Just a very small taste of GB’s cracking Spring/Summer 2013 issue. Subscribe online today.

GB: Are there any political or strategic activities of government in the 21st century that should never be reviewable by courts?

AB: No.

GB: None at all?

AB: None at all.

GB: What about declarations of war or peace agreements?

AB: According to my theory of the law, even declarations of war or peace agreements are reviewable by the courts. The discretion given to the executive branch is, of course, very wide. Therefore, the scope of review is very limited. But take the case of peace and war. Suppose you can find that the chief negotiator or that the prime minister or the president received bribes. Do you not agree that the courts should be able to say that, under such circumstances, the agreement is void, or that the declaration of war is illegal or unconstitutional?

GB: The traditional approach would be to treat this as a political problem – that is, as a problem that is for the political branch to resolve.

AB: Yes, of course, this is a political problem – and likely also a criminal law problem. And if there is a criminal law element, then you have to have a court that will give due process.

GB: If a country – Israel or other – were to declare a war or broker a peace, any judicial action would presumably happen some 20 or 30 days after the war or peace declaration. This would seem quite late. What would be the practical effect of the judicial oversight?

AB: What is the practical effect of Roe v. Wade on the right to abortion when the case lasts more than nine months? What is the relevance? These are questions that every court has to face. In many cases, war will already have been declared. So be it. Take the US and the Vietnam war. The war is declared. I do not see any reason for which the US Supreme Court should not have jurisdiction to determine whether the war was constitutional – including whether the declaration was made (or not) by the proper authority.

GB: What would be the remedy if the court determined that the war or the declaration of war was unconstitutional?

AB: This again depends on the circumstances. In some cases, the only remedy would be a declaration to the effect that something is unconstitutional. But even a declaration has a major effect. We are, after all, telling our rulers that what they are doing is unconstitutional. In other cases, there will be more immediate, practical effect. For example, in Israel, we had a case in which the government was negotiating a peace agreement, and there was an argument to the effect that the government could not negotiate the agreement because it was in fact an interim government – that is, interim governments could not negotiate peace agreements. The Supreme Court took the case. Some of the judges thought that the matter was not justiciable. The majority of the judges – I among them – thought that the case should indeed be discussed. One other judge thought about issuing an injunction – on the premise that an interim government could not make such major policy changes. My own theory was that even an interim government could act out of necessity – as circumstances dictate. If this were an urgent matter, then even an interim government could act.

GB: Can you envision circumstances in which a war in an advanced state is declared unconstitutional, after which an injunction is declared so as to require the executive branch to lay down arms?

AB: This depends on the constitutional culture and maturity of the country in question. In most countries, a court would not issue such an injunction. However, it is not inconceivable that if, say, the German constitutional court or the Japanese constitutional court were to find the policy objectives or the conduct of the German or Japanese army unconstitutional, it would issue an injunction. I see no problem with this. In other countries, of course, even if there is a determination of unconstitutionality, there might only be a declaration to this effect. Still, as I mentioned earlier, a declaration may also be very effective.

Note that we have been talking about jurisdiction, and not about the content of the jurisdiction. It is not enough that a judge should fancy that a war should not be declared – that is, that he or she as a prime minster or president would not have declared the war. This is not the question at hand. This is not the judge’s jurisdiction. So whether a war is wise or not is not a legal matter. Procedural propriety is a legal matter, however – for instance, the right organ of state must have been the one to declare a war – as might be questions relating to proportionality or reasonableness.

GB: Given the complexity of these issues, would judges have to have specific training or preparatory culture in order to be legitimate in correcting or disciplining the executive on matters of war and peace?

AB: What is relevant is not the training of the judiciary per se, but rather the training of the public. The entire country needs to understand that in a mature constitutional system, the legislative branch, the executive branch, and even the judicial branch have no powers unless those powers are provided expressly or implied in the national constitution. This is what is meant by constitutional democracy. And the ones who ultimately decide whether there are disputes, in the event that there is express or implied constitutional provision of such power, are the courts.

GB: Yes, but do today’s judges know enough about, say, national security to be able to make those types of decisions? Surely, if this is the case in Israel, it cannot be the case in all countries?

AB: Consider that whenever there is a national crisis in Israel or in other common-law countries, a commission of inquiry is appointed. Was the behaviour of the army in Sabra and Shatila legal or illegal? An inquiry looked into this. And a judge headed this inquiry – as is the case with most other commissions of inquiry. So are judges qualified to make the decisions in the context of such complex inquiries?

GB: But one must presume that this would still require a particular type of culture – both a public culture and a judicial culture. Do you not agree?

AB: This would require a public culture in which judges should not say that simply because one is a judge, one will decide. The judge will understand that there are limits to his or her power. The public culture would have to be alive to the basic fact that human beings have all of the rights unless these are taken away. By contrast, the executive and the legislative branches have powers only to the extent that these are given to them in the constitution. If there is a dispute on this question, then the courts will adjudicate it.

GB: What about subject-specific knowledge or expertise about war and peace and national security? Surely, whatever their constitutional powers, judges ought to have some knowledge base in order to decide intelligently in matters of war, peace or national security?

AB: I was, of course, talking about the culture of a country – that is, the constitutional culture. You are asking about knowledge – and my answer in this regard is yes, obviously. In different systems, judges should know what other intelligent people in the country know. But that clearly is not enough. Judges can adjudicate only according to facts that are brought to them in a proper way. I do not see that there are any questions that, if brought in a proper way, cannot be adjudicated. A very complicated matter comes before the court – take, for example, a case wherein a submarine or a sophisticated jet has crashed, and families are suing the state for negligence. Can a judge decide in this case? Yes. This is manifestly a very complicated matter, but if the court has the evidence before it, then the judge can decide. If the evidence is not there, then he or she will acquit.

GB: So you are quite confident that there does not need to be a specialized knowledge set for judges – that is, that an intelligent judge, for all intents and purposes, only needs to know his or her role, and that the facts need to be presented and then interpreted?

AB: Correct. However, the judges are acting within a particular culture, and it would evidently be more complicated to convince a judge in respect of cultural matters that are foreign to him or to her. Still, my main point is that I do not believe that there are issues that are so complex that while a regular minister can apprehend them, a judge in the same legal-constitutional system cannot.

GB: Which countries’ jurisprudence and courts do you most admire?

AB: I am an admirer of the American courts – American constitutional law, the US Supreme Court. I am a great admirer of the German constitutional court, which has done wonderful work since WW2. I am a great admirer of the South African constitutional court, which has done wonderful work since the end of apartheid. And, finally, I am a great admirer of the Canadian Supreme Court, which does first-rate work in the context of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

GB: Did you draw actively and consciously on these courts in your decisions?

AB: Yes, always.

GB: Did you draw beyond these courts?

AB: In the beginning, when Israel was established, we were drawing a lot on English case law – because Britain has a wonderful judiciary, and the country does not have a formal constitution. When constitutional questions came up, the English courts were not the main source. We do, in exceptional cases, go to other countries. We are evidently not limited to the four supreme courts that I mentioned. I am an admirer, for instance, of the Indian Supreme Court.

GB: What would be the more advanced courts that you would be interested in studying in the immediate Middle East?

AB: I just do not know – regrettably. I know more about the German constitutional court than about the Egyptian constitutional court.

GB: Is this due to a cultural gap, a development gap, or is it conscious ignorance?

AB: I think that it is a question of language.

GB: Is Israel involved or interested in judicial training or capacity-building in any country in the region - particularly after the Arab Spring?

AB: I was certainly interested in such training, in my time. Israel was interested in it, but it did not materialize, unfortunately.

GB: Would there be any reciprocal interest in that type of arrangement from other countries in the region?

AB: I have no idea.

GB: What is the proper role of religion in Israeli society – legally and philosophically?

AB: The role of religion in Israel’s society should be the same as the role of religion in other advanced societies. We have many, many religious people in Israel, and they should all have the right to freedom of religion. I even think that the state can support religion without undermining democracy – provided that it does so on an equal basis.

GB: Would this involve the Israeli state supporting different strands of Judaism, or would it also support religions other than Judaism?

AB: There is one Jewish religion. There are not several Jewish religions. Within the Jewish religion, you have Orthodox, you have Conservative, and you have Reform movements. Each should be supported on an equal basis. As for state support of other religions, indeed, the state should support all religions in Israel – not just Judaism.

GB: What is the status of Arabs or Palestinians in Israeli law and jurisprudence today?

AB: You mean the Arabs who are Israeli citizens?

GB: The Arabs who are Israeli citizens, as well as those who are not. What is their status?

AB: We have some 7.7 million people in Israel. Well over a million of these people are Arabs. They are Israelis. They have full Israeli rights and citizenship. They have full equality with others under the law. They vote for Knesset members. There are Arab Knesset members. Of course, human nature being what it is, there is discrimination. The state does its level best to fight this, and the Supreme Court along with it.

Then there are Palestinians – in the West Bank, for instance. They are under the rules of belligerent occupation, or under the agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority pursuant to the Oslo Accord.

GB: Are you generally optimistic about developments in geopolitical and also in governance terms in the region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring?

AB: This is outside the realm of my expertise.

GB: What will the Israel-Palestine situation look like in 2020?

AB: Who knows? I do not know how it will look tomorrow.

GB: How did you come to your 2006 decision establishing the legal framework for targeted killings – hisulim – in Israel?

AB: The court had a targeted killing situation. The first question that we asked was: what is the legal framework? The First Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention addresses the protection of civilians in international armed conflicts. That was our starting point. The Protocol also speaks to cases in which civilians are not protected, and the extent to which they are not protected. The Protocol itself is not binding in Israel, as Israel is not a party to it. But I came to the conclusion that those parts of the Protocol that deal with the rights of civilians constitute customary international law. Under our theory, customary international law is part of Israeli common law. As such, it is binding on Israeli courts, unless there is legislation to the contrary. In the event, there was no legislation to the contrary, so we applied the Protocol. I analyzed the First Protocol, which I thought gave the answer to one of the key questions: if civilians are protected, are the terrorists civilians? According to the Geneva Convention structure, we determined – and there are many people who were unhappy with this determination – that the terrorists are in fact civilians because they are not combatants under international humanitarian law. In other words, they do not comply with the definition of a combatant: uniform, ranks, etc. However, civilians are not protected to the extent that they taking part – active part – at that time in hostilities.

GB: What is your sense of the extent to which a similar framework is being applied or ought to be applied to targeted killings by other advanced states? Take drone warfare in the US, for instance. Does it concern you?

AB: I feel that the same rules should apply. I do think that the same rules apply.

GB: What is the nature of Israel’s relationship with international legal bodies like the International Criminal Court (ICC)?

AB: I do not know what the evolution of this relationship will be. This is a sensitive question that has become quite political in Israel.

GB: Does the international community have a legal obligation to intervene in the event of mass atrocities in other countries?

AB: International law has gone through major changes in this respect. If there is a decision of the Security Council to this effect, then such intervening capability is there. There are those who think that this is wrong, or that it should be changed. This is an open moral and political question. Of course, this is not my area of expertise, but I do think that humanitarian intervention is authorized to the extent that it is authorized by the Security Council.

GB: What are the most important societal challenges for Israel over the next 10 to 20 years?

AB: There are so many. But the most important one, in my view, is to finalize our constitutional scheme. Our basic laws, which are the basis of the constitutionalization of Israel – of Israel being a constitutional democracy – have not yet been finalized. They are not comprehensive. Our bill of rights is partial. It is very easy to change this bill of rights. Israel needs to have a better constitution – a broader framework, including an entrenched bill of rights, which takes into account the needs of Israel in the 21st century. We do not yet have this. South Africa has this. Canada has this. We need to move on this front.

Aharon Barak is Professor at IDC Herzliya, former President of the Supreme Court of Israel, and former Attorney General of Israel.

(Photograph: Aharon Babak)

Les candidat(e)s potentiel(le)s doivent avoir entre 20 et 35 ans et doivent soumettre un billet de blogue analytique (maximum 500 mots), en format courriel, sur un sujet d’actualité internationale cadrant dans les catégories suivantes: politique internationale, économie, affaires, culture ou idées, mouvements et tendances. Les langues acceptées sont l’anglais, le français, l’espagnol, le russe, l’arabe, l’hébreu, le mandarin, le perse et le portugais. Une note biographique de 200 mots doit accompagner le billet, ainsi que les liens électroniques pour toutes publications passées (si applicable).

Les candidatures doivent être soumises à gbgeoblogger.globalcontest@globalbrief.ca

La date limite est le 20 avril 2013. Le (la) gagnant(e) ou les gagnants de la compétition seront annoncés dans le numéro Printemps 2013 de GB, version papier et en ligne. Le (la) gagnant(e) ou les gagnants deviendront Géo-Blogueur(e)(es) pour GB, dans la langue de leur candidature, et rejoindront un lectorat international pour une période minimale d’un an à partir du printemps 2013.

Austerity has turned a once classical foreign service into travelling salesmen

Portugal’s centre-right coalition government, elected in 2011, in the context of a 78 billion euro IMF-EU bailout programme that expires in June 2014, has turned decisively – it would say ‘pragmatically’ – to so-called economic diplomacy in order to revive the country’s deeply injured national economy and pay down the national debt. All pretensions to grand strategy or fealty to Lisbon’s past imperial traditions have been cast aside.

Portuguese diplomats are now expected to become the finest salesmen of ‘made in Portugal’ products and services. Embassies are to become ‘business centres’ for Portuguese companies and ‘tour agencies’ advertising the joys and beauty and investment opportunities of the country. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paulo Portas – former director of
O Independente, once one of Portugal’s leading papers – has enthusiastically transformed himself into the national champion of, and spokesman for, Portuguese exports, making it clear that it “is fundamental that Portuguese companies do not lose business opportunities abroad for lack of access to political decision-makers in [foreign] countries.”

Portugal has been long highly dependent on three export markets – all in the EU: Spain, Germany and France. The latest statistics suggest that these three countries account for half of Portugal’s exports. The EU as a whole accounts for nearly three-quarters of Portugal’s exports – down from approximately 80 percent in 2005. Non-EU markets, for their part, account for over a quarter of Portuguese exports – up from 20 percent six years ago. These numbers suggest that the significance of non-EU markets for Portuguese exports began to grow even during Portugal’s last Socialist government – that is, that the government of then-Prime Minister Jose Socrates was already pushing economic diplomacy as a means of diversifying the country’s export markets.

The current ruling coalition, under Social Democratic Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, has pursued a major reorganization of the public service in general, and the foreign service in particular, in order to consolidate all of the national government’s foreign trade, foreign investment and tourism functions under the sole control of Portas. National representatives or emissaries abroad are now required to meet quantifiable targets in terms of trade promotion, sales and foreign investment. Each diplomatic mission must have a ‘business plan’ – including road shows – to promote Portuguese exports and attract new investment to the country. Each business plan is to be approved formally in Lisbon. Bref, commerce has fast become the new narrative within Portugal’s diplomatic service.

Economic diplomacy has been warmly welcomed by many of the country’s political and business elites, who view it as a necessary step to rebalance the economy. Currently, some 18,000 companies form the basis of the country’s export machine. Only about 100 companies, however, are responsible for a full half of national exports – specifically in the automobile sector, energy, pulp and paper, and construction. Business leaders and commentators have already advised the government to expand the number of exporting companies – especially SMEs – diversify the markets outside the EU, and support potential exporting sectors in order to gain international competitiveness. Meanwhile, export growth (and rapid decreases in imports) is actively contributing to rising current account surpluses: 900 million euros in the third quarter of 2012, a turnaround from the current account deficit of well over a billion euros registered a year prior.

Still, a number of factors will likely complicate, if not altogether undermine, Portugal’s capacity to achieve its ends through economic diplomacy alone. First and foremost, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a greatly diminished budget in 2013, as the country continues with austerity measures. Without any tailored programme to train diplomats for economic diplomacy, and with a demoralized and overburdened diplomatic corps now subjected to steep salary cuts, it will be challenging – to say the least – for the foreign service to deliver its sales targets. Portas has said that ambassadors “will be scrutinized, measured, and will have to produce results” – but it is still not clear when and how ambassadors are to be held accountable for good or bad performance. And the turf battles between the consolidating foreign and trade departments in Lisbon will surely test the political and policy mettle of Portas.

Second, the success of economic diplomacy depends on the government’s ability to foster a credible domestic economic environment that promotes business creation, innovation and employment. This will evidently not be an easy task. (Portugal’s unemployment rate is over 15 percent, while youth unemployment is over 30 percent.) The 2013 Doing Business report from the World Bank ranks the country 30th in the world in terms of ease of doing business – the same spot it occupied last year. But in the Global Competitiveness Index for 2012-2013 from the World Economic Forum, Portugal fell four positions to 49th out of 144 ranked countries. In a recent interview, the head of the Portugal Global – Trade and Investment Agency (AICEP), Pedro Reis, did not shy away from blaming the country’s red tape for making it difficult to invest in Portugal.

Third, and most important, it is unlikely that trade deals alone will be sufficient to strengthen and improve the country’s image abroad. Portugal lacks a public diplomacy capacity that can promote Portuguese culture and values globally – including how this culture and these values are an inherent part of the products and services that the country sells on global markets. Yes, products are sold under the ‘Marca Portugal’ (‘Portugal Brand’), but no one seems to know what that actually means. In an extremely competitive international market, why would someone wish to buy Portuguese olive oil instead of Spanish olive oil?

There is no strategic vision for the country’s image and influence in a rapidly changing world. The catchword is ‘pragmatism’ in foreign affairs. That seems to mean increasing Portuguese exports and attracting foreign investments. But foreign affairs is not only about trade, and no amount of trade can exist if there is a lack of well-trained diplomats who are able to engage with, and influence, local dynamic social relations, culture and politics.

Lisbon’s economic strategy is following a pattern now familiar among many other developed countries – to wit, focussing on building strong bilateral ties with this century’s emerging economies in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. There seems to be no space in this economic diplomacy for what have been Portugal’s traditional economic partners – particularly in the EU. In this sense, Portas seems to have forgotten that the EU remains crucial to Portugal’s present and future strategic interests and prospects. To be sure, the EU is now undergoing major realignments – just as it is negotiating free trade agreements with a number of major countries – but Portugal has been absent from this debate. It does not have an agenda, and appears not to have a firm view or doctrine on how to actively take part in the continent’s transformation in support of the country’s national and global interests.

In the meantime, Portugal’s equivalent to the Alliance Française, the Instituto Camoes, has been merged with the Portuguese development aid agency, IPAD, in order to rationalize services. There will be near-term economies, but all this again signals a clear Portuguese retreat from its grandest traditions of engagement in the world, and indeed a shrinking of the national strategic imagination.

Luis Mah is a research fellow at the Centre for African and Development Studies (CEsA) at the Technical University of Lisbon.

(Photograph: The Canadian Press / AP / Armando Franca)

GB discusses wealth creation, the state of the Americas, and lessons for the states of the post-Arab Spring with Peru’s Hernando de Soto

GB: Why does Peru today have the second fastest-growing economy in the Americas (after Panama)?

HDS: What is good about Peru today is that a macroeconomic model that was designed in the early 1990s has endured and been protected, quite systematically, across different governments – all of different political stripes. The result has been, ultimately, Chinese-type growth rates. Of course, Peru does not profit from the type of canal that has made Panama so vital; otherwise, we would have the top growth rate in Latin America.

Most of the economic and legal reforms have favoured Peru’s urban centres, in which some three-quarters of the national population lives. The rural sector – in the Amazon, in the Andes – has been less favoured. Our indigenous people do not have the same rights as those enjoyed by urban Peruvians, and inequality between rural and urban Peru – particularly in the context of high commodity prices – is really a major social problem.

GB: Can you elaborate on Peru’s economic model?

HDS: The model is a hybrid. Macroeconomically, it is essentially the Washington Consensus. It was first instituted by President Fujimori, but it has gone all the way to President Humala, who was originally opposed to it, but who has stuck to it since his election in 2011. Fujimori introduced the model alongside many social programmes, the purpose of which was to integrate people institutionally. These programmes emphasized property rights and also political participation. And we made it easier for people at the lowest levels of society to do business. That is about it.

I would be negligent not to note that this economic model was ushered in just as we ended an internal war with the Shining Path. This was a short, messy war, but one that was relatively successful for the Peruvian state, and that allowed us to get a lot of our problems behind us.

GB: Which are the countries to watch in the Americas over the next 10 to 15 years?

HDS: From your point of view, probably the big countries. Peru is a small country compared to either Mexico or Brazil, so it is obvious that these countries will dominate. These big countries may not be growing as fast as Peru and Chile, but they will certainly have greater influence on the continent’s future simply because of their size.

Peru, Chile, Colombia and Brazil, however, are closest among themselves in their economic philosophies: they all operate today along the basic lines of the Washington Consensus – governed by what Americans and Canadians would call fiscal conservatives, or what Europeans would call economic liberals. All of these four countries have broadly similar economic frameworks, policies and preferences.

Of course, these countries came to adopt the Washington Consensus at times of peculiar authoritarianism in their respective histories. Take Pinochet in Chile: Chile was the first Latin American country to essentially move from developing to developed status – even if under dictatorship. So the model is not exportable without the strongman leaders who drove it through their systems.

GB: What is your assessment of the current state of the Chavez-inspired Venezuelan or Bolivian model?

HDS: These countries have undertreated, if not altogether neglected, the entrepreneurialism that is needed for a society to prosper. Everyone wants equality. And there clearly is a lot of inequality in that part of the world. But you cannot get off the ground – economically – simply through rhetoric. You have to move beyond electioneering in order to mobilize economic forces. The only way in which you can beat poverty is through greater wealth and better distribution of wealth. There does not seem to be much of either today in Venezuela and Bolivia. Capital is not freed up in these countries, and the governments do not allow individuals to accumulate capital. Private property is not fungible – that is, it cannot be used as collateral, to generate credit, to form capital, or to guarantee a supply of basic services. In other words, assets in the country are not put toward what Marx called surplus value. If that does not happen, I do not see how wealth can be generated. And so I believe that these countries are headed in the wrong direction – even if I may sympathize with the social grievances that have motivated their methods and doctrines.

GB: What, if anything, is to be emulated among countries in Central America?

HDS: Panama, as mentioned, looks like it is on the right track; Costa Rica also. That said, I do not think that Latin America has anything special to teach the world in terms of macroeconomics. For the last 20 years or so, we have effectively been perfecting the basic framework under which Western countries have been operating for some time now – playing with wealth redistribution and democratic imperatives. We have nothing to teach anybody, except that we have found ways – at least in the case of Peru – for dealing with political violence in a more or less civilized manner. We have found ways of empowering people – through microfinance, strengthening property rights and, among other things, facilitation of business. But in macroeconomics, we are definitely followers.

GB: Is Latin America looking to Asia for any lessons?

HDS: Fujimori was probably a very big admirer of Singapore. The Chileans were too. But the models that they implemented were strongmen models. This was also true of Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew. Politically, the times have changed in Latin America, and so the strongman methods that lubricated the introduction of those economic paradigms would probably be unacceptable today.

GB: What is the state of the indigenous people in today’s Peru?

HDS: First things first: most Peruvians are indigenous people. Moreover, you would not find one Peruvian today, in the urban centres, insisting on some description of tribal sovereignty. All of the indigenous people in Peru’s urban centres are actively integrated into the private economy. And unlike, say, Canadian Aboriginals, Peru’s indigenous people form the country’s majority. President Humala is himself at least half indigenous. Toledo was an indigenous president.

In Peru, the market economy is no longer associated only with white people, but rather with people of all races. There is no artificial reserve system that separates indigenous people from the political economy of the rest of the country. And when indigenous people from Peru travel to the US and other Western countries – whether they are Aztecs, Mayans or Incas – they want to be assimilated into some form of modern, Western organization.

GB: Are you impressed with anything that is happening – at least on the economic front – in the post-Arab Spring Middle East?

HDS: We have to start with a key question: what was the Arab Spring all about? Our organization actually worked to determine who the people were who self-immolated and got everybody to rise up in the streets. So far, we have been able to determine that, in the first two months of what has been called the Arab Spring – that is, from December 17th, 2010 (when Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolated in Tunisia) through to February of 2011, by which time four strongmen had been toppled – some 64 people self-immolated across the Middle East. All of these people were business people, or what we might otherwise call budding entrepreneurs. They were street vendors, small restaurant owners, and so on. And all of them committed suicide or attempted to commit suicide in the aftermath of expropriation of their property by the state.

In the end, an average of two or three people self-immolated per Middle Eastern and North African country. Some 40 percent of those who self-immolated did not die – that is, they were saved by people around then. But in all cases, these people were protesting against some species of expropriation. Their property was being taken away from them, as was their right to do business. In the case of Bouazizi, for instance, one might have expected that there would have been a political declaration from his family – after the fact – or perhaps a religious declaration. Instead, in their interview with us, the family said: “The poor also have the right to buy and sell.” This is about as commercial as one can get; one might have expected something far more romantic.

Another word that came up in at least 70 percent of the cases was ‘hogra,’ which, loosely translated from the Arabic, means ‘contempt’ – that is, contempt for the small businessman or woman, contempt for the bazaar, for the souk, and for the peddler.

GB: What do you conclude from your study?

HDS: For all practical intents and purposes, the people who self-immolated – in other words, the people who were called the martyrs, and who triggered the Arab Spring – had essentially economic views.

Beyond that, we have been keen to determine how many people in the Middle East and North Africa today work within the bounds of the legal economy. In other words, how many people do not have clear property rights or access to credit, and are fundamentally unable to compete in the global economy? After studying the region over the last 12 years at the request of governments and international organizations, we have determined that anywhere between 70 and 80 percent of all enterprises in the countries of this region operate outside of the law. Those who self-immolated were in most cases the managers or owners of these extra-legal businesses. As such, the Arab world is only about to discover the reasons for which its people rose. The very spark that lit the fire has not yet been properly diagnosed.

GB: If the Arab Spring is primarily an economic story, what is to be done in policy terms to react to it?

HDS: The first dimension must be intellectual. There is no path dependence here. The region must not resign itself to historical determinism – a way of thinking that applies in the Middle East just as it does in some parts of Latin America. I think that what happened in the West, starting in the late 18th century, through the 19th century, and even through to the last century, had little to do with historical determinism: it is simply called the Industrial Revolution. That was when people discovered that the only way to get to prosperity was by collaborating with other people according to a set of rules developed over time by Europeans and North Americans. In other words, once you discover that capital exists – that entrepreneurship exists – this cuts right through any historical trend that may seem predominant. The Arab experience should absolutely not be exceptional in this regard.

GB: Practically, if you were to advise Mohamed Morsi and his team in Cairo today, what would you propose?

HDS: We have been in conversations with all of them. We have told them the same things that I am saying here. In Egypt, the red tape is crippling. The amount of time that it takes to have some kind of control over land so that you can build is 17 years of red tape. Add to this the time spent fending off more powerful people who want to dispossess you of whatever you may own – formally or informally. If you look at many of the people today in Egyptian jails, they are, frankly, people who have not been able to pay their debts, and have essentially been exploited financially.

In most of the region, the majority of the people are still living in what I call the mercantilist system – that is, capitalism for only a few. What we tell Arab governments is that it is only 10 to 20 percent of the population that have the rights and the tools to go global, economically. The majority of the population simply cannot compete – no matter how many free trade agreements may be in place. In fact, most of these governments really have no idea about why it is that they are poor. Now they are slowly realizing that much of it has to do with the fact that their citizens are not economically protected, and not equal before the law.

Politically, my advice for Morsi would be to listen to his own people. That sounds too broad and simple, of course. Every time that I have tried to figure out what is meant in Western systems by listening to one’s own people, I get a different answer, depending on the country or even province or state in question. Switzerland has its referenda. In the US, Congress cannot pass a law without pre-publishing draft legislation and passing through comment and notice periods. Congressmen and women are elected by district. The same goes for Canadian and British and Australian parliamentarians. By contrast, in the Middle East, not one person is elected by district. And so there is no local accountability.

One more example: in Japan, everything looks quite centralized. The Diet seems to have all of the powers. But you soon realize that it cannot approve a law of any import unless it holds a popular assembly that is actually supervised by the press. Once the laws are approved, they have to be looked at by the press. There are at least 40 newspapers per press room. And then, of course, there is electoral accountability for Diet members in their local districts.

All of this tells me that the key lesson of democracy for the new Middle East is not just that electoral pressures matter, but that the manner in which decisions are made – indeed, what goes into decision-making – is by far the most important aspect of good governance.

GB: Elections are obviously not enough, correct?

HDS: One of the characteristics of all developing countries is that they have elections – and only elections. For all practical intents and purposes, this means that they often elect dictators. In Peru, for instance, we elect presidents for five years. Over the course of a presidential term – that is, over the course of five years – Peru manifestly enacts many thousands of decisions, from supreme decrees all the way to bona fide laws.

Just because we have the press, and just because a Canadian or British NGO occasionally visits Lima and shakes up the place, does not mean that we have anything close to what Canada or Britain has in terms of real democracy. Returning, then, to the Middle East theatre, the first thing that the leaders in these countries ought to be doing is to find out from their own people what they need and what they think. Unfortunately, for now, these countries simply do not have the means to do this. There is no feedback inside the systems of these states. The reason that we discovered that it takes, say, 560 days simply to open a bakery in Egypt is that we put 120 people into the field to investigate. But evidently, we should not have to do that.

Let me add that, in respect of the complete absence of these democratic feedback (and accountability) mechanisms, the West often lets us – that is, developing countries – get away with murder. The West continues to assume that, just because we have elections – just because Jimmy Carter comes in and says that we are fine – means that we have democracy. Clearly, it cannot be that simple.

In this sense, the West has an especial duty toward the rest of humanity to ensure that it gets its advice right. This is due to the fact that, from China to Singapore, we are all, one way or another, really imitating the West – for the West has the most socio-politically successful model that ever was. I am talking about the high buildings, the way you educate – all of it, really. Sure, there may be a Chinese or Japanese spin on this, but we are all effectively Westernizing. So the West has a conspicuous duty to convey its lessons properly, but also to be sufficiently humble not to export domestic quarrels or ideological wars.

GB: Is there a country in the post-Arab Spring Middle East that is getting things right – politically, economically or on other fronts?

HDS: I am generally more optimistic than the press and most Western commentators about the future of the Middle East – largely because I have had the privilege of being able to talk to some of the new leaders in the region. In many cases, I have found these new leaders to be extremely interested in making big changes. Of course, the question is: if many of these leaders seem to know and want so much, why are they not getting things right? Probably because, at this stage, the question is still: who is going to run the place? Who is going to write the national constitution? How is parliament going to be elected? And, to be sure, how much power is the military going to wield? So we should avoid being too impatient with these leaders and their countries. Clearly, there are some people in the new Middle East who are really willing to talk about modernity in very interesting ways – even if there does not seem to be much light in the sky for the moment. We will all have to wait a little while to see results.

Hernando de Soto is President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru. He is the author of The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else.

(Photograph: Paul Richards)

Proposition: Africa should welcome China

Richard Rousseau (contre): Au-delà de l’argumentaire des partisans et des détracteurs de la présence grandissante de la Chine en Afrique, l’impact à long terme des investissements chinois est incertain. Les contrats de type «matières premières contre infrastructures» sont susceptibles de développer considérablement les économies des pays africains et de transformer pour le mieux la vie de millions de gens sur tout le continent. Toutefois, dans de nombreux pays africains, la Chine est de plus en plus vue, et avec raison, comme une puissance néocoloniale qui agit de connivence avec des gouvernements kleptocrates. Le problème principal est qu’elle porte fort peu d’attention au «développement durable» et social des nations.

En surface, les investissements «matières premières contre infrastructures» sont décrits par les Chinois en termes simples: en échange de l’accès aux ressources africaines, Pékin garantit le financement de grands projets d’infrastructures jugés nécessaires au développement économique. Les accords d’État à État sont fondés sur quatre principes fondamentaux dans la coopération Chine-Afrique, à savoir les principes de l’égalité, du bénéfice mutuel, du pragmatisme et de l’ouverture. La coopération économique et commerciale entre la Chine et l’Afrique peut, dans certains cas, mener à des situations de profitabilité mutuelle et de gagnant-gagnant, mais les investissements massifs de la Chine ont soulevé des inquiétudes profondes sur les bénéfices réels qu’en retireront les Africains. À moyen et à long terme, les relations Chine-Afrique sont en effet vouées à se détériorer car le développement des infrastructures est, en réalité, mis au service de la géostratégie et de la géoéconomie chinoises. La présence chinoise sur le continent africain est avant tout motivée, comme ce fut le cas avec les puissances européennes du 19e siècle, par la Realpolitik.

La coopération Chine-Afrique rencontre les trois problèmes suivants. Premièrement, les infrastructures construites par les Chinois sont très souvent de piètre qualité. En juin 2006, le Premier ministre chinois Wen Jiabao procède à l’ouverture d’un nouvel hôpital à Luanda, Angola, et se fait photographier alors qu’il regarde dans un microscope, entouré de médecins en blouses blanches. L’hôpital général, un vaste complexe de 80 mètres carrés, a été construit avec des fonds chinois et symbolise le partenariat croissant entre Pékin et Luanda. Quatre ans plus tard, l’hôpital présentait déjà de sérieux risques d’effondrement. Même chose avec le nouveau siège de l’Union africaine à Addis-Abeba, inauguré en janvier 2012 et salué comme un exemple du partenariat Chine-Afrique.

Deuxièmement, les allégations faisant état de violations des normes du travail abondent. Les investissements chinois dans l’exploitation minière sont importants en Afrique. En Zambie, l’exportation de cuivre a généré des revenus de 2,2 milliards de dollars en 2010, mais non sans controverse. Human Rights Watch a signalé que des gestionnaires de sociétés d’État chinoises forçaient des mineurs à travailler entre 12 et 18 heures par jour, 365 jours par année, et dans des conditions dignes du 19e siècle colonialiste. Encore ici, les exemples pourraient être multipliés par cent.

Troisièmement, l’aspect le plus troublant de la politique chinoise en Afrique est la volonté de Pékin de passer des ententes avec certains des dirigeants les plus autoritaires du continent et de la planète, dont la Namibie, l’Angola, l’Érythrée, le Zimbabwe et la République démocratique du Congo.

L’Afrique, comme tous les autres continents, doit émuler l’Amérique du Nord et l’Europe, c’est-à-dire de développer la démocratie, d’établir la séparation des pouvoirs, de faire germer la méritocratie et les institutions des droits humains, et de lutter contre la corruption.

Wenran Jiang (in favour): China’s relations with Africa are very complex and multifaceted, with a fast-evolving dynamic that requires careful study and analysis. These relations cannot be categorically described as either beneficial and win-win or neocolonial and exploitative, for they depend on the particular part of the African continent at play, the timing and length of relevant interactions, tertiary parties, and so on. In my extensive travels in both China and Africa, and in the case studies that I have conducted on Chinese investment in African countries in recent years, I have found generalizations and stereotypes commonly seen in the Western media (overwhelmingly negative) and in mainland Chinese media (mostly positive) to be not an inaccurate reflection of the reality on the ground.

Take your point about China’s overall presence in Africa as not promoting the continent’s sustainable development. What is the empirical evidence to support such a charge? What I have heard from many African leaders and ordinary people is that China’s engagement with Africa is quite different from that of the old colonial powers – precisely because the Chinese government has emphasized a mutually beneficial, sustainable development model that goes beyond simple resource extraction. We can debate whether Beijing has achieved its goals in this regard, and whether it has done enough to present a different model, but it is commonly acknowledged that Chinese demand for commodities and its willingness to make large investments have together fuelled economic growth in many African countries over the past decade.

Consider, also, your negative characterization of the quality of Chinese infrastructural building in Africa. Again, we can find many counterexamples of well-built hospitals, schools, roads, stadiums, airports, train stations, etc. I have personally observed many roads constructed by Chinese companies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and other countries. The Central Boulevard in Kinshasa and the road systems that I travelled in South Congo are of excellent quality. It is a well-told story that Chinese and Africans worked side by side to complete some of the roads and infrastructure projects in 2010 to mark the 50th anniversary of the DRC’s independence. Of course, there are some projects of low quality, as you note, but these are not the main trend. Most Chinese construction in Africa has enabled the local population for the first time to get access to some of the critical infrastructure that they have badly needed for decades – infrastructure that had never been built under the old colonial powers. Western countries poured into Africa hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 50 years to build infrastructure, but the results were evidently not exemplary.

Regarding Chinese treatment of African workers, there are some bad apples, which is inevitable given the fast pace of Chinese investment in many African countries. But these bad examples are neither the majority of cases, nor are they linked exclusively to Chinese investment. China is undergoing major transformations domestically, just as it is building in Africa, such that many of its practices – good and bad – are transplanted to Africa when Chinese companies carry out their work abroad.

Finally, China is not alone, nor is it worse than Western countries, when it comes to making bedfellows with some of the oppressive regimes around the world. Other than economic interests involved, Beijing truly believes that the best way to change a country’s development path is not through the export or the imposition of another country’s ideology and political system, but to let the country in question go through its own gradual reform process – much like China has over the past three decades.

We therefore need to be careful about excessive generalizations when it comes to Africa-China relations. There are many ‘Chinas’ operating in Africa. But in the net, the Chinese impact on Africa has been positive in recent years.

RR: Depuis que la Chine fait de gros investissements en Afrique, les indicateurs économiques de plusieurs pays africains montrent des résultats extraordinairement positifs. Cela est particulièrement évident dans les pays qui possèdent des gisements de pétrole et de gaz naturel importants. Le Nigeria est le cas le plus patent. Le pays enregistre des taux de croissance annuels avoisinant les six pour cent (sinon plus) par an depuis le milieu des années 2000. Certains disent que les peuples d’Afrique ont besoin de partenaires pour faire des investissements qui auront un impact direct sur l’amélioration de leur vie, indépendamment des conditions politiques et sociales. La meilleure façon de répondre aux besoins des Africains consiste à tisser des liens plus étroits avec la Chine car, contrairement à l’aide économique et financière fournie par les États-Unis et l’UE, celle-ci ne s’embarrasse point à inclure dans ses contrats des conditions liées à la bonne gouvernance ou à l’impact des investissements sur l’environnement, ce qui rend les échanges économiques avec la Chine plus attractifs pour bon nombre de pays africains.

Je crois qu’il s’agit d’une grave erreur et qu’elle aura des répercussions à moyen et à long terme. Le discours sur les besoins criants en nouvelles infrastructures n’est pas nouveau, comme vous le notez. Dans les années 1970 et 1980, les Occidentaux avaient aussi mis l’accent sur les investissements en infrastructures de nombreux pays africains. Quels furent les résultats? Vingt ou 30 ans plus tard, presque tout est à refaire parce que les régimes politiques en place ne se sont pas souciés de l’entretien de ces infrastructures à long terme. Ces régimes, gangrenés par le clientélisme, le népotisme et le crime organisé, pensent davantage à leur survie et à s’en mettre plein les poches qu’à soutenir le développement durable de leurs pays. Ceci ne les a pas empêchés, néanmoins, de développer une certaines expertise dans la gestion de grands projets; des mécanismes de transparence ont été aussi mis en place. Mais ils restent inadéquats, pour la plupart.

La «méthode» chinoise en Afrique fait en sorte que de plus en plus de pays, dont l’Inde, les membres de l’UE ou les États-Unis, laissent tomber l’exigence de la bonne gouvernance afin de s’assurer certaines parts de marché face à la concurrence chinoise. Comme dans les années 1970 et 1980, les conséquences seront vraisemblablement catastrophiques à moyen terme pour le continent africain, lequel risque encore une fois de sombrer dans le chaos et le désordre, sans oublier le pillage de ses ressources.

Beaucoup de spécialistes de l’Afrique s’accordent pour dire qu’il y a un manque de transparence de la part de la Chine sur ses activités en Afrique. Par exemple, les autorités chinoises n’ont jusqu’à maintenant pas dévoilé les chiffres concernant l’aide versée et le nombre de citoyens chinois établis en Afrique.

Le Sahel, où la Chine investit de plus en plus, est une poudrière, un territoire de trafic et de non-droit depuis de longues années. La corruption endémique qui, malgré de longues années de lutte, continue à miner l’Afrique, doit être contenue. Ce n’est pas une mince affaire. Cependant, la stratégie chinoise n’améliorera pas les choses. Par exemple, la grande majorité des compagnies occidentales présentes en Afrique respectent les normes internationales de l’environnement, ce qui a pour effet de réduire les externalités environnementales. Pour leur part, les entreprises chinoises n’ont pas adopté à ce jour les normes internationales de l’environnement; elles préfèrent plutôt suivre les leurs. La logique est simple: plus les normes environnementales demeurent minimales, plus la compétitivité des entreprises chinoises augmente sur le marché africain.

La Chine et la communauté internationale, plus généralement, doivent adopter le concept de «conditionnalité positive», que l’UE a mis en œuvre avec succès vis-à-vis des pays candidats à l’intégration (la Pologne, la Hongrie, les pays baltes, etc.). Cette «méthode de la carotte» consiste à octroyer des moyens financiers supplémentaires à un pays, dans le sens d’une récompense, seulement au vu d’améliorations significatives dans sa gouvernance interne, son système de justice et son respect de la règle du droit. Il faut amener les gouvernements africains à se comporter de façon prévisible pour les entreprises. C’est cette même méthode qui fut utilisée par les pays vainqueurs de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale à l’égard de l’Allemagne. Cette méthode peut donner une impulsion remarquable à la modernisation et au développement réel. S’ouvrir à la deuxième puissance mondiale est certes très avantageux, mais les pays africains et l’Occident doivent sortir de leur aveuglement et absolument faire preuve de discernement et de vigilance.

WJ: Chinese aid to African countries – now equivalent to, or more than, World Bank aid to the continent – emphasizes economic development, infrastructure building, and improvement of livelihood. This is in contrast with aid from Western countries that puts a greater stress on governance and policy transparency. This difference is a reflection of two philosophically different ways of looking at managing state-to-state relations in international affairs. Beijing believes that economic development will lead to a better life, and that the political systems of a given country must go through eternal evolution, instead of being imposed from the outside.

A more important question regarding Africa-China relations is whether the two approaches – the Sinophilic and Western approaches – should be seen as mutually confronting or contradictory. Rather than dismissing the other’s approach, as it is often the case today, perhaps we can think outside of the box by combining the two approaches: for instance, noting that while Western aid expertise can bring to African countries good governance and transparency, Chinese aid can bring them much-needed economic development assistance. The two types of aid, on this logic, can complement each other. This was something that I personally discussed with Chinese and Canadian diplomats in Kinshasa two years ago. The initial responses to exploring such a positive-sum game were positive.

Even going back to Chinese infrastructure building projects in Africa in general, I have found, through my field research in Africa, that the Chinese approach is different from that of traditional Western countries. Studies have firmly established that old colonial powers focussed on resource extraction in Africa for the sake of extracting resources, with little else that could benefit local communities. Chinese infrastructure building efforts go well beyond resource extraction. They include building hospitals, schools, road and rail systems, as well as ports and airports that are not directly linked to particular Chinese energy or mining projects. These new types of infrastructure projects, despite some isolated quality problems, are largely beneficial to local communities.

It is not quite accurate to so generalize about Chinese operations in Africa as being non-transparent. For there are so many, and so many varieties of, Chinese projects on the continent. I have observed some operations by (mostly) Chinese small and medium enterprises on the continent that are lacking transparency, but these operations are no less transparent than those of other international operators in the same locations or in similar circumstances. I have also found that most large-scale Chinese companies – especially state-owned enterprises – are doing quite well in terms of transparency, local engagement and long-term sustainability. These companies have strong incentives to get local support for their projects. Many of them have followed the standard that local workers should comprise at least 80 percent of the labour force in Chinese-operated projects – or at least in projects that are past the initial stages (stages at which higher-skilled labour, often Chinese, might be preferred or necessary).

Where Chinese operations do face some criticisms, such as those you level here, broader and more positive praise of China’s role in Africa by African leaders, local communities, and NGOs alike can be cited. As such, when it comes to China’s role in Africa, we need to be more nuanced and far less absolute about a complex, still young, and still evolving relationship.

RR: Wenran soutient que, officiellement, la motivation première de Pékin est le «développement économique» de l’Afrique, et qu’une amélioration de la gouvernance va suivre dans son sillage. C’est une illusion. La Chine, selon l’énoncé officiel de sa politique à l’égard de l’Afrique, considère son aide financière au développement en Afrique comme une collaboration économique Sud-Sud, reposant sur le principe de l’utilité et de l’avantage mutuel. C’est de la frime, comme tous les «énoncés officiels» de presque tous les gouvernements de ce monde.

Pour Pékin, la nécessité d’assurer des approvisionnements en ressources naturelles prend presque invariablement le pas sur les questions relatives à la transparence, l’état de la démocratie et les droits de l’homme. Les régimes politiques autoritaires ou semi-autoritaires sont passés maître dans l’art de tromper les superpuissances en promettant des réformes institutionnelles qui ne changent aucunement la nature et le fonctionnement de leurs régimes. L’Azerbaïdjan, où je travaille, est un exemple éloquent de ce type de comportement. Ce pays est riche en énergie fossile, comme la plupart des pays africains ayant développé des relations étroites avec la Chine. Ce qui attire les Chinois en Afrique – c’est les ressources naturelles et presque rien d’autre.

L’arrivée des entreprises chinoises sur les marchés africains exerce une pression à la hausse sur la valeur des actifs africains, parfois en gonflant le prix des actions lors de leurs achats. Certains experts pensent que cela est une bonne chose, car davantage de ressources financières sont disponibles pour le développement local. C’est une belle démonstration de naïveté. Les profits générés par le gonflement des prix des actifs se retrouvent presque invariablement dans les comptes de banque offshore de bureaucrates ou de politiciens vénaux; une part infime est investie dans les communautés locales. Ainsi va la transparence ou la non-transparence. Cette conclusion est tirée de mes observations de régimes politiques autoritaires ou semi-démocratiques, et confirmée par de nombreux entretiens avec des représentants officiels de ces types de régime politique.

Dans Why Nations Fail – The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, ouvrage publié en mars 2012, Daron Acemoglu et James Robinson démontrent de façon convaincante que ce sont de solides institutions politiques et économiques (bref, la gouvernance) qui conditionnent la réussite économique et le développement à long terme. Dans la majorité des pays avec lesquels la Chine entretient des liens économiques, les élites locales ont recours à toutes sortes de manœuvres illégales, truquages financiers et politiques afin de s’approprier des richesses du pays au détriment du peuple. Les investissements directs et indirects chinois produiront ainsi des résultats ambivalents en l’absence de changements politiques fondamentaux.

WJ: For most of the past two centuries, the African continent was largely controlled by Western countries – absolutely controlled in the colonial era, and indirectly controlled in the post-colonial period. However, Western countries failed to bring democracy, transparency and good governance to African states. What they did, instead, was to ruthlessly extract resources – leaving behind a right mess on much of the continent. Talk of democracy and good governance by Western analysts and political actors, then and now, is therefore more rhetoric than empirical reality.

On this score, it should not come as a surprise that many people in Africa feel that the West has had its time, and that it is high time that China was given a chance to suggest a new, 21st century model of cooperation. Despite the aforementioned problems and challenges, the Chinese presence on the continent has thus far been largely good for African economic growth, and beneficial for Africans’ living standards.

Of course, we ought to make no mistake about the structural need for China to extract energy and resources from Africa. China has been running the most robust economic development engine in human history, and its appetite for resources will endure for the foreseeable future. You are quite right to point this out.

Still, you fail to address three related considerations. First, China is not historically responsible for propping up corruption, dictatorship or non-democratic regimes in Africa or elsewhere. That shame belongs principally to the Western powers.

Second, China’s resource needs have helped economic development in many African countries – thereby contributing to social stability, progress and human rights on a broad range of political and economic indicators. To claim that Chinese resource extraction comes entirely at the expense of good governance is, as such, both analytically simplistic and empirically inaccurate. China gives aid generously to Africa, contributes very significantly to peacekeeping operations on the continent, and is the largest trading partner for that part of the world – a region still shut out of Western-dominated trading regimes.

Third, local African elites were enriched by resource and energy extraction processes long before China became a major economic presence in Africa. To be sure, Western countries operating in Africa are far from pure in their championship of good governance practices. Nor are Chinese companies working in Africa as de facto neo-slave masters, as some Western reports describe. On the contrary, Sinopec Gabon and other large Chinese firms have happily joined the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) – one of the major emerging global investment governance standards regimes aimed at promoting transparency and rule-based good governance.

We should keep in mind, again, that contemporary China is a complex entity, and that there are many ‘Chinas’ operating in Africa today. A monolithic view of China’s role in Africa cannot possibly capture the dynamism and complexity of Africa-China relations in this early new century. Clearly, Chinese enterprises, like all others, are capable of doing both good and evil in the African theatre. What is needed is more nuanced studies and analyses, less categorical or ideological characterizations, and the basic acknowledgement that China’s role in Africa could be more constructive if local communities are, on the whole, better informed about their engagement with the Chinese.

Having said all of this, Beijing can evidently do far more to truly develop a new model of interaction with Africa – a model that it is actively claiming to be developing. For to be different in comportment from the old colonial powers will require the Chinese to adduce continuous evidence of mutual net benefit for Africa and China.

Richard Rousseau est professeur adjoint à l’Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy à Bakou. Il enseigne la géopolitique de l’Eurasie, l’économie politique internationale, ainsi que la mondialisation.

Wenran Jiang is Associate Professor of Political Science, Mactaggart Research Chair, and former director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta.

Il faut admettre une fois pour toutes que l’UE s’est construite contre l’idée de puissance

Il y a 10 ans, l’UE, traumatisée par son incapacité à s’unir face à l’intervention américaine en Irak, acceptait sous l’impulsion de la France de se doter d’un instrument définissant une Stratégie européenne de sécurité. Cette dernière, plus connue depuis cette date sous le nom du rapport Solana, définit les grands enjeux auxquels est confrontée l’Europe sur le plan international et les moyens d’y faire face. Les menaces, ce sont les conflits régionaux, les armes de destruction massive, la prolifération nucléaire, les déséquilibres économiques, les trafics illicites, les migrations non contrôlées et ainsi de suite. Les réponses résident selon le rapport Solana dans l’activation des mécanismes de régulation multilatérale, et cela en conformité avec une philosophie européenne qui a toujours privilégié la norme plutôt que la force. Quelles leçons tirer de ce rapport une décennie après sa publication, et cela au moment où l’UE doit faire face à plusieurs crises: la Syrie, l’Iran, le Mali, sans parler des inquiétudes croissantes que soulève l’évolution despotique du régime russe?

En réalité, le rapport Solana avait les défauts de ses qualités. Le jugement global qu’il portait sur la situation internationale était assez juste. En revanche, il n’offrait à peu près aucune piste opérationnelle pour permettre à l’Europe d’atteindre des objectifs communs. Il en découle un discours dominé par de bonnes idées et de bons sentiments, mais esquivant habilement les difficultés auxquelles se heurte l’Europe pour agir sur la scène internationale en tant qu’acteur global. En réalité, si le rapport Solana ne va pas très loin et se contente de généralités, c’est pour une raison simple: alors que les Européens se mettent aisément d’accord sur des principes généraux d’action, leur mise en œuvre fait éclater les divergences au grand jour.

Parmi ces divergences figure notamment la question centrale de l’opportunité du recours à la force. Au moment de la crise libyenne, seuls la France et le Royaume-Uni manifestèrent une volonté politique d’agir sur le plan militaire sans attendre le feu vert de qui que ce soit. Les autres pays européens furent soit attentistes, soit hostiles à toute idée d’intervention militaire. Ce fut notamment le cas de l’Allemagne, qui est allée jusqu’à s’abstenir au moment du vote à l’ONU sur la résolution 1973 autorisant l’usage de toutes les mesures nécessaires pour protéger les populations civiles en Libye. Par ailleurs, plusieurs pays engagés dans le conflit limitèrent drastiquement les conditions d’utilisation de la force. Et tous exigèrent que l’intervention prenne place dans le cadre de l’OTAN, et non dans celui de l’UE. C’est la raison pour laquelle cette dernière refusa de s’impliquer politiquement dans le règlement de la crise, alors qu’elle disposait manifestement d’instruments de planification politique et militaire pour le faire. Mais encore une fois, cela n’a rien d’étonnant. Quand les États européens ne sont pas d’accord, ils se neutralisent et l’UE en pâtit. La neutralisation conduit alors au neutralisme.

L’intervention française au Mali montre que ces difficultés ressurgissent. Les Européens soutiennent la France, mais ne sont pas disposés à l’assister militairement sinon à travers un très léger soutien logistique ou une participation à un programme de formation de soldats maliens dont l’incapacité est notoire. Les États africains sont totalement incapables de prendre en charge leur sécurité, et les Européens le savent très bien. L’appel aux Africains n’est, de ce point de vue, qu’un prétexte à l’inaction européenne.

Le plus préoccupant est que les Européens ne semblent pas avoir été en mesure de tirer une leçon de cette affaire. Aujourd’hui, sur la Syrie, les Européens ont adopté une position commune. Mais si demain une intervention militaire était mise en œuvre, il est fort probable que les vieux clivages finissent par resurgir. Lors du débat onusien sur la reconnaissance de la Palestine, les Européens n’ont pas réussi là encore à adopter une position commune. Catherine Ashton a plaidé pour l’abstention, ce qui est en soi une curieuse façon de se prononcer sur un sujet où l’on attend précisément de l’Europe qu’elle prenne clairement position.

Le clivage qui oppose les Européens sur la question du recours à la force n’est cependant pas le seul. S’y ajoute un rapport très différencié sur la question de la sécurité européenne. Les Britanniques, par exemple, ont, sur le fond des questions stratégiques, un regard très proche de celui des Français. Cela dit, ils ne veulent en aucune façon transformer cette convergence de vues en une force de frappe européenne. À l’inverse, la plupart des États membres de l’UE sont favorables à l’idée de défense européenne, mais n’ont guère les moyens d’y contribuer. Tout cela renvoie au fait fondamental et historique que l’Europe n’est toujours pas la garante ultime de sa sécurité. Tant que l’on n’aura pas compris ce facteur capital dans l’équation européenne, tous les débats relatifs à la conversion de la puissance européenne en hard power tourneront court. Il faut admettre une fois pour toutes que l’UE s’est construite contre l’idée de puissance. Et ce n’est pas la gravité de la crise des finances publiques que traverse la quasi-totalité des pays européens qui pourra les faire changer d’avis.

Un autre facteur doit aussi être pris en considération quant à la difficulté de l’Europe à définir une grande stratégie. Il tient au fait que les cultures stratégiques nationales demeurent encore très prégnantes et ont du mal à se fondre dans une vision commune, au-delà de la réaffirmation de principes généraux. D’une certaine manière, cela n’a rien d’étonnant. En effet, qui pourra empêcher la Pologne ou les États baltes de nourrir une méfiance viscérale vis-à-vis de la Russie de Vladimir Poutine? Mais qui, à l’inverse, peut obliger l’Espagne, le Portugal ou l’Italie à partager cette crainte? Or à ces questions il est extrêmement difficile de répondre, si on laisse de côté les réponses convenues sur la nécessité pour l’Europe de s’unir.

En réalité, pour surmonter ces contradictions inévitables, il ne faudrait pas seulement que les Européens aient une culture stratégique commune. Il faudrait que l’Europe devienne la garante ultime de sa sécurité; c’est-à-dire que les États européens se donnent les moyens de garantir leur sécurité mutuelle. Or, comment imaginer que l’on mutualise la sécurité alors que l’on n’est pas disposé à mutualiser les dettes? À cet égard, il ne suffit pas de jeter la pierre aux Européens en les jugeant incapables de s’unir. Il faut pousser le raisonnement un peu plus loin et voir que l’une des raisons pour lesquelles ils ne parviennent pas à s’unir tient au fait qu’ils constituent un ensemble de peuples partageant certes des aspirations communes, mais continuant néanmoins à vivre comme des peuples nationaux et non comme les membres d’un même peuple européen.

Là encore, la crise de l’euro a clairement mis en évidence le potentiel de divergences entre les États européens dès que surgit un problème majeur. Certes, le propre des réalités politiques est qu’elles ne sont pas intangibles. D’une certaine manière, l’UE est parvenue à garantir la paix entre ses États membres – une réalisation qu’on aurait tort de sous-estimer au regard de ce qui se passe, par exemple, en Asie, où la Chine, le Japon et la Corée du Sud sont aujourd’hui encore incapables de solder les comptes de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Il faut cependant renoncer à une vision téléologique de la construction européenne, où l’UE déboucherait forcément sur une union politique ou stratégique.

L’Europe n’est donc pas en mesure de construire une grande stratégie. Mais est-ce que l’Europe est pour autant condamnée à l’inexistence stratégique? Non. Car entre une grande stratégie qui ferait de l’Europe une superpuissance, dont l’immense majorité des Européens ne veut pas, et l’absence totale de stratégie commune, il existe très certainement des potentialités d’actions communes. Cela est d’ailleurs d’ores et déjà le cas au travers des opérations militaires de maintien de la paix conduites par l’Europe dans de nombreux pays – le succès le plus récent étant son intervention dans la Corne de l’Afrique pour lutter contre la piraterie maritime. Dans cette affaire, on voit bien que la capacité de l’Europe à agir est efficace, parce que presque tous les pays européens ont conscience que leurs intérêts économiques sont menacés par la piraterie, et qu’une telle opération comporte peu de risques d’enlisement. Mais la reproduction d’une telle intervention, qui demeure d’ailleurs de portée limitée, n’est pas du tout acquise. On voit bien, à propos du Mali, que les Européens ne sont pas tous favorables à une intervention militaire dans ce pays.

Au-delà de la question des interventions militaires et de la projection des forces européennes, l’une des pistes de renforcement de l’Europe est de mutualiser ses forces autant qu’elle le peut – comme cela est d’ailleurs déjà le cas dans le cadre de l’OTAN. Elle est aussi de doter l’Europe d’une véritable industrie militaire qui permettrait d’amortir considérablement les coûts d’investissement et accroître son poids économique sans remettre en cause la souveraineté de ses États. Mais même dans ce domaine, les difficultés ne manquent pas, car les États raisonnent trop souvent à court terme. Dans cette optique, les Britanniques ont préféré commander un avion américain embarqué plutôt qu’un appareil européen, qui leur aurait pourtant permis d’utiliser les porte-avions français – une option ouverte par les accords de Lancaster House entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Les Allemands, quant à eux, se sont très clairement opposés à la naissance d’un géant militaire européen à travers la fusion de BAE et EADS. Il existe donc des inquiétudes fondées quant à la capacité de l’Europe à s’unir et à agir collectivement d’autant plus que le monde qu’elle imaginait au lendemain de la Guerre froide n’est pas du tout celui qui se dessine.

En effet, l’Europe a cru qu’avec la fin de la Guerre froide, la logique classique de puissance irait en s’affaiblissant, et que les dynamiques d’interdépendance iraient en se renforçant. Ce n’est pas du tout ce que l’on constate aujourd’hui. Certes, l’interdépendance des États n’a jamais été aussi forte, notamment sur le plan économique ou commercial. Mais simultanément, cette interdépendance a donné lieu à la montée en puissance des logiques nationales, comme en témoigne éloquemment le blocage des négociations commerciales multilatérales à l’OMC ou des négociations sur les changements climatiques sous l’égide de l’ONU. Pour l’Europe, il n’y a donc pas de tâche plus urgente que de s’interroger sur la meilleure façon de s’insérer activement dans un monde multipolaire dont l’inspiration n’est plus forcément multilatéraliste.

Zaki Laïdi est professeur à Sciences Po et auteur de La norme sans la force, l’énigme de la puissance européenne (2008) et de Le monde selon Obama (2012).

(Photographie: La Presse canadienne / AP / Harouna Traore)

It’s not as bad as it looks, considering the starting point and the enemy at the gate. The game can only be long.

The world’s newest state has not had an easy time of it. After decades of struggle against dictatorship and marginalization by successive regimes in Khartoum, independence in July 2011 brought a profound moment of joy to South Sudan’s war-weary population of roughly 10 million (the next national census is scheduled for 2014).

However, the euphoria has not lasted. The new state has faced serious crises, ranging from large-scale border issues with the Republic of the Sudan, to ever-deepening economic weakness after oil exports were temporarily shut down due to disputes with Khartoum, and significant social and ethnic unrest. Such grim challenges have raised questions about the new state’s viability, with many analysts wondering whether South Sudan has in fact been born a ‘failed state’ – created through misguided Western support and a flawed peace process – destined for the twin curses of oil and aid dependence, compounded by perpetual domestic violence and Khartoum’s bullying.

The widespread hope of the Southern Sudanese public was that a vote for independence would bring better roads, health care, education and a general sense of rising living standards. For many, this has been true, while for many more, progress feels desperately slow. South Sudan’s President, Salva Kiir, has himself publicly lamented the inability of his government to fully satisfy his people’s expectations.

The international media have presented an overly dystopian reality of manic violence, exceptional government incompetence, and endemic corruption in South Sudan. At the same time, the country has quickly become an aid darling of the West and the UN system. In the face of aggression by a Khartoum regime led by a president wanted in The Hague for war crimes and genocide, Western donors have been keen to back the Kiir government and ensure that hundreds of millions of dollars in aid continues to flow to Juba, despite strong concerns about corruption and mismanagement.

Of course, to say that South Sudan has already become a failed state obscures the fact that its previous existence as part of Sudan was not dissimilar – marked by dysfunctional governance, economic underdevelopment, and widespread violence. Indeed, its preceding condition – that of near-perpetual civil war – was often much worse than its post-independence reality. As such, there is a need to strike a balance between recognizing the very real challenges that confront the new country and acknowledging that South Sudan is a new state starting from a peculiarly disadvantaged position. Surviving 50-plus years of misrule from Khartoum would have been a burden for any population and government. Recovering from such origins will take time and, to be sure, significant international support.

Looking ahead, myopic hopes and jaded cynicism must not overwhelm thoughtful understanding of this young African state. The current problems of South Sudan have been compounded by poor decisions, corruption and mismanagement by an inexperienced government in Juba. The institutionalization of a governance culture relatively accommodating of corruption is particularly worrisome. (It is not clear that the centralization of public power in the presidency under the current temporary constitution will remedy these ills.) And, to be fair, Western governments have at times been overly enthusiastic, if not outright permissive, in their support for Salva Kiir’s government.

On the other hand, some progress is being made on the ground, and South Sudan does have a viable path ahead – even if we should not expect it to be an easy one. The country’s history dictates that the war-ravaged country will need to be built from the ground up. The near future is therefore likely to be similar to the country’s first year and a half: tensions and at times violence along the border with the Republic of the Sudan, the manipulation of proxy militia forces by Khartoum in South Sudan’s rural areas, and a weak economy largely dependent on Western aid and oil.

However, there will also be positive dynamics. From a social and political perspective, the peace process begun in 2005 was ultimately concluded through a democratic vote for secession by the South Sudanese in January 2011. This normative foundation should be appreciated – whatever wider doubts may exist about South Sudan’s strategic vocation in the world. As a historic moment of national liberation, the referendum on independence and independence itself provide significant reference points for social and political cohesion and legitimacy across the territory of the new state.

While many critics domestically and abroad have cautioned that the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) has too much power in the country’s political space, and while the SPLM has shown some evidence of administrative incompetence, it remains a party committed to secular democracy. Its natural instinct is not for brutal authoritarianism. Compared to what it replaced – revolving dictatorships in Khartoum – the SPLM should be given the benefit of the doubt, for the time being. Khartoum today, even after losing its southern third, still faces multiple insurgencies in its periphery, raging against the same dynamics – exploitation and marginalization by dictatorial regimes – that for so long provoked war in Sudan.

In terms of economic prospects, there is major potential for spurring development in South Sudan through the exploitation of oil and other natural resources. While foreign investment is still small, there are now active initiatives in the country to build micro-refineries in order to provide fuel for domestic and regional markets. These smaller efforts, rather than mega-pipeline projects and oil export deals, are more likely to grow the economy. Over the longer-term, substantial economic growth will need to be based on agricultural production as well as oil. For now, South Sudanese agriculture is very limited in scope. Investments in infrastructure – particularly with foreign aid – have helped to boost connectivity in the country, though as a country the size of France it remains direly lacking in roads.

Security challenges will remain dominant preoccupations for the new state, and a major burden for an already traumatized population. Without question, the country’s security situation is fragile – both in terms of its relations with its larger neighbour to the north, and across its very diverse population. (The Addis Ababa agreements of September 2012 included provisions to demilitarize the border and launch new discussions on its demarcation.) Ethnic violence – notably in the eastern state of Jonglei – is unfortunately widespread, and any ‘peace dividend’ for much of the rural population has been modest at best. Fighting in the southern part of Sudan between the Sudanese army and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) – the former comrades-in-arms of Salva Kiir’s own SPLA – remains a particular cause of tension between Juba and Khartoum.

South Sudan’s war for independence was a justifiable struggle against dictatorship and exploitation. Spread over decades, the South Sudanese endured exceeding brutality and deprivation in order to secure a better future. Independence was always going to be challenged by the expectations of a population desperately in need of the most basic social services, security, infrastructure and governance. Moreover, the international community has to a good extent facilitated and encouraged such high hopes through promises of quick transformations via development aid and democratization. Given the starting point, the reality was always going to be messier. South Sudan’s present is therefore correctly defined by some successes, some failures and, to be sure, non-negligible progress.

Matthew Arnold and Matthew LeRiche are co-authors of a new book, South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence.

(Photograph: The Canadian Press / AP / Jacquelyn Martin)

Edging toward the sweet spot of new-century governance

Enter the info-state. The info-state – today one of a growing number of dynamic and entrepreneurial cities, city-states or small nations scattered around the world – governs as much through data as via democracy.

Scholars have for decades appreciated political mutations that drive international competition and result in new forms of governance. In 1941, Harold Lasswell emphasized the rise of politico-military elites, such as in Imperial Japan, that shaped the ideology of ‘garrison states.’ In 1996, Richard Rosecrance forecasted a transition toward ‘virtual states’ that downsized geography and outsourced production, while investing more in human and portfolio capital than territorial expansion. Building on this logic of the economic over the political, Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles (2002) traced the advent of the ‘market state’ era, in which the maximization of individual commercial opportunity defines national power and success. Japanese business strategist Kenichi Ohmae then set the stage for the info-state era in The Next Global Stage (2005), which argued that urban agglomerations of city-states resembling the medieval Hanseatic League would become the world’s power centres.

The info-state draws on numerous important attributes of these previous – and still co-existing – units. The economic footprint supersedes the territorial, the urban industrial core and its human capital pool are the locus of value, and diplomacy is exercised by commercial and knowledge centres as much as by national capitals.

But the info-state also presents new mutations that were not conceivable in previous technological periods – a peculiar convergence of the Information Age and the devolved authority of city units and clusters. The critical shift lies in the manner of policy-making enabled by new technologies: governance is practiced in ‘real-time’ – through constant consultation, rather than through traditional, staggered democratic deliberation. In a sense, this is a post-modern democracy – or even ‘post-democracy’ – that combines popular priorities with rationalist or technocratic management. On this logic, data-driven policy might mean more objective measurement of progress, more evidence-based policy, and more accountability of leadership.

In order to thrive, an info-state must provide both the security of the garrison state model and the connectedness of the virtual state. In other words, the essence of the info-state is secure connectedness. And, to be sure, this existential reliance on secure connectedness is potentially the info-state’s most prominent vulnerability.

Already there are notable info-states across several continents and cultural zones, underscoring how this is already a worldwide phenomenon set to grow at the intersection of technological spread and pragmatic governance. New York City, for example, has long been a global hub due to its financial sector. But only in the past decade, as a consequence of the 9/11 attacks and the global economic crisis, has New York undertaken to bolster its own security and intelligence capabilities, and then to diversify into IT and bio-sciences research – thereby becoming the US’s second technology hub after Silicon Valley. Switzerland is in effect a ‘cities-state’ – a conglomeration of specialized centres in banking, research, engineering, hospitality and other sectors. Israel has also made economic diversification into technology sectors a national priority, distributing so much funding for small-scale entrepreneurs that it has earned the title ‘start-up nation.’ Of course, both Switzerland and Israel are also garrison states even as they provide advanced connectivity to global knowledge and markets.

Estonia and Dubai are two far newer info-states. Emerging from the Soviet shadow, Estonia quickly reclaimed Scandinavian and European allegiances, joining the EU and the Eurozone. Its IT industry’s outsized exports have earned it the nickname ‘E-stonia.’ The country’s digital culture is so embedded that, as of this year, many primary school students will begin learning computer programming. And although politically subservient to Abu Dhabi, the UAE emirate of Dubai – the flagship economic anchor of which is the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) – is seeking to become the unofficial capital of the Arab world through intense infrastructural development and a melting-pot culture. While remaining strictly monarchical in rule, Dubai actively uses social media and e-government initiatives to canvass popular sentiment, having invested heavily in knowledge clusters for both international entities and local benefit.

The most evolved info-state is likely Singapore. The tiny Southeast Asian republic is pioneering a new governance model based on a dynamic combination of data and democracy. In no other society is the efficient delivery of public services so diligently monitored through information gathering and key performance indicators. The SingPass system already puts all government functions within reach online, and a nation-wide fibre optic Internet rollout is scheduled for completion by 2015. With a physical sensor network that offers dynamic road pricing and detailed ecosystem monitoring, the city-state that calls itself a ‘living lab’ is itself a complex adaptive system of constant feedback loops resulting in continuous policy innovation.

There has never been, and there is never likely to be, any homogeneity among the nation-states, non-sovereign quasi-states, feudal kingdoms and tribal states, and, of course, the failed or failing states of our world. Amid this non-homogeneity, however, as democratic governance competes increasingly with raw, practical metrics of social welfare and outcomes, the end game for debates on good governance may yet see the info-state play an important bridging role.

Parag Khanna is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, and co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology
Civilization (2012).

What East can teach West, and vice versa, as ‘voyeur’ states take notes

Who, as between Reagan and Gorbachev, won the Cold War? Answer: Deng Xiaoping. The various ‘pivots’ currently being effectuated by serious countries on all continents testify to this victory. All of these pivots are, to be sure, China-driven, even if some pivots are more Chinese than others.

Australia’s Asia pivot, articulated in the recent white paper of the Julia Gillard government, is arguably the most comprehensive and serious. Canberra at least says that it is going where no other more capacious federation – Canada, the US, Germany or Brazil – is constitutionally able or politically willing to go: deep into the bowels of the country’s educational systems – run by the states, not the national government – in order to prepare an ‘Asia-literate’ society, across the sectors, including through the study of priority Asian languages (a vision first advanced by future Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his 1994 report to the Council of Australian Governments). But then again, Australia’s game is Asia or bust: its strategic footprint is nugatory on every other continent. And, of course, whether Gillard and future prime ministers can really make the descendants of British ‘convict’ stock more ‘Asian,’ whatever the muscularity of the pivot, is very much in dispute.

North America’s and Europe’s geopolitical games are manifestly more global than those of Australia. Partly as a result, but also because Asia still figures little in the national imaginaries of North American and European states, their pro-Asian pivots have thus far been only partial and unenthusiastic. As for Africa and Latin America, their pivots are largely unrequited – that is, they are effectively ‘pre-empted,’ as it were, by general Asian strategic disinterest in, or ignorance about, these theatres. (Beijing is a notoriously notable exception.) In other words, imagined tyranny of distance oblige, strategists in key capitals in Asia will concede, sotto voce, that they still do not have a firm strategic impression of Africa and Latin America, and of what’s to be done with and to them.

The pivots of the post-Soviet space are highly eclectic. Countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan are all carefully studying Asian countries, starting with the likes of Singapore, for lessons in ‘governance’ – to wit, how to reconcile reasonably competent, quasi-authoritarian government with strong economic performance. Each of these states is struggling to recast its national ‘mental map’ such that Asia, for all intents and purposes, becomes a ‘third way’ between a moralizing Europe and an irredentist Russia (with both Europe and Russia also systemically suspect).

In the weak states of the Arab Spring, the pivot from West Asia to East Asia is highly embryonic and as yet indecisive. Like the post-Soviet states, they are in many cases still trying to ‘choose’ their alignment or intellectual affinities, with varying degrees of competence and clear-headedness from country to country.

Of course, the rise or, better still, return of China, and with it, some parts of Asia, may still end in tears. China is huge – territorially and demographically – and there is no one in the leadership classes in Beijing who could possibly have a ‘synoptic vision’ that captures the country’s myriad complexities and vulnerabilities. No surprise, then, that China’s communist cadres are today, in the context of the coming to power of Xi Jinping, required to read Alexis de Tocqueville’s L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856). And so humility, not hagiography, is the order of the day in evaluating the undeniable lessons of the recent performance of the Middle Kingdom.

But what’s to learn, in effect? What does the rising East have to teach today’s West? What about vice versa? And which lessons from East and West should be applied by ‘voyeur’ states in the developing or transitional world, from Africa to the former Soviet Union and the post-Arab Spring Middle East? The rise of Deng’s China through to that of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore would seem to suggest that the East has at least to date done its homework on the West: its leaders have mastered the West’s languages, studied en masse in its best universities, and reverse-engineered its products and systems, in countless cases improving on them. But what about the reverse: has the West yet begun to take lessons from the East? Is today’s Western mind sufficiently open and strategically promiscuous to do so, or is it more dogmatic and dated than it may realize in presuming the superiority of its ways, if not the very incommensurability of its civilization with others? If the Western mind is open, might this lead to new sets of agreed wisdoms on how best to govern – ones befitting a more complex century? And will these new sets of agreed wisdoms play themselves out first and foremost in the aforementioned ‘voyeur’ space?

First, definitions. What is the East? In the only relevant sense, we speak here of that part of Asia that is ‘ramified’ by China’s boom, which is by far the single most important causal factor or driving force in Asia’s strategic rise (or return). In this sense, the elegant Tel Aviv to Tokyo paradigm favoured by Kishore Mahbubani is overinclusive. Even the inclusion of South Asia in the relevant ‘Asia,’ for purposes of policy pedagogy, should be contested. India, for instance, is not as tied to Chinese strategic and economic growth as some may fancy. Rather, it is New Delhi’s performance or non-performance – still very much an open question – that will overwhelmingly determine India’s future, and not the China factor. By contrast, Northeast Asia and, even more so, Southeast Asia, are far more ramified – strategically, economically, in governance terms, and even ‘spiritually’ – by the performance of the Middle Kingdom. This means that the character and quality of Chinese governance – and with it the fate of this century’s China – will in large measure dictate the fates of the various states of these sub-regions. If China rises, so will much, although not all, of these sub-regions. If China falls or, say, becomes unstable or destabilizing, then the vast majority of the states of these sub-regions will fail. It is difficult to foresee, on perhaps an extreme example, a city-state like Singapore, for all of its military preparations and investments, surviving strategically should it be embroiled in a serious war that pits its alliances against today’s or tomorrow’s China. And over the course of a century-long rise or return for China, such a major war, involving major countries, can evidently not be ruled out.

The composition of the ‘core’ West is far less controversial. It includes North America, the EU, Australia and New Zealand. (We may throw Israel into this category, for good measure – although a determination on its inclusion or exclusion is not imperative for purposes of our analysis here.) The primary lesson for today’s ‘core’ West from the new East pertains to political and strategic legitimacy. Evidently, the legitimacy of the governments and legislatures of the advanced states of the West comes from electoral competition (‘narrow’ democracy) and, perhaps more importantly, the ability of other constituencies and ‘estates’ in society, from political oppositions to media, lobbies, intellectuals and lay citizens alike to input into and, where necessary, resist and even outright protest governing regimes, laws and decisions on the strength of robust constitutional structures, democratic institutions and, to be sure, deep democratic norms, customs and values (‘thick democracy’).

However, if we agree that China is currently ‘winning’ the post-Cold War – that is, that China-driven performance, at least on the economic front, if not the broader strategic front, is excelling that of the West, which between the EU’s and the US’s considerable fiscal and monetary woes currently appears systemically non-vital – then we must allow that strong administrative performance and practical (real) social welfare outcomes, as in contemporary China, also provide a serious source of legitimacy for government, even if the democratic underpinnings of such government are manifestly deficient. In other words, it is not just the ‘process’ of government that matters for its legitimation, as per classical democratic models, but the very ‘outcomes’ of government as well. In this sense, the rise of China and China-dependent Asia puts paid to specifically North American and Anglospheric debates about whether ‘government matters.’ It shows ‘voyeur’ states, from Africa to the former Soviet Union, that government clearly does matter. And competent government – democratic or less democratic – matters even more. Generally ‘good’ (Eastern) government, as in Singapore or, yes, even China, matters to the outcomes of that state, just as mediocre (Eastern) government, as in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, matters to the less impressive socioeconomic outcomes of those states.

The results-based legitimacy or social contract underpinning ‘Asian’ government is today supplemented by several other related legitimating factors that also commend themselves as corresponding weaknesses, in virtue of their growing absence, in the core West. These legitimating factors include the national capacity and temperament to strategize and plan (and to iterate and see and wait out the results of such plans, accept partial wins, and not be overly exercised by the insolubility of certain problems), specialization and expertise (technical professionalism) at the highest levels of government (and compensation and high societal regard for such expertise), and, signally, a pioneering, building spirit; that is, at their best, many Asians today – old, but especially young – understand full well that their states, societies and individual and collective futures are actively being built and have yet to be built, and that the fact, quality and durability of the building project very much depends on their agency as Asians.

Of course, such ‘Eastern’ governance has its share of important vulnerabilities – vulnerabilities that also threaten its longer-term legitimacy, and therefore the stability of a number of Asian governments and states. First and foremost, the same administrative and decision-making structures – in many cases, algorithms – that allow for long-term planning and strong, results-based delivery of plans have notoriously poor feedback mechanisms that prevent key information from influencing such decision-making. This means that correctives to mistakes – mistakes of which, by implication, state planners and strategists may be variously cognizant – are often inadequate or altogether missing, and that, over the long-term, erroneous fundamental suppositions about what is ‘right’ in given policy situations may lead not just to sub-optimal or unacceptable outcomes, but indeed to the very collapse of the entire governing system.

The infamous Soviet ‘power vertical’ that, due to poor feedback mechanisms from the ground levels to the Kremlin, eventually led to Moscow (never run by foolish men) not being completely aware of the impending breakdown of the entire Soviet system of 15 republics and nearly 300 million citizens (from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok), is today still very much alive in unitary Asian states like China and Vietnam (not to mention North Korea or even a hyper-unitary, although quasi-democratic state like Singapore). Even if China is by far the most serious Asian country in strategic terms, with perhaps the most talented national administrative class, both it and Vietnam, much like the former USSR, undertake rolling five- and 10-year plans that are today largely foreign to the democratic systems of the West. The power verticals from, respectively, Beijing and Hanoi, allow each country to drive a large number of national goals – economic, educational, environmental and other – through their national administrative systems effectively by centralized diktat or promulgation. Strategy and plans are punctiliously developed at the executive centre and driven out and down from this centre, fastidiously, to become on-the-ground realities. To be sure, provincial and regional authorities do feed into the national plans made at the centre, and they clearly must and do adapt and tailor these plans when implementing them locally. But there is good reason to be skeptical about the efficacy of such ‘feed-in’ or feedback – structurally and culturally – into the central decision-making loci of these systems. That “the Emperor is far away,” as the Chinese are wont to say about Beijing, means that even the best central planners in large Asian countries cannot entirely assimilate the highly variegated and particular realities of their citizens in the context of a constitutional tradition that demands such extreme discipline and deference to the centre, and in which there is no sustained record of, and few institutional channels for, individual extroversion and expression that may ‘bend’ the best laid plans of the capital to the messy conditions of Asian ‘mice and men.’ As such, we might posit that to the extent that such feed-in and feedback is systemically compromised, there is every danger, over the long-run, that these systems of governance will destabilize because of poor or improper decision-making.

We might loosely call the technical efficacy and professionalism of governing in today’s China and China-dependent Asia ‘rule by algorithm.’ Serious technocrats or planners – in principle, the smartest men and women in the land – establish and iterate rules and frameworks – algorithms, as it were – to address a very large spectrum of state and societal problems through various combinations of state and societal instruments and capabilities. If an identified problem morphs or is not properly solved, then the algorithm is changed; indeed, the algorithm may be changed on an ongoing basis – if only to perfect it. And indeed, these algorithms set the rules of the game for state and society, and all social behaviour is essentially subsumed thereto – often unquestioningly, both by culture (including through self-deterrence) and because the rules themselves so demand.

In the West, the ‘rule of reason’ (or ‘rule of argument’) prevails. The inflexibility of the algorithmic approach in the East is mitigated not just by the reactivity of government and planners to electoral pressures, but by the existence, protection and even encouragement of ‘estates’ of argument and challenge in most layers and quarters of society. (An abiding culture of debate and contestation of ideas, and far greater parity of education between the governors and the governed, clearly abet the protection and promotion of these estates.) This ‘argument’ feeds contrary and, in many cases, corrective impulses into state decision-making structures – from the ground level and the peripheries to the centre – in ways that are essentially alien to Eastern algorithmic paradigms. These corrective impulses may be said to have a long-term stabilizing effect on the governance of Western states, causing them generally to avoid extreme or dramatic mistakes in governance – or to avoid allowing these mistakes to go undetected or unaddressed for too long – just as they may, to be fair, also lead to far greater stasis and internal incoherence in governance than one might find in the most competent of Asia’s algorithmic states. These corrective impulses also arguably immunize today’s Western states, to a large extent, from the need for continuous ‘excellent’ governance or leadership – just as they may make these states generally resistant to sweeping reforms, even in the service of great public problems.

Just as the Eastern rule by algorithm commends itself to numerous strengths or atouts that may be attractive to ‘voyeur’ states, so too, in other ways, does the West’s rule of reason or argument. For instance, federalism, a style of governance practiced and celebrated mostly in advanced Western states, from Canada and the US, to Germany, Switzerland, Belgium (dysfunctional though it may be), Austria and Australia, has, by design, a notorious blunting effect on centralized power – one that, at its best, allows putative local realities to be addressed by local levels of government, just as there is continuous, constitutionalized ‘argument’ between local and central governments about jurisdiction and policy responsibility. Only Malaysia has a federal system in the East, as we have defined it. And, of course, India (or even Pakistan or Nepal), not strictly in this same China-dependent East, also has a federal system. But the key insight – one posited by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, through to John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier, and even Henry Parkes – is that the federal system of governance, as opposed to unitary governance, exists specifically in order to allow for more or less autonomous regional or local public authorities to determine their own specific plans and fates in relation to those realities that are ‘reasonably’ deemed regional or local. The planning capabilities or sweep of national authorities in the federal system is therefore naturally limited or mitigated, and is primary or exclusive only in ‘reasonably’ designated areas of national life and policy. The ‘feedback’ mechanism so absent in Eastern algorithmic systems comes from the inherent or built-in legal and policy intersections of the activities of national and regional authorities. And, of course, the highly protected courts in federal systems supplement this feedback-by-argument through a continuous and evolving jurisprudence that clarifies the constitutional division of powers between levels of government, as the world turns and changes.

Another manifestation of the ‘rule of reason’ in the West that is largely absent from today’s East is the existence of very robust – indeed, nearly absolute – constitutional and cultural bulwarks of protection for individual life – not just protection of rights, but life itself. In most countries of the East, individual life is, as a rule, in the public space, still treated as an instrumentality in the service of the preferred Asian freedom – not freedom from governmental repression, but rather freedom from chaos. (The Singaporeans and Malaysians might refer to the corresponding fear of chaos and death, in the Hokkien idiom, as kiasi, in response to which sometimes extreme or radical private or public measures may need to be taken.) An individual life, or short of that, what Westerners view as fundamental rights, may, on this logic, need to be compromised or traded in the service of the more important general protection and freedom from chaos. This may lead to swifter and less compunctious resort to peremptory punishment (like the death penalty) for what might, in the rule-of-reason countries of the West, be considered micro-torts (including some drug offences); or to draconian emergency laws and prerogatives in response to perceived threats of a political ilk (including terrorism).

True enough, states in the West do occasionally and readily resort to draconian measures – including through emergency laws or extreme uses of executive or political prerogatives – when threatened internally or externally. In such cases, the individual life may also, even if on a time-limited basis, be treated instrumentally – or have instrumental or contingent, rather than absolute, value – by Western governments. Nevertheless, the spirit of governing in today’s West, in which great war has not been seen in nearly 70 years – and where, contra today’s East, as Kishore Mahbubani has argued, there is also no obvious prospect of great war – and in which there is a sustained tradition of rights activism in all branches of government, still commends itself to the view that such cases and periods are exceptional rather than instinctual.

By extension, majority-minority relations in today’s ‘reasonable’ West are in many cases characterized by ethnic, linguistic or religious majorities that are culturally and, through legal strictures, more porous than Eastern majorities. This cultural-legal porousness of the majority is more apposite, for our purposes, than only legal protection of minorities, which has been in place for many decades now in the West, and is also extant in many Eastern states. A black man (or woman) may today become President of the US, a French-Canadian Prime Minister of Canada, a child of Hungarian immigrants President of France, and a Jew (potentially) Prime Minister of the UK (for the second time). In the more advanced cases, as in Canada or even New Zealand, this majority-group porousness has evolved from express political-constitutional resuscitation of minority groups that were, for all practical intents and purposes, the ‘losing’ parties in historical battles (in the event, French Canadians and, more controversially, the Maori), into effective co-equals in the governance of these countries. By contrast, the power balance – or ‘argument’ – between majorities and minorities in Eastern states is today still conditioned by an ‘iron cage’ in which the rules of the game and one’s vocation and telos are largely set – but for some heroic exceptions – by membership in a state’s majority or minority. We are therefore quite far removed from the prospect of an ethic Chinese or Indian head of government in Indonesia or in Bumiputra-majority Malaysia, even if the prospect of a Tamil or Malay prime minister in Chinese-majority Singapore is slightly more conceivable in our lifetime. Of course, in the ‘thick’ majority Eastern societies of China, Vietnam or Thailand, there is absolutely no prospect of minority penetration into executive political power. And, to be sure, the algorithmic logic of Eastern governance would view this state of affairs as perfectly natural and otherwise consistent with the preservation of a stable social order.

What lessons, in closing, for the so-called voyeur states and regions of our world? Will they be able to combine, promiscuity oblige, the best of East and West – that is, the best of algorithms and argument – in such a way as to engineer the new ‘sweet spots’ of governance for this century? Does the former Soviet space, for instance, need better algorithms or more argument? Answer: for now, both; over time, perhaps one more than the other. The same goes for the post-Arab Spring Middle East and much of Africa. Many of Latin America’s states may need more algorithm than argument – again, for now. And still, we generalize, of necessity. But we can say with some certainty that the increasing complexity of the world and the inherent instability of these voyeur regions and their respective states will not permit of a purely or paradigmatically Eastern or Western idiom in their governance. Their approaches will necessarily be hybridic, always seeking to stabilize and improve at the margins, just as today’s East and West may themselves before long be seeking to improve at the margins – more reason for the former, more algorithms for the latter – always in the general paranoia that these attempted improvements could destabilize the very edifices they purport to reform.

Irvin Studin is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Global Brief.

(Illustration: Harry Campbell)

Between identity and difference, the impulse for identity has proven more destructive

Two principles rule in human affairs: identity and difference. We yearn for home, comfort and familiarity (self, family, tribe, city, country, language, culture), and yet we are always engaging with difference (through simple curiosity – one of the most endearing human traits – or need, or love, which is the aesthetic attraction). This sets up a paradoxical oscillation between paranoia (excessive fear of pollution coming from outside) and schizophrenia (an inability to distinguish self from other; all messages are the same).

Moats and bridges are perhaps unhappy metaphors for thinking about inter-state relations –except that, of course, that is the way in which we tend to think of them. We are always digging moats, and simultaneously building bridges to get over them. This begs the question: why dig the moat in the first place?

It is indeed strange that in an age in which the concept of the individual as a philosophical entity dwindles to a spectral absence, we find ourselves – as states – in paroxysmal identity crises. We deploy fences, security cameras, drones, radar and digital monitoring to guard against the influx of the alien – that is, to guard against improperly processed immigration. This is a complete turnabout for, say, America, which has long prided itself on accepting the poor and outcast of Europe, along with manual labourers from China and slaves from Africa.

These moats, excavated between country and country, between first world and third, between opposing ideologies, between Israeli and Palestinian, between Asian and Westerner, offer a nostalgic fantasy of security and purity prefigured in the Old Testament, where the Hebrews conquer the Promised Land and immediately begin to obsess about ritual difference and contamination by followers of Baal in their midst. We are mired, it seems, in an ancient and antiquated concept of identity that is fearful, suspicious and even, yes, paranoid – one that prioritizes protection (moats) from foreign contagion (illegal immigrants, refugees, ambiguous foreign workers, terrorists) over discovery, translation and exchange.

To be sure, we do not mind the exchange of currency, real or virtual, as long as the balance of payments tends to our advantage (and, again, the balance of payments idea reprises an old-style essentialism or its parody – to wit, we have to preserve our vital essences). But currency is phantasmal: we do not even see it crossing the border, flowing like the whispering of an underground river through electronic ether. Even in war, commerce is often blind to sides.

Think of the way in which many oral cultures once took great pains to categorize identity – a family, clan, tribe – while also invoking the incest ban and embracing exogamy (along with the prosecution of war as a means for acquiring prisoners for adoption).

The incest taboo is one of the most peculiar and paradoxical of human ideas. The notion that too much sameness is a bad thing (who among the first proto-humans thought this up?) is so peculiar and basic that the great French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss posited it as the institutional foundation of culture itself. Which is to say, once again, that all human relations are inflected with an interlocking system of paranoid and schizophrenic impulses in tension with one another. We call this system civilization (Freud was very dubious).

Of the two impulses, perhaps the yearning for identity is historically the most destructive. Many notable crimes against humanity were committed in our last century in the name of racial or ideological purity. All of this is, again, prefigured in the Old Testament – a textbook of cultural purity and paranoia warring against the opposite human impulse to embrace difference mostly through love; hence the constant hectoring against marrying foreign women (Jezebels) who might lead one to embrace cultural syncretism.

Yearning for difference is the root of comedy. Mixing with the other promotes confusion, love, misunderstanding, heartache, trade, hybrid-vigour, and new ideas. Travel and translation (bridges) are the operative sub-metaphors. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan were notable East-West tourists who created much cultural interchange intermixed with the usual collateral damage. Nowadays, the East-West axis builds bridges in the form of package tours, but more importantly through investment and trade: Toyota builds cars in Tennessee; Apple builds iPads in China.

Despite the use of Internet blocking techniques and no-fly lists, ideas mostly whiz back and forth at the speed of light. When we think in terms of money and ideas, the moats all but disappear, and the metaphor of the bridge gives way to the idea of diffusion vectors, pipes, tubes and fields. At the same time, the moat-building industry (arms, security and surveillance, border fences, fifth-generation fighters, and carrier fleets) expands apace – both aspects growing on a scale that dwarfs the individual human understanding. We seem, therefore, to be locked on contradictory trajectories – reaching toward, perhaps, some cataclysmic and demoralizing climax.

Douglas Glover is a Governor-General’s Award-winning novelist and short story writer. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Attack of the Copula Spiders.