the United States do something? How can we stop all of the terrible crises the people of this world face every day? Should we bomb the capital? Should we send in Marines? Where do you go with this? It is a very tough deal. The only answer I can give is we have to try to influence every situation and outcome as best as we can within the realm of the limitations of our capacity. The last ten years have taught us a pretty tough lesson about expanding our reach too far. It exacts a horrible toll upon the young men and women who serve in our armed forces for five, six, or even seven rotating tours back into combat zones. We have never before had such practices in the history of our country. It has resulted in record suicide rates, divorces, spousal abuse, and home foreclosures for
A Look Back
those getting out of the military. That is the reality. The politicians and the military do not want to talk about that, but that is a consequence of getting overcommitted and not factoring in our limitations.
GJIA: That said, the United States need not necessarily shoulder this weighty burden alone. How do you think cooperation with the United Nations should factor into the decision making process you have just described? Hagel: All the good work that the UN does is critically important to the world. Surely it is imperfect like any institution, but we have to work through that. And we do. The United States was the godfather of the United Nations and will continue to support its ideals to the best of its capacity. Chuck Hagel was interviewed by Michael Brannagan, Sikander Kiani, and William Handel on 9 November 2011.
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A Changing Game
Politics and Foreign Affairs with Madeleine Albright
Continuing the discussion started with Senator Hagel, the Journal talks with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about her views on the present progression of U.S. foreign policy and the understanding her career has brought about therein.
GJIA: If you were preparing to assume the Presidency in 2012, what would your priorities be, and how might they differ from those of the current administration? Albright: The truth is that our economic situation is an issue of national interest. Our debt is a huge liability in terms of our national security, and we have to deal with that. My priorities would be, beyond that, in many ways the same as what I wrote about in my Memo to the President book in 2008. To fight terrorism without creating more terrorists, to deal with the issue of nuclear proliferation—very specifically to take a look at what is happening in Iran and North Korea, and more generally to be concerned with and follow on to New START, forming a plan to deal with missile defense and the issues that arise from that. Then I think there has to be a way to deal with the energy and environmental issues in a more productive way, and to
Madeleine K. Albright served as the first female U.S. Secretary of State under President Clinton from 1997 to 2001. Prior to this she was U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997. Dr. Albright is currently a Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and Chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm. She chairs both the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Pew Global Attitudes Project and serves as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation.
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try to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, not only in this country, but abroad. But the economic and financial crisis is something that has to be the big priority because it is damaging to us both at home and abroad.
GJIA: How do you feel that U.S. Middle East strategy should shift in the wake of increasing Iranian hostility? What should U.S. policy be toward a nuclear Iran?
really push back a bit. I would look at Turkey as a nation capable of exercising its political clout in the region in order to calm the situation down.
GJIA: Given recent developments in the US-Afghanistan-Pakistan triangle, where do you see the Pakistan-U.S. relationship heading at this point?
Albright: The truth is I do not know. I think our relationship with Pakistan is one of the most complicated we have. Albright: First of all, I think we need Pakistan has nuclear weapons, terrorto understand the regional distribution ists, poverty, corruption, extremism of power in the Middle East. Things of a variety of different kinds, and a have shifted and, even though it seems weak government. So we seem to go very cynical, previous decades have been back and forth a lot in terms of our defined by a balance of power between policy regarding the country. Given this Iraq and Iran. Iran has benefited the equivocation, the Pakistani government most from our current war in Iraq. has stared thinking that perhaps they Despite various internal issues, it has might be the best ones to try to figure developed a much larger reach within out what to do with the Taliban. It is the Middle East because of the conflict. one of the most complex relationships Turkey will be a vital player as a part- out there, but I do think that we need ner in the region and a partner to the each other very badly. United States. The fact is that everything has shifted GJIA: Based on your experience, in the Middle East. There was clearly both in office and from what you have some kind of relationship between Iran observed in recent trips to the country, and Syria, but we’re uncertain at the what do you believe is the likely future moment about the exact nature of that of our relationship with China? alliance or what the future portends for Syria. Then there is the whole issue of Albright: It is hard to predict. ongoing Israeli-Palestinian talks that President Obama is looking for partalso fit into this. UNESCO voted to ners, for countries we can work with. give membership to the Palestinians. There are discussions about the Chinese In turn, the United States dropped its helping the Europeans out of their debt funding for UNESCO. The interplay crisis. We would like to see China not between these different relationships only as a global power, but as a power makes the situation endlessly complicat- that actually takes responsibility and is ed. It is very much up in the air. Again, not a free rider in the international with respect to Iran at the moment, the system. question becomes which country can On the other hand, there continue [ 1 36 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
ALBRIGHT
to be issues such as the South China Sea. Secretary Clinton has suggested that there is a multilateral solution, rather than the Chinese unilaterally deciding that they have access to the sea and the islands and arguing with Vietnam and the Philippines. I was just in Beijing for the third high-level dialogue between a bipartisan U.S. delegation and the International Department of the Communist Party of China, and as a result of those discussions, I got the sense that there are actually a number of issues where we can see common-
A Look Back
Albright: The biggest one for me is Kosovo. If we want to go through the factors objectively, they were in a position that included the falling apart of Yugoslavia, the area’s volatile ethnic composition, and the genocidal ethnic cleansing that was going on. Then from an American values perspective, was it in our national interest to do something when people were being killed for who they are, not for anything they had done? It was a difficult decision, and I had to argue within the U.S. government.
With the transition in power in China
next year, coupled with the election going on at home at the same time...The future of our relationship is still very uncertain. alities. For example, trying to deal with global problems related to the environment and energy. It is one of those very fluid relationships that depend on who is in power, and we are going to see how that works with the transition in power in China this next year, coupled with the fact that we have an election going on at home at the same time. In every election that I have seen the challenger tries to portray China in the worst possible way, and we are already seeing that China-bashing going on. So it is a peculiar year to look at it all. The future of our relationship is still very uncertain.
As you know the State Department does not have any airplanes, so it really was a matter of working within the Principals Committee to try and make very clear what the stakes were, and why do it. There was this sense among the military brass of “Who does this woman think she is?” The initial decision of going in was difficult, and all throughout it was difficult. In addition to the internal discussion, there was the external discussion of how to get NATO to act after the Russians told me they would veto anything in the UN. And thereafter, how to move that whole process forward? That is how I got to be friends GJIA: What was one difficult decision with all these foreign ministers–and you made as Secretary of State? What still am today–because we talked on the factors made it challenging, how did phone every single day. It was an interesting decision-makyou weigh the decision, and how you ing process both on a U.S. bureaucratic feel about it in retrospect?
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fascinating to use whatever knowledge I have from the past to try to analyze unbelievably complex and changing situations. There is always something to do. Presently, I am becoming more interested in public-private partnerships. I was interested in it when I was on the public side, and now I am on the private side. Looking at the challenges of how government and business work together to try to solve some of their common problems is of great interest to me. If I had my druthers I would put some multinational corporations into international organizations because they have quite a lot of sway and their stake in a lot of international situations is very big. People ask me why I teach. I actually love teaching in many ways. For one, I think there is an imperative to on what you have learned. But in many GJIA: To this day you are active and ways it is more the other way around. influential in the sphere of interna- The energy that comes from people tional politics. To what do you attribute your age, of asking questions and being this enduring passion for international interested, keeps me up to date. In this field you have to keep moving because affairs? things change all the time. You have to Albright: First of all, I have loved go over your ideas and see if they fit, if foreign policy my whole life. I joke the process really works, and if the old about this, but I never really had any answers are still useful. There has to be choice. I was the daughter of a diplomat an informing aspect of history, but you and that is all we ever talked about. I am cannot let it dominate you to the extent one of these people who knew what they that you do not think ahead. And that is wanted to do. I was a political science why I enjoy what I do. major and wherever I went to school I would create international relations clubs and make myself President. It has Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Kenneth been with me forever. I find it endlessly Anderson on 14 November 2011. level and an international level. Dealing with the aftermath is truly the hard part. Issues that crop up that you do not expect always present a challenge. Did it turn out right? I think it did turn out right. But there is a lesson to it. And that is, it was not just the military action that was important. I think that the U.S. and the international community should have paid attention longer to what was happening both in Kosovo and in Bosnia. The lesson is that these things all take a very long time, and that it is not just the military part, but also the post-military part that matters. The bottom line is trying to figure out what happens in a country after the military campaign; how can one help without imposing our system on them, trying to figure out, through the international system, how to help them rebuild—this is all key.
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