Helping Haiti the Right Way

(Published @ RealClearWorld. January 31, 2010)

Martha Mendoza of AP writes:

Only 1 cent of each dollar the U.S. is spending on earthquake relief in Haiti is going in the form of cash to the Haitian government...Less than two weeks after President Obama announced an initial $100 million for Haiti earthquake relief, U.S. government spending on the disaster has tripled to $317 million at latest count. That's just over $1 each from everyone in the United States. Relief experts say it would be a mistake to send too much direct cash to the Haitian government, which is in disarray and has a history of failure and corruption.

I’m not sure how smart it is to completely subvert whatever remains of the Haitian state. Even in the cases of failed states like Haiti, landmark work by Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart proves rather definitively that the most effective, long-term foreign assistance policies are directed through a state apparatus.

Also, whatever “experts” are being referenced here, I doubt that their argument was that U.S. AID should subsume the entire role of aid distributor and implementer. Preeminent development economists Paul Collier and Jeffrey Sachs and former economic adviser to Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Louis Warnholz each argue that aid should be distributed through a transparent international bank.

Sachs provides the most specific plan:

I want the money to come from the US, but not to go through the US government. What I'd like is for US and other donor money to be put into a multi-donor trust fund (MDTF). My specific recommendation is that the MDTF should be located at the Inter-American Development bank. There are a lot of reasons for that. In essence the IADB is a development-finance institution that works well, has a long-term commitment to Haiti, has a lot of expertise, and is competent in handling money and organising projects with the proper monitoring, auditing and evaluation. And so I think that when you scan the institutional environment, the IADB seems the best place to do this. I think that relatively little of the aid should go through the bilateral development agencies of any of the major donor countries.

Either way, the U.S. maintaining a monopoly on nation-building initiatives in Haiti seems the far less sensible and sustainable policy choice.

(AP Photo)

Note to the White House: It's the Economy Stxpxd!

(Alternative draft published @ TheWashingtonNote. January 26, 2010)

Whatever Obama says about global affairs--on virtually any issue--is not going to matter unless he starts leading a long-term recovery of the portfolio at the source of America's power: the economy.

The economy. The economy. The economy.

2009 was a year when al-Qaeda again dominated the attention of the executive office and warped what should have been a different order among America's priorities. The U.S. has played defense in preventing the worst of the financial crisis and offense against al-Qaeda in South Asia. Overall, American foreign policy victories in 2009 were muddled, non-tangible, and perhaps even non-existent.

Pursuing diplomacy abroad, creating a non-binding compact on climate-change, replacing the G-8 with the G-20, demanding that Israel must stop building settlements, and orating to the Muslim world a “new course” on U.S.-Middle East relations changed what TWN’s publisher Steve Clemons has called the “optics of power,” but these initiatives did not and cannot independently change real power.

2010 needs to be about real power: economic power.

The rise of Asia, the supposed decline of America, and all of the corresponding security concerns are first and foremost economic in nature. American military power and soft power are based on economic power, and economic power needs to be what America harnesses over the coming years to remain competitive and active in key areas of global leadership.

And let’s not forget the existential purpose of the American way of strategy abroad. In the words of Michael Lind:

The purpose of the American way of strategy has always been to defend the American way of life…Foreign policy thinkers who dismiss the idea of ‘the American way of life’ and focus on ‘vital interests’ as the basis of U.S. foreign policy are guilty of a profound philosophical and political error. For there is no interest more vital in American foreign policy and no ideal more important than the preservation of the American way of life.

Thus, to preserve America’s global posture and the strategic relevance of American foreign policy, the Obama administration must remember foremost that their administration must protect the American way of life before achieving anything else.

And the source of the American way of life and American economic power is America’s manufacturing prowess, schools, modern infrastructure, entrepreneurship, technological superiority, protection of property rights, and, most importantly, culture. As those sources of American power are continually neglected, America’s global posture will steadily erode.

Remaining chummy with Prime Minister Wen Jiaobao, President Dmitri Medvedev, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is necessary to ensure America retains a role in managing the “rise of Asia,” but it is not sufficient to protect American strategic interests. Photo-ops unaccompanied by actual policy gains can go only so far (see: nowhere).

If Obama isn’t careful, he’ll become a one-term, irrelevant president. A flash in the pan of global history and the real overseer of America’s decline. No one wants that, not least the democracy that elected him.

As the Obama administration sets the executive office agenda for 2010, they’d do well to remember that Obama’s most critical speech was held in neither Oslo or at West Point. It was at the Brookings Institution, where he outlined a plan to get America back on track economically.

That achievement of the goals in that latter speech should be the paramount objective for the Obama administration in 2010.

Afghanistan's Dream Shamocracy

(Published @ The Diplomatic Courier. November 15, 2009)

Does anyone actually believe democracy exists in Afghanistan? If democracy is defined purely in terms of the existence of elections – that is, people vote – then fine. People in Afghanistan do vote. In the most recent presidential elections, incumbent Hamid Karzai faced former Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and defeated him only after less than half of the Afghan population voted, allegations of ballot fraud were ignored, and Abdullah finally withdrew from the race, arguing that a runoff election between himself and Karzai would inevitably be wrought with the same high-levels of fraud that plagued the initial contest. Fraud plus low-levels of participation plus an electoral choice between Karzai and only Karzai equals an illegitimate electoral process, establishing the core component of “shamocracy,” which is non-democracy or ineffective democracy with a “good” democracy sticker pinned on its face by the international community.

The difference between “shamocracy” in Afghanistan and non-democracy in China, for example, is that neither China nor the international community tries to pretend that China is a democracy. Everyone knows it’s not, and the world operates as such. In some countries, such as North Korea, democracy is claimed by the regime while the international community rejects that claim. In Afghanistan, the entire country recognizes the government is a puppet for U.S. and other international interests, yet the rest of the world tries to convince Afghans otherwise. So, democracy in Afghanistan isn’t quite non-democracy in China or North Korea’s totalitarian version of democracy; it’s a unique Humpty Dumpty “shamocracy” based on international collaboration, an omelet made from broken rotten eggs.

In a country where the vast majority of the population is illiterate, poor, and lacks access to quality education, the U.S. and NATO is attempting to put on a charade of democracy. But this is stupid. Afghanistan is electing a republic not a democracy, and the only democratic element in a republic is the notion of accountability, which is absent in a society where the vast majority of the population is, again, illiterate, poor, and lacks access to quality education.

Besides, in reality, no one in Afghanistan voted for the U.S. and NATO invasion. Some Afghans voted for President Hamid Karzai, but few were part of the process that brought him to recognition and power. Since then, Karzai’s government has been mired in corruption charges, and his brother Ahmed Wali Karzai remains attached to drug cartels. Public confidence in the regime is low, and according to Transparency International, Afghanistan is the fourth most corrupt country in the world out of 180 countries surveyed (only Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar, and Somalia are more corrupt). And, after the Afghan elections, U.S. Special Representative Richard Holbrooke and potential Chief Executive Officer of Afghanistan (a new, also unelected position) Zalmay Khalizad will likely remain more powerful than the Afghan President anyway.

So what’s the point of this shamocracy? Western interests are sacrificing good governance for hope of democracy, but this is a bad trade-off, especially since Afghans do not actually believe that Karzai represents their interests. So the solution is basic: if the West insists on a shamocracy in Afghanistan, then at least provide the best shamocracy that money and military support can buy. That means, don’t support Karzai, a non-leader that has already proven his ineffectiveness. Instead, support Ashraf Ghani, a leader with domestic and international experience and a proven track record of competency.

Mr. Ghani would be Afghanistan’s Jawaharlal Nehru, a leader focused on integrating local society with modernization and economic integration, the only proven formula for the creation of an economically prosperous state in an area where national identities remained secondary to tribal or local ones. Named the best finance minister in Asia by Emerging Markets in 2003 for his work in Afghanistan and second only to Ban Ki-moon for position of Secretary General of the United Nations in a vote conducted in 2006, there probably is no one more qualified or competent in the world to lead Afghanistan.

A few months ago, I had a conversation with Mr. Ghani about winning the war on drugs in Afghanistan, and his response was illuminating both in its content and context. He argued that the best solution was to employ more women and more people in households in general, thus increasing the overall amount of income in the house above the point at which participation in the drug trade is attractive (this is in addition to interdiction and alternative development initiatives – the proposal currently accepted by the Obama administration).

Is there a better response more consistent with South Asia's, the U.S and NATO's, or even the world’s interests than the above to the drug problem? Is there any response more consistent with the creation of a non-extremist, free-market, and participatory democracy than that? There is no better option than Mr. Ghani, and there is no shame in recognizing that.

Democracy is not a good in and of itself all of the time. China’s rapid development since 1978 and Singapore’s over the past several decades has been at the expense of democracy, and Adolf Hitler in Germany was elected by a democracy. The process of “democratizing” Iraq led to a civil war and imposing democracy on the Gaza Strip led to the election of Hamas. The veneer of democracy in North Korea and Uzbekistan give Kim Jong Il and Islam Karimov respectively mechanisms through which they can lie to their own constituencies about the legitimacy of their leadership.

This doesn’t mean democracy is always bad either. Afghans deserve democracy just like any human being around the world deserves a say in the direction of their own lives. But democracy isn’t easy; it takes social preparation and the belief in the competency and legitimacy of the state. Before democracy can exist in Afghanistan, Afghans need to believe in the virtue of having an Afghanistan. Before building a democratic nation, a national identity must first exist. To entrench a national identity, the state must justify its own existence through the provision of public services: the notion of “Afghanistan” must make the people’s lives better, not worse. This requires a technocrat, not a corrupt bureaucrat. Thus, it requires Mr. Ghani and not Mr. Karzai.

R2-D2 to Lead the Global Recovery?

(Published @ RealClearWorld. January 29, 2010)

Former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and current Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University Kenneth Rogoff made a fascinating declaration:

As the global economy limps out of the last decade and enters a new one in 2010, what will be the next big driver of global growth? Here’s betting that the “teens” is a decade in which artificial intelligence hits escape velocity, and starts to have an economic impact on par with the emergence of India and China….


In 50 years, computers might be doing everything from driving taxis to performing routine surgery. Sooner than that, artificial intelligence will transform higher learning, potentially making a world-class university education broadly affordable even in poor developing countries. And, of course, there are more mundane but crucial uses of artificial intelligence everywhere, from managing the electronics and lighting in our homes to populating “smart grids” for water and electricity, helping monitor these and other systems to reduce waste.


In short, I do not share the view of many that, after the Internet and the personal computer, it will be a long wait until the next paradigm-shifting innovation. Artificial intelligence will provide the boost that keeps the teens rolling. So, despite a rough start from the financial crisis (which will still slow global growth this year and next), there is no reason why the new decade has to be an economic flop.

For an image of what a future controlled by computers and robots might look like, look no further than Japan, which employs over a quarter of a million robot workers, envisions using robots to counter future economic and demographic challenges, and creates robot fashion-models.

The Savior Strategy

(Published @ RealClearWorld. October 2, 2009)

The crisis in Indonesia following a recent earthquake presents a critical opportunity for the international community to win "hearts and minds." Of course, these "hearts and minds" are probably not viewed as immediately strategically important by various heads of state, because there is no current level of actively aggressive military engagement in the region; however, smart public diplomacy is based on confidence-building initiatives that take place during peace time as well as war time.


Public diplomacy built on the ethos of humanitarianism has already been proven as an effective means to gain global trust. For example, immigration trends toward the United States have for decades reflected a belief by people worldwide that the U.S. was the "promised land." Moreover, effective public diplomacy comes with many other attractive "soft power" benefits.


And the public diplomacy benefits to be reaped from a successful relief effort in Indonesia are likely quite large. After a tsunami struck Indonesia's coast in 2005, a Pew Research Center report discovered a 25-point jump in public support for the United States following U.S.-led relief efforts.


This situation -- along with others similar -- readily present the opportunity to save lives and win hearts and minds in the process. This is the Savior Strategy, a global security and public diplomacy strategy for a world increasingly wracked by natural disasters. Perhaps most importantly though, for these public diplomacy gains to be sustainable, they must be viewed as strategically ancillary to the genuine primary goal of providing effective relief to the victims of natural disasters.


(AP Photos)

In Support of a Global Transaction Tax

(Published @ RealClearWorld. October 1, 2009)

Last week, the G-20 formally agreed to become the new G-7, which theoretically will help put a little more "oomph" into policies designed to tackle the twin challenges of maintaining global economic growth while restructuring economies worldwide to fit low-carbon or even carbon-free economic growth models.


Piggybacking on the recent surge in international coordination, Germany's Minister of Finance Peer Steinbrück wrote recently on the case for a global financial-transaction tax:

A global financial-transaction tax (FTT), applied uniformly across the G-20 countries and covering all financial transactions at a very low rate, is the obvious instrument of choice to ensure that all financial-market participants contribute equally. Foreign Minister Steinmeier and I are suggesting that the G-20 take concrete steps toward implementing an FTT of 0.05% on all trades of financial products within their jurisdictions, regardless of whether these trades occur on an exchange. National governments could establish a personal allowance to exempt retail investors.


Based on calculations by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research, which studied the possible effects of general FTTs on behalf of the Austrian government, a global FTT of 0.05% could yield up to $690 billion per year, or about 1.4% of world GDP. Such a tax would not unduly burden financial-market participants, yet it would raise a significant amount of money to finance the costs of this crisis.

This makes a lot of sense. A small tax like this would help build a "rainy day fund" in preparation for whenever the global economy next takes a slight downturn, a policy that has proven highly successful in countries like Chile and Norway. The slight tax might also nudge investors toward buying and holding, which might also help deter against a major run on the dollar and other currencies. Maybe such a tax could also help the U.S. avoid eventual economic meltdown as the rising costs of social welfare programs cause public debt to explode in the near future.


Steinbrück's suggestion is a good one, and the G-20 would do well to consider it.


(AP Photos)

Do We Need Al-Qaeda?

(Published @ RealClearWorld. November 13, 2009)

Gustavo de Las Casas argues that the world is better off with an Al-Qaeda organization that is not dead, but instead just constantly held on life support. He writes:

It is tempting to draw up an organizational chart of al Qaeda and think that if the important nodes can be identified and destroyed, the rest of the network will follow. But if al Qaeda is shut down and its middle management decimated, eager fanatics around the globe would no longer gravitate toward a centralized base. Their alternative? To form their own no-name networks and band up with any other al Qaeda survivors. Killing off al Qaeda would do little to reduce Islamist terrorism. It would only make the world of terrorism more chaotic....we should take full advantage of the simple fact that the net which unites the worst Islamist terrorists also snares them.

Hopefully, this debate is happening in the upper echelons of the White House, because if Las Casas's logic is correct, then it's time for the U.S. and NATO to leave Afghanistan. If the preference is for weak jihadi groups rather than dead ones, then Af-Pak may have now earned the stamp "Mission Accomplished," at least on the basis of defeating Al-Qaeda.

If the logic is incorrect, then a surge in troops in Af-Pak may be necessary as a means of procuring total elimination of Al-Qaeda.

But now for a second question -- is elimination of Al-Qaeda even possible?

(AP Photos)