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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
year ago, N obel Peace Prize laureate and former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed EIBaradei ranked 20th on FoREIGN PoLICY's list of top Global Thinkers as we saluted his audacity in returning to Egypt for the daunting task of somehow bringing democracy to his homeland. " I see a decaying temple, a lmost collapsing," we quoted ElBaradei saying of Hosni Mubarak's three-decade-old regime. "It will fall sooner rather than later." At the time, few heralded his prediction, which seemed as much the wishful thinking of a determined activist as an actual guide of events to come. But of course, E!Baradei was right. And this year, we salute him and an extraordinary collection of brave men and women who helped make 2011 the year that democracy- haltingly, incompletely to be sure, but also dazzlingly and astonishingly quickly-came to broad swaths of the Middle East that had long languished under despotism and decay. From ElBaradei and young Coogle marketing executive Wael Ghonim, who helped make Egypt's revolution, toppling Mubarak in a mere 18 days, to exceptional journalists and writers like AI Jazeera's Wadah Khanfar and novelist Alaa AI Aswany, to activists in countries where the revolutions remain bloody and incomplete, like Yemen's Tawakkol Karman and Syria's Ali Ferzat and Razan Zaitouneh- thi s group has demonstrated that ideas still have the power to transform our world, and for this we have named them 2011's top Global Thinkers. The Arab Spring they launched is, not surprisingly, a theme that runs throughout this special issue of FoREIGN PoLICY. We recognize many of the players whose ideas shaped this year's momentous events, from several ambassadors whose blu nt candor in the Wik iLeaked cables helped send activi sts into the streets to the decades-long work of intellectual agitators for revolution Srdja Popovic and Gene Sharp, who may not have exported democracy in a suitcase but certainly helped write the how-to manuals for it. At the same time, FP's third an nual Global Thinkers issue ranges widely across a world in transition to recognize those dominating the intellectual marketplace of ideas. With Europe's economy in crisis and the American recovery precariously perched on the brink of another recession, many on our list are economists helping us understand and navigate this great period of tumultwith a bias toward those, like the writing duo of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff and p erennial bear Nouriel Roubini, who called it right when others didn't. Some thinkers make our list because of the sheer power of their thinking to shape results, for better or worse: the troika of central bankers from China, Europe, and the United States, for instance, who must steer the global economy while always mindful of the disastro us failure their predecessors wrought in the Great Depression. And with a U.S. election season looming, we recognize, too, those whose ideas have set the battle lines, from Barack Obama to the feuding duo of Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, whose Bush-era debates, for good or ill, still very much shape the world of American power we live in today. But for a ll those whose powerful positions put their ideas at center stage, there are many who are on our list for the sheer power of their ideas to assert themselves, fro m the audacity of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, not silenced even by being hauled off to jail, to the un likely global publishing sensation Stephane Hessel who, a t age 94, has channeled the spirit of the French Resistance in which he participated to become the intellectua l agitator of choice for this year's economy-driven protests from Spain to Occupy Wall Street. We hope you' ll enjoy this special issue dedicated to their work. More than 70 of the Thinkers took the time to share their own ideas, and even their reading lists, with you in our annual survey; it's a unique collection of the wisdom of this very smart crowd. Last but certainly not least, don't forget to look at our special opening section on the year's most overlooked stories. (Hint: There's more than one Asian power spending billions of dollars on a new arms race.) Next year's Global Thinkers may have a lot to say about them.
A
-Susan Glasser
DE CEMB E R
20 11
3
10 THE STORIES YOU MISSED IN 2011 1
India's Military Buildup • 'New Europe' Falls Out of Love With the Euro • Mexico's Drug War Moves South • Peak Camel? • The U.S. lmmigration Crackdown • Pakistan 's Other War • Piracy Goes Global • Asia's New DMZ • The War on Nukes Stalls • Rwanda 's Wrong Turn
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F ORE I GN P O LI CY
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THE 2011 FP GLOBAL THINKERS INDEX
Average age
Age difference
of the 20 11 Global Th inkers
between youngest (27} and oldest (94)
Number of Global Thinkers w ho are
women
'~ Number of countries represented by the 20 11 Global Th inkers
~1
~
Number of billionaires
~1
Number of Global Thin kers w ho have
Percentage of Global Thinkers w ho are
published a book
economists
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Number of Nobel
Number of Global Thi nkers panned in Paul Krugman's (No. 32) colum ns this year
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Nu mber w ho are
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Num ber of Global Th inkers arrested
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THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY SEAN McCABE FOR FP
D ECEMBER
201
I
5
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Your Global Thinkers
l
HIS YEAR'S GLOBAL THINKERS list is in the books, and we couldn't have done it without the nominations of our readers. H ere's a look at some of th e most interesting suggestions that ca me up just short. (There's a lways next year.. . . ) Go online to take the 2011 Global Thinkers survey for yourself, a nd check out their picks for what to read-and give-over the holidays. David Graeber, "anarchist anthropologist," University of London: "For his book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years.... H e reminds us that the economic system we have today is likely to be vastl y different from the one we will have 100 years fro m now and that it needs to be." -nominated by "PERRY_ D L"
Anatol Lieven, professor in the department of war studies at King's College London and author of Pakistan: AHard Country: "For writing the most well-timed book of the year. It's almost spooky: Anatol Lieven's new book on Pakistan came out [j ust] before the assassi nation of Osama bin Laden rerurned the country once again to the global spotlight. " -nominated by "MANDALAY"
Lars E.O. Svensson, deputy governor of Sweden's central bank: "For advocating creative monetary policies, notably negative interest rates, at a time when many centra l bankers (including one Ben Bernanke, who regularly populates your list) have chosen to eschew their roles as safeguards of economic growth. " - nominated by "SANC HK"
Richard A. Clarke, former special advisor to President George W. Bush on cybersecurity: For his book o n cyberwar. - nominated by
" DEBORAH SH ERIDAN"
The Secret Qadda~ Files How did the world look to the late Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi? FoREIGN PoLICY obtained an exclusive collection of never-before-seen historical photos and family snapshots taken fro m Qaddafi's private homes and intelligence ministries as his regime fell. Collected by Human Rights Watch emergencies director Peter Bouckaert a nd photographed by freelance photojo urnalist Michael Christopher Brown, the special report on ForeignPolicy.com includes hundreds of images, together adding up to a unique and intimate portrait of life with Muammar-from his famil y wedding celebrations to shocking photos of torture victims, from portraits of a young, handsome revolutionary to the bloated tyrant he would become.
fA~fB~~K fAV~Rilf:
"Haiti Doesn't Need
!~~:a!~s~~eMat"
,_
nothing if not charitable, but from parachuting Pop-Tarts into Afghanistan to sending clowns to the Balkans, ou r visual history of the West's misguided attempts to send its hand-me-downs to the developing world had aid skeptics all a-t w itter. Thanks but no thanks!
'
~
WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD GW's Elliott School of International Affairs is just steps from some of the most influential U.S., international, and nongovernmental organizations in the world. Our unique location in the heart of Washington, D.C. enriches our teaching and research by giving our students and faculty unparalleled opportunities to engage with the international leaders who walk through our doors on a regular basis. Learn more about our innovative undergraduate and graduate programs or view some of our superb special events online at www.elliott.gwu.edu. Now more than ever, there is no better place to study global issues than GW's Elliott School of International Affairs.
CONNECTED TO THE WORLD The Elliott School of International Affairs
T H E GEORGE WAS HIN GTO N U WA If I NC T ON D C
JVE RSIT Y
FP
Foreign Policy·
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G LASSER
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MANAGING EDITOR
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8
FOREIGN P OLICY
~y JO~H~A f. KfAll~~
10
FoREIGN Po LICY
l~mA'~ MllllARY Bml~~r China's new aircraft carrier-actually just a refitted Gor bachev-era Soviet model purchased fo r $20 million fro m the Russia ns-made interna tional head lines when it began sea tri als this year, signaling Beij ing's growing m ilitary am bitions in East Asia. But it isn't the only As ian giant investing heavily in new military ha rdware. India has kept pace with its neighbor to the north and, in some areas, is actually exceeding it-a development tha t, though much less noted, is a sign of the growing militarization of the region as a new genera tion of emerging powers with global ambitions jockeys for regional supremacy. India is now the world's largest weapons importer, according to a 2011 report by arms watchdog SI PRI , accounting for 9 percent of the world 's international arms transfers-most fro m R ussia- between 2006 a nd 2010. India will spend an estimated $80 billion on military modernization progra ms by 2015, according to an estimate from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. In particular, India is focusing on sea power, a crucial new area of competition. The country is planning to spend almost $45 billi on over the next 20 years on 103 new warships, incl uding
ASIA'S NAVAL BOOM
.............. •••••••• ............. ................. Planned expansion, 2011-2030.
-+ NUMBER OF NEW SHIPS
China: 135 • S. Korea: 128 • India: 103
................. ....................... ............ ........................... ............................
............... •••••••• ................ .................... L
-+ SPENDING ON NEW SHIPS
INDIA
m.o BILLION
destroyers and nuclear submarines. By compari· son, China's in vestment over the same period is projected to be around $25 billion for 135 vessels, accord ing to data on both countries from maritime analysis firm AMI International. On top of long-running tensions with Pa kistan and festering insurgencies by Kashmiri separatists a nd M aoist rebels, India's military planners a re increasingly concerned about the prospect of military hostilities with Chinahence the new foc us on nava l power. For now, the United States seems much more comforta ble with India's military ambitions than China's. The Pentagon 's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review welcomed "a more influential role in global affai rs" for India, incl uding in the Indian Ocean region. But there are some troubling signs that the area might not be big enough for two rising superpowers. In August, an unidentified Chinese warship confronted an Indian amphi bious assault ship near the coast of Vietnam and demanded t hat it expla in its presence in Chinese waters (the enco unter took place in a disputed part of the South China Sea claimed by Vietn am). Thankfully, the situation resulted in nothing more than some testy public statements from officials in all three countries, but it was yet another sign of an increasingly militarized Asia n seascape.
Source: AM I I nternational
''Acute famine in the horn of Afnca ... and an ongomg tadure to recognize and" ork "nh a largcl) tunct10nal ~omaldand and Punt land." • "The European banking crisis \\as )11\'en far too little .1ttent1on for the tirst SIX months of the )e.!r."
D ECEMBER 2011
11
THE NEW NEW EUROPE How the crisis is reshaping the continent.
For all the talk of Greeks and Italians seriously entertaining the though t of dumping Europe's common currency in exchange for good o ld drachmas and lira, the more troubling indicator for the decade-old euro may be all the Eastern European countries tha t have pushed for years to be part of the monetary union but are now having second tho ughts. On Ja n. 1, Estonia became the 17th country to adopt the euro, but it might be a w hile before it has company. Poland was du e to join the eurozone in 2012, but that goal has been indefi nitely postponed. ("If you base a monetary union on aspira tions a nd being proEuropean, yo u ma y have problems in 10 yea rs," Ja n Filip Sta nilk o, a Polish a nalyst, told CNBC.com.) In April, Bulgaria's ce nterright govern ment pushed back a plan to join in 2013, citing the need for more preparation. Romania's president also suggested its 201 5 target date could be pushed back by "one or two years." Latvia an d Lithuania had been
keen to follow Estonia into the eurozone as well, but both now say th eir cur ren t ta rget dates are unrealistic, and Lithuania's central bank chief has ca utioned tha t membership is " not a must-have-or-die thing." Only two years ago, eurozone membership was being touted as a solut ion to Eastern Europe's debt worries. A leaked IMF report even recommended that the process be accelerated, arguing tha t "euroisation " would not only help w ith the debt problem but also mea n "removing uncertainty and restoring confidence." But these countri es now worry about the straitj acket that being in a currency unio n has put on tro ubled European economies as they push t o recover. The shift in opinion in what U.S. Defense Secretary Dona ld Rumsfeld once defined as new Europe, where countries have long yearned for European integration, has been as rapid as it's surprising. Membership in the EU club isn 't what it used to be.
~ THE IRISH EXODUS: With its GDP falling nearly 8 percent in 2009, Ireland's emigration rate is currently the highest in the EU. Between April 2009 and 2010, 65,300 people left the Emerald Isle, the most since 1989. ~ BACK TO TURKEY: Germany's economic growth has remained impressive compared to its European counterparts, but inequality continues to rise and lower-income workers have seen stagnating wages. This may be why, after five decades of steady Turkish immigration into the country, 38 percent of ethnic Turkish graduates from German universities now say they want to return to thecountry their families left behind. More than half claim they don't feel at home in Germany. Some of this may be dueto lslamophobic sentiment in Germany, but many are also looking to participate in Turkey's recent economic boom-the country had the third-highest growth rate inthe G-20 last year. ~ COME HOME, POLAND: More than half of the 1.5 million Polish workers who left for Britain since 2004, taking advantage of the new freedom of movement under the EU, have now returned home, according to the Migration Policy Institute. This shouldn't be surprising: Poland's growth rate of 3.8 percent was stronger than any country in Western Europe last year, while British unemployment hovered around 8 percent. ~ THE END OF OPEN BORDERS?In May, Europe's interior ministers votedto allow countries once again to put emergency guard posts at some border crossings. The new rules mark the first major reversal in the trend toward moreopen borders that had been the signature achievement of European integration for 16 years.
"Vladimir Putin's btc't asccnston 111 RmSia.·· • "Success of the IARI' and bailout' of the auto compamc,." • "Japan and Germany, the \\orld\ third and tourth largest economies, mmmg 3\\,1) trom nucle.u cncrg\."
12
F o R E I G N P oL I C Y
1
1
1
11
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MEXICO'S DRUG WAR MOVES SOUTH
A While the drug violence near Mexico's V ' northern border has become a major
~ =political issue in the United States, less noticed has been the disastrous effect the conflict is having on countries to the south. Drug mafias such as the Sinaloa and Zetas cartels, in search of new territory and looking to escape the Mexican government's crackdown, are increasingly setting up shop in the politically fragile states of Central America. With the addition of Belize and El Salvador this year, all seven countries in Central America are now on the White House's list of major drugtrafficking states. Sixty percent of the cocaine that enters the United States through Mexico first travels through Central America, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Homicide rates in four of the seven countries have increased significantly in the last five years-in Honduras, they've more than doubled. In May, Guatemala saw its worst massacre since the 1996 end of its civil war, when 27 people were decapitated by drug gangs in the country's north. Entire regions are now effectively under the control of the Zetas, Mexico's second-largest drug carrel, which has access to machine gLms and rocket-propelled grenades and has even built its own airstrips in the jLmgle. The Guatemalan government launched a major military offensive against the Mexican carrels in the first few months of this year, bur failed to expel them. There are widespread reports that a number of Guatemalan politicians are receiving kickbacks from the gangs or otherwise tied up in cartel activity. Unti l now, the cocaine itself has been processed almost exclusively where coca is grown in the Andean region of South America. But in March, the first cocaineprocessing lab ever discovered in Central America was found in Honduras. In El Salvador, which has also seen its crime rate skyrocket, Sinaloa and the Zetas are believed to have established a lliances with local gangs such as the infamous Mara Salvatrucha. This isn't just Mexico's drug war a nymore.
\ \
'I
Shortly before his death in 1960, English explorer and Arabist St. John Philby predicted that the camel would disappear from Arabia within 30 years. At the time, he was laughed at, but today, ultramodern Saudi Arabia is increasingly relying on camel imports, a shift that has had the largely overlooked effect of putting a strain on herds around the world . The stock of meat-producing camels in the kingdom decreased from a high of 426,000 in 1997 to just 260 ,000 today, a drop of 39 percent, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Thousands of camels are slaughtered every year during the hajj pilgrimage-hence the need for imports. But where to get them? The animals were once as common as sq uirrels in Pakistan, but the country's camel population is now down to about 700,000 thanks largely to demand from the camel·racing industry in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Overall , the Asian camel population decreased nearly 20 percent between 1994 and 2004. The biggest winner has been Australia, which boasts the world's largest remaining population of w ild camels- descendants of the animals brought by British settlers from India in the 19th century-and has profited from the demand by shipping the animals to Saudi Arabia to be slaughtered for food. In fa mine-plagued Somalia , there has been a reported mass die-off of camels-a sou rce of transportation , livelihood, and sustenance for many families. Some tribesmen report losing more than half of their herds. In previous famines in Africa, camels have been considered an early warning system for human deaths. "Camels are the last animals to die, and once they start dying, it is only a matter of time before people start dying," a Somali elder told the U.N.'s IRIN news service in 2009. Sadly, his observation has proved prophetic.
D ECE MB ER
20 11 13
IN BOX STORIES YOU MISSED OBAMA THE HAWK It may be hard to remember now, but America's current president first distinguished himself as an anti-war candidate, winning a Nobel Peace Prize after only a few months on the job. But as president, Barack Obama has more often than not played the tough guy.
-+ AFGHANISTAN: By the end of this year, Obama will make good on his campaign promise to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq- though, as many have pointed out, on a timetable negotiated by his predecessor. In Afghani stan, however, it has been a different story. Obama ordered 30,000 additional troops to the country in 2009 as part of a "surge" strategy meant to give Afghan forces breathing room to increase their own capacity. The surge troops are due to be removed by the end of 2012. -+ WAR ON TERROR: The killings of Osama bin Laden and Anwar ai-Awlaki have gotten all the attention, but those were just the best-known examples of the Obama administration's massive assassination campaign targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban's leadership, mostly through the use of unmanned drones. As of October 2011, according to research by the New America Foundation, the United States had carried out 235 drone strikes in Pakistan under Obama, compared with only 42 such strikes during George W. Bush's second term. Up to 2,200 people may have been killed in these strikes, of whom about 20 percent were civilians. The administration has also ramped up drone strikes against militant targets in Yemen and Somalia. -+ INTERVENTION: Aself-described admirer of George H.W. Bush's foreign policy, Obama might have been fairly termed a Bush 1-style realist for his first two years. But in Libya this year, the administration tore up the playbook and committed itself to armed humanitarian intervention. Although critics accused Obama of foot-dragging, the beginning of airstrikes just a month after protests started in Libya was actually light speed by the standards of previous interventions. Near the end of the year, the administration also committed U.S. trainers to the fight against the brutal Lord's Resistance Army in Central Africa.
-+ DRUG WAR: The Obama administration had advertised agentler approach to drug enforcement. Early in his term, White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske pushed to ban the term "drug war," saying, "We're not at war with people in this country." But the shift isn't reflected in the numbers. More than 1.6 million people were arrested on drug charges in each of the first two years of the Obama administration-the average for the Bush years was 1.8 million-and the vast majority of these were nonviolent possession cases. The administration has also proposed a substantial increase in funding for Mexico's heavily militarized drug war.
THE U.S. IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN As the 2012 Republican presidential ) candidates fight it out over who would • ~ best secure the U.S.-Mexico border and blast states for providing services to illegal immigrants, the White House has been quietly waging the toughest-ever campaign on undocumented immigrants. Despite U.S. President Barack Obama's pledge to pass comprehensive immigration reform-a goal repeatedly stymied in Congressdeportations have reached all-time highs. A record 392,000 undocumented aliens were deported in fiscal 2010, and this past fiscal year that number was nearly 400,000. As of October, almost 1.2 million people had been deported under the Obama administration, compared with about 1.5 million over the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency. The administration has also been cracking down on the employers of illegal immigrants. Twice as many businesses were investigated in the first year of the Obama administration as in the last year of Bush's term. In August, under pressure from Hispanic groups, the administration announced new guidelines under which pending deportations will be reviewed and those who pose no threat to public safety and haven't flagrantly violated laws will have their cases deferred. (These constitute about 50 percent of recent deportations, according to Secretary of H omeland Security Janet Napolitano. ) The guidelines, however, still allow significant "prosecutorial discretion" to immigration officials to determine which immigrants are dangerous. The administration's strategy may have been to shore up Obama's right flank before undertaking a sweeping overha ul of immigration law. As Napolitano put it, "Smart, resolute enforcement by the department can keep Americans safe, foster legal immigration to America, protect legitimate commerce, and lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive reform. " But with progress on an immigration bill in Congress looking unlikely anytime soon, for now it's more stick than carrot.
~
-+ ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DEPORTED
1.~ milliOn
BUSH PRESIDENCY (8 years) OBAMA PRESIDENCY(as of October)
l,l million
"Argentina's seem1ngl) sre.HI) ded111e row.1rd ngged eleu1on .lllroa.Kv." • "Fmergence of .1 global gas market.'' • "Ireland's IIKlplelll economK recm er)." • "The declme of fishing stocks 111 the oceans." • "Commodity price increases based on specula non not tood shortages."
14
F O REI G N P O LI C Y
PAKISTAN'S OTHER WAR ·o/ ..
Baluchistan may be Pakistan's largest province, covering near~,- I "" !1!!7 ly half the country's land area, but the raging separatist violence in the regionsometimes called Pakistan's secret war-gets only a fraction of the attention that the country's other crises receive. Separatist groups, the largest of which is the Baluchistan Liberation Army, have been waging an insurgency since 2007 in the resource-rich province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan. It's the fifth Baluchi uprising since Pakistan's independence in 1947, and even by the country's standards, the province appears increasingly out of control. Baluchistan saw the highest number of militant attacks of any Pakistani province in 2010, and the trend has continued in 20 11, with multiple bombings of key gas pipelines, the murder of Punjab settlers who have moved to the region, and the assassinations of several prominent politicians and oil-company employees. The Pakistani state's response has also been brutal. A Human Rights Watch report documented the killings of 150 people between January and June-mostly young men active in Baluchi separatist politics-in "kill and dump" operations that were likely carried out by Pakistani security forces. Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch's Asia director, described the crackdown as an "abusive freeKabu'.. Islamabad for-all" that calls into question Afghanistan .' --·-·., Lahore the Pakistani government's "willPakistan • ingness or ability to control the military and intelligence agencies." Baluchistan's instability has inter·• Karachi national consequences. The Taliban, headquartered in t he provincial capital of Quetta, use Baluchistan's 800-mile-long border to slip in and out of Afgha nistan. The sparsely popul ated region also provides safe haven for dr ug smugglers and Ira nian rebel gro ups T he CIA is believed to la un ch drone strikes from bases in Baluchistan. And then, of course, there's India, which Pakistan has repea tedly accused of funding the rebels, a charge India vehemently denies. The mastermind of the 9/11 atta cks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is an ethnic Baluchi, as is his nephew Ramzi Youse£, who plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. For now, the Pakistani government is benefiting from the scant medi a attention given to the region and its problems. But it can't be swept under the rug forever.
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30 attacks off the coast of West Africa
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(asof Nov.2)
Somalia's pirates are on pace for another record year in 2011, with 199 attacks as of October versus 126 over the same period in 2010. And unfortunately, modern piracy, thought to have been successfully contained elsewhere in recent years, is not a phenomenon confined to Somali privateers in the Gulf of Aden. Global piracy is back in a big way. The hottest new zone for pirates is West Africa, whose oil-rich Gulf of Guinea ha s see n a spike in attacks this year. Nineteen attacks were reported off the coast of Benin in 2011, after none in 2010. There were also six off the Nigerian coast and three off the coast of Ghana. Many more likely go unreported. In October, the presidents of Nigeria and Benin held the region's first ever head-of-state summit devoted to piracy. West African pirates are a bit more traditional than their Somali counterparts-they tend to go after a ship's cargo rather than kidnapping for ransom money. Sailors have been tied up, beaten with Number of pirate rifle butts, and whipped with electrical cables. In attacks worldwide some cases, entire crews have been shot. Whereas during the first nine Somalia's piracy is often seen as a function of the months of 2011. country's on-land instability, the same can hardly be said of Ghana, one of Africa's most stable and peaceful democracies, with a projected growth rate of 13.5 percent in 2011. It's thought that the region's oil boom is proving a draw for modern-day pirates. And it's not just Africa. Indonesia's International Chamber of Commerce reported this year that pirate attacks are at their highest level since 2007. Even Peru , where piracy is virtually unheard of, saw an attack this year on a Japanese fishing trawler by a gang of criminals ca lling itself the "pirates of th e sea." Ove rall , the first nine months of this year saw 352 attacks-a record level. In the past two years, the United States, Europe, and even China have launched military initiatives to battle piracy. But as the numbers show, the potential riches of high-seas crime make it very hard to stop the rise of new-age buccaneers .
...1he grm\lllg populanty and power of Turkey .1mong Ar.llh ... • '"Iran h." heen mt·r>h,Jdm\ed I" the Ar.1h Spnng, \et the '""e'nude.u proldcr.Hlon, "'ppon tor terror""'· nHenu l ch n.lllllcs, cumon11c troubles, .111d lc.1d-up to 20 I ) pre"dent1.1l clectlon-.uc no le" 1111porum." DE CEM BER 20 11
15
IN BOX STORIES YOU MISSED
ASIA'S NEW DMZ -
, While the world was transfixed by events in the Middle East this • """! February, a century-old territorial conflict in Southeast Asia briefly became a shooting war when Cambodia and Thailand came to blows over a long-disputed religious site, a clash that may foreshadow growing instability in an increasingly volatile region. The two neighbors have long argued over ownership of the 11th-century Preah Vihear Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in a quarrel dating back to the drawing of the border between Siam and thenFrench Cambodia in the early 20th century. In 1962, the U.N.'s International Court of Justice awarded ownership of the templeoriginally Hindu, now Buddhist-to Cambodia, but Thailand has never completely accepted the judgment. In recent years, Abhisit Vejjajiva, w ho was prime minister ~
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from 2008 until last August, upped his aggressive rhetoric under pressure from the Thai nationalist " Yellow Shirt" movement and sent troops into rhe region. From Feb. 4 to 16, the two sides continually exchanged artillery fire in the disputed area-each cotmtry clain1s the other started it-with as many as 28 people killed and thousands of civilians displaced. "This is a real war. It is not a clash," proclain1ed Cam bodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Thankfully, if it was a war, it was a very short and limited one. In July, the United Nations imposed a demilitarized zone around the temple and o rdered both countries to withdraw their forces. The truce is being monitored by Indonesian observers, but the dispute has led some to argue that Southeast Asia's regional body-ASEANneeds its own peacekeeping force. Tensions
have eased somewhat since Abhisit was voted out of office in favor of "Red Shirt"backed Yingluck Shinawatra. Although the crisis seems to have a bated for now, it's just one episode of a period of intense political tmmoil for Thailand, a key U.S. ally in counterterrorism and counternarcotics campaigns. The country has seen large-scale and often violent demonstrations by the largely rural Red Shirts and the royalist Yellow Shirts, and is facing an insurgency in the south by Islamist militants who were accused by Amnesty International this year of perpetrating war crimes against civilians. The possible return of Yingluck's brother Thaksin, the exiled former prime minister and business tycoon who is still wanted on corruption charges in his home country, is another potential flashpoint.
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THE WORLD'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL CULTURAL SITES
Where ancient history meets modern politics.
THE TEMPLE MOUNT
THE AMARNATH CAVES
TAWANG MONASTERY
One of the hoi iest sites for both Judaism and Islam, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the spot wherethe world was first created according to Jewish tradition and the sitewhere Mohammed ascended to Heaven according to the Quran. It's long been a flashpoint in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, and access to the site, including its famous AI-Aqsa mosque, is tightly controlled by the Israeli government. The site has been the setting of clashes between government security forces and Palestinian worshippers, as well as hard-line Jewish nationalists, who favor rebuilding the temple, destroyed by the Romans around 70 A.D.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Hindus make the long pilgrimage to these caves, high in the Kashmir Valley, which contain an ice stalagmite said to resemble the god Shiv a. Unfortunately, the site lies smack in the middle of the insurgency-racked state of Jammu and Kashmir. In 2000, 30 pilgrims to the caves were massacred by Kashmiri separatists. More recently, massive protests erupted when the Indian government attempted to allocate land from Jammu and Kashmir to house Hindu pilgrims visiting the shrine. Local Muslim activists, who described the plan as "Israel-like," eventually won their case.
Both the regional center of Tibetan Buddhist life- it's where the current Dalai Lama sought refuge immediately following his flight from Tibet in 1959- and the largest monastery in India, Tawang is today located in the Indian-Tibetan border state of Arunachal Pradesh. But Beijing argues that the region's historical links to Tibet should make it part of China. The Chinese government has for decades placed pressure on the monastery, ranging from outright invasion during the 1962 Sino-Indian war, when Chinese soldiers damaged large portions of it, to more recent diplomatic protests surrounding a 2009 visit by the Dalai Lama.
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This complex includes rare frescoes dating back to the eighth century and is considered one of the most historically important sites in Georgian Orthodox Christianity. Thanks to a Soviet-era cartographical quirk, however, half of it is located in Azerbaijan. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Georgia has been pushing to have the border shifted toallow Georgian monks- and the public- full access to the site. But owing to the area's military significance, Azerbaijan has been reluctant to part with it. Despite several rounds of negotiations, the situation remains unresolved. "There is no room for territorial exchange. There are no negotiations over this issue," Azerbaijan's deputy foreign minister has said.
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The King Baudouin African Development Prize rewards outstanding contributions of individuals or organizations in the development field in Africa. The Prize strives to spotlight innovative initiatives w hich improve quality-of-life and empower local communities to take development into their own hands.
Value: € 150.000 Deadline for Nominations: 151h February, 20 12
Submit a candidate's file on our website : www.kbprize .org .
Government Accountabi lity Office redova for trying to sell a kilogram of stolen uranium worth at least $20 million. port issued in September. "Theoretically, There have been 500 cases of attempted we know [where the nuclear material cross-border smuggling of nuclear mais kept]. But we don't have a good accounting of where it a ll is," one source terials in the last 15 years, according to familiar with the report told Wired. U.N. data. Many more likely go uncleBudget-cutting in Congress may also tected. Meanwhile, a bill introduced in both the House and Senate in 2009 that be hampering the U.S. effort to secure dangerous nuclear materials, ac~ would strengthen penalties for nuclear cording to ana lysis by the Center smuggling is still stuck in commitfor Arms Control and Non-Protee. Congress also shows no sign liferation. A House bill this year of endorsing the Comprehensive would have slashed the White N uclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), an House funding request for the agreement signed 15 years ago by President Bill Clinton but never Global Threat Reduction lnitiarive (GTRI), a program to secure ratified. The administration has Pounds of "weaponpromised a renewed push to get nuclear facilities in the former usable" nuclear Soviet Union, by $85 million. material shipped CTBT passed but hasn't set a date The GTRI funding was pre- overseas that the for bringing it before the closely served in the Senate version of U.S. now can't divided Senate. account for. New START may have been the bill, but Congress already cut $123 million from GTRI in 2011. progress, but the finish line of a world The threats in question are quite real. without nuclear weapons is still a long way off. In June, six men were arrested in Mol-
THE WAR ON NUKES STAUS •
Speaking in Prague near the beginning of his presidency, ~ Barack Obama promised arenewed U.S. "commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." At the end of last year, the administration achieved two of the planned steps toward that goal with the ratification of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia and the hosting of a 47-nation conference on nuclear security. But progress on Obama's other major pledge, a "new international effort to secure a ll vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years," has been much slower gomg. The United States can't account for 5,900 pounds of " weapon-usable" nuclear material that it once shipped overseas to help other countries' civilian nuclear programs, according to a
'The llltenSiticanon of glohahzanon and the
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11
re\olunon. "I he world has gone from connected to hyperconnected.·· • ...
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IN BOX STORIES YOU MISSED
RWANDA'S WRONG TURN In September, the U.S. Senate .-; unanimously approved a bi• - ~ lateral investment treaty with Rwanda, the first such agreement with a sub-Saharan African country since 1998. The State Department praised the deal, calling it a demonstration of "Rwanda's conm1itment to the economic reforms that will help enable sustainable economic development and opportunity." Foggy Bottom hopes the agreement can be a model for similar treaties with other countries in the future. Rwanda's economic reforms have been widely touted as a rare African success story, with growth around 7 percent per year over the last five years. President Paul Kagame has also earned plaudits for his environmental initiatives and efforts to include women in government (they now make up more than 50 percent of the
•
lower house of parliament). He visits the United States frequently and has become a fixture on the tony-conference circuit. But disturbing signs have emerged about Kagame's commitment to democracy. During the lead-up to last year's presidential election-which the former Tutsi rebel leader won with 93 percent-the vice president of a major opposition party and ilie acting editor of a critical newspaper were murdered, prompting the United Nations to demand an investigation. Over the last two years, Kagame's re-
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>> Tour de Timor: A Resilient Nation Speeds Ahead » U.S.-Timor-Leste Relationship Expands >> Timor-Leste Leads g7+ at Busan Summit
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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Members of the House Democracy Partnership visiting Timor-Leste in 2011.
A Strengthening Friendship U.S. Congress & Timor- Leste Parliament Set Up Exchange DILl/WASHINGTON, D.C. - Ask sitting Congressmen to share their opinions ofTimorLeste after recently meeting parliamentary and civil society leaders, and these are their responses: "We all have a place in our hearts for Timor-Leste:· Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) said. "I was impressed," said Rep. Sam Farr (DCA). "It's a beautiful place. I saw a people and a country getting a foothold," observed Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) . In a critical region of the world,limor-Leste has emerged as an important country to the U.S. for its nascent democracy; and, with every passing year, the relationship has strengthened. One symbol of the mutual commitment is the House Democracy Partnership (HDP).The Partnership is a bipartisan Congressional initiative that sets aside funding and provides institutional support for partner legislatures overseas, including limor-Leste. The current 2 TIMOR-LESTE
commission has 20 members, 10 Republicans and 9 Democrats with one vacant seat. Rep. Dreier is chairman and Rep. Price is the ranking Democratic member. Timor-Leste was selected to join the program in 2005, th e same year the initiative started. ForTimor-Leste, that support has translated into creating a new parliamentary research service, integrating information technology into parliamentary operations and encouraging greater governmental oversight and efficiency. Other countries that are part of the program include Kenya, Liberia and Indonesia. Since the partnersh ip with Timor-Leste began, three Congressional and seven staff visits between the two cou ntries have taken place. During one session, for exampl e, Congressional staffers shared best outreach practices with Timorese parliamentarians. The idea of Congressional members assisting in the techni cal development of young democracies, is not novel. HDP is the indirect successor to the Frost-Solomon Task Force, which assisted the parliaments of 10
We all have a place in our hearts for Timor-Leste. Rep. David Price {D-N.C.)
new democracies including Poland,the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia and Ukraine during the early to mid 1990s. The current initiative in Timor-Leste works through USAID and the Asia Foundation to provide technical and material support to partner parliaments on a person-to-person basis in areas including defense oversight, constitutional services, procedure and information services. In February 20 II , Rep. Dreier led a delegation of five members to Dili to meet and engage with parliamentary members. Rep. Lois Capps ( D-CA) and Jim McDermott (DWA) also were part of the group. The delegation spent much of its time in Dili, but congressional members also visited USAID-funded programs in other cities. In 2010,
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retired staff from the Congressional Research Service met in Dili with staff of the Timorese National Parliament to discuss improvements in legislative research and analysis. In July 2009,a congressional delegation spent three days in Timor-Leste to discuss independent research in the policymaking process and the value of committee operations. In 2008, the exchange went the other way: Parliamentarians from Dili traveled to the U.S. for legislative strengthening seminars. Over the years,there have been nine training seminars held for parliamentarian s in Washington, D.C. "I felt a great deal of empathy and receptivity to us;' Price said of his recent visit. Rep. Farr, said the partnership between Timor-Leste and the U.S. is ideal and allows for capacity bu ilding and civil society development. "I've described the Hou se Democracy
Partnersh ip as the Peace Corps committee of Congress;' said HOP member Rep. Farr."This is constructive and was something that was needed:' The bilateral relationship has deepened because of the partnership and will continue to do so in the coming years.Representatives said supporti ng emerging democracies is essential and worthwhile. "Let's just juxtapose this to what happened 235 years ago in America," Dreier said . "I've interacted with di fferen t parliamentar- Above: Rep. David Dreier (r ) seated next to President ians, and they are going through the process
of the Timorese National Parliam ent Fernando Araujo.
of getting the country moving. Democracy is Below left: M embers of the congression al delegation a work i n progress.We have experience and want to share it." !:! For more information on the House Democracy Partnership, go to: http:/lhdac.house.govl.
m eet w ith members of the Timorese parliament. Below right: Rep. Jim McDermott (I) and Rep . David Price visit with a mother and her new baby at a USAIDsupported clinic in Manatutu. Bottom: Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta speaks to members of the Congressional House Democracy Partnership from his home in Dili.
Is it East Timor or Timor-Leste? Most of the world knows this small Southeast Asian nation as East Timor. but the country changed its name to TimorLeste in 2002. "Timor" refers to the island area shared w ith Indonesia, and "leste" means "east" in Portuguese. The official name that the United Nations and the International Organization for Standardization uses is TimorLeste. SOURCE GO\IE'rnmeot of Timor 1.este
Tl MOR·LESTE 3
EN ERGY
Timor-Leste uses oil revenues to invest in human development en years after emerging from a costly conflict for its independence and securing its political stability, Timor-Leste is assiduously working to overcome another challenge: an oil curse. Oil is Timor-Leste's leading industry, and experts say it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.According to published reports, the annual budget has ballooned from $70 million in 2004 to $ 1.3 billion in 20 11 - with virtually all the revenue coming from the petroleum fund. Timor-Leste's hopes and ambitions are tied to its oil wealth,and government officials are eager to use that wealth to develop its social infrastructure and invest in education and other human services, thereby avoiding the paradox of plenty - when oil revenues spur corruption and inflation. These consequences have caused some developing countries to become worse off as sudden wealth can discourage long-term planning, fiscal responsibility and economic development. To avoid the oil curse,Timor-Leste set up a special Petroleum Fund in 2005 that was modeled on Norway's sovereign wealth fund
T
The Greater Sunrise oil and gas field in the Timor Sea is situated within a disputed area between Timor-Leste. Australia and Indonesia. The Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA) is owned 90% by Timor-Leste and 10% by Australia.
4 TIMOR-LESTE
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to ensure the sustainable use of its revenues over the long term and avoid waste and inefficiency. Assets from the Timorese fund surpassed $8 billion in 2011. "You can call it a curse; but, if it is managed well,it can be a blessing;' said Raymond Lee Orbach, the director of the University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute and former first Undersecretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. Some countries depend exclusively on revenues from oil without investing in their population, thus creating the paradox of plenty. That can be avoided, Orbach said,with sufficient investment in education and social development. "They have the potential to have a great future;' Orbach said."They recognize energy as their major resou rce." A project at the center of Timor-Leste's
ambitions: Greater Sunrise oil and gas field project, commonly known as Sunrise. Sunrise - a swath of area between Timor-Leste, Australia and Indonesia - has been the subject of controversy, exploration and negotiations since it was discovered in 1974. The current controversy is entangled in the history of maritime negotiations. At the heart of the debate is the question of where to liquefy the natural gas, thus allowing the energy to be exported. The united view in Timor-Leste is that the pipeline must be brought to Timor-Leste as a measure of fairness. In early 2010, the government of TimorLeste took a hard stance: they would not approve any development plan that didn't include a pipeline to Timor-Leste and a liquefied natu ral gas plant on the south coast. Deputy Prime Minister Jose Luis Guterres and other governm ent officials have said that Timor-Leste wants the Sunrise pipeline as the fairest distribution of resources in the region. "There have been a lot of robust discussions over the past three years since this government came to power," said Sunrise Commissioner Francisco da Costa Monteiro. He said the negotiations are ongoing. 1:1
National Petroleum Authority President Gualdino da Silva oversees the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field.
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EC ONOMY
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Timor-Leste Emerges as The Voice of g7+ Timor-Leste Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao (r) looks on as Minister of Finance Emilia Pires addresses donor organizations in Juba, South Sudan, in October 2011.
Minister of Finance, Emilia Pires has been leading the g7+ since its inception
im Adams, World Bank Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific Region , was impressed .When Adams visited limor-Leste to discuss capacity building with key government leaders, the veteran development executive left the country telling a World Bank colleague how wowed he was that TimorLeste had achieved solid growth and political stability, despite the difficult global economic climate. It's true. This small Southeast Asian country is eager to share its experience and already has become a model for fragile countries. From November 29-December I, TimorLeste will lead the g7+countries in the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea to address key development priorities. Representing more than 350 million people, the g7+ is a network of 19 countries collectively united to optimize international donor engagement and development assistance in fragile and conflict-affected states. Represented by Minister of Rnance, Her Excellency Emilia Pires, Timor-Leste has chaired the g7+ since its inception in 20 10, when countries signed the Dili Declaration that called for a fundamental shift in the way development partners interact with fragile states.The group also highlighted the need to prioritize peace-building and state-building as keys to achieving their development goals. The Busan summit is one of several global meetings taking place simultaneously. Dignitaries from around the world are expected to be in Busan for these meetings.
J
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to attend the forum, marking the first time the U.S. is represented at such a high level. While in Busan, member countries are expected to establish for the first time, their own national plans with development partners and to set clear development goals and priorities, culminating in the Busan Outcome Document. The meeting in South Korea builds on the October 18-19 session in Juba, South Sudan,where government leaders from across the world came together and hammered out a development agenda in preparation for Busan. During the sessions, Prime Minister
"The g7+ is nice way of attempting to get more consistent focus and attention to these problems;·Adams said. Adams is quick to point out that limorLeste doesn't have to be part of the consortium because its oil reserves qualify it as a mid-income country. "Timor has taken additional responsibilities, which is interesting for two reasons: One, Timor,because of its oil wealth and good policies has certainly put some of the fragility behind ," Adams said. "It's willingness to provide leadership as a former fragile state, if you could classify it that way, represents a level of generosity and vision which is important. Because of [Timor-Leste's] progress, it does have credibility in the international scene." He lauded the government ofTimor-Leste for its commitment to the g7+ and speci fically praised Pires for her leadership. "That she has spent time on this has been a tremendous compliment both to her and the government in terms of allowing her to do that;' Adams said of Pires."For the other countries, this is a particularly strong gesture because she could be talking in a different environment with middle-income and more successful countries." Timor-Leste has been active in leveraging the g7+ as a platform to improve the relationship between donor and aid countries. Pires firmly believes that the relationship can be transformed. During a recent presentation at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., she spoke about aid effectiveness and said Ti mor-Leste strives to be transparent with donor countries. et
Because of [Timor-Leste's] progress, it does have credibility in the international scene. Jim Adams World Bonk Vice Presiden rjor Easr Asia and rhe Pacific Region
Xanana Gusmao encouraged donors to consider the priorities of each country when they provide aid . The need for such a co llective voice makes sense because these countries face similar challenges, said Adams, who was an early supporter of the g7+.
"Actually, the donors in my country appreciate it because we are honest.And now they are honest with us as well." For more information on the Fourth HighLevel Forum on Aid Effectiveness, check out www.aideffectiveness.org/busanhlf4. Tl MOR·LESTE 5
PR OFILES
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Looking Back, Looking Forward Deputy Prime Minister Jose Luis Guterres has watched his country achieve its freedom and become a beacon for other freedom-seeking peoples DILl - Midway through what would become a long day of budget hearings as part of a transparency initiative,Jose Lufs Guterres stood at the doorway, meeting and greeting concerned citizens in this capital city. The former Ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations and current deputy prime minister, reflected on Timor-Leste's comm itment to democracy and its own progress. "''m sure we are setting the right goals," he said."The policies that we have implemented have in reality solved many problems." Over th e last thirty years, the former University of Cambridge student has been at the forefront of ensuring TimOJcLeste's place in the world. A career diplomat, negotiator and statesman, he advocated on behalf of TimorLeste before it was an independent country in 2002 and during some of its darkest days. Guterres was a member of the National Council of Timorese Resistance and also of 6 TIMOR-LESTE
the Central Committee of the Fretilin Congress, which is a major political party in Timo1cLeste. As former Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs he traveled widely and worked to ensure that Timor-Leste remained visible before the international community. He became the first Ambassador ofTimorLeste to the U.S. with a concurrent accreditation as Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2002 to 2003.Perhaps his greatest achievement during his tenure was helping to lead the initiative to help the more than 150,000 internally displaced people living in Timor-Leste at the time of independence. Colleagues at th e United Nations cautioned him that it would take 10 to 15 years to solve the problem. Guterres shook his head and said Timor-Leste didn't have the luxury of time, and ultimately solved the problem in a couple of years by engaging with government ministries and civil society organizations. He credits the spirit of the Timorese in achieving their own independence, but he is equally quick to praise the international community. He specifically extolled President Bill
Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright for their assistance to Timor-Leste. Timor-Leste turns ten in 2012,and Guterres believes it is time forTimor-Leste to give back. Timor-Leste has signed onto major United Nations human rights conventions, establishing itself as a defender of human rights. In recent years, Timor-Leste has also provided financial support to other countries in need,
We have received so much, and it is time for us to give to other peoples who are suffering.
including $1 million in aid to Japan during the tsunami .Timor-Leste also leads the g7+,a consortium of weak and fragile states that aims to transform the way foreign aid is distributed. "We have received so much, and it is time for us to give to other peoples who are suffering;' he said. "We value freedom, human rights and democracy." a
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A Friend to the U.S., an Advocate for Timor-Leste Educated in the U.S., Ambassador Constancio Pinto wants to attract more Timorese to American universities and colleges WASHINGTON, D.C.- Ask His Excellency, Ambassador Constl:incio Pi nto about his credentials: He may quietly rattle off a few foreign languages, talk about his book or his degrees from Brown and Columbia Universities. Ask him about opportunities to strengthen the bilateral relationship through people-to-people programs,and the tenured ambassador's face lights up. "My goal is to bring more students here:· he said. "I would like more students - especially those interested in community colleges - to study in the U.S. It is in our interest to bring Timorese students to the United States. The United States offers a high class education and this will benefit people in the long run:· FewTimorese or Americans, for that matter, can speak about th e bilateral relationship from as deeply a personal perspective as Pinto, a father of two and lifelong advocate of Timor-Leste, who spends his days advancing relations between the U.S. and Timor-Leste. Even fewer are as well-qualified: Educated and trained in the U.S., Pinto is the first Ambassador of Timor-Leste to the United States to reside full-time in Washington, D.C. But, his current tour is not the first time that Pinto has lived in the U.S. or advocated on behalf to Timor-Leste to an American audience. A self-described accidental diplomat, Pinto joined the struggle to free Timor-Leste as a young man and soldier. He fought alongside otherTimorese against foreign invaders only to be captured during the fighting. He escaped prison,and during a trip to Portugal, he saw video footage of a massacre of Timorese that he credits for inspiring him to travel to the U.S. and speak about the atrocities committed against Timorese. "From then on, I started my own work as an activist and diplomat, meeting with government leaders and pushing for the cause of Timor-Leste. That has not stopped even today" He started the movement from Brown as
a student and focused his work on political science and development studies. Upon graduating, he intentionally chose the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University for its proximity to the United Nations. There, he laid the groundwork for an independent Timor-Leste as Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Timorese Resistance Movement in the Clandestine Movement from 1990-1991. In 200 1, he became Minister Counselor/Charge d'Affairs for the Embassy of Timor-Leste in Washington, D.C. He worked with dozens of students coming from Timor-Leste to the U.S. and held cultural gatherings from the embassy to promote understanding and friendship. He also co-authored the book,
East Timor 's Unfinished Struggle: Inside the East Timorese Resistance. "I want Americans to know Timor as they know their own country," Pinto said. "Timor-Leste is a country committed to democracy and human rights. We are a young cou ntry, and there are lots of opportunities. It's a place Americans have to discover. Democ racy doesn't only exist in America.It also exists in Timor-Leste:· He encourages Timorese youth to see life in America and then return to Timor-Leste to teach ,start a business or join public service. ''As Timorese, we have a strong bond with the community where we belong. For the community, it is a point of pride to have someone studying in the United States. The students have a sense of responsibility to their communities. I say,"'Study hard and go back!'" et
SPORTS
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Tour de Success Annual Tour de Timor mountain bike race closes another triumphant year
About 100 Timorese participated in the annual Tour de Timor mountain bike race that also attracted athletes from across the globe. 8 TIMOR-LESTE
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uick: In just three months, put together an international mountain bike race to help commemorate a major historical milestone with no staff, money or cycling experience. OK? It was May 2009 and Michael Stone, an assistant to President Jose Ramos-Horta, received th is directive to bu ild the Tour de Timor, a c ross-country bike race that commemorates the l Oth anniversary of the Timor-Leste vote for independence. Stone didn't ask many questions; the clock was ticking. "It was a major challenge to say the least;' he said. "A lot of good people came together to make the impossible possible." That was in 2009, and with every passing year, the Tour de Timor has grown in attendance and international popularity. The 2011 race wrapped up in September and clocked in as the most successful year yet: More than 350 cyclists from across the world, including 100 Timorese, participated in the international event. Australian rider Luke Fletch was the race winner, while Peta Mullins was the top female rider. The grueling &
Q
diverse topography and cu lture ofTimor-Leste. "We wanted the race to introduce all participants to the diverse culture, geography and history of this young undiscovered nation;'Stone said."We have aimed to make the race one of the toughest mountain bike races in the world, so that the people who participate never forget:' It worked. Cyclists from across the world , including from the U.S.,Germany and Portugal, competed and their feedback spoke to the rigor of the race. "It was at times the most challenging, grueling and di fficult thing I've done on a bike. It was also among the most rewarding, memorable, enjoyable and satisfying thing I've done on a bike," one cyclist said. The Tour de Timor has also become a symbol ofTtmor-Leste's resilience. "The 2011 Tour de Ti mor is an auspicious occasion for this young nation.With the enormous success of the first and second iterations, it is fair to say that the Tour de Timor has become a memorable annual event on the calendar for both professional cyclists and tourists alike;· Ramos-Horta said. Early bird registration for Tour de Timor 2012 begins in November. For more information or to register, go to: www.tourdetimor.com. ~
President Jose Ramos-Horta promotes sports diplomacy Timor-Leste is increasingly leveraging sports diplomacy to host the world and raise its profile abroad. President Ramos-Horta's office has overseen major international annual activities in Timor-Leste, including the Dili 'City of Peace' Marathon and the Tour de Timor. His office has also organized other initiatives, including the International Fishing Competition in Atauro, the Timor-Leste Dive Photo Contest and Timor-Leste Adventure Race.
Tl MOR·LESTE 9
GALLERY
Life- iVL Timor:
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~x:;:__
Top and Middle right: Fishermen off the coast ofDili. Bottom: The Motael Dili Church is one of the capital's oldest institutions and where Timorese resistance fighters took refuge during the conflict. Middle left: The Castaway Bar is a favorite spot for tourists.
Look for the next 1ssue of Timor-Leste Now 1n the January 2012 issue of Foreign Policy magazme ! Editor in Chief: Sheila B. Lalwani Designer: Lisa Pampillonia Contact Amer Yaqub, Publisher at 202.728.7310 or
[email protected], for any comments or questions about these reports. For additional informat ion on FP's nation branding capabilities, please visit www.foreignpolicy.com/advertising/ mag_nation.php
10 TIMOR-LESTE
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What was the most overhyped story of the year?
U.S. debt ceiling debacle 6
THE FP SURVEY
lOth anniversary of 9/ll s
THE WISDOM OF THE SMART CROWD For the third year in a row, Foreign Policy polled the world's top Global T hinkers to ask everything fro m how Barack O bama's really doing on the economy to w hat the biggest threats to global stability are in this year of revolutions. (H int: T here's not a lot of buUishne.ss in this group.) So take a look at w hat our brilliant collection of Nobel winners, paradigm- shattering authors, and leaders from around the world has to say about this momentous year and w hat's in store for 2012.
4
The Tea Party 4
Top 3 global leaders with greatest influence on world events this year: {Respondents could select multiple)
1. Barack Obama 38 respondents
2. Angela Merkel 28 respondents (Last year: 6th)
3. Recep Tayyip Erdogan 18 respondents {Last year: 5th)
Top 3 last year*: 1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad {Iran) 2. Luiz lmlcio Lula da Silva {Brazill 3. Hu Jintao {China) *Aside from Obarna
What has been Obama's biggest mistake so far?
How would you characterize Barack Obama's handling of the debt crisis?
General wishy-washy-ness 18
It's the economy, stupid 25 Disastrous 25
Mishandling the economy 10 Pretty good 15
Mishandling the debt crisis
What is the one thing the U.S. president could do to turn things around politically? Act with greater conviction 10
Middling 16
I
4 Great
In the bottom range: 2009: 5% 2010: 19% 2011:41% 19 Mixed bag
9 Above average
22 Disappointing/poor
If the election were held today against one of the existing Republican candidates, would Obama win?
5
"The crisis was entirely preventable, and I find myself deeply worried about Obama's political judgment as a result."
5
Nothing he can do
How would you rate Obama's time in office?
44 Yes
I
"Kill bin Ladenoh, wait1"
12 Depends on opponenVToo early to tell
3 No
Economy Whose advice would be more valuable right now?
K
37say
John Maynard
eynes
"These are hard days to be a Keynesian, but that's the right stance mthe contemporary economy"
,.lrl.o 9say
Higher
Friedman
Same
"Friedman on monetary policy, tax reform, and fiscal stability."
Lower
Charting shows number of respondents out of 73 surveyed
32
On Election Day 2012, will the U.S. unemployment rate be higher or lower than it is now?
fOREIGN POLICY
Is the global economy improving or worsening? 51
16
"Heading to a double dip in advanced economies."
10
10 35
Worsening Mixed Improving
Are we witnessing a permanent shift in world economic power away from Europe and the United States and toward Asia?Or are Western economies just experiencing a rough patch? Permanent shift east Rough patch for the West
Ageneral rebalancing 17
9
.... ...
...
...
...
... ...
World Which country is most likely to face a revolution in 2012?
Syria ~If it doesn't
happen n2011. "
"I think we've seen the end of the dictatorships in the Arab world."
United States "#OccupyUSA7"
Morocco "They have an indicted war 2 crimmal heading their 4 state who no longer has the excuse that Algeria 'evel'fone else' is also an autocrat." __________,
2
"Put a map of the Middle East through Southeast Asia on the dartboard. "
G~
Pakistan
Burma
3 3
1
Yemen "The powder keg."
Suda~
What is the biggest threat to world peace today?
Zimbabwe
2
10 10
Middle Eastern conflict Economic decline and poverty Pakistan Nuclear/WMDproliferation Extremism Bad governance/dictatorships America Iranian aggression Environmental collapse
6 6 4 4 3 3
Last year's top 3 I. Tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions
2. Mideast conflict
3. Pakistan
Winners and losers of the Arab Spring Biggest winners
Biggest losers
I. The Arab people whose dictators were overthrown (36)
1. Dictators (19)
2. Arab youth (7) "The biggest winner is the 60 percent of the population who are under age 30. We don't know how the Arab Spring will play out, but the youth have been heard across the region in ways that we haven't seen since 1958. "
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "terrified" and 10 being "excited," China's rise has me:
3. Too early to tell (6) 4. Turkey (5) 5. The Muslim Brotherhood (3) 6. Democracy (2)
3. 1ran (5)
•• ••• •• •••• ••••••• ••••• ••• •••••• ••••••
"Nervous and hopeful."
"What could be better thana billion-plus people gaining prosperity?"
5. Hosni Mubarak (3) The Arab people (3)
"China is winning at the moment; however, India may be poised to supplant it in the near future."
"Because their expectations are unlikely to be met."
True or false: China will eventually become a democracy.
China ttttz9 HasChinawoathear ttttt apinst India tor economic $UpiWICf? ttttt ttttt ·~ ttttt ttttt Yes/For now
"Mostly due to a failure to engage with the revolutions."
4. Muammar aiQaddafi (4)
(J square = 1 response)
"Mostly pleased, but I am afraid it wJJI explode and regress."
"They could have fixed thmgs, and they had the opportunity for years. But they never did. "
2. Israel (17)
True, but democracy with Chinese characteristics
tt 22 ttttt ttttt ttttt NJtttt
10
True, emphasis on 19 "eventually"
True
"True. Not Western-type democracy, but they will evolve their own definition and version of democracy. It is inevitable."
28
"Not yet. India is a democracy- messier but more sustainable economically and politically in the long run. "
11
False
SURVEY PARTICIPANTS (73): Ala a AI Aswany, Abhiiit Bane~ee, Mustafa Barghouti, Dav~ Beers, Naocy Birdsall, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Herman Chinery-Hesse, Amy Chua, Jared Cohen, Paul Collier, Tyler Cowen, Gene Cretz, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Esther Duflo, Barry Eichengreen, Mohamed EIBaradei, Mohamed EI-Erian, Terry Enge~er, Gareth Evans, R1ck Falkvinge, Paul Farmer, Salam Fayyad, Thomas Friedman, Mizuho Fukushima, Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Rached Ghannouchi, John Githongo, Edward Glaeser, Zaha Hadid, He Weifan& Stephane Hessel, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Mikko Hypponen, Joi Ito, Yuichi Ka~o. Robert D. Kaplan, Wadah Khanfar, Man Kuraishi, GaiY lash, Bjorn lombor~ Kishore Mahbubani, luis Mareno-Ocampo, Eman AI Nafjan, Deepa Narayan, Joseph Nye, Cern Ozdemir, Carlos Pascual, Anne Patterson. Steven ~n ker, Srdja Popovic, Azim Premji, lant Pritchett, Sheny Reh man, Condo~ezza Rice, Kanneth Rogoff, Alec Ross, Kanneth Roth, Nouriel Roubini, Paul Ryan. Yoani Saochez, Saskia Sassen, David Scheffer, ManaI ai-Sharrt, Anne-Marie Slaughter. Arvind Subramanian, Andrew Sullivan, Andy Sumner, Martin Wolf, Yu Kaping, Razan Zaitouneh, Robert Zoell~k. Ethan Zuckerman.
PRODUCED BY MARGARET SLATTERY • INFORMATION DESIGN BY LAURA STANTON FOR FP / DECEM BH
2011
33
.... ...
' ' THEFP INTERVIEW On how, as a writer, he became involved with the Tahrir Square protests : My concept of the novelist is that he must stay all the time with the people. Writing is the defense of human values. When people are in the streets facing death, you cannot stay in your house.
34
FoREIGN P oLICY
I wrote the words "the people" many times in my articles and in my novels. But the first time I felt I knew the meaning of "the people" was during the revolution. I had many prestigious awards in literature, but I would say that the biggest award I had was during the revolution. I met young protesters who said to me, "We are here because of what you wrote," and I was really honored by that.
On how the Egyptian people have changed since the revolution: Egyptians are no longer the Egyptians who were ruled by Mubarak. When you overcome the barrier of fear, you become a better person-a much better person, as a matter of fact-and it is irreversible. On his upcoming novel: I have been writing a novel for the
ALAA AL ASWANY
For channeling Arab malaise-and Arab renewal. Novelist I Egypt
past three years. I took five months off for the revolution, but I hope to have it for the beginning of the year. It is called The Automobile Club of Egypt. It is about Egypt in the 1940s. On the possibility of writing a novel about the Arab Spring: Yes, absolutely. But I need my distance to imagine my feelings, not just write them.
All revolutionaries want their stories told to the world, and no one has conveyed the hopes and drea ms of Egyptia ns more vividly tha n Alaa AI Aswany. T he dentist turned author rose to fame with his 2002 novel, The Yacoubian Building, which charted Egypt's cul t ura l upheaval and gradual dilapidation since th rowing off its colonial shackl es. Aswany used his prominence to help found the Kefaya THE BEST MUSE FOR THESE poli tical movement, w hich first articulated TIMES: The millions of the dema nds tha t wo uld energize the youth Egyptians on Feb. 11 who in Tahrir Square: an end to corruption, were gathered when Mubarak decided to leave. a rejection of hereditary rul e, and the est ablishment of a true democratic STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Both are a very good idea. culture. For his p olitical activism, Aswany was blacklisted by Egypt's state-owned AMERICA OR CHINA? America. I had an American education publishing houses, and security officials and lived in Chicago. The harassed the owner of the cafe where he American experience is an met with yo ung writers. important part of my life. H ow times change. Aswa ny was a READING LIST: "Vanka," by fixture in Tahrir Square during Egypt's Anton Chekhov; The Brothers uprising-he was almost killed three times, Karamazov, by Fyodor he said, during the running battles between Dostoyevsky; The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. demonstrators a nd pro-Muba rak thugs. And he has tried to keep the revolution's spirit alive since, pressing the country's ruling military junta to remove the vestiges of Hosni Mu barak 's regime and assailing Egypt's Islamists for their willingness to sacrifice the movement's pr inciples for a taste of power. In the process, Aswany has given voice to a people silenced for too lo ng. "Revolution is like a love story," he said in February. "When you are in love, you become a much better person. And when you are in revolution, you become a much better person."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . . . . / .· - - - - - - 1
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHANIE SINCLAIR
/--------
D ECEMBER 20 1 1
35
MOHAMED ELBARADEI, WAEL GHONIM
For defying the police state-and inspiring millions to join them. Democracy activists I Egypt The bespectacled lawyer a nd the Google marketing guru may not look the part of revolutio naries. But Mo hamed EIBaradei and Wael G honim have done more than any other figures to put the poli tical dema nds of Egypt's citizens o n a glo bal stage. After a celebra ted career as Internation a l Ato mic Energy Agency director-general that won him the N obel Peace Prize, EIBara dei returned to Cairo last yea r to o ffer a political a lte rnative t o the stagnant rule o f President H osni Mu barak. And tho ug h he was one of the few to believe change co uld come-and quickly-to Egypt (" I see a decaying temple, a lmost co llapsing," he was quoted as sa ying in last year's Global T hinkers issue), the rapid pace o f change in Egypt since has exceeded his w ildest expecta tions. Less than a year
36
FoRE I GN l 'oLICY
a fter his return, M ubarak was o usted-and EIBara dei ha d esta blished himself as one of the most prominent voices for pushing the revolutio n ever further. G ho nim became the glo bal face of th at revolutio n not long after it started, va ulted to fame after giving a tearful TV interview upon emerging fro m M ubara k's prisons (where he was thrown after helping s park the protests by creating a popular a nti-Mubarak Facebook page). H e has since teamed up with E!Baradei to criticize Egypt's ruling military junta for failing to la y o ut a clear road ma p for a transfer of power to civilia n rule and for using military trials to silence protesters. As Egypt's Islamists co ntinue to gai n influ ence, th e two leaders' w or k in pushing for a secular, democratic Egypt is mo re urgent tha n ever. Ghonim is now planning to
GHONIM'S TOP TWEETS
-+ "To all Egyptians silence is a crime now! #Jan25" (Jan. 26)
-+ "Pray for #Egypt. Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die #Jan25" (Jan. 27)
-+ "Freedom is a bless that deserves fighting for it. #Jan25" (Feb. 7)
-+ "A call to all well-educated Egyptians around the world. Come back ASAP to build our nation. #Jan25" (Feb.
ELBARADEI MUSE: Mohamed Bouazizi. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, by Ha-Joon Chang; AI-Khubz AI-Hafi (For Bread Alone), by Mohamed Choukri; To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. BEST IDEA OF 2011: Social networking as a tool to defeat tyranny. WORST IDEA OF 2011: Ignoring my wife's advice to retire and spend more time with her.
11)
-+ "Dear llka [his wife] , I love you and I love my kids. I miss you a lot, I was searching for Egypt and we just found it. #Jan25" (Feb. 11)
-+ "44 days since Mubarak stepped down YET state owned media is still being led by same chief propaganda officers who opposed our revolution!" (March 24)
form an Egyptian N GO focused on local innovation, while EIBaradei is running for president, harnessing the tools that Ghonim mastered-Facebook and Twitter-to communicate with Egyptians. It has freed him, he says, to take a fearless, big-picture view of the events in Egypt over the past year: "If all the young people feel [the revolution] is being derailed, they know a way back to the street-but it will be ugly."
D ECE MB ER
20 11
37
All FERZAT, HAZAN ZAITOUNEH For speaking truth to a bloody power. Cartoonist, human rights lawyer I Syria Ali Ferzat has been irritating Syria's heavyhanded powers for four decades with his biting political cartoons, evincing a razor-sharp wit and a withering eye for hypocrisy. When President Bashar al-Assad initially took power, Ferzat was allowed to start an officially sanctioned satirical magazine as part of what was supposed to be a new era of openness, but it was swiftly shut down. Emboldened by this year's uprising, Ferzat broke with his past practice of avoiding caricatures of acrual people to defiantly portray Assad as a Napoleonic madman with delusions of omnipotence. His response to the regime he has infuriated is simple: "You ask me why I air your dirty laundry, but you don't ask yourself why you soil it in the first place." A cartoon showing the president trying to hitch a ride in Muammar al-Qaddafi's getaway car evidently pushed things too far, and in August Ferzat was seized by security force members who beat him, broke his hands, and left him by the side of the road. The magazine he published his cartoons in has been shut down, though he now reaches a wider audience abroad.
38
FoREIGN P oLic Y
ZAITOUNEH MUSE: Syrian protesters. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? Syria. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Democracy in all seasons. READING LIST: Books? No place or time for books in the revolution. BEST IDEA: One revolution is not enough. WORST IDEA: Toppling Assad would lead to civi I war.
If Ferzat embodies the Syrian uprising's defiant soul, Razan Zaitouneh represents its beating heart. The 34-year-old attorney has been active in Syria's opposition since founding the Human Rights Association of Syria in 2001; and her website, providing up-to-date information on casualties and abuses by security forces, has been an essential resource for journalists locked out of Syria by its bloodthirsty government during this year's uprising. Zaitouneh has been in hiding since security forces accused her of being a foreign agent, and her husband was reportedly arrested and tortured for three months before being relea sed in July. In October, the international advocacy group Reach All Women in War gave Zaito uneh its Anna Politkovskaya Award, named for the murdered Russian journalist in honor of female human rights defenders who put their safety at risk. In accepting it, Zaitouneh said the Syrian people "deserve much more than complicit silence, or timid criticism from those who have failed to refer this regime to the International Criminal Court despite acknowledging its crimes."
RACHED GHANNOUCHI, KHAIRAT EL SHAlER
For working to reconcile lslamism and democracy (we hope). Islamist leaders I Tunisia, Egypt
STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: Borj Roumi, by Samir Sassi; History of Tunisia, by Hedi Timoumi.
The world cheered when peaceful pro-democracy movements overthrew autocratic governments in Tunisia and Egypt this year, but old fears that longbanned lslamist movements in both countries would rise to prominence, endangering the rights of women and minorities and fostering violent extremism, quickly resurfaced. So too, however, did leaders of those movements who seem determined to say all the right things when it comes to Isla mism and democracy. "We have continuously defended the right of women and men to choose their own lifestyle, and we are against the imposition of the headscarf in the name of Islam," said Rached Ghannouchi, the 70-year-old former socialist turned Islamist leader of Tunisia's a l-Nahda (Renaissance) party who returned home in January after 22 years of exile in London, where he'd fled after a decade of torture and imprisonment in his home country. After winning a plurality of 40 percent in Tunisia's firstever democratic elections, Ghannouchi's party is a major power broker in the new government. Khairat El Sharer, the top financier of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, spent a dozen years in prison und er Hosni Mubarak before being released after the revolution. He a lso so ught to reassure the West, writing in the Guardian, "The success of the Muslim Brotherhood should not frighten anybody: we respect the rights of all religious and political groups." The leadership of the now-legal Muslim Brotherhood is very much up for grabs, and Sharer is seen as a leading candidate to head the party and perhaps, one day, the country: a media-savvy engineer who became prosperous as a textile and furniture trader, developing a knack for working with foreign investors. Given the audiences these leaders command, there 's little hope for democracy unles s they are on board. So far, they seem to be playing a mostly productive role. Let's hope it stays that way.
D ECE MBER
2011
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TAIAKKOL KARMAN
For keeping the spirit of the Arab Spring alive against impossible odds. Activist I Yemen As military leaders and tribal chieftains hijack Yemen's to define the revolution. President Ali Abdullah Saleh's revolution to settle long-running scores, it's easy to forget regime, unable to deter this bothersome activist with that the original uprising was guided by the same peaceful threats, finally ordered her arrest in a nighttime raid, a principles that motivated protesters across the Midd le East. misstep that turned her into a cause celebre and only added The day after demonstrators toppled Tunisian despot Zine to the ranks of the protesters. Her eventual release did ei-Abidine Ben Ali in January, Tawakkol Karman, a 32-yearnothing to temper her resolve. "This is not the victory I old mother of three who runs an organization seek, " she said. "I was ready to stay in jail if to protect freedom of expression and human the demonstrations would have toppled Ali To the government: rights, rallied a few of her friends o utside Abdullah Sa leh." But though Karman has "All your bullets, all Sanaa Uni versity to cheer the Tunisians' been celebrated worldwide for her braveryyour violence will not success-the first sign tha t the Arab Spring and shared the Nobel Peace Prize for her stop us. Kill everybody had reached Yemen. audacity in helping launch the Arab Springthat you want. We will Yemen remains in turmoil, and the political As the protests gained momentum, not stop our struggle." Karman improbably stepped to the forefront paralysis in Sanaa has left the country "You will see! It will of this deeply patriarchal society, articulating take a little longer. defenseless against religious extremism and economic decline. a nonviolent spirit and democratic principles But we will make our
revolution. We will make it, or we will die trying." 40
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WADAH KHANFAR For turning the AI Jazeera revolution into an actual one. Former director-general, AI ]azeera I Qatar
As the world watched Egyptians throng Tahrir Square to call for the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's regime, they turned their TVs to the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera. And Wadah Khanfar, the channel's top executive for eight years before he stepped down this past September, is the one responsible for transforming the pan-Arab satellite network into the most influential media source in the Middle East and a revolutionary inspiration in its own right, giving voice to the long-suppressed aspirations of a new generation of Arab citizens. Whether the United States, Iran, or pre-revolutionary Egypt, AI j azeera's coverage has long been a target of unhappy governments. In 2004, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld excoriated the channel's coverage of the Iraq war as "vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable," and Mubarak's goons attacked the station's Cairo bureau and arrested its reporters during the height of this year's uprising. But Khanfar brought the network into its own during this year of Ara b revolt, providing granu lar detail and a level of cultural understanding that was simply unmatched by its competitors and getting millions of viewers around the world addicted to its online live feeds from Tahrir Square. During the height of the Arab Spring, AI Jazeera witnessed a whopping 2,000 percent increase in visits to its English-language website, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the network for delivering "real news" from the region. Khanfar's allies have bedeviled him as much as his enemies: Qatar's ownership of t he network led to persistent questions of objectivity, and diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks that showed him altering AI j azeera 's coverage under U.S. pressure may have hastened his departure. Nevertheless, Khanfar's
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MUSE: The youth. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Abit of both. Austerity should focus on defense and foreign interventions, and stimulus to create jobs. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Awakening. READING LIST: APeace to End All Peace, by David Fromkin; Secret Channels, by Mohamed Heikal; Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future, by Stephen Kinzer. BEST IDEA: Trust the choice of people in defining their destiny. WORST IDEA: Becoming subservient to the centers of power.
decision to focus on the stories of Arab citizens, and not their brutal, venal rulers, has been vindicated. As he put it, "It is the growing periphery of the Arab world-the masses at its margins, not its feeble and decaying center-that is shaping the future of the region."
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EMAN AL NAFJAN, MANAL AL·SHARIF For putting Saudi women in the driver's seat. Activists I Saudi Arabia In May, a video appeared on You Tube featuring M ana! alSharif, a Saudi computer consultant a nd longtime wom en's rights activist, driving her car in the city of Khobar. In Saudi Arabia, the only cou ntry on Earth where women ar e prohibited from driving, th e video, quic kl y blocked by Saudi autho riti es, beca me a viral sensation. Later, Sharif enco uraged Sa udi women to take part in a nationwide day of driving to protest the ban, which is widely enforced but no t actually written in Sa udi law. The clip-and Sharif's la ter impriso nment-sparked a movement. Dozen s of videos o f Sa udi women driving in defiance of the ban have co ntinued to ap pear o n the Internet, the first majo r cha llenge in more than a decade to Saudi Arabia's restrictive r ules targeting women, the harshest in the world. Meanwhile, though the Saudi government has now granted women the right to vote in the 2015 elections-with permission fro m a ma le relative, of course-a woman was recently sentenced to floggi ng for being ca ught in the driver's sea t (the sentence was la ter commuted ). Pa rt o f the reason wo men a re increasingly defying this harsh treatment is Ema n AI Na fj an, author of Saudiwoman's Weblog, one of the most influential English-language blogs on Saudi Arabia, as well as a postgrad uate student in Ri yad h and mother of three. She not only amplified the driving videos a nd t he protest on her blog, but called out Sa udi authorities for setting up a fake Twitter feed to discredit Sharif. Sa udi Arabia m ay not have seen the upheavals experienced elsewhere in the Arab world this year, bur Nafjan thinks the driving pro test is a sign of things to come. "There's no denyi ng that the co untry is fertile ground for a revolution," she writes .
SHARIF MUSE: Peaceful demonstrators bringing down dictatorships. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Amiddle ground: more safety nets. AMERICA OR CHINA?America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?Arab Spring. READING LIST: The Women Who Broke All the Rules, by Susan Evans and Joan Avis; Inside the Kingdom, by Robert Lacey; Rosa Parks: My Story, by Rosa Parks.
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HAT DO SAUDI WOMEN WANT? I wish I could give you an easy answer. But Saudi Arabia is a diverse land-spread out across a vast territory almost a fourth the size of the United States and divided by religious sects and among some 45 tribes. Divining the Saudi people's demands, never mind those of Saudi women, is no simple task. By law, every Saudi woman has a male guardian. At birth, the guardianship is given to her father and then upon marriage to her husband. If a woman is a widow, her guardianship is given to her son-meaning that she would need her own son's permission for the majority of her interactions with the government, including the right to travel abroad. Legal recourse is difficult to obtain, especially because abuse is only recognized when it's physical abuse. Even then, the Saudi justice system is patriarchal , bordering on the misogynistic. For example, to this day the Justice Ministry has not issued a law banning child marriage, leaving the decision at the discretion of the girl's father. You would think that women living under these conditions would long for liberty, independence, and civil rights. Many do-as this year's driving campaign makes clear. However, it's just not that simple. Millions of others
are still not sure they are ready for change. Some explain their indecision as a fear that they might have to assume responsibilities they are incapable of undertaking. One fellow Saudi tells me that she sees what women have to put up with abroad: "I see how American women have to run around the city running errands, and I don't want to open that door. As long as women driving is banned, no one will have these expectations for me," she says. In fact, Saudi Arabia may be even more conservative than most outsiders think. There are some who are not only passively happy with the status quo but also loud in their resistance to any form of change. In 2009, a Jeddah woman named Rawdah AI-Yousif, in collaboration with members of the royal family, organized a campaign to strengthen the guardianship system. It was called "My Guardian Knows What's Best for
Me." They urged the king not to give in to local activists and international human rights organizations regarding the guardianship system. Another campaign gathered thousands of signatures from both men and women calling for the extension of gender segregation laws to hospitals-the same segregation laws that have led to Saudi women only making up 15 percent of the national workforce and an unemployment rate for women so high that the government won't release the numbers. The only public places where these laws are not enforced are malls and hospitals. Yet there are Saudis who would like to see segregation even there. None of this is a surprise, considering what is being taught in the public school system. In religion classes, students learn that the Saudi interpretation of Islam supersedes any worldly concepts of human rights. Women have the most to lose,
yet these ideas are so ingrained that I defy you to find a report of a Saudi mother complaining about what her children are being taught. Women in most countries may take their aspirations for freedom for granted, but for many of us, it is brand new. An exasperated expatriate in Riyadh once expressed to me how frustrated she was with the requirement to wear an abaya everywhere. She wondered: How do you all put up with having to cover your faces for your whole adult lives? What she didn't realize was that many Saudi women look at her and wonder: How can she walk around without an abaya? How is it that she doesn't feel exposed and naked? Yet I am happy to say that I am one of many women hungry for selfdetermination-women who have realized that though liberty and rights come with responsibility, it also gives them and their daughters the autonomy to pursue their happiness. And yes, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Saudi women who are fighting for their rights-and the well-covered driving campaign is just one of many battles, from fighting for the right to manage their own businesses to being allowed to freely leave and enter the country without their guardian's permission. Even something as simple as recognizing women lawyers in our judicial system could be transformational. And that, of course, is why it is so hard.
NAFJAN MUSE: Gandhi. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Reasonable austerity. AMERICA OR CHINA?Both and neither. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?Arab Spring all the way. READING liST: Inside the Kingdom, by Robert lacey; Deaf Sentence, by David lodge; The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright. BEST IDEA: Atwo-state solution for the PalestinianIsraeli conflict. WORST IDEA: Sarah Palin for president.
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FATHI TERRIL For believing that no massacre should go unpunished. Human rights lawyer I Libya It was poetic justice that Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime, Thousands more soon joined them, igniting the protest which collapsed under the weight of its crimes this year, was movement that eventually snowballed into a fu ll-blown brought low by a man who called the Libyan government revolution. As the revolt gained momentum, Terbil's iconic black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh and New York Yankees to account for one of its worst atrocities. Fathi Terbil, a 39-year-old Libyan human rights lawyer, had bravely taken cap became symbolic of the diverse, youth-driven spirit of up th e case of the estimated 1,200 people massacred in a the Libyan revolt. Now, as a member of the council at the 1996 uprising at the notorious Abu Salim prison. When heart of Libya's new interim government, representing the youth movements, Terbil is trying not only to bring justice Qaddafi's security forces, panicking at the first rumblings of dissent, arrested him in Benghazi in February, he assumed a to victims of past crimes, but to build a government under central role in the origin story of the Libyan uprising. which such crimes cannot happen again. It's no easy task: The first people to gather outside the prison to demand The utter destruction of any independent organization over four decades of Qaddafi's Libya meant, in Terbil's release were the families of the victims of the Abu Salim massacre. (Terbil himself was Terbil's words, that the erstwhile rebels were "In Abu Salim, starting "as if we had just been born today." one of them-his brother was killed there too. ) I found the
opportunity-the key-to attack the regime." 44
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SRDJA POPOVIC, GENE SHARP For writing the how-to manuals for this year's revolutions. Activist I Serbia Political scientist I Boston
POPOVIC MUSE: Desmond Tutu. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Unityonly united American leaders can overcome the economic and political crisis the United States is facing. AMERICA OR CHINA? America, as the ideals of freedom, human rights, democracy, and private entrepreneurship, at least for me, still stand stronger and more important as opposed to marvelous Chinese achievements of economic growth, discipline, and stability. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring, with its prospects for democracy for millions, is a definite
fact. And whether this winter or next spring will be limited only to the Arab world and countries like Syria, Bahrain, and Iran-or even pose a challenge to other non-Arab autocrats in places like Belarus, Zimbabwe, or Burma- is yet to be seen. READING LIST: Small Acts of Resistance, by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson; The Autumn of the Patriarch, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Join the Club, by Tina Rosenberg. BEST IDEA: The Maldives as the first carbon-neutral country. WORST IDEA: That Arabs are too "immature for democracy."
Gene Sharp, a n 83-year-old Boston-based academic, was not on the grou nd in Tunis or Cairo, but his tactics certainly were. For more than half a century, Sharp has been working to t urn the philosophies of nonviolent protest devised by Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gand hi into a blueprint that can be put into practice by activists aroun d the world. Over the last few decades, his ha nd book for peaceful revolt-the 1973 classic The Po litics of Nonviolent Action, which covers everything from "camouflaged meetings of protest" to "disclosing identities of secret agents"-has been deployed by protesters from Burma to Zimba bwe to the "color revolutions" that swept through the former communist world. In 2005, Sharp, often called the Clausewitz of nonviolence, was discovered yet aga in by the April 6 Youth Movement, a youth activist group tha t became one of the central organi zers of the protests that this year brought down Egyptian dictator Hosni M ubarak. April 6 also took inspiration and practical instruction from the Ce nter for Applied NonViolent Actio n and Strategies (CANVAS), a group led by Srdja Popovic, a onetime marine biology student turned revolutionary, a nd composed of other veterans of Otpor (" Enough" in Serbian), the yo uth movement that organized the 1990s student uprisings tha t ultimat ely toppled Slobodan Milosevic. Today, Popovic's goa l is to help spread Otp or's model around the world, and arguably he has succeeded. His gro up inspired t he Arab Spring protesters directly and indirectly, from rhe Otpor fist that made it into the logo of the April 6 movement to Arabic-subtitled copies of the Orpor documentary Bringing Down a Dictator. Of course, both Popovic and Sharp a re quick to note that the real architects of the Egyptian revolution were the masses who thronged Tahrir Sq uare. " There are two things you need to avoid if you don' t want yo ur movement to be doomed: One is violence; the other is raking advice from foreigners," Popovic said this year. But even if they didn't carry revolution in a suitcase to the Middle East, it is undeniable tha t these bold global proselytizers of nonviolence have helped change t he world in a very real way thi s year.
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THE BIG THINK Bf~l~~ l~[ ARAB ~rRI~~ BY MARC LYNCH
''
hy does every nation on Earth move to change their conditions except for us? Why do we always submit to the batons of the rulers and their repression? How long will Arabs wait for foreign saviors?" That is how the inflammatory AI Jazeera talk-show host Faisal ai-Qassem opened his program in December 2003 . On another AI Jazeera program around that same time, Egyptian intellectuals Saad Eddin Ibrahim and Fahmy Howeidy debated whether it would take American intervention to force change in the Arab world. Almost exactly seven years later, Tunisians erupted in a revolution that spread across the entire region, finally answering Qassem's challenge and proving that Arabs themselves could take control of their destiny. Throughout this year of tumult, Arabs have debated the meaning of the great wave of popular mobilization that has swept their world as vigorously as have anxious foreigners. There is no single Arab idea about what has happened. To many young activists, it is a revolution that will not stop until it has swept away every remnant of the old order. To worried elites, it represents a protest movement to be met with limited economic and political reforms. Some see a great Islamic Awakening, while others argue for an emerging cosmopolitan, secular, democratic generation of engaged
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citizens. For prominent liberals such as Egypt's Amr Hamzawy, these really have been revolutions for democracy. But whatever the ultimate goal, most would agree with Syrian intellectual Burhan Ghalyoun, who eloquently argued in March that the Arab world was witnessing "an awakening of the people who have been crushed by despotic regimes." In March, Egyptian writer Hassan Hanafi declared that the spread of the revolutions demonstrated finally that "Arab unity"-long a distant ideal in a region better known for its fragmentation and ideological bickering-" is an objective reality." This unified narrative of change, and the rise of a new, popular pan-Arabism directed against regimes, is perhaps the greatest revelation of the uprisings. Not since the 1950s has a single slogan-back then Arab unity, today "The People Want to Overthrow the Regime"- been sounded so powerfully from North Africa to the Gulf. This identification with a shared fate feels natural to a generation that came of age watching satellite TV coverage of Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon over the previous decade. AI Jazeera, since its rise to prominence in the late 1990s, has unified the regional agenda through its explicitly Arabist coverage-and its embrace of raucous political debates on the most sensitive issues. That pan-Arab popular identification extended to the democracy movements that multiplied across the region-whether Egypt's tenacious street protesters, Bahraini
human rights activists, or Yemen is (including this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman) protesting President Ali Abdullah Saleh's nepotism and corruption. A decade-long, media-fueled narrative of change is why Arabs immediately recognized each national protest as part of their own struggle. As Wadah Khanfar, the network's recently departed director-general, put it, "That was AI Jazeera's role: liberating the Arab mind. We created the idea in the Arab mind that when you have a right, you should fight for it." So while the Arab uprisings generated a marvelous range of innovative tactics (uploading mobile-camera videos to social media like Facebook and Twitter, seizing and holding public squares), they did not introduce any particularly new ideas. The relentless critique of the status quo, the generational desire for political change, the yearning for democratic freedoms, the intense pan-Arab identification-these had all been in circulation for more than a decade. What changed with the fall of Zine ei-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia was the recognition that even the worst tyrants could be toppled. It shattered the wall of fear. That is why hundreds of thousands of Egyptians came into the streets on Jan. 25. It's why protests broke out in Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco, and Jordan. It's why Syrians and Libyans took unfathomable personal risks to rise up against seemingly untouchable despots despite the near certainty of arrest, torture, murder, and reprisals against their families. The uprisings came in the wake of years of institutional and political decay diagnosed acutely by Arab intellectuals such as Egyptian jurist Tariq ai-Bishri, by the prescient 2002 Arab Human Development Report, and by nascent political leaders like former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed EIBaradei. Beneath the edifice of stability, they warned, state institutions were crumbling, their legitimacy faded in the relentless drift of corruption, nepotism, casual brutality, and indifference toward their people. Elections became ever
more fraudulent (with the Egyptian and Jordanian elections of late 2010 among the worst), security services more abusive, graft more flagrant. All this greatly contributed to the economic underpinnings of this year's discontent. The previous decade saw neoliberal economic reforms that privatized industries to the benefit of a small number of well-connected elites and produced impressive rates of GDP growth. But, as ruthlessly dissected by Arab economists like Egypt's Galal Amin, the chasm between the rich and poor grew and few meaningful jobs awaited a massive youth bulge. For many leftist activists, the uprisings were a direct rejection of this neoliberalism-and those ideas and the technocrats who advanced them have likely been driven from power for the foreseeable future. But the uprisings were not only about jobs and bread; as Sudanese intellectual Abdelwahab EI-Affendi wrote in January, echoing a famous slogan of the 1950s, the revolutions were needed so that the people would deserve bread. The theme of restoring the dignity of the people pervaded the Arab uprisings. The police abuse that drove Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation and killed the young Egyptian Khaled Said struck a chord with populations who experienced daily the depredations of uncaring states. The gross corruption of Ben Ali's in-laws and Hosni Mubarak's efforts to groom his son for the presidency simply insulted many Tunisians and Egyptians-and they were ever less afraid to say so. A fiercely independent and articulate rising generation would no longer tolerate brazen corruption, abusive police, indifferent bureaucracy, a stagnant economy, and stage-managed politics. Egypt's Kefaya ("Enough" in Arabic) movement was in many ways the forefather of the Arab uprising. Originally drawn together for state-sanctioned protests over Palestine and Iraq, the organizers of the loose movement courageously turned their focus inward to challenge the succession of Gamal Mubarak. Kefaya brought together an astonishing range of ideologies with revolutionary socialists protesting side by side with Muslim Brothers, and liberals with Nasserists. It pioneered the use of social media, mastered the art of symbolic demonstrations, and pried open a space in the Egyptian media. That opening was seized by an increasingly aggressive press, led by figures like the irreverent editor Ibrahim Eissa and liberal publisher Hisham Kassem, as well as determined new Internet citizen journalists. Independent newspapers such as Eissa's ai-Dustour eviscerated the pretensions of their rulers. AI Jazeera talk
shows threw every issue open for debate. Activists like Tunisia's Sami Ben Gharbia used Internet tools to reveal the Tunisian first lady's shopping trips to Paris on the president's private jet. Bahrainis used Google Earth to reveal the shocking size of lands expropriated by the royal family for private use. Egyptians like blogger Wael Abbas circulated videos of police abuse and identified individual officers online. This opening of closed regimes to raw information and opinion, a faith in the power of public ideas, was itself one of the key ideas underpinning the Arab uprisings. But it would be a mistake to portray the enthusiasm for revolution as universal in the Arab world. Saudi and Gulf intellectuals, in particular, argued fiercely against the spread of the revolutions to their own lands, insisting that the Gulf monarchies were different. Many, such as Emirati writer Sultan AI Qassemi, argued that the monarchical regimes would prove more resilient than the republics, whether due to greater legitimacy or simply greater wealth . Most have indeed avoided significant internal challenges. For now.
THE UPRISINGS WERE NOT ONLY ABOUT JOBS AND BREAD BUT ABOUT MAKING SURE THE PEOPLE DESERVED BREAD. Some Arab intellectuals go further to say that the Gulf is leading a "counterrevolution"-a wide-ranging conspiracy to restore the status quo. In this telling, the conservative Gulf regimes, after protecting themselves, set out to use their wealth and media empires to rebuild relations with the Egyptian military, rid themselves of the hated Muammar ai-Qaddafi, promote lslamist movements against Iibera Is, and support the challenge to Iran's major Arab ally, Syria. Anxious revolutionaries around the region likely attribute too much coherence and power to these counterrevolutionary efforts. But even in Egypt, the fears of chaos and disorder run deep, and many will be susceptible to the lure of a return to normality. No final answer has yet been delivered to the question posed by Lebanese liberal Hazem Saghieh in February: "Can a corrupt dictator be overthrown without descending into chaos or a new tyranny?" And then there is the contested role of religion in the Middle East's new politics. lslamist political movements such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Jordan's Islamic Action Front have long participated in elections, citing the fatwas of Doha-based cleric Yusuf ai-Qaradawi to avoid seeing democracy as an un-lslamic innovation. In Tunisia and Egypt, such movements rapidly demonstrated their mastery of the techniques of political
competition, out-organizing and outcampaigning their secular rivals. Even more tellingly, their longtime Salafi critics-who had spent decades denouncing them for joining an un-lslamic political game-now rushed to form their own political parties. But as their power grows, these lslamists have struggled to reassure their domestic critics and the West of their commitment to democratic principles-and, given their first opportunity to actually exercise power, to figure out for themselves how deep those commitments run. The uprisings were also about America-just not in the way most Americans would have it. Arabs found the idea that Iraq's liberation had inspired their democracy struggle laughable; if anything, it was the protests against the Iraq war that taught them the value of public dissent. Americans cheered themselves with the thought that the protesters in Tahrir Square were not burning American flags-and that Libyans in Benghazi were waving them. But this was a dangerous misunderstanding. Many Arab analysts directly equated dictatorial regimes at home with a foreign pol icy they considered subservient to Israel and the United States. The Arab uprisings called for independence, national sovereignty, and respect for the will of the people-all of which pointed to less eager cooperation with Washington and frostier relations with Tel Aviv. None of that, however, means that Arabs are flocking to join a new antiAmerican axis. Indeed, groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, which inspired many Arabs over the last decade with their perceived success and anti-American defiance, have lost appeal, equivocating as their patrons in Damascus and Tehran preside over the slaughter of unarmed protesters in the streets. In a pointed challenge to Syrian leader Bashar ai-Assad, who has sought refuge in "resistance" to Israel as Syrians have risen against him, Palestinian writer Ibrahim Hammami wrote in June, "We say to those who raise the slogan of resistance to repress their people: Freedom first, and dignity is more important." So it's early days yet. But as Palestinian intellectual Khaled Hroub wrote in February, "the fundamental change is the return of the people" to the region's politics. And that-the idea that the opinions of Arabs matter and can never again be ignored-may be the most potent new idea of all.
Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and co-editor of FOREIGN POLICY's Middle East Channel.
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BEN BERNANKE, JEAN-CLAUDE TRICHET, ZHOU XIAOCHUAN For steering the world amid crisis. Central bankers I United States, France, China With smoke still rising from the wreckage of the world's financial system, it's up to three wise men to salvage what's left. And with their eyes on the villainized central bankers of the 1930s, each has tried to avoid the currency wars and protectionism that plagued the world during the Great Depression, aiming instead to steer a calm path through the rubble, above the daily fray of politics and name-calling. People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, whose country owns a whopping $1.14 trillion in U.S. debt, has been forced to cope with the unpleasant fact that China's entanglement with U.S. and European markets makes it dependent on the health of Western economies. To that end, he has pursued a course of letting the yuan gradually appreciate, in a bid to slowly build up domestic consumption and decrease China's reliance on foreign markets. Ben Bernanke, who has become a political punching bag in the U.S. presidential campaign, has had a tougher job. The Federal Reserve chairman's efforts to spur bank lending by expanding the monetary supply were
described as almost "treasonous" by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, while candidate Newt Gingrich promised to fire him. Bernanke has nevertheless pressed forward with his plans to keep the Fed's benchmark interest rate near zero to encourage investment and has nudged Congress to get its act together as he warned that An1erica's recovery is "close to faltering." But the problems of Bernanke and Zhou paled in comparison with those of Jean-Claude Trichet, who as European Central Bank chief faced a full-blown debt crisis in Greece and the potential for a slow-motion fiscal collapse in Italy, Spain, and possibly even France. Trichet, who retired at the end of October, did his best to calm the crisis threatening the euro he helped create, pledging unlimited cash to eurozone banks o'\'in~ ' - and buying up the bonds of financially distressed countries. His mounting frustration spilled over during a news conference in September: "We are in the worst crisis since World Warn .... Wedoourjob.ltis not an easy job." We all feel their pain.
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11 BARACK OBAMA
For leading from behind-and showing it's not necessarily a bad thing. President I Washington Conservative critics of the White House may have turned the idea of "leading from behind" into a punch line as soon as it appeared as an anonymous quote from an administration advisor 9,000 words into a New Yorker article, but it is quickly becoming Barack Obama's most enduring foreignpolicy legacy-and not necessarily as the insult his rivals saw it. Certainly, Obama has led: Although he came to office promising to curtail America's military adventurism abroad and focus on nation-building at home, he has nevertheless presided over more dramatic political shifts in the Middle East than ever achieved by his pugnacious predecessor, even if they are the result of events that he was reacting to rather than driving himself. As the Arab Spring remade the region in 2011, Obama adapted as both American values and interests demanded. When protests in Cairo reached a fever pitch, he cast aside the caution of his advisors and unambiguously told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a 30-year American ally, that it was time to go. And when Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi responded to an uprising by threatening to hunt down his rebellious subjects "home by home, alley by alley," the president joined a French- and British-led coalition that ousted the mercurial dictator, though only after securing clear regional support for the mission. It is hard to in1agine Arab societies being focused so intently on internal politicsor welcoming Western military intervention with open arms-during the Age of Bush. In Asia, the president has managed the difficult balancing act of reducing the U.S. military footprint, navigating the rise of China, and striking blow after blow against al Qaeda. He vowed to pull out of Iraq and es tablished a timetable for withdrawing from Afghanistan, a decade-long war that few Americans now see as worth the sacrifice, over the objections of his hawkish critics and even his own generals, while urging a long-overdue refocus on U.S. alliances in East Asia. And, of course, his gutsy call to order a risky commando raid deep inside Pakistan, which resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden, may be the one decision that all Americans can agree was the right one.
DICK CHENEY, CONDOLEEZZA RICE For making the world we live in. Former vice president I Washington Former secretary of state I Palo Alto, Calif. Guantanamo is still open, U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan, U.S. drones still aim for al Qaeda targets every week, and more than 1,200 government agencies work on counterterrorism. Like it or not, we're still living in George W. Bush's America. And at a time when most politicians, including the GOP presidential candidates, are advocating a more limited RICE U.S. role in the world, AMERICA OR CHINA? America, hands Bush's vice president and down. secretary of state have remained unapologetic public ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? advocates for the projection of Arab Spring, Complicated and American power-even if they messy, but far beHer than the vehemently disagree about silence of tyranny. how to exercise it. READING LIST: The Confession, by This year, in dueling John Grisham; Einstein: His Life and memoirs, Dick Cheney and Universe, by Walter Isaacson; King's Condoleezza Rice offered a Cross, by Timothy Keller. new look at the still-relevant BEST IDEA: Technology is foreign-policy divides of the transforming the way we live every Bush administration. Cheney's day. But it isn't the cause of that In My Time is a passionate transformation, it's just accelerating defense of his aggressive everything. approach to the war on terror. It also takes a few WORST IDEA: That the United shots at Rice, accusing her of States of America should sit on the misleading Bush about details sidelines in global leadership. of North Korea negotiations and of "tearfully" admitting she was wrong about the media strategy for the Iraq war. Rice's memoir, No Higher Honor, in which she calls the vice president's staff "very much of one ultra-hawkish mind," describes not only her conflicts with Cheney-most notably when she lost the fight to avoid having terrorism suspects "disappeared"-but also the shift to a more engaged foreign policy that marked Bush's second term. In those years, Rice did much to build an approach to the world that Barack Obama-who campaigned in 2008 as Bush's polar opposite-has arguably embraced.
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BILL AND MELINDA GATES
For putting their money where their mouth is. Co-chairs, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation I Seattle There's philanthropy, and then there's Gates philanthropy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was founded in 1994 and has grown exponenti ally in resources and ambition since the software mogul's 2008 retirement from Microsoft to pursue saving the world full time, sits on an endowment of $36.3 billion. Already, the Gates Foundation has handed out more than $25 billion, wel l in excess of the GOP of Bahrain, in grants for everything from charter schools to antimalarial mosquito netting to microfinance to research into diseases-say, visceral leishmaniasis-that few Americans have even heard of. To take one example, the monumental scale of its efforts to fight malaria is reaping monumental dividends. In part due to the fou ndation's work, READING LIST: malaria deaths are down Bill: That Used to Be Us, by 20 percent worldwide since Thomas Friedman and Michael 2000, and 1 million African Mandelbaum; Redefining Health Care, by Michael E. children have been saved Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted from the disease, with a new Teisberg; Change.edu, by and promising Gates-funded AndrewS. Rosen. vaccine moving through Melinda: Awakening Joy, by clinical trials. James Baraz and Shoshana The Gateses don't Alexander; Connected, by just throw money at the Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler; Mindset, by world's problems-they Carol S. Dweck. throw ideas at them, too. More so than perhaps any other philanthropic endeavor, their foundation has advanced the notion that the entrepreneurial, metricsheavy sensi bility that guides success in the private sector can be brought to bear on the big problems that corporations and governments alike have failed to solve ("philanthrocapita lism," as journalists Matthew Bishop and Michael Green dubbed it). Consider the Gates Foundation's approach to polio, for instance, which involves everything from pushing governments on foreigna id policy to funding sewage monitoring in order to predict the disease's spread. The foundation's international reach has also served one of their other goals: inspiring the newly minted billionaires of the developing world to pursue philanthropy. T hey're up to 69 recruits, all of whom have agreed to spend the majority of their wealth on their own versions of Gates do-gooding.
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~~ THE FP INTERVIEW Bill Gates on what's lacking in development:
The greatest market failure is the lack of investment in innovation, particularly innovation that would be of particular value to the poorest. But a lot of our inventiveness is on how upstream [innovation] and downstream [delivery] work together. So you take the polio campaign: using satellite maps to update the microplans that the vaccinators follow, using the GPS tracker to follow along to see if the independent monitoring person actually goes and visits the houses that they say they're visiting so that your tracking data is good.
On the complicated global politics of getting new drugs to the right people :
We've got to make sure great things get invented and that they get financed and that they get delivered. Take the case of vaccines. A good example of something we did is we worked with the Chinese regulatory authority so that they would get certified as a good regulatory authority so that some of the vaccines in China, including a Japanese encephalitis vaccine, could get out into the marketplace. It's not like somebody figured out this great world regulatory scheme. So you know, we find cases where it's not clear what the right path through it is. On tax schemes to raise more public money for aid :
I think you can design something that raises, say, $10-$20 billion a year, implemented by a number of countries, that would help in the world of aid well spent. We're saving lives for a few thousand per life-that's literally millions of lives that can be saved and countries that can be put on a sustainable path, along with the stability and security and medical benefits to the world at large. On the emerging markets that are surprisingly good partners:
Brazil and China have not been traditional aid givers, but both have a lot to contribute. We just signed an agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology about them giving grants to innovators in China whose products can help the poor countries. We also just signed an arrangement with Brazil, where we're working with Embrapa-that's their agricultural expertise group that did such miracle work on tropical soilswhere we work with them on pilot projects. So you have some new donors that bring new capabilities to help complement what the traditional donors are doing. Melinda Gates on what they' ve learned:
We learned that if people were able to put aside a little bit of money each day or week-even just a dollar or two-then they had savings to serve as a cushion when things got tough. But there wasn't a system set up to help them save. We're really excited about M-PESA. It's the first mobile money service that's become really useful to millions of people. Behavior change is critical. While we're working upstream, developing solutions, we've got to be thinking about delivery: How should we develop and deliver those solutions so they will be adopted? I visited a project in India last year called Shivgarh . They've made incredible progress in behavior change and cut neonatal mortality by more than half in just 15 months. Communities created songs about skin-to-skin care-kangaroo careand immediate and exclusive breastfeeding and cleancord care. There are examples like this in other places in South Asia and in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Now we have to evaluate these behavior-change successes so that they can be extended to other places.
14 AZIMPREMJI
For being the Bill Gates of India. Founder, Azim Premji Foundation I India It's not just because of Azim Premji's enormous wealth that he is compared to the American technologist turned philanthropist. Granted, the chairman of the technology-services company Wipro is India's third-richest citizen, with a net worth of $13 billion, according to Forbes. He inherited Wipro as a small cooking-oil company when he was just a 21-year-old engineering student at Stanford University and has since overseen its growth into a global giant. It is Premji 's unprecedented philanthropy, however, that recently has borne out the Gates comparison. Last December, Premji made the largest charitable contribution in modern Indian history: $1.95 billion to his rural-education foundation, to help train teachers and improve exams and curricula for 2.5 million Indian children in more than 20,000 schools. The Azim Premji University, a training and research institution in Bangalore, welcomed its first 200 students in July, and the foundation just announced plans to open 1,300 free schools across the country. Through his contributions, Premji is at the forefront of a rising tide of Indian philanthropy, with billionaire executives such as Shiv Nadar, founder of the technology company HCL, and Sunil Bharti Mittal, of the business conglomerate Bharti Enterprises, often listed in the same cohort. Gates himself traveled this spring to India to meet with Premji and others and encourage the country's wealthiest citizens to give back. As Gates wrote in Time, Premji is "setting a remarkable example for those who have benefited so enormously from India's economic expansion ."
MUSE: Mahatma Gandhi- simplicity in life, morality in character. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus for now. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring.
-Interviews by FP contributing editor Charles Kenny
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CHRISTINE LAGARDE For not shrinking from a crisis, or its unpopular solutions.
Managing director, International Monetary Fund I Washington The International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief wasn't supposed to be the main attraction at the annual Federal Reserve conference held this summer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a sort of mini-Davos of the central-banking world. But Lagarde upstaged headliner Ben Bernanke with a dead-eyed tour d'horizon of global economic misery th at included many pointed jabs at the European financial leaders from whose ranks she had so recently come. France's fin ance minister until June, Lagarde was o ut to prove-and s urely did so-that she was no eurocrat, wa rning that unless Europe figured out how to urgently recapitalize its banks, contain the contagion of its most debt-heavy sovereign balance sheets, and, dauntingly, come up with "a common vision for its future," then the "serious flaws in the architecture of the eurozone" would "threaten the sustain ability of the entire project. " As debuts go, the new IMF chief (yo u may recall w ha t happened to the o ld one) certainly ca me out swinging, and in a way that suggests some optimism for the future of what has become arguably the world's most important financial institution. The fact that her prescriptions ca used no small amount of indigestio n on both sides of the pond was the surest sign she was on to something.
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AHMET DAVUTOGLU, RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN
For imagining a new role for Turkey in the worldand making it happen. Foreign minister, prime minister I Turkey Over the past eight years, the team of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his foreign minister, academic-turned-diplomat Ahmet Davutoglu, has worked relentlessly to build Turkey into a regional powerhouse. This year, with the crises of the Arab Spring, their vision came to pass as Turkey achieved a level of influence in the Middle East it hasn't had since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey is arguably one of the few unambiguous winners in the region's upheaval so far, after shrewd ly opting to side with the crowds in the streets rather than the autocratic regimes with which it had long dealt. Its government was among the first in the world to call on Egypt's Hosni Mubarak to step down: "I say that you must listen, and we must listen, to the people's outcry, to their extremely humanitarian demands," Erdogan said in a speech that resonated far more in Tahrir Square than did the more cautious approach of Western governments. But given how proudly Davutoglu once touted his country's "zero problems" foreign policy, Turkey has had quite a few to contend with in 2011. Turkey initially opposed NATO intervention in Libya and took some heat in Benghazi for its slow embrace of the rebels. Erdogan's pointed criticism of Bashar ai-Assad's crackdown on protesters seems to have had little effect on the Syrian leader, and refugees have continued streaming across the border. Turkey's challenges in the coming year will include deteriorating relations with Israel and the possible revival of democratic Egypt as a rival regional power. Still, Davutoglu can boast a significant personal victory-winning a parliament seat for the first time-thus proving that the erudite author of such tomes as Alternative Paradigms: The Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanschauungs on Political Theory could shake hands and kiss babies with the best of them. The elections this year not only cemented Davutoglu and Erdogan's personal base but also reinforced Turkey's image as a model of an Islamic democracy. As for Erdogan, he has focused on the challenge of drafting a new constitution in 2012 to replace the current one, which was drafted under martial law- part of an effort to transform Turkey's outdated political system as profoundly as he has realigned its foreign policy.
The Politics of Emerging Strategic Technologies Implications for Geopolitics, Human Enhancement and Human Destiny (St Antony's Series)
by Nayef AI-Rodhan ENDORSEMENTS: "This is a fasciua tiug accou11t of the i11terplay of 11ew tech11ologies and 11atioual power. It goes beyond mechanistic estimates to explore social and political cousequences of a world reshaped by teclwological cha11ge. The discussiou of lwman e11hallcemellt through drugs or gelletic manipulatioll is e11grossi11g alld raises 11ew a11d difficult problems, both political a11d ethical, for what will soo11 be a very differwt world. The scope of tl1e book, wit/1 its discussio11 of a full ra11ge of llCW teclmologies of cousequences, makes it u11ique m1d illsighiful as a guide to Olle of the ftmdameu tal forces that will reshape il1tematiollal politics." James Lewis Director and Senior Fellow, Technology and Public Policy Program, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Was hington DC, United States. "This book takes a broad look at emergi11g tech11ologies alld their role ill mabli11g humanity to further its evolutio11. Nayef AI-Rodhall comprehe11sively addresses the key tre11ds of these strategic techuologies alld the highly relevallt geopolitical alld strategic implications. Withi11 this framework, he highlights the 11eed for settillg trallsllatiollal policies i11 place to e11sure ubiquitous huma11 dig11ity alld the freedom to choose our owu desti11y. This study is a scimtific aud breathtakiug voyage i11to the future that will euchaut the reader alld eucourage society to meditate on our lwmau 11ature alld subsequeut respollsibilities." Giovanni De Micheli Director of the Electrical Engineering Institute and Integrated Systems Centre at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
The Politics of Emerging Strategic Technologies Implications for Geopolitics, Humon Enhancement and Human Destiny
St Antony's ~rios
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man A Philosophy of History and Civilisational Triumph
by Nayef AI-Rodhan ENDORSEMENTS: "This book is an exceptiollally wide-rangiug examillatiou of past and preseut approaches to the securing of rz qualitrztively adequate social life Oil tl1e plauet. The ueed for illtercultural dialogue is pressiug and stated as a matter of urgeucy ill the text. That argument is we/1-preseuted !llld it is 11elpftlily accompan ied by a large amount of empirical evide11ce. The book is also a stroug a11d ethically attractive lwma11ist statemwt about the value of lw mau il1teractioll that illcorporates a visioll of mutual respect based on a mixture of scielltific argumellts alld llormative aspiratiolls. Those fea tures are very impressive." Professor Michael Freeden Professor of Politics, Director of the Centre for Political Ideologies, Professorial Fellow, Mansfield College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. "Dr. Nayef R.F. AI-Rodhm1 challellges us to grapple with the meallillg of history alld lww it could lead to the improvemeut of the lwmall collditioll. This book presmts his views 011how a sustaillable history based 011humall diguity could be achieved. Ill his opi11io11, this requires good govemauce, based Oil "rcaso11, security, llllmall rights, accouutability, trallsparellcy, justice, opportunity, imrovatioll aud illclusivelless." I agree, alld I hope that the path laid out ill this book attracts mally followers." President Jimmy Carter 39th President of the United States. "No-oue seekiug to uuderstaud the modem collditioll cau afford to igllore Dr AI-Rodha11's iuspiri11g book, a proforllld analysis of the core values arouud which effective global govemallce call be built alld sustahred." Lord Anthony Giddens House of Lords, Former President of the London School of Economics, United Kingdom.
Author Information Nayef R.F. Al-Rodhan is Senior Member of St. Antony's College, University of Oxfo rd, UK, and Senior Scholar in Geostrategy and Director o f the Geopolitics of G lobalisation and Transna tional Security Programme at the Geneva Cen tre for Security Policy, Switzerland . He is a p hilosopher, neuroscientist an d geostrategist. A p rize-winning scholar, he has published 19 books proposing many innovative concepts and theories in g lobal politics, security, philosophy and history. He was educated at Yale University, the Mayo Clinic and Harvard University. He is best known for several philosophical and analytic books on global politics that include: Sustainable History a11d the Dig11ity of Ma11; Emotio11al Amoral Egoism; Nco -Statecraft a11d Meta-Geopolitics; The Politics of Emergi11g Strategic Teclwologies a11d Symbiotic Realism.
www.sustainablehistory.com
www.amazon.com and www.amazon.co.uk
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11 JACK DORSEY, MARK ZUCKERBERG For changing how we do just about everything-even overthrow governments. Executive chairman, Twitter I San Francisco CEO, Facebook I Palo Alto, Calif. Not many 27-year-olds can boast of having built a multibillion-dollar corporation, fostered a technological revolution, helped boost several real-world revolutions, and been the subject of a controversial Hollywood biopic. But they're not Mark Zuckerberg. With more than 800 million active users-more than 10 percent of the world's population- his Facebook is now a bona fide global superpower. And in many ways, 2011 was the year that Facebook met global politics. The company attracted both awe from its business peers and criticism from human rights groups with its forays into the Chinese Internet market, while Egyptian Facebook groups became the vanguard of the movement that eventually brought down one of the world's oldest dictatorships. Zuckerberg may downplay his role in this year's uprisings, but it's not for nothing that one prominent online activist, Coogle's Wael Ghonim, personally thanked the Facebook CEO in the wake of Hosni Mubarak's ouster. If any technology has given Facebook a run for its money in terms of impact this year, it's Twitter, the microblogging service invented by Jack Dorsey in 2006. Once the province of tech geeks, Twitter has become an essential conununications tool for activists and government officials, as well as journalists and their readers, who can now get realtime reports from smartphone-wielding participants in the events. Dorsey has been more willing than his Facebook counterpart to emphasize his technology's role in this year's political events and even suggested that they may be Twitter's true raison d'etre. "What's happening in Egypt right now," he said in March, "that's the value, not the brand Twitter. So we need to refocus on that value."
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~Of~ FACEBOOK ~AVf AfO~fm~ rOUCY1 BY DAVID KIRKPATRICK oward the end of 2008, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was musing about a massive political rally in Colombia earlier that year. A young man had started a Facebook group to show his revulsion against the FARC guerrillas, and one month later, on Feb. 4, millions of people across Colombia and around the world rallied in opposition to FARC. The anti-FARC protests were the first ripple in what would become this year's global wave-the use of social media in massive political movements, as Facebook and Twitter have almost overnight become the world's collective soapboxes, petition sheets, and meeting halls. It may have started in the Middle East with outraged friends on Facebook, but the chain reaction eventually led to landscape-altering citizens' movements and demonstrations not just in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, where despots were toppled, but also Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and later in Spain, Israel, India, Britain, the United States, and elsewhere. Facebook is a common thread in all these movements-it has become the new infrastructure of protest. And more is coming. Zuckerberg has taken up the study of Mandarin in preparation for a Facebook push in China-not as part of a Facebook political vanguard, but out of Zuckerberg's keen interest that his service succeed in China . Who knows what change, political or otherwise, it will bring? Zuckerberg had a hint three years ago of what was to come. "In 15 years," he predicted, "maybe there will be things like what happened in Colombia almost every day." Clearly, his time frame was much too conservative, which is why it's probably a mistake to call 2011 the Year of Social Media. Future years will likely see even more impact from these evolving online tools. Facebook, not even eight years old, is poised soon to pass 1 billion active
users. Twitter may be smaller-100 million users-but it's an elite crowd: media, political, business, and technology leaders. Meanwhile, legions of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are working on new socialmedia products that may eventually be even more efficient at helping ordinary people organize themselves. What makes Facebook so effective in politics is the very fact that it is first a social tool. On Facebook you merely say, "I will be at the mall," and the system tells your friends. So if you want friends in Tunisia to know you are tired of President Zine ei-Abidine Ben Ali, it feels natural to employ a system you've already learned is efficient at reaching large groups of people. The message, whether of political dissatisfaction or more mundane matters, can spread virally with great speed.
THE BIGGEST QUESTION MARK FOR SOCIAL MEDIA IS CHINA. Of course, neither Facebook nor Twitter caused the Arab Spring. Social media may help people organize and spread awareness, but it can't force people to put their own lives at risk. The two together are an incendiary combination. And that is what makes it unlikely that Zuckerberg will repeat his musings of 2008. He now has powerful reasons for keeping quiet. Facebook is banned , more or less successfully, in Burma, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, among other places. But the service operates in scores of undemocratic countries, and he wants that to remain the case. The biggest question mark for social media is China. Two massive national services modeled after Twitter, the so-called we;bos operated by Sina and Tencent, have hundreds of millions of users each. Although government and company censors seek to carefully
filter the comments, they aren't always successful. Following the deadly July crash of a high-speed train in Wenzhou, so many outraged citizen posts escaped erasure that it became seen as acceptable to criticize the Railways Ministry. That emboldened many in the press to cover the crash more aggressively, even in government-owned outlets. The continued growth of the weibos and the public passion for them lends a new uncertainty to Chinese politics. While it can't be called democracy, it is a kind of manifestation of popular will. There are of course no illusions among denizens of the weibos that comments aren't monitored. To get around censorship, many users invent code words that stand in for the names of leaders or major controversies. Often such discussion of sensitive topics survives the censors. On the other hand, the censors can still win. Tens of thousands of citizens of the northern city of Dalian massed in its central square this summer in what some say was the largest political demonstration in recent Chinese history. They were protesting an oceanfront chemical plant that had been flooded in a monsoon, potentially spreading noxious chemicals over the harbor and nearby sea. While the authorities agreed to relocate the plant, censors appear to have successfully kept information about the protest off the weibos. Most Chinese never heard about it. While Zuckerberg says entering China is one of Facebook's top strategic priorities, it's hard to imagine the service being allowed to operate inside China without the filtering and censorship routinely applied already to other social media. A Facebook spokesman in Washington recently told the Wall Street Journal that the company could even conceivably cooperate. "Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others," said Adam Conner. "We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we're allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven't experienced it before." Even Mark Zuckerberg might not be able to anticipate how it will play out, but there's little doubt about this: Social media, once unleashed, will keep empowering ordinary people worldwide to have a public voice.
David Kirkpatrick is author of The Face book Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World.
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TWEETS ON THE EVE OF ARREST ~
AIWEIWEI
For standing up to the Chinese Communist Partyeven after it threw him in jail.
"It is as easy as falling off a log for a bad state to mistreat its people. It is democracy that restricts the power of doing evil deeds." (March 31)
~ "Local police are tired and very helpless; they are
operating within a powerful machine that has no ethics or rules, and no bottom line of morality or law." (March 31)
Artist I China On Aug. 5, a simple four-character message appeared on Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's Twitter feed: "Wen ge hao ba" ("What's up?"). It would have been utterly unremarkable, but for two things: It was Ai's first tweet since spending three months in prison, and it was written in defiance of the Chinese government's o rders to stay quiet. Ai's arrest on April 3, putatively on charges of tax evasion, was probably inevitable. The son of a famo us poet who was forced into internal exile during the Cultural Revolution, the avant-gardist known for his confrontational nude self-portraits has dissidence in his DNA. A vocal democracy advocate since the 1990s, Ai infur iated the Chinese Communist Party by
disavowing the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, for which he had helped design the iconic Bird's Nest stadium, and pushing for an investigation into Sichuan earthquake deaths later that year. Throwing Ai in jail put a famous face on a worrying trend: Since this spring, the number of human rights activists, lawyers, artists, and other dissidents vanishing into government custody without explanation has quietly but sharply spiked in China. Now Ai has taken up their cause, railing against this state of affairs-in open violation of the terms of his release. " [Tjhere are many hidden spots where they put people without identity," he wrote in a searing Newsweek essay. "With no name, just a number.... Only your family is crying out that you're missing."
PHOTOGRAPH BY MATIHEW NIEDERHAUSER FOR FP
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HE WEIFANG, YU KEPING
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BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON
For debating democracy, and being brave enough to do it inside China.
For being America's premier power coupleand showing why it matters.
Law scholar, Peking University I China Official, Communist Party I China
Former president I New York Secretary of state I Washington
A nervous Beijing has cracked down viciously on dissidents this year, jailing dozens of lawyers and human rights supporters and placing scores under enforced supervision or house arrest. Yet among the many activists keeping Vu hopes for reform alive, two stand out. One surprising advocate from inside the system is Yu Keping, a bureaucrat and head of the government-advising China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics, whom the New York Times has described as a "mild-mannered policy wonk" and a proponent of slow but steady change. His straightforwardly titled essay, "Democracy Is a Good Thing, " insists that China can transition into a democracy that works for the Chinese. In a China Daily op-ed this summer titled "Reform Must Be Incremental," Yu wrote that though the go-slow approach has been on balance good for China, "The country still lacks a mechanism to counter the selfish behavior of the bureaucracy, corruption is still rampant and public service rendered by the government is far from enough." He Weifang, meanwhile, is an outspoken critic of the Chinese legal system who was sent to internal exile in Xinjiang for signing the Charter 08 manifesto against the government in 2008 and then was told last year that he couldn't leave the country. For He, a Peking University law professor and longtime writer on judicial abuses who says he sees China growing more repressive over time, reform cannot come fast enough. And if the Communist Party doesn't adapt, he has warned, "then that process of transformation will not occur peacefully, and if the extreme violence comes, then there will be no Communist Party. It is a case of adapt or die." So will it be Yu 's way or He's?
The Clintons are nothing if not the ultimate survivors. Nearly two decades after they burst onto the national stage, they are still dominating it, with Hillary mounting an extraordinary comeback to the extent that she now polls as America's most admired political figure, while Bill virtually runs a parallel United Nations £rom his Manhattan offices. This year was perhaps the most eventful of Hillary's tenure as secretary of state. As 2010 came to a close, she had just presided over the release of the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, an agency-wide audit of the State Department's best practices. But her ambitious plans for internal reform were quickly overwhelmed by the leak of hundreds of thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence and the turmoil in the Arab world-never mind that the WikiLeaked cables generally showed U.S. diplomats evincing a nuanced Lmderstanding of world events and a surprising unity of purpose. And though U.S. foreign policy initially seemed caught off guard by the collapse of U.S. allies in Tunisia and Egypt, it recovered its footing in Libya. The coming year will likely be Clinton's last in Foggy Bottom, and judging by her recent article for FP, her priority will be reorienting U.S. foreign policy toward East Asia, where, she has said, "much of the history of the 21st century will be written." As for Bill, the "president of the world" has continued traipsing the globe devoting his time and his foundation's substantial resources to issues that generally fall off the radar screen, whether it's reconciliation in Bosnia or rebuilding in Haiti. In November, he published Back to Work, a manifesto with his thoughts o n everything from job creation to energy and financial responsibility. Both Clintons offer something unusual in world politics: their trademark optimism. At this year's Clinton Global Initiative, Bill described as a "no-brainer" a plan to create 1 million new jobs by retrofitting buildings to make them more energy-efficient. "Usually when things sound too good to be true, they are," he said. "They aren't here. " Hillary, meanwhile, cheered the rise of participatory democracy: "We really are in a new age."
r\
HE STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Austerity. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring.
I
READING LIST: Montaigne's Politics, by I \ Bianca maria Fontana; The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, by Hastings Rashdall; The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin. BEST IDEA: Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Sina Weibo, played an instrumental role in promoting democracy all around the world. WORST IDEA: Say goodbye to Washington Consensus and say hello to what is being called the China Model.
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For giving France its swagger back. President I France The Arab Spring did not start out well for France. In Tunisia, protests against Zine ei-Abidine Ben Ali drew attention to France's unfortunate tradition of coddling dictators in the Francophone world-especially when it turned out that President Nicolas Sarkozy's newly appointed foreign minister had spent her holiday on the Tunisian coast and had flown there courtesy of one of Ben Ali's relatives while his security forces were busy cracking down on nonviolent protesters. Sarkozy was somewhat more outspoken in calling for the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. But the real turn came in Libya. Although France had once led the way in engaging Muammar ai-Qaddafi, Sarkozy quickly emerged as the world leader most forcefully pushing military action, dragging along the more reticent Barack Obama (No. 11) and David Cameron (39). Throughout the NATO air campaign that ultimately toppled Qaddafi, grateful rebels regularly hoisted signs proclaiming, "Merci,
Sarkozy," making Sarkozy perhaps the first French leader to be greeted as a liberating hero since Charles de Gaulle. Visiting Tripoli after Qaddafi's fall, Sarkozy told crowds, "We have a common destiny, and what we're now building is valid for Libya and all those Arab peoples in the world who want to free themselves from their chains." Closer to home, Sarkozy has emerged as the most strident advocate of a strong governmental response to Europe's sovereign debt crisis, clashing as well as closely partnering with his German counterpart, Angela Merkel, as they figured out the extent of governmental intervention needed to stabilize the eurozone. Even in these straitened times, Sarkozy has done more than any other recent president to keep France on the map as a world power. Unfortunately, this might not be enough to save the wildly unpopular leader at the ballot box in closely fought elections next year. If only Benghazi got a vote.
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON SEILER FOR FP
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BERNARD-HENRI LEvY For taking on a real war this time. Philosopher I France The French public intellectual universally known as BHL this year transcended his role as merely a flamboyant member of the commentariat, moving from rhetorical bomb-thrower to unlikely inspiration for an actual bombing campaign. In March, Bernard-Henri Levy made his way into Libya, hitching a ride on a vegetable truck to meet with the nascent revolutionary leadership in the country's rebellious east. As Muammar ai-Qaddafi 's tanks closed in on the rebels' de facto capital , Levy telephoned his friend, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to warn him that "the blood of the people of Benghazi w ill stain the flag of France" if the world did nothing. At Levy's urging, Sarkozy swung into action. France became the first country to recognize the rebels as Libya's legitimate government and led the way in pressing NATO to launch an air campa ign against the erratic dictator. Levy's muscular humanitarianism-he hailed the Libya war as a step toward "a moral conscience for mankind"-seems to herald an end to the role of sideline critic that the French played during George W. Bush's military campa igns. In acting as a quasi-official French emissary to the rebels, Levy effectively bypassed France's actual foreign minister, Alain Juppe, who was reportedly sidelined on the issue. Although BHL's antics still inspire their fair share of eye-rolling, he has never shied away from taking a stand-as when he mounted a furious defense this year of his friend, then-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who stood accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid but later had the charges dropped. As 2011 proved, BHL- Iove him or hate him-is impossible to ignore.
On Sarkozy's decision to intervene in Libya: "When my president, Sarkozy, embraced Qaddafl, I was the first to say that it was disgusting, that it was a scandal-of course! Now, he changed his position, and at last, he understands that Qaddafl is a danger for the world.... I, at least, applaud."
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GENE CHEll, ELIZABETH DIBBLE, ROBERT GODEC, CARLOS PASCUAL, ANNE PATTERSON For writing the Wikileaks cables that mattered. U.S. diplomats I Libya, Washington, Egypt Julian Assange's goal in leaking hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables was to embarrass the U.S. government. But many of his WikiLeaks cables revealed American diplomats to be deeply engaged and hard-hitting in their missives home. And the missives themselves led to unintended positive consequences, from helping to topple a dictatorship to giving an early glimpse into M uammar aiQaddafi's madness. Five bylines stood out in particular: Gene Cretz, who in 2007 was named the first U.S. ambassador to Libya since 1972, wrote numerous, highly prescient cables describing Qaddafi as increasingly cut off from reality by a tight group of confidants (not to mention his "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse). Cretz was forced to leave Libya in January following the release of the cables but has since returned in the wake of Qaddafi's downfall. Elizabeth Dibble, now a deputy assistant secretary of state, was no less withering--or accurate-when she described Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in her previous job as deputy chief of mission in Rome, as "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader." Robert Godec, former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia and now a State Department counterterrorism official, portrayed the family of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali as a mafia-like cartel and the president himself as having " lost touch with the Tunisian people." The revelation that America had no illusions about Ben Ali undeniably played a galvanizing role in shifting elite opinion in Tunis during the revolution. Carlos Pascual-an academic expert on state failure-was a controversial ambassador to Mexico to begin with. But unsparing cables noting the Mexican government's "inability to halt the escalating numbers of narco-related homicides" proved too much, and Pascual was forced to step down. Anne Patterson-now posted to Egypt--offered an early warning of the deterioration in U.S.-Pakistan relations, writing in 2009 that Washington's policy toward Islamabad risked "destabilizing the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and the military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis"which sounds disturbingly close to the current reality.
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SAMI BEN GHARBIA, DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, ALEXEY NAVALNY For shaping the new world of government transparency.
Activists I Tunisia, Germany, Russia While the headlines this year may have been dominated by Wikileaks, these three activists led their own transparency campaigns, largely without the same spotlight and in countries where they made a difference. In a society where muckrakers are regularly beaten up and even killed, Russian lawyer and blogger Alexey Navalny has turned his crowdsourced anti-corruption site RosPil.info into a heat-seeking missile against bloated and rapacious government contracts. By this fall, Navalny had saved the Russian government nearly 7.7 million rubles by calling attention to and then torpedoing wasteful deals, not to mention offering a mainstream face for the growing Russian anti-corruption movement. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former deputy of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who turned against his boss and wrote a blistering memoir accusing him of being too politically motivated, not to say megalomaniacal, is developing his own leaked-documents site, Openleaks, focused on exposing corruption worldwide rather than chasing Assange's great white whale, the United States. And Sami Ben Gharbia, a blogger and civil society advocate connected with Ethan Zuckerman's (No. 73) Global Voices project, brought Wikileaks into the closed society of pre-revolutionary Tunisia, pumping out exclusive "Tunileaks" via his Nawaat group blog. Cables from the U.S. ambassador detailed a society rotten with greed from top to bottom: "With those at the top believed to be the worst offenders, and likely to remain in power, there are no checks in the system ," read one cable, released on Dec. 8, 2010. Days later, Tunisia exploded into pro-democracy riots. "Everyone could read the documents; they helped tip the balance," Ben Gharbia said. As Domscheit-Berg told the New York Times in February, "Sometimes if you look at raw, unfiltered information ... then the truth is very blunt, and that is something that has a completely different impact on people."
DOMSCHEIT-BERG MUSE: My wife and son. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Another system. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? World spring. READING LIST: WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency, by Micah L. Sifry; The Corporate Whistleblower's Survival Guide, by Tom Devine and Tarek F. Maassarani. BEST IDEA: Occupy Wall Street. WORST IDEA: Introducing facial recognition for 800 million users without asking for explicit consent.
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CARMEN REINHART, KENNETH ROGOFF For raising the alarm about America's debt burden.
Economist, Peterson Institute for International Economics I Washington Economist, Harvard University I Cambridge, Mass. They told us so. For years before the crash, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff presciently sketched out just how bad the global credit crunch could become based on their ground breaking study of eight centuries of financial crises-the work that culminated in the publication of their bestselling 2009 book, This Time Is Different. In their ROGOFF study, the two found that in MUSE: Ca"issa. all the crises, "excessive debt STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Much looser monetary policy, gradual accumulation ... often poses but determined reduction of fullgreater systemic risks than it employment budget deficit. seems during a boom." AMERICA OR CHINA? America. Since then, Reinhart and Rogoff have been sounding the ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. alarm about America's crippling READING LIST: Endgame: Bobby addiction to debt; before it Fischer's Remarkable Rise and exploded into the public eye Fall, by Frank Brady; Exorbitant this summer, they warned that Privilege, by Barry Eichengreen; high debt levels are "a risk to Civilization: The West and the long-term growth and stability." Rest, by Niall Ferguson. In particular, they argue that government debt burdens above 90 percent of GDP (America's has just gone over 100 percent) are associated with 1 percent lower median growth. "I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that ever ything follows from missing the call on ReinhartRogoff, and I include myself in that category," Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama's first budget chief, told the Washington Post in October. As Reinhart and Rogoff have shown, those who claim that "this time is different" have been consistently proven wrong for the last eight centuries.
II
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DAVID BEERS
For forcing a long-overdue conversation on America's debt. Head of sovereign ratings, Standard & Poor's I Britain Given th at few people have ever heard of him-he didn't even have his own Wikipedia page un til just a few months ago-David Beers has a remarka ble ability to make the w orld's most powerful governments a nd corpora tions ha ng on his every word. In August, the division of Sta nda rd & Poor 's he heads sent shock waves through the globa l economy by downgrading the United States' sovereign-credit ra ting from AAA to AA+. Beers, a two-decade veteran of the firm w ho previo usly assessed sovereign de bt for Salomon Brothers, was q uick to deflect charges of partisanship. " It's a bout the difficulty of all sides in finding a consensus aro und fiscal-policy choices," he said , put ti ng • CYPRUS: BBB + TO BBB • GREECE: BTO CC his finger • ITALY:A + TO A precisely on • JAPAN: AA TO AAthe source of • NEWZEALAND: AAA TO AA+ Americans' • PORTUGAl BBB TO BBB• SPAIN: AA TO AAgrowmg • UNITED STATES: AAA TO AA+ frustra tion with their govern ment. T he move sent ma rkets tum bling a nd prom pted angry rebukes fro m U.S. officia ls, including President Barack O bama. Beers lat er targeted Greece, Italy, a nd Spain with S&P downgra des as well, a move viewed as so damaging tha t the European Union is considering banning agencies from
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assessing countries receiving bailouts. That Beers a nd his cohorts were taken so seriously may be surprising, given that just three years ago, the credibility of ra ting agenc ies was at an all-time low following the colla pse of firm s like Lehma n Brothers and AIG despite their gold-plat ed rat ings. Some will continue to question S&P's credibility- and the fi rm didn 't do itself any fa vors by backing up its decision t o downgra de U.S. debt with calculations containing a $2 tr illio n erro r-but the firm's overall conclusion tha t " th e effective ness, sta bility, a nd predicta bility of American policymaking a nd political institutions have wea kened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges" seems harder tha n ever to refute. If it fina lly forces Washingto n to address its long-term debt crisis a nd political dysfunc tion, Beers wi ll have d one the world a great service.
STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Instead, focus on supply-side measures to boost economic growth. AMERICA OR CHINA? Both. This is not a zero-sum game. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring, with caveats. READING LIST: Against the Flow, by Samuel Brittan; American Sphinx, by Joseph J. Ellis; The Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson. BEST IDEA: Successful completion of the Doha round of trade talks. WORST IDEA: Breaking up the eurozone.
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MAHMOUD ABBAS, SALAM FAYYAD
For forging a path between violence and surrender. President, Prime minister, Palestinian National Authority I West Bank "Enough, enough, enough. " With those words a t the U.N. General Assembly, Mahmoud Abbas fi nally stepped out of Yasir Arafat's sha dow a nd began to build his own legacy as a Pa lestinian nationa list. Abbas, who has guided the Palestinia n Authority through nearly seven post-Arafa t years, took the bold step in 2011 of giving voice to Palestinians' widespread exasperation with a 20-year "peace process" by taking their cause directly to the United Nations, where he appealed to the world 's preeminent international body for recognit ion. T he U.N. statehood gambit, conceived last winter after negotiations with Israel ground to a halt, may have been greeted wit h cries of dismay in Washington and Tel Aviv, but it ga lvanized
~1 ANGELA MERKEL,
WOLFGANG SCHAUBLE For holding Europe's fate in their hands. Chancellor, Finance minister I Germany With the eurozone economies crumbling left and right, Germans rightfully take pride in being among the last in Europe who can pay their bills-and they resent being asked to prop up debt-strapped Mediterranean spendthrifts like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Which is why Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble have in effect become Europe's leaders this year; without their cautious but firm action, few doubt the European Union would be even closer to collapse. Their nearly impossible task: devise an approach that prevents a complete sundering of the union, but also doesn't give a blank check to its most profligate members. Schauble has played the tough guy in the duo, putting off suggestions to expand the European Union's bailout fund and stressing that Greece would only get a cash infusion after sweeping austerity measures. As he put it, "You can't cure an alcoholic by giving him alcohol." Merkel, who grew up in East Germany in the shadow of the Berlin Wall and is well acquainted with both the political and economic rewards of reunification, has stressed the reforms that the EU must take on its path toward a more perfect union and held to the idea of the union even as her political popularity has plummeted. She joined with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to call for more economic coordination among the eurozone countries and proposed that each nation pass a balanced-budget amendment. "There is no alternative to a global framework for a globalized economy," she told a joint session of the U.S. Congress. "This is a second wall that has to fall: a wall standing in the way of a truly global economic order."
the world's attention in a way that dozens of suicide bombers never could. None of it would have been possible without the state-b uilding efforts of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, which also hit a major milestone this year when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund both said that Palestinian institutions were on par with established countries. Under Fayyad, an American-educated economist and former TMF hand, reforms helped the Palestinian economy grow at a projected 7 percent clip in 2011 and, perhaps more importantly, slash dependency on foreign assistance by more than $800 million-a giant step toward a llowing Palestinian institutions to stand on their own. If Palestine ever becomes a st ate, it will owe much to these two men and their steadfast rej ection of violence.
FAYYAD MUSE: Steve Jobs. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? Not either/or. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: Gaza: Stay Human, by Vittorio Arrigoni; Almond Blossoms and Beyond, by Mahmoud Darwish; Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. WORST IDEA: That people have to choose between democracy and stability.
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FUKUSHIMA MUSE: Natalie Portman. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY?Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? Both. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: A Suitable Amount of Crime, by Nils Christie; The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein; The Lie of Nuclear Power, by Hiroaki Koide. BEST IDEA: The decision of Naoto Kan to stop operating the Hamaoka nuclear power plant.
KAIDO MUSE: Jessica Alba, especially in Dark Angel. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY?Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? Impossible selection. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: Ultimate Punishment, by Scott Turow. BEST IDEA: Gradual abolition of nuclear power and weapons; rapid introduction of green energy. WORST IDEA: The war on terror makes the world more unsafe and hostile.
~~ MIZUHO FUKUSHIMA,
YUICHI KAIDO For being anti-nuke in Japan-before the wave. Activists I Japan In the months after the tsunami-induced meltdowns at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station this spring, anti-nuclear sentiment swept Japan, which relied on atomic energy for about 30 percent of its electricity before the accident. Although devastated by their country's losses, Mizuho Fukushima and Yuichi Kaido were less surprised by the disaster. Fukushima, the lawmaker who leads Japan's Social Democratic Party, and her partner, Kaido, a public-
interest lawyer, have spent three decades resisting Japan's nuclear rise in their respective arenas: parliament and court. But the cozy nuclear plant operators and government officials who make up Japan's so-called "nuclear village" largely ignored their effortsthat is, until this year. The Fukushima Daiichi disaster has now forced the island country to re-examine the safety of its nuclear facilities. Naoto Kan, Japan's prime minister until he resigned in August, called in July for Japan to wind down its nuclear program, and his successor, Yoshihiko Noda, agrees. Kan also requested the closure and upgrade of a power plant in the earthquake-prone coastal city of Hamaoka, a facility whose safety Kaido had called into question nearly a decade earlier. Had he won the Hamaoka case, Kaido said, this year's disaster "could have been prevented. " Today, Fukushima and Kaido see a changed political horizon. As Fukushima told the New York Times in August, "Although I won't be able to change the past, I think I can change the future."
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~~ NOURIEL ROUBINI For doubling down on doomsaying. Economist, New York University I New York Rarely has someone done so wel l predicting that the world will go so wrong. No uriel Roubini rose to prominence for forecasting that the 2008 housing crisis wo uld lead to a global eco nomic meltdown, and he has been peddling a message of doom and gloom ever since. Unfortunately for all of us, he 's been right. Since the crisis hit, Roubini has consistently pushed back against the conventional wisdom that the worst is over, notably wa rning in 2008 that banks' losses wou ld be measured in the trillions of dollars, when the optimists were still predicting that the crisis was limited to a narrow subsection of the financial sector. In just the past year, while oth ers were holding out hope that President Barack Obama's stimulus package would revive the MUSE: Lady Gaga. struggling job market, Roubini suggested that the United States could be heading for a STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. dreaded double-dip recession, criticized the European bailout package to Greece as "a AMERICA OR CHINA? China. ri p-off," and penned a provocative and w idely ARAB SPRING OR ARAB read essay as king, " Is Capitalism Doomed?" WINTER? Winter. (Answer: maybe.) A READING LIST: Grand Pursuit, lack of "policy bulby Sylvia Nasar; The Future of You Can't Say He Didn't Warn Us lets" to address the Power, by Joseph S. Nye; The ~ Feb. 17, 2008: "There is now a serious risk of a systemic meltdown in crisis, he says, means Price of Civilization, by Jeffrey that economists U.S. financial markets as huge credit and asset bubbles collapse." D. Sachs. should consider the BEST IDEA: Let's start taxing ~ Jan. 5, 2009: "My predictions for the coming year ... are even more prospect of a 1930sthe rich more-the Buffett dire: The bubbles, and there were many, have only begun to burst." style Depression. Rule- as inequality is now "This might be the atl929 levels and increasing ~ May 5, 2010: "The job losses are going to stay with us for a very long beginning of the end further. period of time. Unemployment is going to remain high." of the American emWORST IDEA: Afront-loaded pire," Roubini sighed, ~ Aug. 5, 2011: "At this point there is serious risk of a double-dip fiscal austerity that will sink th ree years ago. recession in the U.S. and most other advanced economies." us in a severe recession.
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JJ JOSEPH STIGLITZ For questioning global markets run amok-before it was cool. Economist, Columbia University I New York
J~ PAUL KRUGMAN For keeping the Keynesian flame alive in an age of austerity. Economist, Princeton University I Princeton, N.j. For American liberals, Paul Krugman 's twice-a-week New York Times column has become a life raft in a sea of public-policy discourse that has turned distinctly choppy. An early critic from the left of President Barack Obama's economic policy-in 2009 he argued loudly that the $787 billion stimulus package proposed by the White House was too small-the Nobel Prizewinning economist-cum-pundit's outrage has only grown in 2011. To Krugman and his large audience, the Obama administration seems to have all but handed the keys of the U.S. Treasury over to Tea Party budget-cutters. In a September Times column, Krugman likened austerity advocates to pre-modern doctors w ho bled patients in a misguided effort to cure them. "What passes for being reasonable and wise and serious inside the Beltway is in fact deeply foolish," Krugman told TV talk-s how host Charlie Rose in July, as Congress's debt-ceiling debate approached its climax. If the world plunges back into recession, as seems increasingly likely, no one can say Krugman didn 't warn us.
Krugman vs. the Rest of the List:
-+ David Beers/S&P, "Credibility, Chutzpah and Debt," Aug. 7, 2011: "If there's a single word that best describes the rating agency's decision to downgrade America, it's chutzpah-traditionally defined by the example of the young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan." -+ Ben Bernanke, "The Intimidated Fed," April 28, 2011: "Mr. Bernanke is allowing himself to be bullied by the inflationistas: the people who keep seeing runaway inflation just around the corner and are undeterred by the fact that they keep on being wrong." -+ David Cameron, "The Austerity Delusion," March 24, 2011 : "The Cameron plan was based on belief that the confidence fairy would make everything all right. But she hasn't: British growth has stalled, and the government has marked up its deficit projections as a result." -+ Barack Obama, "The President Is Missing," April 10, 2011: "What have they done with President Obama? What happened to the inspirational figure his supporters thought they elected? Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn't seem to stand for anything in particular?" -+ Paul Ryan, "Ludicrous and Cruel," April 7, 2011: "[Ryan's budget plan is] simultaneously ridiculous and heartless."
With the global financial contagion still spread ing, the insights of this Nobel Prize-winning economist and prominent critic of globalization have been more in demand than ever. His 2010 book, Freefa/1, was a well-deserved "1-toldyou -so," and he has continued to point fingers at growing inequality and the global economic establishment's slavish devotion to free market id eology for helping cause the crash. Although the past year has been rough for the world's economy, it has been pretty good for Joseph Stiglitz, who has found his onceheretical views more mainstream than ever. In a widely discussed Vanity Fair article, Stiglitz took aim at America's yawning wealth gap and the culture of over-the-top executive compensation that created it. "An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after yea ran economy like America's-is not likely to do well over the long haul," he wrote. Stiglitz isn't strictly a finger-pointer. He has also chaired a U.N.-organized commission on reform of the global financial system. And burnishing his anti-establishment credibility, he spoke at this year's Occupy Wall Street protests in New York. Stiglitz's skepticism has weathered the storm far better than the free market exuberance of many of his fellow economics supe rstars. Perha ps next time we'll listen.
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~4 ELIZABETH WARREN For holding Wall Street accountable. Legal scholar, Senate candidate I Cambridge, Mass. A Harvard University professor and expert on financial regulation might seem an unlikely candidate for a populist hero. But Elizabeth Warren's plainspoken, relentless criticism of the financial-services industry and tireless advocacy for the American middle class have turned her into a household name-and may just turn her into a senator. In 2008, Warren, an academic expert on bankruptcy, took on the thankless task of auditing the $700 billion bailout of the U.S. financial industry. Along the way, she gained a popular following through her frequent and candid testimonies to Congress and TV appearances. She was widely expected to become the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the oversight agency that she conceived of and helped establish, but the White House passed her over this year in the face of overwhelming Republican opposition. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that the agency under Warren "could be a serious threat to our financial system. " Warren was quick to pivot, announcing that she would run for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat in Massachusetts. The frustrated American left has since rallied aro und her, and a video of a fired-up Warren defending government services as a "social contract," saying, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own," has become a viral sensation. Welcome to class warfare, 2012 edition.
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~~ AMY CHUA For proving that even a parenting memoir can shake the world . Legal scholar, author I New Haven, Conn. Not many parenting books can ignite fierce debates over race, immigration, and American decline, but not many authors of such books are like Amy Chua. This corporate lawyer turned Yale University professor first made a name for herself with her 2003 book World on Fire, which argued that globalization fuels ethnic conflict in the developing world. But that was nothing compared with this year's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, her memoir-cum-manifesto about raising two overachieving daughters, which kicked up a major firestorm and rocketed to the top of bestseller lists. Chua, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, attempts to decipher the question of why Chinese mothers produce "so many math whizzes and music prodigies." Her answer: Chinese parents "can do things that would seem unimaginable-even legally actionable-to Westerners," such as forbidding their children from attending sleepovers, watching TV, STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Either getting any grade besides an A, or way, it will end up a watered-down, playing "any instrument other than the horse-traded compromise. piano or violin." AMERICA OR CHINA?America, if it The book garnered a fierce backlash, can reclaim its traditional values with many accusing her of inflicting of hard work, responsibility, and permanent psychological damage on respect for excellence. her children. (Many critics ignored the book's ending, in which Chua realizes READING LIST: Crave Radiance, she needs to lighten up a bit.) Chua's by Elizabeth Alexander; The contention that soft American parents Death Instinct, by Jed Rubenfeld; are being outdone by hard-charging Extremely Loud and Incredibly Asia n Tiger Moms also tapped into a Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. growing fear that the United States is BEST IDEA: Writing a parenting becoming complacent in the face of memoir that hit a geopolitical nerve. a rising China-where, ironically, the book was sold under the title Being an WORST IDEA: Writing a parenting American Mom. memoir that hit a geopolitical nerve.
~~ TERRY ENGELDER,
GARY LASH, GEORGE P. MITCHELL For upending the geopolitics of energy. Geologists I University Park, Penn., Fredonia, N .Y. Former CEO I Houston Nearly 30 years ago, a Texas oilman named George P. Mitchell threw his money behind an idea: that breaking apart dense underground shale formations could release vast reserves of natural gas. The bet took over a decade to pay off, but the wait was worth it, not only making Mitchell a billionaire, but also fundamentally reordering the global balance of energy and the political power that comes with it. Only in the past several years has the extent of the shake-up become fully apparent. Thanks to investments made by Mitchell's industry heirs in hydraulic fracturing, or " £racking, " U.S. shale gas production nearly quintupled between 2006 and 2010 to 4.8 trillion cubic feet-almost a quarter of U.S. natural gas production-and prices plummeted. Meanwhile, geologists have mapped eye-poppingly large shale gas reserves throughout Europe and the United States-most notably Terry Engelder and Gary Lash, who in 2008 estimated the reserves of the U.S. Northeast's Marcellus Shale formation at a monstrous 500 trillion cubic feet, making it the world's largest unconventional natural gas reserve. Less than a decade ago, the United States was bracing for a future of importing na tural gas from countries like Qatar and possibly Russia, which for years has wielded its gas reserves as a political weapon against its neighbors. Now gas prices in the United Sta tes have halved from three years ago, production has risen to heights not seen since 1973, and the country is looking a t a once improbable future as an energy exporter. " My engineers kept telling me, 'You are wasting your money, Mitchell,"' the oilman told an interviewer two years ago. " We made it to be the hottest thing going."
ENGELDER ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?Summer comes after the spring. I am looking forward to it! READING LIST: Power Hungry, by Robert Bryce; Einstein, by Walter Isaacson; The Last Stand, by Nathaniel Philbrick. BEST IDEA: Declare victory in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring the troops home. WORST IDEA: Continuing government farm subsidies for the purpose of manufacturing corn ethanol.
LASH READING LIST: Power Hungry, by Robert Bryce; American Theocracy, by Kevin Phillips; The Quest, by Daniel Yergin. BEST IDEA: Take advantage of the United States' wealth in natural gas. WORST IDEA: We can solve our energy problems by relying on wind and solar energy plans.
U.S. shale gas production, 19~2011
(trillion cubic feet per year)
- -• • 0.74
0.2
1990
0.25
0.39
1995 2000 2005
Source. U.S- Erof&y lnfoonation Administration
2011
~1 ANNA HAZARE For asking the world's largest democracy to live up to its billing. Anti-corruption activist I India This 74-year-old Gandhi devotee has been railing against government corruption since his days as a rural organizer decades ago, but in 2011, when a series of high-profile scandals reached the highest levels of India's ruling Congress party, his message finally seemed to resonate. Twice this year, Anna Hazare went on a hunger strike in New Delhi to demand tough legislation that would create a powerful new government anti-corruption watchdog. When the softspoken Hazare was arrested in August , tens of thousands of his supporters took to the streets throughout the country, bringing government to a standstill. Finally, the Indian Parliament agreed to debate his ideas, and Hazare ended his fast. Indian elites dismiss Hazare's demands as naive and even dangerous. He and hi s brain trust, including Arvind Kejriwal, a key activist behind the so-called Jan Lokpal Bill, favor an anti-corruption chief with sweeping, near-dictatorial powers and have called for the death penalty to deter corrupt officials. But it's hard to deny that drastic measures need to be taken when the world's fifth-largest economy ranks 87th in the world on government transparency. For now the simplicity and single-mindedness of Hazare's crusade has awakened millions of middle-class professionals who are fed up with India's pervasive culture of graft. "You have lit the torch against corruption," Hazare told his supporters. Now that it's burning, he's unlikely to let it go out.
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~~ MIKE MULLEN For a courageous final act. Former chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff I Washington One of Barack Obama's most noteworthy accomplishments wo uldn 't ha ve hap pened wi thout the support of George W. Bush's ha ndpicked top U.S. military co mmander: Mike Mu llen, a Navy admiral whose four-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ended in September. Last December, when leading Sen ate Republicans said they would defer ro military leaders in deciding whether to vote for repealing the Pentagon's 17-year-old "don 't ask, don' t tell " policy prohi biting o penly gay service members in the military, Mullen rose to the occasio n, telling Congress, "America has moved on .. .. America's military is read y, by a nd large, to move o n as wel l. " T he re peal passed. Mullen's last public act as chairman was to break one of the great taboos o f post-9/11 U.S . foreign policy. In September congressional testimony, he avowed th at the Haqqani network-a vicious, Pakistan-based insurgent group responsible for attacks on U.S. troop s in Afghanistan-was a "verita ble arm" of Pak istan's powerful Inter-Services Intellige nce agency and that Pakistan h ad chosen "to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy." Pakistan 's reaction was swift a nd predicta bly furious, b ut th ere was a sense that a hard truth had fin all y been aired, a nd from an unimpeac hable source: a man who made dozens of trips to mee t with Pakistani leaders and helped guide a U.S. military leadership that has been far more reluctant to criticize Pakistan than its civilian co unterpart. Coming at the end of a career defined by low-key effectiveness, it was an explosive finale-and an admirable one.
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FoREIG N PoLI CY
~~ DAVID CAMERON For showing how to do more with less. Prime minister I Britain Britain's prime minister has spent the year keeping his enemies, and even his allies, off balance , wielding the budget-cutting knife at home while also backing a muscular foreign policy abroad as he heads an awkward coalition govern ment with the Liberal Democrats. In an era of European financial collapse, David Cameron was one of the first major leaders to embrace austerity as the antidote, and his first budget committed Britain to tax hikes and massive cuts in public spending-harsh measures that countries such as Greece and Italy are only now rushing to duplicate. But Cameron has also proved that shrinking Britain's military does not mean retreating from the world. He teamed with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to launch a diplomatic blitz that first convinced the United States, then the U.N. Security Council, to endorse aggressive action to halt Libyan autocrat Muammar ai-Qaddafi's war on his own people. The prime minister's response to the riots that gripped his country in August also proved that he's no pushover. " It is criminality, pure and simple," he told the Hou se of Commons . He skillfully wove the events into hi s rhetoric about a "Broken Britain," saying that widespread social decay was to blame for the riots. But with public funds shrinking, it's up to Cameron to do more with less.
4~ rA~l RYA~ For putting America's debt problem on top of the agenda. Congressman I Washington
It was arguably profligacy, not war, that brought down the Roman and British empires, and today's United States seems ever more at risk of a similar fate. Like dozens of Western countries staggering under debt loads, the United States faces a massive deficit-$1.3 trillion this year alone. If there is any hope of climbing out of that hole, the U.S. federal government will need to cut spending in dramatic ways. More than any other political figure, it has been Paul Ryan, a charismatic rising star among Republican lawmakers and the House Budget Committee chairman, who has led the charge, preaching a new politics of austerity as the only antidote to the crisis. As Ryan wrote in the Wall Street Journal in Apri I, "The threat posed by our monumental debt will damage our country in profound ways, unless we act." To be sure, the Wisconsin congressman's "Path to Prosperity" plan, passed by the House of Representatives in April before being defeated in the Senate, was far from perfect. But unlike others in both parties, Ryan made an effort to do business with his political rivals (Obama called his plan a "serious proposal"), and he undoubtedly set the terms of the intense debate that followed. MUSE: The Rolling Stones. After all, you can't always get what you want. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? It's a
false choice. Prosperity is the real answer. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: Lords of Finance, by Liaquat Ahamed; Endgame, by John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper. BEST IDEA: Corporate tax reform. WORST IDEA: Raising tax rates on individuals and successful businesses.
41 ROBfRllORli~K For looking to reinvent aid for a new era. President, World Bank I Washington
It's been a bad year for the credibility of the world's financial institutions, battered by debt crises in Europe and America and by China 's economic growing pains. But amid the bank panics and bailout frenzies, Robert Zoellick's World Bank has urged powerful countries not to overlook the plight of the poor. In its fifth year with Zoellick at the helm, the bank has been a model of good acts in lean times: The World Bank increased assistance to North African countries rattled by the events of the Arab Spring, while pledging at its fall meeting with the IMF to help fix the problem underlying both economic and political crises worldwideunemployment. Zoellick has also launched an effort to rebrand the World Bank as a source not just of handouts but of information that allows individual countries-rich and poor alike- to help themselves. The bank recently made public thousands of data sets that used to require payment. It's part of
Zoellick's effort to "democratize development economics," in his words . Zoellick insists that emerging markets shou ldn't have to scrape by on outside assistance; instead, foreign aid should be integrated with private investment and entrepreneurship. "The goal wou ld not be charity," Zoellick said in September, "but a mutual interest in building more poles of growth." MUSE: Yogi Berra: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Structural reforms for growth. AMERICA OR CHINA? Work togetherwith others- as responsible stakeholders. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? A climate shift- for a decade or more. READING LIST: The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson; Other Clay, by Charles R. Cawthon; Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution, by Charles Rappleye. BEST IDEA: Gender equality is smart economics.
For being the powerful voice of the new Global South. President I Brazil
For Dilma Rousseff, a former member of a Marxist guerrilla movement who was imprisoned
and tortured by Brazil's ruling military junta in the 1970s, her country's modern-day problems must seem positively trifling. While many world leaders are forced to contend with populist anger in an age of growing unemployment and shrinking federal budgets, Brazil's first female president is charged with managing her country's booming economy, which has more than tripled over the last decade, and its determined ascent to prominence on the world stage. It's a task that she has undertaken with low-key aplomb in her first year since taking over from Luiz lnc!cio Lula da Silva, the populist president who chose her as his successor. Rousseff has pledged to bring down Brazil's national debt and has even inserted her country into efforts to resolve the eurozone's fiscal crisis, dramatically reversing Brazil's decades-long role as supplicant to Europe. Brazil may still be one of the world's most unequal countries, but Rousseff has put the eradication of this problem front and center. In her first months in office, she laid out a plan dubbed "Brazil Without Poverty," which aims to lift more than 16 million Brazilians out of extreme deprivation. "In jail you learn to survive, but also that you can't solve your problems overnight," she explained to Newsweek. "Waiting necessarily means hope, and if you lose hope, fear takes over. I learned how to wait."
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For their passionate advocacy of an urban-based society. Economist, Harvard University I Cambridge, Mass . Sociologist, Columbia U11iversity I New York
GLAESER: 1. Singapore. Surely the world's best-managed city, if a little too orderly for my own taste. It's always worth watching what they are up to, because they provide a clear model for much of the world. 2. Gurgaon. The growing IT center on the edge of New Delhi, which provides a vision of a considerably more middle-class India housed in tall structures that are less constricted by India's often awful land-use restrictions. 3. Cairo. The world watched as an urban uprising centered in Tahrir Square overthrew Hosni Mubarak's regime, but Egypt's course is far from certain. This city may end up determining the future of democracy in the region. 4. Hong Kon~Shenzhen. This matched pair of cities will reflect China's ability to ride out ongoing economic storms. 5. Athens. The urban heart of Western civilization and the center of the current chaos that buffets the European Union. What happens in Greece once again affects us all. 6. Vancouver. This beautiful Canadian city continues to show how immigration and good
This year's political upheavals have been as much about cities as countries. From Cairo's Tahrir Square to London's Tottenham, we've seen vivid iII ustrations of how urban spaces can shape social movements. Saskia Sassen, an academic guru who famously coined the term "global city," has been very much part of the conversation, arguing that the same melting-pot factors that make cities drivers of capitalism can also make them highly unstable . "The poor in Britain, living next to enclaves of wealth and privilege, chose street riots to deliver their message," she wrote. For a more optimistic take on the potential of cities, there is Edward Glaeser's critically acclaimed Triumph of the City, released this year. The book overturns scores of conventional wisdoms about urban spaces: Teeming slums aren't a sign \... of poverty but of economic dynamism. Green, rural spaces actually hurt the environment. GLAESER Historical preservation punishes a MUSE: Clio. city's poorest residents. Glaeser's STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Mild research has taken him from stimulus today. Austerity soon. the fading industrial centers AMERICA OR CHINA? America and China. of America's Rust Belt to the exploding megalopolises of Rio de ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Janeiro and Lagos. But Glaeser Spring for the Arabs, but a real threat doesn't always practice what he of winter for Israel. preaches. "About five years ago READING LIST: The Education of my wife and I did what millions Henry Adams, by Henry Adams; of Americans do throughout the Hidden Harmonies, by Robert Kaplan country, " he has said. "We chose and Ellen Kaplan (disclosure: Bob a suburb."
72
FoREIGN PoLI CY
architecture can combine to make cities vibrant and fun. 7. New York. This great city still matters. Protests on Wall Street. A new science campus on Roosevelt Island. There is plenty worth watching. 8. Sao Paulo. The Brazilian megacity has a mayoral election in 2012 that will provide a chance to re-examine both that city and the political future of Brazil. 9. Christchurch. A massive rebuilding effort following this year's New Zealand earthquake is a unique opportunity to rethink urban form . 10. London. This year, it was struck by riots. What will happen next year amid the Olympics?
SASSEN: Our geopolitical future is not going to be determined by the G-2 combo of the United States and China. It will run through about 20 emerging strategic urban centers, working as networks rather than conventional hierarchies. Topping the list? 1. Washington/New York/Chicago. These cities are becoming more important geopolitically than the United States is as a country,
partly due to war fatigue and the rise of the global economy. Chicago is rising fast as a geopolitical actor; think of the state visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao in January, when he stopped not just in Washington but also in Chicago. 2. Beijin~Hong Kong. Beijing is the center of power, but Hong Kong's geopolitical role is critical. 3. Berlin/Frankfurt. Berlin and Frankfurt time and again show themselves to be the bulwark of the European Union. 4. lstanbuVAnkara. Istanbul has long been described as the hinge between West and East, North and South, with a rich imperial culture and deep knowledge about how to govern such intersections. In combination with Ankara, it is rapidly becoming a major global policy nexus. 5. Sao Paulo/Rio de Janeiro/ Brasilia. These cities form the new politico-economic heavyweight next to nowestablished China. Brazil's development bank is richer than the World Bank, and its economic power is large and ascendant. 6. Brussels. The EU may be struggling with several members' economic crises, but its institutions and capabilities are unlike any other union of states.
teaches my son math); 1688: The First Modern Revolution, by Steven Pincus.
AMERICA OR CHINA? Neither- not the G-2 but the G-20.
BEST IDEA: Crowdsourcing innovation in local government, like the privately and freely developed app that allows riders to know when buses in Boston will arrive.
ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring.
WORST IDEA: More subsidies for highway construction.
SASSEN MUSE: Keynes. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus.
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READING LIST: Open City, by Teju Cole; Keynes: The Return of the Master, by Robert Skidelsky; Confidence Men, by Ron Suskind.
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BEST IDEA: Cooperation as a craft, not simply a decision.
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SPECIAL ADVERTIS IN G SECTION
The
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Discover The Philippines at worldfolio.co.uk
1nes Ready for any challenge Having weathered the recession better than most, the Philippines has renewed confidence in its economy, its government, and itself oters in the birthplace of "People power'' united at the ballot boxes in May 2010 to overwhelmingly back a new government for d1e Philippines. The "No corruption, no poverty" campaign led by Benigno Aquino III clearly struck a chord with the electorate, and the new administration has held firm to its pledge to encourage socio-economic growth through accountability, as the president believes greater transparency goes hand-in-hand with poverty alleviation. The new administration inlmediately took steps to demonstrate the courage of its convictions to increase institutional transparency by introducing "zero-waste budgeting", obliging all government agencies to justify their projected expenses, thereby reducing d1e potential for overspending or corruption. New investment laws have been designed to provide better guarantees for investors and President Aquino has highlighted key areas with prinle investment potential: logistics, mining, shipbuilding, tourism, agro-industry, business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology (IT), electronics and semiconductors, and energy and electricity. "We have streamlined business registration, improved power supply, instituted reforms and issued policies to fight corruption, and established closer coordination between the national and local governments to improve the investment climate, even in the countryside," says President Aquino. With regard to the private sector, many of Aquino's ministers have orchestrated a more enterprise-friendly and results-based edge to government policy. II>
V
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III
2
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
IJ> "In the private sector, if you do not pro-
duce, you do not eat. We are focused on making things happen and letting our actions speak for themselves," says Secretary of Finance, Mr Cesar V. Purisima. "The work style of President Aquino is designed for action, not for show. He is really focusing on making sure we are able to execute our programs and ensure optimum performance of cabinet members. Those who do not perform are asked to move on." Mr Purisima recently won the 2011 Emerging Markets Finance Minister of the Year Award for Asia in recognition of his "strong policy track record and steadfast commitment to maintaining economic stability over the past 12 months." Emerging Markets' eclitor Taimur Ahmad said: "Secretary Purisima's decisive action upon taking office to enforce greater fiscal discipline allowed tl1e economy to grow strongly last year and to insulate it from heightened market sensitivity to sovereign indebtedness." President Aquino's plan, which is often referred to as "Aquinornics", is underpinned by four pillars: fiscal sustainability, infrastructure, investing in people, and improving the way business is done in the Philippines. "On the fiscal and the macroeconomic side we are doing very well," says Mr Purisima. "We are a net creditor country; our reserves are greater tl1an our debt. We are a BOP (Balance of Payments) surplus country: we make more dollars than we spend.
"We have streamlined business registration, improved power supply, instituted reforms and issued policies to fight corruption, and established closer coordination between the national and local governments" President Benigno Aquino III
Our reserves are on a historical high and the increase in reserves, whk h has proven to be sustainable, is structural ratl1erthan hot money inflows driven by the BPO industry and overseas remittances." Investing in its people is of paramount importance: better educated inclividuals have higher employment rates and earnings, and produce more relative to those with less education. Therefore, governments have to invest substantial portions of their resources in education with the expectation that benefits will accrue over time, and the Philippines' government is vety anxious to pursue this tack -to have a highly educated workforce going forward.
To improve the country's infrastructure, the government is targeting public-private partnerships (PPPs) in its bid to become a regional logistics hub. An improved n·ansport network and energy provision would also spur growth in the tourism sector, which has ample room for development given me country's spectacular natural blessings, and the fact that China's burgeoning tourist market is virtually next door. 'We have an ambitious PPP program," says the finance secretaty, ''but we are making sure we are doing it properly. We have launched me first project already- a toll road called Daang Hari." Continued on page 4 IJ>
Leading figures in business and politics in the Philippines
Paquito 'Jojo' Ochoa
Roberto V. Ongpin
Cesar V. Purisima
Albert Ferreros del Rosario
The Executive Secretary is me highest-ranking official in d1e current government. The fmm er city administrator of Quezon City, and Aquino fami ly friend, has served as Noynoy's legal counsel since 1998.
The President and CEO of ISM Communications is a former Minister ofTrade and Industry. Ongpin also partly owns holding company Top Frontier which controls a large stake in the San Miguel Corporation.
The current Philippine Secretary of Finance held the sa me position under the Macapagal-Arroyo government. He also represents the Philippines as a governor in the Asian Development Bank.
The Foreign Affairs Secretary secured US$1.2 billion in U.S. funding in his former role as ambassador. He also has vast business experience, ranging from insurance and banking to telecoms and pharmaceuticals.
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Buried Treasure
I
Philex Mining Corporation profits from a modern approach to the ancient business of digging for gold
In recent years the Philippine mining industry has achieved remarkable growth, as gold and copper prices have reached alltime highs. Correspondingly, large-scale mining companies have increased investment, production and tax payments to the Philippine Government up by 296% to PhP1.8 billion (US $41.4 million) in 2010. Philex Mining Corporation strives for excellence in mineral resource development while taking its social and environmental responsibil ities seriously. It is committed to the continual improvement of its operations in order to minimize adverse environmental impacts, to comply with applicable legislation and other requirements, and to promote environmental awareness among its workers at all levels. By adhering to the philosophy of doing business the right way, Philex earned US $89.7 million in 2010, the second highest income in its 53 years of operation. And it mined the h ighes t annual o re tonnage si nce 1987 - 9.4 million tones in 20 10, eq ui valent to an increase of 14 per cent on 2009. Continued growth and expansion are on the agenda. Philex has a number of new projects in the pipeline, such as extending the mine life in Padcal and advancing the Silangan Project in Surigao del Norte. It is also looking to consolidate and further develop its coal operations, and oil and gas prospects. It plans to spi n-off all the energy assets into a subsidiary company, Philex Petroleum, to be listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange. Philex has also made strong commitments to the communi-
.
~
ties it works with. Its operations at the Padcal mine site have delivered around US$ 850,000 of value in health, educa tion, livelihood and infrastructure projects, und er the Social Development and Management Program (SDMP). In 2010 alone, Philex's SDMP
delivered better healthcare to 7,144 people, afforded quality education to 611 students, and improved 2,300 meters of roads. And on top of this, Philex is helping to support developing communities' survival long after any given mine ceases operation.
.,
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re;orested oVer
2,ooo hectares-with over 1 million seedlings, and continue to maintain the forest year after year. (.
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4
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IJ> Continued from page 2
A steady ship
Additionally, the Philippines is geographically located at the heart of what is expected to be one of the fastest growing regions of the next 20 to 30 years. It is on track to be a part of the ASEAN alliance by 2015, an integrated community of more than 600 million people, boasting a GDP in excess of $1.7 trillion. "We will be the northern and Pacific gateway to ASEAN," adds Mr. Purisima. Billionaire Roberto V. Ongpin, president and CEO of ISM Communications and a former Minister of Trade and Industry, has vowed to attract more foreign investment into the country. "I have brought in so much investment into this country, and I will keep doing it," said Ongpin, who heads five publicly-listed companies. Meanwhile, the Philippines' long-standing relationship with the United States was strengthened in June this year, when Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert Ferreros del Rosario met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mrs Clinton opened the meeting, affirming: "Whether we are working together to combat extremism, help victims of natural disaster, or sta nd up for human rights, the people of our countries share a vision of a better world and a mutual desire to take action."
I
Careful work by the Central Bank has helped the Philippines make progress through stormy waters
The Philippines continues to be a growth economy as investments in good governance and infrastructure continue to gain momentum. While growth is predominantly below-par in most advanced countries, growth prospects in emerging economies like the Philippines are getting brighter and are attracting more foreign investments. In the firstsixmonthsof2011, net foreign direct invesonents rose 16.4% to US$779 million. Net foreign portfolio investments, on the other hand, grew by 230.2% to US$3.1 billion from January-August this year. Fifty consecutive quarters of positive growth and the focus of President Benigno S. Aquino on transparency and accountability draw much interest from investors to invest in the Philippines. "First and foremost, the Philippine economy has stable macroeconomic conditions. There is a solid fundamental base supportive of sustained
sss reaches out to f':A
I Filipinos around the world
economic growth." says Amanda M. Tetangco Jr., Governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), formerly known as Central Bank of the Philippines. "Second, the Philippine banking system remains sound and stable. This bas been brought about by the series of financial sector reforms that we have implemented over the years. Most of these reforms seek to improve risk management practices of banks (e.g. increased capitalization of banks, adoption of international accounting standards for financial reporting, enhanced corporate governance and bank supervision, etc.)." According to Mr. Tetangco, most foreign direct investments came from the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Netherlands, and were largely placed in real estate, manufacturing, mining, financial and insurance services, utilities, and wholesale and retail trade sectors. In recent years, the skills of central bankers around the world have been strenuously
Armando Tetangco, Governor of the Central Bank of the Philippines tested. Nevertheless, for the third time in six years GovernorTetangco was lauded as one of the world's top six central bankers earlier in 2011 in the annual survey by New Yorkbased Global Finance on the performance of central bank heads. During the global economic slowdown, the BSP, under the guidance of the Governor, ensured that credit con-
1861
1898
Jose Rizal Birthday
Independence Day
APhilippine national hero is born. His literary works denounced the condi· lions of the local population under Spanish rule, inciting revolt against the authorities.
The independence of the Philippine Islands from rule by Spain is declared by revolutionary forces under Gener· al Emilio Aguinaldo from his home in Cavite.
If you ' re a global Filipino, you can enjoy social security protection wherever you are in the world. The Philippine Social Security System extends to Filipino workers abroad its voluntary social security and provident (Fiexi-fund) programs.
IJ Philippine Social Security System
,~ . SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM
~ _/~
www.su.gov. ph
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Insurance - just in case In 2010, the Philippine economy grew by over 7%, blessing the country's burgeoning middle class with increased disposable income. This happy state of affairs is predicted to stimulate a rise in life insurance take-ups in 2011/12 - possibly upwards of 23%. However, there is still vast potential for growth: life insurance premiums accounted for only 0.75% of the country's GDP in 2010. The Philippine Prudential Life Insurance Company, Inc. (PPLIC) is a Philippine life insurer with over 1.5 million policyholders. Founded in 1963, it provides a range of products including endowments, healthcare, education and pension plans, and is among the top 15 Philippine life insurance companies. Mr. Gregorio D. Mercado, President and CEO ofPPLIC says: "The Philippines' insurance penetration rate is 15%. Therefore there is ample room for expansion in the sector. We're doing much to educate people about the benefits of insurance, and as the economy improves the opportunities for growth in the sector will just get better."
Reading, writing and... financial literacy The Philippines has reported healthy increases in both GDP and FDI
tinued to flow within the economy while keeping inflation under control. The BSP has also encouraged greater participation by banks in microfinance and micro-insurance sectors. "In the early 2000s, there were only a handful of banks involved in mlcrofinance; now there are more than 200, which have benefitted close to a million microentrepreneurs," says Mr. Tetango.
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. THIS SUPPLEMENT TO FOREIGN POLic.Y WAS PRODUCED BY UNIVERSAL NEWS Grosvenor Gardens House, 35-37 Grosvenor Gardens, London SWl WOBS Tel: +44 (0)20 7629 7198 universalnews@unive~lnews-us.com
WWil.unive~lnews-us.com
~
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THE PHILIPPINES TEAM: Mario Bert~, Isabel ~ Perez, Rafoella Villacieros and Scott Winnen ~ PHOTOS: Karen Kho ~
:... . ..~-~~~~-~~-~~:.~~~-~-r-~~::~~~---····. l
1986
2010
People Power Revolution
Benigno Aquino Ill
According to Amanda M. Tetangco Jr., Govemor of the Central Bank of the Philippines (BSP), over the past decade the total portfolio of microfinancing activities by the country's banks has reached PhP 7 billion ($161 million). However, the involvement of NGOs, cooperatives and other organizations not under the central bank's supervision could well take this figure up to PhP 20 billion. As such, the BSP has gone to great lengths to educate the nation's budding entrepreneurs in the services banks can offer. "We have set-up an Economic and Financial Learning Center here in the BSP main office that is open to the public," he says. "So anyone can go there free of charge, do research, use the facilities, the Internet, database, etc. We have replicated this Economic Financial Learning Center in 21 other locations across the country. We have also been working with the Department of Education to teach basic financial concepts as early as elementary grade in public schools. So now we have money management and savings as part of the curriculum."
<[&] 5 VIRTUES, 1 BANK Guided by its five-fold institutional virtues of Excellence, Integrity, Commitment, Leadership and Teamwork.
{Excellence}
The People Power Revolution led by Ninoy and Corazon Aquino triumphs after three years of demonstrations against the fraudulent practices of the Marcos regime.
Benigno Simeon 'N oynoy' Cojuongco Aquino Ill becomes the 15th and current President of the Philippines, succeeding Gloria Mocapogai-Arroyo before him.
{Leadership}
{Integrity}
{Commitment}
{Teamwork}
6
A dean profit By adhering to a triple bottom-line policy- financial and operating performance, environmental stewardship and empowerment of communities - Philex Mining Corporation has prospered financially, yet not lost sight of its role as a social and environmental steward. In fact, principles of sustainability have long guided Philex's operations: its first tailings pond was constructed in 1967, long before the Pollution Control Law of 1976 required it. Philex was also the first mining company in the country to have achieved ISO 14001 certification for environmental management. Government agencies and industry associations have commended the company's activities. Philex's reforestation programs at the Padcal mine site and at the Silangan Project were placed in the 2010 Best Mining Forest Awards of the DENR - Mines a nd Geosciences Bureau. In November, the Silangan Project received a citation from the Philippine Mine Safety and Environment Association for overall excellence in environmental, safety, and health management.
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The safety net
I
Social welfare and insurance can help alleviate the worst effects of natural disasters and poverty
As food and fuel prices rise, the global economy falters, and typhoon devastation increases, more Filipinos are being pushed close to the poverty line. The Department of Social Welfare a nd Development (DSWD), is tasked with reversing this trend. Hon. Corazon Juliano-Soliman, Secretary of DSWD, explains: ''We're committed to addressing inter-generational poverty by ensuring children go to school85 per cent of the time, families go to health centers once a month; and the poorest get fuel and rice subsidies. We've already reached a million families and aim to increase this to 1.3 million in 2011. But to go further, we need foreign investment in the country and economic growth to lift Filipinos out of poverty." Ho n . V id a T. Chia ng, Deputy Commissioner of the Philippine Insurance Commission (IC) believes all Filipino 's s hould have th e opportunity to secure insurance protection by 2020. However, key challenges include
lack of affordability, and a lack of awa reness of insurance amongst Filipinos. Ms Chiong continues: "We focus on educating Filipinos about the value of insurance and promoting microins urance for the poor. We aim to foster an environment of increased insurance penetration and robust insurance industry growth."
Vida T. Chiong, Deputy Commissioner of the Phitippine Insurance Commission
The man from the Pru called by... Philippine Prudential Life Insurance Company, Inc. (PPLIC) has a long history of developing low-cost products and CSR initiatives which benefit Philippine society. Gregorio D. Mercado, President and CEO of PPLIC, explains: "As far back as the 1980s we were providing micro-insurance. Back then, we were the only provider to offer cooperative members policies with affordable premiums. And in the early 1990s we formed a pool of insurance companies so we could secure the life insurance coverage of overseas Filipino workers." The company has also been involved in CSR programs that include building homes for the poor. Mr. Mercardo says: "We recently launched the PPLIC- AMP AP V illage and we're doing our share. All insurance companies should do this because the biggest expense in one's 1't'ILIPPl~f: household is rent. If that is covered then you Prudential have a little money left for other necessities l.'·~ 0.~11'1'111£ like insurance."
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Corporate responsibility, Phillipines style I Big companies spreading the wealth Both public and private sectors are pulling together to raise living standards for Filipinos through several projects designed to support marginalized sectors of society. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives from the 100% government-owned and controlled gaming finn, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR), address education, nutrition, health, humanitarian and environmental issues. PAGCOR has earmarked P1 billion ($23 million) for the Matuwid na Daan sa Silid-Aralan Project to construct 1,000 new classrooms nationwide in partnership with the Department of Education. It has also allocated PhPlOO million for the P-Noy Bayanihan Project, which will fast-track the production of school furniture made from confiscated, illegally-harvested logs. "We fund the conversion of these logs into chairs and tables for donation to public schools nationwide," says PAGCOR Chairman and CEO Cristina L. Naguiat Jr. The company also ingeniously converts old slot machine stands from its Casino Filipino branches into school desks. PAGCOR' s feeding program for undernourished children, health service missions, Christmas gift giving project and disaster relief efforts are other valued CSR aces up the company's sleeve. Elsewhere, one of the world's largest providers of customer care outsourcing services is also playing a role in raising living standards. Site! has a network of over 120 customer contact centers in 26 countries, and in the Philippines seven call centers make up its largest offshore contact center operation. Clearly it has an important role in the region's prosperity. Steve Barker, Sitel's General Manager for Asia and the Pacific says: "We are the largest employer in Baguio. We have comprehensive medical insurance coverage for employees and their dependents." At many of its operations in the Philippines, Sitel provides 'Baby's Haven' facilities where working mothers can nurse their infants, or spend time with them during breaks. Petron Corporation has been governed by CSR commitment since its inception nearly 80 years ago. Chairman and CEO Mr. Ramon S. Ang feels these policies are essential. "In carrying out its CSR
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www.sitel.com
SiTEL
mission Petron counts on strategic partnerships with government institutions, businesses, international agencies and civil society groups, as well as its employees, who regularly use their time and talents to help make a difference in the lives of others." Finally, Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI) is developing one of the world's largest copper-gold deposits at Tampakan, and its General Manager Mark Williams is aware of his company's responsibilities. ''We believe that it will make a significant difference to our communities, welJ beyond the Iife of the project. SMI has been chosen to provide finance and technical assistance to the country to research and explore the country's mineral wealth. However, the minerals belong to the people and the count!}'. It is important to stress that this is actually the country's project. We are spearheading the project, but the project is the countl}''s, and we are a contractor."
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Developed by Cristino L. Naguiat Jr., Chairman and CEO of Pagcor, the complex wiD feature more than 10,000,000 sq. ft. of leisure space
Entertainment City I A spectacular investment in leisure and gaming A massive fully integrated le isure and entertainment complex is set to take tourism to a w hole new level in the Philippines. The $4 billion brainchild of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor), Entertainment City Manila will be developed over the next five years on a 254 acre plot of reclaimed land along the coast of Manila Bay. Four licensees- Travellers International Hotel Group Inc., SM Group, Bloomberry and Aruze- will each build a total of 250,000 square meters of mixed leisure spaces. A maximum of 7.5 per cent of the floor area at the site will be dedicated to gaming, opening up the vast majority of the estate to a variety of resort amenities and family-friendly attractions, such as shopping, dining and entertainment venues. "Pagcor is committed to creating a multifaceted leisure and entertainment center that is internationally benchmarked. We will also continue to emphasize the strength of our human resources," says Cristina L. Naguiat Jr., Chairman and CEO of Pagcor.
Pagcor expects to transform the Philippines into one of the premier tourist destinations in the world. "A 10 per cent share in the $115 billion global gaming pie will give the Philippines $11.5 billion in revenue, making the country an even bigger destination than Las Vegas in terms of earnings," says Mr. Naguiat. "If we succeed, we will generate an additional one million jobs and bring in a million more tourists."
"I am not just promoting the Casino, I am promoting the whole of the Philippines. It's not just about the gaming - it's the scenery, and all the natural wonders you can see in these islands." Cristina L. Naguiat Jr. Chairman and CEO of Pagcor
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Winds of change blow through the islands Already the world's second largest producer of power from geo-thermal sources, the Philippines is taking renewable energy seriously Increased 'green' power generation from geothermal, wind and hydro sources can reduce dependency on costly imported fossil fuels- thereby making the benefits financial as well as environmental. Currently, the Philippines relies heavily on foreign energy sources: imported coal and crude oil accounted for 50 per cent of the total energy supply in 2007. Yet the country has rich renewable energy potential, including robust wind energy sites, ideal solar conditions, and many geothermal and biomass resources. In fact, it is already second only to the U.S. in terms of geothermal energy production. The country wants to further reduce air pollution, with Ramon
Tampakan Copper-Gold Project
Paje, Secretary of Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) aiming to popularize the use of electric tricycles. "The ultimate aim is for our country's five million tricycles, of which 2.8 million are in Metro Manila, to become zeroemission vehicles," he said. Another plan is to convert current diesel-run 'jeepneys' -a major public vehicle in the Philippines- into electric vehicles. This, Paje said, would keep the cultural identity of the jeepney as uniquely Filipino, while at the same time increasing reducing emissions. Prompted into action by the 2008 fuel crisis, the Department of Energy created the Renewable Energy Act. Its aim is to pro-
mote the development and commercialisation of renewable energy resources to achieve national energy security, reduce greenhouse emissions, be ofbettervalue to the consumer, and reduce energy imports. Fiscal and nonfiscal incentives to private sector investors, equipment manufacturers and suppliers are being offered to help reacl1 these targets. The National Renewable Energy Program, launched in June d1is year, aims to triple renewable energy capacity to 15,400 megawatts by 2030. "Renewable energy resources are expensive because it's emerging technology, but in the long term the price come down, making it cheaper than traditional sources," Layug said.
Ramon J.P. Paje, Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) The Philippines is set to host a bio-energy conference dubbed "Be Independent, Go Green Energy," on January 12-13 next year, to he! p develop a robust and profitable sector in the country It hopes to encourage more investors to become involved in biofuel feedstock production and processing, and renewable energyproduction including biomass feedstock production and biopower generation. President Aquino is expected to grace the event, along with Mr. Paje and Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras.
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Sagittarius Mines, Inc.
Creating wealth. Enriching lives.
A blueprint for large·scale, responsible mining In the Philippines
www.sml.com.ph
Philippine Mining Dc\clopmcnt Corporation www.pmdc.com.ph
PETRON
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Leading from the front
I
Petron Corporation's profits have helped the whole country- but there's more work to be done
Philippine GDP grew 7.3 per cent in 2010 to US $188.7 billion, and Perron Corporati on (Petron), the largest oil refining and marketing company in the Philippines, b elieves it has played a key role in boosting the country's economic progress. Ramon S. Ang, Petron Chairman and CEO explains: "Supplyi ng nearly 40 per cent of the country's oil requirements, Petron posted a US $78 million net income for the first quarter of 2011, generating income and tax revenue for the Philippine economy as well as creating more jobs through the establishment of more service stations nationwide. Also, the local production of oil
and petrochemicals is essential to the country's growth, fuelli1g vital sectors such as transport, manufacturing, and power generation. We also provide raw materials used in everyday products such as food packaging, home appliances and car parts, among others." Petron, a long-standing business in the Philippines established in 1933, is a major player in the local downstream market. Perron's Integrated Management Systems-certified refinery in Limay, Bataan, has a rated capacity of 180,000 barrels a day. It processes crude oil into a full range of petroleum products including LPG, gasoline,
A success story in the Philippine construction industry Mr. Dinalo Tamayo and Mrs. Cynthia Tamayo, the President and Vice President of DDT Konstract, Inc. with daughter Andrea Marie, the first of a new generation of Tamayos to take the company to new heights DDT Konstract was launched in 1998 with capital of just a few thousand dollars, made up of the Tamayo's life savings and loans from family. Today, DDT Konstract has a turnover of over 5 billion pesos (US $10 million). The company's success has been built on word-of-mouth recommendations, and a reputation for always completing jobs to perfection. Central to this was the use of the world-class technology and quality materials from Sweden and the UK. Certification as a registered U.S. contractor has helped the company expand, via Guam and Hawaii, into mainland America: DDT now have offices in San Francisco and Las Vegas. The Tamayo's efforts have created a true Filipino success story.
Ramon S. Ang, Chairman and CEO, Petron Corporation
diesel,jet fuel, kerosene, industrial fuel oil and solvents, which are distributed through its nationwide network of 32
depots. Furthermore, through over 1,700 service stations, it retails gasoline, d iesel, and kerosene to motorists and public transport operators, and has also established its convenience store brand "Treats" at its service stations. Despite the s tre ngth and growth of the Philippine oil industry, however, Mr. Ang believes there is much work to be done. "The petrochemical industry here in the Philippines is very underdeveloped. We believe that the local market is big enough to wa rran t the establishment of a more developed petrochemical industry similar to that of Thailand. T hailand is now self-sufficient and in fact exports pe trochemicals. It is a model that we would should take a serious look at and emulate."
For demanding that war criminals be held accountable. Prosecutor, international Criminal Court I The Netherlands Director, North western University's Center (or International Human Rights I Chicago
This summer, when International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis MorenoOcampo charged Libya's Muammar ai-Qaddafi and his son with crimes against humanity, it was a bold gesture that demonstrated how legal sanction could isolate a rogue government just as much as a military strike. As David Scheffer, the United States' first-ever ambassador at large for war crimes and one of the handful of international jurists, politicians, and activists whose commitment to prosecuting the war criminals of the Balkans and Rwanda led to the creation of the ICC back in 2002, writes in his forthcoming memoirs, All the Missing Souls: "The modern pursuit of international justice is the discovery of our values, our weaknesses, our strengths, and our will to persevere and to render punishment." Eight years into Argentine jurist Moreno-Ocampo's nine-year tenure , and despite America's refusal to ratify the ICC treaty, he and Scheffer can point to a number of victories: the successful indictments and, in some cases, trials of war criminals
from the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda, as well as the capture this year of Ratko Mladic, the infamous butcher of Srebrenica. Scheffer calls it "conduct unbecoming of a great nation" that the country that led the charge to prosecute these evildoers also exploded the bounds of the Geneva Conventions while fighting the war on terror. But the work done by MorenoOcampo, Scheffer, and others ensures that the world is nonetheless gradually becoming a less cruel place.
SCHEFFER MUSE: The nameless protester against tyranny. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: City of Thieves, by David Benioff; Empire of the Summer Moon, by S.C. Gwynne; The Justice Cascade, by Kathryn Sikkink. BEST IDEA: Drastic reductions in nuclear weapons stockpiles as relics of Cold War thinking. WORST IDEA: That responding to the plight of the Libyan people in early 2011 was not in the national interest of the United States.
Nixon to Barack Obama and in June completed a transformative tenure across two administrations as Pentagon chief, is the rare exception. The career spook oversaw a responsible drawdown from Iraq, managed an ambitious counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan , and began a difficult discussion about the need to realign the military's budget priorities for an age of fiscal austerity- all the while winning applause from hawks and doves alike. As Capitol Hill continues to obsess over America's spiraling debt, Gates's focus on trimming the fat from the military looks increasingly prescient. After convincing Congress to ax dozens of military programs in years past, he laid out plans this year to cut $178 billion from the Pentagon's budget over the next half decade. He also warned that NATO faced a "dismal" future if America's allies did not pick up the slack , and he vocally opposed future military adventures . Any of his successors who advocated a ground war in Asia or the Middle East, he memorably told West Point cadets, "should have his head examined."
Former defense secretary I Washington
In these days of political trench warfare, most Washington fixtures leave the city with their stature diminished. But Robert Gates, who served presidents from Richard
For showing what it means to be brave in Pakistan. Member of parliament I Pakistan
For continuing to give us the bad news about the global economy. For being America's last bipartisan figure.
president-elect has ever had" on the extent of the damage wrought by the bursting U.S. housing bubble. Romer recommended a $1.2 trillion stimulus , watered down to $787 billion a few months later. Since then , and particularly since leaving the White House in the fall of last year, Romer, an academic expert on the Great Depression whose work focused on the role of monetary policy in precipitating the crash, has sounded an increasingly urgent alarm about America's jobs crisis, warning that though "today's unemployment appears mainly cyclical, it could turn structural" without immediate measures such as more public investment and a payroll tax cut. Romer's New York Times column has become a powerful platform denouncing the current vogue for austerity-an argument that, she says, " makes me crazy. " Whether briefing the president or the public , Romer has never been one to sugarcoat the bad news.
Economist, University of California I Berkeley, Calif.
In December 2008, Christina Romer, newly appointed to head Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, delivered what her colleague and successor, Austan Goolsbee, later speculated may have been " the worst briefing any
Prominent advocates for secular democracy in today's Paki stan not only must have the courage of their convictions- they must also be prepared for the very real possibility that their careers will come to violent ends. This year alone saw the stunning assassinations of Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, the sole Christian in Pakistan's government-a sign that the creeping lslamist fanaticism
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and militancy plaguing Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan know no borders. But instead of mourning, Sherry Rehman-a prominent journalist, TV personality, and member of parliament from the ruling Paki stan Peoples Party- took up the cause for which Taseer and Bhatti were murdered : their efforts to amend Pakistan's outrageous blasphemy law, which has been used as a cudgel against Pakistan's embattled minorities. In response , a prominent lslamist cleric issued a fatwa calling for her death; at the height of the furor she said she was receiving two death threats an hour. Rehman has also smashed gender barriers by founding the Jinnah Institute, a national security-centric think tank, inserting herself into a field normally dominated by a small cadre of men at the top of Pakistan's shadowy intelligence services. Her stand against religious zealots has largely confined her to her house out of fear for her safety. But she refuses to back down, saying, "Appeasement of extremism is a policy that will have its blowback." MUSE: Steve Jobs, with his knowledge and knife-edge mind. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA?China. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Autumn. READING LIST: Destiny Disrupted, by Tamim Ansary; Civilization: The West and the Rest, by Niall Ferguson; Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future, by Stephen Kinzer. BEST IDEA: Let's talk to everyone, especially the enemy. WORST IDEA: Aid without trade.
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FoREIGN P oLICY
4~ SlB/f~ ri~KfR For lookingon the bright side . Psychologist, Harvard U1Ziversity I Cambridge, Mass.
The headlines may be gloomy: a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, famine in Somalia, a bloody crackdown in Syria. But Steven Pinker doesn't fret over the dismal news. In his ambitious new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, the Harvard University-based cognitive researcher argues that the world is a significantly more peaceful place than it was in centuries past. Pinker makes the case that the worst examples of human cruelty- torture, war, suicide- have declined dramatically in the modern age. Why? He contends that humankind has gradually tamed its worst instincts as traits like empathy and equality have proved more useful than violence and revenge,
an insight as relevant to geopolitical strategists as criminologists the world over. And Pinker suggests the trend toward a more peaceful planet is accelerating, beginning with the "Long Peace" that followed World War II and gaining momentum with the "New Peace" that followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. So, cheer up, he writes: "for all the troubles that remain in the world , the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor. "
4~ A~~RfW SUlliVA~ For his eloquent and passionate advocacy of gay rights. Blogger, Daily Beast I \Vashi,gto"
MUSE: Statisticians. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? I don't have an opinion on everything. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Springier. READING LIST: Getting Better, by Charles Kenny; The Great Big Book of Horrible Things, by Matthew White; Winning the War on War, by Joshua S. Goldstein. BEST IDEA: Joshua S. Goldstein: If you want peace, work for peace. WORST IDEA: The United States' funding only the parts of the U.N. that advance American interests.
In 2003, British-born Andrew Sullivan, who is HIV-positive, was prohibited from becoming a U.S. permanent resident and denied the right to marry his same-sex partner. Eight years and two policy changes later, the writer and husband is a permanent resident of the United States, using his explosively popular blog, now hosted by the Daily Beast, to exhort his adopted country to extend marriage rights to all its citizens- a cause that
A
A~l~lO~Y Of INONIVIOLENCE
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he '""'''include of h" m'" violence enough kinds of victims to fill a page of a rhym ing dictionary: homicide, democ ide, genocide, et hnocide, polit icide, regicide, infanticide, neonaticide, filicide, siblicide, gynecide, uxoricide, mariticide, and terrorism by suicide. Violence is found throughout the history and preh istory of our species, and shows no signs of having been invented in one place and spread to the others. At the same ti me, the
quantitative study of history provides some pleasant surprises. Abominable customs such as human sacrifice, chattel slavery, and torture-executions for victimless crimes have been abolished. Hom icide rates have plunged since the Middle Ages, and rates of battle death in armed conflict are at an all-time low. Whatever causes violence, it is not a perennial urge like hunger, sex, or the need to sleep. The historical decline of violence thereby allows us to dispatch a dichotomy that has
stood in the way of understanding the roots of violence for millennia: whether humankind is basically bad or basically good, an ape or an angel, a hawk or a dove, the nasty brute of textbook Hobbes or the noble savage of textbook Rousseau. Left to their own devices, humans wi ll not fall into a state of peaceful cooperation, but nor do they have a thirst for blood t hat must regularly be slaked. Human nature accommodates motives that impel us to violence, like predat ion, dominance, and vengeance, but also motives that-under the right circumstances-impel us toward peace, like compassion, fairness, self-cont rol, and reason. -Steven Pinker
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~COLUMBIA ISIPA School of International and Public Affairs
Empowering Leaders to Serve
the Global Public Interest To provide a truly global public policy education, Columbia's School of Internatio nal and Public Affairs (SIPA) offers an array of degree choices that is unmatched by other graduate public policy schools and uniquely prepares 21 st-century leaders to address our increasingly complex policy challenges.
The Curriculum SIPA's MPA and MIA degree programs all provide the rigorous preparation in politics, policy and quantitative analysis, econo mics, and management required fo r professio nal success across the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Students combine these core skills with focused study of a critical arena of public policy: Econo mic and Political Development, Energy and Environment, Human Rights, Internatio nal Finance and Econo mic Policy, International Securi ty Policy, Urban and Social Policy.
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seemed astonishingly more achievable in 2011 than even Su llivan cou ld have imagined until recently. A self-proclaimed conservative, Sullivan argues against those who label him a liberal for his support of gay rights and decries the religious bias of modern right-wing politics. His ability to glide between political ideologies has made him a lightning rod for criticism, but also the rare figure in contemporary politics who can reach audiences across the political spectrum. Meanwhile, his most fundamental cause, samesex marriage, is undergoing a remarkable boost in popular acceptance, with the president admitting that his views, once opposed , are "evolving," and a majority of the country supporting it for the first time, a 9 percentage-point leap from last year. Sullivan, who has been punditizing for samesex marriage since the early
1990s and wrote a major
Newsweek cover story about his own marriage after New York's decision to legalize this summer, is justified in lifting a glass of Champagne. "[In) the years of struggle, as more and more heterosexuals joined us, we all began finally to see that this was not really about being gay. It was about being human," he writes. MUSE: Thomas Merton. AMERICA OR CHINA? China. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring. READING LIST: The Rogue, by Joe McGinniss; The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker; The Settlers, by Gadi Taub. BEST IDEA: Bowles-Simpson deficit plan. WORST IDEA: Foreign policy based on theology, as in Rick Perry's "easy" position on Israel.
~~ ~o~ rA~l For being the most influentialif not electable-figure in the Republican presidential contest. Congressman I Washington
In 2011, RonPaulism went mainstream in U.S. presidential politics. Four years ago, the Fed-bashing, gold-standardpushing, unapologetically isolationist Texas representative was a far-flung outlier among Republican primary candidates. Then came the Republicans' 2010 congressional election wins and the startling success of the Tea Party movement-of which Ron Paul's brand of libertarianism was a precursor. Now Paul, a long-shot presidential hopeful once again, faces the opposite
problem in the 2012 race: a slate of GOP contenders who are tearing pages out of his half-dozen books. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann blasted the allied intervention in Libya, and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman says it's time to "bring those troops home" from Afghanistan, while Texas Gov. Rick Perry threatened Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in language that even Paul might not use. They may not have the stomach for the full Ron-say, commiserating with Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, as Paul did loudly in an August debate, or declaring that President Barack Obama shou ld be impeached for assassinating American citizen Anwar ai-Awlaki in Yemen. But the Republican Party's eventual nominee is likely to have walked at least part of the way to victory in Paul's quirky footsteps.
The Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
Teachers' Workshop June 4-8, 2012, in Basin Harbor, Vermont The Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies promotes excellence in the teaching of strategic studies at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels. This workshop is designed to help prepare faculty who are new to the national security or strategic studies field. (All expenses are paid by the Merrill Center.) Topics will include: Teaching an introductory course in strategic studies; syllabus construction; case teaching ; use of film in the classroom ; gaming and simulations; and staff rides. Past presenters have included: Eliot Cohen , Thomas Keaney, and Mary Habeck (SAIS); Peter Feaver (Duke University); Brian Linn (Texas A&M University); and Stephen Rosen (Harvard University). Eligibility: All faculty or prospective faculty members interested in teaching courses in the national security field are eligible to apply. Application procedure: Submit cover letter, curriculum vitae, and a description of current and prospective teaching interests to the Merrill Center Administrator, Christine Kunkel, at ckunkel@jhu edu or mail to 1619 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington , DC 20036. Applications must be postmarked by January 15, 2012. For more information: Visit the Merrill Center at http://merrillcenter.sais-jhu.edu/ or call 202-663-5772.
symptoms of violence before they erupt: " I don't wait until I see signs of genocide," he said.
EVANS
For making the "responsibility to protect" more than academic. Special advisor to U.N. secretary-genera/ I New York Chancellor, Australian National University I Australia
~1 JO~~ McCAI~ For finding his voice againin support of democrats the world over. Senator I Washington Sen. John McCain, no longer nursing his wounds from his stinging 2008 presidential defeat, has been unleashed again-as a loud and consistent voice for muscular interventionism at a time when it is becoming decidedly unfashionable in American politics, even among the most hawkish Republicans. While the GOP presidential field is jockeying over who would draw down in Afghanistan fastest and Congress avoids pretty much anything having to do with America's role in the world , the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has spent 2011 riding the wave of the Arab Spring, warning dictators and unsettled regimes from Burma to Egypt that their embrace of freedom must be absolute-or else. He was among the first U.S. politicians to call for Hosni Mubarak to step down in Egypt, and he flew to Benghazi in Apri l to rally the Libyan rebels. Two months later, along with Sen. John Kerry, he introduced legislation that authorized the president to act in defense of the ragtag desert militias McCain had called "my heroes." Over the summer, the senator warned Burma's brutal military rulers that they could be next. "Governments that shun evolutionary reforms now," he said, "will eventually face revolutionary change later." With Burma releasing political prisoners and Muammar al-Qaddafi killed by his foes, it looks like the old McCain-the man who stood up against Bush-era torture, the one willing to stake his reputation for the Iraq surge-is finally back .
In the past decade, the idea of a "responsibility to protect" has gone from an airy theory held by a small cadre of human rights advocates to a guiding principle of the world's strongest military alliance. Francis Deng and Gareth Evans played a prominent role in developing the intellectua l scaffolding for R2P, as it's clunkily called, and it received its first practical application this year in Libya. Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, chaired the blue-ribbon panel that came up with the term "responsibility to protect" in 2001 and was the first to bring the idea to prominence with a 2002 Foreign Affairs article arguing that the international community " repeatedly made a mess of handling" the interventions of the 1990s, most spectacularly in Somalia and Rwanda, and shou ld adopt more rigorous standards. The United Nations agreed w ith him at its 2005 world summit, reflecting the growing consensus that state sovereignty is not a right, but a privilege. Deng, the first South Sudanese to obtain a doctorate and author of key works in the 1990s introducing the R2P concept, has sought to apply similar principles to his war-racked country. This year he traveled to his homeland, the world's newest country, to lead workshops on catching the
MUSE: Pollyanna-someone has to stay optimistic. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus, please. AMERICA OR CHINA? Both: God save us from a zero-sum game. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring, absolutely. READING LIST: The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker; The Memory Chalet, by Tony Judt; Why the West Rules- for Now, by ian Morris. BEST IDEA: U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood. WORST IDEA: That, post-Fukushima, civil nuclear energy should be abandoned.
For working to show that doing good can also be in the national interest White House advisor I Washington
Samantha Power was awakened to humankind 's true potential for cruelty w hile, as an intern at CBS Sports, she watched the uncensored feed of Ch inese protesters being violently suppressed in Tiananmen Square. Over the next t wo decades, her battle against genocide took her to the Balkans, Rwa nda, Darfurand now the White Hou se. Power, whose Pulitzerwinning book on genocide first brought her to Barack Obama's attention, has a more influential perch than ever-and by all accounts, the president's ea r-to advance her argument that the United States has a duty to halt atrocities. " If we are to bring about an end to the world's worst atrocities," as she once put it, "there has to be the
DECEMBER
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creation of political noise and political costs in response to massive crimes against humanity." Although the U.S. record may be spotty, world leaders are increasingly adopting Power 's views, as the intervention in Libya showed. And with American flags now being waved there, not burned , Power and the Obama administration are proving that humanitarian intervention isn't only the right thing to do-it can also be good for U.S. interests.
~4 MO~AMm R-fRIA~ For delivering economic tough love to a world in denial. C£0, Pimco I Newport Beach, Calif.
The world has finally caught up with Mohamed EI-Erian. For nearly half a decade, the CEO of the world's largest bond fund has guided his investments and widely quoted public writings by the same unhappy theory: Things are going to get worse before they get better. The global economy isn't just weathering a tough spell, EI-Erian argues-it's undergoing fundamental structural changes on the road to a "new normal," and the longer we put off dealing with them the more painful they will be. A former IMF economist and manager of Harvard University's endowment, EI-Erian knows just how change-averse institutions can be, and in his voluminous commentary he has increasingly turned his fire on a global policymaking elite in denial, criticizing "mindsets that have difficulties recognizing regime shifts, preferring instead the illusionary comfort of the more familiar cyclical frameworks." He has also warned, early and often, of
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the global implications of developments like Greece's debt crisis and the United States' S&P downgrade, reminding us that, like it or not, we're all in this together.
~~ rA~l COlllf~ For pointing the finger squarely where it belongs: at the world's dictators. Economist, Oxford University I Britain
~~ MA~ll~ WOlf For appealing to the highest common denominator. Columnist, Fina ncial Times I Britain
A former World Bank economist, Martin Wolf has called his job as a financial journalist an accident. But the nuanced, prescriptionheavy columns that he has penned for the Financial Times since 1996- complete with dense, data-rich charts on everything from U.S. bond yields to the latest Chinese slats- have earned him a devoted following among top economists, politicians, and financiers. Whether offering remedies for the European debt crisis, critiquing the Obama administration's approach to the U.S. deficit, or warning of further economic shocks looming on the horizon, Wolf's columns pack in enough academic rigor and specificity to serve as cheat sheets for top government officials. "I'm writing for the people who are doing these things, who are running these things," he told the New Republic. If only they'd listen more often. MUSE: William Shakespeare.
Best known for identifying the world's poorest "bottom billion" in his 2007 book of the same name, Paul Collier has long insisted that bad governance is most to blame for global poverty and that the West should stop cozying up to dictators who enable the worst abuses. His 2009 book, Wars, Guns, and Votes, controversially called on Western countries to condone foreign military coups in response to sham elections, while suppressing rebellions against politicians elected fairly. Thus, according to Collier, the international community could at least delegitimize-and perhaps even help topple- the world's most corrupt and antidemocratic leaders. Then came 2011, and a string of the dictators Collier had long been railing against finally bit the dust. Not only was the international community following Collier's advice and hardening against corrupt leaders, but, as he wrote for FOREIGN POLICY, the "bottom-up force of information technology" and the pressures of foreign influence have been "an excruciating squeeze even on the world's seemingly most secure incumbents of power." A good thing, too: It's the only way that the bottom billion will ever move out of misery.
STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus.
MUSE: Martin Wolf.
AMERICA OR CHINA? America.
STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulusbut spend big on investment while trimming consumption so as to improve the balance sheet
ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: The Plundered Planet, by Paul Collier; Imperfect Knowledge Economics, by Roman Frydman and Michael D. Goldberg; Keynes: The Return of the Master, by Robert Skidelsky.
AMERICA OR CHINA? China- but rocky, not rocket ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring. READING LIST: Pillars of Prosperity,
by Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson; The Memory Chalet, by Tony Judi; Arrival City, by Doug Saunders. WORST IDEA: Heard at Jackson Hole: To resolve the U.S. economic crisis, we need to return government spending and the fiscal deficit to pre-crisis levels as fast as possible.
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If there is a living symbol of this year's Mediterranean meltdown, it is Silvio Berlusconi, whose "bunga bunga" parties and maladroit governance have made Italy a global laughingstock- and, more seriously, a major drag on the entire European project. The Italian prime minister, finally headed for the exits after 24 dodged lawsuits since he first took power in 1994. In no small measure it was thanks to llda Boccassini, a prosecutor based in Milan. Dubbed "llda Ia Rossa" ("I Ida the Red") for her fiery hair and left-leaning politics,
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Boccassini is known for her daring investigations into some of Italy's most notorious mafia clans. Since the early 1990s, however, Berlusconi has been her chief quarry, and she finally seems to have caught him this year for allegedly paying a 17 -yearold for sex and abusing his position to hide the act. The prime minister denies it, but tens of thousands of wiretaps, ordered by Boccassini's office, have revealed the decadence of Berlusconi's bacchanals-a nd the corruption and callousness of Italian politics in the midst of a financial crisis. Berlusconi's unforgettable quotes rank up there with the worst scandals exposed by Wikileaks. Despite strenuous pushback from the flamboyant PM's media empire, Boccassini has quietly proceeded with putting the entire corrupt system of Berlusconismo on trial. As she said last year of the mafia, "Either you are with the state or you are against the state." Even if you think you own the state.
as the world's greatest nation. In That Used to Be Us, co-authored with Johns Hopkins University professor Michael Mandelbaum, Friedman delivers what he describes as a "wake-up call" to America, making the case that the war against al Qaeda was a dangerous distraction from the home front and that a third party is needed to restore American greatness. For Friedman, American anxiety over the "rise of the rest" is caused primarily by the realization that the U.S. political system is increasingly bogged down in partisan infighting and bureaucratic paralysis. Commenting on Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann's climatechange denialism , he implored them to sell their wares elsewhere-as he put it, "we really are all stocked up on crazy right now." STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Both. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? It is an Arab Awakening and will take all four seasons for many years.
Jens Stoltenberg provided a case study in how to guide a nation through trauma. Stoltenberg emphasized the principles that have made Norway the envy of the world in the first place. "We will never abandon our values," he told Norwegians two days later. "Our reply is: more democracy, more openness, and more humanity. But never naivete." In the months since, Stoltenberg has resisted pressures to institute greater domestic surveillance measures and maintained a proimmigration stance. As he put it: "We need to accept that there are extreme views out there, too. They cannot be silenced to death, but de bated to death."
FOREIGN POLICY
article this year. From Indonesian villages to rural Morocco, they met people who would fall comfortably within the international definition of hungry, yet were forsaking needed nutrients for better-tasting treats or a DVD player. What to do? For starters, they suggest leaving the grand, onesize-fits-all solutions where they belong: back at the academy.
BANERJEE MUSE: Voltaire. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? China. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring.
For their brilliant book on the world's poorest. Economists, Massachusetts lmtitute of Technology I Cambridge, Mass.
Within the world of development economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Foreign-affairs columnist, Duflo are known as the New York Times I Washington "randomistas" for eschewing Thomas Friedman popularized For meeting terror grandiose solutions to with humanity. eradicate poverty in favor the idea that the world is flat- and now he thinks Prime minister I Norway of randomized field trials. it's cracking up. The New Through their Poverty Action York Times foreign-affairs Wealthy, tranquil Norway Lab, they have studied columnist argues that today's seemed a world apart from how the world's poor make hyperconnected world has the violence and extremism economic decisions- in the made the planet's havethat has wracked other parts process redrawing the battle nots more aware of their of the planet. That illusion lines between those who was shattered in July when call for massive infusions of predicament and thus more eager to rebel against the Anders Behring Breivik-a government aid and those indolent and corrupt elites far-right madman obsessed who reject the usefulness of above them. But Friedman with a purported Muslim aid altogether. has done more than catalog takeover of Europe-set off a In their book this year, the wreckage of the Great bomb in Oslo and went on a Poor Economics, Banerjee Recession- he has laid out a killing spree at an island youth and Duflo argue that hunger blueprint for how the United camp, killing 77 people. In is not solely the result of States can reclaim its status----'L--the aftermath, Prime Minist~ being unable to afford
For holding out hope of American renewal.
enough food. Just like every other consumer on the planet, they found , the world's poor purchase goods based on the human desire for short-term pleasure over long-term gain. "What if the poor aren't starving, but choosing to spend their money on other priorities?" they asked in a
READING LIST: Open City, by Teju Cole; Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, by Mohammed Han if; Shah of Shahs, by Ryszard Kapuscinski.
DUFLO STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? China. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring. READING LIST: Shah of Shahs, by Ryszard Kapuscinski; Richard Ill, by William Shakespeare; Trespass, by Rose Tremain.
For helping us understand the new threats of the cyber era. Chie(research officer, F-Secure I Finland
Mikko Hypponen spends his days waist-deep in worms and viruses-of the virtual kind. A leading expert on cybersecurity, he has played a key role in helping us understand-and then stop-some of the dangerous menaces of the digital age. There
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were the worms Sobig.F, which Hypponen and his team dismantled in 2003, and Sasser, which they spotted in 2004; more recently, he has monitored hacking at Sony, as well as security threats to mobile devices. Hypponen's most highprofile case by far, however, is Stuxnet (and Duqu, its recent clone), and here his investigations shed much-needed light on the complex new world of cyberwar, where the bad guys and good guys alike- from shadowy computer hacks to major world powers- are now fighting. Last year, Stuxnet was discovered to have attacked nuclear centrifuges in Iran beginning in 2009. Some suspected Israel , but Hypponen has posited that it was the U.S. government. " If you look at who has the know-how, who has the technology, who has the motive, it's pretty obvious," he told Forbes this year. For Hypponen, who has been consulted by law-enforcement officials on three continents, Stuxnet proves that cyberattacks can affect the offline world- the increasingly networked water, power, and transportation systems that we all rely on. As he put it, "If the Internet doesn't work, or if computers don't work, our society doesn't work." MUSE: Twitter. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Neither. AMERICA OR CHINA? Neither. Superpowers were a 20th-century phenomenon. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: DarkMarket, by Misha Glenny; Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground, by Kevin Poulsen. WORST IDEA: Social networks that don't actually delete your data when you press "delete."
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~~ ~mMA~ c~1~mv-~~~f For bringing Africa into the mobile age. Software entrepreneur I Ghana
Twenty years ago, when Herman Chinery-Hesse returned home after studying in the United States with plans to start a Ghanaian software company, his friends told him he was crazy. But his company, SOFTtribe, is now West Africa 's leading software company, helping imagine a new Africa for a digital age. Today, ChineryHesse is working to develop a payment system via mobilephone text messages that will allow African entrepreneurs to sell their products abroad . Ghana can be a world-class center of technological innovation, he insists- a Singapore for the continent-but the tech no logy has to meet local needs by being what he calls "tropically tolerant." His ambition is nothing less than the reimagining of an entire continent: more techsavvy, more prosperous, but always African. "Our colonial education systems gave us a legacy of rote learning; now we need to liberate innovative thinking to reinvent Africa ," he says.
~J Mfl~ ~A~A~ For being the last man in Israel to stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu. Former director, Massad I Israel
With a right-wing coalition installed in Jerusalem and the chaos of the Arab Spring putting Israelis in a defensive mood, Israel's hawks are ascendant. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has a surprising new critic: former Mossad chief Meir Dagan. After nearly a decade in the shadows, the spymaster this year embarked on an extraordinary media blitz, challenging what he called Netanyahu's march to war against Iran and unwillingness to pursue peace with the Palestinians. "I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and [Defense Minister Ehud] Barak," Dagan said. Netanyahu quickly yanked Dagan's diplomatic passport. But as the man likely responsible for sabotaging Iranian nuclear research and orchestrating the assassination of a top Hezbollah operative in 2008, Dagan can't be dismissed as a mere peacenik. Ariel Sharon is said to have hired him in 2002 because he wanted a Mossad with "a knife between its teeth ." So when Dagan refers to an Israeli airstrike on Iran's nuclear installations as "the stupidest thing I have ever heard," we should pay attention.
~4 JO~fr~ ~Yf For seeing the future of power. Political scientist, Harvard University I Cambridge, Mass.
ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Can't tell yet. WORST IDEA: Continued construction of nuclear plants.
When FOREIGN POLICY asked 10 prominent American political scholars what prospective 2012 presidential candidates should read, four picked books by Joseph Nye, the longtime Harvard University
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MUSE: The Internet. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus.
professor and former deputy undersecretary of state best known for coining the nowubiquitous term "soft power." In 2011 Nye was back on the bookshelves with The Future of Power, his thoughts on global governance in a world where U.S. dominance is slipping. "Two great power shifts are occurring in this century, " he writes, "a power transition among states and a power diffusion away from all states to nonstate actors." He thinks the second may ultimately prove more disruptive. But don't call Nye a declinist. He argues that despite America's current difficulties, the U.S. economy is still more vibrant, and U.S. culture more influential, than China's. "The U.S. faces serious problems," he writes. "But one should remember that these problems are only part of the picture- and, in principle, they can be solved over the long term."
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agrees with critics of foreign aid that the system is broken: poorly administered from afar based on donor priorities, damaging to local institutions, and a sap on motivation. Unlike most critics, though, Birdsall- an economist by training who spent years at the World Bank and working on Latin American economic development- has an answer. Send money, she says, but pay only for results. In their 2010 book, Cash on Delivery, she and co-author William Savedoff argued that foreign aid should be based on a contract system in which aid is only disbursed after certain agreed-upon goals are met. This year, COD is catching on, with Britain's Department for International Development sponsoring pilot programs in Ethiopia and India. Cash on Delivery now has a chance to deliver. MUSE: Bob Dylan (the times they are a-changin'). STIMULUS OR AUSTER 1m For the U.S., short-term stimulus plus Medicare reforms to bend the cost curve and avoid long-term austerity. AMERICA OR CHINA?America for my lifetime. My children's? ARAB SPRING DR ARAB WINTER? Spring. READING LIST: Lords of Finance, by Liaquat Ahamed; How to Live, by Sarah Bakewell; Eclipse, by Arvind Subramanian; Grand Pursuit, by Sylvia Nasar. BEST IDEA: Alittle more emigration from poor to rich countries would add trillions of dollars to the world's GOP.
explaining the fall of the dollar as a global currency-and why it might not matter- has made him a "go-to economist on the continuing global financial crisis ," according to Pulitzerwinning New York Times columnist David Leonhardt. Barry Eichengreen's new book, Exorbitant Privilege, is an eye-opening look at the history and future of global currency. The bad news, for Americans at least, is that the dollar will soon lose its status as the world's dominant reserve currency, gradually sharing the role with the euro and the renminbi. The good news is that this shift won't necessarily hurt Americans. "[T]he fundamental fallacy behind the notion that the dollar is engaged in a death race with its rivals is the belief that there is room for only one international currency, " Eichengreen writes. His latest book presents a sorry picture-but one with a silver lining: American decline, he says, could be better for everyone. MUSE: Aimee Mann. STIMULUS OR AUSTER 1m Stimulus now, austerity later. AMERICA OR CHINA?Both. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Winter comes before spring. READING LIST: Poor Economics, by Abhijit Bane~ee and Esther Duflo; The Enlightened Economy, by Joel Mokyr; The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk.
WORST IDEA: Debt prison for the Greek middle class.
For redrawing the global map of our future. For showing us that money isn't everything. Economist, University of California I Berkeley, Calif
This Berkeley professor's work
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journalist I Washington
Just as Robert D. Kaplan's book Balkan Ghosts and seminal 1994 article "The Coming Anarchy" were
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year has been about grappling with the most profound question in political philosophy: how to create legitimate central authority. In one Arab country after another-Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syriapopulations have taken to the streets to demand the downfall of their rulers, even as it is unclear what will follow in their wake. And the question applies not only to the Arab world. It is unclear, for example, whether Iran's quasi-clerical system of revolutionary rule has a long-term future, given
z .... t he intense infighting wit hin the regime and the intense dislike it stirs within significant swaths of the population. Can China's one-party system of control last indefinitely? Can Burma's? Whereas the United States basically inherited its democratic system from the British, and its main drama over more than two centuries has been about limiting central authority, the cha llenge in too many other places is the opposite: how to erect responsive government in the first place. No thinker has tackled these questions as painstakingly and as eloquently as the 19th-
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IRAQ. WITH ITS MIXTURE OF DEMOCRACY. CREEPING AUTHORITARIANISM. AND ANARCHY. IS A PLACE MADE FOR MILL- AND HOBBES. century English philosopher John Stuart Mill , which is why he is such an appropriate guide for these complicated times. Mill asserts, in On Uberty, and especia lly in Considerations on Representative Government, that whi le democratic government is surely to be preferred in theory, it is incredibly problematic in its particulars. This, of course, is part of Mill's larger exploration of liberty, and why ultimately the only justification a government has to curtail that liberty is when a person's behavior impinges on the rights of others. Despotism may work better in some instances, if only as a temporary measure, he writes; democracy is not suited for each and every society during significant periods of its development. I am crudely simplifying Mill, who is so clear while being so incredibly nuanced, and thus immensely readable. "Progress includes Order," Mill writes in Considerations, "but Order does not include Progress." Tyranny may be the pol itical building block of all human societies, but if t hey don't get beyond tyranny, the result is moral chaos and stagnation. Middle Eastern despots of our day too often supplied only Order; Asian ones have brought Progress, too. Thus China's rulers, who must retire at a certain point, who bring technical expertise to t heir ru le, and who govern in a collegial style, are much to be preferred over the North African variety, to say nothing of those in Syria or Yemen. Yet even in those cases, the prospect of a collapse of central authority indicates that, pace Mill, there may be no alternative to some sort of dictatorship, at least in the very short term. Mill's philosophy actually builds on that of his 17th-century compatriot, Thomas Hobbes, another thinker all too relevant for our times. Hobbes is often regarded as a preacher of doom and gloom. In fact, he wasn't. He stared into the abyss of anarchy and realized there was, indeed, a solution that
required reading in Bill Clinton's White House, the prolific journalist's current writing may become defining texts for the conflicts of the 21st century- which, he says, will be centered in Asia . Kaplan's latest book,
could lead to order and progress. That solution was the state. Hobbes extols the moral benefits of fear and sees violent anarchy as the chief threat to society. For Hobbes-best known for observing that the lives of men are "nasty, brutish, and short"fear of violent death is the cornerstone of enlightened selfinterest. By establishing a state, men replace the fear of violent death with the fear that only those who break the law need face. So while Hobbes made the case for central authority, Mill built on him to help us understand how humanity must get beyond mere authority in order to erect a liberal regime. Such concepts are sometimes difficult to grasp for today's urban middle class, which has long since lost any contact with man's natural condition. But the horrific violence of a disintegrating Iraq, or this year's fears of state collapse in places such as Yemen and Syria, have allowed many of us to imagine man's original state. In fact, as more and more nondemocratic systems find it harder and harder to survive in this age of instant electronic communications, Mill and Hobbes will top the dead thinkers list for years to come. Iraq, with it s mixture of democracy, creeping authoritarianism, and anarchy, is a place made for Mill and Hobbes, while Afghanistan is pure Hobbes. Imagine the relevance of Hobbes in the event of a regime collapse in North Korea; or of Mill as Egypt struggles for years to transform a mi litary dictatorship into a civil democracy. These men may be long dead, but their philosophy is a sure guide to today's headlines. The need for order-even as order must be made free from tyrannyis precisely the issue that hangs over the Greater Middle East.
Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, predicts a world
where ethnic disputes and the battle for resources make the Indian Ocean the new center of global instability- with a strong role left to play for the United States. According to Kaplan, the Indian Ocean region "may comprise a map as iconic to the new century as Europe was to the last one." And Barack Obama 's administration seems to agree, making much of what Hillary Clinton has called a "strategic turn" east. Whatever the region, Kaplan remains committed to his long-standing faith in pragmatic realism. He writes in FP, "It is realism in the service of the national interest ... that has saved lives over the span of history far more than humanitarian interventionism." STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA?America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Winter. READING LIST: China: AHistory, by John Keay; Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann; Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick. BEST IDEA: The U.S. presidential system, with its separation of powers, may not be as well suited to the rigors of the 21stcentury postmodern age as the parliamentary system used by most other democracies. WORST IDEA: Realism is dead because of the Arab Spring.
For applying his prophet's eye to the problem of dictatorship. Political scientist, New York University I New York
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita doesn't have a crystal ball. But through mathematical modeling and a keen understanding of the nature of political power, the New York University professor has proved remarkably adept at predicting events, from the Tiananmen Square crackdown to the Second Intifada to the failure of international attempts to stymie Iran's nuclear program. Bueno de Mesquita has consulted with the CIA and State Department using his modeling method, which simulates leaders' behavior while making stressful decisions. In May 2010, he and colleague Alastair Smith told a group of investors that Hosni Mubarak's regime was likely to collapse soon. This year, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith released The Dictator's Handbook, which reduces the art of staying in power to a set of surprisingly simple rules, most of which boil down to knowing which supporters are crucial and figuring out how to placate them. At the end of the day, he believes, leaders will do whatever it takes to retain power. He writes: " It is surprisingly easy to grasp most of what goes on in the political world as long as we are ready to adjust our thinking ever so modestly." READING LIST: Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen; Ultimatum, by Matthew Glass; The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson. BEST IDEA: Amnesty for dictators who step down trumps pursuit and punishment. WORST IDEA: Foreign assistance will help Libya or Egypt become more democratic.
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For putting the muscle back in human rights.
For creating new forms for a new age.
For exploring why we make the mistakes we do.
Executive director, Human Rights Watch I New York
Architect I Britain
Psychologist, Princeton Un iversity I Prince!Oit, N .J.
In many ways, 2011 was a banner year for the enforcement of human rights. After 16 years on the run, Bosnian Serb war-crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic was arrested and sent to The Hague for trial. Dictatorships fell across North Africa , and, in the case of Libya, with a considerable push from Western military might. And the United States has committed its military know-how to taking down central Africa's infamous Lord's Resistance Army. Led for the last 18 years by Kenneth Roth, a tenacious former prosecutor, Human Rights Watch has been at the center of all these issues, taking bold risks to produce damning reports from inside closed regimes and putting pressure on governments and the media to keep their eye on abuses. And it's doing so with more resources and staff in more countries than ever after an eye-popping $100 million grant from financier George Soros in 2010. At the end of last year, Roth called on Washington to show that "the humanitarian use of force remains a live option at the Obama White House." After two years when realpolitik seemed to be the president's guiding strategy, Obama now seems to have done just that in Libya and Uganda. Roth's positions can often be controversial- he supported calls for Canada to arrest former U.S. President George W. Bush on torture charges-but nobody can deny that his views carry more weight than ever.
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In 2006, the New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote that Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid' s utopian and international vision was "as close to a manifesto for the future as we have." Five years later, we are all living in that future- and it is fabulous . Hadid's snaking, geometric, fluid structures now grace cities from Guangzhou to London to, soon enough, her native Baghdad, where Hadid has been commissioned to replace the bombed-out Central Bank of Iraq . And the lushly reptilian visual signature of her buildings now influences everything from Lady Gaga's footwear to the spaceship-style architecture coming into fashion across the developing world, offering a democratic and highly modern alternative to the ubiquitous glass towers preferred by the neoauthoritarians of China and the Gulf. The global economic decline has done nothing to slow down her inexorable march into the bolder, better, faster, and newer. "We are in a period of economical decline- so we should do bad stuff?" she told Newsweek this year. " What kind of bullshit is that? Show restraint? Why?" MUSE: The people of Japan, for their resilience and dignity in coping with the aftermath of the devastating tsunami. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? Both- America and China. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring.
Long before Malcolm Gladwell tipped over into celebrity or Freakonomics was a gleam in Steven Levitt' s eye , Daniel Kahneman was enthralling readers with surprising insights into the cognitive routines and in he rent biases that drive human decisionmaking. A psychologist by training, he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for illuminating the motivations behind risky decision-making. In his highly anticipated book Thinking, Fast and Slow, published this year, Kahneman sketches a model of the human mind as driven by two systems of thinking: one that makes fast, intuitive judgments and choices, and one that is slower and more deliberative. In Kahneman's view, "gutlevel" intuitive thinking drives an astonishingly high number of human decisions, from what car a consumer buys to what company a broker invests in to whether two countries go to war. In the wake of the global financial crisis, his warning that "organizations that take the word of overconfident experts can expect costly consequences" is particularly welcome. Here's hoping it encourages world leaders to let their two-track brains do the thinking.
nlYlmCOW[~ For finding markets in everything.
Economist, George Mason University I Fairfax, Va.
In an age when academics are increasingly pushed to specialize in ever-more-arcane subtopics, Tyler Cowen's output is delightfully eclectic. In his books, his New York Times columns, and especially on Marginal Revolution , the blog he co-authors with colleague Alex Tabarrok, Cowen riffs as comfortably on Cantonese cuisine and classical music as on monetary policy and interest rates. Most importantly, the blog has become a kind of central gateway to the growing world of blogging economists. When a reader suggested that Cowen's uncanny information recall might be a sign of mild autism, rather than take offense, he wrote an entire book exploring the topic. This year, Cowen released a widely discussed 15,000-word ebook, The Great Stagnation, in which he argued that the current economic slump is structural, rather than the result of specific policies, and that there's little hope of recovery anytime soon. Cowen thinks the United States has already picked the " lowhanging fruit" of growth-<:heap, available land, new information technology, the entrance of women and minorities into the workforce--and future innovations are unlikely to have the same economic impact. And if that's too much of a downer for you , he also has a forthcoming monograph on how to use economics to order more effectively in restaurants. Hint: Go for the ribs.
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he world can be a humbling place for the purveyor of big ideas. Each year, earth-shattering events, be it the 9/11 attacks, the 2008 financial crisis, or the 2011 Arab Spring, upend received wisdom and demand fresh thinking. So what are the big ideas that should be thrown out this year?
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iLLEGAL MEXICAN IMMIGRATION IS A GROWING THREAT. This sure doesn't
seem like a dead issue, as the rhetoric is alive and well among conservative Republican politicians; observe the reaction to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's instate tuition plan for illegal immigrant students. Even Democratic President Barack Obama has pursued deportations at a relatively rapid pace. Nonetheless, the reality on the ground is outracing the political debate. The annual flow of about 500,000 illegal Mexican migrants has slowed to about 100,000 a year; that's a huge change. Mexico, meanwhile, is undergoing one of the most rapid demographic transitions in history as its fertility rate is just slightly over two per family, barely above America's. Thirty years from now, the United States may have to compete to lure Mexican immigrants across the border.
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GREEN ENERGY WILL SAVE US.Not
anytime soon. Obama came into office vowing to bring about a "clean energy" nation, but the recession has turned priorities away from environmental causes. The United States seems further than ever from addressing its carbon problem. Americans now see the expansion of fossil fuel production as a higher priority than green energy, and this margin of difference has only grown since 2007. Rightly or wrongly, the Solyndra scandal has given solar power a bad name. Nuclear power seems to have lost its allure after the Fukushima disaster,
as greens who once saw it as a possible carbon-light solution are now swearing off it. Perhaps a surprising technological miracle lies right around the corner, but the more likely outcome is that the political impetus for green energy will be largely dormant for some time to come.
3BANK RUNS ARE ATHING OF THE PAST.
Sadly, bank runs are alive and well. They first resurfaced in the United States with a run on money-market funds and on the so-called shadow banking system in 2008. We're now seeing gradual "silent runs" on European banks, as depositors wonder why they should keep their money in Greece or Portugal, leading the banks of those countries to wither. The withdrawals of these peripheral eurozone countries from capital markets are like another form of bank run, except the victim is a country rather than a bank. Expect more bank runs, not fewer, at least for the foreseeable future.
THE EUROZONE IS FOR PRETTY MUCH 4EVERYONE IN EUROPE.
By now, it should be obvious that a 17-nation eurozone was a bad idea. The only questions left are how many countries do not belong and how painful will it be to push out those that shouldn't be there. Whether or not you think the current patchwork bailouts will work (probably not, see No. 5 below), just what, precisely, are those bailouts fighting to defend? No one knows anymore. The peripheral countries, like Greece and Portugal, used to think that if they suffered through a bit of deflation from eurozone membership, they still could benefit from the lower borrowing rates enjoyed by stronger economies like Germany. Now they're getting the deflationary pressures, stronger than ever before, but without the low borrowing rates. So what's in it for them to remain? What's in it for Germany and Finland and the Netherlands? It's hard to see.
5BAILOUTS SHOULD BE INCREMENTAL.
How many times over the last year have the Europeans announced Greek assistance or bailout plans? Everyone has lost count. By November, the most recent July plan already seemed out of date, and that was before all the required governments had agreed to it. So why should anyone take the next bailout plan any more seriously? A bailout should run ahead of the market and respond with overwhelming force rather than chasing after the market. After 2011, the multiple bailouts approach will look worse than ever.
FISCAL STIMULUS SHOULD BE 6"TEMPORARY, TARGETED, AND TIMELY."
Those were Obama's catchwords in 2009, the goal being to boost a sagging economy and bring it to recovery rapidly. Yet this recipe hasn't held up. The problem arises when the downturn lasts longer than the program of stimulus. Once the stimulus is removed, the labor market remains slow, and the workers, formerly employed thanks to the stimulus, don't have private-sector jobs to move into. The stimulus ends up having postponed the pain for a few years, but without much improving the economy over the medium term, much less the long run.
On the whole, 2011 has not been a good year for the global economy. But still, life expectancy continues to increase. Crime rates continue to fall in many countries, including the United States. Tolerance is on the rise. The developing world is elevating hundreds of millions of people from poverty. All these gains are real, and we should appreciate and applaud them. It's our economic coreand in the most successful countriesthat is malfunctioning. I shudder to think what this list might look like next year.
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AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? It's still February. READING LIST: Endgame: Bobby Ascher's Remarkable Rise and Fall, by Frank Brady; 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann; The Return, by Daniel Treisman. BEST IDEA: The driverless car. It already works; it just has to become cheaper and protected from the excesses of liability law. WORST IDEA: That the further government spending of trillions of dollars will restore prosperity.
1~ JOIIlO, U~A~ l~CKfRMA~ For navigating the future of global media. Directors, MIT Media Lab a~td MIT Center fo r Civic Med ia I Cam bridge, Mass.
techno-utopian: In his new capacity at MIT's Center for Civic Media, he will be developing a system for monitoring the bias and reliability of news sources to allow consumers to make informed choices-a kind of nutritional information for the news. Zuckerman will be working with Joi Ito, a Japanese-born venture capitalist appointed this year to head the university's famous Media Lab, despite never having earned a college diploma. Ito's eclectic career includes everything from a stint on the board of ICANN, the Internet's main governance body, to serving as a "guild master" in World of Warcraft. As both a programmer and investor, he was crucial in the early development of technologies including Flickr, Twitter, and Firefox. Interested in where electronic media are heading next? Class is in session.
ITO MUSE: Mother Nature.
From "Twitter revolutions" to Wikileaks, 2011 was a year of profound transformation in how people both consume and produce news. So it is perhaps only fitting that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's pioneering media studies program hired two of the thinkers best poised to navigate the new media landscape-because they he Iped create it. In 2005, when Ethan Zuckerman co-founded Global Voices, a website to monitor and collect news from the international blogosphere, gleaning useful information from thousands of blog posts around the world seemed daunting. But this year's social media-driven revolutions affirmed Zuckerman's vision, with Global Voices at the center of the upheaval as a major news aggregator and amplifier. Zuckerman is no
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STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? Both. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring. READING LIST: Republic, Lost, by Lawrence Lessig; Consent of the Networked, by Rebecca MacKinnon; Too Big to Know, by David Weinberger. BEST IDEA: Users controlling their own data. WORST IDEA: Assuming the Japanese government could deal with the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima.
ZUCKERMAN MUSE: Vaclav Havel. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. And much more than we've seen thus far. AMERICA OR CHINA? Two great powers in a multipolar world, but not the only two. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring, but not all the seeds planted will bloom. READING LIST: World 3.0, by Pankaj Ghemawat; The Unlikely Disciple, by Kevin Roose; It's Our Turn to Eat, by Michela Wrong. BEST IDEA: The world isn't flat and globalization is only beginning. which
means we have time to change what we're doing and get it right WORST IDEA: That the way to react to fundamental political change is to retreat more deeply into a bunker mentality. I'm looking at you, Israel.
14 RORY ~UWARl For challenging the COINdinistas. Member of Parliamellt I Britain
Rory Stewart rocketed to fame with his 2004 book, The Places in Between , which chronicled a 32-day solo walk that he took across Afghanistan. As a member of the British diplomatic service and later the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, he has spent most of his career working on military interventions, from East Timor to Iraq to Libya. So when he says that the Afghanistan war is on the path to dismal failure, it's time for foreign leaders to listen. Stewart, a skeptic of the counterinsurgency doctrine-known as COIN-that has dominated U.S. military thinking in recent years, argues that the Obama administration's much-touted "surge" strategy played into the Tali ban's hands-the massive influx of funds placed power with foreigners rather than with the Afghan government, while the increase in boots on the ground antagonized the Afghan people. "As far as I'm concerned, the troop deployment caused their return ," Stewart said of the Taliban. Elected as a Conservative member of Parliament in 2010, Stewart is now calling for a drastic drawdown in Afghanistan-a nd a dash of humility about the ability of foreign powers to transform war-torn societies. Only then, he says, will we learn, "If we can often do much less than we pretend, we can do much more than we fear."
1J MARIA BA~~IR For aspiring to an Afghanistan ruled by law, not men. Prosecutor I Afghanistan
These days, the photo-ops from newly opened girls' schools and women-empowering handicraft collectives that filled Afghanistan coverage in the first post-invasion years feel like dispatches from another century. Equal rights for Afghan women may exist on paper-they're in Afghanistan's 2004 constitution-but they hardly seem like a priority for Hamid Karzai's government and a U.S.-Ied coalition with decidedly diminished expectations. Into the chasm between promise and reality steps Maria Bashir, the crusading chief prosecutor of Afghanistan's western Herat province. Ousted from her criminalinvestigator job by the Tali ban in 1995-after which she ran an underground girls' school-and named to her current post in 2006, Bashir established herself early as both an idealist and a check on Panglossian hopes for Afghanistan's post-Taliban future, warning that a womanfriendly constitution wasn't enough in a country where judges often still rule by tribally infused sharia law. The survivor of a 2007 bomb attack and the target of innumerable death threats, Bashir now lives under de facto house arrest, protected by an entourage of (U.S.-paid) bodyguards. But she has become if anything more driven in her work, prosecuting families that sell their daughters into marriage and pursuing 87 domestic-abuse cases last year alone. "I hope that Afghanistan will have a better future," she told Mother Jones, "but I know it won't come soon. It may take another generation. Or two. Maybe my daughter's daughter will have a good life."
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With international action on limiting climate change seemingly stalled, it must be hard for Bjorn Lomborg to resist an "I told you so." The Danish environmental researcher has been a longtime dissenter from the conventional wisdom calling for international agreements to limit carbon emissions. Lomborg emphasizes the massive costs and argues that they would in any case have minimal effect on global warminginconvenient truths that help explain why the grand ambitions of the expiring Kyoto Protocol and sundry U.N. conferences have come to naught. As for climate change, Lomborg insists he's no denier and that his beef is with activists who hawk clearly unworkable solutions. Some have still labeled him a climate-change skeptic-former U.S. Vice President AI Gore reportedly refuses to appear on the same stage as Lomborgbut he continues to have an outsized impact in the public sphere. His Copenhagen Consensus project was launched in 2004 to prioritize the world's most intractable problems, with efforts to solve climate change ending up well below what he considers more solvable challenges, such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. As Lomborg told Salon , "It seems evidently moral to ask: How can I do the most that I possibly can with the money that I'm going to be spending?"
AMERICA OR CHINA? America for what the future should be, China for what the future will be. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Definitely Arab Spring for its citizens. READING LIST: Getting Better, by Charles Kenny; The God Species, by Mark Lynas; The Quest, by Daniel Yergin. BEST IDEA: That we could screen all blood in sub-Saharan Africa for HIV for about $7 million over five years. WORST IDEA: That making energy more expensive through green subsidies will create green jobs.
Greens enjoyed their best-ever result in German local elections. Polls this fall showed that one in five voters supports the Greens, making it the country's main opposition party. As Ozdemir wrote, "Time is on the side of the green movement." With federal elections around the corner in 2013, time is on Ozdemir's side as well. MUSE: My family. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Both, the answer strongly depending on each country. AMERICA OR CHINA? Both for our economy. America when it comes to values.
For making it easier for Germany to go green. Co-chairman, Green party I Germany
Cem Ozdemir has been at the center of two of the most significant shifts in European politics over the past decade: the influx of immigrants from the Islamic world and the rise of Green parties as a potent political force . In 1994, the former journalist and son of a Turkish gastarbeiter became the first person of Turkish descent elected to Germany's Bundestag and later served in the European Parliament. He has been vocal on the need for Europe to address its immigrants in a more humane fashion. "Unlike Americans," he wrote recently, "Europeans still have great difficulty identifying even second-generation immigrants as fellow citizens." Ozdemir became co-chair of the German Greens in 2008 as part of the party's new focus on appealing to Germany's ethnic minorities. The party's influence, once marginal, is on the rise, buoyed by voter disappointment with Chancellor MUSE: As always, rationality. Angela Merkel and the burst of anti-nuclear sentiment STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus following this year's Fukushima and then austerity. _ Luclear disaster, when the
ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Still spring when it comes to Yemen, etc. But an increasing danger of winter in Egypt READING LIST: The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco; The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides; The Third Industrial Revolution, by Jeremy Rifkin. BEST IDEA: A political union toward the United States of Europe.
calling attention to the true fragility of a global agricultural system that the average Safeway shopper takes for granted, warnings that proved prophetic when global food prices first spiraled out of control in 2007-08. He foresees a future in which agricultural innovation slows and countries engage in a kind of resource nationalism over food , exacerbating already chaotic market fluctuations. And as Brown argues in his 2011 book, World on the Edge , the food crisis is just one symptom of a civilization hurtling toward an array of environmental tipping points-collapsing polar ice sheets, exhausted aquifers, diminishing fossil-fuel reserves-without the political will to avoid them. "Rising food prices," Brown wrote back in 2003, "may be the first global economic indicator to signal serious trouble between us ... and the earth's ecosystem." He was right about the rising prices part; even Brown hopes he was wrong about the rest.
WORST IDEA: Throwing Greeks out of the eurozone or getting back the deutsche mark for Germany.
For seeing the poor as more than victims. Poverty researcher I India
For calling the food crisis of 2011. President, Earth Policy Institute I Washington
In January, as Zine ei-Abidine Ben Ali was fleeing a mass uprising in Tunisia and the first demonstrators were crowding into Cairo's Tahrir Square, global food prices reached peaks not seen in two decades of U.N. records. Whether the food riots that exploded in countries from Algeria to Yemen that month were a cause or simply a confounding factor in the Arab Spring, to Lester Brown the lesson is clear: "Get ready, farmers and foreign ministers alike," he wrote, "for a new era in which world food scarcity increasingly shapes global politics." Brown has spent decades
The global economic crisis has exposed some ugly preconceived notions about poor people: that they're lazy, that they deserve unemployment. But as Deepa Narayan, the former director of a World Bank anti-poverty program who has spent nearly 30 years working for NGOs, governments, and global organizations in Asia and Africa, argues, the reality is anything but. "[P]oor people ... are born capitalists in the Horatio Alger mold, more capitalist than the average New Yorker or Londoner. They believe in the power of their own effort-they try and try, and even if they are foiled or cheated, they try again," she wrote. Narayan brought this iconoclastic attitude to her groundbreaking Moving Out of Poverty program, which former U.S. President Bill Clinton called "an important resource for everyone who is working to alleviate poverty." Involving
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interviews with 60,000 poor people in 17 countries since 2003, the study- a followup to Narayan's monumental 60-country Voices of the Poor study in 2000-is one of the few ever to focus on mobility and how people overcome poverty. It draws a unique and textured picture of the realities of modern destitution, in which the bottom billion, often left out even from the inadequate government and aid programs meant to help them, must fend for themselves. "No matter if I fall, I get up again. If I fall 5,000 times, I will stand up another 5,000 times," said one subject from Narayan's study. MUSE: Warren Buffett. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? America and China. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: Lords of Rnance, by liaquat Ahamed; The Great Disruption, by Paul Gilding; The Abundant Community, by John McKnight and Peter Block. BEST IDEA: Cars that use compressed engines will shift energy needs and free us of the oi I curse. WORST IDEA: Greedy poor and middle-class households are responsible for the housing crisis.
Mandela in 1996-tried to travel to Cape Town for an 80th birthday celebration for Desmond Tutu, the South African government, which was negotiating a $2.5 billion investment deal with China, refused to grant him a visa. No one has more loudly lamented this state of affairs than Tutu. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has called the actions of President Jacob Zuma's government in the visa flap a national disgrace and, most explosively, "reminiscent of the way authorities dealt with applications by black South Africans for travel documents under apartheid." Tutu may be an octogenarian now, but he has been fighting Zuma just as aggressively as he once stood up to the white regime in Pretoria. For years he has criticized the "moral failings" of Zuma, whose political career has been dogged by rape and corruption allegations, and chastised the ruling African National Congress for failing to make good on its promises to fight poverty. For a country growing awkwardly into its new role as a regional heavyweight, he is exactly the conscience South Africa-and the world- needs.
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For showing that the Internet really does go everywhere, even Castro's Cuba.
Archbishop emeritus I South Africa
Blogger I Cuba
In casting off apartheid 17 years ago, South Africa became one of the world's great human rights success stories-so it is a grim irony that the country now spends much of its time on the international stage defending the likes of Muammar alQaddafi and the Burmese junta. In October, when the Dalai Lama-welcomed to South Africa personally by Nelson
When Yoani Sanchez launched her blog, Generation Y, in 2007, the Havanaborn computer programmer turned journalist was a virtual unknown. Four years later, she's a dissident voice of such prominence that the Cuban government has ordered her detained and beaten. A blurb from Barack Obama even graces her
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recently published book, Havana Real. Sanchez's rise owes at least as much to her literary gifts as to the power of Web 2.0. Approaching her country's ills with both hopefulness and a gimlet eye, where most Cuba commentators are didactic and ideologically entrenched, her posts- on everything from Raul Castro's latest pronouncements to the taste of mangoes- have over the years painted an unusually vivid portrait of a society in limbo. The very fact of their existence stand s as a rebuke to a government that sti II sharply limits its citizens' access to the Internet. (For years , Sanchez had to sneak into hotels pretending to be a German tourist in order to publish them.) " We have taken back what belongs to us," Sanchez wrote in February. "These virtual places are ours, and they will have to learn to live with what they can no longer deny." STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulate investment and apply austerity to public spending. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Spring. BEST IDEA? The Internet is a universal human right. WORST IDEA? The people love their dictators.
~~ ClAY ~~I~KY For understanding the revolutionary power of social media-first. Author I New York
The indefatigable technooptimist Clay Shirky's
predictions about social media- enabled revolution haven't always come true. "This is it," he said in 2009 of Iran's ill-fated Green Revolution. "The big one." But credit is due: This year the New York University professor also got things very right. His January/ February Foreign Affairs essay, "The Political Power of Social Media," had barely hit newsstands before Tunisia 's and Egypt's dictators were ousted after mass protests organized and coordinated via Web 2.0. Hosni Mubarak seems to have agreed with Shirky on the revolutionary potential of social media: The autocrat shut down Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, YouTube, and finally the whole Internet in a doomed bid to save his presidency. But what Shirky graspsand Mubarak did not- is that social media tools, rather than making revolution in and of themselves, are more a new and effective means of bringing about the offline activity that has always established and strengthened personal freedom. "[l]t is a strong ci vil society- one in which citizens have freedom of assembly- rather than access to Google or YouTube," he wrote, "that does the most to force governments to serve their citizens ."
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For trying to drag diplomacy into the 21st century. Director, Coogle Ideas I N ew York Advisor for innovation, State Departmwt I \Vashingtmt
The U.S. State Department's headquarters in Foggy Bottom is a musty, World War 11-era building that famously commands a corps of Foreign Service officers only as large as the Pentagon's marching bands. Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, however, have begun to imagine a new future for diplomacy, one that would harness the power of new technology and social media to ensure that the department punches far above its increasingly anemic budgetary weight. The two have relentlessly pushed the idea that international events are no longer determined by world leaders sitting at the top of mammoth bureaucracies, but by networks largely outside governments' control- a fact driven home this year by the Arab Spring. And they set about the difficult job of moving Foggy Bottom beyond the archaic world of diplomatic cables, elevating Internet freedom as a U.S. priority and encouraging diplomats to use social media like Facebook- a technique that paid dividends this year when U.S. envoy to Damascus Robert Ford used these tools to go over the Syrian regime's head and express outrage at President Bashar ai-Assad 's brutal crackdown on his own people. Cohen, author of a prescient book on Middle Eastern youth movements, recently brought his ideas to the private sector, launching a "think/do tank" at Google. Its first project brought together a motley crew of former lslamists, neo-Nazis, and gang members in Dublin to discuss the factors that contribute to radicalization and violence. "I believe the greater one's network, the more change one can effect," he told an interviewer. "It is amazing what you can get, who you can meet with, if you just ask."
COHEN STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?Arab Winter.
Join a community of 400 students from more than 60 countries-in a multidisciplinary graduate program combining theory, practice, fieldwork, and a commitment to social responsibility. Also offering master's programs in Urban Policy Analysis and Management and Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management.
ARE YOU NEW SCHOOL?
www.newschool.edujia4 An Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Institution
READING LIST: Ghost Wars, by Steve Coli; On China, by Henry Kissinger; Start-Up Nation, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. BEST IDEA: To tackle corruption by moving salary disbursements of civil servants and law enforcement to mobile payments to remove the middlemen. WORST IDEA: The Iranian regime plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
ROSS
DEFEATING DICTATORS FIGHTING TYRANNY IN AFRICA AND AROUND THE WORLD
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GEORGE B.N. AYITTEY
MUSE: Theodore Roosevelt. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Neither. Cut to the bone in certain areas and invest significantly in others. AMERICA OR CHINA?America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?Arab Spring. READING LIST: Empire of the Mind, by Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt (2012); The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein; The Master Switch, by Tim Wu. BEST IDEA: Launch a global campaign for clean cookstoves. WORST IDEA: Require the equivalent of a driver's license to use the Internet.
~4 M~~TA~A ~AR~H~~TI For believing in a different politics for Palestine. Po litician I West Ballk
Decades of terrorist attacks may have cemented the Palestinian cause in the world's consciousness, but they never delivered the Palestinians' national dream-a state of their own. More than anyone else, politician and human rights activist Mustafa Barghouti has pioneered an alternative path that emphasizes nonviolent tactics to delegitimize the Israeli occupation and demands that the Palestinian national movement live up to its ideals. He was the only political figure to contest Yasir Arafat's anointed successor, Mahmoud Abbas, in the 2005 Palestinian presidential election, and he won a seat in the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006 on a platform that promoted an alternative to Arafat's Fatah and the militant group Hamas. Barghouti has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Palestinians' bid this year for member-state status at the United Nations, framing the move as part of the "diplomatic resistance" to Israel. At the same time, he has pressed the Palestinian Authority to revitalize its often-ignored democratic institutions and provide a transparent accounting of its budget, while urging Fatah and Hamas to set
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STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA?Both. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?Arab revolutions. READING LIST: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, by John C. Maxwell; The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow; Hell and Heaven, by Yahya Yakhlef. BEST IDEA: "Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded." -Virginia Woolf WORST IDEA: "Right now, the peace talks are based on only one thing, only on peace talks." -Benjamin Netanyahu
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Scholars of International Affairs: IPSI is an inlensive , hands-on workshop tbal l eaches scholars how lo produce and disseminat e policy-relevant research . At I PSI, s uccessfu l academic and policy prac titioners will show you
- Wll AT policymakers look for in intermdional affairs scholarship - l:VHO is the itleal audi-ence for y our research - HOW to get y our work read by the people who matter. Join us Lo build t he tools and networks you need to make your voice heard.
~J rfRVU ~OODB~OY For his bold secular defiance. Physicist, Q uaid-i-AZLJm University I Pak istan
Pakistan has caused international alarm by expanding its nuclear arsenal-it is now believed to have more nukes than Israel-even as the government becomes more unstable and less able to hold onto these powerful weapons. But one Pakistani scientist from within the nuclear program, Pervez Hoodbhoy, head of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University, has become a powerful voice in denouncing his country's growing religious fundamentalism. In his book Islam and Science: Religious
Application available at www.bridgingthegapproject.org Open to faculty (all ranks) and posL- docLoral scholars fro m all relevant disciplines. Accommodations and meals provide d. Bridging the Gap is co-sponsored by American University, Duke University, and UC Berke ley, with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
BRIDGING THEGAP
Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality,
Hoodbhoy questions why a culture that produced some of the most significant early advancements in science and mathematics now lags behind. Rather than better technology or faster Internet access, Hoodbhoy has written, "Muslims need freedom from dogmatic beliefs and a culture that questions rather than obeys." Hoodbhoy is also known for his fearless critiques of the Pakistani military establishment at a time when others remain silent. Following the death of Osama bin Laden, when most public discourse in Pakistan condemned the American incursion, he expressed hope that it could be a turning point for the generals: "The country must decide whether to decisively confront Isla mist violence, or continue with the military's current policy of supporting jihadi militants with one hand even as it
Scoville Fellows work with one of twenty-seven participating public-interest organizations. They may undertake a variety of activities, including research, writing, and advocacy on a range of security issues including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, non-proliferation, missile defense, weapons lrade, environmental and energy security, and regional security and peacekeeping, that support the goals of their host organization, and may attend coalition meetings, policy briefings and Congressional hearings. Fellows
are supervised by and learn from senior level staff and often have the opportunity to publish articles or reports. The program also arranges meetings for the fellows with policy experts. Many former Scoville Fellows have gone on to pursue graduate degrees in international rela· lions and taken prominent positions in the field of peace and security with publicinterest organizations, the Federal Government, and in academia.
Candidates must have an excellent academic record and a strong interest in issues of peace and security. The program is open to all U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens living in the U.S. eligible for employment. Benefits include a salary, health insurance and travel to Washington, DC. The next application deadline is January 13, 2012 for the Fall 2012 fellowship.
Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship (202) 446-1565 •
[email protected] • www.scoville.org
PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR TOMORROW'S LEADERS IN PEACE AND SECURITY
slaps them with the other." Let's hope Pakistan listens. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA?China. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?Arab Spring. READING LIST: Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, by Mohammed Hanif; The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini; Bloodmoney, by David Ignatius. BEST IDEA: For the U.S. to exit Afghanistan. WORST IDEA: For the U.S. to exit Afghanistan in indecent haste.
~~ A~~y S~M~m For finding the new "bottom billion." Econo mist, University of Sussex I Britain
His research means a radical redrawing of the aid map-a complex challenge that involves not just old-fashioned handouts but everything from new trade deals to revised political partnerships. Still, finding out where the poor really are is a good first step. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Something new altogether. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?A Global Spring. READING LIST: Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson; The Haves and the Have-Nots, by Branko Milanovic; Arrival City, by Doug Saunders. BEST IDEA: The "catalytic class," the new middle-class revolutionaries or those newly non-poor and emerging lower-middle classes in many countries who are fed up and in the mood for protesting. WORST IDEA: Too many to mention.
In his influential 2007 book, The Bottom Billion , Paul Collier (No. 56) argued that the world's poorest 1 billion people are concentrated in just 58 badly governed countries . Now, fellow economist Andy Sumner says he has identified a "new bottom billion," and his findings, released last year, stand to reshape how we think about poverty. In 1990, an estimated 93 percent of the world's poor lived in low-income countries, according to Sumner. But that has radically changed ; by 2007, more of the world's 1.3 billion poor-almost three-quarters of them- lived in countries now classified by the World Bank as middle income, a diverse group that includes China, India, and Indonesia, as well as Pakistan, Cameroon, and Angola . In comparison, only 370 million poor people live in low-income countries, primarily in subSaharan Africa. Poverty, in other words, is no longer just "a poor country issue," as Sumner has put it.
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FoREIGN P oLICY
~1 JO~A~~A SIG~R~AR~OTIIR For showing how good women are at fixing what men break. Prime minister I lee/and
In 2009, Iceland's government became the first casualty of the global economic crisis. And following decades of ill-advised deregulation and financial speculation under the country's male-dominated political elite, Iceland went in a radically different direction-backing a former flight attendant turned union rep turned legislator, Johanna Sigurdardottir, as its first female prime minister and the world's first openly gay country leader. Sigurdardottir has since presided over a feminist revolution. Nearly half the country's legislature is now female, as are four of
its 10 cabinet members. She has supported high-profile campaigns against rape and domestic violence, and a law legalizing same-sex marriage passed unanimously-allowing Sigurdardottir to marry her longtime partner in 2010. Prostitution and strip clubs have been banned. It seems to be working: Iceland's economy is finally starting to show signs of life after much lighter cuts to social welfare programs than in other European countries. Maybe it's time for them to dump the boys' club, too.
~~ Jo~~ mr~o~Go For working to build a nation of watchdogs. Anti-corruption campaigner I Kenya
Kampala's slums," he wrote. "They are Africa's overwhelming majority: poor, marginalized and angry about corruption and soaring food and fuel prices." ARAB SPRINGOR ARAB WINTER?Arab Spring but with lots of rain. READING LIST: Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling, by Patrick Chabal; The Spirit Level, by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson; How Rich Countries Got Rich.. . and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, by Erik Reinert. BEST IDEA: From a young Kenyan: "Africa is the final frontier in economic growth, democracy, and development." WORST IDEA: let only economists explain what's wrong with the economy.
~~ rA~l fARMm For reminding the world of Haiti's continuing struggle.
Once forced out of his country Medical anthropologist, Harvard for blowing Unive rsity I Boston the whistle on a massive Haiti only government tends to make graft scandal, international John Githongo has become a headlines global symbol of the struggle following a against government corruption massive global since returning to Kenya in cataclysm . That's why the work 2008 and beginning a crusade of Paul Farmer, who has for for transparency in one of the years argued that the country's world's more venal countries. misery is the result of human Githongo had been the corruption and mismanagement, government's anti-corruption not the wrath of nature, is czar but fled in 2005 after essential to reminding the world accusing top ministers of that the Western Hemisphere's fraud. Now he has adopted most failed state hasn't gone a more grassroots approach, away. But Farmer isn't just an launching a campaign called advocate for providing aid-he's Ni Sisi! ("It is us!") to empower a trenchant critic of how it is local businesses and act doled out. In his new book, as a watchdog on opaque Haiti After the Earthquake, government contracts. If Farmer points a finger at the successful, it's a model that U.S. government, whose could be exported to other policies over the last century, countries where corruption is he says, have contributed rampant. enormously to Haiti's instability. Githongo believes Africa may Take his critique of Haiti's be ripe for the kind of uprisings massive cholera outbreak recently seen in the Arab world. over the past year, its largest "The Tunisian street vendor who ever. Farmer, who is also the set himself alight was not so co-founder of the international different from the disaffected medical NGO Partners in Health young men of Nairobi's and ~d was deputy to U.N. Haiti
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envoy Bill Clinton (No. 22), has ripped the international community for not anticipating the possibility of such a catastrophe in a country with such poverty and poor sanitation, not to mention down playing the crisis once it hit. "If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti- and we knew it," Farmer says. MUSE: FOR. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? Not an either-or question. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER?Spring. READING LIST: To End All Wars, by Adam Hochschild; Deep China, by Arthur Kleinman, et al.; ASong of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin. BEST IDEA: The Tobin tax on financial transactions. WORST IDEA: America vs. China.
For using new tools to advocate for a new foreign policy. Political scientist, Princeto n University I Princeton, N.J.
This year, AnneMarie Slaughter showed there's life after politics. After stepping down in February as head of the State Department's policy planning shop-where she oversaw a major review of America's diplomatic and development efforts-Slaughter returned to her perch at Princeton University, but if anything her public profile has only expanded as she has transformed herself into a public intellectual for a new-media world . Between her new blog on the Atlantic's website and lively Twitter feedrecent output includes debates with fellow Global Thinkers Clay Shirky (No. 82) and Ethan Zuckerman (No. 73)-she
regularly argues for the creation of a newly networked , globalized foreign policy, one that takes into account the immense changes reshaping the world of diplomacy. "[T]he traditional tools of fighting, talking, pressuring, and persuading government-togovernment really aren't working so well," she wrote in July. "Thirty years of urging reform produced next to nothing; 6 months of digitally and physically organized social protests and a political earthquake is shaking the broader Middle East." MUSE: Franklin D. Roosevelt, for continually learning and adapting to change. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: Thinking About Leadership, by Nannerl 0. Keohane; Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency, by Micah L. Sifry; Everything Is Obvious*: *Once You Know the Answer, by Duncan J. Watts. BEST IDEA: Passing a constitutional amendment to ban private money in federal elections. WORST IDEA: Ending the euro.
mKI~~ORf MA~B~BA~I For being the muse of the Asian Century. Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School o f Public Policy I Singapo re
For years , Kishore Mahbubani has been arguing that Asian powers are ascending while the influence of Western democracies is decliningand that Western countries have as much to learn from Asia as vice versa. Back in 2001, he wrote, "If my
intuition is proven right, we will begin to see, for the first time in 500 years, a two-way flow in the passage of ideas between the East and the West early this century." With the United States mired in economic crisis and political dysfunction while China and India continue to grow at a healthy clip, this Singaporean diplomat turned academic is now taking a well-deserved victory lap on op-ed pages from Tokyo to New York . Mahbubani argues that Western governments, instead of rigidly adhering to free market orthodoxy, should "relearn the virtue of pragmatism" from India and China , which found prosperity by abandoning Nehruvian socialism and Maoism. "I used to be regularly lectured by Westerners on the inability of Asians to slay their sacred cows. Today, the Western intelligentsia seems equally afraid to attack their own sacred cows," he wrote this year. More controversially, he thinks that U.S. congressional dysfunction and the growing influence of the Tea Party are evidence that American democracy is no longer adequate to meet the challenges of the global economy. "Only one phrase," he writes, "captures the current Asian perception of the West: sheer incredulity." MUSE: Niccolo Machiavelli.
~~ ~~Oll OKO~JO-IW~lA For returning home to clean house. Finance minister I Nigeria
Ngozi Okonjo-lweala has spent her career shuttling between the rarified world of international economic institutions and the rough-andtumble politics of her native Nigeria. Most recently, she served for four years as managing director of the World Bank, where she pushed initiatives like "diaspora bonds" that would allow immigrants in the West to invest in their home countries. In July, the Harvard- and MIT-educated Okonjo-lweala returned to Nigeria as President Good luck Jonathan's finance minister, a job she had held once before. Last time under Okonjo-Wahala, or "Trouble Woman ," as she's nicknamed , the country cut inflation in half and averaged 6 percent growth per year. This time her focus is on reducing Nigeria's debt burden and creating jobs, despite the slump in the global economy and considerable challenges at home, including entrenched corruption and a string of terrorist attacks. "Africa is the next BRIC," she told the Washington Post. "There is value in Africa for those who have the appetite to look in new directions."
STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Austerity. AMERICA OR CHINA? Both. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: ADifferent Sky, by Meira Chand; Ill Fares the Land, by Tony Judt; Zero-Sum World, by Gideon Rachman. BEST IDEA: $1 a gallon gasoline tax for Americans. WORST IDEA: The American Tea Party's proposal to keep reducing taxes.
~J lA~l rRilC~ffi For explaining why the developing world isn't developing. Economist, Harva rd University I Cambridge, Mass.
Lant Pritchett is known for pairing careful empiricism with willful provocation: Several years ago he likened the notion
D EC EM B ER 2 011
105
of restricting immigration to apartheid. In his recent research, the former World Bank economist has advanced a similarly blunt argument-that many poor countries, though they appear to be struggling towa rd a better future, are simply faking it. By measuring the development of institutions rather than actual outcomes, Pritchett argues, international organizations and aid donors have given rise to the phenomenon of " isomorphic mimicry": Like the viceroy butterfly, which mimics the appearance of a poisonous monarch to avoid being eaten, weak states are merely aping the institutional trappings of developed countries. In reality, many countries are stuck in a state of suspended evolution. , "At the current rate of progress, Pritchett said this year, "it will take literally thousands of years for many developing countries to reach Singapore's level of capability." Pritchett's solution is straightforward: Do a better job of measuring the things that matter. Rather than counting post offices, ask whether the mail is getting delivered. Rather than ta llying the numbers of enrolled students, find out if they're learning anything. This may be easier sa id than done, but at least it's a start. MUSE: Still Springsteen. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? Has to be both. READING LIST: The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace; Flourish, by Martin E.P. Seligman; ASecular Age, by Charles Taylor. BEST IDEA: Some of my students have founded an organization- IDinsightto help organizations use the feedback from rigorous evaluation to improve their practices. WORST IDEA: Arizona's immigration law seems aimed at undermining America's greatest strength-openness to ideas and people.
106
FoREIGN P oLICY
~~ MARl K~RAI~~I
~4 AR~~~~All ROY For being the voice of India's voiceless.
For giving a kinder face to euroskepticism.
For crowdsourcing world saving.
Author I India
Mayor of Lo ndon I Britain
President, Globa/Givi1tg Foundation I Washingto n
Arundhati Roy began writing her debut novel , The God of Small Things, in 1992 , the yea r after India's near-bankrupt government embarked upon an ambitious agenda of economic liberalization. By the time Roy's book landed her a $ 1 million advance and the prestigious Man Booker Prize , India was riding a wave of economic growth that has quintupled the country's GOP since 1991. But a collision between the outspoken left-wing artist and the rising Indi a n tiger was all but inevitable. A passionate critic of Hindu nationalism and India ' s nuclear and Kashmir policies, Roy pushed one too many buttons with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's administration last year by visiting a training camp run by Maoist guerrillas. The government clamped down, threatening pro-rebel activists with jail time . Undeterred, Roy published a short book of essays on the Maoists, Walking with the Comrades-so far staying out of jail in spite of doing so-and made similarly incendiary visits to Kashmir to protest the Indian military campaign there. Roy's support for the Maoists-who are hardly blameless in a conflict that has now c laimed 6,000 lives-may be misgu ided , but she has put her finger on the very real cost of India 's economic boom. "We are watching a democracy turning on itself, trying to eat its own limbs," she warns.
No one expected the unga inly, towheaded London mayor and Telegraph columnist, previously best known for his bike-share programs and scandalous personal life, to turn into a global heavyweight. But as Europe collapsed around him-and his own city erupted with anti-austerity riots- Boris Johnson's lifelong bent toward a kinder, gentler euroskepticism started to seem inc redibly prescient. In October, he defied his Conservative Party-and leader and riva l David Cameron (No. 39)-to call for a referendum on bringing Britain out of the EU. " The Briti sh people haven't had a say on Europe since 197 5 ," he pointed out. Johnson spent the yea r pushing back against what he ca lled "snooty europhiles" in Berlin and Brusse ls who would belttighten the continent's way into monetary unity. About the London riots, when he was c riticized for stay ing on vacation during the first rash of violence but responded with a string of very un-Tory stimulus measures including afterschool programs for at-risk youth, he wrote, " We can be less squeamish about police violence, or we can be less squeamish about the rea Iities of young people's needs." It's no surprise that Johnson seems headed for reelection next yea r-and after that, many say, the top of the Conservative ticket.
Mari Kuraishi has proved that, thanks to the Internet, everyone can be a philanthropist-and the giant development institutions no longer have a monopoly on efforts to improve the lot of the world 's poorest. In 2000, the Japanese native left a successful career at the World Bank to found GlobaiGiving-a website she describes as an "eBay for philanthropy" that revolutionized the field by connecting a worldwide community of donors with ventures in need of funding. A decade later, hundreds of thousa nds of donors have pooled their funds- the average donation is around $25-to give more than $50 million to more than 4,500 projects. Kuraishi's interactive approach has allowed innovations to flourish in a way that has been impossible at bureaucratic and top-down institutions such as the World Bank. "With masses of active people," she has said , "we'll get more innovation, more creativity, more of a shot at solving the problem of global poverty." MUSE: lady Gaga. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Spring. READING LIST: Bossypants, by Tina Fey; The Lost Books of the Odyssey, by Zachary Mason; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. BEST IDEA: Repealing "don't ask, don't tell." WORST IDEA: Forgiving student debts.
~1 A~VI~~ S~BMMA~IA~
For standing up to Hugo Chavez.
For soundingthe alarm on China's economic ascendancy.
Ed itor, Tal Cual I Venezuela
Senior fellow, Peterson Institute for International Ec01zomics I Washington
One cold February morning in 2021, the U .S. president comes hat in hand to the China-dominated International Monetary Fund to request emergency financing to shore up an American economy racked by more than a decade of anemic grow th and spiraling debt. In exchange, the Chinese demand-and receive- the w ithdrawal of American naval bases from the Pacific and an onerous restructuring of the U.S. budget. That, at least, is the gloomy scenario that begins econom ist Arvind Subramanian's new book,
ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Prolonged autumn. READING LIST: To the End of the Land, by David Grossman; The Prospector, by Jean-Marie Gustave le Clezio; Why the West Rules- for Now, by lan Morris. BEST IDEA: Need to tether China to the multilateral system. WORST IDEA: Government is the problem in the United States.
Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China 's Economic Dominance. To hear
~~ ~ICK fAlKVI~Gf
Subramanian tell it, China is not just looming ever larger in America 's rearview mirror- it has already sped by. He argues that most estimates greatly understate China's economic weight and that the Asian powerhouse's purchasing power actually surpassed that of the United States in 2010. And China's demographic advantages mean there's not much the United States can do about it. "Dominance," he warns, "might be more China's to lose than America' s to retain."
For taking pirates into politics.
MUSE: As for all times, Gandhi. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimulus now, austerity later. AMERICA OR CHINA? America.
Founder, Pirate Party I Sweden
" It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy," the late Steve Jobs once sa id. No one had to tell Rick Falkvinge , founder and chief evangelist of the growing global Pirate Party movement. A former software entrepreneur and Microsoft employee, Falkv inge founded the original party in Sweden in 2006. It rose to prominence following a government crackdown on the Pirate Bay file-sharing site , and Pirate Parties are now active in more than 25 countries. Indeed, 2011 may be remembered as the year Falkvinge's big idea
broke through into the public consciousness. His Pirates still aren't exactly mainstream, but the issues they focus on-government transparency, Internet privacy, and copyright law- are very much in the zeitgeist, and their ranks are growing. The Swedish and Swiss Pirate Parties have aided Wikileaks, offering the controversial site server space and web hosting; a self-described Pirate Party activist was named secretary of youth and sports in Tunisia's revolutionary cabinet; and in September, the Pirates won a shocking 8. 9 percent of the vote in Berlin's state elections. Falkvinge also made Internet waves this year with his highprofile advocacy of Bitcoin, a digital currency that is either the future of global commerce or a hightech form of money launderingdepending on whom you ask. MUSE: John Stuart Mill. AMERICA OR CHINA? Neither. Brazil and India. READING LIST: Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond; Peopleware, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy lister; Information Feudalism, by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite. BEST IDEA: Bitcoin. Distributed cryptocurrency will change the economic game entirely. WORST IDEA: Anything related to harder enforcement of the copyright monopoly.
If Teodoro Petkoff's resumestudent demonstrator, guerrilla fighter, economic policymaker, j ourna listis an archetypal Latin American intellectual's , so is his role in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela : the newspaper editor-cum-opposition leader. Since quitting government service 12 years ago, the irrepressible Petkoff has u sed his editorial posts-as well as a short-lived 2006 presidential bid- to establish himself as one of the most prominent and persistent critics of Venezuela's red shirted president. When a pro-Chavez National Assembly granted t he president expanded executive powers over the economy, courts, and individual rights last December, Petkoff wrote, "Chavez has begun to take the path of dictatorship." When the government pushed through a minimumwage hike in April, complicating efforts to control Venezuela 's alarming 27 percent inflation , Petkoff warned that policymakers had gotten themselves "stuck in a swamp of quicksand." After Chavez returned f rom cancer treatment this summer as a self-professed changed man just in time for next year's polls, Petkoff wryly noted the "very clear electoral campaign message" in the president's newfound moderation . Against a backdrop of steadily shrinking media freedom in Venezuela , Petkoff' s c rusade is an increasingly necessary one.
__L DECEMBER
2011
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For bringing the spirit of the French Resistance to aglobal society that has lost its heart. Author I Frmtce
Stephane Hessel has a fair claim to being the world's most interesting man: He's the son of the real-life model for the woman in Jules et Jim, a French Resistance fighter during World War II who survived torture in Buchenwald, and a concentrationcamp escapee who later helped Eleanor Roosevelt edit the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Even at 94, when he talks, people listen. So when he published a pamphletlength book last year, lndignez-Vous! (published in English as Time for Outrage), people bought it-by the millions around the world, making Hessel a bona fide publishing phenomenon. The book is a short polemic, an old lefty's impassioned cri de coeur against a society that has forgotten the postwar values of
tolerance and social responsibility and fallen under what Hessel calls the "international dictatorship of the financial markets." It struck a major chord in a year when everyone, it seemed, was indignant about something. When protesters in Spain began calling themselves los indignados, it was clear that Hessel's message had leapt borders. "The basic motive of the Resistance was indignation," Hessel writes. "We, veterans of the French Resistance ... call on you, our younger generations, to revive and carry forward the heritage and ideals of the Resistance. Here is our message: It's time to take over!"
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arebelievedtobehekifortheaccountsofanumberofbenefidaiOVolllefs,noneofwhom(unlessseparatetyidentifiedintheforegoing list)ownsasmuchas 1%ofthestockofTheWashingtonPostCompany.11 .Known Bondholders,Mortgagees,andOtherSecurity HoldersOwningorHoldingl PercentormoreofTotalofBonds,Mortgages,orOtherSecurities:Thefollowingareknownbondhold· KS,mortgagees,andotherserurityholdersowningorholdingl perceotormoreofthetotalamountofbonds,mortgagesorother securitiesoflheWashingtonPostCompany:TheBankofNewYorkMeUon,andBNYMellonTrust,S25WitliamPennPI~Pinsburgh,
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Preced ing 12Months.13.PublkationTitle:Fore1gnPollcy.14.JssuedatefordrcUationdata:SeptembetlOctober20 11. 15.Extentand NatureofOrculation:(A)TotaiNo.CopiesPrinted:Avef'ageNo.CopiesEachlssueDuringPreceding12Months,118,281;No.Copies ofSinglelssuePublishedNearesttoFilingOate, 107, 1 59.( B)PaidCirculati on(ByMailandOut~idetheMail):( 1 )MailedOutsideCountyPaidSubscliptionsStatedonPSForm3S41 :AverageNo.CopiesEachlssueDuringPreceding12Momhs,25/J74;No.Copiesof SinglelssuePublishedNearesttoFilingDate,24,490.(2)Mailed1n-countyPaidSubscriptionsStatedonPSForm3S41:AverageNo. CopiesEachlssueOuringPreceding12Months,.O;No.CopiesofSinglelssuePublishedNearesttofilingDate,0.(3)PaidDistribution OutsidetheMailslncludingSalesThroughDealersandCarriers,Streetvendors,CounterSales.andOtherPaidDistributionOJtside USPS:AverageNo.CopiesEachls~ueDuringPrecedi ng 12Months, 17,963;No.CopiesofSinglel~suePubhshedNearesttofiling Date,15,262.(4 )Paid Di stribvtionbyOtherCia~sesofMairThrough theUSPS:AverageNo. Copie~Eachl ssueDuringPreceding 12 Months,O;No.CopiesofSinglels~uePublishedNearesttoFilingDate,O.(C)Tota iPak:l Distribution:AverageNo.CopiesEachlssue
MUSE: Calliope. STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY? Stimu Ius. AMERICA OR CHINA? America. ARAB SPRING OR ARAB WINTER? Arab Summer. BEST IDEA: Build a strong Europe. WORST IDEA: Continue the war in Afghanistan.lil1
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AverageNo.CopiesEachlssueDuringPreceding 12Months.O;No.CopiesofSingle lssuePublishedNearesttoAiingDate,0.(4)Free orNomioaiRateDistributionOutsidetheMaii(Carriersorothermeans):AverageNo.CopiesEachlssueOuringPreceding12Months, 11 ,391;No.CopiesofSinglels~uePubli~hed NearesttofilingDate,10..892.(E)TotalFreeorNominaiRateOistribution:Average No.CopiesEachl~sueDuringPreceding12Months,37J63;No.CopiesofSinglel~suePublishedNearesttoFiling0ate,36,36S.{F) TotalDi~tribution:AverageNo.CopiesEach l s~ueDuringPreceding12Months, 81,000;No.CopiesofSinglelssuePublishedNearest
toFilingDate,76, 117.{G)Copie~notOistributed:AverageNo.Copie~EachlsweDuringPreceding 12Months,37,281;No.Copies ofSinglelssuePubtishedNearesttofilingDate,31 ,042.(H)Tota i:AverageNo.CopiesDuringPreceding 12Months,1 18,281 ;No. CopiesofSinglelssuePublishedNearesttoAi ingDate,107,159.(1)PercentPaid:AverageNo.CopiesEachlssueDuringPreceding 12 Monl:hs,53.9%;No.CopiesofSinglelssuePublishedNearesttoFilingDate,52.2%.16.Thisisageneralpublkation.Publicationofthis staternentofownersh ipwiU beprintedintheDecember2011 issueofthispublication.17Jcertifythatall informationfurnishedon thisformistrueandcomplete.lunderstandthatanyonewhofumishesfalseormisleading informationonthisformorwhoomits materialorinfonnationrequestedontheformmaybesubjecttocriminalsanctions(includinglinesandimprisonment)andlorcivil sanctions (including civil penalties). Steven Pippin, Circulation Director. Date: September 30. 201 1.
WE NEED COMPANIES LIKE YOURS TO BRING THE MUSIC BACK EACH YEAR The DC Jazz Festival (DCJF), the largest musical offering in our nation's capital, is a highly-anticipated signature event on the city's cultu ral calendar. More than 80,000 people from the Washington, DC Greater Metropolitan Area, as well as out-of-town visitors, come to enjoy and be enriched by over 100 performances and programs in nearly 50 ven ues throughout the city each year -
all for the love of jazz. In addition, the OCJF Roberta Flack Music
Excellence Education Program enables thousands of DC Public School students each year to learn about and appreciate jazz. But in order to bring emerging, nationally and internationally renowned artists to perform at t he Festival each year, we need your company's help- as a sponsoring partner of the 2012 DCJF. To learn more about how your company can play an important role in preserving and promoting our nation's most treasured original art form whi le advancing your company's brand, visit www.dcjazzfest.org, or call Sunny Sumter at 202-457-7628.
Special Advertising Section
Bridging eastern and western markets
Ushering talent in the wake of China's growth
As emerging markets have financial institutions. The US. is Hong Kong's taken the global stage, second largest trading partner and U.S. Hong Kong has attracted coni dence in Hong Kong rs illustrated by tile over one thousand U.S. increasing number of American frrms operating companies who have used in the city Bridging eastern and western the city as a base to secure Tile United States remains one of Hong markets. Hong Kong relishes its dual roles as a foothold in the Asian Kong's most rmportant global partners and a gateway to China for U.S. busrnesses and a region and springboard into today, over one thousand US frrms are reaprng spnngboard for Mainland Chrnese companies Mainland China. the benefits of doing business in the city to reach out to global markets' for B6 Le Associates, Ltd. Group Ambassador Stephen M. The Closer Economrc A key challenge "Hong Kong has Managing Director Louisa Wong Young. Consul General of the Partnershrp Agreement companies isthedevelopment United States of Amenca in long been a (CEPA) enables Hong Kong of a committed. focused and ofrndustriessuchasconsumer to benefrt from China's knowledge-based workforce goods. retail. frnancial Hong Kong· 'Hong Kong has gn 'one country, two systems' Leading the way in seNices, rndustrial, technology long been a gateway for foreign gateway for fore1 policy while remainrng a identifying talent for local. and pharmaceuticals The investment into China and that investment into role continues, despite China's business-onentated econ- international and U.S Fortune company's extensive market own more recent opening up. China" omic strength; 100 companies is B6 Le knowledgeandwell-integrated Last year. almost two-thirds of Hong Kong's geograp- Associates. Established in network have allowed costthe USD 105.7 billion rn foreign hical location cannot be 1996. the executive search etfectrve and trme-etfecllve direct investment in China ignored as Mr. Arthur Bo-wring. frrm employs over 530 people pooling of human resources was conducted through Hong ~anaging Director. Hong and has a network of twenty- enabling B6 Le Associates to Kong. n the other drrection. Kong Shipowners' Association two internatronal off1ces become the largest executive over half of the USD 59 brllion notes. including nrne in Marnland search frrm in Chrna. Chrna rnvested rn overseas 'Asia represents frfty per cent China and a newly opened · n addrtion to seNicing was conducted of today's total global shipping otf ce in Connecticut, USA our US-based clients, the markets through Hong Kong' . fleet. China has always traded specif cally to seNe US Connecticut otf1ce was Hong Kong's success United States of America through Hong Kong even clients _in the1r expansion established to assist before colonial times and the rnto Chrna. our Asian clients in their in positroning itself as the Consul General Ambassador bridge between east and west shipping industry remains 'We are the "proneer" Jj:~ expansion rnto the U.S. has been welcomed by US Stephen M. Young as vital today as it was to the head-hunting frrm rn Chrna , market.' says Wong. investors according to ~r. Donald Tong. Hong earliest traders' and the frrst rnternational We have a strong Kong Commissioner. USA, Ambassador Stephen M. Young concludes; search firfll granted multiple localized presence in Asia 'Hong Kong and the U.S. have long enjOyed 'As Hong Kong and the Mainland continue licenses to operate there'. says today and are committed close ties thanks to our commitment to the to build stronger. more extensive ties and Founder and Group Managrng to identifying the best local free fllarket. free flow of rnformallon, capital. Hong Kong and Guangzhou sign more Drrector, Louisa Wong talent. Above anything else, and rdeas, respect for intellectual property framework agreements. US frrms rn Hong With a cumulative of over B6 Le Assoc1ates will conand rule of law U.S. interests in Hong Kong Kong should be well-positioned to play a role 9.700 search assignments tinue focusing on our clients' are srgnil cant. wrth substantial inward direct rn promoting cross-border seNices. education delivered, B6 Le Associates' specif c business needs' expertise covers a wide range www.bo-le.com investment in the city's insurance sector and and trade' With its vibrant economy, proximity to Mainland China and rule of law, Hong Kong plays a pivotal role within the international business community.
/..ij t t
Offering a guiding hand Described as the 'World 's Freest Economy', Hong Kong is founded on the rule of law upheld by an independent judiciary and the British common law system. .n the f1ercely competitive business climate of the city, a solid relationship between lawyer and client is essentiaL While the larger internatronal law I rms continue to play
a role Hong Kong, it is the flexibility and personal client seNice offered by the more medium srzed frrms whrch are attracting attention Anthony Tong, Managing Partner and solicrtor of Robrn Robin Bridge & John Liu Bridge & John Liu has been Managing Partner Anthony Tong described by World Trademark 'he goes above and beyond Review fllagazine as 'remark- his mandate to take care of hrs able' and an authority on clients from A to Z' Hong Kong lit1gation and antrEstablished rn 1983, the counterferting work. His clients frrm's expertise focuses on have been quoted as saying Corporate and Commercial,
Entertainment, Healthcare, Intellectual Property Acquisition, Labor and Employment. Litigation and Alternative Drspute Resolution, ~atrimoni al, Notarial SeNices, Wills, Probate and Exploitation and Litigation and Property in Hong Kong and China Robin Bridge & John Liu has consistently fllaintained high rankings rn annual worldwide suNeys conducted by Managing .ntellectual Property magazine. Asra Legal Busi-
ness magazine and Asia IP magazine and the lrrm's client base today includes prestigrous international clients such as Rrchemonl. Tiffany & Co., Viacom and Nike Tong: 'We are active in China because our clrents want to do business there. As more American companies invest rn China via Hong Kong, we offer our hand to guide them through the complex process of doing business there.' www.rbjl.com Hong Kong 1
Special Advertising Sect1on
Enhancing people's lives through innovation, quality, affordability and service Hong Ko ng exporters continue to play an important role in the city's economy d espite manufacturing facil ities being relocated to the Chinese Mainland over recent decades. Tradilionally, Hong Kong orig1nal design based manufacturers and ong1nal equipment manufacturers had every intention of establisl1ing their business and eventually marketing products under ti1eir own brand. Fierce competition and conflicts of interest witi1 custorrers created severe challenges lor compan1es hoping to take til is route One Hong Kong based took a manufacturer different approach. VTech Holdings Ltd l1rst set about eslablislling its own brand before entering tile contract manufacturing services. The company today is the world's largest manufacturer of cordless phones and is at tile forefront of communications technology. 'People saw the h1gh quality of our products being sold in the international market and contracted us to manufacture products lor them,' recalls Allan C Y Wong, Chairman and co-founder of VTecil. 'We were the f1rst company 111 tile world to sell the fully digital 900MHz cordless phone below US$1 00.00 in the U.S. We have become !he largest player 111 llle cordless pllOil e markel in tile U.S. and sell under both the VTecll and AT&T brands' . S1nce being eslablished in 1976. VTech loday employs
learn1ng products into a dominant player in cordless telepl1ones. Our success with 'Lesson One' really opened doors lor us and was tile catalyst for our growth 111 the
u.s·.
VTech Holdings Ltd. Chairman and Group CEO Allan Wong Chi Yun around 34,000 people 111 11 countries and l1as research and d evelopment cenlres 111 Canada, Hong Kong and Mainland China. The company introduces more than one
\\ It is important for us as a company to deliver innovative products" t1undred new products every year which are sold in seventy f1ve countries. Wong's particular afflnily with tile U.S. dates back to til e 1980's wl1en l1e introduced, 'Lesson One' . !he very f1rst microchip based educational loy. Wong; 'The Company evolved from a leading manufacturer of electronic
Despile the slowdown i11 tile Nort11 American economy, tile U.S. currently accounts for fifty one percenl of VTech's total business and remains key to tile company's success. ' t is 1mportant for us as a company to deliver innovative products. Take lnnoTab as an example. it is a multi- function educational tablet for children aged 4-9 and a key new producl for the upcoming l1oliday season.' says Wong. 'Tile U.S. has long been a trendsetter in the retail sector so 11 IS importa11t for us to play a leading role in the U.S. market We have t11e flexibility to continually adapl to North Arrerican market changes while also developing our business in the rest ol the world'. www.vtech.com
Launched in 2011 , the lnnoTab is a multi-function educational tablet for children aged 4-9 years old.
HONG KONG - USA . , . ~ TRADE RELATIONS: ~ 1. The U.S. is Hong Kong's second largest trading partner after Mainland China. 2. In 2009, the US was the 2nd largest market for Hong Kong's domestic exports, accounting for US$ 944 million or 13% of the total value. 3 There are some 1,400 U.S. firms, including 817 regional operations (288 regional headquarters and 529 regional offices), and over 60,000 American residents in Hong Kong . 4. The U.S. is the largest source of inward direct investment in the insurance sector. 5. The U.S. trade surplus with Hong Kong was the largest of any U.S. surplus in 2010, owing largely to Hong Kong imports of American aircraft and spacecraft, diamonds, telecommunications equipment, and computer processors.
FAST FACTS ON HONG KONG: 1. The city is a regional center for dispute resolution with more cases handled in Hong Kong than Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea combined. 2. In 2009, Hong Kong ranked 1st globally in terms of initial public offerings (IPOs), with US$31 billion raised. 3. Trams have been running on Hong Kong Island since 1904. More than 160 trams make up the world 's largest fleet of double decker trams in operation. 4. Ranked as the world's most freest economy since 1995 by the Heritage Foundation. 5. Hong Kong International Airport is the world's busiest airport for international freight and the fourth busiest for international passenger traffic. 6. There are more mobile phones than people in Hong Kong . 7. In 2009, Hong Kong overtook London as the second largest wine auction center after New York.
8 . Urban areas make up less than 25 percent of Hong Kong . Nearly 40 percent of the total land area is protected for conservation and recreation purposes. Cheung Chau Island (above) is part of the 'Islands District' and is located 10 km southwest of Hong Kong Island .
No.1 Cordless Phone Manufacturer in the World
vtech 2 Hong Kong
Special Advertising Section
The Open University of Hong Kong International education is becoming increasingly competitive. Establishments must continuously build on their solid reputations, adapt to student requirements, embrace technology and strive to recruit students who understand that a modern education must reflect a global outlook. With its vibrant economy and location on Cl11na's doorstep, Hong Kong is vying to
1ng university in Hong Kong. With private un1versities in Tokyo, Taiwan and Korea play-
become a leading global educational hub with world-class
ing highly corrpelilive roles in Asia, our government needs
Universities. Willi its main campus conveniently located in Kowloon, The Open University o f Hong Kong (OUHK) is dedicated to developing student focused programs. By provid1ng open access and distance education sub-degree, degree and postgraduate courses, OUHK is reaching out to students who are looking to gain a greater understanding of the current opportun1ties presented by the global marketplace. In recogn1tion of t11e competitive nature of the global education sector, OUHK has actively embraced opportunities and challenges, says OUHK Presidenl, Professor John CY Leong; 'Since the return of sovereignty, Hong Kong transformed itself into a knowledge based economy and there developed a need to provide more educational opportunities for students. OUHK has always dedicated 1tself to luifilling the educational needs of Hong Kong and today enjoys a solid reputation as a lead-
"we pride ourselves on our flexible mode of university education" to prov1de much stronger support to the self-financing education sector in Hong Kong 111 order for il to develop.' Established by the Hong Kong Government as The Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong 1989, the
u n 1-
in
versity became The Open University of Hong Kong by ordinance 111 1997. Under the expansion of education 1n the 1990s in Hong Kong, the OUHK pioneered the distance learn1ng mode to enable students to adjust the pace of learning according to the1r own conditions. This student-focused ap-
~it-'A MJ ~'
~ OPEN VNIVERsrJY OFHONO KONG
proach, comb1ned with flexible teaching methods, has enabled OUHK to ga111 a reputation for excellence while continuously developing new
Open University of Hong Kong President Professor John C.Y. Leong
and unique programs such as the fully onl1ne Master of Laws 111 Chinese Business Law. This program and other non-distance learning cours-
courage guided self-learning as we believe this leads to a more pro-active experience
brand which utilizes popular technology platforms to reach new students and provide
es, including full-lime courses are helping to ensure OUHK's reputation for Innovation, qual-
and allows students to develop more autonomy and develop Interactive skills'.
educational tools lor existing students With plans for continuous
ity and flexibility is secure. 'We are a self-f nancing student-focused educational establishment with a high-
OUHK has actively embraced technology to reach out to the International student population. Througll channels
curnculum developments and further expansion of the univers1ty campus in 2013, OUHK's leading posit1on in the interna-
quality teaching stall and we pride ourselves on our f exible mode of university education,'
on iTunes U and the Open Learning platform, OUHK has bu11t a recogn1sed educational
tiona! education sector looks set to continue 1nto the future www.ouhk.edu .hk
says Professor Leong. 'Students bene I t from a choice of face-to-face or distance learning rPethods, both of
Master of Laws in Chinese Business Law
which can deliver. Students wl1o cl1oose distance learning programmes progress at a rate they can manage, using specially-developed course materials, while taking advantage of our Online Learning Enwonment We en-
China b usi ness is now an indispensable component of life for many people and enterprises including executives, entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants and government officials. Are you also contemplating to start your Ch1na endeavours soon? Knowledge of Ch1nese business law will guide you away from various legal pitfalls and definitely will g1ve you an edge over competitors. The good news is you no longer have to set foot into the country to learn l11e law but can do so online, at your own pace, with the Centre lor eLearning of the Open UniverSity of Hong Kong. You may study individual courses to su1l your needs or accumulate credits to get a Master's degree in Chinese Business Law Current students are com1ng Irom all over the world such as the USA, Europe, Greater China, etc. Programme Highlights: • Student can atlend real-lime online lectures and tutorials • Course IT'alerials developed by renowned Beijing scholars and legal experts • Focus on case stud1es and bus1ness applicat1ons for legal professionals and managers • Round-the-clock online access to law journals and law cases through the University's E-Library Website: http ://ecentre.ouhk.edu.hk Enquiry: [email protected] .hk Researched and produced by Franz J. Fricke and Philip Demack for Synergy Media Specialists. [email protected] Hong Kong 3
GLOBAL THINKERS, FILL IN THE BLANKS The world's smartest people tell us \vhat to think about Baraek ()bam a. the Arab Spring, and the dizzying events of 2011. THE BEST MUSE FOR THESE TIMES IS .. . Mohamed Bouazizi. - MOHAMED ELBARADEI • Still Springsteen.
LANT PRITCHETT
• Pollyanna: Someone has to stay optimistic. -GARETH EvANs • William Shakespeare. - MARTIN WoLF • Mart in Wolf. -PAUL COLLIER • Steve Jobs. a-changin').
SALAM FAYYAD • Courage. -<:oNDOLEEZZARICE • John Stuart Mill. -RICK FALKVINGE • Bob Dylan (the times they are NANCY BIRDSALL • Franklin D. Roosevelt, for continually learning and adapting to change. -ANNE-MARIESLAUGHTER
• Thomas Merton. - ANDREW SULLIVAN • Niccolo Machiavelli. - KISHORE MAHBUBANI • Yogi Berra: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." - RoBERT ZoELUCK • Calliope. - STEPHANE HEssEL • The Rolling Stones. After all, you can't always get what you want. PAUL RYAN • Statisticians.
STEVEN PINKER • Natalie Portman.
MIZUHO FUKUSHIMA • Lady Gaga.
NOURIEL ROUBINI
BARACK OBAMA IS .. . More like a character from a tragedy than a comedy. - HE WEIFANG • The best conservative resident since Bill Clinton.
ANDREW SULLIVAN • Still in the OJT phase (on the job training) . -NANCY BIRDSALL • Floundering. - TYLER
cowEN • A black man in the White House! Makes you believe that miracles do happen ! - MANAL AL-SHARIF • Not as disappointing as the U.S. Congress is.
ETHAN ZUCKERMAN • A great thinker and a disappointing leader. - DEEPA NARAYAN • A pigeon among
the cats. - ABHIJIT BANERJEE • A man like any other. -YOANI SANCHEZ • The Gorbachev of the United States. RICK FALKVINGE • A policy wonk's president, which probably explains his unpopularity. - LANT PRITCHETT A work in progress.
MOHAMED ELBARADEI • A dawn of a new rea lity.
WADAH KHANFAR • The Arab
RAZAN ZAITOUNEH • A glimpse of hope to all peoples living under oppression. - RACHED GHANNOUCHI • Overdue. -SALAM FAYYAD • Like spring here in Boston- there is always the risk that there are one or two more snowstorms around the corner.
ABHIJIT BANERJEE • At risk of ending up like Iraq, Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon, where elections did not lead to true de-
mocracy. - NouRtEL RouBINI • The name of Banana Republic's next competitor. - AMY CHUA • Less about democracy than about the crisis of central authority.
ROBERT D. KAPLAN • Only a beginning. -STEPHANE HESSEL • Irreversible.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
THE YEAR THAT MOST RESEMBLES 2011 IS .. . 409: The year the Vandals invaded Roman Hispania. - TERRY ENGELDER •
1848.
MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI, ROBERT D. KAPLAN, MARl KURAISHI, STEVEN PINKER, ALEC ROSS, MARTIN WOLF, ROBERT ZOELLICK • 1890:
When the United States passed Britain economically. -KISHORE MAHBUBANI • 1916-1918: When Arabs revolted against the Ottomans. - MANAL AL-SHARIF • 1920 for Egypt. - ALAA AL ASWANY • 1929. - HERMAN CHINERY-HESSE, STEPHANE HESSEl, ANDY SUMNER •
1930. - PAUL COLLIER • 1930-1931. - TYLER COWEN • 1931. - BARRY EICHENGREEN, NOURIEL ROUBINI ANDREW SULLIVAN • 1937. - DEEPA NARAYAN, SASKIA SASSEN, ROBERT ZOELLICK • Japan in 1945.
MIZUHO FUKUSHIMA • 1949 to 1960: When many COlOnies achieved
independence. - ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER • 1968. -GARETH EVANS, JOHN GITHONGO, YUICHI KAIDO • 1979. '-JOSEPH NYE, ANNE PATTERSON
• 1989. - BRUCE BUENO DEMESQUITA, GENE CRETZ, MOHAMED ELBARADEI, SALAM FAYYAD, WADAH KHANFAR, GARY lASH, LANT PRITCHETT, YOANI SANCHEZ,
~ DAVIDSCHEFFER, ETHAN ZucKERMAN •
2008. - DAVID BEERS. PAUL FARMER. HE WEIFANG • 2010. - MIKKo HYPPONEN ("We are moving to the
future at a faster pace than ever before"), PAUL RYAN • 2012. -<:EM OZDEMIR, KENNETH ROGOFF
112
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