May 18, 2012
Philippe Sands

IT sometimes feels like a week doesn’t pass without some former head of state or other alleged outlaw on the front page as a new international trial opens. This week alone there’s Charles Taylor’s sentencing hearing at the special court for Sierra Leone, the opening of Ratko Mladic’s trial at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and Khaled el-Masri’s extraordinary rendition case at the European court of human rights.

These and other cases are the product of a century-long effort towards the creation of an international judiciary. A first wave began in the 1920s, with the creation of an international court in The Hague. Many early cases involved allegations of the mistreatment of minority groups in various parts of Europe. The end of the Second World War unleashed a second wave, starting with the international military tribunal at Nuremberg and Tokyo and the creation of human rights courts in Europe and elsewhere.

A third wave came in the 1990s, following atrocities in the Balkans and Rwanda, the catalyst for creating the Yugoslav and Rwanda tribunals and — after five decades of effort — the Rome statute of the international criminal court. This was also the moment for the House of Lords’ ruling that Augusto Pinochet was not entitled to claim immunity for alleged international crimes.

Two developments are under way, distinct but proceeding hand in hand. The first is that the international institutions are necessary appendages to police the global rules that most people agree are needed for the proper functioning of our embryonic international order.

International courts are not limited to human rights and crime: others function in the economic sphere, to enforce free trade rules, intellectual property rights and foreign investments. Ironically, many of those criticising human rights and criminal courts for excessive interference in sovereign affairs are leading defenders of international courts that protect economic rights.

The second trend is the recognition of the growing place of the individual in the new order. In this way, the individual is both a holder of rights that can be enforced against the state that is said to have done wrong — the Masri case — and obligated to avoid international crimes. A century ago this was unthinkable; only in the last decade does it approach normality.

As recently as the 1930s, sovereignty was seen as being nigh on absolute: sovereignty meant a state could do pretty much whatever it wanted to its nationals, including torturing and killing them on a mass scale. The post-Second World War settlement changed that: sovereignty was seen as limited, not absolute, as individuals got rights and international bodies protected those rights.
Courtesy: The Guardian, London

May 22, 2012
By Anne-Marie Slaughter

On Sunday and yesterday, Nato’s 28 members met in Chicago for their annual summit. Sixty-two years after the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, binding the US, Canada, and 10 European states to consider an attack on one an attack on all, Nato is transforming itself into a 21st century global security organisation. The result will be a safer world.

In 1949, the world was rapidly dividing into two principle political-military blocs, East and West, alongside a large ‘non-aligned movement’. Nato faced off against the Warsaw Pact, created by the Soviet Union and its allies in 1955. Within both blocs, smaller powers clustered around the superpower. No flexibility existed within either bloc for smaller groups of members to deploy alliance assets.

Today, Nato is becoming, in the words of its secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, “a hub of a network of security partnerships and a centre for consultation on global security issues”. It is a “globally connected institution,” with more than 40 individual country partners and growing ties to other international organisations.

Indeed, the country partners include all of Europe’s non-Nato countries, such as Austria, Switzerland, Finland, and Sweden, and aspiring and possible Nato members such as Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Belarus, and even Russia. Virtually all of the Central Asian countries — from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan, as well as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan — are partners, as is the entire Maghreb, from Morocco to Egypt, as well as Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE.

Finally, Pacific partners include Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Mongolia.

Working relations

On the organisational side, Nato describes itself as having developed “close working relations” with the United Nations, the European Union, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

If one draws links radiating outward from Nato to all of these different countries and organisations, the result is a security network that has multiple hubs and clusters — much like a map of the internet or of planets and galaxies. This world is no longer unipolar, bipolar, or even multipolar, because the actors that matter are not single states, but groups of states that are more or less densely connected. It is a multi-hub security network, in which the hubs are regional organisations of different sizes and strengths.

This structural shift has enormous practical significance. For starters, it means that not only Nato’s military resources, but also its human capital and practical knowledge in combating many different kinds of threats are available globally.

Nato has created a Comprehensive Crisis and Operations Management Centre that brings together civilian and military expertise on crisis identification, planning, operations, reconstruction, and stabilisation capabilities in ways that are explicitly designed to connect Nato headquarters in Europe to “the networked world”.

Second, Nato’s own identity is becoming that of an alliance that exists to empower — to offer assistance and partnership — as much as to overpower. Nato is no longer just a hammer; it is an entire toolbox of security options. These options include developing counter-networks to meet networked security threats such as terrorism as well as highly decentralised threats such as piracy.

Security options

As a result, when a crisis like the war in East Timor in 1999 or last year’s political stalemate in the Ivory Coast arises, Nato can backstop whichever country or group of countries chooses to take the lead in carrying out a UN mandate.

Nato members themselves also have much more flexibility to draw on Nato’s collective assets. Even sceptics of Nato expansion and operations like the intervention in Libya now recognise that joint operations by member countries, operating under a UN mandate and in conjunction with regional partners, is likely to be a model for the future.

Power in a network flows from connectedness, or what network theorists call ‘centrality’. The most powerful member of a network is the node that has the most connections to others, which means that a node can increase its power not only by adding connections directly, but also by increasing the connectedness of nearby nodes.

In other words, the US can increase its own power both by connecting to other Nato members and by increasing the connectedness of those other countries and organisations.

The logic of centrality as a source of power creates a virtuous circle, in which members of a network gain advantage by bringing more members into the network and connecting more densely to them. That is exactly the logic behind Nato’s transformation.

The topic on the agenda in Chicago was getting Nato forces out of Afghanistan. But the longer-term subject will be getting as many countries as possible into the global Nato security network.

— Project Syndicate, 2012

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the US State Department, is professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Source: Gulf News

May 24, 2012
By Francis Matthew

Nato made a tragic mistake when it gave itself the authority to get involved outside its core territory of Europe and North America. Set up in the aftermath of the Second World War, it was brilliantly successful for many decades as an alliance which had the sole purpose of mutual defence. Nato was not designed to attack anyone, and for decades it was a bulwark against Soviet and Communist aggression.

It is sad that millions of young Arabs and Muslims will no longer see Nato as the heroic defender of democracy, but merely as an American-led expeditionary force which strikes at the convenience of the White House, conquering Afghanistan and destablising Libya, but refusing to get involved in Syria. The obvious lack of consistency and failure of principle has trapped Nato in a moral morass of its own making

There is no reason for Nato to be involved in Afghanistan, other than the military convenience of the United States. When it was assaulted by Al Qaida terrorists in 2001, George W Bush’s administration invoked Article 5 of the Nato Charter and for the first time ever the entire alliance found itself at war.

But Nato was set up for conventional war, and the founders of the Treaty did not envisage the alliance being use to track down terrorists all over the world. Intense global sympathy for the United States in its hour of need caused these doubts to be ignored when American forces led the invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban government which sympathsed with Al Qaida.

Bush’s administration found it much too hard to muster international support for its actions in the United Nations, which is the natural place for the world community to come together and communally approve military action. Instead, it used Nato, which also had the huge practical benefit that the troops had trained together for years, shared common understanding of commands and manouevring, and were ready to act together.

Iraq misadventure

But the later invasion of Iraq destroyed any lingering global consensus of support for the United States, so that action remained outside Nato, and famously did not even get a clear mandate from the United Nations despite the unfortunate Colin Powell being sent out as Secretary to State to seek support using ‘evidence’ of weapons of mass destruction from the famous Dodgy Dossier.

These two actions in Afghanistan and Iraq followed Nato first offensive action which was to fight the Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s in the middle of the collapse of Yugoslavia. Politically this action was much less controversial since it was seen as a natural extension of Nato’s basic role of supporting democracy in Europe.

As the defender of the democracies of western Europe, Nato had engendered international trust and won a high degree of support from all sectors of its member states’ populations. But after Communism collapsed in central and eastern Europe, Nato found itself without an obvious role, and under the disastrous leadership of George W. Bush it voted to give itself permission to act out of theatre at the 1999 50th anniversary Washington Summit.

In 1955 the original Nato was expanded to include the newly independent West Germany, and this so alarmed the USSR that it rushed to form its own military bloc and the Warsaw Past was born in 1956.

The balance of fear standoff between East and West continued for decades, but the implosion of Communism handed victory to the democracies of Nato. Nato and the European Union prepared to help the emerging new nations of central Europe as the Warsaw Pact failed.

Sadly, similar thinking dominated after the collapse of the USSR, when the new Russia was made to feel very unwelcome by the Cold Warriors of Nato, who rushed to sign up all the USSR’s former vassal states but deliberately left Russia out in the cold.

It would have been hard to incorporate Russia into the alliance, but Europe and the United States should have provided more willing help and support to the newly emerging Russia, and so encouraged a more open politics. Instead, the paranoia engendered by Nato’s acts has helped build Putin and Medvedev’s charade as the former KGB officer maintains his iron grip on power.

Nato’s most recent military expedition was to support the rebels in Libyan and to help topple Muammar Gaddafi. Again, this was done for military convenience and allowed the participating air forces to operate out of Nato air bases in Italy.

But the underlying problem in Afghanistan and Libya is the same: Nato is a military alliance and cannot offer a political solutions. They have to be left to the Afghans and Libyans who have to find their own balance of social and political forces to build a lasting consensus of how they will run their own countries.

Nato should recover its soul and return to defending the democracies of the North Atlantic. International expeditions should be sanctioned by the United Nations, where rigorous political action must be combined with the military excitement. This may be harder to achieve, but it will certainly do more lasting good than Nato’s current roaming the world looking for its next war.

Source: Gulf News

May 26, 2012
By Mahboob A. Khawaja
Exclusive Book Review

The book offers brilliant new thinking and scholarly visions responding to complex and changing global crisis situations. Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja shares cross-cultural knowledge and international experiences to spearhead the interests and values of Man, Humanity and the Universe – the embodied global citizenry ignored by the rulers and scholars in abstract notions and superficial models of peace and security management. Few most hated and feared leaders overwhelmed with pretensions and perpetuated animosity are terrorizing the mankind that Arnold Toynbee calls warriors as dreamers and Hans Morganthau would define them as cruel monsters, sucking out its moral and spiritual values to be just digits and numbers – insecure and vulnerable to catastrophic future. The Universe engulfed with dysfunctional organizations, secret weapons and nuclear disasters and global warming are time bombs in waiting. The warmongers are anti-human and anti-peace. Righteousness and wickedness cannot be combined in one human character. The humanity looks to scholars of new ideas and integrity for a secure future, logically spells out Dr. Mahboob – “Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking” – Global Citizenry as the nucleus body of peace and conflict resolution to reshape anew future. Dr. Khawaja enriched with optimism and political imagination integrates the moral and spiritual values as the rational forces of global mankind in a model for peace and conflict management and a sustainable future.

The 21st century’s egomaniac politicians obsessed with perpetuated animosity, tyranny of corruption and transgression are challenging the Laws of God and waging bogus wars of terrorism against the very humanity they falsely claim to represent; and the global institutions of peace and security rendered dysfunctional craving another age of darkness and catastrophic future. Arnold Toynbee called the warriors as dreamers and Hans Morganthau would have defined them as sadistic monsters. To change the prevalent despotism into optimism, Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja – a global visionary and proactive scholar in global peace, security and conflict management offers intelligent new thinking and persuasively powerful new visionary models of the real world in peace-making and conflict management. Under the materialistic hegemonic control of the few, the news media is being used as a weapon to afloat the delusional economic happiness in the minds of the masses encouraging the contemporary scholars, policy experts and academics to ignore the true assets of the mankind and its moral and spiritual value-based imperatives in peace and conflict management paradigms. All conscientious and thinking scholars would reaffirm the role and vitality of the global citizenry in peace and conflict resolution; yet, the sadistic warmongers view the humanity just in digits and numbers and continue to drain-out its positive energies, thinking and aspirations by global warfare. The delusional superpowers led by the US are at crossroads – politically, morally and financially broken and unable to cope with continuous uncertainty of the future that soon they could be replaced by more efficient and responsible emerging nations of the East to assume leadership role in global affairs. In fast approaching peak-oil age and soaring oil prices, the proponents of the bogus War on Terror are investing heavily in animosities against Islam and Muslims, militarization and creating invincible armies to dream of glory and triumph – the consequences of their own triviality and viciousness against the mankind, they cannot escape. To trade-in the high priced oil supplies, the Western masters manipulate the Arab rulers in war racketeering schemes and weapons buying to quell the Arab people’s movements for freedom and new future. If the oil-exporting Arabs and Muslims nations had educated and intellectual leadership they could have performed a balancing act in global affairs. Not so, they are subservient to the political masters of the West. The re-enacted NATO has its integrity and capability online to manage superficial animosities and to encounter the reactionary Islamic militancy; something it failed to do against the former Warsaw Pact nations under the USSR led ideological warfare. The continuous wars have incapacitated the Arab-Muslim nations as some are complacent in providing logistical support to the US-British aggressions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Across Western Europe and North America, the people are against the wars but the US one track military minds are pursuing more seen-unseen wars against the Arabs-Muslims, not just to occupy their natural resources but to go beyond Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan onward to Iran and occupy the lands and people. The Crusader’s call fomented by George Bush assumes religious warfare against the Arabs- and Islam. The author wonders, if the oil enriched Arab elite could ever rejoin the Rational Thinking and have the freedom to THINK on their own of a Navigational Change to avert the self-geared disasters?

The contemporary Western leaders are misleading the masses into delusional happiness. Wars do not create economic prosperity. Man-made conflicts are not the means to pursue peace and harmony. Righteousness and wickedness cannot be combined in one human character, so is the resulting tragic politics of the 21st century world. The Earth and Space are wired with secrecy and global warming is a clicking time bomb for the future. The most hated and feared leaders do not have the intellectual and political capacity to solve any problems which they have created. The humanity looks to proactive scholars and intelligent and honest people of new ideas, integrity and leaders of change to envisage and plan the future – logically and fascinately spells out Dr. Mahboob – “Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking” – for Man, humanity and the Universe to co-exist without animosity of the few vengeful mindsets. Man being the most intelligent creation on Earth and the nucleus of Humanity must think of his originality of Creation and coherent role-play within the Laws of God governing Man’s life and the Universe. The Man, the Humanity and the Universe must be seen as interrelated to envisage global peace and harmony on One Plant. Life, the universe and the laws of governance of the planet are not the outcomes of politicians and staged actors. Is there ANEW culture of Thinking and emotions to bring the mankind back to its originality of Rationality, Unity and Co-existence to save the humanity and civilizations? Lessons of history are ignored – universally most feared and most hated leaders, who drove the mankind to the insanity of the Two World Wars, likewise are actively engaged with gospel in one hand and the war on terrorism in the other to undermine the future prospects of the mankind. Consequently, failed international institutions, incompetent and corrupt global leadership affiliated to the Washington-based Military-Industrial complex continues to enforce militarization of the globe – an insane perversion against the logic of peace and co-existence amongst the mankind. As a revulsion against the insanity of the wars perpetuated by the few leaders, the mankind looks to Men of intellect and scholars of integrity for workable solutions. Dr. Khawaja argues that the future belongs to the global citizenry not to the few sadistic warlords, and that an informed and politically mature and active global citizenry must have opportunities to exercise its rights, choice and freedom to develop the futuristic global institutions and governance by integrating the moral and spiritual values of Man, humanity and the living Universe as the coherent rational forces of global conscience for a sustainable future. Being on One Planet- ONE WORLD, People of the Globe to which the Universe belongs, have never allowed any abstract institutions or governments or egomaniac leaders to act on their behalf? The message, its purpose and its spirit are clear that the mankind as ONE rational force must act to safeguard the future.

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May 27, 2012
Fareed Zakaria

There has been much speculation about power struggles in China in the wake of the ouster of Bo Xilai, the powerful Communist Party boss of Chongqing who used populism, money and intrigue to rise to the top.

Had he not been brought down this year—by a series of mistakes, revelations and bad luck—Bo might have rattled the technocratic-authoritarian system running the country. China might well survive its political crisis, but it faces a more immediate challenge: an economic crisis.

Every year for two decades, experts have told me that China’s economy was set to crash, felled by huge imbalances and policy errors. They would point to non-performing loans, bad banks, inefficient state-owned enterprises and real estate bubbles. Somehow, none of these has derailed China’s growth, which has averaged an astonishing 9.5 per cent annually for three decades.

Ruchir Sharma, who runs Morgan Stanley’s Emerging Markets Fund, makes a different and more persuasive case in his new book, “Breakout Nations,” pointing not to China’s failures but to its successes: “China is on the verge of a natural slowdown that will change the global balance of power, from finance to politics, and take the wind out of many economies that are riding in its draft.” Evidence is accumulating to support his view.

China’s growth looks remarkable. But it isn’t unprecedented. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all grew close to nine per cent annually for about two decades and then started to slow. Many think that China’s fate will be like that of Japan, which crashed and slowed down in the 1990s and has yet to boom again. But the more realistic scenario is Japan in the 1970s, when the original Asian tiger’s growth slowed from nine per cent to about six per cent. Korea and Taiwan followed similar trajectories.

What caused these slowdowns? Success. It becomes much more difficult to grow at a breakneck pace when you have a large economy and a middle-class society.

Sharma does the math: “In 1998, for China to grow its $1 trillion economy by 10 per cent, it had to expand its economic activities by $100 billion and consume only 10 per cent of the world’s industrial commodities—the raw materials that include everything from oil to copper and steel. In 2011, to grow its $5 trillion economy that fast, it needed to expand by $600 billion a year and suck in more than 30 percent of global commodity production.”

All the factors that pushed China forward have begun to wither. China became an urbanised country last year, with a majority of its people living in cities. The rate of urban migration has slowed to five million a year. This means that soon the famous “surplus labour pool” will be exhausted. This decade, only five million people will join China’s core workforce, down dramatically from 90 million in the previous decade. And thanks to the one-child policy, there are fewer Chinese to take the place of retiring workers.

Sharma’s picture is largely shared by the Chinese government. For years the leadership in Beijing has been preparing for a slowdown. Premier Wen Jiabao argued in 2007 that China’s economy was “unbalanced, uncoordinated, unstable and unsustainable.” He sounded a similar note this week, calling for government measures to stimulate the economy.

In some ways, China still has a lot of gunpowder in its arsenal. Its central bank can lower interest rates and the government can spend money. But even its firepower has limits. Sharma argues that on paper China’s debt to gross domestic product is a modest 30 per cent but that when you add up the debt of Chinese corporations, many of which are government-owned, the numbers look alarming. The government will spend more on infrastructure but will get diminishing returns for these investments. Chinese consumers are spending more but—in a country with no safety nets and an aging population—saving rates will remain high.

Sharma predicts trouble for countries that have been buoyed by a booming China—from Australia to Brazil—as its demand for raw materials drops. He even predicts a decline in oil prices, which, coming on top of the shale boom, should worry oil-producing states everywhere.

As for China, Sharma suggests that six per cent growth should not worry the Chinese; these would be enviable rates for anyone else. The country is richer, so slower growth is more acceptable. But China’s authoritarian regime legitimises itself by delivering high-octane growth. If that fades, China’s economic problems might turn into political ones.
Fareed Zakaria is a noted foreign affairs analyst

© 2012, Washington Post Writers Group
Source: Khaleej Times

May 27, 2012
By Philip Stephens

Not so long ago consecutive summits of the western powers would have called the world to attention. Nowadays, these gatherings call attention only to how fast and far the west has fallen. If one were looking for a metaphor for a decade of decline, there have been few more telling than the latest summits of leaders of the G8 nations and Nato.

Lest we forget, the opening of this century saw the US cast as an eternal hegemon. Europe struck a pose as the model for a post-nationalist multilateralism that would take root around the world. Fresh from taming Slobodan Milosevic in the Balkans, Nato had reinvented itself as the military guardian of the new global order.

Ten years on, Europe is in the grip of the nationalisms it thought it had banished. The message from the G8 leaders in Washington was that the eurozone remains hopeless and helpless in the face of the banking and sovereign debt crises that have brought a continent to its knees. For its part, the Nato summit in Chicago presented the unedifying spectacle of the world’s foremost military alliance rushing for the exits in Afghanistan.

The determinist, or should that be fatalist, view of history says we should not be surprised. The inexorable rise of the east and south was always going to upset the view that victory over Soviet communism presaged the end of history.

The rebalancing of global power ushered in by the re-emergence of China and India and by the rise of Brazil, Turkey and the rest was never going to be easy for the west. Add the economic and psychological impact on the rich nations of the global financial crash and everything since seems entirely explicable.

Maybe. But for those who grew up with the assumption that the world belonged to a small group of nations sitting on either side of the North Atlantic, two things are striking. The first is the breathtaking speed of the turnround – to look back to 2000 is to see a century compressed into a decade. The other is the vigour with which the west has colluded in its own demise – whether it be the US attempt to reorder the greater Middle East with cruise missiles or the European assumption that, even as the world was turned on its head, nothing need change in Europe.

By most accounts the exchanges at the G8 summit were polite enough. The closed-door deliberations were the more convivial for the absence of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president is still sulking about US missile defence.

Francois Hollande’s election as French president has shifted the centre of gravity in the eurozone. Nicolas Sarkozy’s relationship with Germany’s Angela Merkel recalled Tony Blair’s “hug ‘em close” approach to George W. Bush. Mr Hollande is asserting a more independent French position.

So Ms Merkel finds herself pretty much isolated. Barack Obama makes no secret of his frustration with Berlin. The crisis in Europe, the president knows, could rob the US of the economic growth he needs for re-election. Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister, is also on the side of those who believe fiscal retrenchment is self-defeating without growth.

Whether any of this translates into substantive policy changes is at best moot. The strange thing about this crisis is that all the main players, Germany included, do indeed want to save the euro. It is just that they are not prepared to muster the will to match the end. Are they ready to create the political union needed to sustain the single currency? As long as this question goes unanswered the crisis will fester.

The arguments about a Greek exit, about eurozone bonds, the role of the European Central Bank and the rest have thus become a proxy for doubts about European integration. The creation of the euro presumed that Europe was heading into ever deeper union. The euro crisis has turned out to be both cause and effect of the unravelling of that commitment. Europeans are reaching again for the chimera of independent action and calling it national sovereignty.

Nato is scarcely in better shape. Failure in Afghanistan does not mean the end to the alliance; nor does the US “pivot to Asia” prefigure an abrupt end to the partnership. Al-Qaeda has been decapitated by American drones and marginalised by the Arab uprisings. For all the mutual frustrations, the US and Europe still need each other to safeguard the global commons. What’s missing is a guiding purpose – and a willingness on the European side to pay for the alliance’s upkeep.

The other day I asked a distinguished military scholar from Washington what Nato is now for. Events, he said, would provide the mission: “stuff happens”, in Donald Rumsfeld’s famous phrase. He is right that inertia is on the side of preserving at least the form of the alliance. Whether it will amount to much, I am not so sure.

The west is not finished. These nations remain by far the richest on the planet. For every tale of woe about gridlock in Washington there is a story of American enterprise and ingenuity. Billions of people around the world would give anything for what Europeans call austerity.

The rest have their own problems. The recent glimpse of brutal infighting in China, political stasis in India, faltering growth rates in places such as Brazil – all are another reminder that history does not travel in straight lines. Nor are any of these powers willing or able to take on the global responsibilities shouldered by the US and, to a degree, by Europe.

Relative decline is the west’s fate. Inevitably, it will be uncomfortable but it need not be harrowing. What is so maddening is that the leaders who gathered in Washington and Chicago seem so determined to make the very worst of it.

Courtesy: Financial Times

May 28, 2012
By Uri Friedman

The prevailing political wisdom is that the economy — not foreign policy — will determine who becomes the next president of the United States. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll on what the single most important issue was for them in choosing a president, 52 per cent said jobs and the economy (and they’re evenly split on whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney would do a better job on the latter).

To put that figure in perspective, the second most-cited issue was “Health care/repealing Obamacare” at a mere 7 per cent, while foreign-policy issues such as terrorism and the war in Afghanistan each mustered a measly 1 per cent of responses.
But every politician lives in fear of that 3am phone call that can upend the best-laid campaign plans. Here are five global events that could send the US election careening along a very different path than the one it’s travelling down today.

A showdown with Iran: World powers are currently wrapping up a second round of contentious nuclear talks with Tehran, and the European Union is preparing to roll out an oil embargo on Iran in July. But if this diplomatic tack fails to wring meaningful concessions from Iran, there’s an outside chance that Israel — or, in a less likely scenario, the United States and its allies — will conclude before November that military action is the only way to halt Iran’s nuclear advances. Americans see Iran as the country that represents the greatest threat to the United States, and a recent Pew Research Centre poll found that 63 per cent of Americans are willing to go to war if necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons — a measure that Romney has promoted more aggressively than Obama.

Some market analysts estimate that a military conflict with Iran could push petrol prices in the United States to between $5 (Dh18.35) and $6 per gallon, alienating voters and jeopardising the country’s fitful economic recovery. And there’s a reason why the National Journal’s Charlie Cook has dubbed Iran the “wild card” this campaign season: The last five times petrol prices have spiked during a US presidential campaign, the incumbent party has lost the election.

n A European nosedive: The prospect of a Greek anti-austerity party winning new elections in June has sparked widespread fear that Greece will default on its debt and exit the eurozone, which could spread contagion in southern Europe and plunge the global economy back into recession. But there’s a debate about the extent to which the European debt crisis will influence the US election.

If a Greek exit precipitates the collapse of the Eurozone, Brookings Institution scholar William Galston argues in the New Republic, it will be disastrous for Europe and the United States. But he adds that US GDP growth would probably slow and the unemployment rate would likely stagnate even if the European monetary union remains intact after Greece’s departure.

“These developments would make it harder for Obama to argue that we’re heading in the right direction, and … I suspect that economic growth at these depressed levels would mean victory for Mitt Romney,” he writes.

A Chinese economic slowdown: China’s slowing economic growth has prompted Chinese leaders to pledge new measures to stimulate domestic demand and commentators to warn of an impending economic crisis in the country. But when Beijing sneezes, does Washington catch a cold? China’s sluggish growth poses a “substantial risk” to the United States as the general election approaches, Campbell Harvey, a professor at Duke University, told CNN. “You don’t need a lot to knock us out of recovery.”
A domestic terrorist attack: The United States has not suffered a major terrorist attack during Obama’s presidency, and the administration has foiled several plots. The president has taken out several high-profile terrorists through drone strikes and touted the killing of Osama Bin Laden as one of his signal achievements — much to Mitt Romney’s chagrin.

But an attack on American soil could instantly shatter the armour Obama has built up on national security, reverse the public’s declining concern about terrorism, and transform the campaign. And such a scenario isn’t out of the question..
n The unknown unknown: There’s a reason we call the “October surprise” what we do — sometimes (though admittedly not often) we simply don’t know what will tilt the results of a race until Election Day is upon us. The term “October surprise” dates to 1972, when National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger declared less than two weeks before the presidential election that peace was “at hand” in Vietnam — comments that were credited with helping President Richard Nixon resoundingly defeat George McGovern (though in truth, Nixon didn’t need much help).

We have a way to go until November, and anything from security in Afghanistan to violence in Syria to elections in Venezuela (ominously scheduled for October) could emerge as a potential game-changer. When the 2008 presidential election got under way, everyone assumed that foreign policy — specifically the war in Iraq — would be the dominant issue in the campaign. And then the global financial crisis hit, propelling the economy to the top of the agenda. It’s too early to rule out the reverse happening in 2012.

Uri Friedman is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.
Courtesy: Washington Post

May 29, 2012
Dr N. Janardhan

Declining economic growth in most of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and now South Africa) countries is not the ideal time to sing praises about this evolving bloc.

But since even their current growth rates are beyond West’s dreams, it is not improper to do so either.

For those cynical or sceptical about BRICS as a formidable economic force of the 21st century, try indulging in a newly-coined phrase and book – “Breakout Nations” – by Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley, which is creating a buzz in the biz world.

But, before getting entangled in catchy phrases (BRIC in 2001 was also a banker-economist’s phrase – Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs), it is important to see BRICS beyond its economic identity. Like it or not, BRICS’ relatively good economic performance has given these countries ample scope to pedal a political agenda. If calibrated well, it can serve as a viable alternative to the current world order.

Either way, the writing on the wall is clear – the West’s hegemony over the global economy is a thing of the past. By the same logic, its political influence in global affairs is on the decline, and is likely to recede further.

As a sample of their effectiveness, compare the outcomes of this year’s BRICS and G-8 summits. While the former ended on a note of tangible optimism, the latter ended with “artificial hopetimism”. The BRICS shift from an economic to political grouping in 2009 has had an insightful effect on the shake-up of international relations. The proposal at the 2012 summit – to start a development bank – not only challenges the World Bank regime, but the politics surrounding it too.

While the global economic crisis and reforming the international financial institutions have been topics of focus during BRICS meetings in the past, the bloc’s leaders have also been focussing on food, energy and climate change issues, which have assumed a political tinge. They have also called for greater say on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

For those who cite their political inexperience, two of the BRICS countries are permanent members of the UNSC; all are members of the G-20, NAM and G-77; and each is a key member of their respective regional groupings.

At the end of the first summit in 2009, the group’s leaders urged a “multipolar world order”, and creation of “conditions for a fairer world order”. These assertions were construed as “a diplomatic code for a rejection of US’s position as the sole superpower”.

But China has stressed that BRICS is an “ad hoc political club” of developing economies, with no political agenda to become an anti-US bloc.

It is important to note that BRICS is not an exclusive or closed group. It has already expanded, with South Africa’s inclusion. As we move on, why not expand it further by including other thriving economies, which are searching for a voice in world affairs, and even rename the bloc appropriately?

With efforts to reform the United Nations meeting resistance from the waning powers, this could be the only way that rising economic powers can transform into influential political actors.

A few countries that fit this bill include South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and some of the Gulf countries, among others. (“Breakout Nations” include Indonesia, Poland, Philippines, Nigeria, Turkey, South Korea and Thailand.)

As much as this list includes allies of the United States, BRICS must conduct itself in a way that they are encouraged to join the bloc for its potential and not be discouraged because of a perceived conflict of interest with that of the United States.

The real strength of BRICS or any similar organisation in future would not lie in its exclusiveness, but in its inclusiveness. In fact, the bloc should be open to include the United States at some stage.

While it may be premature to write the epitaph of the West’s economic, political and security influence, it would be immature not to explore viable alternatives. In this, some of the BRICS countries’ quiet and unassuming growth and influence could be their greatest virtue.

What all this means is that any new alternative must not be viewed as a competitor with the United States. It should be viewed in the spirit of cooperation in a ‘post-US world’, which is necessarily not an ‘anti-US world’.

Dr N. Janardhan is a UAE-based political analyst and author of “Boom amid Gloom: ‘The Spirit of Possibility in the 21st Century Gulf’
Source: Khaleej Times

June 1, 2012
By Dr Pervez Tahir

This is the title of the recently published book by Peter Nolan, professor of Chinese development at the University of Cambridge, who was also my faculty adviser when I was doing my PhD here in the 1980s. According to the Financial Times, he “knows more about Chinese companies and their international competition than anyone else on earth, including in China”. After the fall of the Soviet Union, transition experts like Jeffrey Sachs began warning China about the incompatibility of the Communist Party with the market economy. To borrow (and slightly modify) Mark Twain’s famous words, the news of the death of the Chinese economy was ‘vastly exaggerated’. The Chinese Communist Party is alive and kicking, overseeing the country’s spectacular rise that has seen it become the second largest economy of the world in a very short span of time. So much so that the influential Western media is now busy churning out story after story about the threat of the Chinese buying up the world, be it the huge Western firms, African energy resources or Latin America’s natural resources. Nolan’s book contains a wealth of information and insightful analysis to show that the shopping spree is more noise than news.

Of course, China possesses in its coffers the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves. However, the depth of the Chinese purse ought to be seen in the proper perspective. Around one-fourth of America’s externally-held debt is owned by China. But this is only 12 per cent of America’s publicly held debt and eight per cent of its publicly and non-publicly held government debt. The so-called Beijing Consensus is still no match for the Washington Consensus. Even if China has money, it still faces some insurmountable barriers to entry in the Western world.

In the globalised economy, there is no such thing as a level playing field. First, three decades of intense globalisation has led to very high levels of concentration. To give only two out of the many examples in the book: 80 per cent of the global production of industrial gases is in the hands of only three firms and 75 per cent of the supply of braking systems for large commercial aircrafts is controlled by only two firms. Most of the concentration occurs in what Nolan calls “superior technologies”. A small number of system integrators atop the global value chain control 50 per cent of the world market. Second, the top 100 firms control 60 per cent of research and development (R&D) spending, giving them an immense competitive advantage.

Among the top 500 global firms listed in the Financial Times, there are only 79 firms from low and middle income counties, which mostly consist of banks and state-owned entities, which are all users rather than producers of high technology. Again, the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from developing countries has increased, but an overwhelming proportion of it is from firms with headquarters in developed countries. China heads this list of developing countries, but it is still far from catching up with the developed countries. Its income per capita is only 16 per cent of the figure for developed countries.

No Chinese firm is among the top 100 firms in terms of R&D spending. In terms of FDI, Chinese investment in developed countries is very small compared with FDI coming into China. Attempts to acquire Western assets have mostly failed.

Western countries are more into China than China is into them. “China has not yet bought the world and shows little sign of doing so in near future”, concludes Peter Nolan.

The Express Tribune

By:Harsh V Pany

China dominates BRICS with an economy larger than that of four other members combined

With China’s President Xi Jinping planning to make his first foray into international diplomacy since his election at the BRICS annual summit in Durban and his singer wife slated to perform, the organization will hit the headlines. Again, there will be talk about this loose grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa filling the emerging void left by the troubled US and European Union. But yet another summit and ritual show of unity won’t hide the emptiness at the core of BRICS. The strong display of China’s newfound power by its president will only underline the organization’s lopsided nature and lack of actual clout.

Representing around 40 percent of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of its economic output, BRICS does offer promise of clout. The economic profile of the five nations, especially that of China, has continued to grow with suggestions that BRICS collectively could become bigger than the US by 2018 and by 2050 even surpass the combined economies of G7 states.
Yet a major challenge for ongoing influence from BRICS is China’s dominance over the other four members. For all its promise, BRICS has remained a talk shop aspiring for greatness.

The first formal summit meeting was held in Russia in June 2009 with South Africa joining the group in December 2010, changing the nomenclature from BRIC to BRICS. The Yekaterinburg summit called for “a more democratic and just multipolar world order based on the rule of international law, equality, mutual respect, cooperation, coordinated action and collective decision-making of all states.” Since then the joint statements of the various BRICS summits have repeatedly underscored need for a realignment of the post–World War II global order based on the untrammelled supremacy of the US. As the US is preoccupied with internal troubles and the eurozone is mired in a debilitating debt crisis, a vacuum is increasingly being felt in the international system. This presents an opportunity for the BRICS to emerge as major global players. Plans are underway for some joint projects. The New Delhi summit resulted in a proposal to create a joint BRICS development bank that would finance investments in developing nations, and this year’s summit is expected to conclude negotiations for setting up this bank.

But overall momentum for BRICS, a much-hyped initiative, seems to be flagging. Growth-rate estimates for all the BRICS are steadily declining. Fluctuating economic trends, however, are not the leading reason behind the unworkability of the BRICS idea, but rather the structural disparity at the heart of the grouping.

China’s rise has been so fast and so spectacular that others are still trying to catch up. The Chinese economy is not only the second largest in the world but also larger than the economies of the other four members combined. China’s power makes the other members nervous, leading them to hedge bets by investing in alternative alliances and partnerships even as China’s rapid accretion of economic and political power adds to its own challenges to make friends. Given the leverage that China enjoys in BRICS, it should come as no surprise that Beijing has suggested that IBSA – the grouping of democracies India, Brazil and South Africa – be shut down in favor of BRICS.

China’s manipulation of its currency has resulted in significant problems for manufacturing sectors of other emerging powers. India, Brazil and South Africa all have expressed disenchantment with Beijing’s economic policies at various times. New Delhi has even imposed anti-dumping duties on a range of Chinese goods. China’s dominance of the intra-South trade remains overwhelming with other emerging powers struggling to get a share of the pie. Central bankers from Brazil and India spoke against the undervalued yuan in 2009 and 2010 to little effect.

Economic ties between China and Brazil have grown, but so have frictions. China is not viewed as a fair competitor with Brazilian manufacturers accusing China of dumping diverted exports from Europe even as Brazilian manufacturers face steep non-tariff barriers in trying to export to China. Worried about the influx of investment and cheap imports from China, Brazilian manufacturers are losing market share to Chinese counterparts, and Brazil is also wary of China’s growing economic profile in South America, which Brazil considers its own sphere of influence.

Russia and China are united in their aversion to a US-led global political order, but elite distrust of each other remains. Though they coordinate in trying to scuttle western policies, as has been the case on Iran and Syria recently, the partnership is one of convenience. Russia’s failure to develop its Far East has allowed China to gain a toehold in this strategic region and allowed Beijing to define the Asian security landscape. And though China is the largest buyer of Russian conventional weaponry, many in Russia see this as counterproductive: China could emerge as the greatest potential security threat to Russia.
Likewise, Sino-India ties have witnessed a steady deterioration over the last few years on a variety of issues – from land border to maritime disputes. Despite the public pronouncements by the two sides, New Delhi remains skeptical of China’s intentions. Beijing’s refusal to acknowledge India’s rise and a lack of sensitivity on core security interests are leading to pushback. With overall bilateral trade worth $55 billion, India’s trade deficit with China rose to $23 billion in 2012.

South Africa’s relations with China are also not as wrinkle-free as so often made out in the popular media. Concerns have been rising that China’s economic power is strangling South African manufacturing while locking up vital resources for years, as the flood of Chinese finished goods to Africa has created a large trade imbalance. Textile mills in South Africa have closed down under the onslaught of inexpensive Chinese imports, leading to public protests. In a somewhat surprising outburst, former South African President Thabo Mbeki had warned that Africa risked becoming an economic colony of China if the growing trade imbalance between the two was not rectified. Though China has its share of supporters in South Africa, its extractive economic policy is leading to growing calls for a more equitable economic relationship.

The fascination with BRICS is partly an offshoot of the discussion on the emerging so-called post-American world. Many commentators argue multipolarity is likely to be the norm. Yet while BRICS may have growing economies, it’s not clear this can translate into power at the global level. Even if the BRICS get their economic act together, the grouping will find it difficult to turn that strength into a unified political force. China’s dominance makes most of the goals articulated by the BRICS states wobbly. The point of this coalition was always to show that the balance of power is shifting toward emerging countries, away from the West’s historical dominance. But a multipolar world isn’t the same as China just trying to tilt the balance of power toward itself.

The narrative surrounding the rise of BRICS is as exaggerated as that of decline for the US. The tectonic plates of global politics are certainly shifting, but their movements are unpredictable. BRICS will remain an artificial construct, merely an acronym coined by an investment banking analyst, for some time to come.

Harsh V Pant teaches at King’s College, London. This article was also carried by YaleGlobal.

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