The stirrings of a democracy

President Bush has promoted his “Democracy Agenda” as a cornerstone of our foreign policy. Inevitably, Iraq has taken center-stage on that in the past several years. As Saturday’s Washington Post points out, there is an opportunity for the U.S. to bring greater attention to a movement that is actively pursuing real democratic reform in a country that is long overdue for it: Myanmar.

Formerly known as Burma, Myanmar is a country that has had a military junta for the past 19 years. It came to power by crushing a democratic movement spurred on by students and Buddhist monks and nuns. Most people in my generation know of Myanmar only through the movie “Beyond Rangoon”.

Myanmar has certainly moved beyond Rangoon. Since taking power, the junta has kept dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi detained under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years. More than that, though, their fear of the United States has caused the junta to build a new capital in the jungle about 200 miles north of Rangoon.

Myanmar allows limited interaction with other countries, and has an ongoing row with Thailand over the number of ‘displaced people’ who keep exiting Myanmar for Thailand. This limited interaction has changed to moderate attention in the past month.

On August 19, the junta raised the price of energy—for some forms, up to 500%--overnight. For comparison, if gasoline prices in the U.S. increased 500% overnight, we’d be paying $13.35 for a gallon of gas tomorrow. In a country where the average income is $1,800 per year and 70% of the people are farmers, that is nothing to sneeze at.

Following this price increase, people throughout Myanmar took to the streets to demand change. At first the protests were a relatively small affair. But they have grown steadily in the intervening month. Yesterday nearly 20,000 monks, nuns, and average citizens were reported to have marched through the streets. Some of the onlookers even shouting support for Suu Kyi.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made a statement supportive of the Burmese people over the weekend, and said Bush was likely to say something soon. Attention for the most recent stirrings of democracy in Burma would be welcome, but action even more so.

Victory!

I am declaring victory in my one-man battle against Time Select. I discovered today (though it must have happened a few days ago) that the New York Times has discontinued it's strange and incomprehensible policy of trying to force online readers to pay extravagant amounts of money for today's news: Times Select is defunct. Let's hope it stays that way. And, just in case you want to find out yourself, the New York Times can be found at: www.nytimes.com. They have great international reporting. I especially like their Asia-correspondants.

Overheard in Washington

OK, so it wasn't overheard so much as received in an email, but it's both true and funny. I've played ultimate frisbee the past year-plus on a team. One of the players was quoted in a story in the Washington Post today on a fairly complicated, though significant, issue. My girlfriend, who also plays on the team, writes:

"What a classic Washingtonian moment. Reading the Post, and the expert quoted is on my freaking ultimate Frisbee team."

Who says DC isn't a small town?

What I've Learned

At the risk of angering the publishers at the Washington Post, I'm reprinting, in its entirety (with a link to the site) Kofi Annan's Op-Ed that was published in today's post. The timing, with a new Congress preparing to start, couldn't be more appropriate. Hopefully someone will listen.

What I've Learned

By Kofi A. Annan
Monday, December 11, 2006; A19

Nearly 50 years ago, when I arrived in Minnesota as a student fresh from Africa, I had much to learn -- starting with the fact that there is nothing wimpish about wearing earmuffs when it is 15 degrees below zero. All my life since has been a learning experience. Now I want to pass on five lessons I have learned during 10 years as secretary general of the United Nations that I believe the community of nations needs to learn as it confronts the challenges of the 21st century.

First, in today's world we are all responsible for each other's security. Against such threats as nuclear proliferation, climate change, global pandemics or terrorists operating from safe havens in failed states, no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others. Only by working to make each other secure can we hope to achieve lasting security for ourselves. This responsibility includes our shared responsibility to protect people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. That was accepted by all nations at last year's U.N. summit. But when we look at the murder, rape and starvation still being inflicted on the people of Darfur, we realize that such doctrines remain pure rhetoric unless those with the power to intervene effectively -- by exerting political, economic or, in the last resort, military muscle -- are prepared to take the lead. It also includes a responsibility to future generations to preserve resources that belong to them as well as to us. Every day that we do nothing, or too little, to prevent climate change imposes higher costs on our children.

Second, we are also responsible for each other's welfare. Without a measure of solidarity, no society can be truly stable. It is not realistic to think that some people can go on deriving great benefits from globalization while billions of others are left in, or thrown into, abject poverty. We have to give all our fellow human beings at least a chance to share in our prosperity.

Third, both security and prosperity depend on respect for human rights and the rule of law. Throughout history human life has been enriched by diversity, and different communities have learned from each other. But if our communities are to live in peace we must stress also what unites us: our common humanity and the need for our human dignity and rights to be protected by law.

That is vital for development, too. Both foreigners and a country's own citizens are more likely to invest when their basic rights are protected and they know they will be fairly treated under the law. Policies that genuinely favor development are more likely to be adopted if the people most in need of development can make their voice heard. States need to play by the rules toward each other, as well. No community suffers from too much rule of law; many suffer from too little -- and the international community is among them.

My fourth lesson, therefore, is that governments must be accountable for their actions, in the international as well as the domestic arena. Every state owes some account to other states on which its actions have a decisive impact. As things stand, poor and weak states are easily held to account, because they need foreign aid. But large and powerful states, whose actions have the greatest impact on others, can be constrained only by their own people.

That gives the people and institutions of powerful states a special responsibility to take account of global views and interests. And today they need to take into account also what we call "non-state actors." States can no longer -- if they ever could -- confront global challenges alone. Increasingly, they need help from the myriad types of association in which people come together voluntarily, to profit or to think about, and change, the world.

How can states hold each other to account? Only through multilateral institutions. So my final lesson is that those institutions must be organized in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.

Developing countries should have a stronger voice in international financial institutions, whose decisions can mean life or death for their people. New permanent or long-term members should be added to the U.N. Security Council, whose current membership reflects the reality of 1945, not of today.

No less important, all the Security Council's members must accept the responsibility that comes with their privilege. The council is not a stage for acting out national interests. It is the management committee of our fledgling global security system.

More than ever, Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system. Experience has shown, time and again, that the system works poorly when the United States remains aloof but it functions much better when there is farsighted U.S. leadership.

That gives American leaders of today and tomorrow a great responsibility. The American people must see that they live up to it.

The writer, secretary general of the United Nations, will leave office Dec. 31. This article is based on an address he will give today at the Truman Presidential Museum & Library in Independence, Mo.

Incomes, Inequality, and the World Bank

The Post has a story about a World Bank report that came out recently, describing the broad-spectrum failings of poverty alleviation programs.  In short, according to the report, 60% of countries receiving poverty-alleviation loans from the Bank have remained stagnant, or actually lost ground in the "war on poverty".

 

My favorite, exerpted quote, though is this:

"For a sustained reduction in poverty over a period of time, it really pays to worry about both growth and distribution," said Vinod Thomas, director-general of the Independent Evaluation Group. "It has been a mistaken notion that you can grow first and worry about the distribution later."

As China-watchers (and Chinese themselves) can speak on, one of the main concerns for the CCP right now is growing income inequality (and the social unrest that is coming along with it).

 

There are two big challenges that I see on this right now.  First, finding a plan for any given country that will allow it to effectively redistribute wealth/income while not creating a 'welfare state'; and Second, how to convince those who are accumulating the wealth and earning the income that it's actually a good idea for them to surrender some of that wealth.

 

My guess is that the first person who figures out a highly effective way to do this is going to earn a Nobel Prize.

 

 

The Anxiety Kingdom

There is a story in today's Post that, in microcosm, describes China's growing economic problem: Unemployable college graduates. Not because they lack the skills to get decent jobs (the jobs their parents assume college will open the doors for them to get), but because China's economic and regulatory environment make it too hard for the business to start to provide an opportunity to the young people with energy and creativity.

Like so many things, there's a catch. China can't afford to simply free up the restraints on their economic and business sytems. Why? Because it will tear apart the economy from too much economic growth. It's currently caught between a rock and a hard place, both of it's own making: it needs as many college graduates as possible to provide upward mobility for a population enormously in need of hope; but at the same time it has to slow (to a modest 8 or 9%)the economic growth so that the economy doesn't destabilize the whole country.

I'm a bit worried that we're going to have more of this kind of news before we hear less.

Global warming and economics

Global Warming To Cost Up To 20% of Global GDP

In college and in grad school, I had ongoing debates with my roommates and friends about the need to quantify, in dollar terms, the costs of global warming, if we wanted the businesses and governments around the world to start taking it seriously. If there isn't a dollar value attached to it, it doesn't affect their bottom line, and they don't have to worry about it.

Sir Nicholas Stern has just done this, in a 700 page report he prepared under a commission from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, in the UK. In his report he presents the costs of global warming at between 5-20% of annual global GDP over the next century plus. If this were an average loss to everyone on the planet, it would mean the average american would earn 8,000 less a year, just because of global warming.

It's a long report, the executive summary is even 27 pages. The middle of the summary is pretty interesting. I'd suggest starting to read at page 10 or so.

Bitter Partisanship

If you thought bitter partisanship was constrained to the Western Hemisphere (where outside the U.S., Mexico is also bitterly--and evenly--divided) there is news from Eastern Europe showing how we are not alone in our "I'm right and you're wrong" attitude. At least we haven't resorted to tear gas, rubber bullets, or fire hoses yet, as is happening in Budapest now.

Today is the 50th anniversary of their 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union. So maybe, in a bittersweet sense, it is fitting.