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Harvard Political Review

VOLUME XXXVIII NUMBER 2 SUMMER 2011

UNITED STATES 17 Protests, Privacy, and Free Speech peter bozzo

19 Chartering Success

jimmy biblarz and terah lyons

21 The Second Battle of the Bulge

REVOLUTIONS AROUND THE WORLD

24 Politics of the Federal Reserve

6 Been Here Before A history of revolutionary mistakes in Egypt Allan Bradley

Aditi Ghai

thomas gaudett

WORLD

8 Revolution and Democracy Inviting revolutionaries is good for good government Caitria o’neill

26 Sizing Up Singapore

11 Don’t Call It a Revolution Unrest and democratic evolution in Thailand Caroline Cox And Arjun Mody

27 Lacandon Jungle

13 Tweeting the Trigger Social media assisted, not enabled, the Egyptian Revolution Jenny le and john prince

29 Not on Oil Alone

15 Oil and Revolution The persistence of the rentier state eric hendey

BOOKS & ARTS

INTERVIEWS

alec barrett joseph wall

Jonatan Lemus

32 Why Marx Was Right Eli Kozminsky

33 The Monroe Doctrine matthew bewley

34 Kill the Irishman Raúl quintana

38 Bill Richardson The former New Mexico governor on

energy policy and foreign affairs

beatrice walton

39 Emma Sky Former advisor to General Raymond Odi-

erno discusses the Middle East

henry shull

ENDPAPER 40 My HPR Education sam barr

Volume XXXVIII, No. 2, Summer 2011. The HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW, a nonpartisan journal of politics, is published quarterly through the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138. Annual subscription: $25.00. Email: editor@hpronline.org. ISSN 0090-1030. Copyright 2011 Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image Credits: Newscom: Cover-Dylan Martinez, 22-Treible/MCT, Flickr: 1-Ramy Raoof; 2-Fabio Marini; 4-Alvin Trusty; 5, 14-Mariam Soliman; 8-IK Koskinen; 11-Nate Robert; 15-L.C.Nøttaasen; 17-k763; 18-pirateyjoe; 19-Arvind Grover; 21-Tracey Olson; 25-Medill DC; 26-Nicolas Lannuzel; 28-Cesar Bojorquez; 38-Roger H. Goun; 40-ptwo. US Federal Government: 3-Architect of the Capitol; 6-CIA; 20-Pete Souza. iStockPhoto: 3. Wikimedia: 4-John Trumbull, Eugène Delacroix, Russian State Photographic Archive, Redthoreau, Dvorapa; 13-Sherif9282; 24-Dan Smith; 27-Calvin Teo; 30-Valter Campanato. Pragya Kakani: 12, 16, 21, 23, 31. Yale University Press: 32. Hill and Wang: 34. Anchor Bay Films: 36, 37. Institute of Politics: 39.

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Harvard Political Review A Nonpartisan Journal of Politics Established 1969—Vol. XXXVIII, No. 2

EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Max Novendstern PUBLISHER henry shull Managing Editor christopher danello ONLINE EDITOR jeffrey kalmus Covers Editor neil patel United States editor alexander chen World Editor james l. wu Books & Arts Editor paul mathis Interviews Editor simon thompson Business Manager andrew bocskocsky Circulation Manager thomas gaudett DESIGN EDITOR andrew j. seo Graphics Editor pragya kakani Staff Director joshua lipson WEBMASTER eric hendey u.s. blog editor paul schied world blog editor beatrice walton books & Arts Blog editor raúl quintana harvard blog editor caroline cox humor editor jeremy patashnik

senior writers daniel barbero, Alec Barrett, kenzie bok, CARLOS BORTONI, Anthony Dedousis, Victoria Hargis, sarah j. johnson

STAFF Peter Bacon, jimmy biblarz, matthew bewley, Elizabeth Bloom, Peter Bozzo, ioana calcev, Gabby Bryant, Rachel Burns, Richard Coffin, Catherine Cook, Ivana Djak, Ray Duer, Sarah Esty, Farha Faisal, aditi ghai, Candice Kountz, eli kozminsky, Taylor Lane, Elise Liu, Peyton Miller, Laura Mirviss, arjun mody, Caitria O’Neill, Brad Paraszczak, Samir Patel, Mason Pesek, John prince, Ashley Robinson, Ashin Shah, Allison Swidriski, Nicholas Tatsis, Gabriel Unger, Pooja Venkatraman, Daniel Wallach, Tiffany Wen, Alethia Williams

ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Alter Richard L. Berke Carl Cannon E.J. Dionne, Jr. Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee SChwartz

From the Editor The best thing ever written about Facebook was probably a single line in Lawrence Lessig’s review of The Social Network: “What’s important here,” Lessig says, in his characteristically vehement way, “is that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-abillion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone.”

To understand what Professor Lessig means—and to understand, by extension, what “revolution” might entail here in America—we have to forget, for a moment, our gripes with Facebook as it currently exists. In fact, forget everything you’ve ever read about the problems of the Web – about “the shallows,” “the daily me,” the “death of journalism,” and “digital Maoism.” And forget, while you’re at it, your own sneaking suspicion that your life, having become much more connected, is not so much more fulfilled.

These concerns, though perhaps valid, miss the point. If Facebook is “revolutionary,” it’s not because of its technology. Pessimists forget that technology has always been accused of fragmenting our minds and pulverizing our communities. It was Karl Marx in the 19th century, after all – not Steve Jobs in the 21st – who said of modernity, “all that is solid melts into air.” Optimists will point out that Facebook helped activists make hell all across the Middle East. But let’s not forget that governments would continue to be overthrown, and we’d still be sharing information with our friends, even if we un-invented the Internet tomorrow.

What excites me about Facebook, then—what makes it “revolutionary”—

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is the story of its creation: the fact that this monumental public project was envisaged, executed on, and scaled to epic proportions “without asking permission of anyone.”

Facebook is used by more people every day than there are citizens in America, and yet unlike other basic infrastructural tools—unlike the postal service or the highway system—Facebook was not created by committee. No powerful person granted Zuckerberg imprimatur to begin; no agency mandated that we, his users, sign up; and no one (not even the Winklevosses’ lawyers) could stop him once he started. The manic energy and ruthless ambitiousness of the marketplace, of Harvard’s campus, of a free and uncontrolled Internet, were brought to bear on the creation of a vital public institution, by a dorky kid the same age as the writers of this magazine. This could be the slogan for a renascent activist class in America: “launched without asking permission of anyone.”

Most Americans will never understand what it’s like to be part of a revolution. The pathos of Tahrir Square are as foreign to us as are the pleas of Tom Paine, or the poetry of Gettysburg. Yet the Facebook story suggests that the capacity to create social revolution has never been more widely distributed, or more deeply enmeshed in our lives, than it is today. The conditions are ripe for a new revolutionary age in America. Yet the choice to become revolutionaries remains ours alone to make.

Max Novendstern Editor-in-Chief

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THE FUNNY PAGES A Timeline of Significant Events in the History of Revolutions c.2380 B.C.: The first revolution in recorded history occurred in the Sumerian city of Lagash when the people forced King Lugalanda off the throne. The new leader of Lagash, Urukagina, established himself as a popular reformer who sought to eliminate corruption in his government, but he was forced out of office disgraced when it became public that he had engaged in inappropriate relations with a high-end member of the oldest profession.

1776: The Declaration of Independence—perhaps the most famous document in revolutionary history—was signed. It expressed the American colonists’ inalienable right to life, liberty, and to serve hard alcohol at formal events.

1830: France’s July Revolution saw King Charles X deposed in favor of King Louis-Philippe. The rebels were led to victory in battle by a topless woman. To date, this is the most fun revolution ever.

1917: The Russian Revolution saw the end of the Czarist era in Russia, as the Bolsheviks came to power.

This event marked the beginning in Russia’s transformation from the backwards, conflict-ridden nation it was in the early 20th century to the forward-thinking, tranquil nirvana that it is today.

2011: Mark Zuckerberg intentionally started revolutions all over the Middle East in order to get the attention of a Boston University student whom he briefly dated in 2003.

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1861: Due to irreconcilable artistic differences, American Revolutionary War reenactors started the Civil War. The conflict was the bloodiest war in American history and saw the secession of 11 southern states from the Union. Finally, in 1865, the North and South were reunited when they decided to collaborate, once again, on a new project: Civil War reenactments.

1956: The Cuban Revolution began.

Ending with the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, the revolution has changed the western hemisphere forever.

Millions of American teenagers have since worn t-shirts with revolutionary Che Guevara’s image.

Approximately 1000 of them actually knew it was Che Guevara on their shirt. Of these, only 50 knew who Che Guevara was.

COVERS what is revolution? neil patel

In The Social Revolution, Karl Katusky warned that “there are few conceptions over which there has been so much contention as that of revolution.” This argument does not only exist within the body of scholars attempting to describe and define the phenomenon of revolution, but it is also shared with the revolutionaries themselves, as they devote time and energy to define the purpose of their struggle. While academics and pundits have disputed the intricacies of what is considered a revolution, at the broadest level, a revolution leads to some type of significant change in a community. The difficulty in defining a revolution illustrates how diverse the experience of revolution can be, from its birth to its aftermath, and even its nonexistence.

The recent upheaval in the Middle East was largely unexpected. It is widely acknowledged that social media contributed to the birth of popular dissent in the region, but it is clear, that like Eastern Europe in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, a distinctive regional brand of authoritarianism contributed to the domino of protests during the Arab Spring. In a region of rentier states with rich supplies of oil to subsidize authoritarian regimes, revolutionaries were met with mixed results.

The mixed results of popular movements in the Middle East beg

the question of why popular dissent fails to manifest into political change. Alexander Lukashenko continued his 16-year reign as president of Belarus by winning 79.65 percent of the popular vote in an internationally criticized election last December.

Despite the fraud in a country that Condoleezza Rice labeled “the last true remaining dictatorship in the heart of Europe,” most Belarusian’s seem satisfied with the standard of living. In Thailand, which has experienced mass protests since the 2006 coup, a disintegrated political field with multiple movements vying for power has eroded the legitimacy of the political framework to create long standing change.

Given the various upheavals around the world, Americans have justifiably wondered as to the proper response. Engrained in our own revolutionary history, Americans have had a long standing romanticism towards the concept of revolution. Through the symbolism of Che Guevara t-shirts or the following of Twitter feeds of protesters in Tahrir Square, Americans are generally supportive of the perception of

individuals fighting for their own rights. But as we consider the future of states like Egypt and Tunisia, it is important to realize that our international policies play an important role in framing the constitutional moment in post-revolutionary societies. Newly formed democratic government in the Middle East, may force the United States to make difficult decisions if we are really committed to the free expression of political will.

Neil Patel ‘13 is the Covers Editor.

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been here before

A history of revolutionary mistakes in Egypt allan Bradley As citizens and policymakers alike wait to see where the 2011 Egyptian revolution will head, the anxiety may come with understandable sense of déjà-vu. Some 59 years ago, in fact, British colonialists faced similar turmoil, following a 1952 coup in which the Free Officers, a group of junior military officers led by Gamal Nasser, deposed the corrupt and ineffective King Farouk. As today, previous Western support for an unpopular autocrat complicated relationships with the new revolutionaries. Professor Kirk Beattie of Simmons College told the HPR, “Just as the British were looking over the shoulder of the king in ‘52 and constraining the foreign policy behavior of the king, so in more recent times have the successive Egyptian administrations, first Sadat in particular and then Mubarak, also had the Americans looking over their shoulder and constraining their policy behavior.” The parallels are worrying, but they are not complete. Significant differences between the anti-colonial movement and the modern revolution make 2011 an extraordinary moment of opportunity for American foreign relations and for the revolution.

Rise of the Arab Street Although both 1952 and 2011 saw revolutions in Egypt, the modes, goals, and outcomes of both vary greatly. “It should be ironic that people are carrying posters of Nasser in the crowd,” Joel Gordon, professor of Middle East history at the University of Arkansas told the HPR, “because he put in place the system that Egyptians have been struggling to get out from under.” Indeed, if 2011

echoes 1952, it also repudiates the regime the Free Officers left behind, a military regime that turned into a dictatorship, stable only through suppression and boldfaced electoral

advocacy rather than top-down motivation. Jeff Goodwin, a professor at New York University, credited the Free Officers as leaders of an “extraordinary coup” that

manipulation.

From the beginning, then, the 2011 revolutionaries distinguished themselves from the Free Officers by their emphasis on grassroots

honestly attempted to address real social problems. Still, regime change began in the ranks of the military.

Not so in 2011, which saw millions of Egyptians in the street. It is safe to say

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that the Egyptian government today retains legitimacy and popularity of the sort which predecessors never enjoyed.

Nasser’s Tightrope Further, many of the ultimate defects of the 1952 revolution were born from historical circumstances now dissipated. When Gamal Nasser gained the presidency, he inherited a complex relationship with the Western states. Egypt’s defeat

by Israel in 1948 proved a final discrediting of Farouk’s regime and inculcated in Nasser the eagerness to build a stronger Egyptian military.

Once in office, one of the president’s first moves was to seek an arms

deal with the United States. Yet Washington’s refusal to sell arms to the Egyptians, followed by tit-for-tat diplomacy, soon pushed Nasser to purchase arms from Soviet suppliers instead.

As his term continued, Nasser attempted to steer a middle path in the Cold War, independent of the two superpowers. Claims Gordon, “this was the great era of nonalignment, but it was not possible in any practical sense at that point in the Cold War.” Stephen Calleya, a professor at the University of Malta, expressed agreement, noting, “In the Cold War context, there was a completely alternative and much more antagonistic international system.

You had the two superpowers, you had the patronclient system, and of course the Arab world found itself in the thick of things very quickly.”

Nonetheless, Nasser’s nonalignment does not mean that the 2011 revolution should turn out similarly. “Today, it’s a completely different international system,” argued Calleya, “an international system that offers—or should offer— opportunities of engagement where mutual interests and commonalities can play out and where the Arab street can be direct players.” Where before Egyptian foreign policy could only shuttle from the West to the Soviets, today’s Cairo can hope for full integration into the world community.

It’s Not Always About Us While the Nasser legacy of nationalism remains, 1952’s slogans of national sovereignty increasingly focus on checks against government rather than opposing foreign powers. “What we’re seeing now is an assertion of democracy,” Goodwin told the HPR, “recognition that there can be no national politics without democracy and that for the nation to speak, you need democratic institutions.

You can’t have

unelected, unaccountable military leaders claiming to represent the will of the nation.”

Indeed, the conversation about internal sovereignty, at least, leaves the language of anti-colonialism behind. Nada El-Khouny, a college student in Cairo and a participant in eighteen days of protests in Tahrir Square, deflected the HPR’s questions on how protesters felt about the United States’ role in 2011. “Honestly, in comparison to other situations there was hardly a reference to America or what America’s role in this is,” she explained. “It was very much a focus, for the first time in a long time, on internal affairs.” Rather than being defined by foreign influence, Tahrir Square declared an end, on its own terms, to the military regime left behind by the Free Officers.

Game Over, Start Again?

If the Egyptian revolution can consolidate sovereign rule by the people, the new government’s foreign relations will commence in a changed world. To Calleya, 2011 represents not just the end of the anticolonial era but an extraordinary opportunity for Western powers. “If the Arab street have turned the page by standing up against the system that was stifling their aspiration,” says Calleya, “now we should also be honest and respectable enough to say, ‘We also made mistakes and now we want to correct that strategic error.’” Democratic rhetoric on the streets of Cairo shows a readiness for friendly integration into the international system, and Western nations have a great deal to gain by trusting revolutionary aspiration.

Such optimism must be tempered by the recognition that no true democracy to emerge from Tahrir Square will be as hospitable to the interests of the United States as the Mubarak regime, as several old sticking points will be impossible to avoid. “At minimum,” Gordon told

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the HPR, the U.S. has to “stand back and let Egyptians determine their own political structure.” That could include watching the Muslim Brotherhood organize as a political party and begin entering candidates in elections.

Furthermore, most Egyptians wish to challenge the recent status quo in Israel, an area in which Mubarak proved relatively quiescent.

Egyptian democracy won’t be easy. Its first manifestations spooked the Free Officers into

establishing a military regime instead. Yet nearly sixty years on, now that the political order of 1952 has been destroyed, the West has no choice but to embrace the Arab street. If fellow nations fail to respect Egypt’s sovereign interests, the world community may lose Egypt as surely as Nasser turned to the Soviets in 1967.

Allan Bradley ‘11 is a Contributing Writer.

Revolution and democracy

Inviting revolutionaries is good for good government

caitria o’Neill The revolution was the easy part. In the wake of the various governmental transitions in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and other nations across the Middle East, the idea of democracy in the region is once more in full swing. With the death of the traditional autocracies, reformers dream of a new wave of representative, constitutional government.

None-theless, for all the hopeful images in Tahir Square, improved government in the Arab world is neither inevitable nor preordained. There remains significant work yet to be done.

So far, the nations of the world seem eager to promote democracy in these revolutionary states’ constitutional moments.

Western nations have sent experts, watchdogs, and briefing papers to provide advice on the correct way to structure a democratic constitution.

Within this plethora of planning, a small but incredibly important tool that could aid democratization has been overlooked, however: the visa.

By easing travel requirements and affording North African citizens the ability to visit and study in healthy democratic states, Western powers could greatly improve chances of a democratic transition during the constitutional moment.

Breaking and Building The headless, popular movements in the Middle East have exhibited an unprecedented enthusiasm for the idea of democracy. Indeed, in his speech on the Egyptian revolution, President Obama quoted Martin Luther King that “there is something in the soul that cries out for freedom,” and with good reason. For all the President’s optimism however, Middle East states’ aspirations towards more representative governments remain hindered by the region’s lack of democratic traditions. Of the 22 members of the Arab League, for example, only Iraq, and to a lesser extent Lebanon, enjoy relatively democratic systems of governance.

As such, while protests may provide dramatic images, the real work of building institutions will prove far more difficult and complex.

As Stephen Calleya, professor and director of the Mediterranean Academy for Diplomatic Studies at the University of Malta told the HPR, “We must seize the historic moment we see folding out on our screens.

No one should take for granted these events. These actors are championing democratic principles and the rule of law. Now is the time to stand up and help by launching effective policy mechanisms.”

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Calleya calls for a systematic strategy of assisting nations developing their democracy, though he recognizes that the responsibility ultimately lies with the new revolutionaries.

A New Hope?

Histories of democratic transitions offer less encouraging signs. Indeed, many experts draw parallels between the political heritage of the newly liberated North African states and postCold War nations. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, those Soviet satellites with previous democratic experience, particularly in Eastern Europe, swiftly formed representative organizations, while previously authoritarian states,

especially in Central Asia, did not. Anthony Jones, professor of government at Northeastern University, argues, “Eastern Europe had a whole generation of people who grew up in democracies. While they were able to return to what they had, the rest of the Soviet Union had difficulties, having no previous experience with democracy. Each state went back to what they had: authoritarianism.” Unfortunately, there appear better analogies between North Africa and Central Asia than with Eastern Europe.

Like Central Asian states, Northern African states lack both experience with democratic participation and access to functioning models of such governments. The Middle East has the lowest levels of democracy in the world, trailing behind even sub-Saharan Africa. Calleya noted at a recent talk at Harvard University, “The impossible visa program makes it difficult for North African people to travel to democratic states to experience and learn about democratic governance.” Coming off the heady success of the early revolution, states like Tunisia and Egypt want democracy. But as expectation encounters the reality of the process, patience wears thin. “The people have incredible expectations,” Callayaesaid.

“They want to start seeing tangible results.” Should the initial impressions of pluralistic government fall short of the expectations, Calleya fears, the region may quickly return to its dictated heritage.

Friending the Middle East If democracy fails, the most likely culprit may be preexisting divisions among Arab societies. Worryingly, signs of discord have begun to appear among people recently united in revolution. In Egypt, Mubarak’s fall may have enabled long-repressed tensions between Arab Muslims and Christian Copts to fissure Egyptian society. A recent women’s protest met with verbal and sexual assault represents a monumental break with the respect shown to protestors in Tahrir Square. In an interview with the HPR, Susan D. Hyde, professor at Yale University, noted that functioning democracy help arbitrate internal conflict: “Democracy can be a way to mediate those disagreements without resorting to civil war or repressive dictatorship.” The implications

of failure are enormous. The window of opportunity presented by the constitutional moment can easily be lost, and no amount of democracy exportation or advice can replace public will for democratization that can be fostered by firsthand experience with democracy. “The problem with North African states is a lack of previous democratic and capitalist experience,” Jones told the HPR. “The states could revert to tribalism, fragment, or sink into civil war.”

Yet Jones remains confident that 2011 Egypt is distinct from 1990 Uzbekistan, thanks to new forms of media. “We live in the 21st century. They may not have truly democratic experience, but they have seen it. While they do not have a social democratic institutional base to return to, they may have enough exposure to inform that transition.” Democracy does not have a user manual, and no amount of counsel or material aid can be substituted for an understanding of how democratic institutions function. Regardless, the weak democratic tradition and lack of access to functioning democracies are some of the most easily remedied hurdles facing revolutionary states in the Middle East. Former Lebanese presidential candidate and visiting Harvard law professor Chibli Mallat told the HPR, “There should be more active engagement with the new voices of the Middle East. Part of this would not only be a more relaxed visa policy, but a structured and intensive dialogue with citizens of these countries by and large.”

The Welcome Sign If fears of terrorism and illegal immigration are the primary motives behind strict visa requirements, perhaps Western countries should reconsider their strategy. A string of failed states across the Middle East have the potential to produce far more unrest and extremism than a democracy. In a speech at Harvard, Professor Mallat called upon academics, businesses and governments to “join the Middle Eastern nonviolent revolution.” Revolution has created a window for democratic transition. Rather than tweeting democracy, perhaps the West should consider inviting others in.

Caitria O’Neill ‘11 is a Staff Writer.

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DON’T CALL IT A REVOLUTION

Political unrest and democratic evolution in Thailand CAROLINE COX AND ARJUN MODY Democracy is a messy business. As the ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East illustrate, the pendulum of social upheaval often swings wildly and in unpredictable directions. Since 2006, Thailand has found itself in the throes of political uncertainty, punctuated by outbreaks of anti-government protests and violent repression. The pattern may seem deserving of a “revolutionary” label, but Thailand’s political situation is less revolt than reforming. To wit, the nation does not simply face a popular uprising against a one-party oligarchy but rather an existential political dilemma: an interminable struggle between its political parties: the royalist People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the populist United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), and the incumbent Democrat Party led by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. The fragmented nature of the opposition parties, which includes ideologies that span all shades of Thailand’s “colored” political spectrum, precludes a popular uprising along the lines of those in the Arab world. Yet the unrest’s persistence paradoxically has the potential to engender

a more deliberate institutional change by improving the legitimacy of the existing political framework.

Six Years of Conflict The root of Thailand’s political conflicts trace to a 2006 military coup ousting Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from Government House. Thaksin had been elected as a man of the people yet gradually gained the label of a corrupt and authoritarian ruler. His tenure saw him indicted for tax fraud on a $1.9 billion transaction with his telecommunications conglomerate, multiple nepotistic appointments, and alleged extrajudicial killings. His status as a billionaire did little to help his image. Thaksin’s rule stimulated substantial opposition from the PAD, whose members bear the title of “Yellow Shirts,” after Thailand’s royal color. Nonetheless, he found equal support in the UDD, whose “Red Shirts” provided the name for the 2010 political protests calling for his return.

After Thaksin’s outster, Thailand entered a two-year period of rapid governmental change. Four men shuffled

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through the premiership between 2006 and 2008, three of whom were removed through court rulings.

The nation finally experienced a semblance of political stability with the election of Abhisit Vejjajiva in 2008. As a self-styled populist, he outlined a left-wing agenda with the slogan “Putting People First,” in ideological opposition to the more free market economics of Thaksin.

Catharin Dalpino, an expert on Southeast Asia at the MacArthur Foundation, told the HPR that Thailand once again faced a “colorcoded political conflict.” After the election of Vejjajiva, protesters wearing UDD red took to the streets.

These protests, often drawing more than 10,000 Red Shirts, resulted in violent clashes with the military and police. While the UDD’s main demand for the dissolution and re-election of Parliament is not unprecedented, the group’s support for Thaksin, largely perceived as a corrupt politician, adds another dimension to the protests.

Shades of Orange The lack of distinct villains and heroes may make Thailand

somewhat distinct from other revolutionary locales.

The complaints lie not against autocratic despots but rather among democratically elected officials and between political factions. As such, the protest movements criticize specific policies of the government rather than the general styles of governance. Further, the ultimate goals of the political colors remain unclear. The divide between the Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts may be less than the polarization often portrayed. According the Asia Foundation’s “2010 National Survey of the Thai Electorate,” two-thirds of the Thai people do not identify themselves with a particular faction, and most have difficultly clearly defining the goals of the two groups.

Last year’s violent protests may have perpetuated the myth of a highly polarized and potentially volatile Thai electorate, but the reality is that most Thais are largely content with the current government and believe that Thailand’s democracy is functioning.

Nevertheless, the political clashes suggest that Thailand’s government ought to approach, or at least

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consider, some sort of change. Ernest Bower, head of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, urges the label “evolution” rather than “revolution” to describe the current situation in Thailand.

For Bower, the current “politicalroyalist-business superstructure” that governs Thailand proves an unsustainable model and faces an imminent overhaul.

Indeed, political heavyweights such as King Bhumibol are also the nation’s chief businessmen.

The question remains whether the current prime minister remains up to the task. While Abhisit is an agreeable leader in some respects, corruption and cronyism still permeate the ranks of his cabinet. It will take at least another election to bringing greater stability and reform to the country.

Prospects for the Future Indeed, virtually all experts, suggest that the best solution for peace in Thailand is greater attention to legitimate elections. As Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor at Chulalongkom University in Bangkok, noted to the HPR, “Thailand has had 18 different constitutions in the last 78 years…I think it’s important that the Thai people learn to work within the system.” Pongsudhirak accepts the inevitability of some corruption in Thai politics, but would prefer an elected official with some semblance of stability in office, rather than another military coup to replace a

corrupt politician with an unelected one. By proving to the people that the elections are not rigged, Pongsudhirak asserts, Thailand can add greater confidence to a system rocked by uncertainty.

Pongsudhirakmay soon get his wish. It is widely expected that Prime Minister Abhisit will dissolve parliament and hold elections in July. Of course, concern lingers as to how the elections will play out in the wake of last year’s protests.

Kim McQuay, the Asia Foundation’s representative to Thailand, worries,

“There is a fairly strong sense among the Thai people that all of this is not behind them. They feel that there is every possibility that they could see another incident or incidence of that kind.”

Possible electoral oversight could cure some doubts about electoral legitimacy, and the increasingly moderate Thai electorate may help dissuade the extremists in the Yellow and Red Shirt movements from protesting. Nonetheless, the political evolution in Thailand is happening, but it requires a greater emphasis

on honest politics. While Bower doesn’t “see Thailand headed for civil war [or revolution],” he warns that “unless the government shifts towards empowerment and better institutions and allowing expression, [Thailand is] going to continue to have these grinding protests and this won’t go away until political space is created.”

Caroline Cox ‘14 is the Campus Blog Editor. Arjun Mody ‘14 is a Staff Writer.

tweeting the trigger

Social media assisted, not enabled, the Egyptian Revolution Jenny Le and John Prince As an oft-static region of the world erupted in protests this past winter and spring, onlookers might have had fair reason to ask what had changed.

Hosni Mubarak had ruled Egypt since 1981, his party undefeated since its founding. Yet in a matter of weeks, the “Pharaoh-for-Life” relinquished office, a man without supporters. Even more curious, the revolution was a non-violent, pacific effort, in stark contrast to the nation’s bloody changes of government in the past.

In the aftermath of the revolution, Western observers swiftly hailed social media as one of the revolution’s greatest champions. Over the course of the protests, websites like Facebook and Twitter provided a platform for individuals to voice their opinions, as well as a means of mobilizing large groups of people. Indeed, as media restrictions out of Egypt grew tighter, foreign news outlets took increasing amounts of their coverage from the sites. Yet, while social media proved a useful tool for Egyptian revolutionaries and their supporters, the

movements’ label of a “Facebook Revolution” seems somewhat misguided. Facebook did not spark discontent with the Egyptian government, and other organizing tools proved influential. Nevertheless, social media certainly did influence the contours of the protests and likely accelerated Mubarak’s ousting. Whether the revolution could have succeeded without Twitter, it certainly could not have done so in the same way without social media’s help.

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Pulling the Trigger To most observers, the massive protests and subsequent toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic regime proved an unexpected shock.

Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, told the HPR that “it was entirely unprecedented. It was really a blank slate when it comes to this sort of protest. We’ve never seen anything like it before.” Indeed, rational observers would prove hard placed

for information by solving the coordination problem,” namely the difficulty of getting people to show up, when such arrivals depend on the knowledge that other protesters will also attend. Moreover, social media’s assistance may have proven as much ideological as organizational. Jason Brownlee, a professor of government at the University of Texas–Austin, states, “well-off Facebook activists provided the gilded linchpin for an array of previously outspoken

to explain the citizens’ willingness to demonstrate. In the previous history of the government, protesters could expect a violent crackdown at best, imprisonment and torture at worst. Yet the waves of people swelled each day, ultimately filling the revolutionary center of Tahrir Square.

To explain rapid mobilization and motivation, experts have fixed on social media as an obvious trigger.

Dustin Tingley, assistant professor of international relations at Harvard University, alleges that “social media gave people higher confidence in the fact that other people would show up” to the protests, large numbers being desirable from an effectiveness and safety standpoint. Tingley claims that social media “serves as a conduit

but disparate social and political groupings: labor, intelligentsia, opposition politicians, discontent citizens in the Sinai and the south, that for years had decried the conditions of Mubarak’s Egypt but not yet coalesced into a national movement.” As Brownlee points out, Facebookers may not have been representative of Egypt as a whole, but they proved passionate, dedicated, and possessed of a significant microphone.

The Trigger, Not Bullet Whatever effect social networking had in Egypt, other nations have struggled to find the same success. In China, a group of activists advocating a so-called “Jasmine Blossom Revolution”

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attempted to follow Tunisia and Egypt and motivate popular protests against the government. Although the word “jasmine” managed to bypass China’s extensive internet filters, the movement failed to inspire more than fragmented protests. Tingley explains that “a revolution is unlikely to be successful in China. [The problems] are largely attributed to growing pains due to the quick economic growth.” Yet China’s failure also calls into question social media’s ultimate use to Egyptian revolutionaries.

Only 4.7 million Egyptians out of 83 million use Facebook, and even fewer tweet. While visible signs of literate and elite opinion, the Egyptian revolutionaries’ social media postings may have mattered less than broad-spread discontent with the Mubarak regime.

Indeed, most academics assert that future revolutions depend as much on individual populations as online tools. Sparsha Saha, a third-year government Ph.D. student at Harvard, explains that “the probability of success [for a revolution] is lower in countries with a strong government that quells dissent…. [when] people are aware of the government’s resolve and perceive that, any other movement will fail.” The 2009 protests in Iran, under the Green Movement, made extensive use of social media, famously causing the U.S. government to plea with Twitter to delay maintenance, but the government managed to crush the Greens by detaining several key leaders in the movement. Even though many Iranians might choose to take to the streets of Tehran again, fear of government and lack of confidence in social media tools will likely inhibit protests, at least for the short-term. Should individuals choose to mobilize en masse, however, with or without Facebook, then such actions would enhance the cause of democracy in Iran.

A Connected, Global Future Despite the limitations of social media that activists must deal with, the tools still enjoy the ability to change the political context in which individuals live.

Hamid pointed out that “the use of Twitter allowed people outside of Egypt to follow along. It was a way to channel information and to get more people to care.” In fact, most of the tweets on the revolution came not from Egypt but from the rest of the world.

Social media undoubtedly provided a powerful source of sympathy for the rest of the world, as well as a conduit for much of the protesters’ message.

The outpouring of support for the Egyptian protesters helped decrease the autocracy’s legitimacy and forced Mubarak to back down or risk a takedown from outside powers.

The use of websites like Twitter and Facebook were important catalysts in the cycle of events that led to the end of the Mubarak regime.

The essential factor, however, was the resolve of the people, with the support of the world favoring their triumph. While social media may not always be able to guarantee a successful revolution, the tool can still play an important role in framing the political context through which revolutions erupt. Saha believes that “social media will be a space for political beliefs. More so than in America, Facebook is used as a space for political activism and organization. In Iran and many countries that do not have freedom of speech, there is no space for political views to be expressed. Social media fills that void.”

Jenny Le ‘14 and John Prince ‘13 are both Staff Writers.

oil and revolution

The persistence of the rentier state eric hendey The idea that demand for oil may affect American foreign policy is neither a new nor particularly novel thesis.

Many commentators, from Pat Buchanan to Thomas Friedman have argued that the United States counteracts its own interests through its purchases from authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Less examined, but equally potent, however, may be oil’s effects on its sellers. Since Hazem Beblawi published his book The Rentier State in 1987, academics and scholars have examined the Arab world’s oil-rich autocracies through Beblawi’s lens.

Commentators debate which states best fit the model of using the profits generated by indigenous resources to fund a system of benefits and subsidies, as well as a strong security apparatus. Nonetheless, few have challenged Beblawi’s corollary, laid out by UCLA professor Michael Ross, that these rentier states rarely democratize. Few have challenged this view, that is to say until the events of this spring.

Throughout the revolts of the Arab Spring, even states with access to considerable earnings have not proven immune. In particular, the upheaval in Libya challenges the assumption that oil wealth poses an insurmountable obstacle to democratization. Libya possesses the largest oil reserves in all of Africa, exporting 1.8 million barrels every day, yet its revolution has proven as newsworthy as those in more oil-less Egypt or Tunisia. As such, recent events may call into question traditional theories of the “resource curse.” Nonetheless, if rentier states have weakened, neither have they totally lost their advantages entirely. In this sense, the recent events in the Middle East demonstrate that, while globalization has increased ease of disrupting commodity-based economies, effective use of revenues can still potentially maintain a government.

Rent in a Globalized World At first glance, the global economic changes over the past thirty years would seem to have eroded the Arab dictators’ primary base of support, namely their oil. Cyrus Bina, the author of Oil: A Time Machine and a professor at the University of Minnesota-Morris, told the HPR that “oil was one of the pioneers of globalization.” After the 1970s and 80s, states increasingly bought and sold on an interconnected, global marketplace. With cartels like OPEC and authoritarian regimes apparently losing the ability to control the global price

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price has dropped. In Libya, for example, investors received only five percent of all profit on oil, while Gaddafi’s government retained the remaining 95 percent. While it may cost more to buy off the population than it would in an unconnected world, increased royalties still present states with greater opportunities to preserve their rule.

of oil single handedly, state budgets have grown considerably more variable, and checks that much less consistent.

The social and cultural impacts of globalization enjoy an equally strong role in undermining the influence of rent. Information technology empowers the residents of rentier states to compare their life to the outside world and judge the costs of repression at home. “Most of the influences that these countries avoided could not be ignored,” said Bina. “Now, the King of Saudi Arabia cannot even buy [off ] the opposition because of the exposition of the population to the transformation of the world.” Indeed, twenty years ago, a resident of Saudi Arabia would only know his share of the nation’s revenue; now, he also knows how much the government takes.

Nonetheless, while globalization might appear to be a force against the resource-extraction model, trends towards greater state ownership of resources could counteract this growing cynicism. Giacomo Luciani, a professor at Princeton University, points out that that productionsharing agreements between Arab nations and international oil companies have grown increasingly skewed in favor of the state, even as a nation’s influence over the selling

Resource Curse?

Nonetheless, the protests have opened the question on the extent to which resources cause political repression in the first place. James Robinson, a professor of government at Harvard and the author of Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, argues that “oil is not really responsible for the situation in the Middle East.” Robinson explains that many Arab dictatorships, such as Syria, do not have access to large oil reserves, and those that do rely on more tools than just their wealth.

“What would Saudi Arabia look like if you took the oil away?” Robinson asked. “It would be a lot poorer, but it wouldn’t really be any different.”

The true origins of Middle Eastern authoritarianism, he argues, predate the discovery of oil. “What’s going on in Libya has nothing to do with oil,” he said. “It has everything to do with the way Libyan society is organized and the way this colonial state was constructed as different groups were thrown together.”

As such, while oil remains important, other factors may prove even more significant. “Obviously, there are other factors as well in specific national situations,” said Luciani. He argues that “in Libya, you have the overwhelming factor of an incompetent government.” At the time of the rebellion, the country was home to a massive underground economy and high unemployment.

In effect, Libya’s inefficient system of cronyism and bureaucracy wasted much of the rent that had been extracted, leaving the country no

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better off than if the oil had never been found.

Oil Forever After Nonetheless, opponents of the rentier hypothesis should not be too swift to totally dismiss oil’s power. Unlike Libya, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has been extremely efficient with the resources of his land. As the Arab Spring protests developed, the King ordered 2,000 Saudi troops across the border into Bahrain, preserving the embattled allied monarchy. Simultaneously, the King promised his own disgruntled populace a huge jobs and housing package, spending billions of dollars to buy their loyalty. In both cases, an overflowing treasury bought economic stimulus, as well as a world-class military.

Indeed, while enjoying their fair share of protests, most oil-rich nations have ultimately quelled much dissent. Iran repressed its protesters, Algeria’s government boosted wages, and Kuwait simply sent money. “So far, there hasn’t been anything that has run counter to the patterns that I’ve seen up to this point,” said Ross.

The thesis of oil causing repression may be mistaken, but it is clear that oil rent continues to confer at least some security to authoritarian regimes. Yet the fault is not entirely the regime’s own.

As the world’s largest consumer of oil, the United States has a unique opportunity to affect the ways in which Middle Eastern states spend oil revenues. While historical and cultural factors may be static, the global oil market is something that present day policymakers can actually impact. How they do so may well determine whether the climate of hope in the Middle East can be sustained.

Eric Hendey ‘14 is the Webmaster.

UNITED STATES Protests, Privacy, and the First Amendment The Supreme Court endorses speech. Sort of.

peter bozzo On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in one of the most controversial cases of its term, Snyder v. Phelps. By an 8-1 majority, the Court ruled that under the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause, protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church could not be charged with intentionally inflicting emotional distress by their protest of a Marine’s funeral. Though a jury had awarded the family of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder millions of dollars, the high court upheld the circuit court’s dismissal of the verdict.

While politically controversial, the Phelps case represents the latest in a series of speech-favoring decisions from One First Street. Throughout the past two decades, the Justices’ support for First Amendment claims expanded substantially, and the trend has only accelerated under Chief Justice John Roberts.

Nonetheless, speech’s victory may prove less than absolute. In particular, the narrow reasoning employed by the Chief Justice in the Snyder case illustrates the court’s unwillingness to create broad precedent from its speech cases and calls into question the Justices’ views on the limitations of the First Amendment.

A Free Protection While enshrined in the First Amendment since 1791, the right to freedom of speech has expanded in practice over the past several decades. Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet told the HPR, “The Court is more receptive to claims that freedom of expression has been violated than it might have been a decade ago.” Indeed, over the past ten years, the Court has struck down laws against subjects as diverse as indecent Internet material and campaign finance regulation, all under the rubric of the First Amendment. Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, suggests that the Court’s increasingly firm endorsements of free speech emerge from two factors. First, Shapiro asserts, the Court’s swing Justice, Anthony Kennedy, is also the “most pro-free speech justice,” tilting close cases to the side of the First Amendment. Even so, the Court’s most recent decisions have hardly required Anthony’s vote. In addition to the 8-1 Snyder ruling, the Justices also voted 8-1 in United States v. Stevens that the First Amendment allows individuals to distribute videos depicting animal cruelty.

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As a result, the Court’s favoring of free speech decisions may rest on subtler attractions. In Shapiro’s words, free speech claims prove “an easy way for the Court to see itself as upholding minority, individual rights against majoritarian wishes,

diminution of speech rights springs from the Justice’s belief in individual privacy. In Phelps, for example, the Justice based his dissent on the desire of the Snyder family not to be disturbed during the funeral.

By contrast, Shapiro interprets

which is harder with respect to other types of government programs or criminal prosecutions.” Both conservative and liberal Justices appear to favor free speech claims, albeit for differing purposes. In his concurrence to Citizens United v.

Federal Election Commission, for example, Justice Scalia asserted that the right serves as a limitation on governmental power, while Justice Breyer in Morse v. Fredrick argued for the importance of balance in First Amendment jurisprudence.

Alito’s lone dissents as based more on the grounds of decency than of privacy. “It’s probably more about what is tolerable in a free and democratic civil society, what goes beyond the pale, what is simply too outrageous to be protected,” Shapiro argues. Nonetheless, Harvard Law professor Richard Fallon points out that Alito is not “categorically hostile to First Amendment claims,” and in cases like Citizens United, Alito “has been as ardent a defender of free speech claims as anybody.”

Nonetheless, when free speech is weighed against privacy interests, Alito often seems to come down on the side of privacy.

The Private Justice One exception to the court’s broad expansion remains: Samuel Alito.

The junior Justice’s lone dissents in Snyder and Stevens marked Alito’s emergence as the Court’s free speech foil. Jeffrey Rosen, a professor at George Washington University Law School, argues that Alito’s seeming

A Triumph for Free Speech?

Despite the ultimate judgment for the protesters, Snyder v. Phelps may prove surprisingly unhelpful

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for free speech advocates. As the opinion of Chief Justice Roberts stated, the Court refused punitive damages initially awarded to Snyder on the grounds of “intentional infliction of emotional harm,” yet the Court did not rule on the extent to which emotional harm can prove grounds for speech restriction.

Indeed, Tushnet points out that Roberts included a footnote to the opinion noting that, after the protest, “Maryland passed a statute regulating the where and when of funeral protests.” As Tushnet argues, the opinion’s narrowness could allow future bans on funeral picketing to be upheld, provided the law is not based on the content of signs.

For his part, Fallon warns against interpreting the Snyder opinion too broadly or using it to evaluate the Roberts Court’s free speech jurisprudence. “The Court writes its opinion in such a way as to leave open the possibility that a statute written to exclude protesters from being within a certain physical distance or above a certain decibel level at military funerals might be constitutionally permissible,” Fallon claimed. Nonetheless, Roberts’s unwillingness to create sweeping precedent contrasts with previous speech judgments, such as New York Times v. United States, which offered implications that apply well beyond the case at hand.

When Expression Matters The Court’s caution about endorsing speech more broadly is unfortunate, given that First Amendment defenders face major challenges ahead. In particular, the Supreme Court has offered almost no guidance on whether changing technology might alter the meaning of the First Amendment. In his concurrence to Snyder, Justice Stephen Breyer’s questioned whether Phelps’s protest would have been constitutionally protected if it had involved an Internet posting

or other online attack. According to Fallon, Breyer was “gesturing toward a currently underdeveloped area of the law… If the protesters in this case had been conducting a targeted effort to bring anguish to the father of a service member who died by hounding him ceaselessly with email messages or telephone calls,” the ruling might have turned out differently.

Justice Breyer’s concurrence reveals that the doctrine of free speech, while broadly protected by recent courts, nonetheless may stand at a moment of uncertainty.

Justice Alito’s dissent may also raise the question as to how the limits of privacy blur in an age of blogs, Facebook, and smartphones. In addition to defining the broader significance of Snyder v. Phelps with regard to freedom of speech, the Court will find itself applying the ruling to unfamiliar technological and social contexts.

The nature of these decisions will define the Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence over the years to come.

Peter Bozzo ‘12 is a Staff Writer.

chartering success

Fixing the broken charter system jimmy biblarz and terah lyons With advocates ranging from documentaries like Waiting for “Superman” to policymakers like Michelle Rhee, charter schools remain the hot topic in education policy. Supporters argue that the schools’ innovative teaching strategies, progressive teacher evaluation models, and superior administrative structures offer a panacea to inefficient public education. More broadly, scholars contend that anti-regulatory, anti-union approaches have allowed charters greater creativity and flexibility in both teaching and assessment, turbocharging their student outcomes.

Charters enjoy their successes, but the story is more complicated than that often portrayed. In particular, charters still struggle to manage their responsibilities to students with mental disabilities. While the government prohibits any public school from discriminating against any of its students, charters’ decentralized mode of operation complicates such implementation. As charter schools increasingly become part of the American educational mix, the federal government must monitor local educational agencies to ensure all students enjoy their full measure of rights.

Send in the Feds Federal law prohibits any school receiving federal funding from engaging in ableism: namely, the practice of discrimination based on physical, mental or emotional disability.

Nonetheless, charters’ decentralized governance has complicated the application of federal

President Obama with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The federal government’s 2009 program, Race to the Top, made money available to states that adopted charter school-friendly policies. mandates. Professor Thomas Hehir of the Harvard Graduate School of Education told the HPR that the federal government has not held the charter sector to the same special education standards as traditional public schools. In particular, Hehir points to the fact that charters force interested parents to apply to their program, which he argues may discourage parents with

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special needs from signing up for charters in the first place.

Even when schools operate with the best of intentions, disabled students do cost more to educate, while charters receive a flat fee per every student.

Implementing a system based on increased per-pupil funding for special needs students would provide a valuable incentive for accessibility based reform, Hehir asserts.

The question of charters’ openness to all students has become increasingly contentious since 2009, when President Obama launched his Race to the Top initiative. The $4 billion initiative provided states with extra federal funding, so long as they institute certain reforms, most notably expanding their support of independent schools. Hehir comments, “Race to the Top has put a lot of money out there and tried to more aggressively change state policies in favor of charters. A lot of states responded to that.” States previously removed from the charter school trend, including Alabama, Kentucky, and Washington, jumped onto the bandwagon.

Hehir maintains, “the role of the federal government as it relates to charter schools has been pretty squarely in the area of promotion. The mechanisms used so far have been primarily discretionary; in other words, they’ve had grant programs to fund states to do more charters.”

A Regulatory Issue Whether or not Race to the Top converts American education to the benefit of charter schools, the federal government can still play a role in

promoting educational materials more broadly. Dr. David Rose, a lecturer at the School of Education, maintains that funding for special education in charter schools should focus on tailoring student experiences. Currently, there exist numerous regulations intended to help students with special needs and alternative learning styles, most notably the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard.

Rose praises the latter program, as it was “designed to make it easier and faster to obtain accessible instructional materials” for students with disabilities. Since the law’s implementation, the number of books, tapes, and texts available to special education teachers has increased tremendously, all at comparatively little cost.

Such successful regulations suggest that charter policy can be made more effective by adding considerations based a universal learning model, namely a method of education dedicated to addressing all students’ individual needs.

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“There’s been a fundamental shift to start to move away from this idea that the kids are broken,” says Rose, “to the notion that our schools are disabled.” Rose asserts that the universal learning model should apply for both charter schools and traditional public schools and that the government ought to take a holistic view of reform.

Nonetheless, calls for reform should also maintain perspective.

Professor Martin West, deputy director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance points out that students enroll in charter schools on an entirely voluntary basis, meaning that mandates that the percentage of students identified as having special needs be the same in charter schools and traditional public schools may not prove effective. West continues, “If we rush to regulation without a true understanding of the problem, we run the risk of over-regulating.”

As such, West calls for an increased program of data collection to assess charters’ needs.

Reaching the limit Even good data may not solve the problem, however.

West particularly points to students with learning disabilities, for whom part of the identification process is often based on standardized test scores. According to a report published by U.S. Charter Schools, the largest consortium of charter schools in the United States, “testing and labeling [students with disabilities] would not improve a student’s education in any way.”

Compounding the problem, charter schools nationally receive less funding per-pupil than traditional public schools, totaling about 80% of the national average level.

While West believes, “funding that students carry with them should reflect what we know about the cost of educating them,” regulation mandating so when charters are not currently being equally funded would be detrimental.

Some advocates claim the answer lies in special education-only charter schools. Yet the solution also raises potential ethical issues. “Are we willing to accept that as the optimal situation, despite the big two decade push toward mainstreaming [students with disabilities into general education classes]?” West questions.

Schools such as Democracy Prep Harlem, the highest performing school in central Harlem, are designed to serve students with special needs and have been proven highly efficacious, yet their students are separated from the traditional schooling system.

New Way Forward Despite arguments over charter schools’ role in educating special needs students, experts agree on one principle: there is no quick fix for the underrepresentation of special needs students in America’s charter schooling system. Nonetheless, policymakers deserve to make the effort, if a final solution appears substantially more difficult.

In the words of President Obama, “We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools.” Given the pro-charter tide of the country, the issue of special education ought not to be left out. If the system cannot adapt and self-correct for institutionalized inequalities in accessibility, then Washington must address discrepancies in opportunities for students with special needs.

“As charter schools increasingly become part of the American educational mix, the federal government must monitor local educational agencies to ensure all students enjoy their full measure of rights.”

Jimmy Biblarz ‘14 is a Staff Writer. Terah Lyons ‘14 is a Contributing Writer.

the second battle of the bulge Tackling America’s debt problem means tough choices aditi ghai

“Our spending has caught up with us, and our debt will soon eclipse the size of our entire economy. No longer can we kick the can down the road.” So declared Speaker John Boehner in his maiden speech to the U.S. House of Representatives. In the weeks following Boehner’s assertion, budget battles have consumed Washington, with Republicans and Democrats contending over a plan which ultimately cut some $38 billion in discretionary spending. For all the sound and fury of the past months, however, progress on balancing America’s finances remains elusive.

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If the nation’s lawmakers are serious about addressing the nation’s debt dilemma, they must push questions of discretionary non-defense appropriations into the background, and devote their attention to more pressing concerns of entitlement and defense spending.

In this light, current debates inhibit such focus more than they assist. Factional conflict over trivial portions of the discretionary budget has stalled the bipartisan compromises necessary to address the real substance of the budget deficit. Without such agreements in place, the national debt will continue to grow until America’s leaders address its root causes.

Flood of Red (Ink) In fiscal year 2011, the annual deficit of the federal government stood at a record $1.6 trillion, with the national debt an all-time high of $14 trillion. To some extent, the headline numbers owe their magnitude to the effects of the ongoing economic downturn. Total revenue remains some half-trillion dollars lower in 2011 than it was in 2008, while federal stabilizing programs, such as unemployment insurance, have caused governmental expenditures to balloon. Should taxes and automatic spending return to their historic level, the deficit would stand at somewhat under a trillion dollars, still higher than the historical average, but not so much as today.

Nonetheless, the volatility of the recession should not distract lawmakers from more serious budgetary problems. On January 1, 2011, the first of the baby boom generation turned 65, reaching the age for full retirement.

Over the next decades, mandatory entitlement programs, notably Medicare and Social Security, will consume an ever-greater amount of the federal purse.

Such expenditures dwarf other spending by an order of magnitude. As Harvard Kennedy School professor John

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Donahue told the HPR, “even if we cut all discretionary spending out of the budget, we would still have a debt problem.” Lawmakers might find a way to balance the budget in the short-term, but left unchanged, long-term entitlement costs will ultimately swamp the boat.

Why Fight?

Although most policymakers agree on the importance of addressing growing federal debt, the budget battles on Capitol Hill may have done more harm than good.

Linda Blimes, Kennedy School public policy professor and author of The Three Billion Dollar War, argues, “I think the Republican effort to cut spending just for the sake of cutting spending is incredibly short sighted. This current situation in which the entire government is… fighting over small amounts of budget cuts is extremely disruptive.” Blimes contends that budget-cutters’ outsized focus on discretionary domestic spending does little to deal with the root causes of the deficit, given that discretionary spending amounts to only one-sixth of the total budget. Instead, Blimes argues, contentious fights actually cut comparatively little money, but they do serve to alienate both parties from the other. Such hostility may prove more costly than even the typical partisan struggle. The key to any budget deal lies in both parties’ ability to trust the other; reducing that relationship diminishes any incentive to cooperate.

Nonetheless, while discretionary programs may cost little, as far as the total budget is concerned, cuts to them may suffer substantial consequences. In particular, some of the least expensive programs in the federal budget, such as Americorps, still enjoy an outsized impact on the nation’s general well-being. Reducing small-buteffective programs for the sake of cuts would seem an exercise in futility. As Blimes asserts, “The markets don’t

“Medicare is not a self-contained program; it’s just a part of the larger healthcare system. All healthcare providers are finding that their costs are rising much faster than costs in the rest of the economy.” Likewise, the essence of Social Security’s problems remains the decreasing number of workers per retiree as compared to when the program first launched. Congress may find it more difficult to fully secure entitlements’ future while other national problems persist. Nonetheless, there exist concrete steps that legislators can, and ultimately must, take. The perfect need not be the enemy of the good.

care whether we cut a billion dollars out of the Head Start program or any other program. What they want to see is what are we doing over the next thirty years… to deal with the rise in pensions and across the board government spending.”

Mandatory Spending, Mandatory Cuts If domestic spending ultimately impacts the long-term budget relatively little, however, entitlements remains the crux of the federal debt crisis. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2040, mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and interest will consume every penny the government brings in. Nonetheless, sustainable solutions can and do exist. Donahue argues that Congress should raise the minimum age requirement for benefit collection, attempting to increase the number of workers supporting each retiree. By contrast, David Certner, legislative policy director for the American Association of Retired People, contends that Americans enjoy the security of entitlement programs in their current forms, and would prefer higher taxes to sustain such benefits. In practice, a combination of tax hikes and demographic adjustments should suffice to avoid most dire scenarios.

To be sure, entitlement reform questions touch on other substantial issues. Certner claims that Medicare’s outsized expected growth owes to the fact that

POLITICAL ARREST AND ECONOMIC DISTRESS The heat of the budget battle aside, there exists bipartisan consent that Medicare and Medicaid are growing at unsustainable rates, and that Social Security’s payouts will soon exacerbate the already unmanageable deficit. While precise details of any agreement may vary, there remains ample space for efforts to secure entitlements’ future. Nonetheless, a hyperpolarized Congress has hindered these bipartisan objectives, with many proposals ending in legislative stalemate. Unless legislators take steps to break the logjam, entitlements costs will compound.

Ultimately, America’s budgetary problems are less economic than political. To bridge the partisan divide, congressional representatives ought to remember that duty to their constituents and nation comes before party allegiance. To step back from economic disorder, representatives must first acquire the necessary political and structural tools to diagnose the debt problem as they seek to tackle it.

Aditi Ghai ‘14 is a Staff Writer.

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The Politics of the Federal Reserve

The dangers of the pressures on central banking

thomas gaudett Since its inception in 1913, the Federal Reserve has faced questions over its independence from the political sphere. For the most part, such efforts of politicians and bureaucrats seeking to direct monetary policy have been rebuffed.

As Harvard economics professor N. Greg Mankiw told the HPR, “Congress decided that it made sense to have monetary policy set by an independent institution that was not under direct political control.”

Former House Budget Committee member Bob Inglis (R-SC) added, “The best rationale for having an independent Fed is that it is not subject to the political pressures of the administration or of Congress.”

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, however, members of both major parties have increasingly challenged the Fed’s independence,

criticizing levels of transparency and lack of accountability.

Audit the Fed? In principle, most economists advocate for an independent central bank, free from political exigencies.

Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman commented, “[The Constitution] gives Congress monetary policy power. Congress has now delegated this responsibility to the Federal Reserve.” Indeed, most nations of the world enjoy similar arrangements. Yet the institution’s expanding role in backstopping the U.S. financial system remains more controversial. Jeremy Stein, also a professor of economics at Harvard, explained, “the Fed does a better job with its traditional mandate of maintaining price stability when it is relatively free of political

interference.

Thus, in a world where the Fed was doing nothing more than setting interest rates, this would argue for considerable independence from short-term political pressure…However, when in its role as a lender of last resort, the Fed gets in the business of taking credit risk on a meaningful scale, there absolutely needs to be transparency and accountability.”

The Federal Reserve’s expansion of its balance sheet throughout the financial crisis has brought the scrutiny of Congress upon the institution. Some members, most notably Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), used the upheaval to call for the Fed’s dismantling, or at least increased scrutiny. Yet the expansion of the Fed’s mandate may also have led previous supporters to grow more skeptical. Even Barney Frank (D-MA), former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has stated that the Fed must be accountable to voters. As Frank told the Washington Times, “There is a problem with too much power going to an entity that is not subject to democratic powers.”

The Inflation Dilemma Nonetheless, where Paul’s criticisms blame the Fed for excessive inflation, the executive branch may soon find fault

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in the institution for insufficient growth in the money supply. With federal debt at 60 percent of the gross domestic product and growing, America faces few easy fiscal options. Yet the Federal Reserve enjoys the power of monetizing the debt, that is, weakening the value of a dollar to diminish the relative debt owed.

While such would benefit short-term budgets, there exist longer-term concerns. As Mankiw states, “The Fed chairman is always aware of what Congress and the President are thinking. But his long-run legacy is to do the right thing and not to cave to political pressure.”

Nonetheless, Friedman is ultimately sanguine about the possibilities of congressional input, “As long as members of the Congress do not have a majority on their side on a particular issue, the Fed chairman listening to them is no different than paying attention to what the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or the commentators on Bloomberg say.”

The epicenter of these political flashpoints remains the program of quantitative easing.

Quantitative easing aims to encourage lending for the purpose of investment by pumping liquidity, namely cash, into the financial markets. Analysts recognize that extra money, all else equal, creates the risk of higher inflation, yet a low-interest rate environment like the present may mitigate those risks. Nonetheless, political conservatives have excoriated the quantitative easing program, labeling it an unnecessary waste, while political liberals, notably Paul Krugman, indict the program for being insufficient stimulus. Nonetheless, for all the criticism, the Fed’s response may be to make the best of bad options.

According to Inglis, “If you don’t have an independent Fed led by brilliant economists like Ben Bernanke, then you have politicians setting monetary policy. That is a dangerous setup.”

The Treasury The lessons of the past year further call into question the Federal Reserve’s relationship with its counterpart, the Treasury department. Both bear responsibility for the economy; the Fed overseeing monetary policy and the Treasury fiscal. Nonetheless, nothing guarantees that the two will continue to work as well as they have so far. Throughout most of the 2000s, the Fed and

Treasury operated in tandem to boost the mortgage market through low interest rates and easy credit. In the wake of the bubble bursting, however, it is conceivable that the Treasury Secretary would pursue a policy which involves low interest rates to incentivize investment, while the Federal Reserve might be concerned with raising interest rates to curb inflation.

As such, the relationship between Fed and Treasury might prove a major source of conflict. Friedman suggests that, unlike the Fed, the Treasury Secretary does the work of the President, and reiterates, “Why do we have an independent agency with people who are not appointed and reappointed every month, for example?

The idea is to insulate it from day to day political pressures.”

Return to Normalcy Despite criticisms, the future of the Federal Reserve appears much the same as in the past.

According to Mankiw, “We will return to a time of normalcy when the distinction between monetary and fiscal policy becomes clearer.” Over the long run, the Fed will continue to operate as the institution that deals primarily with monetary policy. Nonetheless, the difficulties of the economic crisis will likely continue to keep the Federal Reserve at the center of debates about the role of government in the economy. The Fed’s future mission may well engender further conflict. Indeed, as House Republicans prepare to advocate for substantial savings to slash the federal deficit, the Obama administration may rely heavily on the Fed to execute expansionary economic policy.

Ultimately, no matter the economic times, the Federal Reserve operates best as an independent institution. A combination of increased independence from political pressure and greater accountability and transparency to the public will improve the Fed’s operations, and may even finally affect its public standing. Maintaining relative performance in these categories will prove difficult, no doubt, but the combination should ultimately ensure the Fed fulfill its dual mandate of maintaining steady price levels, and fostering long-term economic stability.

Thomas Gaudett ‘14 is the Circulation Manager.

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WORLD Sizing Up Singapore Lessons to learn and avoid in America’s model country Alec Barrett

In 1993, when novelist William Gibson called Singapore “Disneyland with the death penalty,” the phrase struck a chord. Nearly twenty years later, Gibson’s formulation is still around, but the bite it once struck seems to have worn off. In those intervening years, Singapore has risen to become a model state in the eyes of the West—one whose economy, society, and even features of its political system are signs of success worth replicating. The praise remains effluvious, but it is no less well deserved. What makes Singapore so enviable to thinkers, commentators, and visitors alike is not just the city-state’s remarkably efficient economy, orderly society, or productive political system, but rather the resultant ability to be something for all its citizens.

What Makes Singapore Singapore One of Singapore’s defining characteristics lies in its multiculturalism. Though a majority of the population is of Chinese descent, there remains strong influence from Malay, Indian (particularly Tamil), and post-colonial British cultures. Several nationalities enjoy their own ethnic neighborhoods, forming a stark contrast with the city’s highly Western glass-and-steel downtown.

Nonetheless, people of every ethnicity remain constant presences on the city’s sidewalks. Given such diversity, the Singaporean government offers widespread respect for the population’s various cultures; Singapore has

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four official languages, and the government erects signs in all of them. To an outsider, the combination of a heterogeneous society and a strong social fabric seems improbable, but this accommodation allows Singaporeans to feel nationalistic identity without abandoning their ethnic pride, thus reinforcing the city’s multiculturalism.

The state’s unique social fabric further enables the high standards of living which the government sustains.

Some 85 percent of citizens live in public housing, and the state provides universal healthcare. Generous benefits mean a population with comparatively little reason to disapprove of their government. Further, the vast social safety net does not hinder economic productivity. As New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman pointed out in his January column on Singapore, these and other features of the government-controlled social structure contrast with the city’s exceptionally free market economy. While providing for citizens of all ethnicities, Singapore also hosts a large number of Western financial institutions and boasts wealth, visible in luxury cars and designer clothing, no less than that of London or Paris.

Perhaps the most notorious feature of Singaporean culture is its kiasuism, the fear of losing face, or more broadly, of losing at all. Unique even among the stereotypically disciplined and competitive cultures of East Asia, kiasuism drives the country toward its own

goals. As the philosophy argues, without these high standards, all of the aforementioned socioeconomic achievements might not be possible. Yet the obligations under kiasuism extend to more than self; Singapore also strives to show off its country to others. Kiasuism implies immense pride in what Singapore can accomplish, combined with a distinct eye toward giving a positive impression to outsiders, hence the infamous draconian policies toward chewing gum. And hence the nickname of Disneyland.

What We Can Learn Friedman argues that Singapore’s greatest lesson for the United States is “about taking governing seriously.” It is true that pragmatism has assisted Singapore’s economic success, although Singapore’s ability to adapt quickly stems as much from the nation’s small size. Nonetheless, while the country’s smallness has enabled it to quickly change course, its leaders have taken full advantage of such opportunities. The ability of Singapore’s ministers perhaps owes in part to the nation’s rewarding of public service; its ministers enjoy million-dollar salaries, the highest in the world. Nonetheless, the state’s munificence extends beyond the walls of the Cabinet room.

Like any high-powered business in the twenty-first century, Singapore recruits aggressively from among the academically talented.

Federally funded scholarship programs ensure that the country never risks a brain drain. The government offers numerous merit scholarships to students from elsewhere in Southeast Asia and around the world. In return for their high quality education, of course, students must commit to becoming residents, or in some cases citizens, of Singapore. The nation’s higher education policies have contributed substantially towards recruiting the best and the brightest, and keep them

working for Singaporean companies, domestically or abroad.

For all its unusual flaws and surprising merits, then, Singapore manages to be something for everyone. People from different cultures and different parts of the world see something familiar in Singapore, and rightly so. Unlike the United States, where the “melting pot” blends and changes the cultures that meet here, Singapore preserves them. The population is South and East Asian, but the most common language is Western. Typical cuisine is a mélange of Asian dishes, but shopping centers and the brands that populate them are European.

The country is simultaneously unique and familiar, which more than anything else contributes to its goal of being visitor friendly.

Singapore’s greatest lesson for the West, especially Europe, but also the United States, lies in its delicate balance between integration and assimilation, between diversity and conformity.

Where the Parallels Stop The “death penalty” side to

Singapore persists: the nation remains a one-party authoritarian state. Severe punishments do as much as culture to keep the country virtually drug-free and public spaces, especially the subway, remarkably clean. While many of Singapore’s practices may be inspiring to the West, Singapore’s success may ultimately prove difficult to replicate. One of the keys to the country’s unparalleled growth still remains its diminutive scale. As pluralistic a society as Singapore is, a strong social fabric exists because it is a country of just a few million.

Singapore’s political geography is equally defining: much of the land on which the island city-state is built is imported sand, and the adjacent peninsula is occupied by Malaysia, a historic rival.

Singapore will always be attractive to the West. Compared with Japan, Taiwan, and certainly new China, Singapore is not just developed and an economic powerhouse, but it is a bastion of familiar culture borne of its colonial heritage. For admirers, it is something of a cultural and economic Petri dish—a source of

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ideas and inspiration for reform. When observers put Singapore on a pedestal, then, they should not forget the country’s unique history and conditions that have allowed it to thrive. Singapore’s desire to be a model for visitors and outsiders is laudable, and the fact that it has so many admirers in the West shows that it succeeds in this respect. However, many of the policies it uses to

achieve this coveted status could not succeed without Singapore’s unique demographic and geographic position and should not be adopted because of their inconsistency with democratic principles.

Alec Barrett ‘11 is a Senior Writer. He recently returned from a trip to Singapore.

Why Should Anyone Care About The Lacandon Jungle?

Mexico’s 17 year-old insurgency and its importance

Joseph Wall Deep in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico, a balaclava-clad guerilla puffs on his pipe, spouting socialist rhetoric. “What we’re going to do is shake this country up from below, pick it up and turn it on its head,” he declares. At first glance, the insurgent might seem the emblematic Latin American revolutionary, with ideology from Marx and media savvy from Castro.

The man’s name is Subcomandante Marcos, and he is the de-facto spokesman for the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Since 1994, Marcos and the EZLN have been in a state of war against the Mexican federal government.

Yet unlike the vast majority of other guerrilla movements, the Zapatistas have not engaged in destructive conflict with an overwhelmingly superior national army but rather given up violent military action in order to garner popular support and focus on the establishment of their own communities. While their rebellion continues, the Zapatistas have moved from a state of violent warfare to a symbolic and ideological warfare that furthers their designs for the indigenous communities in the highlands of Chiapas. Although the future of the group remains uncertain, their example continues to provide strength to indigenous rights movements.

An Unfortunate Province Though official conflict began in 1994, the EZLN asserts that its motivations spring from struggles throughout the history of the Mexican state. At the time of the country’s European conquest, colonial rulers formed a system of castes designed to marginalize peasants and the indigenous population, the latter’s descendants composing the support base of EZLN. Such

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structures placed Spanish conquistadors at the pinnacle of society while confining most residents of the Chiapas to subsistence agriculture. Over the centuries, while much of the nation developed, the Chiapas largely did not. By the time of Mexico’s independence from Spain, Chiapas was, and remains, one of the poorest regions of the country.

After the second Mexican Revolution concluded in the 1920s, the ruling Institutional Revolution Party (PRI)

attempted to homogenize Mexican society by assimilating indigenous communities into the national fold.

Nonetheless, a combination of corruption, mismanagement, and governmental neglect counteracted the vast majority of the PRI’s efforts.

Retired Harvard professor John Womack writes in his book Rebellion in Chiapas that “two-thirds of the homes, crowded dirt-floor shacks, had no electricity, drinking water, or drainage…more than 80 percent of working men and women in the region lived on less than US$1,500 per year” in the southern highlands where the EZLN is based.

While economic struggles continue to harm Mexico’s indigenous community, racial struggles fueled the tensions which ultimately emerged in the Zapatista movement. Ethelia Ruiz Medrano, a researcher at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, told the HPR that in several towns in Chiapas, indigenous people were not permitted to walk on the sidewalk until the 1970s.

Indigenous attempts to preserve their traditional way of life and resist the redistribution of property were repeatedly quashed by state and local governments associated with the PRI, while national government aid rarely reached the affected regions.

Finally, Mexico’s ascension into NAFTA in 1994 terrified those who feared the treaty would exacerbate the gap between rich and poor. This mélange of economic difficulties and social ostracization ultimately culminated in EZLN. “Today, We Say Enough” On the very day that NAFTA came into effect, January 1, 1994, the EZLN burst onto the scene, declaring war on the Mexican state and occupying several towns throughout Chiapas.

Mexican army forces quickly repelled the offensive, forcing EZLN into a ceasefire just twelve days later.

Nonetheless, the movement’s brief

taste of combat strengthened its members’ resolve. By June 10, 1994, the EZLN announced that they were “in favor of a political solution in the transition to democracy in Mexico.”

Womack wrote that the EZLN made clear their demands for education, employment, property rights, and a degree of political autonomy through their strategy of engaging with “Mexican civil society.”

In 1996, the EZLN officially came to terms with the Mexican government, signing a peace treaty called the San Andrés Accords.

Under the agreement, however, EZLN continued to administer the parts of Chiapas which it had occupied. Nonetheless, the treaty’s mechanisms proved controversial with PRI authorities, leading to uneven enforcement of the accords’ provisions. After the PRI finally fell from power in 2000, members of the Zapatistas organized rallies throughout the country and presented their case before the Mexican Congress in support of the treaty’s full enforcement. The new government under Vicente Fox ultimately passed a weakened version of the accords, complicating relationships with the EZLN. Nonetheless, the relationship between Zapatista-ruled Chiapas and the federal government remains comparatively peaceful, although uneasy. Though the Mexican state and its paramilitary proxies have been accused of perpetrating massacres and human rights abuses by several well-respected local and international watchdog organizations, the EZLN has kept a low military profile. “The state is trying to exhaust them,” says José Rabasa, Harvard professor and author of Without History: Subaltern Studies, the Zapatista Insurgency, and the Specter of History. Even so, the group continues to persist. Today, the group enjoys approximately 3,000 members, somewhat off its peak, but still relatively strong.

A War of Ideas The secret to the Zapatista’s survival may lie as much in its ideology as in its military tactics.

Professor Rabasa explained to the HPR, “It is in many ways a war of ideas, where different forms of organizing life exist.” Indeed, outside Mexico, EZLN may be best-known for its promotion of alternative methods of governance, including setting up communally-governed autonomous municipalities that preserve indigenous lifestyles.

Dr. Ruiz Medrano argues that these communities can restore indigenous dignity, commenting, “The Zapatistas want to show the world that the indigenous people can rule themselves, and do it well.”

While these independent townships seek independence from Mexico, the broader Zapatista strategy has been to engage both Mexican society and the world more broadly The future of the Zapatista movement remains uncertain, but the legacy is already clear. The group’s transition from armed insurgency to social campaign is undeniable. Their rebellion brought attention to the plight of a repressed and voiceless people, and their nonviolent methods have achieved some good for indigenous communities, even with the lack of political progress.

More broadly, EZLN’s continued existence provides a potential model for protest movements, showing that non-violent construction may pay more dividends than bloody conflict.

Yet, most of all, the Zapatistas have forced the question of indigenous rights to the center of Mexican political debate. “They gave Indians back their pride for being Indian,” Ruiz Medrano affirms.

Joseph Wall ‘14 is a Contributing Writer.

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Not On Oil Alone

Hugo Chavez’s rule grows complex Jonatan Lemus On March 20, Hugo Chavez once again became the subject of international headlines when the Venezuelan president condemned U.S.-led military action in Libya, arguing that intervention was part of an American plan to control Libya’s oil supplies. Chavez further alluded to the possibility of an American intervention in Venezuela, to which he responded, “Don’t even think about it Mr. Obama.” In ordinary times, Chavez’s nationalistic paeans would have bolstered his

oil prices could provide the president with the resources necessary to recover some of the popularity he has lost at home. However, Chavez faces new challenges that could threaten his ability to stay in power after the 2012 elections, particularly economic crisis, disagreements with the military, and the reemergence of a united opposition. Whatever the ultimate outcome, Chavez’s poor handling of these various domestic matters means that he cannot ride to reelection on anti-American rhetoric

political standing and scattered his opponents. Yet picking fights with President Obama may soon be the least of Chavez’s concerns.

The recent turmoil in the Middle East has uprooted autocratic leaders across the globe, but it has also given Chavez a unique and perilous opportunity. Politically, the Libyan military intervention has provided a reason to maintain anti-American rhetoric abroad, while the increase in

and oil-fueled spending alone.

Chavez’s future now also relies on his ability to maintain and expand his control of key institutions in Venezuela, heretofore the nexus of his rule.

Votes to Buy Throughout Chavez’ 11-year tenure, revenue from the nation’s oil fields has proven the president’s most potent political asset. Since

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1999, the state-run Petróleos de Venezuela has dispersed an estimated $60 billion to build houses, schools, and patronage networks, all at Chavez’s direction. Riordan Roett, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, told the HPR, “As long as oil prices remain high, he has sufficient wealth to buy popular support.” Oil dividends aid Venezuela in two senses; they enable Chavez’s government to prove social spending on the nation’s lower classes, while boosting GDP more broadly. As such, the recent run-up in oil prices would seem to leave the president in an enviable position.

Nonetheless, the fate of Chavez’s administration may prove more complex than the commodities indices would suggest. Although he still remains the most popular politician in Venezuela, Chavez’s approval ratings have fallen below 50 percent, with the opposition increasingly potent.

Indeed, opposition candidates won 47.2 percent of the vote in the 2010 national assembly election, by far their best showing of the Chavez years. Pollsters blamed the comparatively poor results of the ruling United Socialist Party on the woes of the Venezuelan economy.

Similar political crises have seen Chavez seek to use oil revenue to boost popularity. Facing a 2003 recall referendum, for example, Chavez created a series of “misiones,” antipoverty measures, which allowed him to survive the vote. As such, it was perhaps unsurprising that in 2010, after the election, Chavez merely pledged to continue with his current policies.

New Decade, New Difficulties Nevertheless, purchasing popular support remains only one of Chavez’s challenges. Javier Corrales, professor of political science at Amherst College, asserts that Chavez faces new institutional

and political difficulties. In particular, Corrales points to the “government’s incompetence, which hinders policy effectiveness, a stronger electoral coalition than at any point since 2004, and potential internal disagreements within the military.” Though the president has grown used to ruling unopposed, Venezuela’s economic woes, including 28.7 percent inflation and double-digit unemployment, have eroded much of Chavez’s standing.

Indeed, focus on social spending alone may well backfire. Leonardo Vivas, fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, observes that economic problems increasingly preoccupy the majority of the Venezuelan electorate. “Issues like security, jobs, and price hikes still worry a majority of Venezuelans,” Vivas explained. While misiones are popular among the poor they serve, Chavez has offered relatively little for middleclass Venezuelans. Yet, in the short run at least, it seems that the situation will not improve.

Luis Davila, fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, asserts, “social, economic and political problems in Venezuela are of such a magnitude that even if oil prices grasp to $200 there is too little to do there.” Unless Chavez implements policies to tackle general financial concerns, people’s support for his socalled “revolution” might soon vanish.

Not So Fast Nonetheless, the sum of Venezuela’s challenges may not necessarily equate to the end of Chavez’s twentyfirst century socialism. After over a decade in power, Chavez enjoys more than a few tricks up his sleeve. First, the president’s rhetorical gifts and natural charisma may yet help him maintain local support. Carlos Blanco, professor at Universidad Central de Venezuela, told the HPR, “If Chavez and his government are able to convey the idea that falling oil prices and the deteriorating economic situation are due to the forces of capitalism, he can partially avoid the erosion of his popularity.”

Most important, even if popular support does not back him, Chavez may already enjoy enough control of state institutions to maintain his grip in power and manipulate the outcome of elections, whatever the people vote. For example, by changing the electoral laws, the United Socialist Party managed to secure a near-supermajority of the seats in the 2010 parliamentary elections, even

the party won slightly under half of the votes. Further, as Professor Corrales and Michael Penfold point out in their book Dragon in the Tropics, Chavez now enjoys control over important branches of government, greater influence in the economy, more power over the private media, complete obsequiousness of the courts, the electoral council, and his own party. Neither the voters, nor even a unified opposition, have the strength to fight against such institutions, should they side with their benefactor.

The political events in the Middle East have had consequences around the world. Yet, surprisingly, its ripple effects have the power to shape the future of countries like Venezuela. Although politically speaking, these events might only serve to fuel Chavez’s rhetoric, the international community seems to take Chavez’s remarks less seriously every time. Economically, the increase in oil price brought about by the tensions in the Middle East could have some impact in Chavez’s performance leading to the 2012 elections. However, regardless of whether the money provided by oil has a positive or negative effect, it seems apparent that Chavez’s strength has stopped depending on one single factor. Chavez may, and likely will, win reelection in 2012, or at least re-inauguration. Nonetheless, the president’s victory, if it comes, will be not on oil alone.

Jonatan Lemus ‘12 is a Contributing Writer.

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BOOKS & ARTS Why Marx Is Relevant Eli Kozminsky

why marx was right, by Terry Eagleton. Yale University Press, 2011. $25.00, 272 pp.

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“You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism,” writes Terry Eagleton in the preface to his new book, Why Marx Was Right. Eagleton is a literary theorist and an English professor at the University of Lancaster, as well as a longtime activist in socialist organizations.

Yet Eagleton’s contentions revolve around the after-effects of worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression—a crisis causing scholars to call for a reevaluation of capitalism— through which he makes a renewed and blistering case for the relevance of Marxism in the 21st century.

Eagleton’s objectives in his work are twofold: to educate lay readers about Karl Marx’s thought and to refute common criticisms of Marxism. Both efforts serve the work’s ultimate purpose, which is to present Marxism as a plausible political alternative to capitalism. On the first front, Eagleton provides a lucid, and often witty, survey, drawing on a wealth of sources, and employing the analytical rigor of an English professor cum social theorist. The defense of Marxism, however, is far from conclusive. While he deftly deals with the more theoretical critiques, Eagleton’s case for Marxism rests almost entirely on what he perceives, at times erroneously, as capitalism’s shortcomings. By Eagleton’s account, though, such practical concerns just get in the way of Marx’s more visceral truths.

Though his assessment of the contemporary political economy does not hold much factual water, the book uncovers Marx’s emotional appeal, informing a more social critique as powerful as it is relevant.

Eagleton’s Little Red Book If readers are looking for an introduction to Marxism, Eagleton’s book is an accessible, succinct, and exceedingly entertaining place to start. Perhaps unsurprising, given the author’s day job as an English professor, the book focuses intensely on close readings of the Marxist cannon. In one section, for example, Eagleton takes on an explanation of one of Marx’s socio-economic goals, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” “Few of his well-known phrases have sent more of a chill through the veins of his critics,” Eagleton notes, perceiving the implication of political repression in the words. Nonetheless, Eagleton points out, the slogan’s contemporary associations did not exist in its historical-linguistic roots, for, “the word ‘dictatorship’ in Marx’s time did not necessarily suggest what it does today. It meant an extralegal breach of political constitution.” Writing in an age of monarchs, Marx meant the slogan to imply government by the people, and to oppose, rather than support, arbitrary rule.

Omissions and Exaggerations While Why Marx Was Right spans topics ranging from Marx’s support of civil liberties to lessons in material determinism, one subject remains conspicuous by its absence: the theory’s economic critiques. Nowhere does the author even attempt to address criticisms by theorists from Fredrick von Hayek to Milton Friedman, whose analyses have shaped perceptions of Marxism over the past century.

Nor does Eagleton mention the fact that Alfred Marshall’s marginal theory of utility has discredited the labor theory of value, upon which Marxian economics heavily relies. If Eagleton is trying to make what he characterizes as a “plausible” case for Marx’s ideas, the work suffers from the failure to reckon with capitalism’s formidable proponents.

In many ways, such omissions represent a larger, undermining trend in Eagleton’s book, namely its failure to engage with the entire history of Marxism in practice.

Faced with the bloody record of selfproclaimed communists like Stalin, Eagleton only offers that the Soviet Union “fostered the kind of solidarity among its citizens that Western nations seem able to muster only when they are killing the natives of other lands.” Leave aside the fact that “solidarity” is today best associated with Lech Walesa movement against communism. Eagleton’s contentions revolve around the book’s sole rationale for considering communism as a serious political alternative: Marxism may have been terrible in practice, “[but] what about capitalism?” What about it? Quoting Labour MP Tristram Hunt, Eagleton writes that “the special economic zones of Guangdong and Shanghai appear eerily reminiscent of 1840s Manchester and Glasgow.” Yet the analysis conveniently ignores the fact that, under capitalist regimes, these two British cities eventually

evolved into modern, more humane metropolises.

Meanwhile, life expectancy in “capitalist” Shanghai stands at a record peak—over 82 years—while workers’ wages remain significantly higher than those of interior, “communist” China.

What Marx and Eagleton Got Right Yet something about this book’s urgent case for Marxism, even in its dearth of empirical rigor and bouts of absurdity, deeply resonates.

“The bankers and financiers who have brought the world financial

truth—albeit emotional more so than economic—but resonant all the same.

While the communist system Marx and Eagleton propose is prone to collapse in practice, their rhetorical structures appear far sturdier than today’s financial markets. In this sense, Eagleton attacks what he sees as the depraved ethos of capitalism, as opposed to its more technical underpinnings. Such a lopsidedly social angle flounders in the practical realm (or, in Eagleton’s case, mostly ignores it) but grips psychologically.

The author’s rampant empirical lacunae seem to imply, though, that

“Eagleton’s defense of Marxism and its implicit critique of capitalism are not solely confined to stock exchanges and capital allocation; rather, there is a cultural, and less tangible, undercurrent.” system to the brink of the abyss are no doubt queuing up for cosmetic surgery,” writes Eagleton in an amusing aside, “lest they are spotted and torn limb from limb by enraged citizens.” Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein hasn’t yet undergone plastic surgery, yet it is true that he and his institution stand uniquely unpopular. Even if the passion for Marxism last seen during the 1960s has evaporated, the seething rage against perceivably corrupt “crony capitalism” persists. In this sense, Marx is as pertinent to presentday America as he was to the 19thcentury underclasses of Manchester.

Eagleton’s defense of Marxism and its implicit critique of capitalism are not solely confined to stock exchanges and capital allocation; rather, there is a cultural, and less tangible, undercurrent. Perhaps it is not cerebral facts, but rather gut feelings, that lend credence to Eagleton’s case. Marxist criticisms of capitalism still enjoy a level of

it is this latter criterion with which he is chiefly concerned.

In this latest Marxist manifesto, powerful sentiments trump realistic considerations and make a compelling social, not economic, stand against the political status quo. Of course, to simply say “Marx was right” would fall utterly short, ignoring capitalism’s observable merits and influential advocates. But Marx, despite the glaring historical record, was certainly not off a more visceral mark; he was not entirely wrong. Though Eagleton’s book is unable to make a functional case for Marxism as a political alternative, the author resurrects its instinctive truths as a social critique, ones as relevant today as ever.

Eli Kozminsky ‘14 is a Staff Writer.

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the evolution of a doctrine Matthew Bewley

For a work of academic history, Jay Sexton’s The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in NineteenthCentury America is a brisk and rewarding read. In a little under three hundred pages, the author, a lecturer at Oxford, traces the evolution of America’s most famous foreign policy from its articulation in 1823 to the 1904 expansion of the Roosevelt Corollary. Though perhaps disappointing to those who expect broad claims, Sexton offers impressive amounts of historical evidence to reinforce his narrow and intriguing points.

In total scope, the work should sound familiar to any AP U.S. History student. Sexton argues, as many have before, that the rejection of European influence in the New World sprung from an American government unsure of its place in the global order. By the early twentieth century, of course, the theory became a justification for intervention in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine nonetheless advances two less familiar ideas: that domestic politics rather than international conditions motivated American policymakers and that the doctrine’s implications remained a major point of American debate. These ideas, though not radical departures from traditional opinion, add enough nuance to make the book significantly more than just a review of familiar historical events.

Domestic Ideologies, International Doctrine Throughout The Monroe Doctrine, Sexton emphasis linkages between domestic politics and American foreign policy. Early on, as with most 19th century American political struggles, slavery often lay at the center of these disputes. Through careful historical reasoning, the book shows that voting Americans and the politicians they elected, both pro- and anti-slavery, constantly feared a New World intervention by Old World powers. As Sexton is careful to remind, however, these threats often proved imagined, or at least exaggerated for domestic political advantage.

In one particularly salient example, The Monroe Doctrine cites contemporary arguments that Britain planned intervention in Texas to abolish slavery, and that France desired to do so in Mexico to establish it.

These speculations, claims Sexton, shaped the U.S.’s subsequent interactions with its southern neighbors more often than a more blasé historian might care to

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The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America,

by Jay Sexton. Hill and Wang, 2011. $27.00, 304 pp. admit. No sole work of diplomatic history this, Sexton’s chronicle speaks most to the men who conceived and applied the Doctrine. Neither of the British nor French scenarios bears a great deal of plausibility in retrospect.

Still, Sexton maintains, Americans’ fears of similar interventions encouraged politicians and statesmen to assert the Monroe Doctrine in new ways, even as they used it to link themselves with a revered intellectual heritage.

A Complex Evolution Another of Sexton’s focuses centers on the often vehement disagreements among Americans about the true meaning of the Monroe Doctrine. Sexton writes that the original articulation in 1823 and the 1904 emergence of the Roosevelt Corollary constitute “bookends for the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine.” Between these marks, however, the author identifies five broadly defined periods within which separate conception of the Monroe Doctrine prevailed. These periods range from President Monroe’s “Era of Good Feelings” to the first of President Roosevelt’s interventions in Latin America, yet each provides a radically differing interpretation of Monroe’s meaning. Pro-slavery politicians used the statement both for and against territorial expansion, while Democrats in the 1840s applied it to support unfettered American empire. President Cleveland used the rhetoric of Monroe to argue against intervention,

while the first President Roosevelt often used the words to support the same. Different as the politics of these arguments were, a common thread runs through each of the periods outlined: no one ever agreed on what exactly the Monroe Doctrine meant.

This almost constant disagreement, convincingly established by the frequent quotation of memoirs and letters and a deluge of citations, remains the most intriguing part of Sexton’s argument.

In part, The Monroe Doctrine’s narrative speaks to the typically American tradition of historical reinterpretation and reappropriation.

Indeed, the work deserves a debt of gratitude for its emphasis on deliberate acts of creation and interpretation, standing against notions of a never-changing document. By contrast, the conclusion Sexton seems to draw, that American foreign policy remains driven largely by domestic concerns, is intuitive enough that its frequent restatement can get stale. For the most part, though, Sexton spends his time crafting an interesting history and explaining the significance of that history in unique ways.

The Post-Doctrinal World The emergence from The Monroe Doctrine into a year where the book’s namesake lacks its previous cache can be jolting. Sexton depicts an America in which statesmen made constant reference to the Monroe Doctrine as they navigated foreign threats, both real and imagined. The reader resides, on the other hand, in a world in which the United States intervenes most in places far removed from what Teddy Roosevelt would have considered his country’s “back yard.” President Monroe feared the apparent threat to American territorial integrity posed by the military power of vast Old World empires, and even Roosevelt worried about the threat to American hemispheric interests by less ominous, but still threatening, European nation-states. Today, President Obama presides over a globe-spanning nation, less doctrinal and more willing to engage with the world.

As for the Monroe Doctrine itself, the most significant modern use came almost half a century ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Few American politicians and or even voters have the emotional connection to the Monroe Doctrine once so prevalent.

One might well answer that an America that can perceive national security threats in Afghan caves understandably sees the geographic limits of the Monroe Doctrine as antiquated. Sexton never makes so broad a claim, but he does hint at the emergence of

an entirely new, internationalized Monroe Doctrine throughout the Wilson presidency. Wilson proposed that “the nations should…adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world.” Although the Wilson administration would often violate this principle by imposing its militarily will on Latin American governments, the proposal marked the beginning of a worldview which equated threats to American values abroad as threats to national security domestically.

In examining the evolution of a doctrine whose emotional impact has been lost among modern Americans, then, Sexton does not just write an intriguing history of one of a country’s most symbolically important policies. He provides context for the transformation of the United States from a minor regional player into a global superpower through the lens of contrast of the country’s two dramatically different doctrinal self-perceptions.

“Different as the politics of these arguments were, a common thread runs through each of the periods outlined: no one ever agreed on what exactly the Monroe Doctrine meant.”

Matthew Bewley ‘14 is a Staff Writer.

SUMMER 2011 | REVOLUTIONS | HPR

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Kill this Film

Irishman’s tale tepidly sticks to genre Raúl Quintana Summer 1976 was not a pleasant time to be a resident of Cleveland, Ohio. Throughout the months, a series of 36 car bombs traumatized the city. These deaths capped a street war between the city’s longinfluential Italian mafia and an Irishman seeking to break the power of the city’s criminal organizations.

At that time, the struggles of Danny Greene, progeny of the Emerald Isle, received national attention, along with the focus of a book written by the city’s chief of police. Thirtyfive years later, the narrative has hit the screen in the form of Kill the Irishman.

Though Greene’s story captivated contemporary audiences, the film adaptation ultimately lacks emotional residence.

Greene committed his crimes just six years after Coppola’s Godfather, yet in the years following, the Godfather’s spiritual successors have covered nearly every permutation of the genre. Whether Val Kilmer’s opening monologue—interestingly, both he and Danny Greene came from the same neighborhood—or the film’s supporting cast—one that must have felt permanently displaced after The Sopranos finale – nothing stands out from anything one might see in Goodfellas or The Departed.

The film’s single distinguishing characteristic remains the sheer number of car bombs, with which the movie begins, ends, and even includes a montage. Such is not to say that innovative directors cannot find fertile ground in the true crime genre; Lock, Stock, and Smoking Barrels comes to mind. Yet Kill the Irishman lacks a necessary foresight, mashing together

Coppola’s authentic techniques and alternating in mood, meaning, and quality. The final feature proves confusingly jumbled. It significantly underwhelms.

Two Films Diverging The film’s deficiencies first lie with its director. Throughout Kill the Irishman, Hensleigh never

Kill the irishman, Jonathan Hensleigh. Anchor Bay Films, 2011. 106 min. seems to decide what his movie is supposed to be. At first, the film seems promising in its pretentions towards a slick action thriller: a relentless stream of adrenaline and violence, in which its characters kill to the beat of an unmistakably Irish theme song. However, Hensleigh splices action with more-thansubtle plot turns in which the music suddenly stops and the film’s tone

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undergoes a stark change. Slowed down, Kill the Irishman becomes an almost meditative work, a gritty, narrative exploration of hardearned status and the American dream, focused Danny Greene’s inner psychology. These changes in tone are never particularly jarring per se, but they accumulate to the point of discomfort. In the end, neither side of the film receives full treatment, leaving Kill the Irishman more detached than its on-target counterparts, such as The Boondock Saints and The Departed.

Hensleigh’s indecision paralyzes his treatment of Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson), a character developed into a set of misguided contradictions. At times Greene is a ruthless killer, at others, a victim of circumstance. He evolves into both an excessively brutal, power-hungry criminal, but also the working man’s hero. Reckless and ignorant of his family, he’s devoted enough to his love to nearly elope with her. Many of these contradictions perhaps are perhaps inherent to Greene’s character. The real Greene was once arrested for grand larceny, only to gain the label of the “Robin Hood of Cleveland.” Hensleigh never provides the necessary insights to explain away the apparent dichotomy.

To be sure, a large part of the gangster genre rests on precisely such intellectual dexterity, or even sustained hypocrisy; Michael Corleone claims to care for his family, and remains no less ruthless for that fact. Yet while Stevenson portrays Greene adequately well, the actor ultimately lacks the necessary charisma to overcome the apparent divisions in his character’s persona.

Perhaps the worst example of the phenomenon arrives at the end, when Hensleigh seems to want to turn Greene into martyr-figure.

Yet Stevenson plays the part with little of the moral ambiguity once anticipated by the film’s meaning.

Every character in Kill the Irishman either celebrates Danny Greene or tries to kill the man for being a rebel, but nothing in the film or in the character drives the audience to these emotional extremes.

Dialogue for Dummies Greene, though, is only one of many examples of the script’s underdevelopment. The supporting characters do little to either entertain or forward the plot.

Christopher Walken, a rare highlight, steals the screen in his first appearance, yet the movie squanders him as a plot device for the remainder of the running-time.

Oversimplified dialogue, Hensleigh’s attempt to remain consistent with the characters, too often descends into either obvious plot reminders or genre clichés. “There’s no good in me,” Greene ruminates.

As a case in point, take Greene’s romantic interactions.

The first romantic scene starts passably with semi-witty, if not completely original, flirting. Yet it all goes downhill quickly, complete with annoyingly trite dialogue (“I heard you’re dangerous”) and action (a symbolic Irish ring for a gift? Really?). It’s not so much that character chemistry never solidifies as that the concept of mutual attraction never seems to have occurred the production.

At best, the romance feels forced; at worst, a fact more often than one would hope, the scenes feel painfully awkward. Even the theme of love itself suffers. At first, Greene’s relationships seem like a background element of his character, a part of his life irrelevant to the plot. In the second half of the film this changes: romantic scenes become more prominent, and the implausibility of the characters’ actual attraction becomes glaringly obvious.

Feelings are rushed, emotions seem spontaneous, and the scenes simply bore

A Stranded Film Most significant, Kill the Irishman is a thematic jumble, creating troves of loose stranded motifs, from the criminally violent implications of the American dream to the figure of Danny Greene as role model. Nothing develops. Once-intriguing mysteries fall flat, lost amidst the explosions and cronyism that dominate the rest of the work. As a result, the film loses its meaning.

The dramatic power that drives gangster classics is illusory, as the writers and directors try to distract the audience with explosions of a quantity more appropriate for Michael Bay. For all this, the film isn’t entirely bad; it stands out precisely for its mediocrity.

Other than a few clichés, awkward scenes, or poorly constructed lines, nothing is particularly terrible. The film, in short, is the antithesis of Greene, who instigated a flood of violence and left 27 mob bosses in his wake. Kill the Irishman is the kind of movie that seems destined for late-night HBO counterprogramming Law & Order reruns. Unless, of course, one likes exploding cars.

Raúl Quintana ‘14 is the Books & Arts Blog Editor.

SUMMER 2011 | REVOLUTIONS | HPR

37

INTERVIEWS governor bill richardson

The former New Mexico governor, Ambassador to the UN, and Secretary of Energy on energy policy and foreign affairs beatrice walton Harvard Political Review: President Obama recently announced that the United States would cut oil imports by one-third before 2025. Is his energy plan ambitious enough?

Bill Richardson: It’s not ambitious enough, but it is politically realistic. I believe it’s the best we can do under the present Congress and the mood of the country. My hope is that the crisis in Japan will spur Congress to make the initial steps to pass the two most significant parts of the change of our energy policy: the removal portfolio standard of the goal of renewable energy by 30 percent of that period and greenhouse gas emissions standards.

HPR: The President also stated that nuclear energy would continue to be a staple of the U.S.’s energy diet. Is the promotion of nuclear energy in the U.S. responsible, especially in light of recent events?

BR: I believe nuclear energy needs to be a part of the energy mix. We have 104 reactors in 31 states. But I believe we have to be very careful about expanding. We need to have very sensible evacuation plans. We need to be careful about commissioning new reactors in seismically active areas of the country. We need to strongly review the existing reactors that have some of that faulty Japanese technology. And we need to tighten the standards for containment vessels in earthquake-prone areas.

HPR:

Recognizing

our

current

involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, along with our huge national deficits, are our national security efforts worth their enormous costs?

BR: Yes they are. I believe these interventions are in the national interest of the country. In Iraq, we are withdrawing, so it makes sense to have a sensible withdraw plan. In Afghanistan, the president has made a commitment to withdraw, but we still have to maintain some kind of presence. In Libya, it is a limited intervention that hopefully will be reduced in the days ahead. America is the prime force in international politics. We have to fulfill our international responsibilities.

HPR: What is the role of the U.S. in the Middle East right now?

BR: We need to be able to respond to these popular protest movements more effectively. I believe America needs to develop new lines of communication with protesters and dissidents through technology, as opposed to the old Voice of America media programs.

We have a lot of national security interests in the Middle East, including our relationship toward the IsraeliPalestinian settlement. At the same time, we have to look at how we can associate ourselves with democracy and popular movements, while not harming our national security. Thus far, President Obama has done a good job of not just striking that balance, but of getting ahead and associating America with these dissidents

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and protesters that are emerging everywhere.

HPR: Who will play the role in keeping stability in the region as so many countries take on infant governments?

Will the U.S.?

BR: No. The main responsibility is of the population of the countries themselves. But I believe it is up to NATO countries, European countries, Western countries, and the U.S. to help develop programs of civil society of democratization, of transitions from dictatorships to democracies, free institutions and free press, and protection of human rights.

HPR: America’s math and science scores have consistently fallen in the world rankings over the past decade.

What does this mean for U.S. national security?

BR: It hurts our competitiveness. Our main competitors are testing better than our kids. I think it is important that we renew our emphasis on math and science and technology and find ways to incorporate some significant reforms: making teachers stronger and better, promoting Advanced Placement programs in math and science, getting our national laboratories and science institutions more involved, and by fostering more scholarships in science and math.

Beatrice Walton ‘14 is the World Blog Editor. This interview has been condensed and edited.

Emma Sky is a Spring 2011 Fellow at the Institute of Politics. From 2007 to 2010, she was Political Advisor to General Raymond Odierno in Iraq. She previously advised the NATO Commanding Generals in Iraq.

Emma Sky

Former advisor to General Raymond Odierno discusses the Middle East Henry Shull

Harvard Political Review: What role should the outside world, especially the U.S., play in supporting recent revolutions in the Middle East?

Emma Sky: I think it’s a unique opportunity for America to redefine its relations with the Middle East, and not just country-by-country, but to have a grand strategic approach. We live in a world which is very interdependent, so it’s very good that we’re not seeing the U.S. going it alone. It’s good to see the President building up coalitions, but I have yet to see that really intellectual sense of recognizing we’re in a different era now. How do we change the way we approach these countries? How do we help build their capacities? How do we help them access economic opportunities? I can see many, many opportunities, but I can also see many threats.

HPR: How will this strategy be determined?

ES: You can think of those great brains in the past like Kissinger who actually came up with a grand strategic approach, who actually stood back and looked at America’s position in the world. I think there’s a great opportunity here for really good thinking. We’ve seen the neoconservatives, the very militarized foreign policy. This is an opportunity for, say, a liberal version of our interaction with the rest of the world. I’ve not seen anybody thinking big thoughts on this, but you hope that some people are. This is a really exciting opportunity for a new doctrine, a new approach, a new something to define the world that we live in.

HPR: How do you see the idea of American exceptionalism playing into all of this?

ES: American exceptionalism can be a blessing, and it can be a curse. It’s a curse when America believes that there’s only one version of modernity, and it’s America, that everyone else just wants to be like America, and we can help them be like America.

Where it’s a blessing is that goodwill among Americans to help others.

America’s power can be other peoples’ humiliation. But America’s generosity can be other peoples’ saving. And so it’s crucial to get the right mixture.

HPR: What will happen after the revolutions? Will the results be favorable to the U.S.?

ES: I expect these are not going to be quick revolutions. Egypt and Tunisia have probably got the best chances of moving in a positive direction because of the institutions which are there and the civil society. Other countries don’t have the building blocks. Yemen or Libya might be five, ten, fifteen years of instability, or there might be a coup in which another strong man comes to power. So it’s difficult to tell. I think we should be thinking of the potential for instability for a while to come. There’s going to be this natural evolution that is going to happen, and some of it might come out well, and some of it might not.

HPR: What do you think we should be trying to achieve in these situations?

ES: You know, democracy doesn’t come just like that. It takes a while. And these countries have their own development path, and their own vision of where they want to go. Where it’s aligned with ours, we can support them in the right way, not tell them what they should be doing, but help support. At the end of the day, we don’t want to be thought of any more as the great Satan who propped up corrupt regimes. We want to be thought of as a country that lived by its values to genuinely support justice and dignity.

Henry Shull ‘13 is the Publisher. This interview has been condensed and edited.

SUMMER 2011 | REVOLUTIONS | HPR

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ENDPAPER My HPR Education A defense of student political expression Sam barr

Several weeks ago, a columnist for The Harvard Crimson announced that he’s sick of hearing other students blather on about their political opinions. “It requires a truly astonishing degree of presumptuousness,” Dhruv Singhal wrote, “for someone to believe that their particular insights on the appropriate balance between the cause of social justice and the prudence of free market economics ought to be, let alone is, of interest to anyone other than themselves.” Reading this diatribe, I had mixed feelings. There is undoubtedly value in intellectual humility; that’s true at any age but especially at this one. Why should anyone care what we think, when most of us haven’t had jobs, or credit card bills, or children?

The Harvard Political Review presumes that students’ conclusions are at least somewhat interesting and relevant to other people—mainly other students. But I don’t think that the main purpose of this magazine is to provide political analysis to a waiting world.

The HPR’s purpose is not primarily to educate our readers, though that would be a happy byproduct of publishing a magazine, but to educate ourselves. My four years with the HPR have been a continuing education, and not just in politics.

The first lesson I learned was that it can never hurt to ask. The HPR’s breadand-butter articles—the news analyses that appear in the Covers, U.S., and World sections—require interviewing people much more knowledgeable

and important than we are. In my first couple articles for the magazine, I resisted this requirement; I recall that one of my articles relied on only one interview. I thought as Singhal does: Why should anyone listen to my questions and contribute to my little article?

I got over those doubts—partly by failing to correct people who assumed I was a Kennedy School student, and partly by growing more confident that I actually had questions worth answering. Singhal would have us wait until some magical moment at which we become People Worth Talking To. But the process of becoming such a person is gradual.

Another lesson I learned from the HPR is that, if students are audacious enough to publish their work, they had better be prepared to defend it. Several times, we have had interviewees contact us and complain that we misrepresented their views. Sometimes we were totally in the wrong; sometimes not. It’s important to understand these experiences as educational, in addition to embarrassing. In Singhal’s view, student political expression is inherently arrogant and unproductive, but I think that these interactions were both humbling and helpful.

A final lesson arises from the fact that, believe it or not, sometimes people will actually like what students have written. In the Internet age, you can’t just put ideas out there without considering what will happen if they’re taken seriously. We learned this lesson

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last fall, when we published our report on the federal budget. We vaguely hoped that this project would get some mainstream attention, but it was still a shock to learn that we’d been invited to appear on Fox News. Rather than worrying about whether we deserve to be listened to, the more relevant issue for the student writer is how to react when we are, in fact, listened to. While I understand the impulse to wonder whether a mere college student has anything worthwhile to say about politics, the right response to that concern is to find something worthwhile to say, not to refrain from saying anything.

For most of us, our interest in politics began at a very young age; our first political expressions were no more profound than “My parents are Democrats/Republicans, so I am, too.”

Since then, we’ve seen the Bush-Gore recount, September 11th, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 election, and health care reform. We have learned some things along the way, as all politically engaged citizens have.

But it’s been a process—there were no sudden revelations that transformed us from political neophytes to firstclass wonks. If students don’t talk to each other about politics, that learning process will be stunted, and apathy and ignorance can take hold. Surely a little presumption is a fair price to pay to avoid that fate.

Sam Barr ‘11 is the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus.