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The Malignancy of Multinational Currency

written by Katie Jones

“France is one of those countries that by printing money for 14 African states prevents their economic development and contributes to the fact that the refugees leave and then die in the sea or arrive on our coasts,”

This hostile and controversial statement was leveraged by Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s populist deputy Prime Minister, in a counterproductive attempt to deflect shared responsibility for Europe’s migrant crisis. However the currency in question should be a part of the larger discussion on globalization and post-colonial institutions. If European leaders were to earnestly evaluate the CFA franc not from their perspective but from the perspective of the affected Africans, they may find some unsettling similarities to the eurozone.  

The CFA franc represents two distinct multinational currencies in Western and Central Africa. The currencies are effectively the same, as both have an exchange rate pegged to the euro (1 euro = 655, 957 francs), however they are not interchangeable. The logic behind the fixed exchange rate is to prevent inflation and promote investor security in nations where poor governance may otherwise threaten market stability. However, this comes at a very steep price for the nations involved. In return, they must keep 50% of their reserves in the French Treasury, follow the strict monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB), and attempt to develop their economies with an inevitably overvalued currency.

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In the current economic landscape, African nations should seriously consider if the sacrifice of sovereignty necessitated by the franc is worth the supposed increase in prosperity. The crux of the problem is that the CFA franc is essentially a version of the euro, and relatively weak economies using a strong currency is counterproductive to economic development. The strength of the franc encourages imports and makes exports less competitive on the global market, stagnating the development of member nations. Additionally, the main priority of the ECB is to maintain stable prices, with inflation at a maximum of 2%. This policy makes sense for the top members of the European Union (EU), but a developing nation should be focused on high employment rates and exports, ideally with inflation rates of up to 8%. Moreover, the 50% reserve requirement of the franc zone countries greatly limits their investment options. The French treasury gives them a return rate of only  .75%, which sometimes does not even match the level of inflation, much less provide a desperately needed return on investment.

The franc becomes even less attractive when considering the performance of other African economies. Former French colonies that abandoned the franc, such as Morocco and Algeria, are more successful economically, despite using an independent currency. Overall income per capita, adjusted for inflation, has grown 1.4% in the franc zone and 2.5% in the remainder of Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, the line of credit extended to the franc zone is pitiful. In the western franc zone (see map) the credit to GDP ratio is 25% and in the central franc zone it is only 13%! This is in comparison with the remainder of Sub-Saharan Africa around 60%.

So why keep the CFA franc? The franc is known to benefit a small percentage of upper and middle class African citizens by providing easy access to imports and the ability to invest abroad, while by and large disadvantaging the 75% of the citizenry who are working class. To exacerbate things further, France and other foreign interests greatly benefit from the franc zone as an export market, and France is granted special access to African resources as a part of the agreement. Furthermore, the franc’s status as a multinational currency provides greater benefit to outside nations wanting to facilitate trade, than the internal member states. The franc is after all very poorly integrated, with intra-regional trade accounting for only 15% of total trade, while trade with Europe accounts for 60%. The French, along with the remainder of the eurozone, clearly profit off of the CFA franc.  

Many African economists and politicians acknowledge these flaws, yet the question of how to move forward still remains. The French have responded to the protestations of their former colonies by supporting the creation of a new multinational African currency independent of the euro, that will incorporate more– and larger–African states, including but not limited to Nigeria. However, this still appears self-serving. There is minimal justification for the existence of a new multinational currency in Sub-Saharan Africa, and as aforementioned, it primarily benefits outsiders. The best interest of the franc zone may be to follow the advice of former World bank director Carlos Lopes. He believes the CFA franc should be tied to a basket of other currencies, including the notoriously undervalued Chinese yuan, or to hover around a target exchange rate with the euro, both which will help to mitigate the overvaluation of the franc, while maintaining the currency as a pillar of stability.

The tragic irony is that France, along with a number of Southern European states, are the victim of the euro in much the same way that the CFA franc is. The euro is too strong for the economies of Southern Europe. Estimates peg overvaluation at  5% in France and 7% in Greece. Furthermore, the emphasis on low inflation within the eurozone is really to the benefit of the booming German bloc, at the expense of countries such as Italy and Greece that desperately need stimulus spending. In terms of real GDP, Italy was the same size in 2016 as it was in 2001. Much like the franc zone, Italy, among other countries, needs to focus on improving employment rates, infrastructure projects, and competitive exports, to ensure growth in coming years.

When comparing eurozone countries to those that chose not to adopt the currency, such as Sweden and Hungary, the results are disappointing at best. National Gross Income (NGI) per capita in the eurozone grew at a rate of  1.65%  in 2015, whereas Sweden saw growth rates around  2.72%. Additionally, Hungary, an emerging European economy, witnessed even higher growth rates, with NGI per capita reaching  3.06% in 2015. The success of independent Eastern European economies makes evident the disadvantage Southern Europe suffers being a part of the euro. Furthermore, when examining the eurozone within the global context, it is evident that as a whole they have fallen behind other developed countries. The US economy was just 13% bigger than the eurozone at it’s genesis, but now it is over 27% larger.

So why keep the euro? This question is obviously more nuanced in light of the highly integrated European economy and greater cultural and political ties of the EU, than are present in the franc zone. Brexit, despite not having a monetary element, should be evidence enough that disintegration is not a feasible option for Europe at this point. However, the shortcomings of the euro must still be recognized. The euro, rather than being of overt benefit to a neocolonial power as the franc is, does disproportionately benefit Germany. The significant undervaluation of the euro in Germany (about 17%) makes its exports extremely competitive and creates greater economic prosperity. Unfortunately, this leads to a vicious cycle where Germany becomes more and more prosperous and the ECB creates tighter monetary policies to adjust for German strength (ie higher interest rates), all while neglecting the needs of the weaker economies in the eurozone. For the benefit of not only the European project, but the 147 million people who use the CFA franc, the Germans should ease their tyrannical monetary policy and cozy relationship with the ECB.

Realistically however, the prospects of Germany doing this are unfavorable, and as a result the euro’s most likely fate seems to be an eventual phase out. The currency once intended to unite Europe, has since contributed to the very economic stagnation and rise of isolationism that will eventually be its demise. But perhaps this is to be expected when inflicting stringent monetary policy on nations with diverse economic needs and dissonant fiscal policies. It may be time to reconsider multinational currencies as a whole.

March 15, 2019 0 comment
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FeaturedGlobal Health

Heads of the Hydra

written by Alex Langsam

In 1993, Colombian troops shot dead the infamous Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar on his rooftop. To celebrate, they fired their guns into the air while chanting “We won!”. Lee Brown, the director of the U.S. National Drug Control Policy at the time, said Escobar’s fate should “serve as an example to others who traffic in death and misery”. But despite the apparent victory, the New York Times made a sober clarification. Author Robert McFadden noted that, apart from the symbolism, Escobar’s death was “not expected to seriously affect cocaine traffic”. The drug would continue to sell through the various groups that had assembled in the power vacuum left by Escobar’s downfall.

The take-down of cartel leaders has become a recurring story, one that shows the futility of America’s current policy. Earlier this month, New York courts found Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán guilty of ten criminal counts relating to his drug enterprise. Guzmán was the leader of one of the largest drug-trafficking operation in the world, which sold cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana. He was convicted for this and numerous other crimes, including conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to distribute of heroin, cocaine and marijuana internationally. Now he is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. Justice was served, law and order prevailed, and America caught the bad guy. U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue valiantly told reporters after the verdict was announced, “There are those who say that the war on drugs is not worth fighting. Those people are wrong.”

Mr Donoghue’s claim and Guzmán’s conviction seem to suggest it is time for celebration. Perhaps George W. Bush could lend us his Mission Accomplished banner? While the media and the courts savor the conviction of one of the once-most-powerful drug traffickers in the world, it’s worth thinking back to 1993. Let us remember the Colombian troops standing over Escobar’s bloody corpse on the rooftop, shooting into the air and shouting “we won”. Recall what Robert McFadden, the New York Times’ journalist who wrote of Escobar’s death, said following Pablo’s death: beyond symbolism, cocaine traffic was not expected to be seriously affected. Like an echo from the past, while the U.S. justice system was busy dancing with glee, Guzmán’s defence lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman prophesied that “the cocaine doesn’t stop flowing with the take-down of El Chapo”.

The War on Drugs has been waged in the U.S. for nearly fifty years now. Originally a cheap campaign slogan for Richard Nixon in 1971, the U.S. government now spends roughly $47 billion every year fighting the War on Drugs. This ideological war in the U.S. is fueling a very real one in Central and South America. The cartel wars in Mexico have killed more than 200,000 people since 2006. And yet despite the cost of America’s War on Drugs, its tactics have not changed. The fight has assumed a cyclical nature, that goes something like the following:

Some substance, such as cocaine in the 1910s or marijuana in the 1930s, becomes popular among U.S. citizens. The government, who usually extol this kind of free-market supply and demand efficiency, prohibit the substance and its production in the United States. But the free-market keeps kicking and before long a black market emerges, with demand from the U.S. citizens satiated by supply from poorer, less easily-regulated countries. Huge amounts of money are siphoned into cartels, whose leaders subsequently gain immense power and notoriety. If born in the U.S. they might have been respected as self-made entrepreneurs. But capitalism is a nationalist game, and so the U.S. incites a manhunt against such an obvious and out-in-the-open enemy. Multinational coalitions are formed and mass resources spent in the pursuit and capture of said individuals. After years of bribery, murder and evasion of the authorities, the cartel figurehead is either executed or taken into custody. New organizations are then free to fill the vacuum left in their absence. It’s back to square one, with little disruption made to the distribution of narcotics. Despite the media hype that follows the demise of such leaders, reality is typically less optimistic: cocaine remains wildly popular in a post-Escobar world and people will continue to smoke weed despite Guzmán rotting in prison.

The War on Drugs rages on, reinforced by opportunistic politicians after a scapegoat, fanatical law enforcement unquestioningly chasing agendas, and a corrupt private prison industry that’s desperate for profit. But despite being afforded unwavering commitment, it isn’t being won. A campaign of tough love and prosecution has given tremendous power to criminals and left minimal impact on the drug trade. In Mexico, innocent people are dying, while the cartels’ economic power grows similar in scale to that of multinational corporations, positing an existential threat to the sovereignty of their home countries. An abstract war waged against a noun (see also the War on Terror) is not only ambiguous rhetoric used to drum up political support, but, as seen with the War on Drugs, can be the cause of as many casualties as conventional warfare. The War has perpetuated a violent and powerful black market that shows no signs of disappearing. In an effort to protect its own citizens from the ills of substance abuse, the U.S. has put citizens in other countries at risk – prime examples being Mexico and Columbia, with deaths numbering hundreds of thousands for both countries. The War on Drugs must come an end in order to save innocent lives. Alternatives to prohibition need to be considered.

1930s Chicago found itself in a similar predicament to what Columbia and Mexico face today. The ruthless gangster Al Capone ran a powerful crime syndicate that held the city hostage. Capone had taken over from criminal boss Johnny Torrio, who had in-turn replaced James “Big Jim” Colosimo. Just like Pablo Escobar, these criminals were easily replaceable, one after the other. Their business was also drugs, albeit a kind that is now fairly socially acceptable – alcohol. Black-market bloodshed went on for more than a decade until the U.S. Government repealed the prohibition of alcohol. This repeal didn’t completely shutdown the mafia groups, but it did cut off a valuable part of their revenue. In the same way, a well-assessed end to certain contemporary drug prohibitions could seriously threaten the cartels of today.

Marijuana, once the sworn enemy of authorities, is slowly winning its fight against prohibition. A growing awareness of the issues of prohibition have caused a shift in public opinion. As remarkable as it seems, the U.S. Government was defeated by potheads. The War on Drugs had to withdraw from its cannabis front. The futility and hypocrisy of prohibition is starting to show, as more and more evidence proves in favor legalization. The legalization of medical marijuana alone saw violent crime in U.S. border states fall by an average of 13 percent, while homicides related to the drug trade fell by an incredible 41 percent.

The legalization of marijuana, a policy previously unimaginable for much of Western society, shows the need to reassess the approach to prohibition. Rational and sane adults should be free to do as they please in regard to their own bodies, so long as it doesn’t cause harm to others. The slow-setting end of marijuana prohibition is indicative of an alternative to the War on Drugs. Substances too damaging to society should be kept away from it, but the blind and perhaps arbitrary prohibition of certain substances could be re-evaluated. Western society’s tabooing of some drugs is deliberately ignorant of the reality of these substances. Research done on octopuses showed that MDMA reduced the creatures’ antisocial behavior (ravers all around the world could tell you the same thing). There are numerous allegations of our fine and honorable policy-makers using cocaine, yet they continue to rise into successful positions. This is not an endorsement of uninhibited hedonism, but a call to at least inspect the laws, as well as cultural norms, we’ve developed around drugs. These laws tend to punish the poor, marking them with criminal records, while the rich pump money into the black-markets that allow the real criminals to prosper. Separately, addicts are of course a problem for society, but, rational individuals looking to experiment, who are not so susceptible to dependence, are not. Alcohol has its dangers, but Western society has assumed it can be handled well enough by society’s sane majority. This doesn’t apply to certain drugs for sure, but laws arbitrarily drawn up decades ago do not follow a rational methodology or a comprehensive analysis of each case. There is more that can be learnt and understood about these substances. The re-evaluation of prohibition could lead to better regulation of such substances, as well as deflating the barbaric trade that supplies drugs to the West while tearing apart poorer countries with gang violence.

Governments around the world need to listen to the advice of experts and treat drug abuse as a social and health-related issue, not a criminal or military one. The eradication of mind-altering substances is impossible – there will never be a truly drug-free society, and as long as there is demand, supply will find a way. Instead of eradication, governments should introduce policies to address the societal factors that lead to increased risky drug use, in turn mitigating the damage caused by such substances. Wielding prohibition like a blunt battle-axe solves very little and seems to have caused more damage than good. If governments don’t change their approach to narcotics, then men like Pablo Escobar and Joaquín Guzmán will continue to gain wealth and power. The fight against drug traffickers has become something like Heracles’ fight with the mythical Hydra. Each head Heracles chopped off the mythical beast was replaced by two new ones. Cartel figureheads are much the same; their defeat does little to prevent future danger. Heracles defeated the Hydra by cauterizing each decapitated stump, and governments need to take a similarly creative approach. Address the cause, not its symptoms, or else the illness will remain. The end of the cartels will come by exploring alternatives to the costly and ineffective War on Drugs that gives them economic power.

March 12, 2019 0 comment
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ChinaFeaturedWomen's Rights

Demographic, Legal, Social – Gender Inequalities in Chinese Society

written by Xinong Wang

Much of American political debate today comprises of a cultural and legislative war over gender equality, from the from the #MeToo movement to the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh and its implications for reproductive rights and views on sexual assault. Amidst the ever increasing scrutiny of the intersection of gender, race, and culture, China offers a fascinating case study which puts into perspective the values of the US and shows the impact of a society ordered around different cultural priorities and with a different population pyramid.

Out of the 144 countries in the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index of 2016, China ranks 99th in terms of gender parity. It’s easy to point to the underrepresentation of women in many professions. But even before looking at women in the upper echelons of academia, politics, and business as  we tend to do in Westernized society, there is a glaringly obvious imbalance that that is often forgotten – as of 2016, there were approximately 34 million more men than women in China. Uneven ratios of men and women exist in every country. For example, the US has 96.95 men for every 100 women, so disparity itself is not a good indicator of gender equality or a lack thereof. However, in China’s case, this imbalance is symptomatic of decades of systematic cultural and ideological gender inequality.

For many, the cause of such a discrepancy in China’s demographics was the One Child Policy, which has long invited scrutiny and criticism for being a harsh legislative measure which infringes upon civil liberties. In effect from the late 1970s to 2015, couples could only raise one child, and women who became pregnant with a second child were often forced into abortion or faced the consequences of either heavy fines or loss of employment. In some cases, exceptions were made for those with dangerous occupations, or if you lived in a rural area and your first child was a daughter. Others might have chosen to simply pay the fine. Due to the One Child Policy, China’s population pyramid is now heavily skewed as the aging population far outnumbers the youths growing into the workforce. When the One Child Policy ended in 2015 in favor of a Two Child Policy, this was already a major concern for the government. The government has been quietly trying to encourage couples to have two children by offering incentives such as tax breaks or even housing and education subsidies. A respected, state endorsed newspaper recently published a piece by academics suggesting that China establish a “reproductive fund” which would tax all adults under the age of 40. This tax would fund rewards for couples for having more than one child, and if an individual remained childless, their contribution would be kept until their retirement or death, whichever came first.

Clearly, China’s aging population is a ticking time bomb which has many worried. Yet the age demographics were by no means the only thing affected by the One Child Policy. A closely related issue is the matter of China’s sex imbalance. During the years it was in effect, many couples aborted female fetuses after illegally bribing doctors to know the sex. In the last year of the policy, in 2015, 113.5 boys were born for every 100 girls. But even after birth, baby girls can find themselves quietly abandoned or even murdered. The one child policy had the marked effect of exacerbating China’s gender imbalance by ensuring that couples who were determined for their only child to be a boy often took extraordinary measures to do so. But it is, of course, by no means responsible for creating the culture which valued baby boys more than girls in the first place. Rather, this preference is best understood in relation to the underlying Chinese world view which revolves around a traditional family unit.

There are many ways China’s family-oriented culture compels many to prefer sons to daughters. For one, the nuclear family unit spans across multiple generations. It is not uncommon for grandparents to be heavily involved in the rearing of their grandchildren. The concept of filial devotion is heavily emphasized. This is a cultural phenomenon that spills over into legislation. In recent years, China has passed laws stipulating that adult children are legally responsible for their parents, and not just financially – they are also responsible for their emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being. Under the act, titled “Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People”, a woman in the city of Wuxi, China, successfully sued her daughter and son-in-law for neglect. The subsequent trial ended in a court mandate for the young couple to visit her at least once every two months, and pay additional monetary compensation. Parents all across China can sue their children for not visiting enough or failing to provide spiritual comfort. The consequences for children include being placed on a credit-score blacklist, which could affect their ability to open bank accounts and have loans. In a country where welfare can be very unreliable, both culturally and legally, parents may come to expect to be taken care of by their children.

The great value that Chinese society confers upon the familial ties between children and parents is inseparable from the importance of marriage. While China’s Marriage Law stipulates that all children, whether born in or out of wedlock, have equal rights, the reality is much more complicated. For Chinese citizens, one of the most important forms of identification is a document called hukou. A hukou determines a person’s ability to be admitted anywhere from schools to hospitals, and is also important for real estate, banking, and loans. In order to register a child for a hukou, a variety of official documents must be presented. In many cities, such as Beijing, China’s capital, this includes a marriage licence. Alternatives include paternity test results which confirm the identity of the child’s father, or paying a “social maintenance fee” of up to tens of thousands of yuan (depending on exchange rates, this is upwards of thousands of USD). Hence in China’s society, having children is important socially, culturally, and in many senses, economically. And in order to have children, marriage is crucial.

China’s society is, in the most original sense, patriarchal, as well as heteronormative. While Chinese couples do not practice taking each other’s surnames upon marriage, it is traditional for children to take the surname of their father, and women tend to be omitted from both their fathers’ and husbands’ family trees. Hence continuation of the family name relies on sons, not daughters. With the importance of family being so high and sons being the only ones able to legitimately pass on the family name, it is no wonder that under the One Child policy, if couples can only have one child, many prefer it be a son. Additionally, as in many other cultures, upon marriage a woman is considered a part of her husband’s family. Hence the other incentive for sons – they are the children who do not leave to become part of another family.

The gender imbalance is often talked about in terms of the detrimental effects it has on the day-to-day lives of Chinese men. In a culture which already places enormous pressure on young people to marry, the shortage of women only heightens the urgency for men who are of a marriageable age. Ironically, the pressure to marry comes from the family-oriented culture. The difficulty of marriage due to the unbalanced sex ratio is now threatening the very culture which created the imbalance in the first place. There are many accounts of adult men living with their mothers or even grandmothers, having never married. The traditions of the family unit are being distorted, and the disruption has nothing but its own patriarchal and heteronormative dictates to blame.

Aside from what many call the “epidemic of loneliness”, the sex imbalance is also responsible for detrimental economic effects on Chinese society. Labor markets are becoming distorted as many migrate to larger cities in hopes of making a good match. The savings rates in China has gone up as men try to accumulate their earnings to present themselves as more suitable matches. Property values are artificially inflated as they buy houses to prove their financial stability, and smaller scale consumption is driven down by their focus on having property and savings. All of these pressures contribute to the decline of mental health among Chinese men.

It would be narrow-sighted and patriarchal to only focus on the negative impacts this has on Chinese men. To some degree, the fact that women who seek marriage are outnumbered by their suitors can be beneficial as women are sometimes able to better their socio-economic status by marrying wealthier men. However, this is a double-edged sword which exacerbates classist stereotypes of women who are “gold diggers”, marrying men for their money and houses. Another dire consequence is that in many rural areas, the shortage of local women has increased violent crime and foreign bride trafficking. It is a common, ubiquitous stereotype in China that women ought to prioritize families over career. With marriage being more difficult for men, this – explicitly or otherwise – increases the pressure women face to get married. With the family-oriented society that places an enormous importance on children, and with children out of wedlock delegitimize as an option, the view is that there is little reason not to. After all, it should be easier for them to find a husband than for a man to find a wife.

With the consequences of the sex imbalance and aging population becoming more and more pressing, China’s cultural views on women must change – for not making the problem worse and preserving the cultural value of family and if not for the sake of simply striving for gender equality. Chinese culture does not reward women who value careers or education past a certain level. There is a special term for women who remain unmarried – sheng nu, meaning “leftover woman” with the implication that she is no longer desirable. The age at which this term is applied begins anywhere between 25-30. This has the effect of discouraging many women from pursuing higher education beyond undergraduate, for fear of being labelled as a nu buo shi – “female academic”. Far from being a complementary term, women with higher education degrees such as PhDs are mocked as being a “female academic” which is a “third gender” separate from male and female. Women who pursue an education over marriage are labelled this way as unfeminine for defying social norms and pursuing an education over starting a family, and are thus seen as unsuitable for marriage. This is made worse by the prominence of academics who feel comfortable publicly publishing blatantly misogynistic sentiments such as “history has proved that women don’t belong in academia”.

China has never had a female president, or even a female member of the Standing Committee, the highest orders of parliamentary power. Of the Politburo, the next level down in government leadership, only one member is female out of the 25 in total. Retirement policies mandate female public servants to retire at 50 or 55, while men can work up until age 60. Not only does this stem from the idea that women are physically weaker, but also contributes to the problem that women are simply worth less economically. This is another subtle push to have women prioritize family, when they are legally valued less, career-wise, than men. Women in leadership positions face double bind situations when it comes to business and culture. Drinking is a large part of networking in business – baijiu is a highly alcoholic grain spirit common in China, and drinking baijiu is a large part of many networking and business dinners. Women are criticized if they drink, but miss out on networking opportunities if they don’t.

In many ways, women in China are set up to be disadvantaged in their professional lives in comparison to their male counterparts. And the imbalanced sex ratio does not help professionally inclined women. Instead, it drives up the cultural value of marriage, and places further pressure on women to choose marriage and children over careers. Discouraging women from pursuing an education or career for the sake of retaining their idealized attractiveness and femininity will have a negative effect as more and more women are willing to forsake the former to advance their careers. As time goes on, the idea that family and personal ambitions are mutually exclusive pursuits for women will not be enough to keep women out of higher academia. But perpetuating the false dichotomy will keep more and more men from fulfilling familial cultural values.

Notably, in all the above policies from the One Child Policy to the proposed reproductive fund, these laws deal with women as the means to a reproductive target. Women are the ones being valued by both law and culture as vessels for potential offspring more than individuals with the right to choose how many children to have, to do it in or out of wedlock, or even whether or not having children is a personal priority over other choices such as education or career. As the US heads into ever increasingly partisan debates on women’s rights, it’s important to remember that everything mentioned in this article, from policing female reproductive rights to societal views which disadvantage women in the workplace, is not unique to China. Gender inequality on all levels is interconnected, whether one looks at it from a cultural, legislative, demographic, or economic perspective. As current events such as the hearing of Brett Kavanaugh continues, it is important to remember this – sexism does not exist in a vacuum of individual behavior, nor nationwide generalization. Everything being interconnected, it is imperative to address it in whatever form it occurs, whenever we can.

October 3, 2018 0 comment
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President Donald J. Trump arrives at the G-7 Official Welcome, Friday, June 8, 2018, and is greeted by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Mrs. Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, at the Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu, in Charlevoix, Canada. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
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FeaturedJournalism

A Budding Bipartisan Consensus on the Liberal World Order

written by Zach Emanuel

On June 26th, Democratic Representative Joe Crowley of New York was defeated in a primary challenge from the left by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a twenty-eight-year-old former organizer for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory shocked many as Crowley, the powerful chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, had been named as a potential replacement for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and led in several polls in the weeks leading up to election day. Yet despite the upset, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said Ocasio-Cortez “represents the future of our party;” and based on her support amongst younger voters, he would seem to be correct.
In addition to running on a progressive platform similar to that of Senator Sanders in 2016, Ocasio-Cortez’s policy positions are indicative of a larger trend within the Democratic Party. Over the last eighteen months, Democrats have begun pivoting to the left of their Obama-Era stances as a result of President Donald Trump’s actions in an effort to oppose him as strongly as possible.
Take immigration for instance. President Barack Obama famously deported more people than any of his predecessors and called for tough and secure borders, while simultaneously supporting a path to citizenship and implementing the DACA program, which protected minors who were brought to the U.S illegally from deportation. All of which were at the time moderate. Obama called them, “common sense” solutions. Yet Trump’s rhetoric and actions on immigration, regardless of how disrespectful and inhumane they may be, have caused Ocasio-Cortez to call for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, and a number of other high-profile Democrats are now doing the same. The policy represents a strong shift to the left from Obama’s positions. Thanks to Trump, Democrats who used to back Obama’s “common sense” immigration reform and strong border security measures would be hard pressed to utter any sort of support for them now.
The same is happening in healthcare. Before Trump, Democrats supported working to improve the flaws within the Affordable Care Act. Regardless of what many in the Republican Party may say, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement was both a moderate plan and a compromise solution to one of the nation’s toughest and most divisive issues. However Trump’s efforts to strip Americans of their health insurance and wreck the Obamacare market through repeal of the individual mandate have led rising Democratic stars such as Ocasio-Cortez to instead call for a more radical Medicare for All plan. Again, due to Trump, attempting to fix the flaws in Obamacare is seen as outdated while support for a Single Payer system has now become a litmus test for Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2020.
Across many issues, the pattern remains. Democrats under Obama supported moderate policies and positions. Along comes Trump, and Democrats move to the left to oppose him as strongly as possible. Ocasio-Cortez and her campaign platform embody this trend, and now it “represents the future of [the] party.”
Yet when it comes to foreign policy and support for the U.S-led liberal, international order, the pattern stops. On domestic policy, Ocasio-Cortez’s platform is filled with aggressive stances opposing Trump, and yet there is no mention of his tariffs jeopardizing the global network of free trade, no position on Russian election interference constituting a threat to American democracy and democracy worldwide, and no reference to Trump’s rhetoric and actions against NATO threatening the Western-democratic alliance. What explains the dichotomy?
Given the lack of criticism Trump has received from Ocasio-Cortez for his actions, it has become clear that the far left is willing to go along with the President in renouncing America’s role as the world’s leading economic, democratic, and military power. For instance, Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of opposition to Trump’s tariffs and potential instigation of a global trade war can be explained because, like Trump, progressives have their own issues with free trade. President Obama championed trade deals through pursuit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the U.S-Korea Free Trade Agreement. In contrast, Bernie Sanders said in 2015 that agreements like these “have been a disaster for the American worker,” because “corporations that shut down here move abroad.” Later in a Democratic primary debate, Sanders even touted his “being on the picket line in opposition to NAFTA” in the 1990s. And Sanders is not alone. A number of left-leaning economists such as J.W Mason and Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Policy and Economic Research, have also spoken out strongly against the benefits of free trade. Therefore, Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of criticism towards- and agreement with- the President’s trade policy is actually in line with her fellow progressives. What’s notable is that just as Trump’s victory represented the triumph of protectionism within the GOP, Ocasio-Cortez’s has done the same for Democrats.
Second, similar to her silence on trade, there is not a word in Ocasio-Cortez’s platform, criticizing Russia’s efforts to sway the result of the 2016 Presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Likewise, I have yet to hear her denounce President Trump’s denials of what unquestionably constitutes a foreign threat to the strength of American democracy, or comment on how the President’s partisan attacks against the Justice Department, FBI, and the media over investigating those threats are eroding public faith in American institutions. Moreover, Bernie Sanders– for all his vocal support and outspoken appeals for progressive policies–has not really spoken strongly either about the dangers Russian meddling poses to democracy worldwide. Why is that?
I suspect it stems from the fact that many on the far left have long seen American democracy and its institutions as intensely flawed, and therefore don’t view them with much essential value. If the American political system was not valuable to progressives to begin with, then attacks by foreign adversaries against it are not perceived of as being particularly threatening. Similarly, if the U.S can’t reasonably claim to represent democratic ideals, then it has no moral right to tout democracy around the world. Though conservatives always questioned whether or not President Obama “loved America,” he never failed to speak glowingly about the country and its political system, saying “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” and “in no other country is my story even possible.” Certainly those statements illustrate a belief in a system worth protecting from foreign threats. Yet as Peter Beinart noted in The Atlantic on July 4th, it is hard to imagine Ocasio-Cortez, or any progressive of her caliber for that matter, saying something similar. Thus, unlike Trump’s immigration policy, his passivity regarding defense of democracy and actions in assistance of its demise have failed to provoke Ocasio-Cortez and others on the far left to speak out.
When President Woodrow Wilson announced America’s entrance into World War I with the intention of making “the world safe for democracy,” he became the first U.S. President to articulate a belief in defending the American system of government both at home and abroad. Trump’s victory however symbolized the end of a Republican Party that cared about Wilson’s conviction of protecting American ideals and institutions in the face of foreign threats. Apparently this view now constitutes “the future” of the Democratic Party as well.
Third, Ocasio-Cortez’s platform lacked criticism of Trump’s dismissal and undermining of American multilateral military alliances such as NATO. Additionally, she has not discussed in any of her post-Election Day interviews the effect those actions have had on weakening and eroding the U.S.-led liberal order that every post-War President, including Barack Obama, has strongly supported. On the campaign trail Trump consistently complained about NATO, lamenting the fact that our European allies weren’t paying their fair share towards their defense and that the distribution of costs was “unfair, economically, to us.” Just this past week in advance of the NATO summit in Brussels, the President levied criticism at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, claiming Germany free rides off U.S security guarantees and threatening to pull back the 35,000 U.S troops deployed to Germany. Such actions are indicative of Trump’s belief that America is getting a raw deal when it comes to NATO and that the U.S would be better off avoiding the international entanglements and obligations that come with the alliance.
When it comes to scaling back U.S military commitments abroad, progressives like Ocasio-Cortez often agree with Trump. Bernie Sanders has long sought to cut American defense spending and once criticized President Obama’s plan to combat ISIS for not encouraging Middle Eastern states to “step up their military efforts and take more responsibility for the security and stability of their regions,” a statement with echoes of Trump’s rhetoric towards Europe. To quote Reihan Salam, the executive editor at the National Review, Ocasio-Cortez is actually “keeping with the fact that many on the hard left have their own objections to the status quo in U.S foreign policy.” Whether it be military interventions or alliances, progressives aren’t shy about their belief that the U.S should take a less activist role. So just as Trump has cowed the GOP into reversing and renouncing its history of support for multilateral agreements and mutual defense, if Ocasio-Cortez’s politics truly constitute the future, then the Democratic Party will soon do the same.
In 1947 when Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Arthur Vandenberg declared that partisan politics should stop “at the water’s edge,” he solidified a bipartisan consensus behind Democratic President Harry Truman’s proposals to drag the U.S from its isolationist past towards an internationalist future. However President Trump’s takeover and transformation of the GOP into an inward-looking party hostile to globalization has threatened the strength of this internationalist consensus. Moreover, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the likely soon-to-be Democratic-Socialist Congresswoman from New York, who openly and proudly opposes Trump on domestic issues, has yet to criticize the President and GOP for this radical shift. If the Republicans are the party of Trump and Ocasio-Cortez is the Democrats’ future, then there may yet be a bipartisan consensus on foreign affairs. It just isn’t the one Truman and Vandenberg had in mind.
The belief that the U.S should abdicate its world leadership arises for different reasons on the Trumpian Right and the Progressive Left. While Trump believes America is better off when it doesn’t concern itself with the interests of the rest of the world, progressives believe the world is better off when America doesn’t. Both positions however are intensely flawed. There is widespread agreement amongst economists on the benefits of free trade for all parties involved. American democracy, imperfect as it may be, is a stronger force for good in the world than Russian or Chinese autocracy. And without military alliances to defend Western liberalism from Moscow and Beijing, there is no way to guarantee its survival. Hopefully one of America’s two parties will recognize this reality before it’s too late.

July 22, 2018 0 comment
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AfricaFeaturedGlobalizationInternational Trade

China’s Strategic African Exploitation

written by Tala Ahmadi

The minibus violently jostled left and right as we hit a road under construction. Awoken from my nap, I looked out the window half asleep. I figured I must still be dreaming as we passed Chinese signs, Chinese workers and Chinese machinery– wasn’t I in the West African country of Ghana? While accustomed to encountering diversity in Africa’s globalized metropolises, I was surprised to find a Chinese presence at a construction project en route to a small village in rural Ghana. As I traveled to more African countries, the image of Chinese investments against the continent’s cities and landscapes was a frequent recurrence.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has aggressively positioned itself in Africa through a host of economic activities ranging from infrastructure projects, construction, mining, social services, restaurants, retail and more. In what President Xi Jinping has deemed a “win-win” relationship, China extracts natural resources from the continent to fuel its economic development in exchange for cheap manufactured goods, roads, schools, hospitals, railways and more. A testament to its foreign policy commitment of “Go Global,” China surpassed the United States (US) as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009.

China’s appetite to forge international partnerships comes at a time when rising populism has forced many Western countries to look inward, with President Donald Trump notably proposing to cut foreign aid by one-third. The economic powerhouse is also ramping up its activities in Latin America in light of a diminishing US presence, doling out more development finance than the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the Andean Development Corporation combined. China has also set its eye on the Middle East, releasing its first Arab Policy Paper which describes how the country hopes to increase trade with the region mostly in exchange for oil.

By pouring $2.25 billion into Africa annually, China has positioned itself as a viable, and often more attractive, alternative to traditional Western aid and development organizations. Chinese money is accompanied by a policy of no interference, meaning few strings are attached for the recipient country besides access to natural resources or a local market. Unlike Western money that often comes with conditionalities like enforcing good governance, human rights or environmental protection, Chinese aid is doled out efficiently and projects are often completed on schedule or earlier. Their non-interference policy also means that the Chinese are willing to indulge African despots that many Western development organizations dare not. One such dictator includes Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s dictator that is purportedly using Chinese funds to increase surveillance capacities rather than assisting the 72% of Zimbabweans who live in poverty (national poverty line).

China has been criticized by many Western countries and media outlets as a neo-colonial force that disregards local labor regulations, funds dictatorial leaders, destroys local markets and invests in construction projects that lack quality and lifetime in the name of profit. While these accusations are valid, China is providing desperately needed infrastructure to a continent that still struggles to achieve fundamental levels of development even after the $30 billion in aid Africa has received since the 1970s. Western development agencies are known for their bureaucratic and top down approach to development that often imposes, unsuccessfully for the most part, western cultural norms and institutions on a continent that frequently does not share the same values. The Chinese have been able to successfully execute projects that Africans can make use of like roads, schools and hospitals.

China’s African foreign policy strategy is deeper than the superficial goal of economic exploitation or neo-colonialism. In light of shifting global paradigms, where the US seems more and more like a decaying empire, China is seeking to build strategic partnerships across the continent that result in international signs of support like at the United Nations. In fact, one of China’s first projects in Africa was the construction of the Tazara railway in the 1970s, connecting Tanzania to Zambia. In exchange for the railway, China required support at the UN to be reinstated in the Security Council. AidData reveals that for every 10% increase in voting support at the UN, China increases aid by 86%. Another bargaining chip for access to Chinese money is often international recognition of China over Taiwan, which most recently occurred with the small, African island country of Sao Tome and Principe.

Another indication that China seeks strategic alliances rather than a form of pure exploitation is China’s establishment of the tri-annual Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2000. During the most recent FOCAC in 2015, where 50 African leaders attended compared to four in the first forum, President Xi promised $60 billion investment in Africa. In 2013, President Xi also revealed his One Belt, One Road initiative, an ambitious vision with a $1.6 trillion price tag, linking Asia, Africa and the Middle East’s trade routes to create a stronger Eastern trade bloc. Perhaps a flex of its geopolitical muscle and a wink to the West, China started building its first African military base in Djibouti— only about ten miles from the US’ largest African military base.

China is presenting itself as a champion of the East and an alternative option for financing the development of emerging economies. While characteristics of China’s foreign policy are accurately likened to economic exploitation, it appears China’s deeper goal in Africa is to forge lasting partnerships in exchange for political loyalty. This may also be influenced by the fact that the longevity of the Sino-African “win, win” relationship is contingent on the Chinese economy’s success. With Chinese economic growth consistently slowing and commodity prices fluctuating, a purely economic agenda may not be sustainable. China presents itself to African nations as an example of an alternative model for climbing out of poverty, an easier and more efficient financing partner and a global leader rivaling the Western hegemonic power structure. A testament to their attempt at cultivating an international image of partnership and leadership, the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana recently commented on the One Belt, One Road initiative, “The belt and road initiative comes from China, yet it belongs to the world.”

August 6, 2017 1 comment
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From Left to Right: Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala, UCLA Professor Arnold C. Harberger, Deputy-Director Alexandra Lieben, MIT Professor Esther Duflo, Holt Alden, UCLA Professor Edward Leamer, Arturo Siguenza
FeaturedThe International EconomyUCLA and the World

Randomized Approaches to Development: An Interview with Economist Esther Duflo

written by Holt Alden

Last week, Generation Editor-in-Chief Holt Alden and Editor Arturo Siguenza spoke with world-renowned economist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Esther Duflo during her visit to UCLA. Professor Duflo is the co-Founder and co-Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and focuses on development economics and poverty alleviation. The interview covers a broad range of topics, including the use of randomized control trials, effective policies for governmental organizations like USAID, and advice for students looking to work in international development. The following is a transcript of the interview, edited for brevity and clarity.

 

Arturo Siguenza (AS): In your experience using randomized evaluations, has there been a development puzzle that has been particularly challenging, or that you consider the biggest puzzle you’ve tackled?

Esther Duflo (ED): Not really, in the sense that most things get partitioned away into smaller things that we can approach, so it’s hard to talk about one big problem. But there are things that are… if you ask me whether there are domains that I understand better after fifteen years of conducting randomized trials, than others, then that is true. For example, one key problem in developing countries is the quality of healthcare, that is really terrible, I couldn’t tell you that I have a good idea of what to do about it. I have maybe a better idea of what the nature of the issue is, but I don’t really have any idea, or the beginnings of an idea, of what solutions would be to improve the quality of healthcare. Whereas there are other domains, like for example in education, where I have a better sense of the problem and what could be done, even if I am aware that there are political constraints to implement what would be done. So there are certainly issues that are a bit thornier than others, and healthcare is certainly one of them.  

Holt Alden (HA):  Tied into that, you have a lot of experience with a whole host of different types of [development] variables. Are there any that have changed your perspective on poverty, specifically, or that you really want to focus on going forward?

ED: I tend to jump from question to question, partly because, as a reaction to the fact that a lot of development work, in particular in international institutions and other things, tend to be very siloed. So people are education experts, or health experts, or they are agricultural experts, but in fact when you are looking at, you know, a household as a unit, they are involved in all of these things and all of these decisions tend to be taken together. So the fact that they have health issues has impact on their business, and the fact that their business is very risky has impact on their health.

So I never really saw myself as becoming a specialist in one topic, as opposed to always trying to keep in mind how all of these things are interconnected. Because each of my projects is reasonably narrow, and one thing at a time — not to become narrow as an economist — I keep circling around, shifting perspectives, shifting projects, as a way of keeping honest.
Esther Duflo

HA: Do you feel like that has been effective for you in your studies? Have you been able to relate them together?

ED: Yeah absolutely. That is kind of what we tried to do in Poor Economics, our book, with Abhijit Banerjee. The book is structured by chapter, which are by theme, but at the end there is really an effort to say ‘what have we learned’.

AS: Your work has been focused on utilizing randomized control trials. However, it can be argued that this removes the local context and local demands from these projects by universalising the development issues. What is your take with balancing the local context with your randomized trials?

ED: So I would almost say the opposite, that the randomized control trials are extremely local because they are always conducted in one particular area. I guess you could conduct them in several particular sites together but, even then, each site you would have to know pretty well and understand pretty well. In fact, the most common criticism of randomized control trial is the opposite, that it’s very local, that being so local it loses the ability to generalize from one place to another, so it’s funny that you should ask the question the other way [laughs].

It’s basically impossible to conceive of a good project without having a very good sense of the reality in the field.

And I think that’s one thing that makes development economists, in particular people who run randomized control trials, different from many other people, in particular bureaucrats in developing countries or people who work in large organizations. We often have a much better sense of the particular realities that people confront in a particular problem.
Esther Duflo

AS: Have you ever had challenges from a local bureaucrat that is opposing what you are trying to do?

ED: Not really. The worst that can happen, and that can be really bad, is sluggishness, when you need something and it doesn’t happen. And the best that can happen is actually cooperation. We have great projects that we have done in coalition with local governments where you have people who are actually very committed to what they want to do and very creative. So one big goal of J-PAL as an organization is to nurture champions within bureaucracies, identify them, and then work with them.

So people are education experts, or health experts, or they are agricultural experts, but in fact when you are looking at, you know, a household as a unit, they are involved in all of these things and all of these decisions tend to be taken together.
Esther Duflo

HA: With the randomized control trials, similar to what happens in medicine, have you experienced any trial or variable that works so well that you’ve ended the experiment? Are there any ethical dilemmas that you’ve faced in your randomized control trials?

ED: Not really, of the first type — that things work so well we’ve had to stop the trial — because the nature of the data collection… I think it might change now with tablets and stuff like that where we get data coming back soon… but until fairly recently the only way we could get data is going out into the field and doing a survey. The data is coming in too slowly to really understand something…

HA: Or after the experiment…

ED: After the fact anyway. So I have not found myself in a situation where I have thought, “Oh geez this is working so well I should stop.” But there are particular issues of other nature that arise. There have been some projects that I haven’t done because I thought that they would be difficult to do ethically. And in these cases it’s never the fact that I randomize is a problem, but it’s the fact that we always randomized when there is some presumption that it might not work — but at least some presumption that it might work — so you have at least some uncertainty to justify the experiment. But there are cases when you feel that in the process of collecting the data you would learn things that could prompt, or should prompt immediate action, but you wouldn’t want to intervene at the time because that would jeopardize the experiment. That’s the type of situation I have avoided, where sometimes I have not done projects.

AS: In the same sphere, with ethical challenges that may arise, a lot of development projects have the tendency of going fad-to-fad. Have you had any experience dealing with this tendency? Or using methods to dissuade this?

ED: It’s about trying to get away from that, trying to generate evidence on things, things that might be fad or might not be fad. So one of the things we run into, we evaluated microcredit programs which certainly have been a fad, or at least were very popular maybe about ten years ago. We collected one evaluation, and found mediocre results, not very bad and not very good. So everybody said “Well, maybe that doesn’t generalize”, we also said “Maybe that doesn’t generalize, maybe it was just that it was not good, who knows.” So we waited and then some people generated other studies like that. When there were seven studies together, we published them all together in one place and then there was no escaping that that thing isn’t working so well. I think it did some something to the fad.

AS: Did you face any problems with people that were very invested in microfinance?

ED: Yeah, microcredit has been an issue because the people who are… it’s not the case in all programs, there are a lot of organizations that just do things because they want to make a difference but if they find out what they do doesn’t work they move to something else. That doesn’t trouble them more than that, they just want to be helpful. They are not married to one program.

But microcredit is different. A lot of people who are in microcredit are deeply invested in it and there have been two kinds of reactions. There have been reaction of organizations saying well that’s useful, we need to change what we are doing. That doesn’t mean people don’t need credit, it means that we need to restructure the offering to better meet the financial needs of the poor. And then there are people who just were upset and tried to make it go away. But it’s not going away [laughs]. I can’t make it go away.
Esther Duflo

HA: Do you normally work more with private organizations or more with governments, especially on the ground?

ED: So early on, when we just started, we worked mostly with NGOs, but now we work a lot with governments. I don’t know what the balance is across projects but certainly if you look at the most recent projects, there is a lot of government work.

HA: Have you felt that [government work] has been more or less effective, or less fast?

ED: It is less fast, it is more work. It is like pulling teeth. But I don’t know if you could call it more or less effective. Working with NGOs has a lot of advantages, in particular the fact that you can, if you have a good partnership, you can control pretty well what’s happening on the ground because they know pretty well what’s happening on the ground. So you know what you’re doing. If you’re interested in evaluating an impact of a particular action — if you manage to do it well — then working with an NGO is much better.

On the other hand, when we move to policy many things happen. The scale changes, the targeting changes, the quality of implementation changes and you’re not going learn that by working with NGOs. If you want to know the effect of policies… if you want to learn about people it might be more effective to work with an NGO and manipulate just one thing and manipulate it very well. That might be a first step in some developing-a-policy type of continuum. But if you’re interested in changing policy, that first step might be necessary but it’s not sufficient. It serves different purposes. But it’s definitely more involved by the nature of the of the exercise.

AS: In J-PAL have you focused on working more with NGOs or with government organizations?

ED: So there has been this shift. Generally we were working more with NGOs and now there is a lot of work with governments. But it is also a question of age. Younger people work more with NGOs because they need results quicker and they have less money. Once you are a little established you can take more risks and you have more time. Even within J-PAL if you looked at the age of the people who run projects, it would be pretty well correlated, I’m guessing.

AS: Have you seen a type of development project that has been receiving more funding recently? That has been more popular?

ED: There is a lot of interest in governance issues. Governance, corruption, et cetera. So that’s an area that gets easy funding. There’s a lot of interest in gender issues. There’s a lot of interest in crime and post-conflict instability, like fragile states. These are the areas that have a lot of funding lately.

HA: If you were in charge of something like USAID, or some other government agency here, is there some step that the U.S. could take in order to better support developing countries?

ED: I was a member of the President’s Global Development Council, so I can tell you what we said. There were three pillars. One was focusing on environment and climate [change], because it’s going to become a poverty issue and a lot of the problem is generated in the US. It needs international leadership, it’s not something that countries can really deal with on an individual basis. The second was public-private partnership. I have less to say about that, that’s less my area of interest. And the third one was innovation.

So it was, basically, saying look, the aid budgets are small. They are becoming smaller and smaller, both in absolute value and as a fraction of what developing countries have to spend because of how the world is going. Therefore the share of the US in the aid budget is falling, because there are countries like Brazil and China who are now spending a lot of money on other countries.

So if we don’t do anything, if we continue building a hundred schools here, and paying some beltway bandit to do some half-hearted agricultural project there… we are doomed to irrelevance. The only way to become relevant and really helpful is to take the lead on generating innovation.
Esther Duflo

Not just innovation as in widgets, but innovation as in policy innovation. How do you do that? By devoting a considerable amount of your own budget –instead of just doing things– doing things to evaluate them. Or by scaling things up that have been scientifically proven to be effective in helping countries to scale them up. Or by supporting countries to create such innovation units within their own government. So that’s sort of the things we are pushing. I think if I were in charge of USAID I would try to push on the third, on this innovation lever. There is something at USAID called the Development Lab, I think, and they are very proud of it and rightly but it’s about two people [laughs].

AS: Commenting on something you said about not just policy innovation but also tech innovation, has there been a particular technological innovation that has really come up in development?

ED: Cell phones. Generally I’m reasonably skeptical of technology but the cell phones has just… in the space of very few years, it is everywhere and it’s really changed the way that everything works. So cell phones, coming next is the smart phone. I really think it’s going to make a difference. Then, already there but for now just in Kenya, is mobile money. It’s not just in Kenya, its Kenya, Bangladesh, Pakistan, but it’s really huge in Kenya. In Kenya, however you look at it, it seems to be changing lives.

AS: Has there been a particular method of disbursing, or trying to get cell phones out there to people in developing countries? Or has it just grown on it’s own?

ED: No, you know Nokia is a very cheap phone — has very cheap phones. They just spread, people find it useful. You think of innovation that has really commercially succeeded, you think of the cell phone and mobile money and microcredit, to some extent. But microcredit, I don’t know if it has… it’s just a commercial success.

HA: Regarding the cell phones, I think that has definitely been pushed and helped by processes of globalization and has been a really positive benefit. Do you think that globalization overall has helped or hurt impoverished nations? Or is it sort of a balance?

ED: I have no idea. I’m not very good at this type of question, I don’t think anybody knows. What we do know is that there are some distinct positive benefits, like the cell phone, but we also know there are distinct negative impacts on distribution. When you’re looking at India and the districts that were most affected by the rapid liberalization in the ‘90s, these places became comparatively poorer compared to other places less affected by the removal of the trade barriers. So we do know it affects distribution in the poor countries and the rich countries. I think these are the two things we know.

I don’t know the extent to which.. people are suggesting that as countries become closer together and trade more, they grow more. This worked on the Panama Canal and the advent of plane transport, which made some countries which were previously effectively very far away now closer by, and seem to be trading more and becoming richer. So there is some indication in that sense. I think the question of trying to put this together and asking whether it’s a positive or a negative doesn’t make sense. Because whatever is negative has to be addressed anyway and in principle could be. It shows something of our inability to redistribute gains. But there is no theorem that trade produces no losers unless you are able to redistribute. That seems to have been a big lesson.

AS: Are there particular organizations that you’ve seen on the rise? Startups or organizations like USAID who have had major projects that have been making a difference lately?

ED: You want me to name specific organizations doing specific things?

AS: If you can.

ED: An organization that has gotten a lot of attention, and I think rightly, is GiveWell. It is organizing to provide cash transfers to people in Kenya using mobile money. So they are really exploiting the existing mobile money to provide cash transfer with minimal screening and no monitoring whatsoever. They have done an evaluation of that work and they show that people seem to be spending the money perfectly reasonably. So I think it was a useful result and they got a lot of attention for it, rightly.

Not up and coming, but I am actually a big fan of the World Bank. I think that they have a lot of very good economists, they are trying hard. They are a bit disparate, they are doing this and they are doing that, but at the same time they have a lot of people that know what they are doing. By and large, in particular lately, they have supported innovation so that is nice.

Very self-servingly — but I should still cite them — I’m a big fan of IPA, that’s Innovations for Poverty Action. I’m saying that self-servingly because that’s of course our very close cousin. I think they are great, they are an NGO — which we are not — helping people conduct evaluations of their program. They are working in a lot of countries in the world setting up ambitious projects. That would be my three.

I’d also cite Pratham, which is a massive education NGO in India. When I said in education we try to understand what should be done, even if there are barriers to actually do it, I think Pratham is the one who figured out how to do it. If someone can do it, they can do it.
Esther Duflo

HA: Do you have any new ideas or experiments that keep you up at night? That you think will really help innovate, like you’ve been saying, in developing countries? What’s the next step you want to dive into?

ED: I have a two year old and a four year old, and they are the ones who keep me up at night, nothing else. [Laughs all around] I try to not be bothered by other things. There are two things that interest me: one thing is very abstract, one thing is very concrete.

One thing is so concrete it’s not economics anymore, it’s really more cognitive psychology. In fact I’m working with cognitive psychologists; I’m very interested in small kids — that might be related to my having a two year old and a four year old — I’m very interested in how small kids learn mathematics. And the reason why I’m very interested in this question is because… a central problem of education in developing countries is that poor kids arrive in school with a small delay, just because they have not gone to preschool, or have not gone to a good preschool.

But then the system in developing countries, partly because of colonial history, partly because of insistence in elite bias… it is the total opposite of “no child left behind”. It is many, many children left behind.
Esther Duflo

The teacher focuses on the top of the class and doesn’t pay attention to the children who are lagging behind. So a small lagging behind at the beginning turns into not being able to read at the end of primary school and exiting the school system.

My hope is to really harness the best of science –that’s why I went to see the psychologists and said you’ve got to work on some real problems, not just labs– to harness the best of what they know to construct the best curriculum possible for preschool. Then haul it out everywhere such that poor kids arrive with a slight leg-up compared to the richer kids, instead of a slight delay. Therefore this advantage will accumulate over time, that’s kind of my hope. So that’s one thing that I’m very, very interested in. And again, that doesn’t keep me up at night — nothing does — but it would.

On the other end of the spectrum, I’m very interested in the plumbing of public policy. That’s the one thing that might seem too abstract, literally how the government machine works. So, when I talk about plumbing, it could really be the plumbing of how money travels from point A to point B without leaking everywhere in the system. Suppose I come up with some great ideas, either they can be profitable, so market entity is going to take care of it and that’s fine, or they are not but we still want to do it because they have some social value. Then government is going to have to run it. Then the issue is, how is government going to be able to run it without destroying it in the process or losing all the money in the process, et cetera. The issue is, “Can I help government implement what they want to implement anyway?” As opposed to giving them ideas — you should do this, you should do that — how do you help government implement what they want to do anyways. Starting with fund flows, so I have a project on fund flows. Literally, how does the money go from the center to a local place and how does that affect corruption and stuff like that? And also, organizations of monitoring systems and the like. That might seem terribly unsexy but in the end the big ticket items will be there I think.

AS: One final question to wrap up, here at UCLA we also have an International Development Studies program. What advice would you give to young IDS students in pursuing a career in development?

ED: Once you finish your studies, you should find yourself a job in a developing country, if possible in the field somewhere and not in the capital. Spend a few years there and understand how things really work until you contemplate your next step. I think that would be the most important thing.

I think there are too many people who work in development that — I think there are bureaucrats in developing countries who just have absolutely no idea what it is. Get yourself out there.
Esther Duflo

AS: That’s the biggest problem that we’ve learned. There are all these organizations telling developing countries what to do when they’ve never set foot in the country.

ED: It’s not just that, it’s also bureaucrats sitting in Delhi, dreaming up some systems. Going back to the plumbing issue, I was talking about healthcare, saying the quality of healthcare is terrible. So one of the issues is the nurses in the public centers never show up to work. So you write the nurses are really bad people, but then you look at them and their job description, and its some kind of … so she’s supposed to arrive at the center at 8 o’clock and be there from 8 to 8 and do field visits in the meantime, she doesn’t have any vehicle, she has ten villages that she has to visit. It’s 50 degrees centigrade, she has to persuade people to get sterilized, which, of course, they don’t want to get sterilized. So someone has been sitting down saying what is the ideal job description for one of these nurses without thinking one thing about how hard it is. So the way we describe it in the book with Banerjee [Poor Economics] is the three I’s: policies for developing countries are plagued by ideology, ignorance, inertia. You have no idea of the realities in the field, and once that sort of thing is in place it never goes away.

May 3, 2016 0 comment
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Welcome to the 2016 Iowa Caucus, DonkeyHotey, Flickr (CC)
Welcome to the 2016 Iowa Caucus, DonkeyHotey, Flickr (CC) Source
Security and ConflictTerrorism

The Next Commander in Chief—Where the 2016 Presidential Candidates Stand on Foreign Policy and Why it Matters

written by Arturo Siguenza

As former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in the Milwaukee Democratic Debate last February, “When people go to vote in primaries or caucuses, they are voting not only for the president, they are voting for the commander-in-chief. And it’s important that people really look hard at what the threats and dangers we face are, and who is best prepared for dealing with them.” Although a clear plug for her past experience, Clinton highlights a crucial element to the presidency that can easily be lost in the media circus surrounding the 2016 election. A time meant to showcase credentials and visions for the future has quickly turned into the spectacle and squabble of entertainment television. The media has succumbed to treating this race for the presidency as just another reality TV show MTV would proudly stream alongside The Real World. With the most recent GOP debate spotlighting personal banter rather than prevailing issues, it is time for us as audiences but most importantly as voters, to make ourselves informed and conscious of the power that one of these presidential hopefuls will soon attain. One of these lucky selected few will soon run this country and the US armed forces, inheriting what can arguably be deemed as the most powerful position in the world. In the wise words of Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility,” and the power in this case, among an extensive list of others, comes from the role of Commander in Chief.

In the digital age, remarks on the campaign trail spread like wildfire across news platforms having immediate impacts on citizens nationally and on the perception of the United States internationally. Case in point: Trump’s rhetoric inciting violence against immigrants with the recent assault of a homeless hispanic man by two brothers, one of which stated, “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” and Trump responded with “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again.” Conversely government heads such as former President Fox of Mexico, in an interview with CNN, voiced that Donald Trump reminds him of Hitler. Although this is but one candidate’s views, it foreshadows the extremely real mindset a presidential frontrunner will take as President and as Commander in Chief and the international denunciation of his views.

These comments and plans for US interaction with the world demand a great deal of attention considering the vast foreign policy challenges that currently exist. The new president will be stepping into a world plagued by terrorist attacks —al-Shabab claiming the most recent bomb attack on a Somalian airplane in reaction to the Turkish airline’s state affiliation to Western operations; will have to face the escalating hodgepodge of civil war against President Bashar al-Assad and proxy war against IS in Syria, along with the snowballing refugee crisis they have kindled; the budding international rivalry with Russia; and the augmenting threat of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, to name a few. As the primaries are in full swing, positions on these international aspects may be greatly impacted by the scrimmage for votes, but they do paint a very real picture of how these candidates will espouse this role. A depiction of this can be quickly processed by simply viewing the way each candidate has titled these issues on their respective websites. Hillary Clinton: “National Security.” Bernie Sanders: “War and Peace.” Donald Trump: “The Military.” Ted Cruz: “Defend Our Nation.” Marco Rubio: “Build American Strength.” These headlines show clear distinctions, with Republicans siding for a militaristic approach and the Democrats opting for diplomatic engagement. To elaborate on a few of the frontrunners’ perspectives, Clinton’s platform seeks to establish a strong economic foundation for diplomatic influence and military defense, aims to disrupt terrorist infrastructure on the ground and online, and hopes to strengthen current partnerships and work to build new ones. Sanders views the role of Commander in Chief as defending this nation, but seeking diplomatic solutions before military action, stating, “war must be a last resort, not the first option.” Trump asserts the military as a primordial force, declaring,—and I quote— “I will make our Military so big, powerful and strong that no one will mess with us.” Following a similar path, Cruz views rebuilding America’s military as key in maintaining national safety and exerting our leadership on the global stage, because “what is best for America is best for the world.”

One of the biggest issues affecting the international sphere, as previously mentioned, is the ongoing war against terrorism primordially sparked by the Islamic State and its affiliates. With a new attack emerging at an almost weekly basis and the scope of these organizations reaching the United States with the most recent San Bernardino shooting, the threat of terrorism has once again reached a security level on par with the period immediately following 9/11. A line connecting the candidates, both Democrat and Republican, is the defeat of IS. However, their projected methods of accomplishing this and tackling its interconnected aspects differentiate their stances. Journalists have outlined the candidates’ positions from accepting refugees, to instituting a no-fly zone, to declaring war. The divide seems clear between the two parties on accepting refugees, but when it comes to military action party lines begin to blur. The Republican candidates have been clear in opposing any further acceptance of Syrian refugees in light of the recent domestic terror attacks, while Democrats have protested anti-refugee and anti-muslim rhetoric in supporting increases in refugee acceptance. Now in the logistics of the war: Cruz and Sanders are both against sending in more US ground troops, while Trump, Clinton and Rubio agree that more troops are needed—with Clinton and Rubio specifying their support for the sending a special ops team. Clinton and the Republicans also both advocate for instituting a no-fly zone in Syria, while Sanders stands alone in his opposition of it. Additionally in terms of invoking NATO Article 5 (the principle of collective defence, requiring all parties to assist in collective action, including the use of armed force, when one or more signatories is attacked), Rubio has favored invoking it, while the rest of the candidates remain unclear In their position for it. IS must be eliminated, they all hail, but how they will achieve this is where divisions come into play.

Another key issue headlining foreign policy talks is US-Russian relations. The ongoing rivalry is no secret, regarding the presence of both forces in Syria particularly and the Middle East in general. Despite the rivalry, there is distinction in how the presidential candidates will interact with Putin. On this gradient of views, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio stand strongest in condemning Russia’s President declaring him as “a bully and a dictator” and “a gangster and a criminal” respectively. Cruz calls for asserting US strength in Syria by expanding missile defenses in Eastern Europe while highlighting the country’s human rights violations to deter Russian resurgence. Rubio has accused Putin of “trying to destroy NATO” in challenging US dominance in the Middle East in addition to his support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In the middle of the gradient lies Hillary Clinton, who has gone head to head with Putin in her past role of Secretary of State. She affirms her belief that Russia has aimed to undermine and confront American power and that the US must counter this; however she admits that when it comes to Syria, the solution must comprise Russian participation. Diverting even further into a diplomatic approach, Sanders promotes a collaborative actions with allies against Russian aggression in placing economic sanctions and international pressure on Putin as “an alternative to any direct military confrontation.” Now on the far side of the gradient is the very pro-Putin candidate Donald Trump who, unlike his peers, seems to be carrying on a friendly relationship stating, “I’ve always felt fine about Putin,” and that “Russia and the United States should be able to work well with each other towards defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other benefits derived from mutual respect,” in response to Putin’s endorsing him.

This breakdown is only a soundbite of the extensive decisions one of these frontrunners will take on. Domestic goals are undeniably a prevailing aspect of this race, but do not let the emphasis on the domestic distract you. We are about to elect a new Commander in Chief. Foreign affairs vastly impact the national, and one Presidential hopeful will inherit the power to overhaul world order as hegemon in the international sphere. It is easy to get caught up in the drama and, more recently, outright brawls, between the presidential hopefuls on the debate floor. However, this election can no longer serve as mere entertainment. Voters must watch debates with critical minds and must investigate what candidates best align with their views. Candidates’ platforms are not a mystery.  Answers are literally a click away.  There is no excuse for ignorance.  Use the Internet. Let it be  your informant, let it be your voice. The proliferation of information is our greatest strength in this election.  Whether you “feel the Bern”, want to “make America great again,” see “Hillary for America,” believe in “A New American Century” or remain undecided, keep yourself informed and vote for who you believe can best represent this nation as not just President, but further as Commander in Chief.

March 3, 2016 0 comment
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Syrian Refugees
EuropeFeaturedGeopoliticsGlobalizationHumanitarian AidImmigrationMiddle EastReligionSecuritySecurity and ConflictSociety and CultureTerrorismUncategorized

Nationality vs. Humanity: The Stranger’s Case

written by Madison Weil

                          “It is nationalism which endangers nations, and not the other way round.”                                                                                                   –Ernest André Gellner                                                                                                                      (British-Czech philosopher and social anthropologist)

French President Francois Hollande recently issued a statement that his country is prepared to open its borders and welcome 24,000 migrants seeking asylum over the next two years. This statement, issued on September 7, 2015, is part of a new plan designed by the European Union to accept and appropriately distribute the massive exodus of refugees fleeing from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other surrounding nations. When asked to comment on French polls that indicated 55% of the national population was opposed to accepting more refugees, Hollande responded that asylum is a constitutional right and a moral duty, and that “France’s image and standing in the world were at stake.”  

In light of the recent terrorists attacks on Paris, and amid reports that one of the attackers held a Syrian passport, Hollande has emphasized the necessity of making proper background checks prior to accepting these refugees. Hollande has declared war on ISIS, but made it clear that France will maintain its “humanitarian duty” and promise to welcome refugees over the next two years.

While many refugees initially identified Germany as the most ideal place to relocate with supposed security and job opportunities abound, other European countries are now offering comparable conditions and welcoming the migrants. In fact, because Germany has been accommodating such a massive influx of individuals in recent months, France has offered to help by offering an expedited asylum application to migrant families arriving in Munich: temporary housing in France along with a two-week approval process as opposed to the usual six-month process.

These recent political and cultural strides made by France are particularly notable given the nation’s sticky history with immigration and ethnic tension. Having just spent a month living and learning in France, I can attest that it is challenging to go more than a day without hearing an allegation that the presence of ethnic minorities, foreigners, and immigrants creates a grave problem for the nation. A commonly held belief among French traditionalists is that these groups directly threaten and compromise the very essence of true “Frenchness.” Many harbor a sense of nationalism that transcends the concept of national pride and actually results in extreme and egregious discrimination—for example, some believe that to be truly “French” is to be white, Catholic, and multi-generationally French. This statement parades as protectionism when in reality it is rooted in racism. This has created an ongoing and very heated dialogue surrounding immigration policy in the last century.

This French perception of nationalism (hopefully) seems foreign to us in the United States. Our nationality law is based on the principles of jus soli (Latin for “right of soil”), meaning that individuals gain immediate citizenship upon being born in the U.S. This has subsequently created the notion that America is a mixing pot of racial identities—our sense of national pride comes from being united as American, not from being one united race. In contrast, most states in Europe, Asia, and Oceania grant citizenship based on principles of jus sanguinis (Latin for “right of blood”) or a restricted version of jus solis—as is the case in France. Under this philosophy, individuals become citizens depending on their parents’ citizenship and not by birthplace. This has fostered and accentuated the cultural division in France between natives and immigrants which has resulted in the emergence of a perceived social hierarchy. Because of this heated history and conflicting cultural dynamic, President Hollande’s decision to welcome refugees in spite of opposition (and in spite of recent events) deserves recognition.

France’s situation forcibly evokes a particularly challenging set of questions: at what point should international leaders place a greater emphasis on obligations to humanity than on obligations to their own national interests? How do leaders of the Western community in particular negotiate or reconcile national interests with moral duty? Is there such a thing as a moral duty to the international community? According to the UNHCR: “Since, by definition, refugees are not protected by their own governments, the international community steps in to ensure they are safe and protected.” In fact, in the past few decades 142 nations have signed on to both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 protocol. By signing this international treaty and its 1967 amendment, the UNHCR states nations are essentially agreeing that “refugees deserve, as a minimum, the same standards of treatment enjoyed by other foreign nationals in a given country and, in many cases, the same treatment as nationals.”

While we have historically seen that most national actions, even humanitarian ones, are often out of self-interest, it is my sincere hope that international authorities will continue to improve and open their borders to those in need. Afterall, those of us born in Western nations with relatively safe conditions could have just as easily been born into a nation experiencing a crisis. Wouldn’t we then hope and pray for assistance and asylum in the E.U.? In the U.S.?

This debate reminded me of an excerpt from Shakespeare’s play “Sir Thomas More.” Sir Thomas More is a lawyer, sent to address an angry crowd of individuals rioting to get rid of “those immigrants” or “strangers.” Shakespeare delivers a powerful message that transcends time and place when More challenges the natives to consider what they would do if they had to flee their home country:

“Whether would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

Nay, any where that not adheres to England,–

Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,

But chartered unto them, what would you think

To be thus used? this is the strangers case;

And this your mountanish inhumanity.”

(Sir Thomas More, Act II, Scene IV)

This is the stranger’s case—the immigrant’s case. For many, it’s near impossible to fully comprehend the plight and experiences of today’s refugees, but so important to try. While it’s challenging to reconcile national interests with humanitarian needs, our nationality shouldn’t supersede our humanity.

November 20, 2015 0 comment
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Cuban propaganda declaring "Ideas are and forever will be the most important weapon."
FeaturedImmigrationMexico and Latin AmericaSecurity and ConflictSociety and CultureThe International Economy

Ending the Embargo: Liberating US Politics from the Cuba Lobby

written by Kurt J. Klein
Cuban propaganda declaring "Ideas are and forever will be the most important weapon."

Cuban propaganda declaring “Ideas are and forever will be the most important weapon.”

On 14 December, 2014, President Obama announced he will re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba after almost 54 years. A month later in the State of the Union, he called on Congress to end the embargo in 2015.  

Since its beginnings in 1960, the embargo has done nothing to promote its stated goal of fostering democracy and human rights on the island. On the contrary, Cuba remains a one-party communist state that has been led by either Fidel or Raul Castro since 1959.  In reality, the brothers use the embargo to successfully create a martyr identity; propping up their regime by giving them a boogeyman on whom they can blame the country’s economic woes. Furthermore, it serves as a derisive obstacle to US cooperation with Latin America. Economically, it costs US exporters at least $1.2 billion per year.  Even stalwart allies, with the exception of Israel, leave the US isolated on this issue by renouncing the embargo.  Since 1999, more Americans have favored ending the embargo than oppose ending it. So what’s the fuss? Why has it taken so long to abandon an anachronistic cold-war remnant that is not just ineffective, but deleterious to American interests? 

Over the last 40 years, the “Cuba Lobby,” interest groups that support the embargo and other hardline policies towards Cuba under Castro, has wielded an unrivaled level of influence in Washington; indeed, analysts like American University’s William M. Leogrande have deemed it more powerful than even the NRA. The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC have a long history of wooing congressional candidates with campaign contributions and punishing those who would renounce the embargo. Similarly, this power reaches even to the State Department. Notably, congressmen under the influence of this cartel are known to manipulate the agency’s funding for specific programs and deny appointments to career Foreign Service Officers who are not sufficiently hard on the Castro government.  Furthermore, in possibly the moment when their influence was most strongly felt, many election analysts believe that the traceable chain from Vice President Al Gore to the Clinton Administration’s actions during the Elian Gonzalez saga provoked the wrath of the CANF and the Cuban American exile vote during the 2000 election. Consequently, the lobby’s powerful presence in Florida helped swing the state, and correspondingly the presidency, to George W. Bush.

However, this is all changing. The first group of Cuban Americans who came to the US as political refugees after the Cuban Revolution are now well into their 80’s. It is this generation and their children, themselves aging and approaching retirement, who fervently loathe the Castros.  These older Cuban Americans make up the leadership who push the Cuba Lobby to strongly support the embargo and other policies that isolate Cuba. On the other hand, the more recent Cuban immigrants came to the US for economic reasons.  They do not possess the same acrimonious sentiments towards the Castros. They desire improved relations between the US and Cuba so they can visit and send remittances to their families without hindrance. As this younger generation replaces the older one, a window is now opening where a majority of Cuban Americans wish to see the embargo end. Currently, 52% of Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County, the largest center of Cuban Americans, oppose continuing the embargo. The changing mood in the Cuban American community, and the fact that the President sees it as politically safe to normalize relations with Cuba, are evidence that the Cuba Lobby’s power is beginning to fade.

Even with the change in general attitude that is spurred by shifting demographics, it is unlikely that we will see any changes toward the embargo in the near future. As a matter of fact, both Houses of Congress are in the hands of Republicans. If Congressional Republicans fall in line as expected with current leadership, Speaker John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the necessary congressional support needed to repeal the embargo will be hard to come by.  Under the current hyper-partisan climate in Congress, supporting policies that are promoted by the President are often seen as traitorous to the Republican cause.  With that stated, there are some GOP supporters in Congress such as Senators Jeff Flake and Rand Paul who desire a change in policy. However, for the time being, the Cuba Lobby still retains its hold on the legislative branch. Perhaps future Congresses can end the embargo by bringing either a change in party control, or, if enough Republicans find political incentives to oppose the Cuba Lobby.

The embargo is very likely to become a hot foreign policy issue in the next Presidential election.  The Democratic frontrunners support continuing President Obama’s initial steps. However, with the notable exception of Rand Paul, nearly all the Republican hopefuls oppose the president’s efforts to normalize relations with the island.

It is ironic that while the Cuba Lobby has been able to exploit Florida’s disproportionate political importance for its own cause, those wishing to end the embargo are looking to do it through another US electoral power oddity: Iowa, the first state to begin the process to pick presidential nominations for both parties. The United States Agricultural Coalition for Cuba (USACC), an organization made up of many powerful agricultural interest groups, sees Cuba as a potential market for farm exports. They can count among their supporters current US Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack. USACC’s goal is to convince voters in Iowa’s caucuses of the potential benefits that ending the embargo would have on the local agricultural industry. It appears their argument is already being heard in Iowa as the State Senate recently approved a resolution supporting enhanced trade between the US and Cuba.

Perhaps the Iowa caucuses can convince those seeking the Republican nomination, and in turn provide evidence to Congressional lawmakers, that opposing the Cuba Lobby is a politically tenable position.  The beginning of presidential nomination process will be a great barometer to how close the US is to ending the embargo.

 

Note: This article also appears in The Generation’s first print issue

 

October 12, 2015 0 comment
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Photographed by Bagassi Koura. Wikimedia Commons.
AfricaFeaturedSecuritySecurity and Conflict

The Unnoticed Conflict in the Central African Republic

written by thegeneration
Photographed by Bagassi Koura, via Wikimedia Commons

Photographed by Bagassi Koura, via Wikimedia Commons

While news networks have assiduously covered the tumultuous events taking place in countries like Syria and Ukraine, the media has largely seemed indifferent to a similar conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR). As a result, much of the international public is unaware of a rapidly deteriorating situation. While camera lenses focus on places like the Middle East and Eastern Europe, this struggling African nation is being pushed further toward widespread slaughter. Increased media coverage of CAR is absolutely essential to spur the international community into action, inspiring them to do something rather than remain in a state of blissful ignorance.

Although the current episode of violence in CAR began in 2012, the country has had an unstable history since it declared independence from France in 1960. Corruption in government and a lack of political stability has led to numerous regime changes, coups, and counter-coups. The current conflict, though ostensibly between Muslims and Christians, is not truly a religious war. Rather, it is one stemming from mistrust and hopelessness. Feelings of political disenfranchisement and frustration born out of lack of economic and educational opportunity has led many Central Africans to join militias, often organized along religious cleavages. As a result, normal citizens have taken up arms, killing, pillaging and driving their fellow countrymen from their homes. The fact that no more recent survey has taken place than an Associated Press tally from September of last year speaks volumes about the lack of coverage. That outdated poll shows that more than 5,000 Central Africans have fallen victim to sectarian violence, a figure up more than 150% from the UN‘s April 2014 estimate issued along with their approval of the MINUSCA peacekeeping mission. According to a European Commission report released late last year, another 500,000 plus Central Africans have been internally displaced, while hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring countries. CAR’s entire population is only about 4.5 million. The sobering reality is that more than one out of every five Central Africans has been uprooted and forced from the security of home and routine into sometimes uncertain, often horrific living conditions. Clearly, the conflict has not been contained, let alone resolved.

The UN’s charter gives as one of its primary objectives the maintenance of “international peace and security.” Thus, the UN bears some of the blame for the lack of progress in solving thecurrent situation. However, the UN derives its power from member states. Without cooperation and active involvement from individual nations, the UN’s ability to respond to world crises is severely undermined. In 2013, several nations expressed hesitance during the planning stages for intervention in CAR; the UK placed higher priority on funding an African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Somalia, while the US balked at the potential cost of putting the plan into effect.

As far as individual nations taking on a leading peacekeeping role, France has displayed some willingness, and currently has about 2,000 troops in CAR. However, the country’s colonial history in CAR has produced resentment and accusations of favoring Christian victims over their Muslim counterparts. Resolving the conflict clearly requires wider cooperation and participation by more neutral participants –ideally both Christian and Muslim nations– whether it comes in the form of funding or manpower. And yet, the response from other leading nations continues to be subdued at best.

Although funding for funding for humanitarian aid has trickled in little by little, there is still a significant deficit. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the 2014 response plan for CAR is 40% short of promised funds; in other words, humanitarian efforts are operating with $220 million less than needed. With the number of displaced Central Africans growing steadily, increased spending, involvement, and coordinated efforts from members of the UN is vital to moving towards a solution.

Could it be possible that the events in CAR attract such little attention from world leaders, because they see nothing material to be gained in intervening there? CAR is not oil rich. Wood, not a particularly coveted resource, makes up 60% of the country’s exports. Further, CAR’s location offers no real strategic advantage; it is landlocked and military bases there would offer little benefit. Without any incentives to motivate them, any nation that intervened in CAR would have to act out of altruism. Needless to say, this hurts the African nation’s chances of receiving help.

However, the UN and its member states are not the only ones able to effect change in CAR. Just as the nations that make up the UN give it power, and influence its decisions, the citizens of those nations can influence their own government’s actions. The international public’s awareness of a conflict certainly plays a considerable role in conflict resolution. A sympathetic and active public can exert pressure on their governments to enact top-down solutions to the conflict, while supporting efforts in CAR by donating to humanitarian organizations on the ground. The international public has thus far failed CAR. On some level, this is understandable. Economic conditions hamper the average person’s ability to make the donations that non-profits rely on to provide relief. Further, citizens confronted with rapid-fire elections often confront the same kind of fatigue that may be at work here. Higher-profile world crises may drain the public willingness to respond to less visible conflicts like the one in CAR. While it is understandable that the citizens of many privileged nations are exhausted from intervening in foreign countries, one must look no further than Rwanda for a history lesson on just how quickly and severely a forgotten conflict like the one in CAR can escalate.

Whether it is the sight of entire cities reduced to rubble in Syria, the return to the international stage of an expansionist Russia, or the paranoia and fear brought on by the spread of Ebola, other stories have monopolized the world’s attention. Considering the gravity of the situation in CAR, why don’t our morning papers jolt us awake with grim pictures of militia members wielding machetes?The answer is they and their readers or viewers have already moved on to newer, fresher disasters and atrocities. Instead of shedding light on the conflict in CAR, the media has largely forgotten it, allowing the situation there to quietly unravel.

If the public is to be roused to insist on action in CAR, the media must play a critical role by providing more coverage. Instead of paragraph-long updates published on the 12th page of a newspaper or relegated to an unvisited corner of a news website, resolving the conflict in CAR requires feature pieces and exposés. If media coverage turned in the direction of exposing the misery of everyday life and the scarcity of essential, life-sustaining resources, the press could awaken human sympathy, stirring high-profile celebrities, powerful officials, and normal citizens alike to act. This surge of human energy and involvement could be a vital force in ending not just the conflict in CAR, but also many others in the often forgotten continent of Africa.

By Penn Scoble

 

March 15, 2015 0 comment
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