M23 Rebels take the City of Goma in the Congo (Part 1)

A rebel group, known as the March 23 (M23) Movement, took the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the 20th of November 2012. This completed a military advance that had been going for couple of days since the 15th of November, when the M23 broke a 3 month long ceasefire and attacked the Congolese army in Kibumba (a city 30km north of Goma). The seizure of Goma by M23 threatens to massively destabilise the Congo, Rwanda (an alleged and almost certain backer of M23) and the wider region. To attempt to fathom this unfolding conflict the history of M23 must be examined, along with important contextual issues like state weakness in the Congo, friction between various ethnic and social groups, the role of natural resources in Congolese conflicts and crucially the wider geopolitical battle that rages just underneath the surface (especially with regards to conflict between Rwanda and the Congo, but also the role of Uganda, Western powers, the UN and the international community).

The M23 was rose largely from the ashes of a previous Congolese rebel group, the National Conflict for the Defence of the People (French: Congrès national pour la défense du peuple, CNDP). On March 23 2009 the CNDP signed a peace treaty with the government of the Congo, headed by Joseph Kabilia, who agreed to let the CNDP become a political in exchange for the release of jailed CNDP members. Also, it was agreed that CNDP members could be integrated into the Congo’s army (fully named the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; French: Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]). Yet, in April 2012 roughly 300 soldiers formerly of the CNDP broke away from the FARDC and started the M23 rebel group, citing poor conditions in the army and a belief that the government of the Congo generally did not fulfill its 2009 March 23 peace treaty obligations. Other possible grievances that could have motivated the formation of M23 are that CNDP soldiers who joined FARDC were deployed outside of Congo’s Kivu region (where CNDP were based and fought), the Congolese government called for Bosco Ntaganda’s arrest (nicknamed ‘the Terminator’, he was the commander of the CNDP. The ICC has demanded his arrest for human rights crimes since 2006), the inability of Congolese Tutsi refugees being able to return home to Rwanda and Kabila not winning the 2011 election in Congo legitimately (a grievance aired long after M23 was formed, shortly after Goma was captured). As Jason Stearns has said, ‘since the beginning of the M23 rebellion in late March [2012], the mutiny has appeared rushed and ill-planned’ (1). M23 were quite possibly formed more out of greed, a fear that their eastern Congo power structures and the wealth such structures ensured would be broken up, than grievances.

The Market Strikes Back

(Different perceptions over what’s monstrous: the market (left) or the state (right))

After the global financial crisis Kevin Rudd, then the Prime Minister of Australia, declared:

From time to time in human history there occur events of a truly seismic significance, events that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next, when one orthodoxy is overthrown and another takes its place. The significance of these events is rarely apparent as they unfold: it becomes clear only in retrospect, when observed from the commanding heights of history. By such time it is often too late to act to shape the course of such events and their effects on the day-to-day working lives of men and women and the families they support.

There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time: barely a decade into the new millennium, barely 20 years since the end of the Cold War and barely 30 years since the triumph of neo-liberalism – that particular brand of free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed which became the economic orthodoxy of our time.

The agent for this change is what we now call the global financial crisis.

(source 1)

Australian academics/intellectuals Robert Manne and David McKnight stated ‘we believe that the global financial crisis, combined with the implicit challenge  of global warming to neo-liberal assumptions about the possibility of endless economic growth, should put an end to market fundamentalism. On this basis we hope we will eventually be able to say ‘goodbye to all that” (source 2). Some other weighty and well known quotes include the chief execute of the Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, saying ‘I no longer believe in the market’s self-healing power’. Martin Wolf also judged ‘the lobbies of Wall Street will, it is true, resist onerous regulation of capital requirements or liquidity, after this crisis is over. They may succeed. But, intellectually, their position is now untenable’ and ‘remember Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free- market capitalism died’ (source 3).

Yet something happened. Or, more precisely, something didn’t happen. No uproar and disavowal over the intellectual foundations of the economy and society that lead to the global financial crisis took place. To Quote A J P Taylor ‘history reached its turning point, and failed to turn’.

What is remarkable post-GFC is this intellectual, and more broader, fatalism. Survival instincts kicked in after the crisis, with the risk-taking troublemakers being bailed out by governments, which necessarily involved socialising losses (that is, having taxpayers, society at large, foot the bill) and privatising gains (Stiglitz’s point). The GFC involved, quoting Sarkozy, ‘the return of the state, the end of the ideology of public powerlessness’ (source  4).

Yet the state’s return was immensely short-lived. TARP and other bailouts show that humanity’s instinct for self-preservation isn’t dead, but soon after vital signs stabilised the concerns of the day became austerity and debt. Despite a depressed economies throughout the Western world, leaders of governments have drearily marched, like David Cameron, into an ‘age of austerity’  where (prior to him taking office) he announced ‘over the next few years, we will have to take some incredibly tough decisions on taxation, spending and borrowing’ (source 5). Wayne Swan, the treasurer of Australia, echoed the sentiment and policies, despite the vital signs of the Australian economy being far superior to those of other Western countries. Swan ran a budget surplus in 2012, despite the huge risk of Australia actually entering into a recession because the economic growth that exists is minimal (and the economy is two speed. Australia is effectively cut in two with the mining states, and specifically the mining industries within those state, riding a commodity boom, whilst South Australia and Tasmania are in recessions [with the other Eastern states teetering on the brink]!) (source 6). The reason Swan gave is as interesting and as telling as the action: ‘our return to surplus sends a strong message of confidence to investors across the world in these uncertain times’ (source 7). This is the ‘confidence fairy’ that Paul Krugman has notably talked about, where the private sector is expected to inject the economy with investments and improve it’s wellbeing as the correct rituals are performed at the alter of business appeasement. That is, so the reasoning goes, if governments do something that pleases and boosts the confidence of business such as reduce expenditures (spend less)  then corporations invest and expand the economy, thus restoring growth and making the economy better again. The problem is businesses aren’t stupid and they don’t want to invest in depressed economies (not such risk-takers now, ey boys!?). whether businesses are so sheepish and pathetic that they won’t on a significantly large scale throw about money unless their is easy returns to be made, or whether there are fair and astute reasons for not investing on significant scale is a point that need not be answered. The issue is that the economic conditions are so unflattering due to the depressed nature of Western economies that unless there are fundamental changes businesses won’t invest, period.

What can break the economic impasse? Government. If government spends more, then more money is going into the economy, and if public works are financed then jobs are created, and the people who work will spend thereby creating a multiplier effect and spurring economic growth. Businesses will then actually have a real and concrete incentive to spend: the economy is growing and they needn’t fear a downturn that would crush demand and hurt their profits.

 

The question is why hasn’t government, that is the state, assumed it’s rightful role and ‘returned’ to societies post-GFC. Apart from the strange fatalism all that there can be is politics. Since the vital signs have been restored to economies economics has been suspended, and all activities taking place have been pure politics. Weakening states so markets and their affluent actors can slowly digest and consolidate more and more of economies is a fundamentally political movement. These affluent actors, such as large corporations, wealthy investors and hedge-funds, end up doing as they please. They buy what they want, when they want (employment and well-being of society at large be damned). Somehow the knuckles of businesses weren’t duly rapped after the GFC, and they seem to understand now that they can get away with murder.

 

What went wrong? People are supposed to look after their own interests in a democracy. Namely, ‘jobs!’ should have been the clarion call from people throughout Western countries after the GFC. Yet, vigilance and demands from the people haven’t been strong enough to counter the wealthiest vested interests on earth. Faith has been put in elites so managerialism can take place (in the USA even worse, somehow, despite the world of justification not to, putting in place fair rules for businesses is taboo, due to reverence of corporation [despite the ridiculously self-evident nature of many businesses not being ‘innovative’ or ‘self made’ or ‘created through hard work’, truths which go against the deeply held American mythos]) and folk economics has lead people to believe that debt is really the boogeyman we should earnestly focus our efforts on.

 

So, what is to be done? Go back to first principles. There are two things. One, dare to know! People need to think and not fall prey to stale managerialism, where governments can without pressure ignore the needs of the people, whilst the vultures of business interests devour the post-GFC carrion. In running a country is a two horse race between government and business, then inequality shall become supremely manifest. Two, stand upon the shoulders of giants. The best and most convincing ideas must be accepted. That is, the best ideas that people can freely be persuaded to accept must reign supreme. The fact is austerity and insanity about the perfection of markets has been absolutely demolished intellectually, that is, at the elite level (the stagnation and group think within the discipline of economics is a bit more about other issues, namely the inability of academic experts to transfer and lobby the best ideas to  become planted within policy circles, and slow time it takes for disciplines to change paradigms). There is no argument against an amount of government regulation that could ensure the GFC doesn’t happen again.

 

I believe the progress and renewal lie in democracy and truth-seeking. I even believe, perhaps naively, that the incredible lobbying strengths of Wall Street will crumble if the general will of the people demand jobs and safe well-belling, along with responsible and law-abiding business coupled with oversight from government to ensure businesses act accordingly. Also, I believe the rot taking place within elites around the Western world can be overturned without a Churchill or a Keynes appearing.

It won’t be easy to straighten so much that is crooked, but I believe once the old virtues are restored, along with the old systems and institutions,  the healing will begin.

The South China Sea

“We all know that the Philippines is China’s inherent territory and the Philippines belongs to Chinese sovereignty, this is an indisputable fact”

Whose words are these? Do they belong to a miscellaneous Chinese blogger? Guess again. These are the words of the anchor of arguably China’s largest television news channel, CCTV (1). This is a telling gaffe, and more so is the refusal of CCTV to apologise and publicly disown the notion and the sentiment. Those of the politburo and in high places best beware that if a media professional can utter such a statement, what are various Chinese internet communities and street demonstrators capable of? If Chinese street demonstrations and internet communities demanded a military strike on the Philippines would the powers that be in China reign them in (could they reign them in)?

(Chinese Journalist in May 2012 planting a flag on an island [technically a ‘shoal’] disputed with the Philippines known as the Scarborough Shoal)

(The South China Sea. China’s claim in red, and the UN Convention of the Law on the Sea in blue, that only grants the right to exploit all resources and doesn’t technically grant sovereignty)

‘In terms of the number and complexity of overlapping jurisdictional and sovereignty claims made to it, the South China Sea is one of the world’s most disputed areas’ is a standard (and good) description of the South China Sea (2). China’s increasing assertiveness around mid-2012 regarding the South China Sea must be understood as a chapter in the long history of disputes over the South China Sea. There are issues of ‘territorial integrity’ (sovereignty), natural resources (largely oil) and strategic/military concerns at play in the South China Sea. And despite claims from countries like China that they wish for the South China Sea to be a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation it is clear that interests between countries clash, and efforts will be required so that countries can settle their differences, so that the very real possibility for conflict is assuaged (3).

It must be noted that China is being assertive in 2012, a year of leadership transition. The oblique statements that China was prepared to respond to ‘any escalation’ and that the Philippines is making ‘serious mistakes’ with regards to the South China Sea could well be an effort to rally the people of China against a perceived foe, getting the Chinese Communist Party onside with the people during this pivotal year (4).

Oil and gas loom large vis-a-vis the importance of the South China Sea. Estimates go as high as 28 billion barrels of oil residing below the waters, with there being even greater reserves of gas (5). The Chinese state owned oil company CNOOC has began the first fully Chinese deep-water drilling operation   in the South China Sea in May 2012 (6). The chairman of the company declared ‘Large deep-water drilling rigs are our mobile national territory and strategic weapon for promoting the development of the country’s offshore oil industry’, highlighting the sense of national importance oil and this particular drilling project contains (7). With China having to import over half of the oil it requires to meet consumption, and with demand tipped to double in around 20 years, securing stables supplies of hydrocabons will likely continue to increase in importance as time wears on.

China’s strategic interests in the South China Sea overlap with China’s naval expansion and the three objectives of that expansion. The three objectives, as identified by Buszynski, include: first, the ability to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence alongside the ability to prevent the United States from sheltering Taiwan with navy deployments, second, protection of China’s trade routes and energy supply routes that extend through the Indian ocean and the Strait of Malacca (a waterway that has 80% of China’s imported oil pass through it), and lastly the ability to deploy a second-strike nuclear capability that would run through the Western pacific, so as to deter the United States (8). The South China Sea moreover is important strategically for China as control of the sea would provide ‘zonal defense’ where China would have a buffer zone to protect it’s interests. Unlike, say, the United States, India and Britain, which all have large waterways around them with uncontested access, China’s coast that lies down the country’s east has South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines that rather effectively limit China’s access to the seas. If China had strategic control over the South China Sea it would provide vastly more breathing space. China’s sphere of influence around the South China Sea largely resides in economic power, so it would gain another significant dimension of power that would buttress it’s economic strength if China could enlarge it’s strategic muscle around the South China Sea.

 

The question for China is: what are the costs of increasing influence around the South China Sea? China would be stepping on the toes of many countries if it moved to shake things up in the South China Sea, with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and probably India, effectively all of South East Asia, likely to become questioning of China’s rise if it sought to gain increased control over the South China Sea. It is quite possible that these countries would seek to balance China to some degree, whilst the temptation of  bandwagoning with the United States would increase. Further, the sentiments of many societies around the region could sour and China might have to exist with significant resentment region-wide, and not a mere few hundred protestors demonstrating against Chinese actions. Whether economic relations could continue to prosper with countries around the South China Sea would become seriously questionable. If economic relations did seriously deteriorate between China and South East Asia the very rise of China may become seriously threatened. It seems that the interests of parties relevant to the South China Sea are that the sea become, to quote the Chinese. a ‘sea of cooperation’ and a ‘sea of friendship’.

Persons of Interest

There are a vast number of individuals whose work, activities and often even the very selfhoods they have crafted and live day to day I have found interesting. Much more than interesting; inspiring, pathbreaking and often awing.

 

These are people I come back to, whether it be days, weeks, months or years later. When I forget about these bright lights my world becomes darker, and this effort here is about ensuring why world remains as well lit as possible.

 

Here are people who are certifiably awesome (to make it easier on me they still have to be stalking the Earth):

– Manuel de Landa

 

– Paul D. Miller

 

– Dave Eggers

 

– China Mieville

 

– Richard Kearney

 

– Hans Kung

 

– Carlos Fuentes

 

– Reza Aslan

 

– George Steiner

 

– Mark Mazower

 

– Timothy Synder

 

– Timothy Garton Ash

 

– Robert Fisk

 

I think I made the task a tad easy confining myself to the living. I also have realised there are many people who are partially interesting or recently deceased who I haven’t included. A number of translators I consider partially interesting and many others. I also realise I am ignoring many directors and visual artists and I’m sure there are other types of people my mind isn’t grasping at the moment.

 

The important thing is to continue to strive to acknowledge and recognise the other. Its the only human thing to do.

Surveying

What have I learned and what do I want to learn? I have studied Europe, IR and globalisation 101, security in contemporary times and some more globalisation along with governance. I have written on democracy and it’s effect upon relations between Taiwan and China, post-national understandings of Europe (with special ref. to Habermas), the international community’s responses to intra-state conflict in Liberia and Somalia and global poverty and it’s causes. The areas of the world I have largely studied are East Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East (although just briefly). I have not studied Australia, the Pacific, South-East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, North America and Latin America. If I had to list specific topics I have focused on I guess I’d say I’ve focused on democracy/democratisation, foreign policy, regionalism, cosmopolitanism/nationalism, international interventions (peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention), conflict (especially intra-state), trade, development aid and global poverty. Things I meant to get around to more are environmental issues (especially climate change), energy (oil, gas, coal etc.) and resources at large, everything from water to iron ore to uranium to rubber to minerals like Coltan and more (really intend to learn more about the top traded and so on). Also I’m interested in power shift and great power politics (who isn’t), but am maybe slightly power interested in the phenomenon of power diffusion, along with ideas about power in general (hence, also the work at large of Joseph Nye). I am also interested in conflict and would like to learn more about the new and historically unique features to conflicts around the world.

Now for some normative discussion. There are things I expect to see, and believe should, come to pass roughly in my lifetime or by the end of my life. I hope these changes happen in 30 or 40 years, but if they come to fruition before the end of the century then that would equally satisfy me. I expect famine, poverty, war and much (if not most) disease to become history. I expect global solidarity and some form of global identity. Some kind of global common understanding and global common feeling. I expect climate change to be pacified and the world’s environment to become respected and sustainable, along with the eradication of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. I also expect (I long time before I near my demise) statehood, dignity and peace for the Palestinians and democracy to reach China. Not only do I expect poverty to be eradicated but I expect development for all countries, so everyone will be able to have the standard of living I experienced growing up. Lastly, I expect religious, ethnic and national conflicts of identity to become history, which especially entails coexistence and even solidarity between Muslims and non-Muslims. The death of conflicts over identity (not identity/difference, but just the conflicts between them) I expect to be correlated with the demise of great power politics (this applies especially to tensions between China and ‘the West’). There is nothing new under the sun, and I believe all of humanity at heart want the free, equal, just and peaceful future I strive to articulate and work towards. Richard Rorty, a long time inspiration, has pretty well summed up the world I hope to see once the difficulties noted above have been overcome: “a global, cosmopolitan, democratic, egalitarian, classless, casteless society” and “my sense of the holy, insofar as I have one, is bound up with the hope that someday, any millennium [or sooner] now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law. In such a society, communication will be domination-free, class and caste will be unknown, hierarchy would be a matter of temporary pragmatic convenience, and power would be entirely at the disposal of the free agreement of a literature and well-education electorate” (my sense of the holy is marginally larger though).

The roads I pick to travel are the roads will I believe will reach this destination. Sometimes these roads are labelled ‘liberalism’, ‘social democracy’, ‘centre-left’ and possibly ‘Third Way’. I believe in global governance (especially a more reformed and muscular version) and cosmopolitanism. I believe in some broad form of global ethics, perhaps something like what Hans Kung articulates. I believe politics will live on and there will always be a bustling marketplace of ideas, but I think there will be a broad group of politics engaged globally which excludes all exclusivist forms of politics, like fascism, excessive nationalism and hateful and/or destructive forms of politics like communism, military juntas, strongman rule and so on.  I believe politics around the globe for this century will be roughly between the centre-left and the centre-right, and that will be this century’s equivalent to the last century’s left right politics (maybe in the future, perhaps when we are post-scarcity, something similar to what some call socialism will appropriately come to pass). Ian Morris has articulated this well, I believe this century will be high stakes, and we will probably either destroy ourselves or achieve utopia. I think I can just make out of the outlines of utopia and I hope given the life I lead uniquely placed at such a time in history I will witness the achievement of utopia and the avoidance of destruction.

 

Topics I could focus on:

– China in Africa

– Conflict in Africa (or international responses to)

– Development in Africa

– Hegemonic decline and the fall of empires

– Power diffusion

– Social movements and democracy

– The responsibility to protect / new ideas about sovereignty

– China’s development/modernisation/urbanisation

– Population growth and sustainability

– Trade and development

– Islam and democracy, the youth in the Middle East and democracy

– Human rights

– The UN and global governance

– Dialogue between difference

 

 

Moral Progress

Richard Rorty:

For Mill, James, Dewey, Habermas, and the other philosophers of social democracy, the answer to the question “are some human desires bad?” is: No, but some desires do get in the way of our project of maximizing the overall satisfaction of desire. For example, my desire that my children should have more to eat than my neighbour’s children is not intrinsically evil. But this desire should not be fulfilled. There is no such thing as intrinsically evil desire. There are only desires that must be subordinated to other desires in the interests of fairness. For those who adopt the utiliatarian ideal of maximizing happiness, moral progress consists in enlarging the range of those whose desires are taken into account. It is a matter of what the contemporary American [sic] philosopher Peter Singer called “enlarging the circle of the ‘we’,” enlarging the number of people whom we think of as “one of us”. The most salient example of this enlargement is the change that took place when the rich began to think of the poor as fellow citizens rather than as people whose station in life has been ordained by God. The rich had to stop thinking that the least advantaged children were somehow meant to lead less happy lives than those of their own children. Only then could they start thinking about wealth and poverty as mutable social institutions rather than as parts of an immutable order. Another obvious example of enlarging the circle of the “we” is the recent partial but encouraging success of feminism. The males have recently been more willing to put themselves in the shows of the females. Still another example is the greater willingness of heterosexuals to put themselves in the shoes of homosexuals, to imagine what it must be like to be told that the love they feel for another person is a disgusting perversion.

The ever quotable Rorty. The issue here though is the figure in the middle, Peter Singer. Morality or ethics needs a strong narrative, and there is one, a liberal, utilitarian and rules based ethics, whose figures and fundamental precepts aren’t widely understood. The main people who help construct this narrative are Peter Singer, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, Richard Rorty, Jurgen Habermas and John Rawls. More traditionally there is Isaiah Berlin and the pillars of John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. These are people who ‘define the circle’ and the liberal values which comprise it. There are others of comparably strong importance like Simone de Beauvoir and Edward Said who do what they can to extend the circle, an intrinsically political act which, sadly, seems to require a lot of activism and not simply a lot of thought and reasoning.

The Expending Circle is Peter Singer’s main book arguing that moral progress has occurred and shall continue to occur. He makes this argument on three points, that humans have an affection for kin or people similar to them, that people appreciate mutually advantageous altruism and that people are reasonable (think those points are sufficiently precise, I’m getting a bit tired though…). I think education and technology are two valuable institutions to point out. Language as well. But these are really the vehicles for moral progress, and the drivers to seem to me to be the three points Singer articulates.

 

So, if we assume those statements are valid, the three points making human beings bound to progress morally, then how? And, importantly, how quickly (quickly enough, that’s a pretty darn important question)? Singer believes reasonable or rational discourses will slowly edge outwards and steadily become more inclusive. He thinks that while if you were to map it moral progress would look like a stock market it is nonetheless certainly happening. As he points out, Greek cities used to be in conflict with one another and effectively disputed being the same species as one another. Now all the Greeks are in Greece and Greece itself is apart of the European Union (at least, for now…).

The endgame for this is that we will all become cosmopolitans, or we will all respect everyone of each nationality with no belief that our people should dominate others. But will people stop seeking domination? The Chinese over the Taiwanese? The Turks over the Kurds? Israelis over the Palestinians? Europeans over the Romani? Every society over their immigrant minorities? I hope Singer is right, but I’m unsure. Also there is the question of time. What if a World War breaks out, aren’t we doomed? It is conceivable our moral couldn’t progress quickly enough. When you consider moral progress occurs in history by fallible human beings, molded by ultimately contingent historical forces there is no necessary reason, as far as I can see, that our moral progress necessarily outpaces disaster.

 

I think Singer is right, we’ve got the ingredients for moral progress on us all the time, and we have made extraordinary gains. Furthermore it doesn’t seem clear that there is anything certainly and indubitably preventing us from marching onwards with moral progress. Now I think its up to us to do the legwork and ensure ‘the circle of the ‘we” keeps expanding.

 

 

What’s in the Pacific?

Robert D Kaplan (who I always get mixed up with Robert Kagan) thinks the South China Sea and it’s region at large will be ‘the 21st century’s defining battleground’ and ‘the world’s new center of naval activity’. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton similarly believes ‘the future of politics will be decided in Asia’ and:

One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise — in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Asia-Pacific has become a key driver of global politics. Stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of the Americas, the region spans two oceans — the Pacific and the Indian — that are increasingly linked by shipping and strategy. It boasts almost half the world’s population. It includes many of the key engines of the global economy, as well as the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. It is home to several of our key allies and important emerging powers like China, India, and Indonesia.

Ok, so the Pacific is important, what’s the problem? The problem is China and America. Kaplan hauntingly compares Europe’s war-torn landmass over the 20th century with the future of the waters of the Asia-Pacific in the 21st century. Huge White says ‘how likely is a US-China clash? Hard to say, of course, but I would give an intuitive estimate of between 5 percent and 10 percent over the next decade. If that seems too gloomy, bear in mind that preparing for a war with one another is now clearly the primary strategic priority for both countries’. Further:

 For it isn’t just China that is dramatically building its military; Southeast Asian countries are as well. Their defense budgets have increased by about a third in the past decade, even as European defense budgets have declined. Arms imports to Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia have gone up 84 percent, 146 percent, and 722 percent, respectively, since 2000. The spending is on naval and air platforms: surface warships, submarines with advanced missile systems, and long-range fighter jets. Vietnam recently spent $2 billion on six state-of-the-art Kilo-class Russian submarines and $1 billion on Russian fighter jets. Malaysia just opened a submarine base on Borneo. While the United States has been distracted by land wars in the greater Middle East, military power has been quietly shifting from Europe to Asia.

There is literal fuel for conflict with:

the oil transported through the Strait of Malacca from the Indian Ocean, en route to East Asia through the South China Sea, is more than six times the amount that passes through the Suez Canal and 17 times the amount that transits the Panama Canal. Roughly two-thirds of South Korea’s energy supplies, nearly 60 percent of Japan’s and Taiwan’s energy supplies, and about 80 percent of China’s crude-oil imports come through the South China Sea. What’s more, the South China Sea has proven oil reserves of 7 billion barrels and an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, a potentially huge bounty.

Enough of the block quotes (though I believe they are all money quotes, and there is tonnes of arising content important to this topic). What I see (and what Kaplan alludes to, though doesn’t expound fully) is China forming it’s own Monroe Doctrine, attempting to kick competitors out of ‘it’s’ place. The Monroe Doctrine, by the way, wasn’t properly hemispheric (when the US tried to get Europe out of the Western Hemisphere in the 19th century), and Beijing’s aspirations would be even more circumspect relative to the Eastern Hemisphere. But it should be noted that China is wooing much of Africa through trade (with ‘no political strings’, i.e. no questions about governance or human rights) and has some sturdy ties with Pakistan (strategically very well located for China). I believe China wants to follow the American model of superpower emergence of regional dominance and getting states in the region to go along, whilst getting the rest of the world to not put up a fight about it having it’s own way. The precise regional area China wants to dominate, to have supremacy over is undefined and uncertain, but China clearly wants a large sphere of influence, significantly larger than it has now. The problem with this is it pisses off just about everyone. In the epicentre of the South China Sea it pisses off the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Vietnam (all who will pretty immediately back the United States in a scuffle). This is exacerbated by the East China Sea, where South Korea, Japan and Taiwan effectively lock China out of the Pacific Ocean strategically.

So, the matters are China is trying to gain more regional influence and supremacy by shoving it’s way into the South China Sea, which hopefully means Taiwan is on the back-burner and no conflict is foreseeable, although it could mean that once China knows it can assert itself  it will go after Taiwan. Taiwan, it is important to underline, is the small, plucky neighbour which serves as a good bulwark against China, but because of it’s size could be put under extreme duress if China got serious. Taiwan, also, at least seen 1949 has been the target of many of a Chinese Communist’s hatred. While probably first being fueled by concerns to conquer the nationalists who were chased out of China to Taiwan there is also clearly a sense of righting the wrongs done by colonial expansion with China growing large and asserting itself (like it would through ‘reunification’ with Taiwan), exorcising the humiliating colonial carve up of the 19th and early twentieth centuries is clearly important as well. Undoubtedly many of the older and historical heads in the communist party see challenging the US as part of some single ongoing fight against ‘Western imperialists’.

America’s position is steadfast. America is waking up after it’s decade long stupor and the thoughts and policies of the country seem to be reorienting it towards the Asia-Pacific ‘as we move forward to set the stage for engagement in the Asia-Pacific over the next 60 years, we are mindful of the bipartisan legacy that has shaped our engagement for the past 60’ ‘I hear everywhere I go that the world still looks to the United States for leadership. Our military is by far the strongest, and our economy is by far the largest in the world. Our workers are the most productive. Our universities are renowned the world over. So there should be no doubt that America has the capacity to secure and sustain our global leadership in this century as we did in the last’. The problem is as clear as two forces heading directly for a head-on collision. Something’s got to give in this game of chicken. Either the US stops, as Kaplan puts it, with ‘its busybody morality’ and excessively caring about ‘the internal nature of the Chinese regime’ and lets China sets the rules and norms for the regional order (because in Kaplan’s quintessential realist argument ‘the balance of power itself, even more than the democratic values of the West, is often the best safeguard of freedom’) or China becomes a ‘responsible global stakeholder’ and falls into line with the international order of the Liberal Leviathan, the United States.

The effect of giving up values (which are interest as well) is, okay, say you don’t care about the politics of the Chinese regime, but what about the regime in Hong Kong? In Taiwan? In Vietnam? In Thailand? In Indonesia? In Pakistan? In Angola? In South Africa (‘The developing world was told that if it did not Westernize and change its political systems to mirror those of the West, they could forget about achieving economic growth and development. Now we are asking what we could learn from other political systems and cultures. Is the political discipline in China a recipe for economic success, for example?’ Words not from avowed communist, but from South African President Jacob Zuma in 2010. A visa for the Dalai Lama was refused from South Africa in late 2010 as well, which caused Desmond Tutu to say ‘our government is worse than the apartheid government because at least you would expect it with the apartheid government’ and ‘our government we expect to be sensitive to the sentiments of our constitution’ here)? My money is on the need for preserving the liberal international order, and I think the stability obsessives overlook that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. But China would clearly have to repent and not demand South Africa, not demand Angola, Not demand Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam and I hope Taiwan act in specific ways. Trade yes, but truly with ‘no political strings’. The question is whether China is willing to play by the international rules or whether it harbors expectations to set the rules itself, especially non-interference (especially no criticism of human rights and governance, even most probably allowing for genocide) and state sovereignty (having countries emulate it, either due to internal or external motivation, either through sticks or carrots, clearly seems to be in China’s interest and possible intent).

I think the liberal order must be maintained by those who have established and maintained it, and history would veer in a dangerous direction if it were shaken up. The global order that’s been established in the past, roughly, few centuries must be maintained. Instead of the world trying to accommodate to China, China must accommodate and go along with the rest of the world.

The Market to the Rescue?

I have recently began pondering how effectual the market could be in developing countries at spurring growth and alleviating poverty. My belief is the market, especially through international trade, is f**king up the livelihoods of many people needlessly in the developing world (whilst actually being a simultaneous drag on the well-being of those in the developed world).

What is interesting also is what is not happening with the market in relation to the developing world. Something like 1 to 3 percent of global Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) goes into Sub-Saharan Africa. If capitalism and traditional or conventional economics held weight, then there should be money pouring in to the country to take advantage of the low labour costs, the lack of competition and the huge population of consumers (around 900 million) who whilst, admittedly, have limited income that doesn’t mean at all there isn’t potential for growth. Hasn’t the world learned anything from South Korea, Thailand, India, Brazil, South Africa (!) and China? Every geographical region in the world has had countries which have yielded huge economic growth (hence profits) over the past one to two decades. Why isn’t money pouring into Africa?

Some say it is because of instability. Yet that isn’t really true for at least half the countries in recent years, and off the top of my head I’d guess a quarter of SSA countries, at least a sturdy dozen, have had meaningful stability for around a decade. Another reason which Paul Collier offers is a lack of information. I think, as is often the case, Collier is on the money. The markets are viewed as too small and information gathering is viewed as too difficult. I think that is just complacent ignorance and opportunity missing. Three decades ago in 1980 in China around 80% of the population lived on a dollar a day. FDI really came several years later, around 1987 and was interrupted to a degree with Tiananmen massacre, but then gathered paced as the 1990s rolled on and has been rocketing since the new millennium. The moral of the story is the rags to riches transformation. Once not only seen as poor but actually being poor, China then transformed into an investment goldmine, a land of potentially endless growth and profits. Moreover, the early bird gets the worm. Those who came first, once they broke into markets and became established, reaped the most benefits. So, whence foreign entrepreneurialism in Africa?

I think a big part of the story is that the markets and the entrepreneurial folk have become complacent and lacking in incentives in recent times. This is due in last part to the changes (mainly deregulation) of the financial industry around the 1980s and is exemplified by the rates of increases in income for the top 1% in developed countries (not at all correlated to economic growth or even the respective performance of firms). Why bother with old school efforts of trying to find business opportunities and use entrepreneurial cunning to make money when electronic computerised trading can earn steady, comfortable profits? Why invest in a country which had nothing said or taught about it in business school (which probably true for the whole region), when you can make easy, comfortable profits on, say, American housing, where the mortgages are sold between one financial goliath after another pleasing all with comfortable profits?

It needn’t be like this. Opportunities needn’t be missed. A theoretical example I have is a franchise of bakeries in small to medium African cities, which have sufficiently reliable electricity and water. Say you invest in getting modern, industrial efficient baking  machinery, which is capital that would give, of course, an unrivaled ability for production and productivity. Land would also be relatively cheap, because overall growth is limited so land isn’t in high demand, and labour would also be cheap. Construction of the building of the bakery, I believe, along with the importing (almost definitely required) of the capital into the country would be the most expensive part of the operation. That is, the fixed costs would be significant. The variable costs, labour, raw materials, utilities like electricity (I think they are variable, because you could lessen retail hours and reduce them) would be interesting, but I believe they would be rather cheap and allowing for profit. Training the labour would be an interesting step, but my belief is that if the capital, that is the machinery, for baking is technologically advanced (read smart, intuitive, simple) enough then training shouldn’t be a problem (especially when the labour is motivated by some nice incomes). Lastly there is the demand angle, which because of the inelastic quality of the good would insure high demand and sales. The main pressure on prices would be whether there is competition with supply (mainly existent from supermarkets, who seem to have in-store bakeries, for instance as seen in South Africa), but this would be simply remedied by setting up in a city without much (maybe any) competition. The pressure on prices from demand would be the small disposable incomes of the people, but I don’t think that is a problem because the goods being sold (bread) are intrinsically cheap and furthermore the market is intrinsically large (everyone needs to eat) so good prices and good sales should be achievable. Lastly there is the social side of this operation to consider. Employment wise local construction benefits would exist for constructing the building, agricultural benefits will stem from production of inputs like wheat, grain and yeast and consumption benefits will appear for people who want the kind of healthy and tasty bread which modern technology can produce (because it would involve local ingredients, like wheats and grains, the bread presumably would be palatable and desired). Economic growth would be spurred. I assume given these social benefits the business would decrease poverty to some degree. The only concern would be disenfranchising local bakers (if there are any), which could perhaps be remedied by simply employing them.

 

I believe the world is full of opportunities. As the incredible growth of emerging economies (a term clearly coined to indicate to the business folk that these are the actually developing ‘developing economies’) shows, there are opportunities all over, and a long way to go before they are all discovered and utilised fully. Lastly I sincerely believe there are many gains to be had for all from much that the market does. I also acknowledge that the market is ridden with failures and therefore probably is structured to undermine a lot of well being. But since the market isn’t going anywhere anytime soon it seems vital to me to accentuate it’s strengths and limit and compensate for its weaknesses, and I think we’ll head in the right direction.

Do Rock the Boat

It is rather remarkable when people who are objectively intelligent, such as professors of politics, suppose that chaos, often in the sense of complete societal overthrow, could result from seemingly benign events, like non-violent street protests or demonstrations. The few dozen non-violent protest movements since 1989 have near universally only overthrown the leadership and maybe the political system which kept the leaders in place (which needed overthrowing non-violently to install a non-violent new system, democracy, replacing a violent old one) and have not resulted in some kind of Mad Max post-apocalyptic transformation. Everyone, of course, has their thresholds over what they judge to be ‘destabilising’ in the sense of needlessly chaotic activity. But the fact is reality is full of changes, and even big changes really aren’t ‘the sky is falling’ chaotic,which is the implication a lot of the time (especially since 1989, it looks like no sky shall come down, at least, not due to the kind of upheavals that have presented themselves thus far).

Why is chaos pronounced by people? It is because people like to believe in the illusion of continuity, they like to believe that things are the same (probably the same impulse that longs for immortality and the avoidance of death). Yet this impulse for keeping things the same can ignore necessary change, even necessary destruction. People don’t like letting go, and social movements are the communal act of letting go and moving on.

Huge amounts of people are in poverty globally, around a billion under a dollar and roughly 2.7 billion live on less then two dollars a day, whilst affluent countries have thousands and thousands who are homeless, unemployed, sick, victims of violence and large swathes who have tiny incomes compared to others. Changes need to happen. There won’t (there can’t) be certainty regarding what will follow some of the big changes trying to redress the world (like with revolutions, people seem to think nowadays it should be understood rather precisely what will happen after a revolution! That is beyond broad understandings like democracy, civil war, authoritarianism etc., which are still themselves not estimated with large certainty. A revolution has always been something which has opened up the future, not something which has immediately and clearly locked it into one track). Change must be accepted to fight the ills of the world and if you stand without fear it is rather obvious which movements are trying to better the world and which are trying to destroy it and sow chaos. Change will happen regardless, and you are fooling yourself if you are trying to believe things have stayed the same.

 

This world-order did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everliving fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.

– Heraclitus

Music and Silence, Liberal Democracy and Suffering

To be religious is to hear music in the silence. That is, to experience/find the supernatural in the natural. This is also why Max Weber’s phrase for the non-religious, ‘the religiously unmusical’ is so apt.

Grace I also find an interesting notion. My interpretation of grace is being possessed/passionate, being full of meaning, having the Divine ‘lift’ you (in quite a literal sense, like ‘a spring in their step’).

 

More marginalia. I was reading Occidentalism, which is a rather deep well (maybe I just haven’t read enough books about ideas for a while), and was struck by their discussion on the West’s (effectively, to my judgement, liberal democracy) relation to suffering. The particular paragraph:

In the Slavophiles’ worldview, exemplified by Dostoyevsky, we should not be trying to solve problems through the human intellect; we should seek salvation instead. We cannot grasp the tragic sense of life through reason, but only through the wisdom of the heart. As Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”. The reasons of the heart are informed by one’s own suffering, and by seeing others suffer. Suffering as the great educator is denied by the Western mind, which always pursues happiness. Hedonism and too much reliance on the intellect bar the West from what it needs most, a way to salvation.

First a quick definition of my understanding of the sense of the tragic: that we are mortal and that death is inevitable, also that suffering is an integral part of the human condition. There is much meat on the bones here. There is the interesting idea of salvation, which I take to be learning to live with the sense of the tragic (which by the judgements of many humans across human history can’t simply be done with reason or the intellect). The sense of the tragic jars the Western mind because the Western mind believes by and large everything thing has a use and is necessary in some way, and that human beings live in a world where nearly all things lay open to human being to be used (usefulness, or at least control or at the very least understand). Therefore, it is logical that suffering (which always suggests/signifies death) is an unwelcome stranger.

How does the West react to suffering (especially of others)? Do we always pursue self-interest and happiness in some sense, and does that make us resistant to experiencing/fathoming suffering? By extension, how do we respond to tragedies, the causes of suffering? I do wonder if there is some intrinsic part of the West which makes empathy, hospitality and responsibility difficult for Westerners. Do we then need some big undeniable occurrence of suffering to wake us from our slumber and stir us to action? There is the idea that only with crises do people respond, not when suffering (or real potential for it) becomes apparent. This complacency, this dreariness of the spirit I find a very distressing idea. Like some sort of lazy and crude evolutionary response on display, where only when disaster seems so large do people respond, therefore seemingly with the motivation of saving their own arses and humankind at large. Need we be more mindful of the tragic?

While I fervently reject demands to do away with ‘Western ideas and the Western way of living’ completely I do  ponder over much of it. There is no certainty at all that much of ‘the West’ can’t be tweaked and improved. I very much believe this century will be ‘a century of the middle’ of the political spectrum, where we will learn how large and variable the options of the centre can be (with centre-left and centre-right becoming the new left and right). I think there is much possibility left to make the liberal democracy, which is pretty much apparent in all Western societies, into social democracy, moving things to ‘the centre-left’, and I think in general this is a functional tweaking and bettering. Reform, not revolution, is all thats required.

 

P.S. Some organisations of humanitarianism which inspire belief in me that suffering is not ignored are the ICRC (and the larger federation, the IFRC), Oxfam International, FINCA, CARE, Medecins Sans Frontier and the UN and its numerous departments (ones I’ve particularly noticed are UNICEF, FAO, WFP, UNHCR and the DHA).