Riots in Iran: Have things changed in 10 years?

The riots were the worst in Iran since the revolution of 1979. Thousands of students took to the streets, pelting stones at security forces and setting fire to pictures of the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The disturbances left a trail of burned-out vehicles and smashed shop fronts. (BBC News)

The above could be a description of events taking place recently during the Ashura or during one of many protests doting the Iranian calendar since the rigged-elections of June 12. But the above recounts what took place 10 years ago, in July 1999.

Back then, reformist President Mohammad Khatami had been voted in office two years previously in a land slide election. Yet he was a member of the political community and sided quickly with the hardliners within the regime when the violence broke out. This explains in large measure why the manifestations only lasted 6 days. Khatami, who favored gradual, peaceful reform to the violent uprising, was never able to make much headway with his program despite being re-elected in 2001. The Supreme Leader and the twelve-member Guardian Council, two bodies with greater power within the Iranian political system than the President, believed that Khatami could become the Gorbatchev of the regime fearing that his reforms would gather an unstoppable momentum which would lead to a counter-revolution, and so they clamped down. (Mr. Khatami is now one of several figures in the current opposition movement.)

During Khatami's second term and after him, there was the American-Iraq war and the ongoing nuclear crisis. Both were foreign threats and acted as unifiers upon Iranian society putting to the fore its most hawkish and conservative forces.

But today, after accusations of vote-rigging during the Presidential re-election of President Ahmadinejad, we have entered the second round of political dissent within the country and the consequences have the potential to go much deeper. In fact, in some ways, we already have if we are to believe the words of Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, head of the increasingly powerful Revolutionary Guard or IRGC. He spoke this summer after his command effectively wrested control over the internal situation:

“We are convinced that the IRGC must play a deciding role in the preservation and continuation of the revolution.”(...)“These events put us in a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions,” (Press.tv, an Iranian Government media)

Indeed, while the 1999 protests were short lived, we have now witnessed 7 consecutive months of unrest. This unrest has manifested itself not only in visible street protests, but through civil disobedience such as anti-government chants during football matches, a "currency campaign" whereby thousands of rial notes have been marked with anti-government graffiti, and, none the least, it is being expressed through the internet which the authorities have failed to control effectively.

The message in 1999 wasn't clear; students reacted spontaneously to a series of events. They wanted more openness within civil society and less control from the government in their lives, they just weren't sure how much and how to do it. They had no leader but by and large, they wanted reform which, as we saw, the government failed to deliver.

Today, the message still isn't very clear yet. It has evolved from contesting the election results to toppling the regime. It is certainly not established - like some westerners wish to believe, that the population as a whole would vote to establish a liberal democracy if they were subjected to a referendum. After all, their rallying cry during the protests is often "Allahu Akhbar" (God is great). What is significant however is that in the footage of the demonstrations are represented a wide spectrum of the population, in particular women, some older men, and working class men, the latter traditionally the base of the Ahmadinejad government. It isn't just students.

While none can speak for all, the leaders of the opposition are more present than they were in 1999. Ten years ago, the clerics pulled together and the protesters were left to hang dry. Today, there is a mixture of pragmatists, reformists, and moderate conservatives openly voicing their concerns on the handling of the situation by the authorities in support of the popular protests. Some leaders such as Mousavi have also joined the crowds on occasion.

Overall, the opposition counts two presidential candidates, two former presidents, and a group of clerics. Some of these figures are currently testing how much they can get away with and haven't yet been arrested only because the hardliners within the regime do not want to make martyrs out of them. Instead, the Iranian Police have been targeting members of their entourage. The regime seems to be making strenuous efforts to balance its reaction and avoid giving the opposition greater cause for action. At the same time, the Mousavi's, Kerroubi's, Rafsanjani's, and Kathani's probably do not wish to cast their lot with a populist movement that may or may not succeed and with whom they may or may not fully agree.

“The longer this goes on, the more difficult will it be for the likes of Moussavi and Karroubi to sustain their current position,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who has worked for the State Department. “They have to at some point opt for regime survival or become the leaders of an opposition movement calling for more than reform.”(NY Times)

It is as of yet unclear what direction they will take. All of the opposition figures were and are still part of the political elite of the country having served, or continuing to serve in some cases, at the highest level of government (Rafsanjani is the chairman of the Assembly of Experts who has the constitutional power of removing the Supreme Leader). In any case, there is now a great factional divide tearing up through every level of Iranian society.

UPDATE: Mousavi has since stated he was ready to become a martyr for the cause.

On the other side of the divide is what Robin Wright has called the "New Right" in a recent report to the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.

The New Right centers around a second generation of revolutionaries who call themselves “principlists.” Many came of age during the revolution’s first traumatic decade. They provided the backbone of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij(or “mobilization resistance force”) that secured the revolution during the chaotic early years. They were hardened during the 1980-88 Iraq war, the bloodiest modern Middle East conflict. In the 1990s, they went to university and entered the work force. After Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005, many gained positions of political or economic power. (Iran's Green Movement)

It is important to stress that the clerics are now deeply divided about the course to take which was not the case in 1999. Kerroubi, Rafsanjani and Khatani are all clerics. Qom, the traditional center of intellectual thought for Shia Islam in Iran, is split over the issue and have called into question the neutrality of the Guardian Council as early as July. Although we can only speculate, it is easy to imagine dissension amongst the Guardian Council and hesitation about what to do following the events in June which would have opened the door for more affirmative action by the Revolutionary Guard.

The New Right has effectively wrested control of the regime and the security instruments needed to hold on to power. In stark contrast to the revolution’s first generation, most are laymen, not clerics. They have effectively pushed many of the original revolutionaries, including big-name clerics, to the sidelines—at least for now. (Iran's Green Movement)

The beneficiary and the instrument of this political change within the Iranian regime is without question the Revolutionary Guard. Over the years, they have increased their presence throughout society. It's alumni occupy cabinet positions, they are are members of parliament, and head large corporations. Ahmadinejad is a former member himself and has further increased the institution's economic role which now translates into a "multibillion-dollar business empire" (NY Times). The Revolutionary Guards is a corps of around 120,000 people, is seen by many as the vehicle of upward social mobility, and is believed to be in control of developing the Iranian nuclear program.

A recent RAND Corporation study on the Revolutionary Guard had this to say about the vision and the purpose that its members have for themselves:

Within the factional debates that characterize Iran’s political landscape, the IRGC leadership appears to believe that its legitimacy is dependent on reviving and burnishing its role in the foundational myths of the Islamic Republic of Iran—the suppression of internal enemies during the revolution’s early days, a role in the “sacred defense” during the Iran-Iraq War, and the postwar economic reconstruction. (RAND)

The comments by Jafari, the head of the Revolutionary Guard noted above express as much.

However, the extent to which it can flaunt the other political institutions is uncertain as the constitution of Iran is ultimately circumscribed by a system of checks and balances. One thing is certain: if a full fledged counter-revolution is to go the distance (i.e. reversing the Islamic revolution), the cycle of violence is only going to become much worse and the Revolutionary Guard and their Basij vigilantes will be called to play a growing role. The Revolutionary Guard is “the only institution in Iran capable of both enforcing and breaching any red lines.”(comments reported in RAND)

And there is ample room for things to get much uglier. Despite eight deaths during the violence, it is worth noting that most police forces and the Basij militia refrained from using lethal force during the Ashura protests, sometimes at their own personal demise. The police and the Basij were mostly armed with batons and tear gas, and youtube videos have shown them often being overwhelmed, cornered and beaten themselves (see "Uskowi on Iran" for an image and video analysis of the Ashura clashes).

Wednesday, amidst pro-government rallies numbering in the hundreds of thousands, there were signs that the regime is ready to escalate its response. In what seems to have been a conscious effort by the regime to send a stronger message, the leader of the legislative, the speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, said that the protesters violated civil rights, and called for the “arrest of offenders of the religion and the harshest punishment for antirevolutionary figures.” (NY Times) Others said that the protesters were now considered "enemy of God".

On a note of optimism, one possible scenario for a quieter revolution comes from the fact that even within the ranks of the Revolutionary Guard, the factional divide between realists and ideologues is present. It is reported that in 1997, around 77% voted for Khatami. But this was a different time and about a popular vote. The opacity of the "New Right" is such that it is difficult to tell if there are any cracks within their resolve.

Senate Reform and the Source of the Problem

The increasing polarization of the American political system and the efficiency - or lack thereof, of passing policy is a subject of interest to me.

Ezra Klein has been following that trail and collected his thoughts on the topic this Sunday. Click here.

The main ills of the system are the following:

the absence of bipartisanship, the use of the filibuster to obstruct progress rather than protect debate, the ability of any given senator to hold the bill hostage to his or her demands

In Brooks and Shields last Friday, one of them stated that the number of times a filibustering attempt was made this year exceeded that of the whole decade of the 1960’s.

As a result, bills are focusing on the “low hanging” fruits instead of tackling problems more comprehensively and fixing politically difficult yet important problems. The benefit of the population and the general interest of the state are left to suffer.

This here is the best line of the article:

The government can function if the minority party has either the incentive to make the majority fail or the power to make the majority fail. It cannot function if it has both.

What this translates into is an inability to legislate effectively because the minority party increasingly wants to see the majority fail and has the power to make it fail. As a consequence, filibustering and other delaying tactics means more time is spent doing less things. If the tendency is maintained, the American legislative process is facing paralysis.

It puts the American political system at a disadvantage when faced with other, nimbler political systems, such as better functioning democracies, or, for that matter, authoritative China. (See here my post contrasting the US and the Chinese political systems in their capacity to take on the challenge of developing and implementing new Energy solutions)

This is not to say that America should repaint itself with an autocratic brush; rather it should seek the following, which is how the system was meant to work:

a world in which the majority can pass its agenda is a better one, a place where the majority party is held accountable for its ideas and not for the gridlock and inaction furnished by the Senate's rules.

But short of phasing out filibustering, or implementing a regressive majority threshold - two measures being suggested here and there, I am skeptical that America can get away without making other reforms in other facets of the American political system. This is because the ills of the democratic political system in America lies not in the Senate procedures: rather, the amount of filibustering and partisanship are symptoms of an increase in the power of public opinion, and, at the same time, of the system of electoral financing.

There used to be a time when Congress – and for that matter, their western equivalents, were truly representative: legislators were elected and then went to their Houses, Congresses and Assemblies where, by and large, they were free to confer with their peers and make legislation. Today, because of the explosion of media coverage, politicians are never completely done with campaigning. While there was certainly bickering in the past, compromises and cooperative actions were possible. Today, those are seen as giving in and as political defeats.

Secondly, it used to be that being a public servant was a duty of the higher class of society: doctors, lawyers, and the educated elite that were already rich. There was an ethic of service and an Enlightenment-inspired  duty towards reason that is now greatly lost. Today, politicians are there to cater to the interests of their campaign financiers and constituents, and very little temperate reasoning is left after they have gone through their campaign rhetoric aimed at manipulating the population into voting them into office. The legislative houses are no longer refuges of reason, but stages from which the elected members project their spin. Furthermore, political success is now a way to pursue personal monetary gains, which was certainly not the case in the past but creates conflicts of interest (a public servant is there to serve the public).

I am not advocating a return to past institutions: such change would be anachronistic. But establishing the differences between past and present, and seeing why the rules were working then and not so much now can be enlightening. Another important factor only alluded to here is the homogenization process in successive stages of the two main political parties since the Civil War.

Political reforms are perhaps the hardest things to do for any regime. Reforming part of the american legislative process will certainly be hard in the current context where any bill one party puts forward will undoubtedly be seen through the very same partisan lens it is trying to mitigate. But as the Ezra Klein piece mentions, the first problem a drunk must fix is not one of the biggest he faces – his debt, the loss of his family, etc, but the seemingly lesser one that is the fact that he drinks every night. Likewise, before America can tackle the problems of tomorrow, it needs to fix its very ability to tackle problems efficiently, which is the growing troubles with the legislative process.

Why Climate Change Needs its Own International Institution

The science of climate change can be controversial: it is hazy at best, corrupt at worst. Short of seeing too much into “climate gate” however and putting the blame on scientists for their zeal and conflict of interests, the biggest problem with the science is that its subject matter is incredibly complex. What will happen and how will it affect us and the planet remotely into the future are very difficult questions to answer.

What is certain however, is that we can’t afford to not do anything about it.

Consequently, there are two useful metaphor in dealing with climate change I have come across.

The first is that we must see the need to do something about it as an insurance we buy today against the possibility of disastrous scenarios in the future. You put a small down payment today against the small but would-be catastrophic risk that something will happen. This addresses the need of the international community to be willing to sacrifice a small portion of global GDP (perhaps 1%) to safeguard against serious trouble 100 years down the road. The purpose here is to slow down or possibly reverse that adverse impact we are having on our environment.

Complementary to the first, the second metaphor is that we must find contingency plans, and develop accompanying technologies and systems to go with it, that we can spring into action if needed much like you would equip a house or a building with fire protection measures such as ladders and sprinklers in case a fire happens. Those fire protection measures may never be used - but they are there in case an unforeseeable but catastrophic event occurs.

I will discuss measures spawning from the first metaphor above as it pertains best to my belief that some form of international institutionalization will be necessary to successfully tackle the problem of climate change. I will leave the second metaphor perhaps for another time.

It is worth noting that from the start we have pursued the first metaphor with first Rio de Janeiro, then Kyoto,  and now Copenhagen. All three were failures: Rio was inconclusive, Kyoto saw last minute measures that eventually were never upheld, and Copenhagen was salvaged but with targets so small and far into the future such that no one would be compromised again.

There are two sources of problems that haven’t been met yet that explain those shortcomings: a lack of representation of the relevant interests and, secondly, a lack of institutionalization to streamline an effective international-wide policy.

First the problem with who’s interest it is that are being represented or not represented.

A very smart man said that we are having problems coping with climate change because it epitomizes the kind of problems humans are bad at: we are pretty good at solving problems that will have an immediate impact, but bad at the ones that require us to sacrifice now to gain a greater reward or avoiding a greater cost in the future. But a look at the success of insurance companies and the dissemination of their products through all walks of life, for all kinds of situation small and large shows us otherwise. Likewise, engineers often try to foolproof their systems with measures that directly factor into the cost of their designs; and military planners account for a wide array of strategic scenarios that requires expanding costs now just in case they happen in the future. We are thus pretty good at valuing risk and putting a price tag on it.

The problem lies with who’s interest the shot-callers on climate change policy serve: the state. Despite what the heralds of globalization were saying 10 years ago, the state is and will remain the main actor and decider on the international stage for the foreseeable future. The state is personified as having interests on the world stage and its leaders pursue those interests as they engage in competition with other states. Consequently, no state wishes to adopt measures that will undermine their economic interest if they cannot ensure that other states will do the same without cheating. That is very difficult to do.

Take the model of domestic politics. Here, the state’s interest - often called national interest, sometimes clashes with the individual’s interest. The liberal left and the conservative right can best be seen as who’s interest they advocate most: the individual for the liberals and the state for the conservative. Both sometimes are in conflict with one another as anyone who even remotely follows the politics of his country can attest.

But of course, not all problems are zero sum games. In fact, what is good for the state is in most cases good for the individual, and vice versa. Likewise, what is good for the international community is often good for the states that compose it. Indeed, if the worst climate change scenario proves true, there might be no states to talk of in a post apocalyptic world.

The problem thus becomes one of common good. Common goods, throughout history, have always been served by governments, or by rich nobles performing the function. In any case, public goods always go beyond the individual’s interest. Thus, the lack of representation of the states’ collective is tied to the lack of institution that will carry out the public good function on climate change.

What we are lacking, decidedly, is real power vested in a body representing the international community’s interest, i.e. the states’ collective interest, to tackle problems of climate change in order to balance the power of the states and enforce upon them their resolutions.

This undoubtedly raises questions of sovereignty which, in our current effective state model, can be thorny, but which are not insurmountable. There are precedents: The WTO and the European Union, while both messy and uneven experiences, are successful, enduring institutions in their own right.

On the other hand, the recent Copenhagen summit was chaotic, unprofessional, and inflamed by fanatic protesters. While much of the legwork should have been done before the conference, the leaders arrived at the end left to hang dry by the negotiators. The leaders essentially signed a face-saving agreement that amounted to nothing. The president of the conference and the organization put too much on the table coming from too many people, and there was too little head-to-head time between the main actors to accomplish anything meaningful.

What we need to start with is to create an international body, probably modeled on the WTO, with permanent staffers both at the international level and within each countries to carry out negotiations, tackle issues one at a time in a deliberative manner, do one-on-ones between specific states, or blocs of states, and slowly develop a permanent institution that will have its own processes and functions with an arbitration arm that can issue legally binding obligations between countries.

While the problem is pressing, you can’t accomplish that in two weeks - no matter how many costumes and props you bring to the party.

Is China is Becoming the Leader in Green Energy?

This week, The New Yorker published the best piece I've read so far on China's political-economic seamanship as it moves forward in the new field of green technologies. The piece is a great help in contrasting the US system and the Chinese one as they come to grip with new Energy solutions.

I see the principal themes of the development of new Energy technologies in both countries as follows: the difference between the role of government in China and that in the US; the lead that China is currently getting not only in manufacturing the new green technologies but in augmenting those technologies; and the question of whether China is capable of discovering the next big landmark technological revolution, and thus breaking the current predominant "Apple model" (own the brand, the design, and the intellectual property, and then get China to drive down the costs).

Here's my short version of the article with commentary.


First, it must be established that China is seeking to attain the leadership role in green energy:

As President Hu Jintao, a political heir of Deng Xiaoping, put it in October of this year, China must “seize preemptive opportunities in the new round of the global energy revolution.”

The US will irreparably fall behind if they do not act :

David Sandalow, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs, has been to China five times in five months. He told me, “China’s investment in clean energy is extraordinary.” For America, he added, the implication is clear: “Unless the U.S. makes investments, we are not competitive in the clean-tech sector in the years and decades to come.”

China's recent experience developing wind powered solutions is discussed: China actually covered ground through protectionism but, at the same time, (temporarily) felt the ills of a command economy:

China has made up so much ground on clean tech in part through protectionism—until recently, wind farms were required to use turbines with locally manufactured parts. The requirement went into effect in 2003; by the time it was lifted, six years later, Chinese turbines dominated the local market. In fact, the policy worked too well: China’s wind farms have grown so fast that, according to estimates, between twenty and thirty per cent aren’t actually generating electricity. A surplus of factories was only part of the problem: local bureaucrats, it turned out, were being rewarded not for how much electricity they generated but for how much equipment they installed—a blunder that is often cited by skeptics of China’s efforts. 

They have a point; many factories are churning out cheap, unreliable turbines, because the government lacks sufficient technical standards.

While the US government is only starting to think about revamping its aging national electricity grid - and being marred by parochial concerns about power line trajectories, etc, the author reports that China is making bigger strides, and more easily:

China is already buying and installing the world’s most efficient transmission lines—“an area where China has actually moved ahead of the U.S.,” according to Deborah Seligsohn, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.

Yet, it is worth noting that, just as much in China as in the US, the bigger share of energy generation will continue to come from coal for the foreseeable future:

The prospect of a future powered by the sun and the wind is so appealing that it obscures a less charming fact: coal is going nowhere soon. Even the most optimistic forecasts agree that China and the United States, for the foreseeable future, will remain ravenous consumers. (China burns more coal than America, Europe, and Japan combined.)

Here, China is actually taking the technological lead to make coal cleaner:

“Fifteen or twenty years ago, anyone you asked would have said that Western technologies in coal gasification were superior to anything in China,” Lin said. “Now, I think, that claim is not true.”

Above all else, widespread price control in China has helped its researchers find efficient, cleaner coal solutions by raising the price of coal which forced firms to reduce their costs of production which fosters innovation. In the US, on the other hand, raising prices through taxation is a difficult thing to do due to the powerful interest groups constantly lobbying a congress that is highly polarized and concerned with financing their next campaign.

The article also recounts how China is transforming its cities by adopting green technologies. Measures range from subsidizing low-energy bulbs, to creating programs to swap out old furnaces for new cleaner alternatives such as solar water heaters. In the US, on the other hand, those measures are often seen as infringing upon the right of the american citizen to choose what he consumes.


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The first lesson to be had is that a new dose of political-economy targeted at reshaping and revamping how the US invests and fosters in Energy R&D and manufacturing will be necessary.

He said that its purpose is simple: to spur innovation of ideas so risky and expensive that no private company will attempt them alone. The government is not trying to ordain which technologies will prevail; the notion of attempting to pick “winners and losers” is as unpopular among Chinese technologists as it is in Silicon Valley. Rather, Yao sees his role as trying to insure that promising ideas have a chance to contend at all. “If the government does nothing, the technology is doomed to fail,” he said.

The other reason why government intervention is necessary is because companies natureally serve their own interest before the national interest. There is a good example of that again in the article when Kevin Czinger, an american business man with an interest in developing the first mass produced electric car, finally elected to find chinese partners because he figured american car makers were going to move slowly so as not to undercut their own products.

Perhaps addressing the free-market purists, here's what one chinese engineer describes the competitiveness of the system of the Chinese system for developing new technologies:

“[Competition] is very intense—like a Presidential election,” he joked, and he sketched out the system: “Normally, each project will have five to eight contenders—some less, some more—but there is a broad field of innovators. A lot of companies are doing the same thing, so everyone wants to have a breakthrough.” He went on, “It’s not possible to have a flawless system, but it makes relatively few mistakes. It combines the will of the state with mass innovation.

China is investing in R&D - particularly in Energy, in a huge way.

R. & D. expenditures have grown faster in China than in any other big country—climbing about twenty per cent each year for two decades, to seventy billion dollars last year.

Comparatively, the US has slashed early investments in Energy under the Reagan administration and again in the second Bush term. The latter came after against a growing awareness in the American scientific community that there is a pressing need for investment in new energy technologies. The reasons for the cuts were the usual republican concerns about big government and the belief that the market is the best mechanism for directing economic growth and innovation.

But the fact is, government investment in green energy makes sense both from a liberal point of view and a conservative point of view: it will generate GDP and jobs; it will make the US competitive in the next big technology internationally which will directly translate into national power; and, oh - by the way, it will help to save the planet from climate change. Thus, investing in Energy R&D is the biggest and best job package Obama can make. And, unlike the stimulus, it will outlast his administration.

But there is a second lesson we can draw from this article: in a world where the state will continue to be at the forefront of political change, one advantage China will have over its American competitor is the age old nimbleness of an authoritarian political regime - both in diplomacy and in economic policy.

Congress, please take note.

But the chinese system is not without its fault, and America has a tradition of overestimating its rivals. The Chinese R&D financing programs have experienced their share of scandals:

... it confirmed what many Chinese scientists said among themselves: the Chinese science system was riddled with plagiarism, falsified data, and conflicts of interest.

There is also a tendency by the Chinese bureaucrats to take less risk and fund the projects that will keep the failures low. On the other hand, the tradition of venture capitalism in the west assumes the rate of failure will be high.

... the system that allowed China to master the production of wind turbines and batteries does not necessarily equip China to invent the energy technology that nobody has yet imagined. “Add as many mail coaches as you please, you will never get a railroad,” the economist Joseph Schumpeter once wrote. Scale is not a substitute for radical invention, and the Chinese bureaucracy chronically discourages risk.

Here is perhaps the million dollar question:

As an editorial last year in Nature put it, “An even deeper question is whether a truly vibrant scientific culture is possible without a more widespread societal commitment to free expression."

While the US government is slowly waking up to the need to invest in Energy technology, the differences in attitudes between Congress and the office of the President are telling. While Congress - and in particular democrats, view the issue through the prism of protecting domestic jobs, and preventing China from taking the lead rather than embracing the problem itself, Obama seems to get it:

... in April, Obama vowed to return America’s investment in research and development to a level not seen since the space race. “The nation that leads the world in twenty-first-century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the twenty-first-century global economy,” he said. “I believe America can and must be that nation.”

And this:

The stimulus package passed in February put more than thirty-eight billion dollars into the Department of Energy for renewable-energy projects—including four hundred million for ARPA-E, the agency that Bush opposed.

The conclusion the author draws about the near future seems to be appropriate, and is worth using to wrap this up:

The larger fact, however, is that no single nation is likely to dominate the clean-energy economy. Goldwind, Coda, and the Thermal Power Research Institute are hybrids of Western design and Chinese production, and no nation has yet mastered both the invention and the low-cost manufacturing of clean technology. It appears increasingly clear that winners in the new-energy economy will exploit the strengths of each side. President Obama seems inclined toward this view. When he visited Beijing in November, he and Hu Jintao cut several deals to share energy technology and know-how which will accelerate progress in both countries. This was hardly a matter of handing technology to China; under one of the deals, for instance, the Missouri-based company Peabody Energy purchased a stake in GreenGen, so that it can obtain data from, and lend expertise to, a cutting-edge Chinese power plant.

Afghanis fighting for Afghanistan

[Afghan] Police fought a three-hour gunbattle in the center of an Afghan provincial capital Monday, finally killing two Taliban militants who stormed a multistory market with dozens of civilians inside, an official said. (AP)

The above AP article recounts an isolated clash between Afghani police forces and Taliban fighters in the small regional capital of Paktia. The incident was anecdotal and small in scale: there were no more than 2 to 5 insurgents, the police did what police do, it took place in a remote area of Afghanistan, and it isn't going to affect the greater strategic situation of the country. However, I believe it could potentially be significant if it is a sign of things to come.

What's the big deal?

The big deal is that since 2001, the American forces have taken over the security for the Afghan people in its entirety.  As a result, the central government is shielded from its own regional foes by foreign troops fighting their war for them. The big deal is that the firefight took place in Paktia province, one of the many areas in the South and the East controlled by the Taliban where no Afghani national troops - nor any provincial militia, have dared opposing them for the past 8 years.

This may be an isolated incident - and other similar clashes certainly have occurred in the past years here and there, but the frequency of precisely this type of incident will be the largest measure of success for the new American strategy in the area, and the biggest factor in the stability of the country and the sustainablity of the central government for years to come.

In the next year and a half, Afghanis fighting for Afghanistan is more important than the reduction of corruption, the quantity of american military operations, or the success of the agricultural and infrastructure development program, while all important in their own right. Only the stability of Pakistan - and their continued military pressure on insurgent groups on their side of the border, rivals in importance.

The reason is simple: the Americans are interposed between two warring factions while the fighting ability of the central Afghani fighting capabilities were allowed to wither over the years. Remember the Northern Alliance? It ceased to exist because it's lost its purpose. For this, a lack of American forethought is to blame.

Still, while the new American strategy in Afghanistan now favors more embedding american forces with Afghani troops to fight a scaled up insurgency, the emphasis must be more on finding local allies rather than building a national army from the ground up. It takes time to raise an army and assure proper hierarchy and control; it takes much less to deal with local leaders, hand them a wad of cash, put a rifle in their hands, and make them comprehend they will either have to fight for it or loose it. A local solution is even more important because the country is so fragmented ethnically and geographically, so isolated and poor in some of the Taliban regions, and lacking a concentrated national resource like Iraq did which increase the tendency for decentralization.

The problem in other words, is incentives: neither the central Afghani, nor provincial leaders will have incentives in as long as the american forces are taking the bullets day in and day out for them. As a result, a proper dialogue - violent tho it may be to start with, between the warring factions of Afghanistan cannot resume and cannot resolve itself efficiently (short of a complete destruction of one of the factions, but that is impractical and unfeasible).

My fear is that if the local approach to the problem lacks proper emphasis, and if embedded military actions become the exception rather than the norm by the force of things, the American generals in July 2011 will have very few sectors to recommend for troop draw down. It is thus better to start sooner and move aggressively if you truly want to become the "cavalry over the hill" rather than continue to be the protector of a defenseless ally.

The isolated incident between the handful of police and insurgent forces in the tiny border province of Paktia must be a sign of things to come if we are to witness a successful and more durable counter insurgency in the next year and a half.

Shultz on Too Big to Fail

In a PBS Newshour interview, George Schultz opposed the 700 billion bail outs for financial firms last year. As Labor and then Treasure secretary, he successively successfully opposed bailing out, or giving in to labor demands and pressures facing companies that were deemed too big to fail.

The basic principle he puts up against that is that when you have skin in the game, you take care of the money you manage. In the past year, this has certainly become a cliché.

But he also said that if a company is too big to fail, then it shouldn't be allowed to get that big. Here are the two mechanisms he would used to go about doing that.

Christmas lights

While he recognizes that some companies will have interests in becoming big, parts of their company should be individualized such that if one parts fail, not all of it fails. If the financial products department of AIG would have been allowed to fail without bringing down the healthier insurance department, that would have been better.

He used the analogy of Christmas lights. Before, when one bulb went out, the whole chain would go out and it took a long time to figure out which light bulb was bad the longer the chain got. Manufacturers solved the problem by creating a parallel mechanism in which one bulb can now go out without bringing the whole chain down. The same should be done for large companies that are too big too fail.

The bigger you are, the bigger your social responsibility

He also said some additional regulations are needed for very large companies that have large economic and social impacts. Mainly, a big financial companies should have larger capital requirements than smaller ones since the risk of failure affects so many more people.

This would inevitably mitigate some of the economic advantages gained from M/A's, but who would want to build a skyscraper without proper fire protection?

The failures of the legislative process

In the wake of growing entrenchment of partisanship in american politics, and, as we speak, in the denouement of the health reform bill, concerns about the efficiency and the soundness of the american legislative process are rising.

Here's a quick piece striking a conversation on the topic, in particular about changing the majority threshold and how to avoid the repeat of Liebermann-esque or Nelson-esque holdouts.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/how-to-limit-filibusters.html


Actually, it would be interesting to get some numbers on how easily or not policy was passed 100 years ago or 50 years compared to today, and then, in particular, how easily congress has amended and can amend its own ways going forward.

Iran's nuclear aspirations, Turkey's take on it, and what 2010 has in store

Iran abandoned an agreement negotiated in October seeing them send nuclear material for enrichment in Russia and in France just as fast as it adopted it. While negotiations along the same lines may be revived, the recent pickup in internal unrest has put those on hold.

Israel had put a deadline of December '09 for negotiations with Iran while they have given assurances behind closed doors that they are not yet committed to a military strike. The renewed and intensification of negotiations - with a tilt towards stronger sanctions is likely to resume soon with pressure coming from the US as they have announced at the end of December. In doing so, it will be important to understand the positions of possible detractors in the process such as China and Russia. Turkey is another one of those and considering their interests in the affair will have to take precedence over unilateral action vis-à-vis Iran.

Here's a focus on Turkey as it sees its neighbor, Iran.


Turkey, like China, have large commercial interests in Iran and are not ready to jeopardize that. On top of that, Turkey shares a long border with Tehran which happens to be kurdish territory. Turkey launched a series of raids inside Iraq a few years ago to attack kurdish villages and they consider the PKK a terrorist organization. Erdogan mentioned that Turkey has a treaty with Iran regulating their relationship going back to 1636! They will thus support a strong Iranian government no matter who's in power. Erdogan has called Ahmenidejad (sp?) his "friend" in the past; he clearly doesn't want to estrange his neighbour.

Turkey also feels like it's been treated unfairly over the past 50 years in its petition to integrate the EU. Today, it seems to have grown out of that phase. It is enjoying economic prosperity despite of it and is now looking around the world for partners and allies in a more even fashion. Luckily for Turkey, the world is now becoming more multi polar and they can more easily choose who to dance with. Look for it to regain a more influential role in the Middle East in the years and decades to come. Thus, above all, Turkey wants to remain independent. They are likely to continue to refuse moving closer to the US or other NATO countries on Iran nuclear issue or other similar agendas just like they did in 2003 when they were asked to play a greater role in the Iraq invasion. They are not about to align the faith of their country with what they see as american or israeli interests as they witness the turmoil it has created in a country that has gone down that route, Pakistan.

So while China and Russia have shown some leniency to the US on the Iran issue if we go by the latest Security Council resolution, Turkey might be a tougher sell. Turkey wants more diplomatic efforts to be done which they believe haven't been exhausted yet.

What is the relevance of Turkey? It is a secular country by constitution, it is the only working democracy in the muslim world, it is very prosperous especially by middle eastern standards, it is a NATO country and aspires to become an EU member. This is a natural ally for the US in the region, one that isn't tainted by oil resources, or hasn't been forced through conflict to become an ally. While the main issue for the US must be ultimately to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, attitudes of countries such as Turkey must be considered. This is something that the Obama administration does infinitely better than the last one. They must continue to do so, and cherish and nurture deep and wide diplomatic ties with as many countries as they can.

So what's going to happen with the nuclear issue in Iran in the first few months of 2010?

El Baradei, the now retiring IAEA head, has said for his departing words that we were "at the end of the road" with Iran. But short of an Israeli or American aerial strike in 2010, I think the new direction will be tougher sanctions - if that. Some sanctions that are being discussed could be crippling from the Iranian economy and many people will want to try that first. This is what the international community will settle for unless conditions change drasticially. While Israel is the only country facing a survival issue in this whole affair, they would be foolish to act militarily on their own. This is especially true considering the enduring political turmoil within Iran as I write this which is one of the major condition that could change very rapidly in the months to come. A revolution within Iran could render the nuclear issue moot, so why spend more political capital now if the indications are Iran is still a good way away from a bomb?

The last thing I'd like to add is about Iran's intentions for nuclear energy.

When you are faced with an enemy, the natural, instinctual thing to do is to assume that that enemy is in the business of deploying all of its energy solely to do you harm, particularly in the most evil, vicious way. The problem is that those assumptions are not only always different from the truth, but they enhance themselves in a vicious circle because your enemy will entertain the same rationale (Indeed, the tragic all-out-war, downward maelstrom of militaristic schedules and attack contingencies that was WW1 was in fact a direct consequence of this rationale considering the rather limited, regional original event that started it). The fact is the "death to america" rhetoric that we often hear coming from Iranian Friday preachers or officials is mostly targeted at domestic audiences, and is fringe in nature. At best - or at worst? they are the Glenn Becks of Iran. Neither the iranian military nor the clerical council (whichever you believe to be the real authority within Iran at the moment) would have on top of its to-do list on day one of acquiring a functional bomb to drop it on Israel.

Iran and other similar countries who want, or wanted the bomb in the past, do so for two reasons. First, the bomb is seen as a symbol of power and prestige. It would transform its relationships with neighbors, add more weight to their negotiating capabilities internationally, and enhance the national sentiment at home. Second, and this one is less obvious, Iran and many other countries, still feel the weight of the post colonial historical legacy. They have the need - no the urge, to break away from it. They feel that the anti-nuclear pressure exerted against them is patronising. Ask any people on the street of those countries why they want the bomb and chances are they will tell you: "You have it, why not us?"

The Mission

The purpose of this blog is to comment and analyze international news and events.

The guiding principle informing this commentary is a take on Socrates' Paradox which says that nobody does evil willingly applied to international affairs. My belief is also that a certain moral neutrality is necessary for a better understanding of events as they unfold and inscribe themselves against the background of historical change material and moral.

There are many voices to be heard on politics coming from the media and governments, but few have the luxury of not being partisan or not being otherwise polarized by the unconscious cultural narratives constituting their historical position. My goal is to add my voice to those few. It is not a matter of being "a-ideological" - that is impossible; rather, it is a matter of depth and an attempt to make the unconscious conscious.

While I will never refrain from advocacy, the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, and, principally, the desire to understand the "other side" of the story for a better global understanding will remain at the core of my reflection. I will often adopt the american point of view, but this is only because I live there.