Global Brief #17 | Spring • Summer 2015

Learn from our internationally renowned faculty how to create lasting deals, solve problems, build strong relationships, and improve your negotiation skills. These intensive courses offer a unique opportunity for you to learn negotiation skills and strategies in an enjoyable academic environment.

Register online at www.pon.harvard.edu/courses/GB For more information, contact us at pon@law.harvard.edu or +1 (617) 495-1684.

harvard ads.indd 1

3/7/2014 11:13 AM

Even Open Societies Can Calcify in their Certainties

EDITORS’ BRIEF

There is no nation that does not fancy itself on the right side of history. Fixity in ideas must be destabilized if there’s to be any human progress at all.

GB

COVER ILLUSTRATION: PAWEL KUCZYNSKI

misperceptions and misjudgements continue to plague China-US relations. He shows us how both countries can and must escape this trap.

In Tête à Tête, GB examines the multiple shocks hitting Moscow as well as the Kremlin’s policy and exit options with Vladimir Mau, rector of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. GB also exchanges with HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, building on the ideas of GB managing editor Sam Sasan Shoamanesh, about how to reengineer the Middle East or West Asia in terms of regional institutions, identity, citizenship and welfare (one of 21CQ’s major Questions).

In Query, Vyacheslav Tolkovanov of Ukraine’s Higher School of Public Administration and former head of the Ukrainian civil service assesses the reforms that Kiev must deliver – with heroic competence – if the country is to stitch itself back together and eventually prosper à l’européenne in the aftermath of Minsk 2.0 and more than 6,000 deaths in the Donbass war. Fred Lazar of the Schulich School of Business compares US and Chinese companies, in the year 2015, only to determine that US companies and industry still have enduring advantages that will be difficult to mimic or overcome by even the cleverest Chinese concerns.

In Nez à Nez, GB Geo-Blogger Alejandro Garcia Magos and Victor Armony of the Université du Québec à Montréal joust over whether Latin America is in fact the world’s least strategic theatre. (GB is in Warsaw for Cabinet Room, intently listening in on Poland’s paradoxical ‘post-planning’ period plans and projects.)

In The Definition, GB examines the import of international criminal justice in the context of war and peace in this early new century. Famed former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth, and Singaporean emeritus senior diplomat Tommy Koh all weigh in. In Strategic Futures, Phil Triadafilopoulos of the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance, John R. Bowen of Washington University in St. Louis, and GB Associate Editor Michael Barutciski look ahead to the state of Western multiculturalism in the year 2020.

In Situ reports come to us from The Asia Foundation’s Matthew B. Arnold in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, and also from Hovhannes Hovhannisyan in Yerevan, Armenia.

George Elliott Clarke, Toronto’s poet laureate, closes the book, waxing dystopically, in Epigram.

Enjoy your Brief. | GB

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

n’est pas «Charlie». But if GB’s preoccupation is not free speech as such, and if its modus operandi is not provocation at any cost, then the heart of its identity is high-brow analytics, sharp theses, and the avoidance of intellectual dogma or, even worse, intellectual banality – perhaps the greatest malady afflicting the English-language commentariat on international affairs in this early new century.

From politics to business and religion, even the most open societies – those in the West – can easily fall into the trap of facile or insular thought patterns (how can our thinking be banal if we are so developed?) – only to be excelled quickly by societies that have studied the West’s best, reengineered its nostrums, and added significant value to the human condition and its discourses.

GB does not believe in revolutions: too many people die in revolutions. But it does believe in adding edge at the margins to received wisdoms, reformulating ideas to advance debates, and pushing intellectual boundaries in order to rewire the brains of our readers the world over – and most of these readers are of the strategic ilk to begin with.

This rewiring of the 21st century strategic brain, then, is the preoccupation of the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of GB. Yoram Schweitzer of Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies launches this number in the One Pager by looking ahead at the next five years of terrorism – and specifically jihadist terrorism in light of the recent attacks in Sydney, Ottawa, Paris and Copenhagen. In the lead Feature, the University of Ottawa’s Wesley Wark tells us how to avoid an endless war against jihadist terrorists by exploiting the vulnerabilities in the strategic doctrine of jihadism, but also by investing in societal resilience and state preparation. Brett House of the University of Toronto’s Massey College makes the case for the private sector and private capital as essential (and thus far largely missing) inputs in the global fight against poverty – and this even if wealthy states offer generous international aid envelopes. Pierre Pahlavi of the Canadian Forces College (Montréal) explains Iran’s behaviour and options in the context of Tehran’s fraught nuclear dances with the P5+1 – just as we prepare for all to come to a head. Miloud Chennoufi of the Canadian Forces College (Toronto) then distills the five great lessons of the failed Arab Spring. Finally, Wang Dong of Peking University’s School of International Studies argues that

1

N O .1 7

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & PUBLISHER Irvin Studin

|

SPRING • SUMMER 2015

D E PA R T M E N T S

MANAGING EDITOR Sam Sasan Shoamanesh ART DIRECTOR Louis Fishauf ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michael Barutciski ASSISTANT EDITOR Marie Lavoie

EDITORS’ BRIEF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ONE PAGER

Yoram Schweitzer | Terrorism: The next five years . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

SENIOR EDITOR & ASSISTANT PUBLISHER

Jaclyn Volkhammer

IN SITU

SENIOR EDITOR Milos Jankovic

Matthew B. Arnold | 2015 will be a seminal year for Myanmar. . . . . 6

JUNIOR EDITORS

Hovhannes Hovhannisyan | Armenia pivots to Moscow . . . . . . . . 40

Carly Barefoot, Patrick Baud, Saad Khan, Navdeep Johal, Yves Guillaume A. Messy,

TÊTE À TÊTE

Misha Munim, Ryan Nichols, Zach Paikin

Vladimir Mau | Moscow’s shocks and options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

WEB DESIGN Dolce Publishing

Prince El Hassan bin Talal | The Middle East reimagined . . . . . . . . . . 42

PRINTING RJM Print Group ADVISORY COUNCIL

Sam Mizrahi, Don Ferencz, André Beaulieu, Tim Coates, David Dewitt, Paul Evans, Drew Fagan, Dan Fata, Margaret MacMillan

QUERY Vyacheslav Tolkovanov | How can Ukraine now modernize? . . . . . . . . . 18 Fred Lazar | Will Chinese companies finally displace US ones?. . . . . 52 IN THE CABINET ROOM Dusan Petricic | Post-planning Poland plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Mailing Address Global Brief Magazine 63 Oatlands Crescent Richmond Hill, ON L4C 9P2 Canada

NEZ À NEZ

General Enquiries, Feedback & Suggestions globalbrief@globalbrief.ca

THE DEFINITION

Subscriptions subscriptions@globalbrief.ca Advertising advertising@globalbrief.ca Article Submissions: submissions@globalbrief.ca

Alejandro Garcia Magos vs. Victor Armony Latin America is the world’s most astrategic continent. . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

“This century, the role of international criminal justice.... . . . . . 60 STRATEGIC FUTURES “In 2020, Western multiculturalism will…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 EPIGRAM

George Elliott Clarke | Rebooting ‘Utopia’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Global Brief® is published quarterly in Toronto, Canada by the Institute for 21st Century Questions and the Global Brief Society. The contents are copyrighted.

Subscription Rates One year (four issues) for CDN $38.

Two years (eight issues) for CDN $72.

HST or GST applies only to purchases in Canada.

Shipping and handling charges apply only to purchases outside of Canada.

The Institute for 21st Century Questions The Institute for 21st Century Questions (21CQ) is a vision and strategy tank that, in association with Global Brief magazine, aims to analyze and help provide real-life solutions to – and ambitiously participate in solution-making for – some of the major geopolitical, political and social questions of this new century. www.i21CQ.com

2

60

14

62

F E AT U RES

8

THE ENDLESS WAR? How to attack jihadist terrorism’s fallacies frontally, while calibrating state machinery and societal resilience for success BY WESLEY WARK

20

DEVELOPMENT FINANCE: ENTER THE PRIVATE SECTOR Making poverty history by 2030 will require massive increases in private investment, not just public aid BY BRETT HOUSE

28

IRAN ET OCCIDENT: RAPPROCHEMENT ET BLOCAGE Comment composer avec la double stratégie iranienne de survie et d’influence PAR PIERRE PAHLAVI

34

LES GRANDES LEÇONS DU PRINTEMPS ARABE Il y en a cinq, dont l’essentiel prône une dynamique régionale plus endogène, patiente, pacifique et inclusive PAR MILOUD CHENNOUFI

BEIJING-WASHINGTON: STRUCTURE, PERCEPTION & DESTINY On the causes, consequences and remedies of misreading the opposite number BY DONG WANG

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

46

3

University of Ottawa

Graduate studies in public and international affairs

It starts here.

The Graduate School of Public and International Affairs is one of a kind!

• An innovative program where public policy and international affairs come together • Cutting-edge research and high quality teaching by world class scholars and on-site practitioners bringing exceptional experience • The only bilingual program of its kind where you can study in either of Canada’s two official languages • Located in the heart of the national capital, an ideal place for theory and practice to come together in preparation for a career in public and international affairs

Submit your application today: www.socialsciences.uOttawa.ca/api

Terrorism: The Next Five Years

ONE PAGER

The efficiency of suicide attacks, a growing talent pool, and spreading ideology together pose a remarkable challenge in the defence

BY YORAM SCHWEITZER

A

an intention to establish an ever-expanding Islamic Caliphate. Western external policies will continue to obsess over the struggle to stanch the momentum and pull of ISIS, and to prevent the spillover of war and religious fundamentalism into neighbouring countries and, more generally, into the territories and societies of the developed world. To be sure, one must also not underestimate African terrorist groups like Boko Haram and Al Shabab – both of which pose serious threats to stability on the African continent.

These dynamics are unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

Throughout the world, technological advances are becoming increasingly available to the highest or most cunning bidder – military, civilian or terrorist. The rapid increase in the use of computer-based military operations, including drones and sophisticated missiles, raises the number of potential battlegrounds, allowing terrorists to target high-profile locations and assets, from various species of critical infrastructure to public institutions.

These trends point to the fact that, in a globalized world, the ideas and behaviour of religious extremists will touch Western countries, societies and ideas with growing frequency and intensity. History teaches that ideas are not bound to one physical territory. As the number of Western citizens volunteering to fight for radical organizations grows, it is clear that the salafijihadist ideology, too, is not self-limiting. Increased immigration from conflict zones to Western countries, accompanied by bottlenecks in finding employment and rising alienation and tension between immigrants and local populations, will pave the way for the use of terrorism as an expression of protest and vengeance in the name of extreme ideologies.

The main challenge for the next five years will continue to be the search for the appropriate theatres and loci to enable state and allied actors to foil terrorist attacks on the one hand, and to diminish domestic and regional factors contributing to the growth in the frequency of such attacks on the other.

States must seek not only to stop the bloodshed, but also to contain and tend to the strife and hardship of millions of refugees, as they represent the potential pool from which future jihadist terrorists will emanate. | GB

Yoram Schweitzer is head of the Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict Research Program at the Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

report published in January by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv revealed that in 2014, nearly 4,400 people were killed in 592 suicide attacks in 16 countries. In 2013, there were over 3,200 fatalities in over 300 suicide attacks. In 2012, there were some 2,300 fatalities in over 200 suicide attacks. The spike in terrorist attacks in late 2014 and early 2015 – in Pakistan, Australia, Nigeria, Canada, France and Denmark – alongside the sui generis North Korean cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, suggests a grim future in terms of global terrorism and asymmetric warfare. As jihadist ideology spreads across the Middle East through groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram and Al Shabab in Africa, the growing scope and volume of religiously inspired terrorism is cause for world-wide concern.

Post-WW2 suicide attacks were first introduced in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Up to the year 2000, a total of roughly 200 attacks had taken place. After 2000, the number grew exponentially, with some 4,200 successful attacks recorded – an escalation attributable to the inherent and increasingly plain advantages of suicide bombings: first, lethality; second, cost-effectiveness in terms of manpower and technology; and third, their unique psychological impact and utility in propaganda, including for the purpose of recruiting future bombers.

Of course, suicide bombings represent but a marginal proportion of all terrorist attacks. And yet, in the absence of successful containment, the continuing turmoil plaguing the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia will set the stage for growing violence that will increasingly spill over into the West. The upheaval accompanying the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa has created millions of refugees and displaced persons. Sub-state terrorist organizations have used this regional instability to seize control of vast swathes of land. Their power and prestige have, as a consequence, increased.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is the most prominent example of a motivated organization that has profited majestically from the fallout in the Middle East by occupying land and proclaiming

5

2015 Will Be a Seminal Year for Myanmar

IN SITU

For better or for worse... The country’s transition remains ambiguous, and its trajectory has not yet crystallized.

MATTHEW B. ARNOLD reports from Nay Pyi Taw

M Matthew B. Arnold is Program Director for The Asia Foundation in Myanmar. The views expressed

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

herein are his own.

6

yanmar, still widely known as Burma in international circles, is in the midst of a historic transition after five decades of outright military rule. Yet as the country prepares for an election required by the end of this year, there remains an open debate as to where things stand and where the country is heading. Even with Nay Pyi Taw’s recent moves toward democracy, economic reform, and international engagement, it is difficult to conclusively identify the country’s turning point away from military authoritarianism, or in fact to determine whether this point has even been reached.

The year 2008 was important because a new constitution ending full military control was adopted.

Then 2010 saw national elections that were boycotted by the major opposition party but otherwise resulted in an elected new civilian administration, with President Thein Sein coming to power in 2011.

In 2012, by-elections saw the National League for Democracy (NLD) of Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi participating and ultimately winning to form the parliamentary opposition party. In 2013, a peace process to resolve decades of widespread insurgency by ethnic minorities gained pace. The economy, long stalled by socialist policies and international sanctions (lifted in 2011), started to grow rapidly: at 7.8 percent in 2014, with a similar growth rate expected in 2015.

This year will be seminal for Myanmar, with a great deal at stake for the country’s political direction and internal stability. This will be the year when the many dynamics brewing over the past decade either converge toward sustained positive change, or else leave the country in a restrictive status quo. For optimists of the country’s transition, 2015 promises to bring together events critical to setting the country’s long-term path: national elections that are free and fully contested; a peace process with a formal path to a final settlement built on constitutional reform; and an economy further opened through the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community.

For critics of the current government, however, if they are not fully free and fair, then the November elections will entrench a superficial reform process (and with it a suspect legitimacy) primarily benefiting the country’s military-based elite. While there is now a civilian president and a parliament primarily composed of directly elected representatives, Myanmar’s government remains at best ‘semi-civilian,’

given the military’s automatic control over 25 percent of seats in parliament and total control over key ministries, including home affairs and defence.

Many analysts fear that this semi-civilian paradigm will not soon change.

Since assuming power in March 2011, President Thein Sein, a retired general who was a senior-ranking official in the previous junta, has implemented a raft of dramatic political and economic reforms. After decades of military authoritarianism shaded by socialist policies, a clear priority for Thein Sein’s government has been growing the economy of Southeast Asia’s poorest country by opening it to foreign investment and starting to privatize state enterprises. Following decades of sanctions and international isolation, Myanmar’s economy is at last expanding.

Another priority has been the implementation of decentralization reforms in order to overcome the legacies of what had been a highly centralized state built around surveillance and control of the population. While limited, this decentralization push saw the establishment in 2012 of 14 governments for all of Myanmar’s states and regions. These subnational governments have executive, legislative and judicial branches – something novel for a country previously defined by the rigid hierarchy of military authoritarianism. Decentralization is seen by Thein Sein as crucial for both improving social service provision at the local level as well as boosting economic growth.

Decentralization is also an attempt to accommodate Myanmar’s remarkable demographic diversity through greater local participation and governance: Myanmar’s population stands at approximately 51 million, with dozens of ethnic minorities.

A third priority reform area for Thein Sein has been the intensification of efforts to resolve over a dozen insurgencies by ethnic minorities mostly spread along Myanmar’s mountainous eastern periphery. Many of these insurgencies have raged since the country’s independence in 1948, and have pitted ethnic armed groups, often seeking secession or at least significant autonomy, against the Myanmarese army and a range of proxy militias. Current peacebuilding efforts have centred on signing individual ceasefire agreements with ethnic armed groups amid plans for a comprehensive national ceasefire in 2015 – one that could subsequently lead to an extended peace process. Though many ceasefires have been brokered over the past several years, fighting con-

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / GEMUNU AMARASINGHE

ticularly the financial and banking sectors.

The mood of Myanmar’s public remains mixed – overall hopeful, but decidedly cautious. A recent public perception survey by The Asia Foundation found that a majority (62 percent) report that the country is moving in the right direction. A significant number (68 percent) believe that the 2015 elections will be free and fair. Progress for most of the population is defined by the quality of life improvements

that come from sustained economic growth; jobs are a clear priority. Other simpler signs of change, such as the construction of new roads, are also significant for the national psyche. Myanmar’s citizens endured 50 years of military authoritarianism, with stunted social, political and economic development.

Slow but steady therefore seems to be the mantra shared by a public that has minimal expectations but is still hoping for the best. Nevertheless, it is clear that doubts linger and that many Myanmarese still question the sincerity of the government to deliver meaningful change. Recent elections to Yangon’s municipal government, for instance, saw turnout at only a quarter of eligible voters – a worrying sign of skepticism in action.

Amid violent upheavals elsewhere in the world – from the Middle East (see the Feature article by Miloud Chennoufi at p. 34) to the former Soviet space (see the Query article by Vyacheslav Tolkovanov at p. 18) – Myanmar’s transition has been characterized by some commentators as a “revolution without losers.” While there may be a democratic opening and an expanding economy, the military is still getting everything that it was looking for when it designed the new constitution: economic growth and international acceptance for the state, and sufficient political control over it all to feel comfortable and secure. Overcoming this basic reality in a manner that does not provoke a coup is the central challenge facing the country. The country’s near future remains uncertain. By the end of 2015, things will be much clearer – for better or for worse. | GB

Myanmar's President Thein Sein inspects officers and soldiers during a ceremony to mark the 67th anniversary of the country's independence in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, January 2015.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

tinues in Kachin and Shan states near the Chinese border. While no ethnic armed groups now demand secession, they are nearly unanimous in calling for a federal system – something that would require major amendments to the current constitution, or even a new one. In an unprecedented move, the Thein Sein government and the military have both acknowledged that some species of ‘federal’ system must be established, and that the constitution will, to this end, require significant changes.

Despite the stated reform intentions of the Thein Sein government, the country has also suffered a number of setbacks: the pace of reform is slow at best, and decidedly uneven. Political reforms, for instance, have not progressed in the manner that the NLD, as well as many other smaller parties and much of civil society, would like. The Union Solidarity and Development Party, the military-backed party that forms the government, has refused to amend the constitution in order to reduce or end the military quota in parliament before the 2015 elections. The government has also refused to rescind the clause in the constitution that effectively bars Aung San Suu Kyi from ever ascending to the presidency. For her part, Aung Sang Suu Kyi has repeatedly rebuked the West and regional neighbours for being naïve about the pace and depth of reform, citing military control and repressed press freedom as tell-tale signs that change is still superficial in many ways.

She has pressured the government by declining to declare whether the NLD will even stand in the 2015 elections. At the same time, she has clearly stated that she does not want international sanctions – particularly by the US and the EU – to be reimposed on Nay Pyi Taw. At this point, to do so would do nothing to catalyze political reform or the wider transition.

In terms of economic growth, there are also significant challenges facing Myanmar. The economy, which is based on agriculture and a rural population, has so far largely enjoyed the easy wins of simply opening up and the easing of sanctions. Sustained, deeper growth is still lacking, and outside of Yangon – the largest city and commercial centre – the appearance of change is muted. A large proportion of the country’s economic prospects are dependent on the development of offshore natural gas fields. As such, economic growth is challenged by the recent severe drop in global energy prices (see the Tête à Tête interview with Vladimir Mau at p. 14), as many of the offshore gas fields are simply uneconomical at current prices. Moreover, past socialist economic planning means that revising economic governance to be more business-friendly will prove a massive undertaking.

The World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ rankings for 2014 placed Myanmar 177th among 189 countries.

While some sectors, such as telecoms, have seen remarkable transformation, others remain archaic and in need of complex, extensive reforms – par-

7

Wesley Wark is Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa.

THE

ENDLESS

WAR?

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

COUNTER-TERRORISM IN THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY

8

he only endless wars are the ones fought over ideas. Wars of treasure, of territory, and of prestige and power all find their destructive finales. The 21st century conflict with jihadist terrorist groups, set in motion by the 9/11 attacks, threatens to become an endless war – but only if the right set of responses by states and societies threatened by terrorism cannot be found.

The latest round of searching for these right responses has been set off by the recent wave of terrorist attacks: in Ottawa in October 2014, in Sydney in December 2014, in Paris and then in Copenhagen, respectively, in January and February of this year.

This wave of attacks has led to concerns that the global community faces some new kind of terrorist threat, and that it is somehow unprepared to meet it, despite more than a decade of deadly experience with jihadist attacks and enormous investments in intelligence and security measures (see the One Pager by Yoram Schweitzer at p. 5).

The sense of being unprepared feeds on an alarmist impulse that inflates the terrorist threat, connects disparate attacks to build a picture of upward trending terrorist violence, and feeds on the notion of a growing mismatch between new terrorist capabilities and existing counter-terrorism

powers. The cumulative impact of such alarmism is to demand that something new be done – and as a matter of urgency. Often this something new will take the shape of proposals for new legal powers or new social policies. Alarmism can be a force for some good – a kind of nervous system jangling – but only if harnessed to a proportionate response designed to improve counter-terrorism effectiveness, rather than to make matters worse.

In periods of heightened alarm and reactive impulses, it is easy to miss the bigger picture that should inform counter-terrorism. That bigger picture needs to be based on an understanding of the strategic notions that underpin jihadist terrorism, and of the exploitable fallacies that they contain, fused with an appreciation of the key ‘pillar’ capacities of counter-terrorism.

Before alarmism is allowed to dictate any agendas for change, it is also important to recognize the significance of societal responses in places that have come under recent attack. Anyone who has lived in a city subjected to unexpected terrorist violence – as I did in Ottawa in October 2014 – will know the sinking feeling of disbelief, the shock of death tolls, the voracious media reporting, and the sense of something unfolding beyond one’s control. But one will also know how quickly normalcy comes flooding back in, and how magnificently well societies can respond, without any orchestration, to shock. In Ottawa, in October of last year, it was the silent public vigil at the National War Memorial attended by thousands, the mounds of flowers and mementos to honour a young soldier, Corporal Nathan Cirillo, slain while on ceremonial guard duty by a terrorist – who was in turn killed shortly after he entered the Parliament

How to attack jihadist terrorism’s fallacies frontally, while calibrating state machinery and societal resilience for success

BY WESLEY WARK

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

9

ILLUSTRATION: PAWEL KUCZYNSKI

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

10

buildings close by. In Paris, it was the «Je suis Charlie» campaign and the reclaiming of the city by Parisians in solemn procession down the great boulevards. In Sydney, it was a social media campaign – “I’ll ride with you” – designed to proclaim solidarity with Australian Muslims who might feel threatened by any kind of backlash against the killings at the Café Lindt in Martin Place. All of these responses were indicators of a real societal resilience – embedded rather than built. Societal resilience, especially its spontaneous demonstration, is a key guarantor of success in counter-terrorism, and indeed a sign that the counter-terrorism battles of the 21st century should not degenerate into an endless war.

Societal resilience is a foundation for counterterrorism success. But it cannot stop – only absorb – terrorist attacks and terrorist threats. Knowing the enemy is, as always, critical. The performance of state intelligence systems thus becomes key to counter-terrorism success and the avoidance of endless wars. These systems typically analyze threats to security by attempting to understand both the intentions and capabilities of threat actors. When dealing with state actors, capabilities – especially of the hard power variety – can be captured and measured with a reasonable prospect of success by intelligence systems deploying an array of collection techniques. The intentions of state actors can morph from puzzles – whose clues lie in official statements, unofficial pronouncements and signalling, ideology and historical tendencies – to mysteries, where unpredictability, chance and the prospect of surprise might reign. With terrorist groups, however, the balance of difficulty between measuring capabilities and intentions is often stood on its head. Intentions – particularly on the part of jihadist groups – are often broadcast and are a central element of the reputation, status and recruiting power of a particular terrorist entity. Terrorist capabilities, for their part, become the hard question, as they are amorphous, disaggregated, and small in scale. Surprise lies in wait here.

In the current environment, we face a significant divide between two different kinds of global jihadist strategic thinking. Understanding terrorist capabilities and aligning counter-measures depends on understanding this strategic divide. One strategic direction is a direct legacy of the concepts propounded by Osama bin Laden during his time as founder and leader of Al Qaeda. That strategy was rooted in the idea of Al Qaeda as a vanguard jihadist organization that would draw others in the Muslim Ummah to its cause and provide direction, organization and assistance to allied groups prepared to swear bayat (loyalty) to the Al Qaeda cause and its leader. Al Qaeda’s ability to function as a central directorate for global jihad was dependent – as bin Laden had long recognized, starting in the period of

development in the Sudan in the early 1990s – on the organization being able to operate from a physical safe haven. The ultimate, if temporary, success of the bin Laden strategic model was the 9/11 attack mounted from Afghanistan against the so-called ‘far enemy’ – taking advantage of Al Qaeda activities and groups spread broadly around the world, with the Hamburg cell a notable example.

The successor to the bin Laden strategic vision is, I would argue, ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), with its self-proclaimed caliphate and its efforts to secure and administer territory across a broad swath of Syria and Iraq, while also building itself up as the new global jihadist vanguard – even to the extent of trying to bind bin Laden’s former deputy and current head of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to its will and direction. The current threat posed by ISIS echoes the threat once posed by bin Laden’s Al Qaeda – the threat of a jihadist organization under strong and capable leadership, able to control territory and resources, and disposed to use these to direct external attacks and inspire followers (see the Feature article by Miloud Chennoufi at p. 34). To the extent that ISIS is able to expand its reach by drawing to its cause jihadist groups in territories as far flung as Afghanistan, Libya and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, it may ultimately exceed the threat once posed by Al Qaeda and its affiliates (see the Tête à Tête interview with Prince El Hassan bin Talal at p. 42).

B

ut while ISIS may aspire to a command and control strategy for global jihad, there is a competing vision at large.

Its most famous proponent is an Al Qaeda ‘renegade’ and jihad theoretician named Abu Musab al-Suri. Al-Suri, or Nasar, was captured in a police raid in Quetta, Pakistan in October 2005, and may be currently held in secret detention by the US authorities, who had issued a reward of US$5 million for his arrest. Al-Suri’s influence did not end with his arrest or dissipate in the mysterious circumstances of his life since 2005. He established a remarkable presence on jihadist websites, culminating in the appearance of a long online manifesto (some 1,600 pages) entitled The Global Islamic Resistance Call. The illuminating study of al-Suri by the Norwegian scholar, Brynjar Lia, in the book Architect of Global Jihad contains an excerpt from al-Suri’s Internet book that takes us to the heart of his theory of jihad.

In this work, al-Suri argues that jihad must take two forms, which he calls the “individual terrorism jihad” and the “jihad at the Open Fronts.” The former is, he believes, a precondition for the latter: “The jihad of individual or cell terrorism, using

rooted in the notion that jihadist terrorism can be sustained against all counter-measures, both at home and abroad; that it can gain longevity; and that it can raise its campaign to the level of long-term, ideological war. That path can only be achieved through significant counter-terrorism failures in the aggregate. Preventing all jihadist terror attacks cannot be the real goal. Instead, what is critical is to sustain good counter-terrorism capacity in order to deprive jihad terrorism of any prospect of longevity.

C

ounter-terrorism starts at home. Its methods can be extended and adapted to embrace overseas fights – whether to aid regimes under threat or to counter jihadist groups seeking to fight their way to the possession of a state. Its capacity rests on five pillars: a strong legal regime; good surveillance and intelligence capacity; good threat assessment and warning ability; effective engagement with vulnerable communities; and public knowledge and legitimacy. While this might be seen as a near-universal architecture, individual states will bring to the table different combinations of strengths and weaknesses among these pillars.

It is therefore important to understand what might be the principal contribution of each pillar and how these pillars interconnect to deal with individual jihad terrorism.

Legal regimes provide proper mandates for police and intelligence agencies, identify terrorism as a special and serious crime, prioritize and provide sanctions against different forms of terrorist criminality, try to have a deterrent effect, and often dictate the terms of the rehabilitation of offenders. More broadly, they define and protect rights.

A legal regime reaches into every other pillar of counter-terrorism. It is, rightly, the first pillar. But strong legal regimes are not enough. They have to be matched to resources and a willingness to utilize criminal sanctions, and they have to meet the test of public legitimacy.

Surveillance and intelligence capacity serves to identify threats, and assists in preventing attacks by interventions, through disrupting plots and facilitating arrests, and also by aiding in the capture of suspects and the mitigation of damage in the aftermath of successful attacks. Surveillance capacity begins with lawful mandates, but requires skilled resources, high levels of technological ability, and an ability to separate ‘signals’ (real threats) from ‘noise.’ Surveillance is a ‘shared good.’ To be effective, its practices and intelligence haul must be shared among government agencies, between government and relevant private sector organizations, and among states. In a threat environment shaped

Societal resilience is a foundation for counterterrorism success.

But it cannot stop – only absorb – terrorist attacks and threats.

Knowing the enemy is, as always, critical.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

the methods of urban or rural guerilla warfare, is fundamental for exhausting the enemy and causing him to collapse and withdraw, God willing. The open front jihad is fundamental for seizing control over land in order to liberate it, and establish Islamic law, with the help of God. The individual terrorism jihad and guerilla warfare conducted by small cells paves the way for the other kind (Open Front Jihad), aids and supports it. Without confrontation in the field and seizure of land, however, a state will not emerge for us. And this is the strategic goal for the Resistance project.”

While al-Suri’s strategic vision may be seen at work in ISIS’s effort to conduct its own ‘open front jihad’ in Syria (al-Suri’s birthplace) and Iraq, it has also been proclaimed as a guiding doctrine by ISIS competitors, such as the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat Al Nusra. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) published excerpts from al-Suri’s The Global Islamic Resistance Call in the first issues of its magazine, Inspire.

It would be overreach to suggest that al-Suri’s doctrine of individual jihad binds together the unconnected recent activities of terrorists in Ottawa, Sydney, Paris and Copenhagen, and gives them an overall strategic purpose. The greater likelihood is that none of the terrorist perpetrators had ever heard of al-Suri or read his manifesto or been in any way guided by it. Still, the aftermath of their attacks lends credence to a next generation of terrorists who may now find strategic purpose in individual attacks.

The challenge of “individual terrorism jihad” will be measured in the future against its operational pace. Any cascade of such attacks will be dangerous. However, it is important to note that al-Suri’s strategic rationale for “individual terrorism jihad” is itself rooted in a fallacy – namely that it can cause the exhaustion and collapse of entire societies. And yet the societal resilience on display – not just in the face of recent terrorist attacks, but in all the instances of modern jihadist terrorism, large and small, since 2001 – is a fundamental refutation of the premise.

Individual terrorism achieves no strategic objective on its own. This is because it is small in scale and disaggregated, and cannot on its own overcome the resilience demonstrated to date by various societies.

(Individual jihadist terrorism also depends on the inspirational effects of an attempt to seize and create jihadist states abroad. Denying such ambitions undermines whatever allure individual jihadist acts might have.) Of course, the problem lies in a potential escalatory cycle in which individual jihadist attacks, if they go unchecked, provide encouragement for other ‘lone wolf’ jihadists and propaganda value for terrorist causes; and also, to be sure, if societies subject to sporadic attacks overreact either domestically or their international behaviour.

The fear of an endless counter-terrorism war is

11

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

The fear of an endless counterterrorism war is rooted in the notion that jihadist terrorism can be sustained against all countermeasures, both at home and abroad; that it can gain longevity; and that it can raise its campaign to the level of long-term, ideological war.

12

by the overlap between individual jihad terrorism and ‘open front’ conflict, with the connector being the two-way flow of foreign fighters, the targets of surveillance are in global motion, both physically and virtually.

Bref, too little surveillance is debilitating; too much, on the other hand, stresses the legal regime, backfires with vulnerable communities, and undermines public legitimacy.

Surveillance feeds assessment, which involves making sense, both strategic and tactical, of the threat environment. Here, the technology of 21st century surveillance – so much of it sniffing the web and listening in on mobile devices – gives way to technology-assisted human judgement, rooted in carefully honed expertise on terrorist groups, on individual actors, and on the history, language, culture and religions of regions beset by terrorist conflict. Without good assessment, expensive and resource-intensive surveillance is often useless.

Without good assessment, surveillance does not know where to look, or look next. But, of course, without sufficient surveillance capacity, assessment is just guessing.

Community engagement supports surveillance and is also an alternative to surveillance where surveillance has no right to be. But it is much more than that. Community engagement involves a mutual contract between the state and affected and vulnerable communities to assist each other in pursuing a common goal: ensuring that jihadist terrorist thinking does not take hold; if it does start to take hold, to attempt to dissuade and offer better alternatives; and if it cannot be stopped in the first instance, to offer a capacity for rehabilitation. The onus is not on the community to heal itself without help; nor is it on the state to step in unilaterally. The essence is a delicate compact.

However, without real community engagement, counter-terrorism will founder. And even with engagement, individual jihad terrorism will adapt to community watchfulness and interventions.

(Typical forms of adaptation will involve silence, deception, and ‘sleeping.’ But even these forms of discipline will drive the embrace of jihad further to the margins and reduce the appeal and chances for success of individual jihadism.)

Public legitimacy and knowledge are too rarely identified as critical elements of counter-terrorism – perhaps because they are taken for granted. Citizens demand high levels of safety and security from their governments. Still, beyond this it is important to note that in order to support counter-terrorism, citizens need to have a capacity to understand threats to national security, and to understand the nature of government powers and responses. Public trust that the government is responding well to terrorism threats and not abusing its power in doing so,

or not unnecessarily intruding on civil liberties and privacy rights, has to be constantly earned through government efforts at public education and information flows, and backstopped by independent mechanisms to review the activities of security and intelligence agencies.

Counter-terrorism capacity may be focussed on dealing with domestic threats, but it manifestly relies on global connections to be effective. Burden sharing on threats and targets, intelligence sharing, the sharing of technological capacities for surveillance and data management, and attention to best practices all contribute to global connectivity among counter-terrorism partners.

Where do the gaps typically lie? The answer will, of course, vary from state to state. Mature counterterrorism states possess all five pillars of the counterterrorism architecture to a reasonable degree. Most Western democracies have had enough time and experience since 9/11 to rise to this standard. But in dealing with the twin threats of individual terrorism jihad and ‘open front’ jihad, a new onus is going to be placed, in my view, on three key areas: enhanced, technologically driven surveillance of global communications; much improved threat assessment and warning; and public legitimacy and knowledge. These priority areas may well fly in the face of conventional thinking, which, as we have seen in Canada, the UK and France, tends to reach for new legal powers to deal with heightened levels of threat. It also flies in the face of adverse public reactions to the Snowden revelations about global electronic surveillance. Little attention is usually paid to the functions of threat assessment and early warning, despite their obviously critical function, and in many systems such capabilities are relatively under-resourced (certainly compared to the resourcing of intelligence collection). Public demand for greater awareness of terrorism threats is not much in evidence, nor is there any kind of sustained debate about the importance of public legitimacy in conducting counter-terrorism operations.

I

dentifying and rectifying counter-terrorism capability gaps in a systematic rather than purely reactive and alarmist way is critical to success. Understanding the reinforcing nature of each counter-terrorism pillar is essential to setting goals and defining the limits of reform in a world where the perfect counter-terrorism state will never – and should never – be found.

But thinking about the inevitable limits on an imperfect system is not counsel for despair – and this is because counter-terrorism’s imperfections are more than matched by the strategic fallacies at the heart of jihad terrorism.

Al-Suri’s advocacy of ‘open front’ jihad is rooted in the assumption that terrorist groups can win

the making, they remain a work in progress both in terms of the advancing technological capabilities that allow for hidden and encrypted communications and the surveillance challenges of detecting true signals amid the bountiful noise on the web.

But the objective should be clear: to deny easy and uncontested access to the web as a force multiplier for individual terrorism.

I

AVOIDING THE ENDLESS WAR n the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks in January 2015, the Belgian authorities moved to break up a terrorist cell that was apparently planning attacks on police targets in Brussels.

One individual identified as a possible mastermind for the plot is a jihadist once based in Syria who goes by the name of Abou Omar Al-Belgiki (‘the Belgian’) in online postings. Like other Europeans who have joined the foreign fighter stream to Syria, he has been used for recruitment messaging. In one such video message from 2014, he appealed to young Muslims in Europe, who lead a life of “humiliation,” to join him in conducting jihad. He argued that only violent jihad could end their troubles, saying: “You will find this only in your religion, only in jihad. Is there anything better than jihad or a martyr?”

The best way to avoid endless terrorist war is to ensure that the answer is: of course there is something better – much better – than jihad and martyrdom. Without demonstrated successes in achieving its strategic objectives, jihad will wither and die. Counter-terrorism’s ultimate goal is not to stop every attack or to find a magic solution for preventing all individuals from being drawn to jihad, but to deny jihadist terrorism any longevity: by halting efforts to create jihadist states; by preventing most terrorist attacks; by sanctioning terrorist crimes; and, to be sure, by demonstrations of great societal resilience when attacks do occur. Individual jihad terrorism, as al-Suri recognized, will have little effect unless it is tied to the bigger aim of achieving the jihad state through ‘open front’ conflict. States and societies will have to demonstrate strong and sustainable resolve to never allow the emergence of such jihadist states and statelets.

Finally, successful counter-terrorism also involves political dialogue and action in a democratic space – this in order to deny and counter the narrative of Muslim humiliation and the validity of violent jihad, and indeed to legitimate security measures. But this is not a war of ideas. A war of ideas should have no hold. For jihadist strategies are not sufficient in and of themselves to elevate terrorism to an endless war of ideas. And such a war will have no hold unless faulty counter-terrorism strategies, at home and abroad, allow it. | GB

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

conventional battles to control states. Yet jihadist terrorist groups cannot fight their way to building a state – that is, unless states and societies decide not to fight back. If there is one lesson engraved on the global security consciousness by the 9/11 attacks, it is the necessity to never allow a terrorist entity to enjoy a safe haven from which to operate or to enjoy some of the attributes of a state in terms of resources and protections. This is true whether one refers to Al Qaeda as a state within a state in Afghanistan, or to the proclamation of a caliphate

by ISIS (perhaps to be followed soon by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria). It follows that talk of a ‘containment’ strategy, borrowed from the Cold War era, is nonsense, as the balance of potential force between any jihadist group and the international community overwhelmingly militates against the success of any ‘open front’ jihad.

Individual jihad terrorism rests on the strategic fallacy that the states and societies against which its attacks and venom are directed are weak, corrupt and rotten – and this because they do not represent the kinds of states that jihad terrorists wish to see erected in their place. However, strategic fallacies do not, in and of themselves, end the threat: ‘open front’ jihad feeds on instability, political chaos, and more generally on the body of failed states and bad governance. At the same time, it exposes itself to counteraction through the exercise of military power, diplomatic action and development assistance; and it exposes itself to the challenge of governance and public support, where it will always be fatally weak.

Individual jihad terrorism feeds on the web. The web provides space for inspirational messaging, propaganda, recruitment, training and expertise, and financial flows. The web is – like it or not – a facilitator of terrorism. It is also a free and open space and needs to be defended as such, for that is its value. Nevertheless, a way must be found to check the exploitation of the web by jihad terrorist attack planners and the creation of dark spaces for operational purposes. The web posits its own endless war possibilities; and yet we need to be less concerned about terrorism propaganda on the web – which will be ultimately self-defeating without strategic successes – and more about the operational communications that feed attacks.

Successful counter-terrorism needs its own workable, legitimate strategy for dealing with the web. On the surveillance side, this means legitimate powers to surveil the web. It means having the technological capability to stay abreast of changes to web-based communications technologies in order to avoid the development of a dark-space web closed off to surveillance. It means, to be sure, developing a lawful capacity to shut down that tiny proportion of web-based communications that involves serious terrorist activity. While these capacities are in

13

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

14

Countries can usually cope with one type of shock, but what’s to be done with all of these shocks concurrently? Such a combination can be difficult because you have to use not only different but indeed opposite or contradictory instruments to deal with individual crises.

PHOTOGRAPH: VALERY KRAINOV / RANEPA

Moscow’s Shocks and Options

TÊTE À TÊTE

GB examines Russia’s concurrent crises and possible exits with one of its leading economic thinkers Conversation with VLADIMIR MAU

GB: What are the causes of the current economic crisis in Russia?

Vladimir Mau is Rector of Russia’s Presidential Academy of

GB: What are the manifestations of the crisis today?

What is different today in Russia than a year ago or five years ago?

National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) in

VM: Five years ago was 2008-2009 – that is, the beginning of the global crisis – and so Russia’s economy contracted significantly that year, as with the global economy. However, with the exception of 2009, Russian growth rates from 2000 to 2012 were above global averages. From 2013, the average growth of Russia has been lower than that of many advanced economies. Of course, this is quite painful. It is a very important indicator that the national growth model should be debated and changed.

Moscow.

GB: What can be done on the structural side?

VM: In broad terms, to put it succinctly, there should be a shift from a demand-side economy to a supply-side economy: radical improvement of the investment climate, moderation of taxes, more robust contract law, and so on. This is the opposite of increasing demand through budget spending. This is, to some extent, what Margaret Thatcher did in the early 1980s in the UK. For the last 15 years, the Russian economy grew mostly based on increasing demand from households and companies. It is clear that for sustainable economic growth you need to do much more for the business environment – to stimulate demand through instruments such as taxes and monetary policy, and through institutions like the court system, competition policy, and so on.

But when your economy is based on a flood of rent money, you do not need institutions. This is a not uncommon dynamic in history. I would urge GB readers to consider the Spanish empire in the 16th century, which started that century as one of the world’s biggest and most international economies, and entered the 17th century as one of the poorest countries in Europe because of the flood of silver and gold from the Americas. The Soviet Union col-

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

VM: Russia is facing a unique combination of structural, cyclical and external shocks. I would say that there are several causes of the current crisis. First of all, Russia is affected by the structural crisis that has hit the advanced economies of Europe. Second, there is a business cycle issue for Russia’s economy.

There is a downturn in terms of the investment cycle of some of the biggest state-controlled corporations.

Third, there are external shocks – on the one hand plummeting oil prices (see the Tête à Tête interview with Prince El Hassan bin Talal at p. 42), and on the other hand international sanctions, which have cut some enterprises off from the financial markets of advanced economies.

I would also note that Russia has an increasing birth rate but a diminishing working population.

Last year, therefore, we had the phenomenon of a diminishing growth rate with diminishing national unemployment. Put together, as mentioned, Russia has been hit by a combination of structural, cyclical and external shocks. Countries can usually cope with one type of shock, but what’s to be done with all of these shocks concurrently? Such a combination can be difficult because you have to use not only different but indeed opposite or contradictory instruments to deal with individual crises. For instance, for the cyclical crisis, you have to enact countercyclical policy, such as budgetary or fiscal stimulus and something like quantitative easing or monetary stimulus. For the external shock, however, the traditional recommendation is the opposite of stimulus: you have to consolidate the budget and keep the macroeconomic fundamentals as conservative as possible. So different economic diseases have different remedies.

In my view, the structural problem is Russia’s most important challenge – more important than even the sanctions or the steep fall in the price of oil. The structural problem consists in the fact that, over the last 10 years, Russia failed to launch profound, sustained institutional reforms. Everyone recognizes the crying need for such reforms, but when you have a lot of money – in Russia’s case,

oil money before the crisis – the incentives for such reform are not compelling. The result is institutional decay that is not atypical for many economies based on resource rents.

15

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

16

lapsed to a large extent because its economy was adjusted to high oil prices; so when oil prices fell institutions were destroyed. Bref: windfall money destroys institutions and growth – this is something of a general rule. Excess money leads to the decay of institutions, or the failure to bring about reforms. And so Russia, at the start of this new century, needs reform of its non-economic institutions – the court system, law enforcement, property rights, and other institutions (see the Query article

by Fred Lazar at p. 52).

GB: What can be done on the shock side, and is the shock-side remedy more long term than the structural remedy?

VM: Institutional reforms are strongly needed in any event – for both the structural problem and the external shocks. The good news is that the Russian economy currently has several advantages, even in the face of today’s economic crisis: very low

sovereign debt (about 12 percent of GDP) and very low external sovereign debt (about two percent of GDP). There is almost no budget deficit. Unemployment is very low. International reserves are high; to be sure, they have diminished over the last year, but they remain quite high because the central bank shifted to inflation targeting and effectively stopped wasting reserves.

All of this is important in order to withstand external shocks, and in a very cheap way. It would be very dangerous to repeat the experience of the Soviet Union, which also faced a double shock in the mid-1980s – a budgetary shock due to a decrease in the price of oil, and an anti-alcohol campaign that destroyed the second important pillar of the Soviet budget: excises on alcohol. The Soviet Union mistakenly started to increase both its debt and its budget deficit: the economy accelerated for two years and then collapsed. So it is important to balance the economy properly and carefully. What is key, in the short run, is budgetary policy – that is, to find efficiencies, and also budget planning in order to shift to expenditures with high multipliers, including social and transport infrastructure. Of course, export stimulus is also very important.

Sometimes you can entertain import substitution ideas, as we have been doing. But import substitution without the stimulation of non-raw material exports is not a very efficient policy for the time being in Russia. So we need a special policy to support exports and a policy to stimulate competition, because the current situation with the low and unstable exchange rate is the biggest barrier to the competitiveness of Russia – far worse than the sanctions-cum-counter-sanctions dynamic, even if this dynamic also has an impact on the ruble.

GB: Is the fall of the ruble mostly or only partly related to the fall in the price of oil?

VM: To a large extent, the price of oil is the dominant factor. But the central bank has not really defended the ruble. To my mind, this was a very courageous step by the governor of the central bank, because she was under significant pressure to defend the ruble. Of course, we know from history and from theory that the defence of the value of an international currency in the face of sustained pressure on it only lasts until a country runs out of reserves.

GB: How do you see the price of oil evolving over the next year or two, and what will be the implications for Russia?

VM: Yegor Gaidar, the late former Russian prime minister, said that you should never predict oil prices. But we can and should use this period of crisis in oil prices to adjust our institutions. I say this because we now have much more manoeuvring room on institutional reform than we would have in the context of high resource rents.

GB: If sanctions were removed against Russia, would the Russian economy bounce back?

VM: Not back. Oil prices are more important than sanctions, but sanctions provide some restrictions on inflow of money – of capital – into the country.

I would not say that this is the most important factor at the moment, but evidently the removal of sanctions would soften the economic situation. In 2008, oil prices were also falling, but financial markets were closed after the Lehman Brothers crash.

Of course, the situation then was a bit easier. The financial markets opened quite soon afterward (see the Feature article by Brett House at p. 20). This was a source of some stabilization for the financial situation. At present, Russian companies have limited access to international finance and our structural reforms are still ahead of us.

GB: But the removal of sanctions would presumably relieve psychological pressure and increase investor confidence?

VM: Naturally. I would also note that, at the moment, Russia is very cheap for international investors to buy assets. There are no political tensions. So this is actually an excellent time to buy.

GB: How long would serious structural reform take?

GB: How serious is Russia’s pivot to Asia, which seems to have intensified in response to Western sanctions?

Excess money leads to the decay of institutions, or the failure to bring about reforms. And so Russia, at the start of this new century, needs reform of its non-economic institutions – the court system, law enforcement, property rights, and other institutions.

GB: What are some possible moves for Russia to address its demographic issues?

VM: This is a long-term problem, so it is not something that can be done easily. For starters, now would be a good time to increase the national pension age. Russia’s national pension age – currently 55 for women, and 60 for men – was determined in the context of a completely different economic system.

Of course, there should be multiple incentives for demographic improvements, including in respect of migration. We have a lot of migrants to this country, and yet many migrants are now leaving the country because the ruble has lost value against their native currency. Another problem is the birth rate, which has improved but remains quite low. I do not think that we can do something radically better with the birth rate in the near term, even if we have made some headway over the past few years.

GB: Will the ruble stabilize at some point in the near future?

VM: This very much depends on oil prices. As I noted, I am not prepared to predict oil prices. But the ruble will definitely find a new equilibrium – and sooner rather than later. | GB

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

VM: It would not be generational in duration. Evidently, institutional reform is more complicated and takes longer than macroeconomic stabilization, but I would not say that institutional reform is impossible to realize – not at all. In terms of the length of time to realization, different reforms clearly come with different timelines and complications. Stimulation of competition policy, or, say, budgetary reform, may not take a long time. On the other hand, credible anti-corruption reforms or judicial reforms take a much longer time. Some countries are not able to bring these reforms about successfully. All of these reforms, of course, will have to be studied.

VM: Export diversification is in itself important. But we should not forget that nearly half of Russian trade is with Europe. To be sure, Asia is a growing market (see the Feature article by Dong Wang at p. 46). It is a huge market. With or without international sanctions, it is important to pay attention to this market. But again, let us not forget that only a tiny proportion of the Russian population lives in the eastern part of the country. Russia is a European and Europe-leaning country, and will always be so.

This does not mean that the eastern dimension is unimportant. But to repeat, sanctions or not, this eastern front is important because Asia is emerging and booming.

17

How Can Ukraine Now Modernize?

QUERY

Vyacheslav Tolkovanov is Director of the National Scientific Research Institute on Public Administration and Local Government, and Professor in Ukraine’s Higher School of Public Administration.

He is past head of the Ukrainian

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Civil Service.

18

After Minsk 2.0, only an ambitious programme of reforms and heroic competence can heal, unite and bring the country into Europe whole BY VYACHESLAV TOLKOVANOV

T

he revolutionary events of 2014, the subsequent presidential and parliamentary elections, and, of course, the military conflict in the Donbass – with over 6,000 people killed and more than a million displaced – have conspired to give unprecedented urgency to the need to enact transformative reforms to modernize Ukraine.

Ukraine is, in 2015, not only a poor country but indeed the only former Soviet state not to have reached the levels of development that it enjoyed when it became independent in 1991. Ukraine also continues to be one of the worst performers on international corruption indices. And if the quality and competence of the national civil service remain suspect, then local government across the country still remains merely formal or symbolic in character – that is, bereft of the substantive constitutional powers and policy and administrative capacities necessary for success.

There are four essential elements of a serious Ukrainian reform agenda that would enjoy a credible prospect of leading the country in the direction of new-century development: first, conclusively ending the military conflict in southeastern Ukraine and launching a real – not perfunctory or superficial – peace-building process in the country for a population that is both scarred and divided (see the Feature article by Irvin Studin in the Fall/Winter 2015 issue of GB); second, deep public administration reform and modernization of the Ukrainian civil service in accordance with European standards (Ukraine’s elite Higher School of Public Administration is the standard – one that should be generalized across the entire national system of training and preparation of the civil service); third, effective anti-corruption measures and processes; and fourth, national decentralization (short of federalization), including the standing up of sustainable and credible local government in keeping with the European Charter of Local Self-Government. Let me treat these four elements in reverse order.

Over the past 30 years, the vast majority of European countries have successfully implemented various species of reforms to local government with the aim of promoting sustainable local development, as well as social and territorial cohesion. In Ukraine, the imperative for aggressive decentralization is driven by the following factors: very weak capacity of local government institutions in exercising their

basic functions as defined by the constitution of Ukraine; overlapping competences and responsibilities between national and local authorities at each of the oblast (region), rayon (district) and hromada (basic commune) levels – caused and complicated by gaps and deficiencies in national legislation; contradictory and archaic administrative-territorial structures inherited from the Soviet era; devastated or otherwise dilapidated municipal infrastructure, hampering the delivery of quality services; the alienation of citizens from decision-making process; and, finally, very low public trust and confidence in authorities at all levels of the Ukrainian state.

How should Kiev drive decentralization of the state? First and foremost, further to the undertakings of President Poroshenko, there must be amendments to the constitution – in particular to create executive bodies for the oblast and rayon councils, and to redistribute responsibilities between local government bodies and national ministries in accordance with the principle of subsidiary. Second, there should be fiscal and budgetary decentralization in order to strengthen the financial capacity of local government. Third, the total number of administrative-territorial units – oblasts, rayons and hromadas – must be reduced, as there are simply too many of these for a unitary state that already has a weak centre, and too many to allow for local economies of scale. Fourth, various forms of local democracy should be promoted in order to stimulate citizen participation in public life at the grassroots.

Finally, municipal infrastructure and, in particular, utilities – starting with those damaged in the war – must be modernized through new technologies, investments and management.

What about corruption – the national scourge, and indeed the scourge of the entire post-Soviet space?

The fight against corruption in Ukraine should be rooted in the reform of the justice sector – for starters, by standing up a specialized state body or anti-corruption investigative agency to deal with corruption crimes in accordance with international standards. There must be improvement of existing procedures for the declaration and verification of income, assets and expenses, and also in respect of the prevention of conflicts of interest in the public sector (cross-pollination between public power and private sector advantage remains notoriously parasitic in today’s Ukraine). Transparency and competition in public procurement can be improved

A pro-Russian rebel patrols a checkpoint in the town of Krasniy Partizan, eastern Ukraine, January 2015.

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / MSTYSLAV CHERNOV

the entire senior civil service of the ancien régime – the current longstanding practice.) A bulwark of fiches de compétences should be used to evaluate civil servant performance, and professional mentorship within the civil service should be fostered aggressively in order to develop young civil servants into future organizational leaders. Finally, the standards and reputation of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) – which falls under the President’s aegis – will need to be buttressed in order to continuously drive innovation through the national civil service education system. As with the Higher School of Public Administration, all of NAPA will need to recruit the best from across the country and internationally, and the civil service and political classes will need to be systematically and culturally integrated into the NAPA recruitment and placement systems.

In the final analysis, all of these reforms should not be perceived as threatening to states neighbouring Ukraine – starting, of course, with Russia. For this, it will be necessary for Ukrainian leaders to conduct a professional awareness campaign inside and outside of the country. Indeed, coming out of the current war we should reinvest in the creation of a proper trilateral EU-Ukraine-Russia commission (an idea originally mooted at the start of the Maidan protests in the fall of 2013) to assist in the modernization of Ukraine. For Ukraine will have to operate – and deftly – between its European and Russian gravities even as it integrates with increasing resolve and intensity into European structures. | GB

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

through free access to public information. Accountability and responsiveness in the management of public finances should be encouraged through the holding of regular consultations with civil society and international stakeholders.

What’s to be done about Ukraine’s civil service?

Currently, outside of corruption, the civil service is plagued by high staff turnover; lack of professional skills and competence among most civil servants; low levels of public trust, as mentioned; nepotism; poor motivation; and, inter alia, inadequate management. First and foremost, there must be better vertical delimitation of the professional civil service vis-à-vis the political class. There must also be better horizontal delimitation of public service work vis-à-vis private labour, both in legal and normative terms. The new classification system of civil service positions will allow for a logical and transparent system of remuneration based on the principle of equal pay for equal work, and will help to address unfair interdepartmental and cross-regional gaps in the compensation of civil servants. To be sure, there must be improvement in the overall remuneration of Ukrainian civil servants if the country is to attract and retain the country’s best and brightest, and if they are to be kept motivated (and minimally corruptible).

On the demand side, Ukraine’s civil service system must move irreversibly to a merit-based approach to recruitment and promotion – one that assures civil servants stability of employment and protects them against discretionary dismissal. (It cannot be, surely, that each new government fires

First and foremost, there must be better vertical delimitation of the professional civil service vis-à-vis the political class.

There must also be better horizontal delimitation of public service work vis-à-vis private labour, both in legal and normative terms.

19

20

ILLUSTRATION: FLAVIO MORAIS

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Making poverty history by 2030 will require massive increases in private investment, not just public aid

BY BRETT HOUSE

his year has the potential to be pivotal for international development. In 2015, the world reaches the target date for the 15-year-old Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

In September, the UN General Assembly convenes in New York to agree on their successors – a new set of ‘sustainable’ development goals (SDGs) for 2030. Just beforehand, in July, governments will gather in Addis Ababa to make financial pledges to support these SDGs. Turning these pledges into real investment for development is a huge challenge: while the MDGs have been successful in rallying new resources for poverty reduction, they have never been fully financed.

Money alone is evidently not a panacea in the fight to end poverty: good institutions, thoughtful policies, and appropriate technologies are also critically important. But adequate financing makes all of these things more likely too. This article sets out an agenda for mobilizing both the public resources and private investment needed to end global poverty by 2030.

Estimates of the extra annual financing required to reach the SDGs range from US$500 billion to US$3 trillion on top of what is already being spent on the MDGs. This range hinges critically on whether one includes in these numbers climate change-related spending and a host of big infrastructure projects. Official development assistance (ODA) from governments will never on its own cover these sums.

Projected to hit about US$150 billion in 2015, or US$125 for every one of the roughly 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty, ODA is not even in the ballpark of these cost estimates. Even if every OECD country decided to meet former Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson’s vaunted goal of raising aid to 0.7 percent of GNP (only five OECD countries are currently at this standard) and to realize other unmet commitments, annual ODA flows would still total only about US$350 billion – some US$200 billion higher than current annual disbursements. Aid from new donors – the BRICS and Persian Gulf countries – is increasing, but these flows only partially offset reductions from established donor countries. In short, there is no plausible scenario under which aid flows would be sufficiently large to finance a single year of SDG spending.

Indeed, current ODA numbers overstate the cash that actually reaches the budgets of developing countries. For instance, Development Initiatives, a UK-based NGO, notes that between 2008 and 2011 net ODA reported by Uganda was only 40 percent of that reported by donor governments. Or consider that Denmark and Italy reported US$2 billion in ODA disbursements in 2011: two-thirds of Denmark’s aid was delivered as

Brett House is a Senior Fellow at the Jeanne Sauvé Foundation and a Visiting Scholar at Massey College in the University of Toronto.

DEVELOPMENT

FINANCE: ENTER THE PRIVATE SECTOR

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

21

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

In short, there is no plausible scenario under which aid flows would be sufficiently large to finance a single year of SDG spending.

22

grants, loans, project support, and technical assistance; more than two-thirds of Italy’s aid was debt relief or refugee support – none of which left Italy.

The impact of aid is further limited by the fact that too little of it reaches the countries that need it most – that is, aid is still overly concentrated in a small number of middle-income countries. The UK’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has found that these countries also get more money for every person living in extreme poverty than lower-income countries. This is perverse.

Sixty percent of the world’s poor live in middleincome countries, and yet these countries should not generally receive ODA dollars. Aid tends to forestall the domestic political pressure needed to address the inequalities that allow extreme poverty to persist at the national level. Some countries have recognized the need for change: the UK, for instance, will end its aid to India and South Africa this year; and the EU has cut aid to 16 upper-middle-income countries. Grants to these countries can be replaced with commercial lending and technical support – particularly to deal with climate change. Scarce ODA dollars can then be sent to poorer countries where they are needed most.

Aid also bunches in certain sectors. Medicinebased efforts to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria have been well-funded; some other MDG targets, however, have been starved for cash. Moreover, aid flows tend to unevenly ebb and flow over the course of time, which further dents the effectiveness of each aid dollar: developing countries cannot spend strategically if they do not know in advance what aid to expect year over year.

Of course, donor governments should still be held to their aid commitments – commitments that are eminently achievable. The 2008 financial crisis is not an adequate excuse for failing to hit these targets: the UK has lifted aid to 0.7 percent of GNP, and set the target into law despite being rocked by the Great Recession, the Eurozone crisis, and years of austere budgets. The UAE, for its part, recently became the first ‘new’ donor to hit 0.7 percent only a few years after Dubai’s own debt crisis in 2009.

The UN has looked at what it calls ‘innovative’ sources of public financing to make aid commitments more easily achievable for donor countries.

Some of the schemes considered are not particularly innovative and have not provided more than a few hundred million dollars in financing per year. Ranging from fees on financial transactions to a ‘solidarity’ levy on airline tickets, many of the schemes are simply additional taxes. Instead, pooling public money under funds for specific purposes, such as the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), has proven to be much more effective for the purpose of raising additional, predictable,

multi-year financing. Efforts are now underway to replicate the success of the GFATM under a G20organized infrastructure fund.

Simply ensuring that existing tax systems in developing countries are able to collect the revenue that they are already mandated to bring in is more innovative than it sounds. The IMF and ODI think that some US$65 billion per year in additional tax revenues could be squeezed from the domestic tax bases of developing countries by improving the effectiveness of tax authorities. As these economies grow and their tax systems become more sophisticated, the potential additional yield will likely increase. Aid, both in the form of dollars and technical assistance, should play a central role in making this happen.

Global Financial Integrity, an American NGO, estimates that ending tax avoidance by international companies operating in developing countries could put an additional US$160 billion per year into government coffers. As a minimal first step toward realizing this target, every donor country and its companies should be made fully compliant under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and publicly report everything that they pay to governments and government officials.

P

ublic money remains crucial, but it will not be sufficient to hit the SDGs. Aid could provide an additional US$200 billion per year; innovative financial levies could add US$1 billion at most; and improved tax collection and reduced tax evasion could yield up to US$225 billion in additional public financing. Pooled funds like the GFATM might mobilize further monies. And yet, at just over US$425 billion in new resources, public money would still not hit even the lower estimate of additional annual aid needed to reach the SDGs. Poor countries have, unfortunately, returned to external borrowing to fill their development financing gaps. Aid catastrophists, such as Dambisa Moyo, have heralded the recent foreign bond issues by several developing countries as an “escape from the yoke of aid.” This critique completely misunderstands what is driving demand for this new debt. International investors have not suddenly embraced Senegal or Ghana as the next economic miracles. Instead, bondholders are simply scrambling for yield now that rich-country interest rates have been pinned near zero for several years.

Until 2006, South Africa was the only Sub-Saharan African country that had issued an external sovereign bond: since then, 12 poor Sub-Saharan African countries, all rebranded as ‘frontier’ markets, have issued some US$15 billion in bond debt. When this paper comes due in a few years, it will likely be

impossible to roll it over at affordable rates.

In fact, low-income countries cannot sustain borrowing even on generous terms. After decades of long-horizon loans from public lenders at concessional rates, several developing countries saw their debt become unmanageable in the 1990s.

Between 1996 and 2007, donor governments and multilateral financial institutions agreed to write off approximately US$75 billion in debt owed by 36 poor countries. Each country received a clean slate to invest in development.

Investors, donors, the multilaterals, and even poor countries themselves promptly forgot the hard-won lessons of the millennial debt relief effort: just a few years of fresh borrowing at historically low rates has already pushed low-income countries back into trouble. The IMF estimates that some 40 poor countries are in medium to severe debt distress.

The next debt crisis is already brewing. Bref, poor countries cannot borrow their way to development.

It follows that policymakers, business and activists also need to focus on increasing private investment in developing countries, and on getting this capital to the places that need it most. Industrialized economies thrive on a mix of public and private actors; developing countries are no different (see the Query article by Fred Lazar at p. 52). Donor countries themselves have always recognized the necessity of this mix. The OECD’s 2011 Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation asserts that “aid is only part of the solution to development.”

The private sector also has a “central role in advancing innovation, creating wealth, income and jobs, mobili[z]ing domestic resources, and in turn contributing to poverty reduction.”

I

The IMF and ODI think that some US$65 billion per year in additional tax revenues could be squeezed from the domestic tax bases of developing countries by improving the effectiveness of tax authorities.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

n order to get ahead, developing countries require greater domestic savings, increased tax revenues, inward foreign investment, and more aid. In 2011, Bill Gates underscored to the G20 that these are not interchangeable bargaining chips. Private money and public aid are complements, not substitutes: they finance different things that need each other to succeed. Public money is the only viable financing for goods and services whose social returns exceed the profits that they generate for individual private investors. Left to the private sector, these public goods would be underprovided, or not provided at all. Conversely, the World Bank estimates that 90 percent of all jobs in the developing world are created by the private sector. In other words, public and private development are two sides of the same poverty-reduction coin.

Jeffrey Sachs notes that there is almost US$22 trillion in private savings globally, but that it is not optimally distributed for development – that is, a large proportion sits idly on corporate balance

sheets. If a fraction of this amount were devoted to the SDGs, extreme poverty could be eliminated by 2030. This is not just an altruistic concern, as the fate of the developed world is intimately tied to that of the rest: consider that some 40 percent of the S&P 500 stock index is exposed to the performance of emerging and frontier markets.

At around US$2 trillion annually, the sum of the diverse range of private capital flows to developing countries is some 13 times greater than ODA. However, like aid, most of this financing goes to a small group of middle-income countries. Only a sliver makes it to the 40 or so low-income countries that are home to approximately 850 million of the world’s extreme poor. Moreover, much of this money is focussed on sectors and activities that make little contribution – directly or indirectly – to poverty reduction efforts. There is, as such, a role for the public sector and aid money to create the enabling conditions to facilitate private poverty-reducing investments in poor countries.

Market fundamentalists argue that private capital does not flow to poor countries because the perceived risks outweigh the likely rewards. However, various studies show that colonial, cultural and linguistic ties guide capital flows to developing countries as much as economic factors. This means that familiarity moves money as much as fundamentals. As such, governments, multilaterals and NGOs can all play a role in creating the awareness needed to shift private capital to the spots where it can have the biggest impact.

Developing countries need patient capital – not hot money looking for a quick return. Even great institutions and excellent policies sometimes provide little buffer against global events and dynamics. For instance, when the US Federal Reserve began removing exceptional liquidity measures in 2014 – signalling that higher US interest rates were nigh – investors indiscriminately fled emerging markets, regardless of the quality of their economic management. Indeed, better performers tend to have the most liquid markets, and liquid markets are the easiest to exit.

Patient private capital comes in a few forms. Remittances by international migrants from developing countries are an especially stable – and strings-free – source of foreign exchange that amounted to approximately US$435 billion in 2013. The Israeli and Indian governments have tapped their migrant communities through the issuance of US$35 billion in ‘diaspora bonds’ at a ‘patriotic’ discount to market rates. ‘Impact bonds,’ which provide capital in return for demonstrated development results, mine similar affinities among non-nationals. Still, however lucrative, all of these instruments are limited by their reliance on some form of forbearance – rather than yield – for support.

23

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Public development finance institutions (DFIs) can mitigate risk and drive increasing flows of private capital.

A DFI can finance the most difficult parts of deals via loans, equity, insurance, or trade credits.

24

The needs of poor countries dovetail with the long horizons of rich-world pension funds and insurance companies. These asset managers are saddled with trillions of dollars of future liabilities that are sustainable only if they can get better yields than Western governments currently offer. They are not used to dealing with poor countries, but public institutions can help to ease their engagement.

Public development finance institutions (DFIs) can mitigate risk and drive increasing flows of private capital. A DFI can finance the most difficult parts of deals via loans, equity, insurance, or trade credits.

This is not a new idea: most OECD countries and multilaterals have DFI arms, such as the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). Nevertheless, this is an idea that needs to be expanded massively.

A typical DFI provides financial products on a quasi-market basis to investors working in developing countries for projects that would otherwise fail to attract support on reasonable terms. DFIs operate with three goals in mind: addressing market failures; producing development gains; and earning a decent return. Nearly every DFI is profitable, and many recycle their profits into aid, more lending, or their government’s general budget.

DFIs can play a particularly critical role in stimulating foreign direct investment (FDI) – that is, investment in real or metaphorical bricks and mortar. FDI is the least volatile of capital flows and is usually accompanied by business savvy, technology transfers, and trade ties. FDI accounts for 75 percent of foreign capital in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it is concentrated in less than a third of the region’s countries. Oil exporting nations, for their part, receive twice as much, on average, as the others, even if extractive-industry investments usually have the most limited positive spinoffs for local people – which is why other forms of FDI need encouragement.

Keeping a DFI focussed on both poverty reduction and profits is – to be sure – challenging. Development impact is harder to measure than simple financial returns. The IFC, for instance, has been taken to task for failing to measure adequately the poverty impact of its projects and incentivizing its employees on deal volume rather than development gains.

Other DFIs have avoided these problems through strong boards, rigorous project vetting, and incentive systems aligned with both of their twin goals.

Most DFIs are constrained by the capital at their disposal, not by the availability of attractive projects.

Donor governments could simply follow the lead of KfW, whose DEG subsidiary is Germany’s DFI. KfW has the authority to issue bonds on international markets. Backed by the sovereign’s credit rating, these funds are relatively cheap compared with other sources of private financing.

DFIs should be enabled to use the full range of potential development finance instruments: loans, equity, insurance, guarantees, and trade credits.

Insurance and guarantees, in particular, can expand the reach of a DFI’s balance sheet. MIGA, for instance, has provided protection on over 700 projects for US$30 billion in exposure since 1988; it has paid out claims worth a total of only US$16 million on six projects. Private-sector assessments of risk in many developing contexts have apparently tended to be overblown, making insurance on international development projects both profitable and effective in catalyzing investment.

N

ational DFIs should also be freed from arbitrary constraints that prevent them from supporting the projects that best combine poverty reduction and profit imperatives. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) sends US$8 to the US Treasury for every dollar of overhead that the US federal budget provides. Still, OPIC is hampered by rules that limit its support to American companies. These rules reduce both OPIC’s development impact and its returns for US taxpayers.

The few OECD countries that lack DFIs should create them. Canada, as the only G7 country without its own DFI, can learn from the experiences of others and avoid the pitfalls that they have encountered.

Canada could leverage the strengths of its immigrant communities, the health of its financial sector, and its regulatory probity to create a model DFI. Aware of all this, Canada’s International Development Minister, Christian Paradis, indicated in October of last year his interest in creating a new development finance mechanism.

Ridding the world of extreme poverty by 2030 is at once an ambitious and entirely feasible goal: ambitious because the world has never done it before; feasible because the world has the technical means to do so. Some plan to increase public financing for the SDGs will almost inevitably be brokered in Addis Ababa in July. Promises will be made to increase aid, make tax systems more efficient and effective, and find new ways to raise public funds. This is all important and essential, but it will not be enough.

The world also needs to come together to increase the flow of poverty-alleviating private investment in the countries and sectors that see little of it now.

Reforming, renewing, expanding, and freeing the world’s DFIs – as well as adding to their ranks – is the most immediate way to put private capital to work to achieve the SDGs. After 15 years of practice on their MDG predecessors, the world knows what to do. And this is the year to make it happen. | GB

Master’s in Development Practice: Indigenous Development

Do development differently.

FULL PAGE, FULL BLEED

Trim size:Interdisciplinary.

8.5” wide x 10.875”Unique. high Indigenous. Global.

Program features:

Bleed size:

8.75” wide x 11.125” high

• First year orientation • Interdisciplinary and course-based • Practical skill development • Career counselling • Two field placements (Canadian & international) • Global network of MDP universities and collaborating organizations

Visit mdp.uwinnipeg.ca or call 204.258.2998 to find out more.

MDP FounDing Partners:

MacArthur Foundation

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

25

The Institute for 21st Century

Questions (21CQ) is a vision and strategy tank that, in association with Global Brief

THE FORMER SOVIET SPACE MIDDLE EAST SECURITY FRAMEWORK

help provide real-life solutions

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE

to – and indeed ambitiously

CANADA AT 100 MILLION

magazine, aims to analyze and

participate in solution-making for – some of the major geopolitical, political and social questions of this new century.

Headquartered in Toronto but partnering, in a variety of languages, with leading public/ government, private and social enterprise organizations and formations around the world, 21CQ seeks to navigate the entire value chain of activities

THE FUTURE OF THE ARCTIC THE FUTURE OF THE QUEBEC QUESTION THE FUTURE OF THE ABORIGINAL QUESTION CYBERSECURITY ASIAN SECURITY FRAMEWORK THE CONGO WAR

on all of its target Questions.

MAINSTREAMING SCIENCE & SCIENCE POLICY

www.i21CQ.com

COMPLEX PRIVATE SECTOR TRANSACTIONS

from the ‘thinking’ to the ‘doing’

GB is online for the world

www.GLOBALBRIEF.ca HYPERMULTILINGUAL DAILY BLOGS IN ENGLISH, FRENCH, SPANISH, RUSSIAN, ARABIC, GERMAN, MANDARIN & HEBREW

WEB EXCLUSIVES (IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH)

GB VIDEOS

Read the Geo-Blog of

FACEBOOK

Roméo Dallaire

TWITTER

former Senator, author, humanitarian, and retired Canadian Forces general

SUBSCRIBE ONLINE TODAY!

AND GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

27

Pierre Pahlavi est professeur agrégé au Département des études de la défense du Collège des Forces canadiennes, où il est Directeur du Centre des études sur la sécurité nationale. Son nouveau livre s’intitule Le Marécage des Ayatollahs: histoire de la révolution iranienne (Perrin).

IRAN

ET

OCCIDENT RAPPROCHEMENT ET BLOCAGE GÉOPOLITIQUE

Comment composer avec la double stratégie iranienne de survie et d’influence

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

PAR PIERRE PAHLAVI

28

ême si des signes encourageants sont régulièrement rapportés par la presse, les négociations de Genève entre la République islamique d’Iran et le groupe du P5+1 demeurent laborieuses et peinent à aboutir à une résolution de la crise nucléaire qui les oppose depuis plus d’une décennie. Au-delà des désaccords de façade qui freinent le règlement de la question – essentiellement de nature technique ou idéologique – les discussions se heurtent à des paramètres structurels rarement débattus par les spécialistes et savamment éludés par les décideurs politiques. Parallèlement, l’Iran et la coalition dirigée par les États-Unis combattent côte à côte l’ennemi commun que constitue l’État islamique en Irak et au Levant (Daech), sans se résoudre toutefois à officialiser cette coopération militaire de facto; une démarche qui aurait, en outre, le potentiel de favoriser les relations entre l’Iran et la communauté internationale et, incidemment, de faciliter les négociations nucléaires. Certes des oppositions internes sont à l’œuvre tant du côté occidental que du côté iranien. Mais rarement l’envie n’a

Le secrétaire d’État américain John Kerry et le ministre iranien des Affaires étrangères Javad Zarif continuent leurs négociations sur l’avenir du programme nucléaire en Iran pendant le Forum économique mondial à Davos en janvier 2015.

PHOTOGRAPHIE: DÉPARTEMENT D'ÉTAT / SIPA / AP

contre la résolution de la crise nucléaire ainsi que l’affirmation de la coopération anti-Daech? Ni les démêlés techniques sur le programme nucléaire, ni les dissensions diplomatico-militaires, ni même l’opposition des forces internes (le Congrès aux États-Unis, les conservateurs en Iran) – autant d’éléments sur lesquels se focalise habituellement l’attention des observateurs – ne suffisent à expliquer ce double blocage. Celui-ci ne peut être compris qu’en tenant compte des fondements structurels de la politique étrangère iranienne et des implications majeures que pourrait avoir un réchauffement des relations irano-occidentales pour l’ensemble du Moyen-Orient. Car reconnaître la souveraineté de

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

été aussi forte de part et d’autre de résoudre ces différends et les astres si bien alignés pour un rapprochement historique. Londres a entamé un début de réconciliation avec Téhéran et le Guardian titrait récemment: «Qu’attendons-nous pour remplacer notre alliance avec l’Arabie Saoudite par une alliance avec l’Iran?» Pour Hubert Védrine, la question ne laisse plus de doute: «L’Iran devrait réintégrer la scène internationale» (voir l’article Query d’Hubert Védrine dans le dernier numéro de GB). Les observateurs occidentaux n’hésitent plus à parler d’un retour en grâce de ce pays qui, encore récemment, était classé dans l’«Axe du Mal».

Quels sont les obstacles véritables qui se dressent

29

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Dans le dossier de la crise irako-syrienne, le problème se pose de manière similaire: la réticence des Iraniens et des membres de la coalition anti-Daech à officialiser leur partenariat ne peut être expliquée sans la prise en compte de considérations géopolitiques.

30

l’Iran en matière nucléaire et son rôle d’arbitre des crises régionales – deux exigences fondamentales de la politique étrangère de Téhéran – impliquerait d’entériner une réévaluation du statut de la République islamique et une restructuration du système régional. C’est la cause profonde qui fait obstacle à tout progrès majeur dans les deux dossiers.

L’impasse, ou du moins la lenteur, des discussions sur le nucléaire ne peut être comprise en se focalisant uniquement sur des questions techniques.

Pourtant, à en croire la plupart des experts scientifiques, les désaccords entre Téhéran et le groupe du P5+1 porteraient essentiellement sur le nombre de réacteurs, le stock d’uranium enrichi ou la nature des activités de certaines centrales comme celle d’Arak. Les pourparlers achopperaient notamment sur le nombre de centrifugeuses auxquelles Téhéran devrait réduire son programme pour satisfaire aux exigences du P5+1. Pour les grandes puissances, les Iraniens devraient suspendre l’enrichissement audelà de cinq pour cent et réduire de 50 pour cent le nombre de ses centrifugeuses. «Nous butons encore sur un point majeur qui est le nombre de centrifugeuses» ne cessent de répéter, à l’instar du ministre français des Affaires étrangères, les diplomates occidentaux. Sans nier son importance, cette dimension technoscientifique n’éclaire cependant que partiellement les raisons de la lenteur des négociations. Le 24 novembre dernier, Hassan Rohani, le président iranien, levait un peu le voile sur les causes réelles de la lenteur des négociations en déclarant que celles-ci ne se «limitaient pas à une question de centrifugeuses», et portaient avant tout sur des paramètres plus larges de «volonté» et de «puissance».

Dans le dossier de la crise irako-syrienne, le problème se pose de manière similaire: la réticence des Iraniens et des membres de la coalition antiDaech à officialiser leur partenariat ne peut être expliquée sans la prise en compte de considérations géopolitiques. Depuis 2014, l’Iran et les forces arabo-occidentales combattent ensemble contre le califat du Cheikh Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. De fait, les Peshmergas kurdes et les frappes aériennes de la coalition arabo-occidentale sont appuyées, au sol, par un corps expéditionnaire iranien dirigé par la Force Al-Qods, et soutenu par une multitude de proxies pro-iraniens et de milices chiites comme le Hezbollah du Cheikh Nasrallah, les combattants de l’ex-Armée du Mahdi de Moqtada Al-Sadr ou ceux de la Brigade Badr de Hadi Al-Ameri. C’est un secret de polichinelle que cette lutte conjointe repose sur un effort de coordination permettant, notamment, d’éviter que les bombardements aériens ne fassent de victimes collatérales dans les rangs des combattants iraniens et pro-iraniens. Malgré tout, de part et d’autre, les autorités se gardent de rendre officielle une alliance quelconque entre la coalition

internationale et la République islamique. Parmi les raisons invoquées pour expliquer cette réticence se retrouvent pêle-mêle des différends idéologiques (Washington accusant Téhéran d’être motivé par des considérations communautaristes), tactiques (l’Iran privilégiant la protection des lieux saints chiites) et politiques (l’Iran soupçonnant la coalition de vouloir, sous couvert de lutte anti-Daech, de se débarrasser de Bachar al-Assad). Individuellement importantes, ces explications ne sont cependant que les symptômes d’une inhibition aux causes beaucoup plus profondes.

A

fin de comprendre les raisons véritables pour lesquelles les négociations nucléaires peinent à aboutir et la coalition anti-Daech rechigne à divulguer sa collaboration avec l’Iran, il faut prendre en compte les fondements de la politique étrangère de l’Iran, les objectifs stratégiques qui la soustendent et leurs implications géopolitiques pour le Moyen-Orient. Souvent discutée mais rarement définie, cette politique s’articule autour de deux axes majeurs: garantir l’indépendance nationale de l’Iran ainsi que la préservation du régime islamique, et constituer autour de l’Iran une sphère d’influence protectrice. Pour bien saisir sa portée géopolitique il faut revenir brièvement sur sa mise en œuvre au cours des 25 dernières années. Institutionnalisée après la guerre Iran-Irak de 1980-1988, cette double stratégie de survie et d’influence a été poursuivie par les dirigeants iraniens qui se sont succédé à la tête du pays, et cela quelle que soit leur obédience idéologique. Basée sur une logique asymétrique, elle consiste à éviter la confrontation directe avec les adversaires américains, israéliens et arabes, à agir là où l’Iran jouit d’avantages comparatifs (comme les domaines idéologiques et religieux), et à «gagner en ne perdant pas» (Henry Kissinger) en se concentrant sur les deux objectifs permanents: établir un Iran fort et souverain dans un environnement régional exempt de l’influence des États-Unis, d’Israël et des monarchies du Golfe.

Durant les années 1990, cette approche multifacette a permis à l’Iran de marquer des points importants comme la vassalisation du régime alaouite dirigé par la famille Assad et l’enracinement au Liban où, par l’intermédiaire du Hezbollah, Téhéran est parvenu à établir une «frontière virtuelle» avec Israël. C’est la naissance de l’axe Téhéran-DamasBeyrouth sur lequel repose depuis la base du système stratégique pan-chiite de l’Iran. Jusqu’au début des années 2000, l’influence régionale de la République islamique demeure néanmoins relativement limitée – cloisonnée par l’Irak de Saddam Hussein, le

Conseil des états du Golfe (GCC) et les Talibans afghans, fondamentalistes sunnites férocement anti-chiites et donc anti-iraniens. Ce cloisonnement est déverrouillé lorsque les Occidentaux délogent les Talibans (2001) et Hussein (2003), offrant aux Iraniens les coudées franches pour prendre pied en Afghanistan (où ils étaient totalement absents auparavant) et pour initier la satellisation de l’Irak – gouverné pour la première fois de son histoire par des Chiites, qui plus est pro-iraniens. La guerre des 33 jours du mois d’août 2006 est pour Téhéran l’occasion de couronner ces succès en remportant, par l’intermédiaire du Hezbollah, une victoire symbolique sur Israël. De sorte qu’à la fin de la décennie, certains commentateurs estiment que la République islamique est la véritable superpuissance régionale, d’autres évoquent une Pax Iranica pour décrire la nouvelle configuration de puissance moyen-orientale, tandis que les chancelleries arabes s’effraient de l’émergence de ce qu’elles appellent le «Croissant chiite» (Moubarak, Roi de Jordanie).

Dans un premier temps, le «Printemps arabe» de 2011 semble avoir pour effet d’accroître davantage la marge de manœuvre de l’Iran et de conforter sa position régionale (voir l’article Feature de Miloud Chennoufi à la page 34): en éliminant des adversaires farouches comme les présidents égyptien, Hosni Moubarak, ou yéménite, Ali Abdullah Saleh; en favorisant ce que le président Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a appelé le «Réveil islamique» et l’éclosion d’États organisés autour de la charia; en étendant le «terrain de jeu» des Gardiens au Bahreïn, au Yémen, en Égypte, dans la Corne de l’Afrique, au Sahel et au-delà; et, surtout, en mettant Israël, les Pétromonarchies arabes et les États-Unis sur la défensive. Lorsque le nouveau président égyptien issu des Frères musulmans, Mohamed Morsi, invite la flotte iranienne à passer par le détroit de Suez pour la première fois depuis la Révolution islamique de 1979, le rêve stratégique des Mollahs et des Gardiens semble exaucé. Le président Ahmadinejad va alors jusqu’à prophétiser «un Moyen-Orient sans Américains, sans Israéliens et sans Monarchies arabes».

À cette méfiance anti-iranienne s’ajoute celle des Iraniens à l’égard des puissances arabes et des objectifs qu’elles poursuivent au sein de la coalition anti-Daech.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

M

ais, très vite, le vent tourne contre la République islamique lorsque la vague des révoltes arabes gagne la Syrie et menace le régime alaouite, principal maillon du système d’alliance pro-iranien. Dès 2012, une coalition hétéroclite visant à faire tomber le régime de Bachar al-Assad réunit, outre les États-Unis et leurs alliés européens, les puissances sunnites.

Apportant leur soutien diplomatique mais aussi financier et logistique à la rébellion syrienne, la Turquie, l’Arabie Saoudite ou le Qatar ne cachent

pas leur volonté de profiter de la crise syrienne pour «briser l’axe chiite». Pour Téhéran, le maintien du verrou syrien devient, plus que jamais, une question de survie géopolitique. La chute du régime de Bachar al-Assad, son principal allié régional, ferait courir à la République islamique le risque d’un nouvel isolement stratégique et diplomatique.

C’est pourquoi l’Iran met en œuvre tous les moyens disponibles pour sauver le régime syrien: sur le plan diplomatique, Téhéran s’appuie sur Moscou et Pékin pour faire échouer le vote, au Conseil de sécurité des Nations Unies, d’une intervention militaire anti-Assad. Sur le plan militaire, Téhéran intervient sur le terrain en déployant notamment ses Gardiens, al-Qods et ses alliés du Hezbollah.

En 2013-2014, la situation se complique davantage pour la théocratie iranienne lorsque le conflit syrien déborde en Irak – et dans une moindre mesure au Liban – avec l’apparition de l’État islamique, dont l’un des principaux chevaux de bataille est d’«éradiquer les hérétiques iraniens et leurs alliés chiites». Pour répondre à cette nouvelle menace, l’Iran apporte son soutien aux milices chiites irakiennes, fait appel à ses alliés du Hezbollah et déploie, comme en Syrie, des combattants du Corps des gardiens et d’Al-Qods. Ce faisant, Téhéran joint de facto ses efforts à ceux de la coalition internationale contre le fléau de l’État islamique (voir l’article Feature de Wesley Wark à la page 8). De prime abord, l’intervention iranienne aux côtés des coalisés se présente également comme une opportunité pour le président Hassan Rohani d’acquérir du crédit aux yeux de l’opinion publique internationale, horrifiée par les exactions barbares des islamistes, et d’amorcer discrètement une réintégration au sein de la communauté internationale, quittée 35 ans plus tôt au moment de la révolution islamique.

Dans l’immédiat, cette collaboration symbolique offre surtout la possibilité de négocier dans une situation plus confortable la question douloureuse du nucléaire iranien. En d’autres termes, l’aide apportée par l’Iran à la lutte anti-Daech semble monnayable pour résoudre simultanément la crise irako-syrienne et celle du programme nucléaire contesté de la République islamique.

Cependant, la possibilité pour l’Iran de faire d’une pierre deux coups est entravée par des obstacles majeurs de nature structurelle. D’abord, même s’ils coopèrent activement mais officieusement avec les Iraniens, les États-Unis sont soucieux de ne pas froisser la susceptibilité de leurs alliés sunnites et israéliens. Comme le notait très justement Paul Richter du Los Angeles Times, «La coopération irano-américaine est un sujet très sensible parce que la plupart des acteurs importants dans la région – les Irakiens, les États arabes sunnites et Israël – craignent qu’une telle collaboration ne se fasse à leur désavantage». Pour une fois à l’unisson, Israël,

31

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

S’il n’est pas exclu que le nouveau roi saoudien, Salman, opte pour une désescalade avec Téhéran, il est en revanche fort à parier que la Monarchie wahhabite et la République chiite continuent de concevoir leurs relations comme un jeu à somme nulle: ce que gagne l’un, l’autre le perd.

32

l’Arabie Saoudite et les pétromonarchies du Golfe n’ont eu de cesse de dénoncer les «manigances iraniennes» et les faiblesses de l’administration Obama vis-à-vis des velléités hégémoniques du régime islamique. La peur des puissances régionales est non seulement de voir remettre en cause leurs relations privilégiées avec les États-Unis, mais aussi de voir mises en place les conditions d’un renforcement de la prééminence iranienne sur l’échiquier moyen-oriental. À cette méfiance anti-iranienne s’ajoute celle des Iraniens à l’égard des puissances arabes et des objectifs qu’elles poursuivent au sein de la coalition anti-Daech. Ce sont elles que le président Rohani pointe du doigt lorsqu’il déclare à l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies que: «Certains états ont aidé à créer [Daech] et se montrent à présent incapables de le combattre». Ce sont les mêmes suspicions qu’exprime Mohamed Ali Jafari, Commandant du Corps des Gardiens de la révolution islamique, lorsqu’il dit: «[N]ous avons de sérieux doutes quant à la volonté réelle qu’a la coalition d’éliminer [Daech]». En termes encore moins voilés, ce dernier surenchérit, un mois plus tard, en affirmant que «les adversaires transnationaux de la République islamique complotent pour nous menacer à nos frontières». En d’autres mots, les dirigeants iraniens ont la certitude que l’État islamique est l’avant-garde d’une campagne internationale visant à briser le «Croissant chiite», reprendre la main sur la Syrie et l’Irak tombés dans le giron iranien et, au final, déstabiliser le régime islamique.

Paranoïa? Manifestations du fameux «syndrome de citadelle assiégée» des Iraniens? Toujours est-il que la méfiance profondément ancrée de part et d’autre hypothèque non seulement l’officialisation de la coopération militaire irano-américaine dans la lutte contre Daech mais également la possibilité pour l’Iran de s’en prévaloir pour avancer ses intérêts dans le dossier nucléaire.

Si, comme on vient de le voir, les négociations sur le programme nucléaire iranien ne sont pas facilitées par l’aide apportée par l’Iran à la lutte anti-Daech, elles sont également freinées par les implications stratégiques qu’entraînerait l’accession de l’Iran au statut de puissance nucléaire. Au-delà des désaccords techniques, ces pourparlers achoppent surtout sur la crainte que le régime iranien ne se serve de son statut de puissance nucléaire pour asseoir son hégémonie régionale. Du point de vue de l’Iran, cela ne fait d’ailleurs aucun doute: l’outil nucléaire n’a d’intérêt que dans la mesure où il permet de poursuivre ses deux objectifs stratégiques, c’est-à-dire la préservation de sa souveraineté nationale et la promotion de son influence régionale. L’acquisition de la technologie nucléaire, militaire et civile, peut supporter ces deux impératifs stratégiques en offrant à Téhéran 1) une assurance-vie garantissant

la pérennité du régime et l’indépendance du pays, et 2) une source de prestige international permettant, en outre, de développer autour de l’Iran une sphère d’influence protectrice. De manière générale, le nucléaire n’est pas une fin en soi mais un moyen au service des deux grands objectifs de la politique étrangère et de sécurité iranienne.

Or, le fait que l’Iran veuille se doter d’une capacité de dissuasion et de persuasion nucléaire ne signifie pas que les dirigeants iraniens soient totalement opposés à une négociation, voire à une réorientation de leur programme. En revanche, ils ne sont disposés à le faire qu’en échange de contreparties équivalentes permettant d’assurer les deux grands objectifs stratégiques de l’Iran. Plus précisément, Mollahs et Gardiens ne sont enclins à faire des concessions sur le nucléaire que contre des garanties équivalentes en termes de souveraineté nationale et de statut régional. Dans le cadre de ce «grand marchandage», les exigences iraniennes sont cependant confrontées à la difficulté du camp occidental à les satisfaire en raison des implications stratégiques pour leurs alliés régionaux. Pour les Occidentaux, la reconnaissance du statut de puissance régionale de la République islamique se heurterait au refus catégorique des alliés régionaux de Washington (voir l’article Feature de Dong Wang à la page 46).

Reconnaître le statut de superpuissance de l’Iran: voilà l’enjeu, mais voilà plus que les Occidentaux ne peuvent offrir et plus que leurs alliés régionaux ne pourraient tolérer.

A

u final, il paraît que la résolution du bras-de-fer nucléaire et celle de la crise irako-syrienne sont non seulement des enjeux considérables mais qu’elles sont, dans une large mesure, inter-reliées.

De prime abord, cette situation de «linkage» offre à l’Iran une opportunité sans précédent de jouer sur les deux tableaux pour normaliser ses relations avec la communauté internationale et espérer obtenir, dans la foulée, une reconfiguration géopolitique avantageuse. Pour les Occidentaux, ce scénario est non seulement envisageable mais tout à fait souhaité. À travers la «politique de la main tendue», l’administration Obama n’a eu de cesse de multiplier les signes d’ouverture à l’égard du régime iranien.

Les autres capitales occidentales lorgnent, quant à elles, vers les opportunités économiques que laissent entrevoir une normalisation des relations avec Téhéran et une réouverture du marché iranien.

Certes, les exigences stratégiques iraniennes semblent faramineuses, mais les Occidentaux trouvent de plus en plus d’avantages à une «réintégration» de l’Iran dans le concert des nations. Cette possibilité

Free e-books on international development

DRC

Learn about positive changes in developing countries from the people who are making those changes.

Canada’s International Development Research Centre supports researchers in developing countries who are nding innovative, lasting solutions

to local problems.

To learn about the impacts of this groundbreaking research, download or read our free e-books online.

We’ve got more than 300 titles.

idrc.ca /e-books

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

est cependant hypothéquée par le refus de leurs alliés régionaux à voir la République islamique retrouver le rôle de «Gendarme régional» autrefois joué par l’Iran du Chah.

Confrontés à l’hostilité des alliés israéliens et arabes des États-Unis vis-à-vis d’un rapprochement avec l’Iran, Téhéran, Washington et les capitales occidentales se contentent pour l’heure de soigner les apparences, de temporiser et de miser sur une évolution favorable du rapport de force régional. Sur le plan nucléaire, à défaut de réduire la pression, la Maison-Blanche s’efforce de ménager le président Rohani en menaçant d’opposer le veto présidentiel à l’adoption d’une nouvelle série de sanctions économiques par le Congrès. Pour sa part, la République iranienne continue de cultiver son image de fer de lance de la lutte anti-terroriste en Mésopotamie mais aussi désormais, et cela mérite d’être souligné, dans la péninsule Arabique. Rares sont ceux à avoir relevé que Téhéran, tout en réprouvant les caricatures de Charlie Hebdo (voir l’article One Pager de Yoram Schweitzer à la page 5), a été l’une des premières capitales à condamner les attentats du mois de janvier à Paris. L’Iran bénéficie également de l’évolution de la situation au Yémen avec la démission du gouvernement pro-saoudien et la montée en puissance des Houtis chiites pro-iraniens qui se revendiquent comme la principale force capable de résister à la menace d’Al-Qaïda dans la péninsule Arabique (AQPA). Tous ces éléments semblent converger pour faire apparaître le régime iranien comme un partenaire à nouveau fréquentable pour l’Occident.

Cependant, ni les manœuvres diplomatiques ni l’évolution de la lutte anti-islamiste sur le terrain ne suffiront à gommer le refus des Israéliens et des puissances sunnites à voir reconnaître les ambitions nucléaires de l’Iran et ses prétentions sur le Moyen-Orient. Redoutant plus que jamais d’être relégués au second plan par leurs alliés américains, les premiers ne cessent de désapprouver le «marché du siècle» que l’Iran pourrait, à leurs yeux, remporter advenant un rapprochement avec Washington. Plus inquiets encore d’une éventuelle réintégration de l’Iran dans le giron occidental, l’Arabie Saoudite et ses partenaires du GCC n’ont pas de mots assez durs pour condamner le réchauffement des relations irano-américaines et la prééminence régionale que cela pourrait conférer au régime des Mollahs. S’il n’est pas exclu que le nouveau roi saoudien Salman opte pour une désescalade avec Téhéran, il est en revanche fort à parier que la Monarchie wahhabite et la République chiite continuent de concevoir leurs relations comme un jeu à somme nulle: ce que gagne l’un, l’autre le perd. C’est d’ailleurs en ces termes que tous les protagonistes envisagent une éventuelle refonte de l’échiquier moyen-oriental. Voilà pourquoi le blocage géopolitique ne sera solutionné ni à Vienne ni sur le champ de bataille irako-syrien. Aucune avancée majeure n’aura lieu sans la prise en compte de ses implications géopolitiques et, in fine, sans une modification majeure du statu quo moyen-oriental. Souhaitée par les uns, redoutée par les autres, cette restructuration promet d’être complexe, fastidieuse et périlleuse pour l’équilibre du système régional et international. | GB

33

34

ILLUSTRATION: EMMANUEL POLANCO

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Il y en a cinq, dont l’essentiel prône une dynamique régionale plus endogène, patiente, pacifique et inclusive, doublée d’une vision stratégique claire PAR MILOUD CHENNOUFI

LES GRANDES LEÇONS DU PRINTEMPS ARABE Miloud Chennoufi est professeur adjoint de relations internationales au Collège des Forces canadiennes.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

l’exception de la Tunisie, où persiste encore l’espoir d’une démocratisation réussie, le Printemps arabe s’est manifestement soldé par un échec. L’espoir d’une Égypte nouvelle s’est dissipé aussitôt que l’incurie des nouvelles forces politiques (laïques et islamistes) a favorisé le retour de la dictature militaire. Aujourd’hui, les Égyptiens subissent des pratiques autoritaires encore plus brutales que celles subies sous le régime de Moubarak. En Libye, la violence ayant joué un rôle primordial dans le changement de régime, l’entreprise de réforme était compromise dès le début. Plus de trois ans après la chute de Kadhafi, le pays se trouve au bord de l’implosion. En Syrie, la brutalité du régime et la militarisation de la contestation ont plongé le pays dans une guerre civile dévastatrice et ont provoqué une catastrophe humanitaire de grande ampleur: des centaines de milliers de morts, des millions de réfugiés et des crimes de guerre abominables. Plus grave encore, alors que le Printemps arabe promettait l’ouverture d’une page historique post-islamiste, de vastes territoires à cheval entre la Syrie et l’Irak sont passés sous le contrôle de groupes extrémistes meurtriers. Le recrutement de combattants étrangers dans la région, notamment des combattants occidentaux, a porté l’onde de choc jusqu’en Europe et en Amérique du Nord (voir l’article One Pager à la page 5).

De cet échec, on peut tirer des leçons pour l’avenir en s’appuyant d’abord sur les conditions qui ont permis au Printemps arabe de se produire. Comme l’a très tôt noté Eva Bellin dans une étude sur les premiers succès du Printemps arabe, les forces armées ont joué un rôle déterminant dans le résultat initial des soulèvements. En Tunisie et en Égypte, la professionnalisation des forces armées avait permis aux présidents Ben Ali et Moubarak de limiter leur influence politique. Mais cette même professionnalisation a séparé leur sort, désormais lié à la survie de l’État, du sort des deux présidents. Si bien que lorsque la pression populaire les a forcées à prendre une décision lourde de conséquences, elles se sont rangées du côté des manifestants. En revanche, les forces armées libyennes et syriennes étant de nature patrimoniale, elles devaient servir le pouvoir d’un seul homme ou d’un seul groupe. Leur sort était intimement lié à celui de Khadafi et du clan Assad. Les manifestants étaient par conséquent vus comme une menace existentielle – pas seulement pour la tête du régime, mais pour les forces armées elles-

35

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

La situation actuelle de la Libye permet d’affirmer en toute légitimité que le sens de la responsabilité a fait défaut à la réflexion qui a précédé l’intervention; les conséquences tout à fait prévisibles n’ont pas été prises en considération.

36

mêmes. Les militaires se sont donc engagés dans une répression sans retenue.

Toujours selon Bellin, plusieurs autres facteurs ont contribué à forcer le choix des forces armées professionnelles en faveur des manifestants.

L’ampleur des manifestations et leur caractère pacifique ôtaient toute légitimité à la répression voulue par les présidents tunisien et égyptien.

Le prétexte de l’extrémisme religieux ne pouvait être évoqué non plus, car les islamistes n’étaient clairement pas derrière le déclenchement de la contestation. Les slogans «post-idéologiques», donc inclusifs, scandés par les manifestants ont par ailleurs permis de transcender les clivages politiques, ethniques et religieux, amplifiant par-là même la mobilisation populaire. Enfin, en l’absence d’une implication étrangère, le Printemps arabe s’est déroulé selon une dynamique endogène et légitime qui a rendu inaudible la rhétorique du complot ourdi de l’étranger.

Quels sont les leçons à retenir? Il y en a cinq.

Premièrement, dans le monde arabe, la violence ne peut pas conduire à un changement démocratique. La violence se situe au cœur du dispositif sur lequel reposent les régimes autoritaires de la région. Elle représente aussi le moyen privilégié des groupes islamistes radicaux. L’abandon de la voie pacifique – d’abord en Libye – a eu une double conséquence néfaste. D’une part, elle a légitimé le recours des régimes à la répression. D’autre part, elle a ouvert la voie aux islamistes radicaux qui ont ainsi pu recourir à la violence, se prévalant des aspects les plus extrêmes de leur idéologie. Parce qu’elle a légitimé la violence comme moyen de contestation politique, l’intervention de l’OTAN en Libye représente le point d’inflexion malheureux du Printemps arabe. Or, c’est bien la non-violence qui avait initialement doté les soulèvements d’une identité propre, en rupture avec la rhétorique révolutionnaire de l’islamisme radical. La guerre civile en Syrie peut s’expliquer en partie par la volonté de l’opposition syrienne de reproduire le scénario libyen. Mais comme en Libye, la militarisation du soulèvement syrien a conduit au chaos.

L’irruption de la violence dans le Printemps arabe a aussi eu des répercussions en Égypte. Les Frères musulmans égyptiens ont radicalement changé de stratégie à la suite de l’intervention militaire en Libye. Ils ont substitué une franche volonté de domination et d’exclusion au discours modéré qu’ils tenaient auparavant sur le respect des libertés et du pluralisme. Ne réalisant pas qu’ils commettaient une grave erreur de jugement, ils ont interprété l’intervention en Libye comme la preuve que l’Occident s’accommoderait bien d’un ordre islamiste régional pour peu que de leur côté ils réussissent à véhiculer un message de modération dans les médias étrangers. Ils ne se sentaient plus

obligés de prêter attention aux forces politiques locales qui appréhendaient leur dérive autoritaire.

Deuxièmement, comme en témoigne l’expérience tunisienne, le changement démocratique a pour condition nécessaire l’inclusion systématique de toutes les forces politiques, y compris celles dont l’idéologie ou les intérêts premiers ne sont pas de nature démocratique et inclusive. Dans le monde arabe, ces forces sont les islamistes et les militaires. L’action politique pacifique demeure le meilleur moyen de maintenir la pression simultanément sur les uns et sur les autres. Par souci de transition ordonnée, les forces armées et les islamistes doivent prendre part au processus de changement; les premières parce qu’elles représentent le principal pilier sur lequel s’appuient les régimes en dernier ressort; les seconds parce qu’ils représentent une sensibilité politique bien réelle dans la région.

Le Printemps arabe a clairement montré que l’action non-violente permet de gagner les forces armées à la cause du changement et de forcer les islamistes à moduler leurs objectifs en fonction de ce qui est tolérable dans un système démocratique.

Voilà pourquoi il fallait se garder de faire basculer le mouvement dans la violence. Dans le monde arabe, la non-violence n’est pas uniquement ni primordialement un choix moral. La non-violence est un choix éminemment stratégique, surtout face à la répression. Car, encore une fois, répondre à la répression par la violence ou l’intervention militaire étrangère revient à transformer la scène politique en affrontement entre les forces de tel ou tel régime et celles de l’islamisme radical. Or, l’objectif premier est de parvenir exactement au contraire de l’impasse que représente le choix factice entre dictature et théocratie, entre autoritarisme et totalitarisme.

P

our l’opposition libyenne et syrienne, l’alternative à la violence aurait été de capitaliser sur l’affaiblissement des régimes et sur la prudence initiale des islamistes, d’arracher un maximum de concessions tant aux régimes qu’aux islamistes, et de maintenir la pression en vue du changement à venir.

Les régimes ne seraient certainement pas tombés et les islamistes n’auraient pas abandonné ce que leur idéologie comporte de plus inacceptable, mais les jalons d’un changement futur inéluctable auraient été jetés alors que la logique autoritaire ou théocratique aurait été maintenue en position nettement moins confortable qu’elle ne l’est aujourd’hui. Et plus important que tout, des centaines de milliers de vies humaines auraient été épargnées.

Troisièmement, la lutte contre la dictature exige que la démocratie soit vue comme une fin en soi, non comme un moyen. Lorsqu’elle est réduite à un simple moyen

Quatrièmement, la diversité religieuse, ethnique et idéologique est un fait au Moyen-Orient. La nier revient à ériger l’exclusion en programme politique et courir le fâcheux risque de détruire un pays en entier comme ce fut le cas en Syrie. Certes, les clivages ethniques et religieux n’étaient pas à l’origine du soulèvement syrien, mais la militarisation du conflit et l’émergence de groupes armés islamistes sunnites, fermés à tout autre groupe, ont permis au gouvernement syrien de jouer à son tour la carte ethnique, religieuse et idéologique pour justifier sa propre violence. Quatre ans plus tard, la Syrie est en ruines.

L’

opposition syrienne s’est très vite laissée dominer par un seul groupe ethnique, religieux et idéologique, devenant ainsi le miroir d’un régime qu’elle prétendait combattre. Le peu d’égard au sort des minorités en Syrie témoigne d’un manque de responsabilité dont la gravité n’a d’égale que l’irresponsabilité du régime.

Si bien que partout dans le monde, le scepticisme s’est emparé des esprits quant à l’avenir de la Syrie et de la région en cas de chute du régime. Plus généralement, s’opposer à une dictature ne saurait justifier l’économie d’une réflexion stratégique sur une vision inclusive de l’avenir. Si l’objectif est de construire un système juste, en rupture avec l’autoritarisme contesté, la taille du plus grand groupe ethnique, religieux ou idéologique n’est pas une source de légitimité suffisante pour déterminer la nature de l’État. Dans le meilleur des cas, l’illusion de justice associée à la loi du nombre a toutes les chances de conduire à une démocratie illibérale – dans le pire des cas, aux affres de la guerre civile intercommunautaire. En Syrie, le référent théocratique et totalitaire des forces qui sévissent sur le terrain ne laisse planer aucun doute sur leurs intentions – des intentions très éloignées des idéaux exprimés à l’origine dans les slogans post-idéologiques et inclusifs du Printemps arabe.

Enfin cinquièmement, l’influence extérieure occidentale (États-Unis et Europe) et régionale (Iran, Turquie et Arabie Saoudite) fait partie du problème plutôt que de la solution. Cette influence est encore plus nocive lorsqu’elle se traduit par une action armée comme en Libye ou par le soutien à la violence comme en Syrie. Après l’invasion de l’Irak en 2003 et ses conséquences désastreuses, seul un excès de crédulité ou un profond cynisme pouvait laisser croire que l’action militaire pourrait conduire à un changement positif dans la région. Encore une fois, les forces locales qui affectionnent le recours systématique à la violence et qui sont les premières à bénéficier des interventions étrangères, ne sont pas motivées

On peut donc comprendre pourquoi l’opposition syrienne a eu tort de remettre le sort du soulèvement entre les mains de puissances étrangères.

Ce fut une erreur stratégique considérable que d’avoir régionalisé puis internationalisé le conflit.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

d’accéder au pouvoir, la démocratie est dite illibérale.

La démocratie illibérale est un système qui puise sa légitimité dans les élections démocratiques, mais dont les pratiques sont fondamentalement antidémocratiques; elles visent à monopoliser toutes les institutions de l’État à des fins idéologiques.

C’est pourquoi l’opposition à un régime dictatorial n’est pas suffisante si elle ne repose pas sur la vision claire d’un système inclusif dans lequel le pluralisme et la séparation des pouvoirs sont garantis. La démocratie vue comme une fin en soi comporte ainsi la logique de sa propre reproduction sans que cela ne dépende de la volonté d’une force politique particulière.

Contrairement à leurs homologues tunisiens, les islamistes égyptiens n’ont pas su négocier leur parcours durant la parenthèse démocratique en Égypte. Leur maladresse a montré qu’ils ne reconnaissaient de la démocratie que le système électoral; et encore, uniquement parce qu’il leur était favorable. La constitution qu’ils ont rédigée seuls, sans égard aux objections de la classe politique et de la société civile, conférait à une autorité religieuse non-élue un droit de regard et de censure sur les lois futures. Ils ont par ailleurs cherché à politiser la justice et l’administration publique, ce qui devait empêcher le développement d’un système institutionnel garantissant l’autonomie de la justice et la neutralité de l’administration. Par ces pratiques ils se sont littéralement aliéné toutes les autres forces politiques, offrant aux militaires l’occasion inespérée de revenir au pouvoir par la force. Aujourd’hui, l’Égypte vit de nouveau sous un régime militaire particulièrement brutal.

Les Frères musulmans se sont trompés sur deux registres. Ils ont d’abord pensé qu’ils avaient définitivement neutralisé les forces armées en écartant l’ancien état-major grâce au soutien des forces révolutionnaires laïques. Or, le chef d’état-major qu’ils ont nommé est celui qui les a finalement renversés. D’autre part, ils ont cru à tort que la mise à l’écart des forces armées leur permettait désormais de marginaliser les forces révolutionnaires qui leur avaient pourtant permis d’accéder au pouvoir. Ils n’ont pas compris que la seule légitimité électorale n’était pas suffisante pour empêcher une alliance contre-nature entre les forces révolutionnaires et les forces armées. Le soutien de la Turquie et du Qatar les a confortés dans leurs convictions et les a poussés à persister dans l’erreur. La Turquie offrait par ailleurs le modèle d’une démocratie illibérale basculant dans l’autoritarisme par la manipulation des principes démocratiques. Mais ce que les islamistes turcs avaient accompli en une décennie dans un climat de maturité politique plus avancée, les Frères musulmans ont cherché à reproduire en quelques mois dans un contexte révolutionnaire dont ils n’avaient pas le monopole.

37

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

En Afrique du Nord et au Moyen-Orient, des pans entiers de la société désirent un changement ordonné vers des systèmes pluralistes et inclusifs. Dans ces mêmes sociétés, des forces d’inertie non-négligeables demeurent à l’œuvre.

Il n’est pas impossible de neutraliser ces forces.

38

par une volonté de démocratisation. Leur objectif est d’instaurer une théocratie aux relents totalitaires.

Les motivations des puissances occidentales dans l’affaire libyenne sont matière à débat. Du fait que la mission autorisée par l’ONU (une zone d’exclusion aérienne) se soit transformée en changement de régime, d’aucuns doutent que les motivations de l’Occident et de ses alliés dans la région aient été d’ordre moral ou légal. Il est fort probable que des calculs politiques étroits aient joué le rôle le plus déterminant. La situation actuelle de la Libye permet d’affirmer en toute légitimité que le sens de la responsabilité a fait défaut à la réflexion qui a précédé l’intervention; les conséquences tout à fait prévisibles n’ont pas été prises en considération. La Libye est aujourd’hui un pays déchiré, en proie à une guerre civile meurtrière, où les clivages ethniques et idéologiques sont tellement profonds qu’un retour rapide à la stabilité semble pour le moment hors de portée. Plus alarmant encore, les nombreuses milices, dont les plus importantes ne cachent pas leur extrémisme religieux, ne sont pas les seules à vouloir dominer le pays. Dans le sud vient de se former une nouvelle milice associée au groupe dit État Islamique en Irak et au Levant (Daech).

L’intervention en Libye a non seulement légitimé la militarisation du Printemps arabe, faisant ainsi basculer le rapport de forces régional en faveur des islamistes; elle a également invité des acteurs régionaux comme la Turquie, le Qatar, l’Arabie Saoudite et l’Iran à prétendre au statut d’hégémon régional (voir l’article Feature de Pierre Pahlavi à la page 28). Avant la guerre en Libye, la Turquie et le Qatar faisaient preuve de prudence; le soutien qu’ils exprimaient au soulèvement n’avait pas de connotation idéologique. Après la guerre, cette prudence a cédé le pas au pari risqué de voir des changements de régimes se succéder dans la région avec prise de pouvoir par les Frères musulmans. Le gouvernement turc, par nostalgie ouvertement revendiquée des gloires de l’Empire Ottoman, et l’Émir du Qatar, par ambition personnelle, espéraient tous deux régner sur un ordre régional islamiste. Les conséquences catastrophiques de ce pari montrent bien que le sens de la responsabilité a fait cruellement défaut aux deux pays.

Turcs et Qataris, au même titre que l’opposition syrienne et les Frères musulmans égyptiens, ont fait la même erreur de penser qu’à la faveur de l’intervention en Libye, l’Occident allait accueillir favorablement ce nouvel ordre régional. Ils ont donc cru bon d’encourager la militarisation de la contestation en Syrie afin d’accélérer la reproduction du scénario libyen. L’espoir, partagé par la France et le Royaume-Uni, était que l’escalade du conflit finisse par convaincre les Américains de lancer une opération de changement de régime. Cela ne s’est jamais produit. Sur le terrain, les groupes armés les plus

extrémistes se sont emparés du conflit selon une logique qui leur était propre. Et c’est précisément cette montée en puissance de l’extrémisme en Syrie, conjuguée à la politique d’exclusion mise en œuvre en Irak, qui a redonné vie aux groupes extrémistes irakiens, le tout culminant dans la création de Daech.

L’ordre que la Turquie et le Qatar souhaitaient instaurer ne convenait ni à l’Arabie Saoudite ni à l’Iran. L’influence régionale de l’Arabie Saoudite était sérieusement menacée par le Printemps arabe dans la mesure où le mouvement échappait totalement à son contrôle. La militarisation des soulèvements a cependant permis à l’Arabie Saoudite de se repositionner comme acteur principal. La politique mise en œuvre depuis des décennies était de nouveau à l’ordre du jour: soutien aux régimes autoritaires qui acceptent l’influence saoudienne (l’Égypte de l’après-coup d’État) et instrumentalisation des groupes salafistes extrémistes dans les pays dirigés par des régimes rivaux (la Syrie). De son côté, l’Iran ne pouvait tolérer la chute d’un allié aussi précieux que la Syrie d’Assad, pas plus qu’il ne pouvait supporter une déstabilisation interne de son propre régime par contagion du Printemps arabe. Le rôle militaire que l’Iran a joué dans la guerre civile syrienne relève d’abord et avant tout des rapports de force régionaux et d’un souci de politique domestique.

O

n peut donc comprendre pourquoi l’opposition syrienne a eu tort de remettre le sort du soulèvement entre les mains de puissances étrangères. Ce fut une erreur stratégique considérable que d’avoir régionalisé puis internationalisé le conflit. Les États qui se sont impliqués d’une manière ou d’une autre dans la guerre civile en Syrie étaient motivés par des intérêts trop divergents pour que le conflit ne se transforme pas en guerre par procuration – une guerre dans laquelle la vie dévastée des Syriens ne devait figurer comme priorité sur aucun agenda.

En somme, le Printemps arabe a montré qu’en Afrique du Nord et au Moyen-Orient, des pans entiers de la société désirent un changement ordonné vers des systèmes pluralistes et inclusifs – mais aussi que dans ces mêmes sociétés, des forces d’inertie non-négligeables, voire significatives, demeurent à l’œuvre. Il n’est pas impossible de neutraliser ces forces. Pour y parvenir, il est nécessaire d’éviter les termes du débat et de l’action qui leur sont favorables, précisément la violence et l’exclusion. Seule une dynamique endogène, patiente, pacifique et inclusive, doublée d’une vision stratégique claire, un sens prononcé de la responsabilité et une reconnaissance de la réalité objective du terrain, peut conduire au changement tant souhaité. | GB

IN THE CABINET ROOM

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

ILLUSTRATION: DUSAN PETRICIC

39

Whither Armenia and the Eurasian Customs Union?

IN SITU

A century after the Armenian genocide, and a quarter century post-independence, Armenia pivots to Moscow HOVHANNES HOVHANNISYAN reports from Yerevan

Hovhannes Hovhannisyan is Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Yerevan

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

State University.

40

W

hy is Armenia joining the Eurasian Customs Union, and not the EU? Is Yerevan’s decision driven primarily by security considerations? Or are security issues simply a pretext for the government in Yerevan to manipulate nationalist moods in the country in order to stay in power? Or perhaps both?

After September 3rd, 2013, when Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan announced Armenia’s U-turn away from signing the Association Agreement with the EU in favour of joining the Eurasian Customs Union (whose members also include Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), security issues have been front and centre in most explanations of Yerevan’s behaviour.

These security issues relate fundamentally to Russia’s role in the former Soviet space and particularly in Armenia, where Russia enjoys a military base and where Russian forces are, by mutual agreement between Moscow and Yerevan, responsible for security along the Armenian-Turkish border.

Of course, Armenia’s current strategic and political realities are directly connected to the last century of its history. To this very day, Armenia remains highly exercised by the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the imperative of securing Armenians against any aggression by the country’s closest neighbours. The genocide has been recognized by 21 states and a host of international organizations, including the UN General Assembly and the European Parliament. However, for a variety of reasons, Armenia’s immediate neighbours – Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran – have not recognized the genocide. As the centenary of the genocide approaches, discourses and debates around it intensify – both by dint of government strategy and through nationalist groups. These discourses and debates are commonly rooted in a distrust of Turkey, including as evidenced by the recently signed and failed protocols on the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations, as well as by the role of Turkey in Syria and Iraq – as perceived by Armenia, at least. Armenia believes that Turkey is supporting ISIS, and that Turkey constitutes not only a threat to Armenians in ISIS-occupied lands but ultimately to Armenia itself (see the Feature article

by Miloud Chennoufi at p. 34). It follows that there are today only a few NGOs and individuals in Armenia who still think that normalization of relations with Turkey and the opening of the border between the two countries are serious possibilities in the near future.

Another major Armenian security concern relates to the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Since the ceasefire agreement of 1994, the OSCE Minsk Group, which includes the US, Russia and France, has been mediating between Yerevan and Baku without any essential or decisive success. Sniper shootings and small attacks continue to this day, resulting in a small but regular stream of casualties on both sides.

Tensions in the theatre remain high. Last August, for instance, saw fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh that was the most significant escalation of the conflict since the ceasefire, causing many analysts to predict that ‘hot’ war would recommence. The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan met with Russian president Vladimir Putin immediately after this fighting, which led to at least a temporary, albeit precarious calm in the theatre.

Islam has also figured prominently in the discourses around Armenia’s security, given the country’s history of hostile relations with its neighbours to the east and west alike. Mujahideen and Wahhabi fighters, including the late Chechen militant Shamil Basayev, fought on the Azerbaijani side in Nagorno-Karabakh. If during the 1915 genocide conversion to Islam was the only means for Armenians to escape being killed, then in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict the Islamic factor played a role – even if for a limited time – in mobilizing fundamentalist forces against Armenians. More recently, the destruction by ISIS last fall, in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, of the Armenian Genocide Martyrs’ Memorial Church – a place of pilgrimage for many Armenians, especially on April 24th, the day of remembrance for victims of the genocide – reverberated across Armenia. The church was blown up on September 21st – peculiarly, the highly symbolic date of Armenia’s declaration of independence from the former Soviet Union.

To be sure, Yerevan’s decision to accede to the Eurasian Customs Union (an accession that was formalized at the start of this year) was made in the context of the significant pressure – some perhaps explicit, but much of it obvious and implicit – brought to bear on Armenia by its chief strategic partner, Russia. This pressure had several dimensions. First, Russia is one of the basic providers of weapons for both Armenia and its biggest enemy, Azerbaijan. Second, Moscow’s ferocious reaction to the revolution in Ukraine in the aftermath of Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to delay the signature of an Association Agreement with the EU was clearly noted across the post-Soviet space (see

the EU in Armenia and the U-turn of Armenia in 2013 were not only the result of corrupt government but also of a deficiency of trust by Yerevan in Europe’s political class and its institutions as legitimate and credible sources of democratic reforms that could make Yerevan more independent in its decisionmaking. On the contrary, Yerevan has confirmed and consolidated the decision-making cage in which it finds itself, and cannot seem to see beyond it.

The majority of Armenians seem to think that

joining the Eurasian Customs Union is mostly a formal, if not symbolic, step that simply serves to solidify the status of Moscow as Yerevan’s senior strategic partner. Many political analysts and intellectuals, however, are convinced that Armenia will not only lose considerable decision-making autonomy as a result of the Union, but will get precious little in return in economic or political terms, even while assuring its security. These same commentators are convinced that the Union is unsustainable over the long run, and that Yerevan would be better served by signing an association agreement with the EU. Young Armenians, for their part, are divided over Yerevan’s strong pivot to Moscow: highly educated young Armenians think that the Eurasian Customs Union will mostly harm Armenia and hinder its development and integration into the European family. Other young people – particularly those who go to Russia for seasonal work and otherwise depend on Russia economically – believe that joining the Union was the only possible decision for Yerevan, as Armenia (population three million) cannot credibly oppose Russian preferences on most major questions of state and strategy. | GB

PHOTOGRAPH: AP PHOTO / RIA NOVOSTI, ALEXEI DRUZHININ, PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, shakes hands with Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan prior to a meeting of CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) in Moscow, December 2014.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

the Query article by Vyacheslav Tolkovanov at p. 18).

Third, there is the aforementioned brute fact of the Russian military base in Armenia and the presence of Russian troops on the Armenian-Turkish border. Fourth, Armenia is highly dependent on, and integrated with, Russia economically on the strength of a number of key companies in the energy and communications sectors that are owned by Russian companies. Taken together, these four dimensions simply do not allow the Armenian government to be meaningfully independent in its decision-making in respect of integration into the EU, or indeed into any species of Western union or alliance.

More ominously, the security issue in Armenia turns on the less-than-democratic processes dominating the country’s politics.

The ongoing falsification of elections, non-independent courts – de facto appendages of the government (itself corrupt) – and, to be sure, the selective application of laws, together make the country vulnerable to internal and external threats. Moscow and Western capitals alike continue to support corrupt Armenian governments because they are, arguably, easy to pressurize and manipulate in the service of the goals of their sponsors. The principal difference, however, is that Russia has far greater and more direct hard power to press the Armenian government than do Western countries (which may be more disposed to the use of various types of soft power). Bref, the physical presence of Russian troops trumps any internal processes – democratic and non-democratic alike – in terms of relevance for the security of the country and its people.

To date, the basic governmental justification for Armenia’s security arrangements is the claim that only Russia, and not the West, proposed for Armenia an effective security system – namely the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – which took into account the country’s complicated geopolitics. In reality, this is a nationalistic myth deployed by the government to preserve its power and authority. The myth is belied by the fact that Russia exports weapons to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Moreover, Russia considers Turkey an indispensable economic partner for the transfer of oil and gas to Europe.

The reality is that successive Armenian governments have, for the last two decades, failed to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh impasse, implement critical democratic reforms, diversify the economy, establish independent courts, and eliminate the post-Soviet oligarchical system. This shows that the failure of

41

TÊTE À TÊTE

The Middle East Reimagined GB sits down in Amman with one of West Asia’s leading voices for regional reengineering Interview with HRH PRINCE EL HASSAN BIN TALAL

GB: What is the mood in Jordan today?

HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan is founder and chairman of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (RIIFS) and co-founder and chairman of the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue (FIIRD).

BT: The mood has moved from sombre, due to the uncertainty about the future of the Jordanian pilot – now the late first lieutenant Moaz Al Kasasbeh, as well as about the fate of the two Japanese journalists (in particular that of Kenji Goto, whose life seemed to be tied in some way to the deal that was being brokered for the pilot) – to the current frantic mode, which was triggered when people witnessed the unexpected immolation of the pilot. This was a gruesome sight, and quite unifying for people in their collective disgust and disdain. It brought the propaganda war to a head. Some people say that the organization that perpetrated this atrocity miscalculated because, whereas in northern Iraq and Syria it was able to move very quickly to secure territory through similar acts of brutality, this particular attempt to intimidate the general public led to a powerful reaction across the board: revulsion at what had happened, total repudiation of the organization and, like the Charlie Hebdo story (see the Feature article by Wesley Wark at p. 8), people marching in the street, essentially saying that we are all Moaz Al Kasasbeh. So the mood in Jordan at the moment is one of commitment to the long haul – to the fight against terrorism, and to attempting to stabilize the country.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

GB: How do you see the conflicts in Syria and Iraq unfolding over the next six months? And what is the future of ISIS?

42

BT: The conflict between the Syrian government and resistance movements in Syria, in the context of the Arab Spring, has been unfolding since early 2011 (see the Feature article by Miloud Chennoufi at p. 34). As far as Iraq is concerned, its conflicts go back to the several wars in which that country has been involved since the Iraq-Iran War. Now, can we see emerging out of all this mayhem an attempt to stabilize the region? There are more militias today in the Middle East than there are governments. Indeed, ISIS is but one of a number of militias with different names that cross our screens from time to time – all with consequences for the internal security challenge for the region. So we evidently cannot reduce the

conflict to a simple Sunni versus Shia dispute.

Remember that there are already 1.4 million Syrian refugees in Jordan. This represents about eight percent of the Jordanian population. And we in Jordan continue to be mindful of the sleeper factor – that one act of horror, such as the killing of some 60 people in Jordanian hotels in 2005, which remains very vivid in the minds of Jordanians.

GB: Does the Middle East need a regional security framework of some sort?

BT: If the EU was able to develop an Erasmus programme, this means that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (see the In Situ article by Hovhannes Hovhannisyan at p. 40) require a Chekhov, Tchaikovsky or Dostoyevsky programme. Perhaps, then, the Middle East, or West Asia – as it were – requires an Ibn Khaldun programme in order to change attitudes about each other, and to develop an international media Peace Corps that combines scholarship with media outlets, and gives content to some of the basic issues that we are all currently addressing in the Millennium Development Goals (see the Feature article by Brett House at p. 20).

At present, I do not see any automatic coalescing of the oil and gas producing countries in the region with their neighbouring hinterland peoples.

This is worrying, as it does little for the stability of West Asia. My answer is yes, we do need a new architecture – along the logic of ASEAN. We need a Middle East citizens’ assembly. We need a Helsinki process. We need to deal with the three clusters of the Helsinki process: basic security, but also human security; creating citizenship – something with which I have been involved for the last three years; and, of course, cooperation among states and societies in the region.

GB: Which countries would be critical or central to creating such a framework or process? How would you sequence potential membership outside of the central group of countries?

BT: I have always maintained that a cheap but compulsory admission ticket is required. Do you accept a comprehensive peace process – a true peace process – instead of a quartet when looking

at the Israeli-Arab peace? Are we talking about Israeli-Palestinian peace, or a comprehensive Israeli-Arab or regional peace?

We need an umbrella agreement for the region, and this umbrella agreement can ill afford to wait for perfect political settlements of sub-regional issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the question of the Iran nuclear programme. The umbrella agreement should address three very clear issues: first, security – weapons of mass destruction; second, anti-terrorism; and third and most important, human dignity.

Eighty percent of the refugees of this world are Muslims, and yet no concessionary fund whatever has yet emerged to this day in this part of the world. We are called upon as Muslims to create a universal zakat fund that would help put a smile on the faces of the followers of at least nine faiths with whom I have worked for six relentless years (and indeed on the faces of people of no faith at all). I have long been calling for a regional bank of reconstruction and development for West Asia – a bank to which all countries could commit on the basis of less sticky fingers – less corruption – and more good governance.

The cheapest compulsory admission ticket would mean that, with the P5+1 process as a point of reference, we would at least have a sounding board. We are talking about an organic, incremental, step-by-step approach. And the region’s non-Arab countries – Iran, Turkey and Israel – will also have to be brought on board, to be sure.

BT: I hope that the Iranians and the West will step back from the abyss by June to come to an agreement over the future of weapons of mass destruction. If there is no progress soon, the talks may fail. Everybody is looking at the US elections in the fall and trying to position themselves. Consider Benjamin

PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF HRH PRINCE EL HASSAN BIN TALAL

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

GB: Will the P5+1 process with Iran ultimately yield fruit (see the Feature article by Pierre Pahlavi at p. 28)?

Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress. It gives us great anxiety to think that our future in the region should perhaps be based on a bombastic speech by a head of government in front of Congress pointing to the need to attack Iranian targets.

There have been suggestions by the Iranian foreign minister that he intends to withdraw. What does such withdrawal mean? Does this mean that he is under pressure from his own extremists to go ahead and weaponize? What is missing in this whole equation is not debate about the alphabet soup of P5+1 alone or partners for peace or partners for the Mediterranean and all of these things, but instead to reflect on whether there is a serious and

43

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Perhaps the Middle East requires an Ibn Khaldun programme in order to change attitudes about each other, and to develop an international media Peace Corps that combines scholarship with media outlets, and gives content to some of the basic issues that we are all currently addressing.

44

representative discussion group around these issues – putting their cards on the table, as it were, in the proper spirit, for that new architecture. Can we talk about a broader patriotism in this part of the world as a justification for helping the tens of millions of mobility and national stakeholders?

Remember Churchill’s famous speech in Zurich, in 1946, when he called for a broader patriotism – so that one can at once be a European, a Bavarian, a German and a Catholic. Why can we not have a broader patriotism in this region – one where one can become an Arab of Jewish culture, or an Arab Assyrian or an Aleppan Orthodox citizen?

GB: What is citizenship in the Middle East or Western Asia today?

BT: For now, it is essentially flag-waving. Every pocket handkerchief state has a flag, a guard of honour, a seat at the UN, and so on. My late brother, who passed away some 16 years ago, once said: let us build this country and serve this nation. The nation to which he was referring was the Arab nation. If we have introduced Arabic into the UN as an official language, are we using the language responsibly, or is the Arab nation, with seven wars in six years, all too easily identified with Oriental despotism?

(Of course, Oriental despotism in this world is not limited to Arab states.) The more I listen to comments by regional leaders, the more I believe that there are no civilized parameters for this West Asian region. You can say whatever you like in this part of the world and get away with it. The same does not apply to Southeast Asia, or even to South Asia – and certainly not to Europe or Eurasia. What does our region boil down to: a barrel of oil and a vast spending spree on new weapons to try out on our peoples? The legitimacy and defence of the nation cannot simply consist in the recourse to weapons.

Many of us once thought that the greatest disaster in our lives was the 1948 war, or indeed the 1967 war. But we have had a war in every single decade since. We have not, as a result, had the chance and time to evolve in a manner that is in keeping with my brother’s vision: improved quality of life, a meditative society, and so forth. There has not been a period of stability that has really given us that opportunity.

GB: What do you see as the near- and long-term future of the Israeli-Arab conflict?

BT: I am told by Israelis that there are some 10,000 front companies in the Gulf region alone – companies owned by members of the international Jewish diaspora. The members of this diaspora can hold whatever citizenship they like and not lose their ability to remain or become citizens of Israel. This

allows them to conduct business in the Arab world unimpeded, even if Gulf countries have no formal diplomatic ties with Israel.

Still, it seems to me that the Israeli reality is that you have a wall, and that behind that wall you have an exclusivist, gated community – exclusivist even in the face of Sephardic or Oriental Jews, who are themselves worried about what the Jewishness of the state is going to mean. How does this Jewishness affect the Arabic language? After all, these Sephardic Jews – particularly the Iraqi and Moroccan Jews – are also the custodians of the Arabic language. So I think that the idea of the Jewishness of the Israeli state, and of a Jewish Israeli state that is primus inter pares in a regional patchwork of disorganized minorities, is worrying.

As such, I think that the solution to the conflict requires a regional model of citizenship – one that includes Arabs and non-Arabs alike, and one that will make economic and political opportunities for citizens in the region far more symmetrical and equal and just. There are many in Israel who support this vision. Indeed, I have discussed with some Israelis the possibility of a regional community based on water, energy and, to be sure, the human environment as a basis for stabilizing the regional order. This would be a win-win situation, instead of a zero-sum game.

GB: How would a regional security framework deal specifically with the question of weapons of mass destruction or nuclear weapons?

BT: Having served as a member of the Nuclear Threat Initiative board for 10 years, it seems to me that everyone can put their cards on the table. If you are talking about the Chinese versus Japanese situation over the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, for instance, then the conflict is actually territorial and identity-based. In our region, we have the question of Iran and its nuclear programme: does this ideological regime have the right to a nuclear capability for peaceful purposes? Does it have the right to weaponize? Of course, Israel believes that Iran does not have the right to weaponize because this would destroy Israel. The fact is, however, that such weapons and such weaponization would destroy me – that is, they would destroy everybody in this part of the world.

Let me add that I simply cannot understand why Pakistan and India cannot be a part of this discussion. They should be part of it. Is our region not a part of Asia? I do not see Asia or, for that matter, Europe consulting us on their security arrangements.

Are we a black hole? No, we are a hugely important thoroughfare between Europe and Asia, and the regional architecture that we are discussing in this interview is a key part of bridging these continents

in a way that is in keeping with our brute realities.

GB: Should Middle East countries other than Jordan ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC? BT: I certainly think that if they are going to take international criminal justice seriously, then they should ratify. If they do not want to take it seriously, then do not ratify. Who has ratified to date in the region? The list is pitiful. Jordan, Tunisia and Palestine. Countries that have not ratified include Algeria, Morocco, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Israel, by the way, publicly stated that it no longer intends to ratify the treaty. How can we talk about the legal requirements for the poor if we do not respect the importance of empowering people through recognition of international legality as well as the shifting sands of national legality via some form of monitor?

Some kind of an exchange of values based in law is necessary – particularly when it comes to women’s rights, children’s rights, and so forth. So I think yes, the more parties and countries that can be brought into a conversation on ethics, the better. I certainly hope that when His Holiness, the Pope, visits the US Congress this year in September – something that is unprecedented – and when he speaks to the UN, given the humanity that we have seen from his person, that he will touch on these issues. And I hope that other faith leaders will also take these issues seriously.

GB: What was the importance of the 2003 war in Iraq in some of the current crises in the region, including in the rise of ISIS?

GB: What caused the Saudis to not prop up the price of oil? And what effect has the collapse of oil prices had on Saudi Arabia, Iran and other countries in the region?

BT: I am not privy to Saudi or OPEC decision-making.

However, for Iran and Russia (see the Tête à Tête interview with Vladimir Mau at p. 14), the fall of oil prices has evidently had a very sobering effect.

Whether this dynamic causes less belligerence – say, in the context of the P5+1 or out of the Minsk 1.0 and 2.0 processes – is unclear. It is very difficult to come up with an exact calculus that allows you to conclude that, if you depress prices to $50 a barrel, this is going to change the situation fundamentally – especially when people are living in extremely depressing situations anyway.

GB: What is your advice for Europe post-Charlie Hebdo? How should Europe and the West more generally react to terrorism?

BT: As I said, terrorism is by no means a new phenomenon. It is certainly not restricted to any particular groupings – despite the way that things are going in Islam and under the sobriquet ‘Islamist.’

I would say to the West that the time has come today to begin to consider a new international initiative – not only strengthening borders and security measures, but also recognizing the disappearance of multilateralism. If the West actually wishes to galvanize multilateralism, then it has to recognize that the League of Nations did not succeed partly because the US never ratified the Covenant of the League of Nations. If we want the new UN to succeed, then let us ratify those agreements that will set us on that incremental path of building a new architecture for the West Asia-North Africa region.

We have not, as a result, had the chance and time to evolve in a manner that is in keeping with my brother’s vision: improved quality of life, a meditative society, and so forth.

There has not been a period of stability that has really given us that opportunity.

GB: Are you optimistic about the quality of young leaders being developed or emerging in the Middle East?

BT: I am optimistic that, after a very long period of darkness, the improvement of the situation in our part of the world is a common denominator between the 88 year old (take the new president of Tunisia) and the young people of the region. I think that what is important is to remind GB readers that leadership should not only be found at the political apex. Civil society matters. And there are signs of a movement in the Middle East that can perhaps one day produce a new social contract. | GB

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

BT: When attempting to stabilize Iraq by direct military action the US forsook some 400,000 members of the Iraqi military. To sack 400,000 people in the context of national economic depression and then to expect them to emerge as model citizens – particularly as new movements and militias are being created all the time – was evidently unwise.

The Americans and Brits never asked themselves, really: how does this war end?

The split of Iraq into three parts – I do not wish to oversimplify – was self-fulfilling. But these three parts today still share a common concern over what will become of Baghdad. More generally, though, the episodes of violent fundamentalism that we have seen in the region over the last decade, sadly, do harken back to the basic question: what price do we owe Mesopotamia? I shall never forget an American soldier asking the director of a prominent European museum, “What is archeologically significant about Mesopotamia?” The answer was: “Everything.” But how can we call this region the Holy Land or the Levant if we continue to act on

the basis of small-minded power plays rather than a broader understanding of strategy, and rather than developing a regional identity and regional institutions with equal opportunity for all?

45

If we avoid conflict by eliminating misunderstandings, then war can only issue, improbably, from clear-headed, brute calculations

BY DONG WANG

BEIJING-WASHINGTON STRUCTURE, PERCEPTION & DESTINY

Dong Wang is Associate Professor in the School of International Studies and Deputy Director of the Institute on China-US People to People Exchange,

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Peking University.

46

n the world today there are three major conflicts – conflicts that can quickly envelope much of the globe: first, the crumbling of the Middle East or West Asia order (see the Tête à Tête interview with Prince El Hassan bin Talal at p. 42); second, the sudden new Cold War between Russia and Ukraine and the West (see the Query article by Vyacheslav Tolkovanov at p. 18); and third, all potential confrontations and shocks relating to the strategic rise of China. I have no remedies in mind for the first two conflicts – even if other writers in GB have treated them with considerable skill – but am optimistic that the third conflict should not necessarily be bloody, provided all parties become far wiser about each other.

If most analysts – including those in Beijing, Washington and New York City – are in agreement that the trajectory of China-US relations will be decisive in shaping the global order in this early new century, they still often remain worlds apart in their interpretation of the behaviour of the country opposite. Consider the notion, mooted just as often by Chinese as by American analysts, that the various problems and frictions in China-US relations are actually caused by so-called ‘structural factors.’ These structural factors include differences in national ideology and political system, as well as the changing strategic power balance between China and the US. Structural analysis leads these observers to everywhere see evidence of continuous Sino-American competition or rivalry.

Western analysts who subscribe to the structural arguments, including the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer, tend to argue that a rising power like China will be a revisionist power. It will, on this logic, for the purpose of power or security maximization, inevitably challenge the predominant position of the established power, the US. The policy prescription for Washington, from the structural perspective, must be to contain Beijing.

For their part, Chinese analysts who subscribe to the structural view like to stress the ‘structural contradictions’ (jiegouxing maodun) in China-US relations, only to then argue that

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTOPHER NIELSEN

47

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

48

ideological prejudices and the desire to maintain hegemonic position will (predictably) drive the US to seek to contain or otherwise keep China down.

And yet these structural arguments might well be misleading – as overly deterministic and therefore possibly self-fulfilling. Importantly, the structural approach fails to appreciate or give weight to the role that perceptions (indeed, misperceptions) play in China-US relations – the implication being that identifying the sources of misperceptions could help to mitigate problems and therefore improve the overall bilateral relationship, if not even save us from unnecessary confrontation or war (see the Feature article by Barthélémy Courmont in the Fall/Winter 2015 issue of GB).

First and foremost, misperceptions may be conceptual in nature. One representative erroneous conceptual assumption is that a given state player is a unitary actor. Of course, the personification of state ac tors is a common practice in scholarly and policy analyses.

But the unitary actor assumption often causes policy-makers and strategic analysts to misperceive ( o r m i s a p p re h e n d ) another country’s intentions and behaviour.

For example, during the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, one of the causes of the escalation of the crisis was the misperception

by Chinese leaders that the Clinton administration’s decision to issue an entry visa to the pro-independence Taiwan leader Lee Teng-hui – a reversal of the previous US policy position – was a manifestation of US encouragement, if not outright support, of Taiwan independence. The Chinese reading of American behaviour, however, ignored the fact that the Clinton administration made the visa decision under enormous pressure from the US Congress. Indeed, the Clinton administration’s implicit forewarning that it might be unable to uphold its preferred position under mounting Congressional pressure – a forewarning issued by Secretary of State Warren Christopher in his meeting with Chinese Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen – was unfortunately discounted by the Chinese.

US policy makers, too, may suffer from similar misperceptions caused by a unitary actor assumption. Consider the so-called Impeccable Incident.

In March 2009, the US reconnaissance vessel the USNS Impeccable was intercepted by Chinese ships

in China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coast of Hainan province. The Impeccable Incident reflected, at least in part, Beijing’s and Washington’s differing interpretations of the UN Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) – particularly in respect of coastal states’ rights in their EEZs. Nevertheless, US officials and analysts viewed the incident as evidence of China increasingly flexing its muscles, and indeed of Beijing’s growing military assertiveness.

But this conclusion was surely based on a unitary actor presumption by US analysts. For much like in the US, China’s vast bureaucracy also frequently falls prey to the curse of ‘the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.’ As the former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates observes in his memoirs, China’s civilian leadership might not always be in full control of the nuts and bolts of what is happening on the military side of the ship of state. One could, therefore, advance the alternative hypothesis that the Impeccable Incident resulted from initiatives taken at the lower end of the military chain of command. To be sure, however, once the standoff began, all Chinese leaders naturally came to the defence of their own boys.

Misperceptions may also be cultural in nature.

As they surely have different cultural heritages and starting points (and, evidently, very different mentalities), Chinese and American policy-makers sometimes find themselves talking past each other when it comes to understanding some important policy discourses or concepts. For instance, US officials and analysts like to talk about shared responsibilities and leadership, and to urge China to assume greater responsibilities and play a greater leadership role in regional and international affairs.

With the aim of moving China to play a more active role in resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, top officials in the George W. Bush administration had, for a while, been endorsing the idea that China should lead the region in developing a Northeast Asia Security Mechanism, building on the success of the Six Party Talks.

A

nother example was the concept of the Group of Two (G2), an idea recognizing the centrality of the China-US dyad in the stewardship of global affairs.

The G2 idea was floated

by US strategic thinkers like Zbigniew Brzezinski – then a top foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Although the Obama administration never publicly embraced the G2 construct, Washington, in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, vigorously courted China to participate guns blazing in international efforts to fight the global economic

and develop a new type of interface that is characterized by “no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and mutual benefit” (buchongtu, buduikang, xianghu zunzhong, huligongying). Alas, despite official Chinese enthusiasm for the construct, the US has to date shown far less interest in it, and seems to even view it with skepticism.

Cultural difference matters here. In the Chinese culture, people define the nature of a relationship before entering into formal or ‘legitimate’ interactions. The Rectification of Names (zhengming) is a very important doctrine in Confucianism. According to Confucianism, the rectification of names – the proper designation of things in the web of relationships – creates meaning and legitimacy for social behaviour and social order. As Confucius famously puts it, “If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success” (mingbuzheng ze yanbushun, yanbushun ze shibucheng). The doctrine of zhengming is encrypted into the Chinese psyche, including among China’s political and strategic classes. In terms of the Chinese social behaviour, then, relational trust comes only after a relationship is positively defined.

Typically, Chinese business culture requires that people dine and drink until they feel that they have become well acquainted and comfortable with each other – only after which do they get down to business, as it were. In other words, unless the nature of the relationship is properly defined, the trust that is requisite to practical cooperation will not materialize.

The American way of doing business, of course, is almost a reversal of the Chinese approach. For Americans, the name (ming) of a thing or person is not critical. Substance precedes name or form.

And this, then, is the US disposition in respect of the ‘new model of major-country relations.’ “Let’s forget about the label, and focus on cooperation,” US officials would tell their Chinese counterparts.

US analysts, for their part, may suspect that China is setting up a rhetorical trap by insisting on US acceptance of a ‘new model of major-country relations’ before any concrete deliverables are agreed.

These analysts would point to the principles that China proposes for the new model of China-US relations – first and foremost, mutual respect – as setting Washington up to effectively affirm Beijing’s ‘core interests’ – a position that Washington would presumably never take. On the US logic, Washington

Shared leadership is a patently foreign concept to Chinese ears.

Unlike in American or Western culture, leadership (lindao) in the Chinese culture is understood as something hierarchical – something that cannot, as a logical proposition, be shared.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

downturn. Top US officials like then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confessed that the US and China were “in the same boat” during her visit to Beijing in February 2009. President Obama himself stated repeatedly that no global challenge – from climate change to nuclear proliferation – could be resolved without China and the US regularly collaborating.

And despite the ups and downs in China-US relations over the course of the Obama presidency, and notwithstanding continued mutual grievances and suspicions, Obama and his foreign policy team have generally been keen to encourage China to play a growing leadership role befitting the country’s growing strategic footprint. Secretary of State John Kerry himself even recently acknowledged that China would soon become a global leading power, and that he therefore expected China to assume a greater share of global responsibility for solving major international problems.

However, shared leadership is a patently foreign concept to Chinese ears. Unlike in American or Western culture, leadership (lindao) in the Chinese culture is understood as something hierarchical – something that cannot, as a logical proposition, be shared. Indeed, as the Chinese saying goes, “How can an outsider be allowed to sleep beside one’s bed?” (wota zhice qirong taren hanshui); or, in other words, a king will not allow any potential threat to his authority and power. As such, repeated US calls for Beijing to share leadership with Washington and other important capitals tend to be viewed with suspicion, distrust and incredulity in China.

Worse still, such Chinese distrust of American logic, coupled with the bitter memory of the Century of Humiliation at the hands of the Western imperialist powers, predisposes Chinese elites and the public to brush aside any suggestion that China and the US should share in any leadership. Such deep-rooted suspicion helps to explain Chinese leaders’ and strategic analysts’ wary reaction to the G2 idea; indeed, these leaders and analysts may even believe such American proposals for shared leadership and responsibility to be a trap set by Washington – one betrayed by what must surely be the overriding objective of the US, which is to contain China (as discussed above).

Another example of culture-based misperception is the concept of a ‘new model of major-country relations’ (xinxing daguo guanxin) between China and the US – proposed by the Chinese leadership and described by President Xi Jinping as an intellectual framework for resolving the dilemma of seemingly inevitable historical conflict between rising and established powers (call it the ‘Thucydides Trap’).

By committing to building a ‘new model of majorcountry relations’ between China and the US, Beijing argues, the two countries can transcend the old pattern of hegemonic conflict and war

49

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

50

should never unilaterally accommodate China’s core interests – not least because the boundaries and definition of these core interests may be highly elastic. And yet these US policy analysts and their political audience or masters seem to have again misperceived China’s intentions. Accommodation, by definition, is mutual. And no Chinese leaders would be so naïve as to believe that they could coax US officials into endorsing China’s core interests.

But the US fundamentally misreads the proposed new model of major-country relations because it fails to appreciate the import of rectifying the name (zhengming) in China’s way of thinking.

The third source of misperception is perhaps the simplest of the three majors: media misrepresentation. Media in China and the US alike today have strong commercial and cultural incentives to dramatize, exaggerate and sometimes even distort stories. Open the pages of any major US or Western newspaper, and one rarely finds much positive reporting about China. That may not be particularly surprising, as American newspapers hardly report any positive stories at all about anything, including the US. Chinese media have, for better or ill, become increasingly like their Western counterparts since market reforms were enacted in the country more than two decades ago. Indeed, Western observers would be surprised to learn that the Chinese media sector has become even more commercialized than its equivalents in Western countries. Moreover, Chinese media, as with their counterparts in East Asia and some other parts of the world (consider the present euphoric nationalism in Russia driven by that country’s media in the aftermath of the Crimean annexation), have also contributed to, and prospered by dint of, the rising tide of nationalism in China. Bref, commercialism and nationalism have together conspired to have the Chinese media often misrepresent the true picture or state of China-US relations.

GB readers will recall that after attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meetings in Beijing in November 2014, President Obama made a visit to Australia for the G20 summit and gave a speech at Queensland University.

In his speech, Obama revealed his lingering suspicion of China’s intentions. He said: “China will inevitably play a critical role in the future of this region. And the question is, what kind of role will it play?” Unfortunately, by the time the story had made it to Chinese online news portals – through the mediation of some other foreign commentary on Obama’s choice of words – the dominant

headline was as follows: “Obama: China is not a Responsible Country.” Many in China today still believe that this was what Obama had actually said about their country.

W

hat’s to be done about these misperceptions in order to keep the bilateral relations between B e ijin g and Washington peaceable and productive? First, drop the unitary actor assumption or presumption on both sides.

Both capitals must develop far better understanding and more nuanced appreciation of the black box of the decision-making processes on the other side – primarily to better understand that side’s intentions.

Second, both sides must develop greater cultural awareness and sensitivity in order to avoid foolish misunderstandings driven by deeply rooted codes of behaviour. Broadly speaking, promoting cultural and educational exchanges will help to improve the understanding of the other country by elites and publics alike. To this end, the Obama administration’s 100,000 Strong Initiative, which aims to send more than 100,000 American students to study in China over a period of five years – a goal already achieved by 2014 – should be applauded. Training the next generations of China specialists in the US, and America watchers in China – specialists who not only speak the languages, but also have deep insights into the culture and history of the opposite country – will be crucial.

Finally, rich and substantive exchanges and educational programmes between media representatives from all levels in both countries can help to alleviate media misrepresentation – an important aspect of socially-based misperceptions between the two countries. Equally important will be the role of policy-makers and analysts in shaping media discourses – rationally and reasonably, with tempered nationalism in place of dogma – in their home country (this, of course, sounds more Chinese than American, but both countries will need to improve in this area) and in communicating through media to colleagues and audiences in the country opposite.

If much of this happens, we cannot guarantee that war will be impossible at some point this century, but we can minimize the probability of misapprehension being its fundamental cause.

War, instead, would happen in full knowledge of realities on the ground and of what would happen as a result of hostilities – hopefully enough information, in the aggregate, to keep decision-makers from flirting with such scenarios. | GB

FULL PAGE, FULL BLEED Trim size:

8.5” wide x 10.875” high

Bleed size:

8.75” wide x 11.125” high

Some see a university.

We see a world of possibilities.

At York University, our interdisciplinary approach engages diverse viewpoints and crosses traditional barriers to create new ways of learning.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Explore how at www.yorku.ca

51

Will Chinese Companies Finally Displace US Ones?

QUERY

Not so fast. All will turn on culture and rules.

BY FRED LAZAR

Fred Lazar is Associate Professor of Economics at the Schulich School of Business, York

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

University (Toronto).

52

F

or the first time ever in the Forbes magazine ranking of the largest global public companies, China was home to the three biggest companies in 2014 (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Agricultural Bank of China). Indeed, Chinese companies comprised five of the top 10 spots on the Forbes list. Still, American companies continued to dominate the list of the world’s most valuable public companies, occupying nine of the top 10 spots, with Apple, Exxon Mobil, Google, Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway leading the way.

Should we bet on US companies continuing to dominate the list of the most valuable companies in the world over the next 10 to 15 years? Or should we bet on Chinese companies – or perhaps Indian companies, even if the most valuable Indian company, Tata Consultancy, ranked only 121st in market value in 2014? Let me make the argument for continuing American dominance.

According to Forbes, there were 564 US companies (28 percent) among the largest 2,000 public companies. Of these 2,000, there were 207 Chinese (including Hong Kong-based) companies (10 percent); 225 Japanese companies (11 percent); and 54 Indian companies (three percent). When compared with each country’s share of global GDP in 2013, the US and Japan were overrepresented among the top 2,000 companies, while China was underrepresented.

India was more or less ‘fairly’ represented. If China continues to grow more rapidly than the US and Japan, it is conceivable that by 2030, China may have the most companies on Forbes list, followed by the US and the EU, with Japan – which will likely grow far more slowly than China – trailing further behind.

On the other hand, if we focus on only the 300 most valuable companies on the Forbes list, the picture is much different. There were 121 US companies (40 percent) among these 300 companies, with only 21 Chinese companies (seven percent), 15 Japanese companies (five percent), and just one Indian company.

Of course, 50 years ago there would have been no Chinese companies at all on the list, and likely no Indian or Japanese companies either. To be sure, at least 53 US companies would themselves have not been on the Forbes list, as many of them had not yet been created by the mid-1960s.

It goes without saying that corporate leaders will continuously change over time. If we were to compare the companies on the Fortune 500 list in 1970 with

those on the list in 2014, we would find that there had been dramatic turnover. And beyond these lists, consider the following short list of companies that were once dominant or significant players in their industries, and now are no longer so: Kodak, Xerox, Polaroid, Zenith, Sears, TWA, Washington Mutual, Barnes & Noble, HMV, Pan Am, People Express, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, Worldcom, Dynegy, Bear Stearns, Commodore Computers, Nokia, RCA, Netscape, Texaco, Lehman Brothers, Global Crossing, Eastern Airlines, Adelphia Communications, Blockbuster, Merrill Lynch, Nortel, Arthur Andersen, Enron, Wang Labs, Barings Bank, and Daewoo.

Recall that during the 40 years following WW2, like today’s China, Japan also experienced very high rates of growth. By the mid-1980s, Japan’s fastgrowing companies had become dominant in many industries, including banking, consumer electronics, machinery and industrial equipment, and eventually autos. It was not uncommon to hear policy-makers in the West argue that the West should follow the lead of Japan. And yet today, while Japanese companies continue to lead in the motor vehicle and industrial equipment and robotics industries, they have fallen behind in financial services (the largest banks in the world were once Japanese banks), consumer electronics (Sony, Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba are still around, but are already far from being market leaders), and computer hardware.

Can China and Chinese companies avoid the pitfalls of Japan, where high rates of growth have been replaced by almost 25 years of stagnation? The Chinese market is certainly far larger, and there appears to be stronger government support for the leading companies in China. Will Chinese companies be able to succeed beyond their borders? Will they be able to succeed if and when their internal markets become more open?

It is easier for companies to grow through imitation. It is difficult to grow when a company is at the technology frontier. Said Joseph Schumpeter: “This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.” He also said: “[T]he function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way […].”

For his part, Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter argued, many years after Schumpeter,

that companies must continuously develop strategies to produce a competitive advantage.

Success in creating a competitive advantage is what sets apart the dominant companies from their mediocre competitors. And success inevitably depends upon the skills and talent of senior management; the execution of the strategies; good corporate governance; and, to be sure, luck.

Moreover, successful companies can never afford to stand still and rest on their laurels. As Schumpeter noted, there will always be someone trying to displace them (see the Feature article by Brett House at p. 20).

R

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / KIN CHEUNG

Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, gives a speech on “Transforming Dreams into Successful Business” in Hong Kong, February 2015.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

eturning to the Forbes list, if we look at the distribution of companies across sectors, China’s corporate presence becomes less impressive. There are few Chinese companies among the largest in the following sectors: biotech, computer hardware, computer services, consumer electronics, electronics, medical equipment and supplies, pharmaceuticals, software, telecom services, aerospace, business and personal services, communications equipment, and healthcare services. On the other hand, US companies appear in almost every sector.

US companies look even more promising when we look at the lists of the most innovative companies and companies with the highest brand value.

On the Thomson Reuters 2014 list of the “Top 100 Global Innovators,” there are 35 US companies, 39 Japanese companies, only one Chinese company, and no Indian companies. The fact that 25 of the US companies had market values in excess of US$20 billion, while only 11 of the Japanese companies had reached this level, puts to rest any presumption of any Japanese corporate renaissance.

American dominance is even more apparent on the Forbes 2014 list of the 100 “Most Innovative Companies.” There are 37 US companies on this list – this

in contrast with only eight Chinese companies, seven Japanese companies, and four Indian companies.

Other than Baidu and Tencent (both software and services), the Chinese companies on the list do not show up in the highly innovative industries with significant growth opportunities: consider Henan Shuanghui Investment (meat processing); Tingyi Holding (production and distribution of instant foods); Hengan International Group (personal hygiene products); Li & Fung (consumer goods sourcing and logistics); Dairy Farm International (supermarkets, hypermarkets, health and beauty, convenience and home furnishings stores); and Inner Mongolia Yili (dairy products).

Nor does the Forbes “Asia Fab 50 Companies” list suggest that China enjoys any massive lead on India in terms of future successes: there are 19 Chinese companies on this list, as compared with 10 Indian companies.

Finally, Brandirectory’s 2014 list of the “World’s Most Valuable Brands” includes 44 US companies.

Indeed, US companies occupied nine of the top 10 spots. There were 10 Chinese companies on the list, with the highest ranking company being China Mobile at 13. Half of the Chinese companies on the list were in financial services. There were 11 Japanese companies and only one Indian company on the list.

Innovation and brand reputation are key drivers of a company’s future success. Evidently, there is no assurance that a high ranking today will ensure

53

Building linkages with Chinese academic institutions Conducting research on Canada-China relations, especially in the investment and energy sectors

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Fostering scholarship and joint research on China’s global role

54

www.china.ualberta.ca

china@ualberta.ca

continued success in the future, as there have been many examples of companies that have stumbled.

But the US companies appear to be better situated for future success, and even if the current leaders are not necessarily tomorrow’s leaders, given the track record of US companies, they are likely to continue to dominate across a wide range of industries.

Of course, at the end of the day, corporate success will be driven by culture as reflected in creativity and entrepreneurship – especially the ability to admit mistakes and accept failure – as well as rules, including ones creating strong governance practices and encouraging openness. High levels of education alone do not ensure success. People must be willing to take chances and start anew when they fail. Capital markets cannot shun past failures.

Governments evidently play important roles in establishing the rules of the game for the functioning of markets. In other words, markets do not exist in a vacuum: they are circumscribed by rules and historical relationships. Most countries have a similar range of laws and rules. However, the interpretations and objectives do differ across countries. So too does the enforcement of the rules. There are also differences across countries in the acceptance of the rules by the people. The more confidence that people have in the rule of law and the objectivity and independence of the courts (see the Tête à Tête interview with Vladimir Mau at p. 14), the more inclined they will be to honour the rules. It follows that people’s behaviour in markets will differ across countries as a result of differences in rules, the enforcement of the rules, the confidence that people have in the legitimacy and objectivity of government, and indeed their experiences in their markets. From a company strategy point of view, then, what might work in one geographic market might not work in another.

To date, it appears that China’s system of rules has been more successful than that of India in promoting national economic growth and the concomitant growth of domestic companies. Moreover, Chinese rules seem to have been more successful than the rules in the US in spurring economic growth.

Japan fell behind because of the inability of government and business leaders to accept and admit failure.

Corporate conglomerates carrying the names of their founders were treated as family fiefdoms, stifling, in many cases, criticism and alternative views.

Can China become a more open society? If so, Chinese companies should continue to succeed. Will they achieve more success than their US counterparts? Not likely over the next 15 years because of the significant gaps that they need to overcome. Can the leadership of China give up their reins and begin to tolerate dissent? Top-down central planning – even highly competent planning – will get a country only so far. Such countries can catch up, but there are no examples where such countries have forged ahead, consistently pushing the technological frontier forward in the process. | GB

Nation-building is in America’s DNA FULL PAGE, FULL BLEED

Trim size: “‘Nation-building can only work when Bleed size: the people own it.’

8.5” wide x 10.875” high 8.75” wide x 11.125” high

Pick up or download your copy today

www.simonandschuster.com

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Jeremi Suri argues that the United States has too often forgotten this truth over the course of its nation-building history— including the American Revolution and Reconstruction as well as efforts in the Philippines, Germany, Japan, and Vietnam. Suri draws lessons from all these efforts that are particularly valuable today.”

—Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University

55

NEZ À NEZ Is Anyone Pivoting to This Continent?

PROPOSITION:

Latin America is the world’s most astrategic continent.

ALEJANDRO GARCIA MAGOS vs VICTOR ARMONY

Alejandro Garcia Magos is an economist and a GB Geo-Blogger.

Victor Armony est professeur de sociologie à l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) et co-directeur du nouvellement créé Réseau d’études latinoaméricaines de

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Montréal (RELAM).

56

AGM (in favour): Yes. For all of the vast natural and human resources of the region, Latin America has little strategic importance on the global stage. This is fundamentally because the continent has failed to achieve significant political unity, which means that its capacity to impact global affairs and act as a reliable partner remains limited.

Currently, Latin America is divided into two subregions that are premissed on competing political narratives or schools of thought. The first one – let us call it ‘Pan-American,’ contends that this century will witness the removal of the physical and cultural barriers between the US and the region. Governments that support this narrative like to emphasize less their ‘Latinness’ than their ‘Americanness,’ and tend to explain or justify their close links with the US on the argument that it is natural for democracies to work together. The primary representatives of this school are the members of the Pacific Alliance: Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru. For these countries, the Organization of American States (OAS) should continue to be the main meeting point for North-South dialogue in the hemisphere.

The second narrative in Latin America can be called ‘South Atlantic’ – for lack of a better expression. This narrative is inward-looking, and contends that Latin America is capable of transforming itself into a major strategic global actor. It holds that the region is self-sufficient in terms of resources, and considers the US a direct rival with antagonistic interests. Governments of this school coalesce around Mercosur and the more feisty Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA). They favour closer ties among themselves and with emerging powers outside of the region. China is here the preferred partner (see the Feature article by Dong Wang at p. 46): witness the fact that in 2009 China became Brazil’s largest trading partner, and Argentina’s second.

In sum, there is a major rift in the region. It does not look as if it is going to close any time soon. In fact, the divergent interests of regional countries will likely push them further and further apart into their preferred sub-regional organizations. If this is the case, Latin America will surely remain the least strategic continent for years to come.

VA (contre): Non, parce que l’Amérique latine se trouve aujourd’hui dans un contexte unique qui permettra aux pays de la région de réaliser, enfin, leur véritable potentiel. Malgré les multiples difficultés et les grands défis auxquels les Latino-Américains font encore face, une profonde mutation s’est produite depuis les dernières 20 années – un tournant qui permet déjà d’envisager la place significative que cette région occupera dans le monde. En effet, une Amérique latine à la hauteur de ses pleines capacités sera un continent stratégiquement clé durant les prochaines décennies, et cela pour trois raisons principales. D’abord, sur le plan économique, l’Amérique latine a réalisé des gains très importants, et cela sur des bases solides qui, même devant les circonstances moins favorables d’aujourd’hui, augurent une reprise éventuelle de la croissance. Bien évidemment, tout n’est pas rose (et le portrait varie d’un pays à l’autre), mais la qualité de la gestion macroéconomique a généralement connu un saut qualitatif, ce qui s’est avéré par la manière dont la plupart des pays latino-américains ont traversé la crise globale sans trop de bouleversements. Il n’y a qu’à se rappeler des violents soubresauts du passé pour mesurer le degré de robustesse que ces économies ont atteint durant les années 2000.

Certes, ce progrès est à relativiser, car le présent semble meilleur quand on le compare avec la longue litanie de ratés qui l’a précédé. Mais il serait absurde de nier que l’amélioration, jaugée sur une échelle historique, a été formidable.

On le sait, l’Amérique latine a toujours été un lieu d’inégalités extrêmes, ainsi que de puissants projets de justice sociale. Rappelons-nous, donc, que l’élan économique des derniers temps a été étroitement associé au soi-disant «virage à gauche».

Au-delà des couleurs et nuances politiques, il est certain que les processus mis en branle depuis le début de ce siècle ont eu des effets colossaux sur la distribution de la richesse: plus de 50 millions de Latino-Américains ont rejoint les rangs de la classe moyenne. Ce phénomène n’est pas qu’économique, car il constitue un pas de géant vers la consolidation de sociétés plus stables, cohésives et politiquement centristes. Voilà donc la deuxième raison qui doit

AGM: Economic stability, democratic rule, and natural resources are neither exclusive to Latin America nor is the region particularly exceptional in any of these areas. And even if that were the case, a question would still need to be addressed: what are the leaders of the region prepared to do PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / RODRIGO ABD

about it? Or, to put it more clearly, what notion of international order are Latin Americans prepared to support with their capacity and resources? If you want to have strategic importance in the world, you need to let others know what you stand for.

Latin America is mute in this respect. The problem here is that, as of today, the region’s leaders have not agreed on a common agenda. A modicum of stability and natural richness is not a substitute for foreign policy and strategy. You still need the will and the skill to transform these assets into political currency. Instead, what we observe today in the region is something very different: commodity-based economies that fuel a competition of narratives and are largely undertaking efforts that neutralize each other. Witness, for instance, the arms race in the Andean region in the late 2000s – one that cost billions of petrodollars.

You mention Latin America’s left turn as a source of economic élan and, in the next breath, the political nuances around this left turn. This

Protesters push a trash bin against police outside the government palace in Buenos Aires after the death of special prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had been investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre, January 2015.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

nous amener à valoriser le statut stratégique de la région: l’Amérique latine se développe maintenant au son de la démocratie, se démarquant ainsi d’autres cycles historiques et d’autres dynamiques géopolitiques ailleurs dans le monde actuel. Finalement, la troisième grande raison d’être optimiste quant à l’avenir de l’Amérique latine est liée à sa fortune quant aux richesses naturelles, à la fois comme réservoir de matières premières et comme écosystème. Le continent représente, à plusieurs égards, une superpuissance de la biodiversité et des ressources environnementales (dont l’eau potable).

Avouons que l’on ne peut exagérer l’importance cruciale de cet enjeu aux ramifications planétaires.

57

is problematic. It has been pointed out elsewhere that the purported left turn blurs the distinction between two strains of leftist politics that have little in common. On the one hand, there is a reformed left such as the one in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, which has accentuated increased social spending within market and democratic parameters. On the other hand, there is the left represented by Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, which has used social spending primarily as a means to stay in power at the expense of basic democratic principles. These are not meaningless nuances. On the contrary, they are at the core of why the leaders of the region are incapable of putting together a unified programme. Let me be extra clear on this: I am not laying the blame on a lack of political will by regional leaders. Rather, I am suggesting that there are important geopolitical considerations that prevent them from working together toward common objectives. And the division in the left is but one example of the significant political nu-

The divergent interests of regional countries will likely push them further and further apart into their preferred sub-regional organizations.

If this is the case, Latin America will surely remain the least strategic continent for years to come.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

ances that divide the region and prevent it from becoming truly strategic. There are – to be sure – other critical differences, such as ones shaped by the level of closeness with the US.

58

VA: Je crois qu’il ne faut pas tomber dans le piège du volontarisme, surtout lorsqu’il est question de l’Amérique latine comme un tout. Au-delà de l’imaginaire de l’unité latino-américaine, il n’existe pas de fil conducteur qui pourrait relier l’ensemble des pays de la région sous l’égide d’un projet commun. Bien sûr, on peut souhaiter l’articulation d’alliances diplomatiques et commerciales, voire la mise en place éventuelle de structures supranationales ou le renforcement de certaines initiatives comme le Parlement du Mercosur ou l’UNASUR (l’Union des nations sud-américaines). Mais il ne faut pas se faire d’illusions quant à la formulation d’un plan d’action concerté à portée géopolitique.

Cela n’est jamais arrivé et je ne pense pas que cela se produise dans les prochaines années. Cette dose

de réalisme – qui nous empêche de miser sur une quelconque «volonté des leaders» – ne doit pas pour autant nous rendre pessimistes. L’Amérique latine est, aujourd’hui, un lieu d’effervescence politique et économique, le tout encadré par l’expérience démocratique et la recherche de modèles de développement plus justes et plus durables. Je ne me cache pas les défis de la croissance – ainsi que les graves déficits démocratiques – que l’on observe avec inquiétude dans certains pays de la région (dont le Venezuela, bien évidemment). Cependant, la majorité des nations latino-américaines sont bien ancrées dans un processus de stabilisation politique (avec, par exemple, l’alternance gouvernementale et la cohabitation de partis dans les institutions représentatives) et de consolidation de leur culture civique. Pensons au Brésil ou au Pérou, pour ne pas parler du Chili et de l’Uruguay. Est-ce que la gauche au pouvoir en Bolivie, en Équateur et au Venezuela contredit la tendance lourde que je viens de décrire? Je penche plutôt vers une lecture structurelle, moins centrée sur les conjonctures et les cycles idéologiques que sur les profondes mutations sociales, politiques et culturelles en cours: montée des classes moyennes, amélioration significative de la condition des femmes, reconnaissance du pluralisme et de la diversité (de modes de vie, d’ethnicité, etc.), expansion des politiques redistributives (dont les transferts conditionnels en espèces), expérimentation démocratique, pour ne nommer que ces quelques réalités. Bref, la plupart des Latino-Américains traversent actuellement une véritable «révolution tranquille» aux accents profondément civiques. Les ingrédients du succès sont donc là: une citoyenneté en progression, des économies en expansion, des ressources naturelles et des avantages environnementaux en profusion.

Les conditions sont exceptionnelles et, sans attendre les politiciens et leurs agendas, le décollage de l’Amérique latine a déjà commencé.

AGM: So maybe our disagreement is less fundamental than what it originally seemed to be. In fact, it looks like it boils down to the choice of measuring sticks: you focus on the social development of a region as the basis for its strategic importance, whereas I focus on the capacity of its leaders to find areas of cooperation and to act upon them.

If I push myself to adopt your perspective, then I would agree that Latin America’s development over the last 20 years gives it a strategic edge over other geographical areas or theatres of the developing world – particularly in terms of attracting foreign investment and strengthening its internal market (see the Feature article by Brett House at p. 20). I would like to add, however, a note of caution: social development can lead to political and economic demands that may overload state capacity. In the

case of Latin America, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the states in the region are not able to keep up with ever-demanding and attentive societies, and that this is bringing negative consequences.

Consider, for instance, the high levels of dissatisfaction with democratic rule across the region as one incompetent government after another is elected.

Is it possible to say that Latin American leaders are victims of their own initial successes? Probably. But they are also victims of their incapacity to envisage and enact policies that can build upon these initial accomplishments. The current state of the economy is a case in point: the commodity boom that started in the early 2000s and fuelled the growth of the region for more than 10 years did not give way to higher levels of productivity or better infrastructure in the region (see the Tête à Tête interview with Vladimir Mau at p. 14). Now that the boom is over, Latin America’s perspectives look grim again: the current economic growth forecast for this year sits at a meagre 1.3 percent. Last but not least, social development also puts stress on the environment as increased consumption leads to intensive use of natural resources. In sum, social development might well be a necessary condition for a region to achieve strategic status, but it is not a sufficient one. Political leadership is still necessary to channel it into partnerships and policy.

La majorité des nations latinoaméricaines sont bien ancrées dans un processus de stabilisation politique et de consolidation de leur culture civique. Pensons au Brésil ou au Pérou, pour ne pas parler du Chili et de l’Uruguay. illicite) et de trafic d’influences autour du procès d’enquête sur l’attentant terroriste contre la communauté juive commis à Buenos Aires en 1994. La récente mort mystérieuse du procureur chargé de l’inculpation de la présidente pour complot a ajouté une autre couche d’incertitude pour les Argentins.

Leur suspicion et leur scepticisme à l’égard des institutions de la République viennent d’atteindre des niveaux inédits. Évidemment, ces événements fragilisent la confiance publique et peuvent miner les assises de l’État de droit. Mais il est également légitime d’y voir un contexte dans lequel la volonté présidentielle se heurte enfin à des limites. Le dégout manifeste de la population envers les magouilles du gouvernement et l’admiration ressentie devant le courage de certains magistrats et fonctionnaires (dont le procureur décédé) reflètent un nouveau standard de probité que l’on attend des dirigeants et des serviteurs publics. Il s’agit, d’après moi, d’un signe du jaillissement d’un nouvel esprit civique en Amérique latine. | GB

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

VA: En effet, nous ne sommes pas totalement en désaccord. Je suis bien conscient de l’importance des obstacles sur la route du décollage latino-américain, dont le manque d’une vision commune pourrait être un aspect à ne pas négliger. Cependant, je pense que les conditions sont bien en place pour que l’Amérique latine devienne un joueur majeur sur la scène internationale, bien qu’il me semble que le leadership – s’il faut accepter cette idée qui, comme je l’ai mentionné, accorde à mon goût trop de poids au volontarisme des chefs et des élites dans l’histoire – se trouve plutôt dans le rôle de certains pays en particulier. La montée du Brésil comme géant économique et géopolitique structurera la région (du moins le cône Sud, possiblement toute l’Amérique du Sud) et, en ce sens, comme son leader de facto.

Le Mexique, quant à lui, est aussi appelé à montrer le chemin, quoique sa situation actuelle soit moins prometteuse que celle de la puissance lusophone.

Ceci dit, j’admets que le paradoxe (social-) démocratique représente un problème supplémentaire – une sorte de mécanisme d’autodestruction qui consiste à toujours élargir la brèche entre les aspirations suscitées par un système de plus en plus inclusif et sa capacité de réponse effective à l’amplification exponentielle des attentes, générant ainsi davantage un sentiment de frustration que de satisfaction chez les citoyens. Cette dynamique nous force à distinguer les acquis (ce que l’on a grâce aux

progrès de la démocratisation) des déficits à combler (ce que les gens s’attendent à avoir dans le cadre de la démocratisation grandissante de leur société).

Prenons pour exemple la question de la corruption.

Cet enjeu est en soi grave, mais il s’inscrit dans une problématique plus vaste: celle de l’indépendance du pouvoir judiciaire. Les Latino-Américains ont besoin de savoir que les coupables seront châtiés, alors que malheureusement ce n’est pas souvent le cas. La distribution de la justice (au sens premier du terme) doit être équitable, si l’on veut que les gens «ordinaires» fassent confiance aux juges et aux tribunaux.

Dans des pays comme l’Argentine, on vit actuellement un double processus: celui du renforcement de l’indépendance judiciaire (et sa dépolitisation) vis-à-vis du pouvoir exécutif, ainsi que celui qui vise à contrecarrer sciemment une telle autonomie (afin d’assurer l’impunité des corrompus). La présidente Kirchner fait face à de sérieuses accusations de malfaisance (notamment son enrichissement

59

THE DEFINITION "In war and peace this century, the role of international criminal justice... …is central. As a combat soldier and war

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

Unauthorized humanitarian interventions may be morally legitimate, but it is not up to the protagonists to decide whether they are lawful.

An illegal use of force does not become lawful because it is done with good intentions.

60

crimes investigator during WW2, I am well acquainted with the horrors of war. I dug up bodies of murdered American fliers with my bare hands, and was there at the liberation of concentration camps used for the systematic murder of countless men, women and children whose only offence was that they happened not to share the race, creed or ideology of their executioners.

Later, I served at Nuremberg as Chief Prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case, billed in the press at the time as “The Biggest Murder Trial in History.”

All 22 of the defendants charged were convicted for their role in the ruthless killing of over a million Jews, Roma, communists, and other perceived enemies of the Third Reich.

Today, we have an active, though still nascent, permanent International Criminal Court (ICC).

I was privileged to join its prosecution team in making the closing statements in its first case – that of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo – in 2011. I stated then, and reiterate now, that the Court reflects a critical step in “the slow awakening of the human conscience.”

At Nuremberg, I opened my case by saying that “the case we present is a plea of humanity to law.”

Today, the tables are turned: the Rome Statute of the ICC – currently with over 120 adherents – represents a plea of law to humanity. It is a treaty that calls out to the nations and the peoples of the world for ratification and implementation. Like a child in its infancy, it needs the cooperation of states to grow into the tool of accountability and deterrence that it was meant to be.

It is axiomatic that failure to enforce law undermines law itself. The original UN Charter plan for comprehensive disarmament and an independent military force was never given a chance. In desperation, those who fear that their cherished values are threatened strike back with whatever tools of terror they have. As long as militants – whether individuals, groups or nations – insist that they alone can determine the legality of their actions, their military power is not a safeguard, but a menace. The illegal use of armed force – the

biggest atrocity of all – is a crime against humanity. Conflict and mass violence can only be curbed rationally by peaceful means.

Similarly, unauthorized humanitarian interventions may be morally legitimate, but it is not up to the protagonists to decide whether they are lawful. An illegal use of force does not become lawful because it is done with good intentions. Courts and prosecutors are required to take all relevant facts and circumstances into account. Let so-called terrorists have their day in court. Irrational arguments will not be persuasive to rational minds but will, in time, be repulsed by public revulsion.

We need enforceable international laws that bind everyone equally, and independent institutions empowered to settle vital disputes by impartial and peaceful means – as well as criminal courts, at both the national and international levels, that can hold leaders to account wherever in the world they may be apprehended.”

Benjamin B. Ferencz was the Chief Prosecutor for the US Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial at Nuremberg. He has been a lifetime advocate of the international rule of law and the establishment of the International Criminal Court.

…must be properly analyzed and understood. The ICC, I posit, will help the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Palestine’s decision to join the ICC has been met by howls of protests in some capitals. The move has been decried as “counterproductive,” “a huge mistake,” and “a concerning and dangerous development” that could make a “return to negotiations impossible.” But why would the ICC “damage the atmosphere” for peace, as the US State Department has suggested?

The broad parameters for Israeli-Palestinian peace have been known for years. What has been lacking is the trust between the two sides to make the painful decisions necessary for a peace accord.

Nothing undermines that trust more than impunity for the war crimes that continue to characterize the conflict – whether through settlement expansion, indiscriminate Hamas rocket strikes, or Israel’s lax attitude toward civilian casualties in Gaza.

…should be seen as one of the four key themes that will dominate our thinking and discourse. The other three themes are war and peace, inclusive growth, and environmental sustainability. Russia’s annexation of Crimea has reminded many Asians that old-fashioned aggression is not dead. A new war between China and Japan is not unthinkable. The future of our planet will depend increasingly on whether China and India will adopt a new growth model. And there is a struggle for the soul of Islam that will impact many countries in Asia (my region), and indeed countries around the world. Inequality and corruption have reached dangerous levels in Asia.

In Asia, the emphasis is often placed on reconciliation in lieu of justice. Asians therefore approve of the process in Timor-Leste, which has sought truth and reconciliation instead of justice per se.

Many Asians would support a similar process in Sri Lanka in order to bring about reconciliation and national unity. Bringing people to trial for war crimes or crimes against humanity is of secondary importance to many Asians.”

Tommy Koh is a Singaporean diplomat and professor

Kenneth Roth is Executive Director of

of law. He has served as Singapore’s ambassador to

Human Rights Watch.

the UN, the US, Canada and Mexico.

ILLUSTRATION: TRACY WALKER

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

The ICC will have jurisdiction over all such crimes – that is, over any war crime committed in or from Palestinian territory. The Court’s Prosecutor is not dependent on formal complaints by ICC members, but can now initiate an investigation on her own.

By helping to deter these crimes, the ICC could discourage these major impediments to peace.

To be sure, the ICC is no guarantee that such crimes will cease, but it certainly provides a disincentive, as well as a potential avenue of redress for victims. How would this undermine the prospects for peace?

That many Western governments have been so lukewarm about ICC involvement in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict suggests that their real concern is not damage to the peace process – moribund as it has been – but fear of seeing Israelis in the dock in The Hague. Yet the ICC is a court of last resort. It is empowered to act only when national authorities have not. So the easiest way for any government to avoid ICC prosecution of its citizens is to conscientiously, genuinely and credibly investigate and prosecute alleged war crimes by its officials and forces.”

61

STRATEGIC FUTURES “In 2020, Western multiculturalism will...

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

...be alive and well. Despite its denigration

62

in the statements of European political leaders, the trend has been toward the extension, entrenchment and adaptation of multiculturalism in liberal-democratic states in Western Europe, North America and Oceania. Queen’s University academics Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka have noted that multiculturalism policies have endured and proliferated, even in states whose leaders have criticized multiculturalism: their Multiculturalism Policy Index, a measure of multiculturalism policies across a wide array of countries and over time, provides ample evidence in support of their position. Others have arrived at the same conclusion through their research.

For instance, my ongoing work on the provision of publicly funded religious education to Muslims demonstrates that even countries with very tenuous multicultural pasts, such as Germany, have made significant strides in equalizing access to benefits long reserved for members of a society’s majority. German states such as Lower Saxony, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia have developed innovative means of extending religious instruc-

tion in public schools, long reserved for Catholic, Protthe group Patriotic estant and Jewish students, Europeans against to their Muslim classmates. the Islamization of At the federal level, Germany the West, or PEGIDA, has followed the lead of other in Dresden, Germany, European countries, including January, 2015. staunchly republican France, in fostering the development of Muslim corporate bodies intended to foster dialogue between representatives of Muslim communities and representatives of the state.

These and other changes have been driven by immigration. At its heart, multiculturalism is about recognizing that societies have become more diverse and need to reconsider and, when necessary, revise longstanding institutions – best understood as the formal and informal rules of social interaction that shape everyday life. Unsurprisingly, these reconsiderations and revisions of longstanding rules of the game have elicited friction – manifested most spectacularly in the popularity of anti-immigration/ anti-Islam movements and parties such as PEGIDA in Germany and Golden Dawn in Greece. Change Demonstrators wave

flags during a rally of

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / JENS MEYER

has therefore come haltingly and through differing means – sometimes through modifications to regulations, sometimes through new laws, and at other times through the courts. Yet changes have occurred and will continue to occur.

The impetus for continuing change will also vary. In some instances, courts will lead, extending old constitutional rights to resolve new debates.

In other instances, change will come through the ballot box, as the electoral weight of newcomers grows and the lure of wedge politics and anti-immigration populism fades. Here it is worth highlighting Chancellor Angela Merkel’s robust criticism of PEGIDA and ongoing efforts to have the CDU compete more effectively for support in Germany’s diverse urban centres. While rearguard actions on the part of anti-immigration movements and parties will persist – drawing energy from the murderous violence perpetrated by fanatics (who, it should be noted, also reject multiculturalism) – these actors will diminish in importance as larger and more consequential parties compete more actively for support from a more diverse citizenry.

While the trajectory will be uneven and will likely include some steps backward, it will be consistent and, because of the weight of demography and the transformative effect of constitutional principles, undeniable.”

Phil Triadafilopoulos is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the School of Public Policy and Governance. He is the author of Becoming Multicultural: Immigration and the Politics of Membership in Canada and Germany (UBC Press, 2012).

… be accepted as the nature of contemporary

John R. Bowen is Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and author of Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves (Princeton University Press, 2007), and Blaming Islam (The MIT Press, 2012).

… be largely discredited. Its idealized, extreme form will be seen as contrary to national interests.

As it becomes increasingly apparent that the strongest Western promoters of multiculturalism spend little time studying other cultures, languages and geography, the superficial aspects of the idea will contribute to its loss of favour even among those attracted to the tolerance and understanding it encourages.

The best attempts to salvage the idea will emphasize cohesion and common values as we see in the «interculturalisme» variant adopted in Québec.

Integration will, quite understandably, become an explicit expectation for immigrant groups, who will be discouraged from forming ghettos. As this mild shift from rights to responsibilities comes to add nuance to the potentially explosive question of immigrant integration, the practices in other cultures around the world will attract more attention and open imaginations. The coexistence of diverse cultures in non-Western places will then offer more modest variations and alternatives with richer histories than the brash self-promoting model currently popular in places like Canada (generally).

In 2020, Western multiculturalism will have lost its superficial political appeal among most Europeans, who will instead try to formulate more sophisticated approaches to their complex integration problems.

The idea will have been generally rejected, except in parts of Canada, where people will keep making boastful (and nonsensical) claims like “Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world” – that is, simply equating the term ‘multicultural’ with having immigrants from every country. The model has an important place in intellectual thought, but it would be foolish to govern international migration in the name of a theory.”

Michael Barutciski is Associate Editor of Global Brief and Graduate Program Director and Professor in the Glendon School

In some instances, courts will lead, extending old constitutional rights to resolve new debates.

In other instances, change will come through the ballot box, as the electoral weight of newcomers grows and the lure of wedge politics and antiimmigration populism fades.

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

society, whatever the particular national ways of governing and supporting it, and whether or not it makes one happy. Each of Canada, France, Germany and other countries will maintain its own traditions of civic life, but these countries will converge on the realities of immigration, of Islam as a domestic religion, and of visible diversity as part of everyday life. Freedom of religion will be even more strongly defended. The older debates – should Germany naturalize Turks? Is Islam part of Sweden? – will be settled for the leadership of each country.

But underneath this cross-national convergence on the realities of multiculturalism, currents of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism of all stripes will continue to thrive. Racism in its broad sense has been part of Western life for centuries; it will not be easily scrubbed away. It will change its major targets. In the EU, racism will target not so much the increasingly integrated citizens whose ancestries lay in former colonies and allies (Pakistan, India, Algeria, and Turkey), but rather the recent, quite traumatized arrivals from turbulent parts of

central and western Africa. It will also turn on the marginal populations of Europe, and in particular the Roma. In the US, of course, the major challenge will continue to be breaking the lock of spatial segregation on patterns of everyday life.

Indeed, the banalization of multiculturalism as a fact of life will mean that it will recede as a term of art – except perhaps in Canada where it will remain a plank of national policy. More critical will be the debates over social justice, economic mobility, and individual rights, including religious rights.”

of Public and International Affairs, York University (Toronto).

63

EPIGRAM

Rebooting ‘Utopia’ From More to Machiavelli, Rand, Orwell and, through Swift, back

BY GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE

W George Elliott Clarke is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto, and the Poet Laureate of Toronto.

His newest book of poetry is Traverse, an autobiographical

GLOBAL BRIEF • SPRING | SUMMER 2015

poem.

64

hen the 18th-century American, French and Haitian revolutionaries began implementing Enlightenment principles – abolishing slavery (except the US), constraining executives (scaling back «l’État, c’est moi» absolutism), and permitting liberty of expression – they likely ignored (St) Thomas More’s Utopia (1516).

Certainly, More’s model society is unworkably fantastic, just like Plato’s Republic (circa 380 BCE). More’s communalist government insists on perpetual surveillance, while Plato’s dream world forbids parenting and bans poets.

However, there can be no “renaissancism” (to use literary theorist Houston Baker’s neologism) – no rewiring of socioeconomics and politics – without, simultaneously, the reimagination of what a Just Society (I quote the late Canuck statesman Pierre Elliott Trudeau) could be and/or should be.

There can be no social progress without proposals to achieve ‘Utopia.’

It cannot be a world in which women and girls are kept deliberately ignorant, so that they can never ask for more than the one percent share of global wealth they currently hold.

Nor can it be a globe in which the terrorist – that heady combo of anarchist and vigilante – enacts regimes of arson, assassination, kidnapping, massacres (paraded as executions), rape, and weapons-trainingas-welfare.

Is globalization “the best of all possible worlds” (to cite Gottfried Leibniz’s 1710 phrase), wherein capital flows, labour pools, and trade treaties trump the ‘public good’?

Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” screed (1989) expressed his pretentious belief that, because everyone desires DVDs, few shall desire to right the wrongs of History.

The crumbling of the Berlin Wall necessitated a ‘New World Order.’ Really? Who still credits that Moloch has displaced Machiavelli, though Mammon has dethroned Marx? Surely, the Utopian vision driving global political economy is that of Ayn Rand (1905-1982), whose Objectivist, ‘Libertarian’ (Sadean) notions of individual rights-to-happiness, buttressed by laissez-faire capitalism, license epic Greed and apocalyptic Fraud.

Rand-inspired deregulation of financial institutions has wrought mass bankruptcies, wealth transfer from publics to plutocrats, and the 2007-2008 onset of the

Global Financial Crisis. Revival of what is, veritably, gangsta capitalism has collapsed economies – from Iceland to Cyprus – and almost destroyed Finance itself. Only public bailouts and central bank interest cuts – Keynes redux – resuscitated Credit.

Though Rand’s Utopian thought, become dogma, crashed the world economy, George Orwell’s 1948 work, 1984, imagining a dystopia of perpetual war and mass propaganda and mass surveillance, portrays, with scary accuracy, our lives today.

The persecution of Edward Snowden and – perhaps – Julian Assange proves the extent to which governments and their corporate allies compile as much information as they can about purportedly private citizens (i.e. ‘consumers’) and, of course, each other. Combine this intensive snooping with the bloodthirsty ‘War on Terror,’ and with the shock-and-awe tactics of terrorists (Islamist or narco-state agents and/or surrogates), and with the division of the world into three blocs headed by America, Germany and China, and what does one have? The answer: 1984, just 31 years late.

The major difference between Orwell and our Common Era is that he prophesied three intercontinental, socialist entities, urged on by fickle and cynical propaganda, battling each other endlessly.

Our shifty combatants are, instead, capitalist, and do not – praise God – shoot at each other; still, they do ship arms and advisers to their supplicants, whether Mexico wracked by drug cartels or Nigeria raped by Boko Haram.

Says Oxfam, one percent of the world’s seven billion people control more than 50 percent of global wealth.

Presumably, they protect their (often ill-gotten) gains by buying elections, rigging economic policies to favour themselves, propagandizing citizenries, and ‘policing’ (terrorizing) dissenters.

One ‘modest solution’ (cf. Jonathan Swift) to ameliorate this global plutocracy is the internment of the super-rich, their bank accounts intact, on an island conducive to agriculture, but all imports disallowed, where they may either strive to enslave each other or work collectively to feed, clothe, and house each other.

If that is too drastic a measure, then governments must close tax havens and tax loopholes and invest in ‘people’s infrastructure,’ including a liveable minimum wage.

Even then, regrettably, we will only be getting back to the Enlightenment: more Rousseau, maybe, and much less Rand. | GB