Steven Hill: China and the Long Road Ahead

Citizenship & IdentityCulture

Steven HillDuring the Olympics, China showed the world that it can throw a heck of a coming out party. But traveling here afterward, one sees the many complexities and challenges facing this vast and ancient land.

Especially in the rural areas—where most people still live—the impressive economic rise of China has penetrated only superficially. True, the Communist Party, which still runs nearly everything, brought electricity and other development here in the early 1980s. But while some appliances like television and telephones are increasingly common, indoor plumbing, electric ovens and other comforts are still scarce.

The life of farming families is still extremely poor, filled with backbreaking labor and scavenging for wood. They don’t have tractors, so they still use water buffalo to plow, an image completely at odds with modern Beijing.

But among the most backward Chinese policies—one that deeply affects these poor rural families—is that of education. The Communist government does not provide free education at any level. Families must pay out-of-pocket tuition for primary, high school, and college education for their children.

Ketevan Ninua: The Cold War Never Ended

Citizenship & IdentityEconomy

Ketevan Ninua Ketevan Ninua is a co-founder of Georgian Center of Technology, a technology and engineering institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a board member of ProGeorgia.org, Inc. Born in Tbilisi, she is a New York representative of the Georgian Association in the United States.

While Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia came as a surprise to most around the world, it should have evoked quite the opposite reaction. Molestation of her neighbors, including setting impoverished Ossetians against Georgians, has long been Russian policy. Today imperial Russia, flouting international law, threatens Georgia’s very existence by bombing the country, slaughtering civilians, and occupying territory. This is a situation that the West has encountered numerous times in the past: Czechoslovakia, 1938; Berlin, 1948; Budapest, 1956; Prague, 1968; Afghanistan, 1979. The world condemns Russia, but condemnations do not curb Moscow’s behavior.

Russian aggression stretches back centuries; its approach to conquest dates from the Middle Ages, when soldiers were sent to war with no promise of payment other than loot. Russian aggression on a macro level is well-documented, but the savagery of its soldiers has not been widely reported. Russian soldiers in Georgia have engaged in widespread looting of food, electronic equipment, furniture, footwear, and clothes—even used toilet bowls and sinks.

Russian soldiers have raped and murdered innocent civilians. In Georgia, three generations often live in the same home; Russian soldiers have beaten elders and shot family members who dared to object. After their looting and killing was over, Russian troops have burned Georgian villages to the ground, destroyed towns, and mined roads—to ensure that no food or humanitarian aid can reach devastated Georgian citizens.

Jonathan Power: The False Dawn of Ethnic Conflict

Citizenship & IdentityCultureElections & InstitutionsRisk & Security

Jonathan PowerFrom what many politicians and some of the press are saying, the house of ethnic togetherness is about to fall apart and the Ossetian withdrawal from Georgia is soon going to destabilize whole continents. No wonder that Beijing is opposing Moscow in rushing to recognize the new order in South Ossetia.

Is this a valid fear? Theoretically yes, historically no. A few years ago, the political scientists James Fearon and David Laitin studied ethnic division in Africa, a continent notorious for its wars. They identified tens of thousands of pairs of ethnic groups that could have been in conflict. But they did not find thousands of actual conflicts or hundreds of new states. Indeed, for every one thousand such pairs of ethnic conflicts they found fewer than three incidents of violent conflict. With only a few exceptions, state boundaries in Africa are the same as they were in 1960 at the time of the independence movement.

It is true that Africa over the last decade and a half has been through a period of great turmoil. But, according to the just-published annual report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Africa (along with Europe) is now the most peaceful continent in the world, with only one significant tribal or interstate conflict last year.

Ian Williams: Taiwan and the Georgia Precedent

Citizenship & IdentityElections & Institutions

Ian WilliamsAugust was a strange month, and there were times when one felt that it could have been a Sarajevo moment (1914 style), or even a Cuban crisis. There is an almost Newtonian law of diplomacy about the resulting release of belligerent energy when two roughly equal masses of foresightlessness collide.

Neither side emerges with much credit from the Ossetia debacle, whether the issue was controlling unruly surrogates, or delivering an effective solution afterwards. In this case, however, the George W. Bush White House unusually played the role of Khrushchev, and backed down in the face of a clearly irrational opponent. But even that commendable forbearance has unintended consequences across the globe, in particular, with China and Taiwan.

In the short term, Moscow tweaked the Eagle’s feather, and got away with it because, for once, this White House appreciated its own limitations. Moscow certainly weakened U.S. military prestige even as it enhanced its battered reputation for sanity, but it was a hollow triumph, reminiscent of the Russian tank column that raced to Pristina Airport in Kosovo and cocked a snook at General Rupert Smith and NATO—but then, sheepishly, had to get fuel and food from NATO since all Russia’s former allies refused over-flight permission for reinforcement.

Clearly, that memory still rankles in Moscow, and can only hope that the little brief authority that Russia’s raid into Georgia gave its generals will overcome their chronic Kosovo syndrome. However, it was dearly bought therapy, which has compounded Russian isolation. It delivered support in Prague, Warsaw, and Kiev for NATO, missiles, and bases that a month ago looked like unjustifiable provocation but which the Russian action has now made seem eminently sensible. Indeed, apart from the effect on its neighbors, one cannot but help wonder at the long-term effect on the Russian Federation itself—Chechnya and Tartarstan being but some of many potentially fissiparous components. How long before Israel recognizes the independence of the Birobidzhan “Jewish Autonomous Region” in Russia’s far eastern provinces?

K. A. Dilday: All Quiet on the Western Front?

Citizenship & IdentityElections & Institutions

K. A. DildayAs always, summer in Western Europe is a quiet time. People tend to take much of the European Union mandated four weeks (at minimum) of paid work leave during August. Official discussions about managing the crisis created by the Ireland’s early June rejection of the Lisbon Treaty have been put off until October, although last week Ireland’s European Affairs Minister, Dick Roche, hinted at the next step by saying that a second vote was necessary if Ireland wants to remain an integral member of the European Union. The implication being that Ireland must continue to vote until they come up with the right answer. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s economy falters, and the Poles are going home.

According to a report released this summer by Britain’s Institute for Public Policy Research, nearly half of the Eastern European migrants who moved to Britain when EU enlargement made it possible in 2004 and 2007, have returned home as the U.K. economy continues its regression. The United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics found that even though the population grew by 388,000 in 2007 (one of the smallest jumps in recent years), the proportion of growth attributable to immigration decreased.

The Poles and other Eastern Europeans have left the U.K., and if they’ve not gone home, they’ve gone elsewhere—to France, for example, which opened its employment ranks to the 12 newest members of the European Union in July, a year ahead of schedule. While economists likely applaud the economically driven pattern of trans-European migration, it seems it is just what social nationalists fear—migrants driven purely by financial motives rather than a desire to relocate and become part of a national community.

France, which assumed the presidency of the European Union in July, introduced a draft European pact on immigration and asylum this summer. It addressed the issues of national values and identity with these lines in the preamble:

“The European Council recognizes the interest of the integration contract for third-country nationals who are admitted for long-term residence on their territory and encourages member States to propose it at a national level. This integration contract must be compulsory. It will include the requirement of learning the national language, European national identities and values, such as respect for other people’s physical integrity, equality between men and women, tolerance, compulsory schooling and education for children.” [Emphasis mine]

As I wrote in the summer 2008 issue of World Policy Journal, even politicians have difficulty defining their country’s identity—of which “values” form the essential part—as independent from those of Europe. The European Union is expected to adopt France’s pact when it reconvenes in October.

Yet while Western Europe has been fairly quiescent on their long summer holidays, the Balkan region, which includes several states that are next in line to be considered for EU membership, has been roiling.

Jonathan Power: How Not to Deal with Russia

Citizenship & IdentityElections & Institutions

Jonathan PowerLet’s be frank: NATO is no longer needed. Indeed, this has been true for some time: once the Warsaw Pact closed up shop there was no good or honest reason for keeping NATO going. The threat that NATO was created to deter disappeared when the Soviet Union collapsed.

It is now time to let the European Union take the strain—whether by trade, investment, diplomacy, or political intimacy (indeed, the hallmarks of a successful union that has mastered the art of expansion and influence by clever use of the carrot)—while America deals with its own problems, brought about by its quest for global influence and application of the Bush doctrine of “preventive war.”

As Mark Leonard, the director of foreign policy at the Center for European Reform wrote in his clever little book of three years ago, “The contrast between the two doctrines is stark. The Bush doctrine attempts to justify action to remove a ‘threat’ before it has a chance of being employed against the United States. It is consequently focused very closely on physical assets and capabilities, necessarily swift in execution and therefore short term in conception, and unavoidably entirely military in kind. The European doctrine of pre-emption, in contrast, is predicated on long-term involvement, with the military just one strand of activity, along with pre-emptive economic and legal intervention, and is aimed at building the political and institutional basis of stability, rather than simply removing the immediate source of threat.”

Passive aggression—the outward expansion of the Eurosphere—is just what the continent needs. For countries such as Turkey, Serbia, or Bosnia, the only thing worse than having the Brussels bureaucracy (with its multitude of new rules) descend on their political systems is to have its doors closed to them.

Peter Morici: Playing Nice with Russia Has Failed

Citizenship & IdentityElections & Institutions

Peter MoriciRussia’s invasion of Georgia should compel the United States and Europe to alter their policies of using economic engagement to promote democracy.

After the Cold War, the United States and Europe sought to integrate Russia, China, and their satellites into the Western market economy. Policymakers believed this would encourage democracy, human rights and a peaceful demeanor toward their neighbors.

Policymakers believed robust foreign commerce and free markets—privatization, private property, and business law—would expose these societies to Western culture and instigate expectations for personal freedoms and free elections. Market economies function best when individual initiative and property rights are protected by elected governments. Democratic capitalism has decidedly outperformed autocratic communist and fascist regimes. And prosperous nations, invested in global commerce, are less inclined toward aggression.

Russia instigated wide-ranging privatization and other market reforms, opened to foreign investment, and had a rocky experiment with democracy. From 1990 to 1995, gross domestic product (GDP) dropped 50 percent, thanks to falling prices for oil and metal exports, inadequate commercial law, cronyism, and corruption. Output stabilized for a few years, but then sank further after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Boris Yeltsin, largely discredited, turned over the presidency to Vladimir Putin in 1999.

Mr. Putin may be a capitalist, but he is no democrat. He maintained essential elements of a market economy but compromised elections, asserted control over regional governments and the judiciary, squelched personal freedoms, and sought to reestablish Russian influence, whenever possible, in former Soviet republics.

David S. Christy, Jr.: Geneva’s Winners & Losers, A View from the Dugout

Citizenship & IdentityEconomy

David A. Andelman [This post is an update on Mr. Christy’s article published in the summer 2008 issue of World Policy Journal.]

If there were trading cards for the Doha Development Round participants, I’d save Falconer’s. The agriculture negotiations chairman, Ambassador Crawford Falconer is my candidate for MVP—it is a shame he is stepping down later this year; he will be missed. Falconer consistently works to strip away the nonsense, politics, and disinformation that dogs these types of negotiations. His reports read like a stern uncle reining in a bunch of wayward nephews—they are direct, utterly sensible, and beyond cavil. There is not a scintilla of wishful thinking. (This, by the way, accords with my personal experience with Falconer, who chaired a World Trade Organization panel proceeding in which I participated.)

Falconer dishes his latest dose of reality in a terse, 4.5-page report dated August 11. He responds directly to the canard that the July mini-ministerial in Geneva fell apart over technical issues regarding the special safeguard measure (SSM)—which allows protection where a surge in imports threatens domestic agriculture producers. Falconer stresses that the U.S.-India disagreement over the SSM is “not some purely ‘technical’ matter,” but rather is political. He then drives the point home by noting the many other difficult issues that the negotiators did not resolve, including cotton from least-developed countries, new tariff quotas for sensitive products, and tariff simplification. He also notes that the members as a whole had not yet vetted the issues where progress was made. His report has been widely accepted as an accurate account.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy’s comments on the progress of the talks and the report of Canadian Ambassador Don Stephenson, chair of the negotiations on market access for non-agricultural products (NAMA), have not been so well received. In the view of some members, Lamy’s comments do not accurately present the splits among the members, reporting agreement where none existed. This may be due in part to the fact that Lamy is nearing the end of his term and this may be his last chance to move the talks forward. Certainly, the members have reasons to back away from concessions given the overall failure of the negotiations, but Lamy’s account is overly rosy. As for Stephenson, the United States has attacked his report for mischaracterizing the state of play on sectoral negotiations, which would eradicate tariffs on specified goods (e.g., chemicals). More importantly, Argentina rejected the July 25 compromise draft on NAMA—which serves as the basis of all claims of progress. Because the WTO operates by consensus, Argentina’s rejection of the package suggests that the widely reported progress is illusory. What to make of all of this?

Paul Blustein

Paul Blustein: Avoiding the Bilateral Blitz

Citizenship & Identity

Paul BlusteinNow it’s more urgent than ever. The multilateral trading system needs support. And one of the best signals the United States could send would be to propose a moratorium on bilateral trade deals of the sort the Bush administration has pursued in wretched excess. These deals offer paltry advantages, and have major drawbacks, as I argued in an article for the WPJ’s special trade issue.

The urgency stems from the collapse on July 29 of negotiations aimed at securing an agreement in the Doha Round of global trade talks. Those negotiations dragged on for nine days at the World Trade Organization’s Geneva headquarters, only to end in yet another in a series of breakdowns—this time, over whether developing countries could raise emergency tariffs to protect their farmers. Never mind which countries deserve the most blame for the latest fiasco; there has been plenty to spread around since the talks were launched in the Qatari capital of Doha in 2001. The important point is that the debacle increases the risk that the WTO’s authority will undergo a significant erosion in years to come.

Minimizing threats to the WTO’s authority ought to be a top priority of trade policy, because as I contended in my article, the WTO plays a crucial role in fostering global economic stability. The WTO’s centrality to the trading system is already under some doubt, thanks to the proliferation in recent years of bilateral and regional trade agreements. So the global trade body is facing a double whammy in the aftermath of the Doha Round failure.

MacBain

Shaun Randol: China Cracks the Door

Citizenship & IdentityElections & Institutions

MacBain

On August 8, China will fling open its doors to the world’s finest athletes and welcome, for the first time, a global Olympic audience. Yet, while the world’s attention is distracted by the glint of gold medals in Beijing, Chinese officials are doing whatever it takes to ensure that only the high polish of the Olympic spectacle makes it out through tightly controlled (i.e. censored) television, print, and online media.

In light of the recent protests in Tibet, a catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan Province, bus bombings in Kunming and Shanghai, and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang Province, Chinese officials are determined to build a façade of control—and cohesive national pride—lest unsightly and embarrassing political demonstrations be broadcast around the world. From banning select foreign entertainers to jailing Beijing dissidents, liberties are systematically being curtailed in what was once hoped to be China’s great coming out party.

To their credit, in expectation of public protests of one kind or another, officials have set aside three city parks in Beijing where demonstrators can air their grievances—a highly unusual gesture from the authoritarian government. There is a catch, of course. “The police will safeguard the right to demonstrate as long as protesters have obtained prior approval and are in accordance with the law,” said Liu Shaowu, director of Olympics security, during a news conference.

According to the law, citizens (it is unclear how internationals figure into this mix) must apply for a permit, in person, five days in advance of the scheduled protest. The application requires detailed information, including the topic of dissent, slogans to be used, and the expected number of demonstrators. Moreover, protests that are disruptive of “national unity,” “social stability,” security, or that advocate for ethnic minority separatism (read: Tibet, Xinjiang) will not be approved.

Despite the obstacles, could we see some action in the parks? Quoted in the New York Times, human rights lawyer and advocate Xu Zhiyong said, “As a first step toward opening up space for dissent, it is appropriate…. There should be many people who are willing to use this space, petitioners and people who have experienced injustice.” It will take a clever protest application, however, or outright subversive action, to hold a demonstration that does not violate the government’s tightly scripted rules. Protesting on issues such as pollution, political prisoners, religious freedom (Falun Gong), Tibet, Xingjian, shoddy construction of schools in Sichuan’s earthquake zone, democracy, freedom of speech in general, corruption, land rights, and other issues will, in all likelihood, be denied their moment in Beijing.