Europe

The arrest of Mladic is a highly symbolic marker that Serbia is now a normal state, prepared to enforce European values, EWI Vice president Greg Austin tells Time. 

EWI Vice President and Director of Public Policy Andrew Nagorski talks on Russia Today about Polish-Russian relations, as two countries mark one year since the Smolensk presidential plane crash.

Many are enthralled because maybe they see a little bit, or even a lot, of themselves in the young (and older) Arabs demonstrating and rallying in the street. The grievances the Arabs have expressed are more common than most of us would like to admit: high unemployment and underemployment, the loss of hope, crushing political and cultural oppression and repression, massive corruption, the selective use of the rule of law or complete lack of the rule of law, the powerful influence of connections (in Arabic wasta and koosa), poor leadership that has done little for the common person, increasingly cavernous differences between the haves and have-nots, declining living standards for many, and bankrupt educational systems, amongst many other problems both perceived and real.

Who could say that he or she did not feel some sympathy with those brave Arabs who have been hitting the streets, putting their lives and livelihoods in danger, and crying out at the top of their lungs that they want democracy, freedom and hope? Probably only the dictators and their cronies who have robbed them of their heritage and their hopes could do that. However, even they in their hearts of hearts could feel the pain of the street. Many of the current and recently ousted leaders did not start at the top and many came from poor backgrounds in small villages. That is one of the pungent ironies of all of this. And, yes, it does stink.

Many are concerned because of the effects all of these uprisings and revolutions could have on oil, gas, and other markets. Still others are concerned about what all of this might mean for the strategic calculus of the region and world. The Middle East and North Africa are vital areas for trade and resources, but also for cultural, political, and now revolutionary forces. In many ways, this area is the center of the Muslim world. It is also a place that has uncountable and powerful connections with Central Asia, South Asia, Europe, Africa and more.

Others are concerned about the immigration that may happen. Still others are worried Al Qaeda may gain from this. Even in some of the most geographically distant areas of the world, such as China, there are concerns that this unrest might spread toward them. The leadership of countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and some of the Central Asian states should be losing sleep over this. The grievances we hear from the Arabs echo in the streets of Caracas, Harare and many more places. The Arab world has become the heart of revolution. These are mostly revolutions of the people, those who are Ibn al balad, (a son of the soil) and the shaab (the youth).  They are  looking to be free from the yoke of economic, cultural, and political repression that has constrained them and their countries from reaching their potential.

However, there also seems to be movement toward more government control and regulation of businesses and even outright nationalizations of some businesses in some countries where the corruption and inequality were over the top. A revolution in economic ideologies that counters the neo-liberalism and free market ideologies of the World Bank and the Washington consensus already seems to be taking hold in places like Egypt and this may spread. This is far from universal. It will be interesting to see how Libyan economic ideologies develop after 41 years of the irrational, mercurial, and "socialistic" policies of Qaddafi. There is also a lot of confusion on the ground about where the "Islamist" groups of the region will fit into the future. The seeds of future revolutions may be sowed already in the region. It is very difficult to tell where all of this is heading.

Indeed, many are confused by these revolutions. How could an area that was assumed by many to be so stable collapse into anger and dissent so quickly? Well, they really were not that stable to begin with. The people saw the weaknesses of the seemingly powerful leaders, their bluff and bluster, and moved on them. Those leaders were brutal because they were weak, much like schoolyard bullies.

Having about 20 years experience in the region and having lived in Egypt for six years, I could feel the anger and frustrations steadily build in many places. Once they saw the chink in the ostensible armor, they went for it. Once they saw weaknesses in the security forces and intelligence services that had kept them down, they were no longer intimidated. Although this is not a part of the world where passive resistance had any know track record, suddenly it took hold and worked well.  The results will have profound effects globally—for the EU, Africa, Asia and the world economic and political systems in general. This is just the beginning of a new wave of change.

What might this mean for Iran? My guess is that Arab Spring could visit this country sooner rather than later. What does this mean for the Shia-Sunni tensions? These tensions are part of the rebellions in Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria and could spread to others, and not just in the region. The elephant in the room is Saudi Arabia, which has the largest conventional proved oil reserves in the world, is the largest oil exporter, and has most of its large Shia population living just above its largest oil fields. And Iran has been stirring up trouble there.

What might this mean for Israel and the Palestinians?  The Palestinians are surely thinking about what this might mean for them. Also, the Palestinians are working through the UN to get many countries to recognize them. This could be one of the reasons why things have been more peaceful there than many might have expected. The Palestinians are employing new international tactics, and even internal tactics, such as passive resistance, which some thought impossible for this community. If Israel does not react in a strategic manner, and with a long term view toward its relations with its near and far Arab and Iranian neighbors, it could find itself in a very difficult bind in the near future.

What could this mean for the United States? This could either be an opening to a better future with the people of the region or a strategic disaster of epic proportions, depending on how the U.S. handles the manifold and powerful challenges this situation presents to it.

This is a time that calls for great leadership in the U.S., the EU, the Middle East and North Africa and more. Without such leadership, the results of these revolutions could be quite bad. If the Arab Spring spreads further into the larger oil producers such as Libya's neighbor Algeria, Iran and even Saudi Arabia, then all bets are off for the economic, political and even military fallout. The same could happen if various energy nodes--Ab Qaiq, the Al Basra Oil Terminal and the like--are seriously damaged or compromised. Then we have Yemen possibly disintegrating into multiple failed states, while Somalia, another failed state, serve as the other bookend to one of the most important oil and other cargo transport areas in the world.

Under certain scenarios we could be looking at $200-300 per barrel of oil and massive economic shocks to the world. I doubt that we are ready for any of this. The U.S. Government may shut down because Democrats, Republicans and the Tea Party cannot even agree to disagree. This is not comforting in a world facing such daunting challenges. The EU countries which are far more vulnerable to energy shocks from North Africa and the Middle East, seem even less prepared to handle the potential fallout. The least developed countries, many of whom heavily depend on imported oil, and particularly Sub-Saharan African countries, could be in for one of the greatest economic shocks of their recent histories if these events spin out of control. The global implications of these events and the unpreparedness of most countries to develop proper policy options to counter the economic and political shocks that could come from them are potentially profound.

None of this is predetermined and we can hope for the best. But hope is not a strategy and, although necessary, it is far from sufficient for the great leadership and strategizing that will be needed. This may be a time to go back in time and look at the rules of leadership as defined by George Washington, such as basing decisions on what is right rather than what is popular (now there is a thought), having a vision of a better future (and not just next week), doing what you say you will (instead of just saying what people want to hear), being honest, being responsible for decisions (no buck passing), doing research and development on decisions (not basing decisions on the 1% factor), building relations (not going it alone), being balanced (not extreme), being humble (not arrogant), learning from defeats (instead of just blaming others), and, observing things as they are -- not what you would like things to be.

Trying to understand  what is happening in the Arab world today, and developing sensible strategies in response to those events, is like sailing a ship in high and shifting winds, and in a very thick fog. You need very good leadership or you might just hit the rocks.

A former EWI senior fellow, Paul Sullivan teaches at the National Defense University and Georgetown University.  All opinions expressed are those of Professor Sullivan and do not represent those of The National Defense University, Georgetown University or any other entity he may be associated with.

The main common conclusions were that the joint decision to set up cooperative missile defense was only very recent (November 2010) and that all parties were working seriously at an official level to understand the full implications.

Dr. Neuneck supported Ambassador Rogozin’s call, emphasizing that NATO and Russian politicians should be fully enlightened on technical capabilities of BMD systems for better strategic decisions. He presented conclusions from a cooperative study by the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg and the IFSH (Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik) released at the end of last year. The German expert argued that it is the right moment for NATO and Russia to decide on the BMD architecture, as he considers NATO's TMD experience minimal, and joint BMD systems and architecture experience  non-existent.

Robert Bell, in an interview with the Voice of Russia before the seminar, called for an examination of lessons learned from the previous positive NATO-Russia cooperation on TMD, when good results were demonstrated on interoperability solutions and operating procedures. Applying these lessons to a new concept of cooperation on a wide area of territorial defense is now possible thanks to the progress of technology and capability of TMD to achieve a range of 3,000 kilometers.

It was stressed that a window of opportunity for closer cooperation between Russia and NATO on non-strategic missile defense was opened at the Lisbon Summit. Furthermore, participants emphasized that an agreement needs to be reached prior to the 2012 American and Russian presidential elections  in order to seize this unique opportunity.

The group is co-chaired by retired Norwegian judge Stein Schjolberg and advocate Pavan Duggal of the Supreme Court of India – one of the leading experts on cyber law in Asia – and consists of experts from Norway, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Italy, and Belgium. In a meeting held March 1-2 in Brussels, the group called for new progressive international legal frameworks, including the need for a global tribunal on cyberspace.

The objective of the EastWest Institute’s Cyber Crime Working Group is to propose a new set of harmonized legal frameworks to combat cyber crime through increased international cooperation. During an intense two-day discussion, participants agreed that, for the moment, new international legal frameworks should be focused on the regional rather than the global level.  Participants also pointed out that any new legal approaches alone will not be sufficient: rather, a much more integrative approach involving not only governments, but also the private sector, civil society, and non-government sector, is needed.

Regarding the new global tribunal on cyberspace, one of the main challenges will be establishing the legitimacy of such a tribunal. Currently, there is no international body with a mandate to deal with cyberspace complaints.  A new global tribunal would require the consent of all countries including the United States, which might prove difficult to obtain.

Preceding the establishment of such a court, state sovereignty—a concept that in the past has caused disagreements among major cyber nations such as the United States and Russia—would require extensive philosophical discussion, as one expert emphasized. Another expert stated that the new tribunal could derive its legitimacy from cooperating on non-politically sensitive issues that have a broad consensus among nations, like banning child pornography from the Internet.

Co-chairs Duggal and Schjolberg emphatically stated that this is only the beginning of a long process for achieving an agreement that reconciles and incorporates diverse legal viewpoints into comprehensive new legal frameworks. Simple questions such as “should new legal frameworks be based on common or civil law?” could be major stumbling blocks. For example, India chose not to join the European Convention on Cyber Crime because it would have introduced a completely alien legal framework into the Indian legislative process.

Participants also agreed that any new legal frameworks have to take into account the involvement of various stakeholders, especially in the private sector. As one participant pointed out, the reason why the European Convention on Cyber Crime is not as widely accepted is that the convention was composed without the involvement of the private sector. Involving civil society as a whole and non-governmental organizations also is deemed essential, especially considering education and training.

The clash of privacy rights and free speech advocacy with cybersecurity will also need to be studied carefully. For example, the European Union has already endorsed a proposal to create a European center to exchange information on inquiries made on child pornography cases. It is, however, not widely accepted due to privacy concerns.

Addressing child pornography, the group stressed the need to redefine the term “child pornography” to make a distinction between real children and virtual children. This attempt, as one expert pointed out, is a good starting point for private-public partnerships. For example, for Russia, this was the starting point in developing the first private-public partnership in the field of cybersecurity.

The cyber crime working group is scheduled to present preliminary findings during a briefing session at the Second Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit on June 1-2, 2011 in London and to deliver a final set of recommendations at the time of the Third Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit in Delhi, India in 2012.

"Not long ago at all, our partners came out actively for honest democratic elections in the Palestinian territories," Putin said. "Wonderful! Well done, lads! And it turns out Hamas wins, the same people you are calling a terrorist organization and have started to fight against." (Moscow Times).

At one level of politics, Putin’s analysis of Iran and Palestine is rational. On another level, there is a deep neuralgia in Russia about the Muslim world. Putin said that Russia was concerned about the consequences of the recent uprisings in Arab countries for Russian security. He also warned (correctly) that the events could have negative consequences for Europe. The underlying anxiety here is not unique to Mr Putin. He is showing a discomfort here many Western leaders share and that will only grow. 

The anxiety comes about because of shifting power relationships in many fields of national endeavor. On a much lower level, this was symbolized in a tantalizing way in the shock defeat of Russia by Iran (1-0) in a football friendly in Dubai on 9 February. Perhaps the patriotic, sports-loving Mr Putin was smarting from the defeat. The Dubai game, a warm-up for the Euro 2012 qualifiers, was only held in Dubai so that the Russian football federation could get the money from the TV rights involved in playing a team from the region.

More seriously though, the Putin visit to Brussels and the concerns he expressed reflect fundamental shifts in world power at a time when, with the uprisings, revolts and wars in the Muslim world, there is an historic shift under way in world politics. Russia’s relations with the European Union (EU) now look very different from three years ago. Russia has overtaken China as an economic partner of the EU and Putin is determined to make Russia and the EU partners in international security affairs as well.

At exactly the time when the world press was trumpeting the statistic that the Chinese economy had overtaken the Japanese economy, and would eventually surpass the American economy, a different data set from the IMF revealed another shift. The US economy was correctly reassigned to number two spot behind the European Union in GDP on a Purchasing Power Parity basis. And Indian GDP is within a whisker of Japan’s. The bargaining power relationships within the G20 and IMF are shifting and on the global stage have shifted in Europe’s favor.

So, the EU is not a country, some might say. Yes, but it is an “economy”, a single economy, in a world where, as a good Marxists might tell you, economics is in command. The Articles of Agreement of the IMF (Section XIII) dictate that “The principal office of the Fund shall be located in the territory of the member having the largest quota”. Well the European Union now has almost double the quota of the United States, around 30 per cent of the total for the EU compared with just over 17 per cent for the United States, and China’s un-naturally low 3.72 per cent. So the IMF headquarters really should move to Europe.

Journalistic flourishes aside, what does this growing list of re-alignments of politics and power mean? At the very least, in economic and social terms, it means that the initiative for change, the impulse for reform and the power for transformation are slipping even faster from American hands. Russia knows it and is looking for European partnership, especially to secure the southern flanks not just of Russia but of Europe as a whole.

Click here to read this piece in New Europe

A Polish essayist castigates Europeans in general for their “euro-centrism” that blinds them to the continent’s decline while new centers of economic and political power emerge elsewhere. He morbidly asks: “Will European civilization outlive Europe, or will it collapse with her?”

A French author, true to form, discusses the even bigger challenge all countries are facing: “The information revolution is a political revolution and an intellectual revolution. It calls into question both power and culture. It challenges the distinction between governors and governed.”

Americans have their own worries about their country’s apparent decline. “Increasingly, many of today’s problems are associated with the historic shift from an economic and financial regime dominated by the United States and the dollar to an unstable and multipolar system,” a New York Times article proclaims.

And then, as always, there’s Russia. One of that country’s few genuinely independent voices warns: “In political terms, his [the Kremlin leader’s] recent strategy can be described as a campaign to achieve democratic change through nondemocratic means. The way I see it, it is an extremely dangerous strategy, threatening to bring forth unworkable antidemocratic structures we’ll have to contend with for a long time.”

You hear such talk a lot these days, of course. But these opinions are hardly new—far from it. The first quotation is from the lead essay by Juliusz Mieroszewski in the March 1950 issue of Kultura, the Paris-based Polish émigré monthly. The French author who discussed the information revolution was Jean-François Revel, writing in his book “Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun,” published in 1970. The quotation about the increasingly multipolar world is from an article by Ann Crittenden in The New York Times dated February 4, 1979. And the independent Russian voice is that of dissident Andrei Sakharov, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington on November 14, 1988; the Kremlin leader he was referring to was Mikhail Gorbachev.

My father zealously monitored the Zeitgeist on such issues all his life. Since he is now ailing and unable to do so, I recently started sorting through his remarkable collection of clippings, and found myself intrigued by the eerie similarities to so many of today’s discussions about supposedly new trends and shifting power relationships.  While my father collected articles on everything from the wars in Korea and Vietnam to the John F. Kennedy assassination and John Paul II’s first visit to the United States, he was especially attracted to the writings of anyone who tried to make sense of the big ideas that flowed from the daily headlines.

As I sifted through his collection, I was struck by the degree to which certain preoccupations have been with us for decades—not, as we sometimes tend to believe, just in recent years. We aren’t so much discovering but constantly rediscovering the major global trends of the postwar era: the shift of power from West to East; Europe’s struggle to define its role and identity; the chronic debates about America’s supposed decline; and Russia’s seeming inability to transition to a system that assures its citizens fundamental rights, since even the self-proclaimed reformers too often have failed to embrace democratic principles.

All those are legitimate issues and concerns. And, yes, some trends—most notably, the shift to a genuinely multipolar world as demonstrated by the emergence of China and India as major players—have accelerated significantly in the past decade. The information revolution that Revel wrote about even before the dawn of the digital era, basing his observations on the growing power of television, hasn’t just accelerated: it’s now moving at warp speed. But none of this negates the fact that we are debating many of the same questions that policy analysts grappled with on a daily basis during the last half of the twentieth century.

It’s worth keeping this in mind since it helps put our current preoccupations in perspective. Europeans agonize whether they are losing out to the rising powers in the East, whether the euro-zone can survive its current spate of economic crises, and whether they can handle the cultural tensions produced by their growing immigrant populations. But if they took a step back, they’d see that the current era—when EU and NATO membership binds most of the countries on the continent together as never before—looks pretty good as compared to the 1990s when the Balkans were exploding in violence, or, earlier, when the continent was divided into two heavily armed, hostile camps.

According to a recent Pew Charitable Trusts poll, 50 per cent of Americans viewed the first decade of this century as generally negative, and only 27 per cent saw it as generally positive. In assessing earlier decades, including the 1960s which was dominated by the Vietnam War, protests and assassinations, Americans were far more upbeat. To be sure, terrorism accounts for a large part of that somber mood, but Americans need to remember this was a phenomenon that was widespread earlier, although it hadn’t reached American soil in a way that registered. And anti-Americanism is hardly new either. One of my keepsakes from my father is a mounted chunk of concrete that was thrown through his office window when protesters attacked the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in 1961, where he was serving as press attaché.

Revel’s underlying thesis about the United States—that it was in the best position to embrace and creatively exploit the technological leaps of the new information age—still applies today. That’s why he was convinced that much of the talk about America’s decline, along with knee-jerk anti-Americanism in his country and others, was off the mark. Its combination of entrepreneurial spirit and comfort level with broad freedoms would allow it to maintain its leading role in far more than just military might.

Since then, the United States has added cause for optimism because of its population trends. Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt points out that, barring a severe backlash against immigration, the country “will avoid the demographic stagnation and decline that faces most other OECD countries.” In fact, the U.S. population is projected to grow from 310 million to 374 million in the next twenty years. As he points out, this will keep the country relatively young, with much better economic prospects than Western Europe or Japan.

True, the world today is genuinely more multipolar than before, and America’s leaders have to take that into account. The digital age cries out for more international coordination on cybersecurity, in particular, since everything from trade, finance and critical infrastructure is vulnerable without new protective mechanisms that span borders as effectively as web connections do. And given their push for nuclear weapons, countries like North Korea and Iran can no longer be seen merely as regional threats—or only as America’s problem. That certainly applies to disparate terrorist movements as well.

But there’s hope in those kinds of realizations. That may account for the recent indications that NATO and Russia could cooperate on ballistic missile defense, and that China is beginning—ever so tentatively—to reconsider how it should handle its North Korean neighbor. And that on cybersecurity there’s a growing realization that national policies will fail without concerted international cooperation.

Of course that isn’t a new idea either, as my father would be quick to point out—and he has the articles to prove it. The question is whether a more sensible approach is developing based on the premise that joint actions to meet joint challenges aren’t just an idealistic vision anymore but a necessity for survival. Economic, political and, yes, military competition will continue. But maybe—just maybe—the next half century of articles will be less concerned with who is rising or falling and more with how we pulled together when it really mattered.

Andrew Nagorski is vice president and director of public policy at the EastWest Institute. This article was written for Newsweek Polska, the Polish edition of Newsweek (www.newsweek.pl).

Currently, governments and the United Nations devote a great deal of resources to peacekeeping, but not necessarily to conflict prevention. According to many conference speakers, this gap in spending is the result of a lack of public awareness about the importance of preventive action – and the consequences are dire.

Conflict prevention will only succeed once it becomes headline news, an election issue and a mark of great statesmanship, EWI associate Matthew King writes in New Europe.