The Law of the Sea Treaty, in its twenty-fifth year pending approval by Congress, is at least good for a case study in interconnectedness. Since the treaty came into effect for other countries in 1982, sea ice in the arctic has decreased by 20%, setting off a mad rush for the resources (oil, gas, diamonds, nickel) that were, until recently, inaccessible. Other countries bordering the Arctic are staking claims to these resources based on their rights as defined by the Law of the Sea Treaty. But the U.S. -- the treaty's lone hold-out -- has no basis to make claims. We are in the ironic position of being unable to secure one of the few benefits of climate change because we've refused to sign a treaty that is in our own national interest.

Perhaps climate change in the Arctic will push the Senate to do what the Pentagon, the administration and Greenpeace could not: ratify the treaty.

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Here's a tip of the hat (with a tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert's "tip o' the hat/ wag o' the finger") to the newish Campaign for International Justice blog. We especially like the blog's attention to offering specific actions that readers can take, and the upbeat overall tone about the possibility of progress towards international justice. As someone who traveled extensively in the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in more peaceful days, the blog's account of a former child soldier there hits hard and could have been an unrelieved downer. Instead, we come away with solid information, an affirmation of human dignity, and the possibility of showing our own solidarity.

The blog's tone is particularly rare -- and valuable -- among advocates addressing these gut-wrenchingly difficult abuses. That's why we at GII/Continuous Progress Strategic Services are impressed by the name, tone and approach of the emerging Action Group to End Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery. You will be hearing much more from the Action Group as it gears up its website and other communications channels. Truth in advertising note: we are assisting Humanity United and The Sheridan Group with the Action Group's planning and evaluation process. But hey: we like to work with people whose work we like!

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 1:08 PM | Permalink

This blog is meant to highlight observations "where global issues, advocacy and messaging meet." That can be a dangerous intersection -- or at least an uncomfortable one -- when an issue position that the GII has messaged and advocated for gets called into question. Thanks to Mauro De Lorenzo's work at the American Enterprise Institute, I had the opportunity this past Friday to hear some challenging perspectives on African development issues. De Lorenzo's interests in development leapfrog the current Washington wonk debate about structural reforms to official development assistance (ODA). He focuses instead on facilitating development through means of which ODA is a small part: investment financing; agriculture subsidy reform (oops, too late); trade agreements. One recurrent theme: how to sweep away impediments to large-scale investments by emerging African, Western and Southern investors. (To some in this room, China's free-spending ways in Africa looked like just the thing to jump-start market-led growth; this blog has featured De Lorenzo's views on the subject before.)

We'll feature De Lorenzo's own summary once he and his team go public with it, but one recurring theme was especially striking: electric power as a constraint on investment and economic growth. Is creating a more predictable and welcoming environment for private investment the right way to fire up the grid? This account from the New York Times makes it sound a bit more complicated than that. But maybe I'll see the light after a couple more meetings.

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 3:15 PM | Permalink

We've been running something of a mini-series on China as a key figure in the intricate tapestry of globalization. China makes such an enormous quantity of the world's goods that consumers -- particularly Americans -- are forcing its leaders to think more carefully about a cultivating a brand. A few weeks ago I noted that assurances of product safety will only take China so far up the economic ladder. If it wants to start competing on more than price, it will have to cultivate some of the finer things as well.

Today the New York Times ran a story on China's brand, titled "China Moves to Change Its Damaged Global Image." Chinese leaders are doing a lot, even by consumer safety advocates' standards, to assure the world that its goods are safe:

Last week, Beijing unveiled new controls aimed at fighting counterfeit drugs and substandard exports. High-ranking officials and regulators vowed to strengthen China’s food safety system, tighten controls over chemical use by large seafood and meat producers, and create a system that holds producers more accountable for selling unsafe products.

These are needful steps in any economic coming-of-age story. But this latest step in China's growth will only sustain its image for so long before deeper pressures cause consumers to ask what it even means to "regulate" something in China:

“The issue is not whether Chinese businesses are regulated; they are,” says Yasheng Huang, an associate professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The issue is that the regulators themselves are unable to be impartial in the enforcement of the laws. Those laws are meaningless in a system that does not even pretend to have judicial independence, media freedom and legislative oversight.”

Huang makes an interesting point about the underpinnings of policies as ho-hum as regulatory effectiveness: even these hinge on democratic norms. It will be fascinating to watch China's leadership navigate calls for accountability from producers while trying to maintain its own unaccountable hold on power.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:27 PM | Permalink

Upon news that the House passed another bloated farm bill on Friday that subsidizes U.S. farmers (mostly of the deceased, non-farming and corporate varieties) at the expense of poor people around the world, it seems like the U.S. and EU might never get their act together.

Agriculture is probably the industry closest to the hearts of both Americans and Europeans. Farm policies that damage prospects for development in poor countries may be the last to go -- a shame, since most of the developing world (particularly the poorest) still make their living in the agricultural sector.

But Germany is showing the way in another sector that has undergone a similar history with deep roots in the culture: coal. The Washington Post reports that by 2018, hard coal production in Germany will cease. That's a big deal for a country that built its economic success -- several times over -- on energy from its own coal. Since World War II, coal has become an economic burden rather than a blessing for Germany, just as agriculture is becoming for the the U.S. and EU:

For decades, German lawmakers have propped up the industry, unwilling to risk massive layoffs and reluctant to eliminate a reliable energy source as gas and oil supplies become scarcer.

But after spending more than $200 billion in subsidies since the 1960s, the federal government this year decided that the practice had become unaffordable. The 2018 sunset for the hard-coal industry was set.

Coal is more fungible than food, for certain. No large country will ever do away entirely with its own food production. But at least this case seems to show that there's hope that sensible policy-making will eventually catch up with bad policies.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:12 AM | Permalink

I know it seems like this happened a long time ago, but it was only about six weeks ago that an oil find was made off the coast of Ghana.

Since then I've been thinking on and off about what can be done when something like this happens. The people in the know about Africa, development and the relationship between the discovery of something like this and the relative poverty of the people in the country all rolled their eyes about Ghana's good fortune. Like Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea before it, the oil would mean the rich in the country would cash in, looting the new source of wealth and keeping any funds from flowing to those most in need.

I was doing some World Bank reading, including Sebastian Mallaby's "The World's Banker" about Wolfenson and John Cassidy's New Yorker piece, "The Next Crusade." And it struck me: why isn't there some capacity, from the Bank or the International Monetary Fund or some other agency, to sweep into action when a country discovers its long-sought oil reserves. They would go and freely offer advice, help build systems to make sure the money went somewhere, to manage debt, fulfill obligations to poor, provide for defense and build national credibility. (Some of this came from the somewhat botched effort by Wolfowitz to link Chad's World Bank aid package to the government's proper use of the oil revenue.) The team could work alongside existing ministries, and heeding the team's advice could be linked (more smoothly, I should think) to debt forgiveness that the country would still like to receive.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 12:41 PM | Permalink

I have personally been a little on the fence about the Indian nuclear deal as it has evolved over time, but I'm inclined to look upon the latest incarnation less charitably.

Why? Because of the double standard. In the world, the United States is permitted more latitude with double standards than other nations, mainly because we hold a lot of the cards. Our national wealth and the way our government can control access to that wealth makes people want to deal with us. We can usually get our way, regardless of the obvious duplicity in some arrangements.

But we're dealing in a different arena right now. India (and China as well) is seen by most as a rising second-world country. They have more customers, more productivity and a dynamic consumer culture we want to engage, understand, and sell things to. So, on the surface it might make sense that they get to take advantage of the double-standards this time.

However, the cost is too great. This administration and others have drawn a line when it comes to developing a civilian nuclear capacity alongside a weapons program. This is the key problem:

Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who opposed the initial deal and said he would try to defeat the new arrangement, said Thursday, “If you make an exception for India, we will be preaching from a barstool to the rest of the world.”

Though India would be prohibited from using the fuel it purchases from the United States for nuclear weapons, the ability to reprocess the fuel means India’s other supplies would be freed up to expand its arsenal.

“It creates a double standard,” Mr. Markey said. “One set of rules for countries we like, another for countries we don’t.”

Robert J. Einhorn, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that in “the first phase of negotiations with India, the administration made concessions that put the country on par with countries that have signed” the Nonproliferation Treaty. (Israel and Pakistan are the only other countries that have refused to sign it, and North Korea quit the treaty four years ago.)

“Now we’ve gone beyond that, and given India something that we don’t give to Russia and China.”

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 9:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Economists and sociologists spend a lot of time trying to ascertain how globalization "really" affects the poor around the world. Are their incomes rising or falling? Do they have more opportunities or fewer? How are they keeping up with better educated, higher earners? Is the gap closing?

The annual Pew Global Attitudes Project is an interesting diversion from that line of questioning. Instead of asking questions about people, it just asks people. The result is a useful subjective measure of how satisfied people around the world are with their lives and how they feel about their own respective futures.

The role that momentum -- positive and negative -- plays as a determinant in people's answers is striking. Common sense would tell you that comparatively rich citizens of the developed world might be a little glum about slowdown in the growth of new prospects, but overall, still pretty happy with their lot in life. And perhaps improving conditions in poor countries might sound a distant note of optimism, but the difficult reality of daily life would seem to overwhelm that prospect.

Not so. The Pew project's recent findings, "A Rising Tide Lifts Mood in the Developing World," reminds us that the direction and speed of the tide has the biggest role in overall satisfaction with life. The level of the tide itself is less important (at least, this is true on the large scale).

Newspapers have mined nuggets from Pew's many findings to tell the stories that emerge from the data. The Financial Times picked up on Pew's topline finding: a sharp decline in support for suicide bombing in Muslim countries. The Times points to truly remarkable changes in Lebanon, among other countries:

Of the 16 majority Muslim countries included in the survey, 15 have shown waning enthusiasm for terrorism in general and suicide terrorism in particular, it says. The most striking declines are in Lebanon, where in 2007 34 per cent of people say suicide bombings are justified compared with 74 per cent in 2002.

Grand Pew pollster Andrew Kohut weighs in on the dynamics behind this shift in opinion:

What is striking about these numbers is that support for terrorism has fallen by most in those countries that have experienced significant levels of domestic terrorism in the last few years – Pakistan and Lebanon being obvious examples.

The New York Times found a different thread, teaming up with Pew to investigate the positive attitudes that Africans have about their futures:

Despite a thicket of troubles, from deadly illnesses like AIDS and malaria to corrupt politicians and deep-seated poverty, a plurality of Africans say they are better off today than they were five years ago and are optimistic about their future and that of the next generation.

As anyone who studies (or lives in) Africa will attest, there are no simple answers to be had, and the picture changes from country to country. Overall 7 in 10 Africans are satisfied with their governments, and "a plurality of respondents said that their financial situation had improved in the last five years, with the exception of Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Uganda." But at the same time, respondents are deeply skeptical of their leadership: "More resource wealth has not necessarily led to broad prosperity. Of the respondents in Nigeria, 82 percent said average people were not benefiting from the country’s oil wealth."

Overall, I found the Pew project's findings to be a refreshing conversation with respondents in a variety of situations. After all, this whole development enterprise is most fundamentally about helping people lead more satisfying lives. It's well worth hearing what they have to say.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 1:30 PM | Permalink

Joel Brinkley's Sunday piece in the San Francisco Chronicle is devastating. (Via.) It makes the idea that America will have success promoting our vision for the final 18 months of the Bush presidency more than laughable.

I remember the heady days for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

About 2 1/2 years ago, when she was new in office, I accompanied her on her first trip around the world, with stops in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Korea, Japan and China. Crowds gathered to see her limousine drive past; people whistled, waved and cheered. Interviewers routinely asked her whether she was planning to run for president. One TV reporter in India told her she was "arguably the most powerful woman in the world." She chuckled but did not exactly agree -- or disagree.

How things change.

A few months ago, she decided to write an opinion piece about Lebanon. She enlisted John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco Systems as a co-author, and they wrote about public/private partnerships and how they might be of use in rebuilding Lebanon after last summer's war. No one would publish it.

Think about that. Every one of the major newspapers approached refused to publish an essay by the secretary of state. Price Floyd, who was the State Department's director of media affairs until recently, recalls that it was sent to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.

As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper. But finally they just gave up. "I kept hearing the same thing: 'There's no news in this.' " Floyd said. The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush's wise leadership. "It read like a campaign document."

So I grieve for the incredibly weakened state of Foggy Bottom. Not even reaching the question of whether I agree with this administration or want to see it's diplomatic goals reached, it's incredibly distressing that what should be the principle tool for international outreach is so weakened.

The damage, sadly, was almost entirely self-inflicted. And the place where the administration's influence is most needed (and where the administration has decided to focus that influence) is the very source of that damage, the Middle East. All this is made worse by the real possibility that very bad things will happen because we aren't in a position to use any tool in the foreign policy arsenal besides force. We have no diplomatic persuasion left in the Middle East. That credibility is up in smoke.

(Image of cover of Expreso from Oswaldo used via Creative Commons license.)

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 1:19 PM | Permalink

Unless you're an "inside-the-beltway dweller," chances are slim that you remember Joseph Nye's book, "Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics," from 2003. But Nye's idea of soft power -- "the ability to get what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your goals" -- is indeed persuasive.

Nye's articulation of what makes America powerful has undergone criticism ("Are you saying we should be soft on terrorists?") and subsequent re-framing since -- as eminent World Public Opinion pollster Steve Kull points out -- Americans only trust a leader who can go toe-to-toe with bad guys and not blink. Thus, it seems that "soft power" has given way to "smart power" -- the new watch-word amongst advocates for a more balanced, less militarized approach to U.S. foreign policy. The original term has cultural implications that one might argue are lost in the latter formulation, which sounds a bit technocratic, implying less that America's strength lies in the inherent attractiveness of its culture and ideals than that its clever leaders should actively be doing clever things to enhance American power abroad.

In any case, the U.S. could demonstrably use a large dose of either. Political realities being what they are (no presidential candidate is about to go trumpeting the word "soft" as a talking point), there is much to be said for focusing on America's smarts rather than its brawn. The Center for U.S. Global Engagement hit on that idea as a rallying point for its Impact 08 campaign, a place for business leaders, NGOs, policy-makers and government officials to come together in an effort to better the quality of U.S. foreign policy by focusing the 2008 presidential campaigns on the idea of "smart power."

In the words of the campaign:

Today’s U.S. investments in diplomacy and development are insufficient to promote global stability, expand the benefits of the global economy, and guarantee American security. Our increasingly interconnected world requires strong U.S. leadership to strengthen democratic governance, harness economic potential, alleviate global poverty and improve human conditions. American investments in these goals will reaffirm America’s tradition of moral leadership, reduce our vulnerability to threats from destabilizing forces and improve America’s image abroad. To achieve these objectives, the U.S. must use smart power – elevating diplomacy and development assistance while integrating them with our economic policies, defense and intelligence activities.

A tent as big as Impact 08 speaks with a loud voice but risks agreeing on little in the way of concrete proposals. Thankfully, the campaign convened a crack working group that not only formulated a commendable strategy and vision but also delved into options for action. The result is a solid foundation of ideas that presidential candidates can use to flesh out a vision for better U.S. global engagement.

Today's Impact 08 kickoff event was a high profile affair. It was interesting to hear each of the speakers -- including former cabinet officials (Madeleine Albright, Tom Ridge, Frank Carlucci) and a retired general (Barry McCaffrey) -- articulate a vision of American "smart power." Carlucci recalled U.S. housing and medical programs he oversaw in Portugal in the 1970's that helped to pull the country back from civil war. Albright rallied moderates -- "Moderation does not signal a lack of resolve: we need militant moderates!" -- to a faithful pursuit of America's ideals. Among her more memorable lines: "We can't rescue America's ideals from misuse and skepticism by giving up on them. Democracy is the exercise of freedom, even if we don't agree with its use. Democracy is a form of government, not a ticket to a heavenly paradise where everyone agrees with us." Ridge echoed that though America may be seen as an adversary, "the idea of America" still makes people queue up at U.S. consulates all over the world to come here.

Most of the speakers expressed the need to reconcile "the idea of America" with its image and its policies abroad. Campaign director Liz Schrayer promised in her closing remarks that the Center's website will cover closely what presidential candidates say about U.S. engagement abroad as their campaigns develop and as Impact 08 takes its smart power message on the road in primary states.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:58 PM | Permalink

On the run today, so a couple quick hits are all I'll have time for:

• Via PSD Blog, we learn that the Global Development Network's 2007 Global Development Awards competition is open. Check out past winners to see the caliber of the competition.
  
• More on the Bush administration's fading interest in any country not named Iraq: The New York Times reports that President Bush "spoken more frequently with [Iraq Prime Minister] Mr. Maliki than just about any other foreign leader besides those of Britain and Germany." The story goes on to explain that Bush has implored Maliki to be a leader for all of Iraq, not merely Shiites. It seems odd for a president with approval ratings at historic lows to give advice to other leaders.
  
• Katya Andresen says this is the best email she's ever received. I was personally inspired by a message I received this week from the One Campaign about the farm bill, putting the focus not as much on poor farmers around the world but small, independent family-farmers here in the states. I've copied it below. What do you think?

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:33 AM | Permalink

Via Marshall Jevons at the Bayesian Heresy, I was turned on to a passage of James Fallows' sprawling China Makes, the World Takes article in the latest Atlantic Monthly. Jevons pulls out a portion of the story which makes you stop and think about all the things we get from China, and where that money goes. Here's a hint: it's a good thing (for the Chinese) that we consume their manufactured goods in such massive quantities:

In case the point isn't clear: Chinese workers making $1,000 a year have been helping American designers, marketers, engineers, and retailers making $1,000 a week (and up) earn even more. Plus, they have helped shareholders of U.S.-based companies.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 1:52 PM | Permalink

Time was that it was possible to do something creative, exciting and revolutionary on the American airwaves. The first televised presidential debates were 47 years ago, and that was groundbreaking. John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon in 1960 and single-handedly created the Kennedy mystique as a visual product, obliterating Nixon in the process. (Though Nixon got his revenge.) Nobody knew what to expect in 1960. Americans were on the edge of their seats.

Four years later, Americans were mourning Kennedy and turned to something earth-shattering from television once again. The Beatles came to the states and everyone stayed home to watch their debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Fine. Not everyone, but close to 40% of the U.S. population stayed home to watch.

We don't get much groundbreaking material on the television these days. I guess that's why I'm not surprised to see mostly disappointment from young observers who had witnessed the hype and found last night's YouTube/CNN Democratic Candidates debate lacking.

The question I have is "What did you expect?"

I don't mean to be testy, but let me put everyone at ease: Almost nothing unpredictable, ground-breaking, even edgy or surprising will ever be associated with this presidential campaign. Don't look for the revolutionary embrace of new media. (Cokie Roberts on NPR kept referring to it as "the new media" like "the new math.") New media is a wonderful tool, but it's just one tool and it's not for everyone. CNN's fumbled use of the technology, the fact that web videos are small to begin with and small things don't look good on TV, and the natural political instinct of any candidate to use a question as an opportunity to do anything but answer the question basically guarantee that this exercise wouldn't be revolutionary.

America's voters are certainly not the YouTube generation. In the 2004 election, the lowest rate of registration was people aged 18-24. The lowest turnout rate? 18-24 again. Who picks our leaders? That would be the 70% of folks 45 and older who turn out to vote. I won't lament that this wasn't a revolutionary piece of television or part of the presidential campaign. I'm not naive enough to think that would be the case. But I will lament that ham-fisted exercises like this one won't do anything to bring voter turnout up in the targeted age groups. In fact, it might drive people away.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:55 AM | Permalink

Last year at a GII-sponsored Effective Aid, Effective Advocacy meeting, a senior State Department official stated bluntly that, "Within five years the U.S. government will have a civilian response capability. The only question is whether it will be located at the Department of Defense or at [the State Department]." Sure enough, one year later, as State's Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization struggles to secure funding and clout, the Pentagon is charging ahead to build and deploy this sort of capability.

Stewart Patrick at the Center for Global Development has been following the Pentagon's preventive role in Africa closely. Of course, this is the Pentagon we're talking about, so a term like "preventive" won't do; rather, the Department of Defense is engaged in "Phase Zero" operations, particularly in Africa. Patrick explains what DoD means by this:

The Defense Department (DoD) spends countless hours drafting plans for potential wars. Each plan outlines specific missions and military requirements for discrete phases of war, from the run-up to hostilities (Phase 1), to the onset of military action (Phase 2), to major combat (Phase 3), to "post-conflict" stabilization (Phase 4), and then to the shift to civilian control (Phase 5).

More recently, the Pentagon got the idea that greater military attention to pre-conflict situations-preventive action-could pay huge dividends, by making it unnecessary to use U.S. troops around the world.

That’s where Phase Zero comes in. It implies that America's far-flung Regional Combatant Commands have a new military mission-eliminating the roots of instability and terrorism in the world's most dysfunctional countries.

This is a new sort of operation for the military. The first test subject will be Africa, where the Pentagon's Africa Command (AFRICOM) will begin an interagency process in 2008 to shape "activities designed to ameliorate troubling trends before they reach a crisis, rather than traditional operations involving the use of force... Although the commander will be a four-star general, one of his two deputies will be a senior U.S. foreign service officer, and the command will include many personnel from U.S. civilian agencies."

Interagency collaboration is well and good, but the same tensions that characterize the friction-filled reform process that has brought USAID and the State Department together (with State as the politically-motivated powerhouse) will define this effort. But this time, DoD will be the heavy-hitter, and Patrick fears that military planning will overtake diplomatic efforts:

The danger in this scheme is that it puts the Pentagon in the driver's seat and threatens to militarize U.S. engagement with Africa. Interagency coordination is one thing, but assigning leadership for this integration to the Pentagon is a risky proposition -- as a recent Washington Post article makes clear.

What the Pentagon is calling "Phase Zero" sounds suspiciously like what some of us still quaintly refer to as "diplomacy" and "development assistance." Given the Pentagon's massive resources compared to civilian agencies, any "shaping" activities that emerge from AFRICOM are likely to reflect U.S. military priorities and give short shrift to broader political and developmental considerations.

The sheer size of the Pentagon's budget and Patrick's fear of the "gravitational pull" it has on civilian leadership of U.S. foreign policy is one sort of concern. Would other agencies do the preventive work better (particularly from the perspective of people in failing states) if they had the funding?

Last week David Ignatius voiced another more fundamental objection: "There's a strong element of neo-imperialism here, the idea that someone's got to make these failed states work, and the U.S. has a responsibility to do so."

How much can the U.S. realistically expect to accomplish as the lead actor? Something tells me that DoD doesn't specialize in respectful partnerships with the developing world...

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The consensus in this article is that the Bush Administration's decision to emphasize diplomacy in the Middle East is "almost overdue" in the words of former Afghanistan envoy James Dobbins. This is almost incontrovertible, but I'll try anyhow. As Josh noted last week, just as we can't really afford to only practice our diplomacy when it suits us, we also can't afford to only practice it where it suits us. It is folly to decide that a half-decade of neglect of the countries in the Middle East can be remedied by an intense diplomatic push as the Bush presidency lurches toward its conclusion, countries in the greater orbit like Pakistan and Afghanistan begin to go off the rails and entities in the center like Palestine and Iraq descend deeper into chaos.

The world's only remaining superpower doesn't get to peddle diplomacy on a squeaky-wheel basis. Snubbing Africa with its potentially growing Islamic presence and deep poverty is a mistake anytime. Turning our back on South Asia, with the most populous Muslim nation, is never a good move.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 2:54 PM | Permalink

The Post carried a distressing story about global development Sunday -- an unfortunate tale of woe re-hashing the birth of Randall Tobias' new approach to spending aid dollars. Hill, Aid Groups: One Opaque System Replaced Another pretty much says it all:

The result is a clearer picture of where U.S. assistance is going, but also a backlash from Congress and aid groups that contend that one opaque system has replaced another, with a small group of people deciding how aid dollars are divvied up, what countries they reach and who controls them.

Rice's foreign aid approach "sadly bears the hallmarks of our failed early assistance efforts in Iraq, where ideology and political connections trumped professionalism," charged Pam Pearson, a foreign service officer who had worked for Tobias, in a cable she sent to top State Department officials last fall.

The fight over U.S. foreign aid has been largely hidden from the public, but it is likely to emerge Tuesday, when the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Henrietta H. Fore, the undersecretary of state for management and the nominee to replace Tobias as the deputy secretary of state for foreign assistance.

For the better part of a year, development professionals and watchers have said that any kind of progress on aid reform is impossible with the current administration. Even before Tobias resigned in disgrace after admitting to paying for massages from members of an accused call girl ring, the hope for 'fixing' aid seemed dim. As we've noted elsewhere, the noble idea of the MCC appears to be in danger of slipping into maintenance mode as the congressional appropriation for the project was slashed, mostly on the back of middling performance by the MCC.

The conclusion many could draw is that reforming aid isn't possible. Last year, when the GII hosted a candid conversation with one of Tobias' closest advisers Dirk Dijkerman, it was clear that the effort to overhaul aid -- although it apparently turned out badly -- was grueling and not very rewarding. USAID missions in the field, NGOs at home and people inside the Department of State and at USAID were all impossible to please, with good reason.

Some would say that Secretary Rice's impulse to substantially change AID was an attempt perhaps to cash in on a post-9/11 momentum account that had already been overspent by hubris. That's quite possible.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:33 AM | Permalink

The Washington Post's yearlong investigation of the farm lobby, dubbed "Harvesting Cash," is muckraking journalism at its best. Advocates for the developing world's poor have lambasted the subsidies that the U.S. government pays to American farmers for some time. The problem is that economists and advocates can (and do) argue about the inefficiency and unfairness of these subsidies until they are blue in the face; the idea that inefficiencies or no, we should tighten our belts and support generations of American farmers is such a powerful one that the arguments make little difference.

The Post takes a long look underneath the macroeconomic arguments against -- and the farm lobby arguments for -- agricultural subsidies and finds... simple corruption. You may have heard that most ag subsidies end up making their way to huge ag corporations rather than the plucky family farmers we carry around in our heads. Or that these subsidies have actually hastened the demise of said family farmer. But the bar keeps getting lower: First, we learned that the government has paid out more than $1.3 billion to people who don't actually farm. And today, the Post reports that taxpayers have paid almost as much to farmers who have been deceased for years.

One wonders what level of absurdity our agricultural policy will have to attain before the American voter demands some big changes.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:06 AM | Permalink

Caroline Heine at Philanthromedia brings us news of a new report from the Case Foundation entitled Citizens at the Center. The report signals an important new tack in the discussion of citizen involvement in civil society. As Heine writes:

For those of us who live and work in the non-profit sector everyday, the idea of citizen-centered efforts presents a major challenge to the institutions that we have ordained to be the fountains of community knowledge, the “deciders” of what is in the best interest of our communities, and certainly the holders of the purse strings.

Many Americans have turned away from politics and political institutions for the same reasons they have turned away from other civic institutions -- a sense that what they do matters little when it comes to the civic life and health of their communities or the country. Shifting to an approach that puts citizens at the center can be a powerful way to help ordinary people take action on the problems that are most important to them, and in the ways they choose.

"I don't think people are thinking of themselves as citizens that much anymore, and I think it's got more to do with the failure of institutions, political parties, officer-holders do to treat people like they're citizens. So I think it is more consumer - they're treated, you know, more as consumers. Even the politics has become transactional. It's, you, know, 'I'll give you a tax cut for your vote,' 'Well, we'll give you free health care for your vote,' and it's all transactional. There is no call to citizenship for the common good.

"But I think people hunger for that. My own view is that I run into people, and in my work, I get a sense that there is a deep hunger for a call to the common good and a deep hunger to be treated as a citizen, to be a citizen, but there's no place to perform your citizenship, and that's where I think a lot of the institutions are failing."

I agree with Caroline Heine that this kind of voice from a foundation is refreshing and speaks to the idea a lot of us have that the best-laid plans of funders and advocates are fine, but they still create barriers to entry that keep ordinary Americans out of the process. This report says it's time to give those folks a chance to push for community change -- and more -- from the community level.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Zalmay Khalilzad, ambassador to Iraq from 2005 until April and current ambassador to the United Nations, traces a role for the UN to help stabilize Iraq in today's New York Times. Khalilzad isn't saying anything revolutionary when he argues that the UN has a comparative advantage in convening power and legitimacy that would go a long way toward mitigating sharp divisions in Iraqi society. It's simply refreshing to hear a representative of the administration articulate that.

The day-to-day situation in Iraq is so complex and solutions must be so finely tuned that it's difficult to say whether the specific agenda that Khalilzad lays out for the UN is a good or realistic one. But as the official who represented U.S. interests in Iraq directly as ambassador, now with a close view to the UN, he seems to be in a good position to speak sense.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:48 AM | Permalink

Nicholas Kristof doesn't often engage in the popular New York Times columnist sport of administration-bashing. More often, he's praising Bush for taking some worthwhile steps while calling for firmer, more energetic leadership from the president. But today Kristof goes after Vice President Cheney in a big way, styling him as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's twin, a sort of mirror image of Cheney in Islamist garb.

On the question of intent and motive, we can only hazard a guess at how right or wrong Kristof is to compare the two (I suspect polling samples on this one might skew to party lines). NY Times columnist David Brooks provided a contrasting view of intentions the other day when he made a cogent argument that the neoconservative vision for Iraq represented the purest of American ideals. Be that as it may, we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Even on tactics and tone, I hesitate to compare Cheney's militant rhetoric with Ahmadinejad's full-blown publicly-proclaimed lunacy about driving an entire people-group into the sea. But I had to grant Kristof's point to some degree when I read that Iranians have readily taken to comparing the two:

“Iranians refer to their new political radicals as ‘neoconservatives,’ with multiple layers of deliberate irony,” notes Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University, adding: “The hotheads around President Ahmadinejad’s office and the U.S. foreign policy radicals who cluster around Vice President Cheney’s office, listen to each other, cite each others’ statements and goad each other to new excesses on either side.”

Irony indeed. I'm reminded of a recent performance I saw of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, a macabre lesson on how difficult it is to maintain honor rather than stooping to the level of the enemy in the face evident evil. On a more practical note (keeping in mind that my college literature professor would surely be troubled by any implication that Shakespeare is impractical), I'll refer the reader to US in the World for ideas on how a future vice president might answer the questions that trouble our current VP. Questions like, "What do you propose we do when countries break international rules?" and "We have no choice but to prevent through military preemption."

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:07 PM | Permalink

Timothy Garton Ash, writing in the LA Times, says that although "Iraq is over," it hasn't really even begun. His argument is that the impact of the Iraq war -- a war the American public has decided it is finished with -- will be long-lasting and resonant for American foreign policy, our interests in the Middle East and our reputation in the world.

Before sliding into a predictable (and completely correct, in my opinion, the cognitive dissonance of Bill Kristol not withstanding) indictment of the war and what will follow, Garton Ash makes some interesting statements about the public opinion that informs his underlying argument.

First, he finds the number that puts fear into hearts of 21 incumbent Republican senators facing voters next fall: "Iraq is over insofar as the American public has decided that most U.S. troops should leave. In a Gallup poll earlier this month, 71% favored "removing all U.S. troops from Iraq by April 1 of next year, except for a limited number that would be involved in counter-terrorism efforts.""

He goes on to add this:

The American people's verdict is remarkably sharp on other aspects of the Iraq debacle. In a poll for CNN, 54% said the United States' action in Iraq was not morally justified. In one for CBS, 51% endorsed the assessment — shared by most of the experts — that U.S. involvement in Iraq was creating more, not fewer, terrorists hostile to the United States. If once Americans were blind, they now can see. For all its plenitude of faith, this is a reality-based nation.

Taken together, it's a fascinating assessment of the complexities of geopolitics in this critical and vexing part of the world. It is also a long list of things most Americans simply don't care about. They aren't mean-spirited or malicious or anything of the sort. They just aren't keen observers of the contours of America's foreign policy. The public didn't have a huge interest in the geopolitical and foreign policy ramifications of this war when the administration began the march to war, and they haven't increased that interest.

They are interested in the fate and fortunes of men and women fighting in Iraq. They are sensitive, I think, to the strengthening of al Qaeda as that translates to danger here. But policy makers, politicians and others should probably take a moment to savor Garton Ash's op-ed. To read it -- and really spend the time -- is for regular Americans to stare into the unblinking horror of a foreign policy's twisted wreckage. To them, our leaders were never supposed to get us into this position. As Garton-Ash notes, US policy for military interventions has been "no more Vietnams" for so long, it appears the public took for granted that our leaders were still following that policy.

In a nutshell, this is the problem faced by many non-profit organizations hoping to connect with or energize Americans about foreign policy. When you don't have a heavily invested community that self-motivates its involvement, explaining the challenging landscape of global issues is an unwelcome task. Policy of the sort we've had for the last half-dozen years doesn't make it any easier.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 1:06 PM | Permalink

It's always a wild ride when an issue moves from stodgy, wonky Washington to the freewheeling, zany realm of college campuses. I remember being deeply moved when Bono and Co. visited my campus a few years back during DATA's first push on AIDS. That visit got Wheaton College's creative juices going, and a couple of passionate student leaders have maintained involvement in the issue ever since.

The same process is underway as malaria gains notoriety on campuses around the country. Scott Paul, writing on The Washington Note, catalogs a wonderful variety of campus-specific malaria campaigns. My favorites are USC's Bed Net Fashion Show, in which designers will incorporate nets into their outfits to raise funds for more of the same, put to a more practical purpose in Africa; and Harvard's campaign of visual demonstration, "Net 'em and Bug 'em: Volunteers in mosquito costumes will walk around campus "biting" people, while others in net suits are visibly immune."

Creative and commendable as these efforts are, they are sure to face skepticism, as evidenced by the comments that popped up following Paul's post. Scrolling down, we find first a "guns versus butter" argument -- if only we didn't spend so much in Iraq, we could really make a difference. A few comments down we find a plea to take care of the needy here at home before we worry about the needy abroad. Both are understandable but unhelpful; you can read thoughtful answers in the online version of US in the World.

It bears mention that malaria is just the tip of the iceberg for a number of organizations doing work to educate and engage students on global issues. Last week Tarek profiled Campaign Idol, a social action workshop geared to high school students interested in learning to do great advocacy. The contest produced some impressive content: the winning advocacy campaign, SASSY! (Support A Self-Sustaining Somalia, Yes!), took home the grand prize (view their PowerPoint presentation here). Americans for Informed Democracy also deserves credit for its own innovative malaria campaign, Veto the Squito. For more on high schoolers doing great things in the advocacy arena, see NetAid's annual Global Citizen Corps Summit, coming up soon in New York.

Oh to be young again.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:43 AM | Permalink

Paul Waldman writing at The American Prospect writes an insightful, concise post about how presidential candidates have used the right kind of campaign narrative to connect with voters. Perhaps Waldman oversimplifies the correlation between the narrative and winning elections, but we'll forgive this flaw and look at his core message about messaging:

Successful presidential candidate stories have three parts. Part one of the story describes the state of the country and its government, clearly defining what is wrong. Part two describes the place the candidate wants to take us, the better day being promised. Part three explains why the candidate is the one and only person who can deliver us from where we are to that better day.

Waldman appears to be launching on a series looking at the campaign narrative. I plan to keep reading.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 4:21 PM | Permalink

On a more serious public diplomacy-related note, the USC Center for Public Diplomacy pointed in its latest newsletter to several articles that profile Karen Hughes' difficult job to improve America's image abroad.

The Washington Times article, "Foreign ministration," is refreshingly light on commentary and heavy on quotes and stories. It does a good job of tracing the arc of Hughes' tenure at the State Department and her effort to make American diplomacy more intelligible to foreign publics, not just diplomats. And it sets up the core question, quoting Pew Center public opinion guru Andrew Kohut: "Public diplomacy in this particular situation can make changes at the margins, but to move the needle you have to have policies or conditions change. Big changes in public opinion are not consequences of misunderstanding, but of big events."

Hughes knows this, particularly after the ill-fated Middle East "listening tour" with which she inaugurated her time at State. She wanted to talk about being a mother. The women with which she spoke wanted to talk about Palestine and Iraq. Of course, Hughes could do little else but listen in such situations. She can't change policy. Indeed, as the Times notes, "No one expects the U.S. to change its policies simply to assuage public anger abroad." You can't run a foreign policy that way.

So Hughes understandably focuses on building personal connections and common values: "I agree that there is concern about policy. But that doesn't mean that we can't forge common interests and values, or that we shouldn't invite people to come and see what America is like." President Bush echoed this with his recently-announced envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, "an inter-governmental umbrella group of 57 Muslim states, 'to listen to and learn from' Muslim countries and 'share with them America’s views and values'."

This is all well and good; Americans really do share lots of values with the rest of the world. But what does it mean to share values? Hopefully there's an element of respect involved which translates into action. Common values don't dictate that we must please those publics abroad, but common values should make us think carefully when they voice a serious grievance. Even as recently as President Bush's announcement on Monday of a renewed effort at peace in Palestine, signs indicate that the administration has not been listening, even a little.

America is the deadbeat boyfriend who ignores his girl, then buys her flowers to make it up to her. That total inflexibility when it comes to the things that really matter (in Muslim countries that would be Palestine) undermines Hughes logical argument that the world may not trust our words, but it respects our "diplomacy of deeds:" health, education and economic opportunity projects throughout the world.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:39 PM | Permalink

Yesterday I quoted David Ignatius saying that U.S. public diplomacy consists of finding new ways to tell the world what the the U.S. government wants to say. But this morning I learned, on FP Passport, that we're not so much speaking with our diplomats as we are serenading the world with our military bands.

David J. Kilcullen, a senior advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, observes that "there are substantially more people employed as musicians in Defense bands than in the entire foreign service." If music is a kind of universal language, I fear we might be getting on the rest of the world's nerves. As the FP notes, foreign capitals can only take so much John Philip Sousa.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:50 PM | Permalink

It's difficult to slip into the mind of an ordinary American, since claiming the existence of such an animal is a little specious. Each American I've met has been unique. But the exercise is important shorthand not so much to typify the thinking of the animal known as "ordinary American" but rather to contrast such thinking with that of the animal known the "inside-the-beltway dweller."

I am just such an animal. I've been here a long time by most standards, and I puzzle over whether I have always thought like this and just found my way to a place where I would feel comfortable, or if something in the air, water or land made me this way.

But no matter. It is rare that I have occasion to pay a compliment to Tom Friedman. But today's column tapped into something I think is critical for policy-makers to understand. Friedman notes that the current situation in Iraq is starting to look bad. After explaining that the US doesn't have any leverage in getting Iraqis to do, well, much of anything in their dysfunctional parliament, Friedman channels the ordinary American:

That’s why the Iraqi Parliament is on vacation in August and our soldiers are fighting in the heat. Something is wrong with this picture. First, Mr. Bush spends three years denying the reality that we need a surge of more troops to establish security and then, with Iraq spinning totally out of control and militias taking root everywhere, he announces a surge and criticizes others for being impatient.

At the same time, Mr. Bush announces a peace conference for Israelis and Palestinians — but not for Iraqis. He’s like a man trapped in a burning house who calls 911 to put out the brush fire down the street. Hello?

It is rare to see columnists tap into this, at least from a big paper like the New York Times. Famous columnists from the bygone days of newspaper-dom like Mike Royko were experts at elevating the perspective of the ordinary home-town denizen to the editorial page and the heads of those home-town readers would nod agreeably as they read, thinking, "Yeah, why is it that way? He's right."

Friedman's right. Something doesn't look right to ordinary Americans about what is happening now in Iraq. Whether you agreed with Friedman at the beginning, that the war was worth fighting, or in the middle, when he said it needed more time, it's hard to look at the conflict now and think it makes sense for intractable Iraqi politicians to take time off (Tony Snow defended the vacation by pointing out how hot it is in Baghdad, oblivious for the moment to the irony) while American soldiers, not to mention countless innocent Iraqis, get blown up in the spiraling civil war.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 9:18 AM | Permalink

A curious, disjointed title -- even for a blog post -- I grant you. But that's how it was listening to the Davids discuss "Smart Power" as guest commentators this afternoon at CSIS's speaker series. David Ignatius (columnist for the Washington Post) and David Brooks (columnist for the New York Times) held forth on the state of American foreign policy, civic culture, leadership, media and who knows what all else.

A smattering of facts and comments that I found insightful, alarming, amusing, etc.:

Ignatius:

• Almost everything the government has tried to do since 2001 to regain America's grip and confidence in its own national security has knocked us further off course.

• Public Diplomacy is a watchword at the State Department, but what the government means, when it talks about "strategic communications," is finding new ways to tell the world what it thinks. The best thing the U.S. could do for public diplomacy is to shut up and listen, carefully.

• Despite events in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military retains its reputation. So wonks and planners are keen on making it a post-conflict tool that can forestall and rebuild failed states as well as it can conquer them (witness Africom's work in Djibouti). But there's a strong element of neo-imperialism here, the idea that "someone's got to make these failed states work, and the U.S. has a responsibility to do so."

• Ignatius commented to an Iranian journalist on the vibrant civil society and arts scene that he observed in Iran. The journalist agreed and added that the only thing that could get in the way of eventual reform is if the U.S. government tries to galvinize that civil society toward its own ends.

Brooks:

• Institutions of authority -- be they church, state, civic or other -- are suffering a lack of confidence. In the 90's it was freedom that won votes. Now it's security. Democrats promise economic security, Republicans promise physical security, but security seems to be what everyone is selling these days.

• It's easy to blame globalization for an increasingly inequitable national economy. But the gap between "haves" and "have-nots" is about wage inequality. That is more the product of differences in education, technology and differentiation (fungible jobs are not as valuable anymore; unique ones are) than competition from other countries.

• Senators are generally reasonable, thoughtful people in private. Only when they go on television do they become "raving maniacs." That is to say, there is a lot of polarizing pressure to "play for the team."

• The "Wise Men" of American foreign policy are never coming back. For better and for worse, they were a like-minded, insulated group that would never survive in today's political world.

• More Americans own ferrets than watch Fox News (bizarre but true, says Brooks)

• We tried to democratize the Middle East, but it ended up "Middle Easternizing" our democracy, bringing out our authoritarian tendencies.

• Young people (under 30) have some of the best social indicators ever: divorce, crime, teen pregnancy are all down while volunteerism and education are up. This generation is surely the most directed and "professionalized" yet, which could have its own problems down the road.

There you have it: a whirlwind tour of the minds of two leading newspaper columnists, without having to read the columns themselves.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Two stories got me thinking about the relationship between the messages of presidential candidates and their audiences this week. National Public Radio featured an piece by Allison Keyes kicking off from a women-focused rally organized by Senator Clinton's presidential campaign. Keyes quotes Clinton Adviser Ann Lewis saying "We know a lot about how women talk to one another about what's important...We don't use political jargon, we don't use rhetoric, we do talk about what we care about."

It seems strange to me that a political candidate would indicate that jargon-free speech is exclusively the province of women, because lots of research is available highlighting that ordinary people of all genders and backgrounds would prefer words that have meaning over purposeless blather.

This theme was carried further in an analysis by Morra Aarons at TechPresident entitled "Women Online: Facts, Figures, and the 2008 Election." Aarons argues:

The candidate most effective at reaching women online will have a serious edge in the primary election. Why? More women vote than men. More women are online than men. Given the importance of reaching women online, all of the presidential campaigns have weak online operations for targeting women. Women make the key difference to primary victories, and although each presidential campaign has staff focused on women, they are doing very little to effectively target women online.

From most of the current marketing and media coverage, you’d think all women do online is shop, talk babies, read celebrity gossip, or pose for saucy photos. Yes, women do all that online (so do men), but women are also the fastest growing group of bloggers online. And yet media coverage of political blogging focuses on the overwhelmingly male world of elite political bloggers. Famous female voices online? Radical rabble-rousers like Michelle Malkin. On the left, Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake, or Jessica Valenti from Feministing, who are compelling, but not moderate or mainstream voices.

Women already comprise 46% of bloggers up, from about 19% just 3 years ago. We outnumber men online; this spans age, race and ethnicity, community type, income and education level.

• After sleeping or spending time with family, the Internet is women’s favorite leisure activity (Yahoo/Starcom report 2005). But women surf around less than men: they like to frequent trusted sites and communities. This is important for campaigns to remember.
  
• Even females who don’t self-describe as “political” organize and raise money: A recent survey by BlogAds.com found that of the “mommy” blog readers surveyed, 46% have contributed to a cause or campaign.
  
• Women talk differently online: "This is a huge generalization, but men use the blogosphere as a podium, e.g., 'This is what I think.' Women use it as a dialogue," Janet Eden-Harris, Internet firm Umbria's CEO, recently told the Denver Westword News. "The number of words that women use on a blog far exceeds that of men," she said.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Economist is one of the few publications with the global presence to examine progress on the UN Millennium Development Goals from many perspectives, official and unofficial. Its July 5 report on the MDGs digs deeper than skeptical pronouncements about over-ambitious UN goals on the one hand or the habit of castigating lazy, unscrupulous governments on the other. (Though it has some of both. Even "Kevin Watkins, the lead author of the UN's yearly Human Development Report, worries that the pledges the UN mints so readily may become a 'debased currency'.")

First off, it warns against fatalism that Americans and Britons have toward making progress on development in general:

Such fatalism is as unwarranted as complacency. The world is making unprecedented progress against poverty. Thanks to miraculous growth in China and India, the first MDG target should be met. Almost 32% of people in the developing world lived on less than a dollar a day in 1990. In 2004 that figure was 19.2%. It should fall below 16% by 2015.

Remarkable numbers, to be sure. But they don't play out country-by-country (we won't see poverty cut in half in every developing country, only in the two biggest), which begs questions about whether the laudably measurable targets that the MDGs set around the world are really useful. And once we do have useful targets in sight, is it only a matter of engineering delivery and picking up the tab to achieve them?

Incremental progress pleases, but does not satisfy, the custodians of the MDGs, such as Jeffrey Sachs, the UN's special adviser and a tireless advocate for the goals. They are reluctant to lower their sights, arguing that the goals are akin to human rights, solemn obligations that brook no compromise. By this reckoning, the developing world's needs can be counted, the cheapest fixes can be costed, and the resulting bill can be calculated. All that remains is for the rich world to pick up the tab, so that a poor country's health and education ministries can get the job done.

This MDG-think is seductive. It is a potent mix of inspiration (saving lives and educating minds is eminently doable) and accusation (why, then, is the rich world not doing it?). But this thinking is also misleading. However laudable, the goals wrongly invite people to think of development as akin to an “engineering problem”, as Lant Pritchett, now of Harvard University, and Michael Woolcock of the World Bank have argued. The task is to pour money in one end of the MDG pipeline and then count the tubewells and school enrolments emerging from the other...

Most of the MDGs, however, do not play to these strengths. If a country is to educate every child and spare its infants and mothers an early death, it must enlist the efforts of thousands of teachers, nurses and midwives, all of whom must exercise care, diligence and judgment. That conscientiousness is not easy to buy or import, except in showcase communities such as Mr Sachs's Millennium Villages, of which there are several very impressive examples in Mali. For these services, the link between spending and results is notoriously weak.

This is where the tricky problem of governance and local accountability comes in. The Economist writes that, "The trick is to sharpen the elbows and strengthen the hands of poor people so that they demand what they need and get what they demand... But is this brand of feisty local politics something donors can cultivate? Aid proposals are now replete with mentions of the word 'community'. Sceptics argue that donors will conjure up 'communities' to fit their projects and their timetables, even if no such organic political unit exists." Indeed, the piece recounts, with great bemusement, examples of efforts to do for the poor things to which they have not agreed.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation tries to add this local component by supporting effective governance where it emerges. That looks very different from setting firm development targets, as the UN has done with in the MDGs. But whether or not all the MDGs are met, we should continue to pay attention to what we collectively promised through the UN, mark where we fell short and plan accordingly for the future, perhaps yielding certain goals to other models (like the MCC) if they prove more effective.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:16 PM | Permalink

Speaking of difficult partnerships, the Millennium Challenge Corporation was envisioned as just that. A Washington Post editorial argues that the MCC's original vision is still sound, despite the administrative difficulties it has encountered.

The idea was to supply U.S. taxpayer dollars only to governments that could meet strict standards of efficiency and accountability. The proposal would do so based on the countries' own expressed needs, not development fads or political fealty to the United States. Money would be provided in substantial amounts, over substantial periods, so as to make a genuine impact on poverty. And the whole project would be administered outside the traditional aid bureaucracy, by a congressionally established Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC).

But funds appropriated to the MCC are dwindling before we can really figure out if the model might work, argues the Post. MCC strictures meant to ensure that the money disbursed is spent on its intended purpose generate a lot of paperwork, which developing countries often don't have the capacity to deal with. So they must hire expensive consulting firms to navigate the process for them. That slows things down and dilutes the ownership that a country exercises over its MCC-funded projects.

The Post argues that these kinks are understandable since the MCC has only been up and running for three years. Pressure to fix them is a good thing, but cutting MCC funds to the degree that Congress wants to will undermine the most attractive thing about the MCC model: it's ability to spur governance reform in pursuit of a big chunk of money. As the MCC's account dwindles, so does the prospect of aid in partnership, it seems.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:31 PM | Permalink

The thing that struck me about Uzodinma Iweala's article in yesterday's Washington Post, "Stop Trying to 'Save' Africa," was not its startlingly new perspective but rather the fact that I had the feeling that I'd already read it several times before.

That doesn't make it's core message less worthwhile. Iweala found his voice writing about the horrors of Africa; his much-acclaimed book, "Beasts of No Nation," is the portrait of a young African who is both victim and perpetrator of terrible acts. Knowing all too well the desperate, violent stories that filter through the Western media and form the picture we get of Africa, Iweala is still more indignant at Western attempts to "save" Africa.

We've covered this emerging genre many times before (I've written such thoughts myself, in fact). Iweala puts a new spin on things, emphasizing African humanitarian assistance, rather than the long-term impacts of African entrepreneurs and so forth:

Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?

But what does the outcome of this new vision look like? That's where things get a little fuzzy in my mind, even after reading many such critiques of Western paternalism. Iweala wants "fair partnerships." But that's the trick, isn't it? How do rich countries engage on various levels -- humanitarian, development, business investment, macroeconomic -- and keep these relationships "fair?" It's easier said than done. Just look at the MCC: billed as a new kind of foreign aid -- based on partnership, recipient initiative and ownership -- it risks failing its noble beginnings (read more about MCC prospects shortly in a dedicated post).

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:26 AM | Permalink

GOP strategist Patrick Ruffini, blogging at Tech President usefully differentiates between direct mail and internet fundraising, and adds some analysis to the NY Times piece on the disparity between Republican and Democratic online fundraising. Ruffini argues that online fundraising represents a generational challenge for GOP money-men and women because most of the party is still thinking about it in terms of the old construct of direct mail. He says online direct marketing is better because it isn't divorced from the rest of your communications by the shifting sands of the postal service and the way ordinary people receive and respond to paper mail:

It's self-evident to those of who do this for a living that the Internet is not direct mail. But what's lost on the old guard sometimes is that the Internet is not just different, but is objectively better. That's not because it's more lucrative (right now) but because it's able to instantly deliver and refine a message, and to allow supporters to interact with the campaign in real time. I'll bet you Obama's direct mail consultants wish they were the Internet people, because it's so much easier online if you do it right.

Email is also a strategic communications medium, where direct mail is not. The point of direct mail is to not make news, and to fly under the radar. The average direct mail letter makes incredible claims to rile up supporters to give you money, but they are claims that no serious observer would ever take seriously. "Mr. Smith, the June 30th fundraising deadline is just around the corner. If I don't raise the necessary funds to compete, Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy will cackle with glee as they down tequilas with their left-wing Hollywood comrades. Please rush your emergency contribution using the enclosed envelope at your earliest convenience."

I certainly don’t feel any outsized affection for Senator McCain, but I sincerely believe he missed an opportunity to make history tonight. To really engage his supporters in a valiant comeback attempt, to give them ownership of the campaign, and to maybe — just maybe — set in motion some momentum that could have gotten him back in this. It’s a strategy that will take guts — a willingness to publicly put the very survival of the campaign on the line (as though it isn’t already).

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:33 AM | Permalink

Commentary about U.S. decline is in full bloom these days, and it's no wonder, considering the constant reminders: poll numbers telling us that the world doesn't like us anymore, endless disappointments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, etc. This blog has said as much many times.

But in the midst of dire assessments of America's future, many strengths remain. I'm a little behind on my Economist reading, but the June 28 cover story story was no less interesting or relevant a few weeks later. Fresh from reading a spot-on book review of a respected (or so they say) academic who bemoans President Bush's legacy to a truly absurd degree, I found the Economist's article, "Still No. 1," a thoughtful articulation of long-term U.S. prospects.

It concludes thus:

If America were a stock, it would be a “buy”: an undervalued market leader, in need of new management. But that points to its last great strength. More than any rival, America corrects itself. Under pressure from voters, Mr Bush has already rediscovered some of the charms of multilateralism; he is talking about climate change; a Middle East peace initiative is possible. Next year's presidential election offers a chance for renewal. Such corrections are not automatic: something (a misadventure in Iran?) may yet compound the misery of Iraq in the same way Watergate followed Vietnam. But America recovered from the 1970s. It will bounce back stronger again.

Leave it to The Economist to give us a stock rating for America. But I see their point.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:31 AM | Permalink

Scott Paul writing all over the place (here and here) takes note of Senator Lugar's nimble navigation of the energy future facing America. Lugar was speaking at the 2020 Vision National Summit on Energy Security.

Scott credits Lugar with avoiding the problematic but politically-enticing formulation of 'energy independence,' and further admires his talk:

Senator Lugar is doing something rare in the soundbyte era of politics: he's speaking to hot-button regional realities, keeping his eye on the main issue, the global oil problem, and elevating the debate above shallow rhetorical devices all at the same time. Presidential candidates need to stop talking down to Americans with energy independence mumbo jumbo and instead follow Lugar's lead.

Think about this: politicians and advocates are talking to the public a lot about a giant range of issues roughly clustered around energy and the environment. Fuel prices, hybrid cars, the war in Iraq, fuel efficiency, global warming, Al Gore, Live Earth, farm subsidies and the ethanol debate, potential war with Iran, the coming hurricane season, and saber-rattling with Venezuela are all banging around the expansive boundaries of this discussion. In truth, though, I would argue the public absorbs more communication about the energy future from large corporations like BP, ExxonMobil and General Electric in the form of advertising than they do from all the NGOs and politicians combined. As a result, many Americans are receiving an advertising-shaped vision about energy: increased domestic production to solve our problems, a rosy picture of innovations like hydrogen cars and 'clean coal,' and a PR-agency-cultivated color-and-music combination that is meant to soothe our fears about the future.

I'm not saying I don't think the public is capable of understanding the complexities of the global energy market, US foreign policy, the promise of cellulosic ethanol, and the relationship between security and oil. But we've created a scenario where the Scott's challenge to the candidates, to stop talking down to the public to elevate the debate above shallow rhetorical devices seems almost impossible. This is especially true in the context of the campaign schedule: oddly important states like South Carolina, Nevada and Florida will be showered with attention -- and presumably this high minded discussion about our energy future -- while non-battleground but immensely populous states like California, Texas and New York will remain in the dark except for those spectacular Ecomagination ads from GE.

The truth is, the shallow rhetorical devices may not be at fault as much as the quality of the devices. While killing the energy independence meme has proven difficult, it's possible that as far as the public is concerned, it's more of a framing challenge than one about the policy itself.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:44 AM | Permalink

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released last week a study on "How Muslims Compare With Other Religious Americans." The topline conclusions of the study show the sort of ideological and political flexibility that makes me proud to be an American, a place where people can maintain a core identity that is central to their lives, yet take on many of the civic values that help us all to get along in relative peace.

In many ways, Muslims stand out not so much for their differences as for their similarities with other religious groups.

In their level of religious commitment, Muslim Americans most closely resemble white evangelicals and black Protestants. In their basic political orientation, they closely resemble black Protestants as well as seculars. When it comes to their views on some social issues, such as homosexuality, Muslims' conservatism matches that of white evangelicals. Muslims are even more likely than evangelicals or any other group to support a role for government in protecting morality.

I'm very curious; I wonder what most of my fellow white evangelicals would say if Pew did a mini-poll asking how they felt about the comparison. But it may not be far off the mark, even from an evangelical perspective. When I read Pew's conclusions, I couldn't help but remember the surprising solidarity an evangelical friend of mine felt during the year he spent as a guest of the Islamist chief minister of the northwestern frontier province in Pakistan. Here is an excerpt of a piece he wrote when he returned:

In so many ways, my worldview differed from that of the people in the tent. Yet a communal prayer for a lost family member is a profoundly human moment. The image of that moment has stuck with me, because it is a picture of two things I found to be true of northwest Pakistan.

First, the vast majority of people I met were gracious to a fault, hospitable, and quick to condemn violence in the name of religion. They were, at the same time, largely uninterested in trying to delineate the boundaries of religion in public life. "Islam," I was often told, "is about all of life." Coming from an American culture in which religion is often considered unwelcome in the public square, this was a real change. For better and for worse, religion in Pakistan is more than the language of private devotion; it is still the most potent language of public life as well.

Second, in spite of feeling far from home, time and time again I found that I felt surprisingly comfortable in Pakistan, precisely because it was a deeply religious society. Despite the points of shared history and shared values, at the end of the day, I believe something quite different than the Muslims I met and lived with and prayed among. But I still came away admiring their devotion and appreciating a society in which religious conversation and values are honored.

I understand, at least in part, how he felt. Tension between religion and politics is profound in the United States, and that is tiring for those who regard faith as about "all of life" -- not just a matter of personal conviction. But tiring as it may be, it remains a worthwhile tension. The U.S. somehow maintains a remarkable balance between the undeniable fact of religious conviction and the need to find a common American civic identity. Neither Europe on one end nor Pakistan on the other has managed it, and I suspect that many in both places wish for more of it.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:36 AM | Permalink

The GII had the opportunity to offer the Aspen Institute conference room in support of a unique event called "Campaign Idol." Put on by the fun-loving geniuses at Americans for Informed Democracy, Campaign Idol offers high school students a selection of tools drawn from our own Continuous Progress website and pits them in fierce competition to design the most excellent campaigns possible.

We'll update everyone on the winner of Campaign Idol soon, but I want for the moment to focus on this idea: High school students, using tools designed for the most part for seasoned advocacy veterans, creating thoughtful, winning advocacy campaigns on global issues.

Contrast this wonderful story with a less uplifting one, about a Harvard University study revealing that "28 percent of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 said they pay almost no attention to news every day. Another 32 percent said they pay only casual attention to one news source a day."

I have to confess that as a person who has paid attention to news throughout his life, I have trouble understanding how people can live without feeling the need to understand the events going on around them. I don't really have an answer about how this narrow age group can produce both the vibrant potential thought leaders who participated in Campaign Idol and the 60% of folks who don't pay any attention to the world around them. But there it is.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 10:17 AM | Permalink

You've got to chuckle at the story that the Wall Street Journal ran today about Stephen Long, a biologist who toiled for years in obscurity studying grasses, particularly Miscanthus (pictured on the right). Now Mr. Long, in between trips to the White House, is acting deputy director of the Energy Biosciences Institute, a $500m program funded by BP to develop fuels made from plant materials. Miscanthus is a leading plant material candidate, you see. Lots of biomass (again, see picture to your right).

It's a good thing, too, since corn prices are through the roof, putting pressure on the poor in Latin America and elsewhere. This is particularly troubling since corn is such an inefficient energy source (see yesterday's post "Biofuels Bad News"). The WSJ estimates that cellulosic ethanol, the kind that would make use of grasses and other plant products rather than corn or sugar, is five years away from market viability. Let's hope that corn will not have to fill the renewable energy gap until then. Lifting restrictions on Brazilian sugar-based ethanol would help.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The CSIS Global Strategy Institute's new blog features a staggering statistic today: in a post describing illicit financial flows from poor countries to rich ones, it estimates that these funds at "8 to 10 times the amount of official development assistance (ODA) provided by the rich countries to the poor ones." That's between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion.

These illicit funds are generated and transferred in a fascinating array of ways:

The mechanisms for generating illicit funds include, but are hardly limited to, under-pricing exports or overpricing imports (and pocketing the difference), falsifying transactions entirely, evading taxes, multiplying books, creating false trusts with hidden beneficiaries, and working through dummy corporations, offshore entities, tax havens, money-laundering fronts, and the like. Bribery, corruption, kickbacks, and forgeries grease the flows. A web of financial intermediaries now in dozens of countries conceals the flow through mazes of fake paperwork transactions. Through this web of false financial transactions, the natural resources and the value added by dozens of the poorest countries are turned into bank accounts, mansions, and gold. It is a massive transfer of scarce resources, perpetuates the poverty of those who produce the goods and resources, and is made possible by acts of omission and commission in the industrialized world.

CSIS has teamed up with the Global Financial Integrity Program to study these flows, including how they affect development efforts. Click through to read more.

Clearly there is no shortage of creativity at work in developing countries; if only better governance could force that ingenuity into better channels...

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 1:37 PM | Permalink

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff took an interesting tack yesterday in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. Chertoff said he believed America was "entering a period this summer of increased risk" terrorism-wise. He said he wasn't talking about a particular threat, and in fact was merely expressing a "gut feeling," though one informed by, he said, seasonal patterns of terrorism, recent statements by Al Qaeda and intelligence he didn't disclose.

I spoke with a homeland security expert here at the Aspen Institute before I set to writing this, because I don't want to seem flip. My colleague -- who has been critical of Chertoff before -- concurred with the secretary's assessment. Al Qaeda attacks during the summer and at volatile times in a nation's political life, because those two factors both point to some laxity or at least a sense of "taking out eye off the ball."

That said, I wonder not about the timing but about the political landscape in which Chertoff's comments landed. I said to a friend that if Vice President Cheney made a similar statement to a hand-picked audience of American Legionaires in South Dakota, I don't think it would even make a ripple politically. But Chertoff's statements, and several other items chronicled in that Tribune piece, make it sound like the public should be sincerely concerned about something happening this summer.

So why hasn't Secretary Chertoff raised the threat level? Why if this is the case hasn't the Department of Homeland Security done more prior to an Chertoff's interview with the Tribune's editorial board to alert the public to this possibility?

It is easy to see that this administration has trouble separating politics from policy. The first homeland security chief, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, took a lot of grief about his color-coded warnings and home safety kits of plastic wrap and duct tape. Chertoff surely doesn't want to recreate that moment, and seems loathe to mess around with the color-coded system he has toyed with discarding.

The conclusion I come to as I ponder this issue is discomforting. It seems our leaders have reached a point where they are paralyzed about informing the public about sincere threats, because they fear a panic and fear also having their words legitimately scrutinized for hints of political manipulation. (It is worth noting that President Bush is at the lowest point in his presidency in approval rating, and could use a little boost/distraction right about now.) But how are we as a nation to be prepared if this is the case? Has this administration's track record of politicized terrorism warnings made it impossible for them to be taken seriously?

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 9:14 AM | Permalink

Via the World Bank PSD Blog, I'm reading now a long piece in the May/June Foreign Affairs about what might prove to be a major problem with Biofuels.

Chris Monasterski pulls some interesting bits out of the article, including this jarring statistic: "Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn – which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year."

I don't think anybody talking about ethanol is really factoring in these details. We're at a moment in American life where we are only beginning to comprehend the fact that there may not be petroleum in the ground to run our cars and air conditioners forever. The idea that the legendary breadbasket of America can somehow point the way to the fantasy of "energy independence" is practically irresistible to policy makers. This has lead to an uncritical embrace of ethanol without any understanding of the complications behind such technology.

The authors of the long Foreign Affairs piece argue essentially that a tight pairing of the price of fuel resources and the price of food staples such as corn used to produce ethanol could take the price of said staple food out of the range for millions of the world's poorest. The authors continue:

The world's poorest people already spend 50 to 80 percent of their total household income on food. For the many among them who are landless laborers or rural subsistence farmers, large increases in the prices of staple foods will mean malnutrition and hunger. Some of them will tumble over the edge of subsistence into outright starvation, and many more will die from a multitude of hunger-related diseases.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 2:49 PM | Permalink

Every so often I'm jolted from my assumption that it is only a matter of time before China is pulled away from the draconian treatment of its citizens as it modernizes its economy and becomes more interdependent with the West. That happened today when I read that "China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog on Tuesday for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash." The New York Times then drily notes that this is "the strongest signal yet from Beijing that it is serious about tackling its product safety crisis."

I'll say. I'm all for careful inspections and swift intervention when safety is compromised, particularly when the problem goes beyond negligence to corruption. That's good business from China's perspective when markets like the U.S. react to tainted products quickly by cutting Chinese imports across the board.

But when will China learn that in the modern economy, you don't just export products, you export a brand? Granted, China does not compete widely (yet) on its brand; it competes on price. But as it seeks to climb the value-added ladder, producing more complex products and services, it's going to need a good brand. It will only be able to sideline human rights, due process and humane sentencing -- among other issues -- for so long before the lack of these makes brand China unpopular.

But of course markets and human rights don't always work as neatly, or cooperatively, as we might like them to. It takes time -- and often a popular movement -- to push things along.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:37 PM | Permalink

The World Bank is something of an enigma, as Terrence Halliday -- an expert on law and globalization and a consultant to the bank -- writes. His journal-length effort to get to the bottom of what the World Bank is really about ranges through the bank's history, leadership, portfolio, and -- most intriguingly -- asks who its true owners are, before concluding that "it is vitally needed despite its flaws."

In the course of Halliday's piece, he reviews two alternative books critiquing the bank, one from a social activism perspective, the other a biography of James Wolfensohn's tenure as president. This makes for a rangy argument that covers a lot of ground but turns up much interesting material and argument.

For instance, readers not accustomed to the ins and outs of the World Bank might wonder, amongst all the stories of Paul Wolfowitz's recent ouster, what a snapshot of the bank's activities looks like; how does the bank translate its stated mission: "a future without poverty, disease, and illiteracy," into policy? Halliday runs through some of this:

A scan of the Bank's reports and its programs reveals an extraordinarily eclectic range of activity in every corner of the globe: getting girls into school in Egypt and poor children to school in the Kyrgyz Republic; combating tb in Africa and malaria in Eritrea; managing forests in Southeast Asia and fisheries along rural coastlines; rushing emergency teams to Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka after the tsunami of 2004 and rebuilding strife-torn Central Africa; killing agricultural pests in Central Africa and developing the garment industry in Cambodia; pushing for court reform in the Philippines and building the power grid in the Dominican Republic; creating housing reform in Mexico and road-building in Poland.

Not least, the Bank now combats the money laundering that could fuel terrorism. It demands transparency in governments and offers transparency for itself. Millions of dollars are committed to reducing government corruption and to building civil society groups. The World Bank Institute trains aid workers. The Bank teams up not only with governments but with the World Wildlife Fund and the Scout Movement for children, with Conservation International and the UN's Programme on HIV/AIDS.

At least, this is how the bank sees itself. But if this is the case, why the small industry of protest and outrage at the way the World Bank operates? Halliday summarizes the position of many social activists: "The Bank answers to the institutions of global finance, to the interests of small consulting firms, major contractors, cash-starved political élites, international bankers, Wall Street, and its largest stockholders -- the world's richest nations. Look not to the Bank for sympathy or understanding for the poor, the voiceless, the excluded and marginal. Look through the Bank's rhetoric to its actions. Weigh them against its predations -- and that will constitute the measure of the Bank's commitment to poverty, social justice, and democracy."

But Halliday points to Sebastian Mallaby's book, "The World's Banker," for a more even-handed critique of the bank. Even when its leadership is willing to truly dedicate the bank's resources to fighting poverty, "the Bank itself is riven with contradictions that would subvert the best-intentioned organization. On any project at any moment, the Bank can find itself caught in a vise of contradictory expectations."

Shareholders, clients and activists are only the most obvious "mutually colliding constituencies." Writes Halliday, "If this three-way squeeze were not enough, the Bank itself is a tribal society where those at headquarters clash with those in the field, where long-term technocrats resent the transient politicians brought in to lead them, where the prevailing ideology of a certain economics clashes with anthropologists and other social sciences."

What, in the midst of all this confusion, can civil society do to clean up the bank's operations and keep it true to its mission? Far from a lost cause, this, says Halliday, is exactly where civil society should be. "...It behooves us to constantly subject this enormously powerful institution to... searching critique, to listen to discordant voices, to confront directly the contrasting visions sketched by Mallaby: a World Bank that partners primarily with Northern NGOs and governments, versus a Bank that keeps its mission focused on "the least of these," the poor countries it is charged to help. Let the Bank continue with its experimentation, but demand that it listen to alternatives, engage in self-critique, and most of all, show evidence that indeed it is creating a world "free of poverty."

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:34 AM | Permalink

Seth Godin writes about the danger of putting too much time between the action and the potential impact of that action when asking regular folks to do something. He says, "People care about a fire in their movie theatre, a lot less about one across the country. People care about an illness that they have right now, a lot less about preventing something twenty years from now. When you create gaps in time or space, people lose interest."

He pulls a chunk of internal debate from some other website in which the author is deliberating about two potential automobile purchases. This is not some environmentally-conscious person agonizing over his carbon footprint; both vehicles are SUVs with fairly hefty fuel consumption. The example is used to demonstrate quite to the contrary, many folks think about their wallets first and don't much look at the global picture. Godin argues that people think about their purchases and their decisions and don't mentally multiply the impacts of those decisions by a million to imagine what the whole world would be like if everyone did what they did.

I think Godin's right that "times a million" math is bad messaging. I just don't think it's for the reasons he cites. I don't think using 'times a million' math is a bad idea because some people just don't get it. It's bad because it implies a little leap of faith, and asks people to believe in the reverberations of their decisions. The vocal part of 'times a million' is easy: "if everybody rode their bike to work, imagine how much less pollution..." But the silent part is, "Merely you, one person, riding your bike to work is practically meaningless."

I don't like leading people through this thought experiment. I don't like lingering over these small-scale things (recycling, carrying your groceries home in your own canvas bags, etc), because I don't like opening the door to thoughts about whether they make any difference at all. Foisting "times a million" on everything means doing just that. As we learn more about why people take the kinds of sustained action lots of advocates need ordinary folks to take, I think we're going to find "times a million" math to fade, precisely because it opens the door for doubt. And doubt isn't something we can afford in this flooded advocacy landscape.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 4:30 PM | Permalink

That's not an argument I've heard many immigration experts making. If any trend seems to present itself, it is that illegal immigration from Mexico is here to stay. NPR recently ran a story that detailed the lives of those left after Mexican villages empty themselves of able-bodied people bound for the U.S. Only the young and the old remain, and the young eagerly tell of their plans to leave.

So when I read in The American that illegal immigration from Mexico will slow to a trickle in the not-too-distant future because of demographic changes, I was skeptical. I'm still skeptical about the argument Robert Dunn -- an economics professor at George Washington University -- makes. His central argument appears to be a moot point: "The main point for the United States is that we have only a temporary problem with illegal immigration from Mexico." Even if Mexico stops sending immigrants, the irresistible laws of economic attraction will draw the poor from elsewhere in Latin America and beyond, and the U.S. will still have the same problem all over again until it gets its immigration policy in order.

But we should not ignore Dunn entirely. If his figures and methodology are correct, this is a big very big deal indeed. Immigration to the U.S. could swing yet again in a new direction, as it's done many times before in unpredictable ways. Dunn's reasoning is interesting, as is his comment on the cultural forces that bear on the immigration debate:

What has changed [in Mexico]? Better education and improved job opportunities for women mean that it has become quite expensive for them to leave the labor force to have more children. The improved availability of birth control technology and liberalization of abortion rules in some countries mean that it is easier for women to avoid that outcome.

Another reason for the particularly sharp decline in Mexico is the cultural influence of the United States. Some politicians fear that we are being “Mexicanized.” In fact the opposite may be underway. NAFTA, our mass media, the more widespread use of English, and the large number of people going back and forth (legally or otherwise) mean that Mexicans are increasingly influenced by our culture, and that implies fewer babies, The United States also has a fertility rate of 2.1, but that is the same as it was in 1990. Mexico is becoming more similar to the United States, which must frustrate their nationalists.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:22 PM | Permalink

Here at the Aspen Institute, we have recently rolled out a new tool that gives individual programs here (the GII is one such program) an opportunity to use social networking software to provide better connections to their participants. Many of the programs at the Institute rely on high level dialogues between influential folks in business, government, NGOs and even the arts community. This social networking tool isn't revolutionary (we're using a customized version of LiveWorld's tools), but it was a steep learning curve for lots of the folks here.

The way it finally was sold to the organization was through the aggressive support of the tool by the Institute's leadership, which made a lot of folks set aside skepticism and perhaps some trepidation and jump in.

Still, there are a lot of careful people dipping their toes into this technology, and it's early yet to say whether we're having success with this new (to many here) stuff.

All of this is a way to introduce an excellent summary of the Social Web, written by Ian Wilker at roots.lab. Wilker notes that the social web is about three main things: expressing identity, relationships and trust, and user-driven websites. It strikes me that too often the emphasis is on the novelty of user-driven content. It's the most fun to discuss, and is the most 'magical' item advocates of the social web can use to dazzle the uncommitted. But the first two issues, of identity, relationships and trust, are really the hard work and big payoff pieces of the social web. Wilker's piece gets a lot right about this, and it's a worthwhile read if your organization is interested in finding a home in a web 2.0 world.

(Tip via Idealware.)

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 4:01 PM | Permalink

Many of our faithful readers (and perhaps even the unfaithful ones - oh yes, we're watching) know that the GII sponsored a series of meetings on the theme of Effective Aid, Effective Advocacy. From the beginning, our intention was to help advocates for development assistance to argue for meaningful aid, not just more aid. For quality, not just quantify. For aid as it could be, not just aid as we know it.

In recent weeks, The Switchblog has published or linked to critiques of development-assistance-as-we-know-it from Bill Easterly, the TED conference in Tanzania, and Congressional committees. Easterly may exaggerate for clarity at times, but his critique of "developmentalism" in the current issue of Foreign Policy continues his usefully provocative war on Jeff Sachs, the UN's Millennium Development Goals and other big-time, centrally planned development assistance schemes.

Easterly's denunciation of the MDGs might bring a grateful tear to the eye of John Bolton and other skeptics about the UN - who are often the truest of true believers in America's unerring moral conscience and economic competence. But here's a bitter bit of irony: the denunciation of centrally-planned, idealistically pure development schemes reminds this reader of nothing so much as the grandiose plans for Iraq whose horrific failure Rajiv Chandrasekaran's chronicles in Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

Can we get development right? Humility helps. I am privileged to have gotten to know a humble development professional, Kevin Lowther, early in his long career with Africare. Kevin's thoughtful cautionary tale appears in the most recent edition of InterAction's Monday Developments. With thanks to InterAction for allowing us to share it here - and to Kevin for great hospitality in Lusaka in 1980 and quiet inspiration since - I pass along his parting words with hope that others can learn from his wisdom as well.

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 3:15 PM | Permalink

I'm working on something a little more ambitious about the intersection between activism and commerce, so I was pleased to see Caroline Heine's thoughtful meditation on green consumerism at Philanthromedia, reviewing a scuffle between New York Times writer Alex Williams and worldchanging.org executive editor Alex Steffen. Heine took note of some interesting research cited in the NY Times article with relevance beyond the eco-consumerism issue:

Williams’ article refers to market research that indicated that people do not believe that, “their consumption gave them a pass, so to speak. They knew what they were doing wasn’t going to deal with the problems, and these little consumer things won’t add up. But they do it as a practice of mindfulness. They didn’t see it as antithetical to political action. Folks who were engaged in these green practices were actually becoming more committed to more transformative political action on global warming.”

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 4:50 PM | Permalink

Today's op-ed from Nicholas Kristof framing Africa as a land of hope (available for a fee here) sent me scurrying over to last Sunday's review by Niall Ferguson of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion.

Ferguson recounts, approvingly, Collier's chronicling of the four traps facing Africa's vast majority trapped in poverty: Civil war, resource curse, the economic handicapping of landlocked countries and bad governance. He reviews Colliers prescription for Africa, which is predicated refreshingly on abandoning the frustrating dogma of dichotomy about dealing with Africa:

As Collier rightly says, it is time to dispense with the false dichotomies that bedevil the current debate on Africa: “ ‘Globalization will fix it’ versus ‘They need more protection,’ ‘They need more money’ versus ‘Aid feeds corruption,’ ‘They need democracy’ versus ‘They’re locked in ethnic hatreds,’ ‘Go back to empire’ versus ‘Respect their sovereignty,’ ‘Support their armed struggles’ versus ‘Prop up our allies.’ ”

I'm happy to read a column about hope and possibility in Africa. And I'm certainly pleased to read Kristof's account of how Rwanda, following the lead of other African success stories like Botswana, is implementing good governance and hard medicine to set a course for positive change. But read the headlines of the last half-dozen columns:

• Attack of the worms


• Our gas guzzlers, their lives


• A 'painful way to die'


• A student, a teacher and a glimpse of war


• Dinner with a warlord


• Africa's World War

The western world has plenty of messengers who can tell us about the woe of Africa. I admire the work of Kristof and others with an immensely valuable podium to bring these stories to the public where we can learn about the twin spirals of poverty and violence swallowing up the lives of so many Africans. But I've almost reached my fill. Kristof's columns, save the one about the relationship between our gas guzzling cars and the impact of climate change in Africa, have nearly become a grotesque showcase of horrors we can't stop and aren't told how to change. If there is something for Americans to do, I want to read it in these pages.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 9:25 AM | Permalink

Gal Beckerman in the Columbia Journalism Review gets most things right about the foibles of the Vanity Fair Africa Issue. Beckerman starts off shaky, in my opinion, explaining that there are two schools of thought regarding Africa's future -- not trade versus aid but governance versus aid. Beckerman then says apart from screeds by cranky old Paul Theroux, nobody puts pen to paper about Africa except for folks promoting the more-aid-saves-lives idea, and thus this Vanity Fair is more of the same.

(I suspect there's a fellow named William Easterly who may disagree with Beckerman's setup, even as he assuredly disagrees with almost everything written in Bono's issue of Vanity Fair.)

From there, Beckerman moves through the issue in an admittedly harsh critique, noting that the issue missed multiple opportunities to actually represent Africa. Beckerman quotes Annie Liebovitz, who photographed the twenty covers, calling the photos “spreading the message from person to person to person.” Beckerman snarks, "The people having this conversation include, conveniently, Brad Pitt and Madonna, Oprah and Barack Obama. It’s not clear exactly what the connection of any of these people is to the continent." This is a valid criticism:

The whole concept of the issue seems to be about Westerners telling other Westerners about Africa (à la the cover). Bill Clinton muses about Nelson Mandela. An interesting music festival in the deserts of northern Mali, is described through the diary entries of an MTV executive. A photo portfolio of mostly Western-educated and urban-based Africans is meant to present a new face of the continent, but they are robbed of their own voices and are instead introduced by prominent Westerners, like Dave Eggers, Harry Belafonte, and Damien Hirst. Early in the issue Desmond Tutu is interviewed by, of all people, Brad Pitt.

I have to quibble with this review not because I found the issue particularly good or compelling. Rather, I think Beckerman is being willfully naive about the entire exercise. Vanity Fair isn't the Nation or the New Yorker or even The Atlantic Monthly. It is a culture and entertainment magazine that has some politics coverage but certainly isn't political. While the July cover featured politicians and actors "talking" about Africa, June's cover had Bruce Willis in full "Die Hard" mode. Last year's most controversial cover featured a bra-and-panties shot of Lindsay Lohan.

Beckerman (or I, for that matter) could conceive of a much better magazine devoted to raising the profile of Africa for American audiences. We could tell the story of the debates that rage over the solution to what ails the continent. We could commission new pieces and excerpt from the bountiful body of work about Africa's misfortune from authentically African authors like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Tsitsi Dangaremba, and on an on. It would be a truly amazing magazine we could put together. But I don't think anyone would call it Vanity Fair.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 12:05 PM | Permalink

Like a lot of folks, I have an RSS reader that I gamely employ to harness my otherwise haphazard web-browsing behavior. I started out with no categories at all, and then began to group things roughly into different universes: political, fun, computer, news. The reader I use allows you to attach multiple categories to each item. I can have one feed appear in the political and the news category, if I wish. All of the Google blogs were together under the tech category: Google Blogoscoped, Google Maps Mania, The Official Google Blog, the Google Reader Blog, too many more to mention, embarrassingly. Today, I added a new Google blog, but it's confounding my taxonomy.

Google.org has a new blog. Three posts deep, and this view inside some of the projects funded by Google's philanthropy is already heartwarming and impressive. Here, Irene Taylor Brodsky of Vermillion Films tells about a man her film crew met while trying to capture the audio of a Muslim call to prayer in India:

An educated and unemployed Muslim, Gulzar volunteered with our crew over the next two days and eventually opened his doors to us to film him. After two weeks of filming the effort to eradicate the disease in India, it was there — in Gulzar's home — that we finally saw polio up close and personal. He was 24 years old, but in the privacy of his home he had to crawl like a baby. In public, he wore calipers on his legs, and his hands bore the calluses of someone who carries his own weight every day on a frame of steel.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been away for a week. I view vacations as my chance to be an ordinary American for a week. It was harder to do this when I didn't have kids, because the nagging need to obtain information, to consume knowledge was harder to ignore. Now, my vacations fly by, just like my daughter, racing toward the churning suft without a passing thought for her own well-being. I hardly notice that I'm not checking email three hundred times a day, not scanning neatly-categorized headlines (news, political blogs, philanthropy blogs, foreign policy blogs, news-magazines, tech blogs, community blogs, distracting blogs), not itching to chatter away on the keyboard of a handy laptop.

This is what many folks live like all the time. During the gigantic expanse of my non-vacation time, I look down on them quietly. Sometimes they make me angry, because I see them as part of America's great uninformed problem. At least many who receive my scorn don't bother to vote.

But during this vacation, I can see the seductive side to this lifestyle. The biggest thing to happen last week, from my perspective on vacation not in some far-off place but merely the beaches of North Carolina, was some nasty weather not particularly threatening to my beach time, and the big hullabaloo about the Apple iPhone. Seriously. I may have heard that the immigration reform bill was defeated, but I viewed the information from some remove, detached. Perhaps to someone outside the Beltway, the latest version of that tiresome story wasn't worth the trouble. Friday I realized that the Supreme Court term had probably ended, and sought out the disturbing decisions about school integration and free speech for students. However, I fumbled an effort to explain to some folks we met on the beach why I was concerned about these stories and about one I came across Saturday morning on the front page of a New York Times someone left poolside. It was baffling, but I really couldn't get a thorough explanation across of why it was bad that the Supreme Court had declared a student's banner reading "Bong His 4 Jesus" fair game for censorship. I felt like I had fallen through a rift in my own unshakable reason.

I mention all this only as a way of explaining, for instance, why it is taking me a day or two to get back into the swing of blogging. As last week, we're shorthanded a bit right now, but I will ramp things up as that old Beltway-centrism settles back in.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 4:35 PM | Permalink