Howard W. French (http://www.howardwfrench.com)

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A Continent for the Taking

Africa first captivated New York Times journalist Howard W. French more than twenty-five years ago, but his knowledge of and passion for the continent has the depth of a lifetime association. His experiences there awakened him as nothing before to… read more

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Commentary & Reviews · Interviews

Copyright The Guardian
(A truly excellent debate in the form of an exchange of letters.)

* Martin Jacques and Will Hutton
* The Guardian, Tuesday 23 June 2009

Dear Will

It is now widely recognised that the balance of economic power is shifting from the rich world to the developing world. Indeed, the role accorded to the G20 rather than the G8 in seeking to tackle the financial crisis is a vivid illustration of this. But what is not recognised – and has been barely discussed – are the political and cultural ramifications of the rise of the developing countries. That, I suspect, is because there is a deeply held western view that they will – and should – end up as clones of western modernity: in other words, there is only one modernity and it is western. This is a fallacy. Modernity is a product of culture and history as much as markets and technology. The central question here is China: will it end up like us or will it be something very different and, as a result, change the world in very fundamental ways?

In my view, there is not a chance that China will become “western”. Of course, it will be influenced by the west, as it already is, but it will remain profoundly different. To think otherwise is to believe that western norms are a universal pre-condition for successful modernisation. This is a highly provincial, and hubristic, mindset.

Let me give a number of examples of how China is and will remain different. Although for the last century it has described itself as a nation-state, in fact at its core China is a civilisation-state. The Chinese think of themselves primarily not as a nation but as a civilisation; all those things that constitute a sense of Chinese identity long predate China’s short life as a nation-state. And the logic of a civilisation-state is very different: a necessary toleration of diversity because of the country’s sheer size (as illustrated by the “one country, two systems” formula for Hong Kong); and a state which has for centuries been seen as the guardian of civilisation and therefore organic to society in a way quite different from the west.

Or take the example of race. Unlike any of the other most populous nations, 92% of Chinese regard themselves as of one race: that is a direct product of China’s extraordinarily long history and civilisational consciousness. It also means that the Chinese do not recognise difference in the way that many societies do; and nor is that likely to change anytime soon. Consider also the fact that the Chinese state, for over a millennium, has, unlike Europe, never had to compete for power with other groups such as the church or merchants, with the consequence that there are no boundaries to its power. The Chinese state is, and will remain, very different from the western state, whatever happens to its present government.

None of these characteristics imply that China will not become a formidable power; but they will certainly make it a very different one. Why we should be surprised? The world is constituted of many different histories and cultures. It so happens that for a brief period of two centuries or so Europe (and its major derivative, the US) has dominated the world. That era is now coming to an end. Far from western universalism we are entering the age of contested modernity.

Martin

Dear Martin

More than 300 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists put their name to Charter 08 last December on the anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights – many have been subsequently arrested. What they want for China is an independent and impartial judiciary; freedom of speech and expression; free trade unions; a free media; the capacity to hold government to account by citizens – all institutions you dismiss as “western” and now to be contested by your forecast of China’s imminent rule of the world. Pan Yue, Deputy head of China’s Environmental Protection Agency, has warned that there is no chance of reversing China’s disastrous growth of carbon and sulphur emissions – now larger than those of the US – unless civil society has the capacity to hold the mainly state owned polluting industries to account. Until China develops the institutions advocated by Charter 08 everybody in China knows there is not a chance – just as the hundreds of thousands mourning their dead children after the earthquake in Sichuan know they have no chance of holding the corrupt officials to account who commissioned the jerry built schools in which their kids died. The party’s buildings stayed intact.

These are brave men and women, all of whom will be in silent despair about the innocent way another prominent western intellectual has bought the party’s line. There is no more enthusiastic exponent of the thesis that China is a civilisation state than the party’s propaganda department. The party thus takes refuge in some conception of “Chineseness” to excuse it from the consequences of authoritarianism, and shore up its own crisis of legitimacy. Its proposition is that the communism that aims to build a socialist market economy and which represents all of China’s traditions – the three represents – is linked by a golden thread to China’s great Confucian past. It is spearheading an economic revolution that will soon lead to Chinese world leadership. The Charter 08 signatories are thus wrong.

I find the notion that countries are condemned by their past to a future cast in the same mould empirically and philosophically wrong. The “civilisation state” is an empty construct: all states reflect their civilisations which in turn contain traditions that are in tension – individualism and collectivism, freedom and authority. If you mean that China is racially homogenous, what are your readers to make of that explosive claim? It is akin to claiming that everyone in the west is white, and therefore we think the same. But we don’t. In any case there are vast cultural differences between the great agricultural provinces of Shandong and Henan and the bustling commerciality of the Pearl River delta and Shanghai. Do you not believe that there is a universal appetite for due desert for effort, for dignity and for the capacity to express self – and which Chinese culture amply expresses itself outside China in Taiwan, and in its own history? China’s history is pockmarked with epic revolts against tyrannical dynasties excusing their tyranny as fealty to “Chineseness”.

You will object that the middle class is hardly in revolt against the party. You are right – so far. It has been bought off with ample largesse, which is more a hard headed political and economic calculation easily recognisable in the west than anything to do with culture. So much depends upon continuing economic growth, but which I believe is unsustainable – at least until there is political change. You can side with the Propaganda Department and its dismissal of Charter 08’s demands as western. I will stand with Charter 08.

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Posted at 11:28 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright Foreign Policy

It will be many decades before China, India, and the rest of the region take over the world, if they ever do.
BY | JUNE 22, 2009

“Power Is Shifting from West to East.”

Not really. Dine on a steady diet of books like The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East or When China Rules the World, and it’s easy to think that the future belongs to Asia. As one prominent herald of the region’s rise put it, “We are entering a new era of world history: the end of Western domination and the arrival of the Asian century.”

Sustained, rapid economic growth since World War ii has undeniably boosted the region’s economic output and military capabilities. But it’s a gross exaggeration to say that Asia will emerge as the world’s predominant power player. At most, Asia’s rise will lead to the arrival of a multi-polar world, not another unipolar one.

Asia is nowhere near closing its economic and military gap with the West. The region produces roughly 30 percent of global economic output, but because of its huge population, its per capita gdp is only $5,800, compared with $48,000 in the United States. Asian countries are furiously upgrading their militaries, but their combined military spending in 2008 was still only a third that of the United States. Even at current torrid rates of growth, it will take the average Asian 77 years to reach the income of the average American. The Chinese need 47 years. For Indians, the figure is 123 years. And Asia’s combined military budget won’t equal that of the United States for 72 years.

In any case, it is meaningless to talk about Asia as a single entity of power, now or in the future. Far more likely is that the fast ascent of one regional player will be greeted with alarm by its closest neighbors. Asian history is replete with examples of competition for power and even military conflict among its big players. China and Japan have fought repeatedly over Korea; the Soviet Union teamed up with India and Vietnam to check China, while China supported Pakistan to counterbalance India. Already, China’s recent rise has pushed Japan and India closer together. If Asia is becoming the world’s center of geopolitical gravity, it’s a murky middle indeed.

Those who think Asia’s gains in hard power will inevitably lead to its geopolitical dominance might also want to look at another crucial ingredient of clout: ideas. Pax Americana was made possible not only by the overwhelming economic and military might of the United States but also by a set of visionary ideas: free trade, Wilsonian liberalism, and multilateral institutions. Although Asia today may have the world’s most dynamic economies, it does not seem to play an equally inspiring role as a thought leader. The big idea animating Asians now is empowerment; Asians rightly feel proud that they are making a new industrial revolution. But self-confidence is not an ideology, and the much-touted Asian model of development does not seem to be an exportable product.

“Asia’s Rise Is Unstoppable.”

Don’t bet on it. Asia’s recent track record might seem to guarantee its economic superpower status. Goldman Sachs, for instance, expects that China will surpass the United States in economic output in 2027 and India will catch up by 2050.

Given Asia’s relatively low per capita income, its growth rate will indeed outpace the West’s for the foreseeable future. But the region faces enormous demographic hurdles in the decades ahead. More than 20 percent of Asians will be elderly by 2050. Aging is a principal cause of Japan’s stagnation. China’s elderly population will soar in the middle of the next decade. Its savings rate will fall while healthcare and pension costs explode. India is a lone exception to these trends-any one of which could help stall the region’s growth.

Environmental and natural resource constraints could also prove crippling. Pollution is worsening Asia’s shortage of fresh water while air pollution exacts a terrible toll on health (it kills almost 400,000 people each year in China alone). Without revolutionary advances in alternative energy, Asia could face a severe energy crunch. Climate change could devastate the region’s agriculture.

The current economic crisis, moreover, will lead to huge overcapacity as Western demand evaporates. Asian companies, facing anemic consumer demand at home, will not be able to sell their products in the region. The Asian export-dependent model of development will either disappear or cease to be a viable engine of growth.

Political instability could also throw Asia’s economic locomotive off course. State collapse in Pakistan or a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula could wreak havoc. Rising inequality and endemic corruption in China could fuel social unrest and cause its economic growth to sputter. And if a democratic breakthrough somehow forces the Communist Party from power, China is most likely to enter a lengthy period of unstable transition, with a weak central government and mediocre economic performance.

“Asian Capitalism Is More Dynamic.”

Hardly. With the United States brought low by Wall Street and the European economy enfeebled by its welfare state and inflexible labor market, most Asian economies appear in great shape. It is tempting to say that Asia’s unique brand of capitalism, by seamlessly weaving together strategic state intervention, corporate long-term thinking, and insuppressible popular desire for material betterment, will outcompete either the greed-devastated U.S. model or the hidebound European variant.

But though Asian economies-with the notable exception of Japan-are among the fastest-growing in the world today, there’s little real evidence to suggest that their apparent dynamism comes from a mysteriously successful form of Asian capitalism. The truth is more mundane: The region’s dynamism owes a great deal to its strong fundamentals (high savings, urbanization, and demographics) and the benefits of free trade, market reforms, and economic integration. Asia’s relative backwardness is a blessing in one sense: Asian countries have to grow faster because they’re starting from a much lower base.

Asian capitalism does have three unique features, but they do not necessarily confer competitive advantages. First, Asian states intervene more in the economy through industrial policy, infrastructural investment, and export promotion. But whether that has made Asian capitalism more dynamic remains an unresolved puzzle. The World Bank’s classic 1993 study of the region, “The East Asian Miracle,” could not find evidence that strategic intervention by the state is responsible for East Asia’s success. Second, two types of companies-family-controlled conglomerates and giant, state-owned enterprises-dominate Asia’s business landscape. Although such corporate ownership structures enable Asia’s largest companies to avoid the short-termism of most American firms, they also shield them from shareholders and market pressures, making Asian firms less accountable, less transparent, and less innovative.

Finally, Asia’s high savings rates, by providing a huge pool of indigenous capital, undeniably fuel the region’s economic growth. But pity Asia’s savers. Most of them save because their governments provide inadequate social safety nets. Government policies in Asia penalize savers through financial repression (by keeping deposit rates low and paying household savers measly returns on their savings) and reward producers by subsidizing capital (typically through low bank lending rates). Even export promotion, ostensibly an Asian virtue, seems overrated. Asian central banks have invested most of their massive export surpluses in low-yielding, dollar-dominated assets that will lose much of their value due to the long-term inflationary pressures generated by U.S. fiscal and monetary policies.

“Asia Will Lead the World in Innovation.”

Not in our lifetime. If you look only at the growing number of U.S. patents awarded to Asian inventors, the United States appears to have a dramatically receding edge in innovation. South Korean inventors, for example, received 8,731 U.S. patents in 2008-compared with 13 in 1978. In 2008, close to 37,000 U.S. patents went to Japanese inventors. The trend seems sufficiently alarming that one study ranked the United States eighth in terms of innovation, behind Singapore, South Korea, and Switzerland.

Reports of the death of America’s technological leadership are, to paraphrase Mark Twain, greatly exaggerated. Although Asia’s advanced economies, such as Japan and South Korea, are closing the gap, the United States’ lead remains huge. In 2008, American inventors were awarded 92,000 U.S. patents, twice the combined total given to South Korean and Japanese inventors. Asia’s two giants, China and India, still lag far behind

Asia is pouring money into higher education. But Asian universities will not become the world’s leading centers of learning and research anytime soon. None of the world’s top 10 universities is located in Asia, and only the University of Tokyo ranks among the world’s top 20. In the last 30 years, only eight Asians, seven of them Japanese, have won a Nobel Prize in the sciences. The region’s hierarchical culture, centralized bureaucracy, weak private universities, and emphasis on rote learning and test-taking will continue to hobble its efforts to clone the United States’ finest research institutions.

Even Asia’s much-touted numerical advantage is less than it seems. China supposedly graduates 600,000 engineering majors each year, India another 350,000. The United States trails with only 70,000 engineering graduates annually. Although these numbers suggest an Asian edge in generating brainpower, they are thoroughly misleading. Half of China’s engineering graduates and two thirds of India’s have associate degrees. Once quality is factored in, Asia’s lead disappears altogether. A much-cited 2005 McKinsey Global Institute study reports that human resource managers in multinational companies consider only 10 percent of Chinese engineers and 25 percent of Indian engineers as even “employable,” compared with 81 percent of American engineers.

“Dictatorship Has Given Asia an Advantage.”

No. Autocracies, mainly in East Asia, may seem to have made their countries prosperous. The so-called dragon economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia under Suharto, and now China experienced their fastest growth under nondemocratic regimes. Frequent comparisons between China and India appear to support the view that a one-party state unencumbered by messy competitive politics can deliver economic goods better than a multiparty system tied down by too much democracy.

But Asia also has had many autocracies that have impoverished their countries-consider the tragic list of Burma, Pakistan, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia under the murderous Khmer Rouge, and the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos. Even China is a mixed example. Before the Middle Kingdom emerged from self-imposed isolation and totalitarian rule in 1976, its economic growth was subpar. China under Mao also had the dubious distinction of producing the world’s worst famine.

Even when you look at autocracies credited with economic success, you find two interesting facts. First, their economic performance improved when they became less brutal and allowed greater personal and economic freedoms. Second, the keys to their successes were sensible economic policies, such as conservative macroeconomic management, infrastructural investment, promotion of savings, and pushing exports. Dictatorship really has no magic formula for economic development.

Comparing a one-party state like China with a democracy such as India is not an easy intellectual exercise. Obviously, India has many weaknesses: widespread poverty, poor infrastructure, and minimal social services. China appears to have done much better in these areas. But appearances can be deceiving. Dictatorships are good at concealing the problems they create while democracy is good at advertising its defects.

So the autocratic advantage in Asia is, at best, an optical illusion.

“China Will Dominate Asia.”

Not likely. China is on course to overtake Japan as the world’s second-largest economy this year. As the regional economic hub, China is now driving Asia’s economic integration. Beijing’s diplomatic influence is expanding as well, supposedly thanks to its newfound soft power. Even China’s once antiquated military has acquired a full plethora of new weapons systems and significantly improved its ability to project force.

Although it is true that China will become Asia’s strongest country by any measure, its rise has inherent limits. China is unlikely to dominate Asia in the sense that it replaces the United States as the region’s peacekeeper and decisively influences other countries’ foreign policies. Its economic growth is also by no means guaranteed. Restive secession-minded minorities (Tibetans and Uighurs) inhabit strategically important areas that constitute almost 30 percent of Chinese territory. Taiwan, which is unlikely to return to China’s fold anytime soon, ties down substantial Chinese military resources. The ruling Chinese Communist Party, which views perpetuating its one-party state as more important than overseas expansionism, is not likely to be seduced by delusions of imperial grandeur.

China has formidable neighbors in Russia, India, and Japan that will fiercely resist any Chinese attempts to become the regional hegemon. Even Southeast Asia, where China appears to have reaped the most geopolitical gains in recent years, has been reluctant to fall into China’s orbit completely. Nor would the United States simply capitulate in the face of a Chinese juggernaut.

For complex reasons, China’s rise has inspired fear and unease, not enthusiasm, among Asians. Only 10 percent of Japanese, 21 percent of South Koreans, and 27 percent of Indonesians surveyed by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs said they would be comfortable with China being the future leader of Asia.

So much for China’s charm offensive.

“America Is Losing Influence in Asia.”

Definitely not. Bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and mired in a deep recession, the United States certainly looks like a superpower in decline. Its influence in Asia has apparently receded as well, with the formerly mighty dollar in less demand than the Chinese yuan and the North Korean regime openly flaunting Washington’s will. But it is premature to declare the end of U.S. geopolitical preeminence in Asia. In all likelihood, the self-correcting mechanisms in its political and economic systems will enable the United States to recover from its current setbacks.

America’s leadership in Asia derives from many sources, not just its military or economic heft. Like beauty, a country’s geopolitical influence is often in the eye of the beholder. Although some view the United States’ declining influence in Asia as a fact, many Asians think otherwise. Sixty-nine percent of Chinese, 75 percent of Indonesians, 76 percent of South Koreans, and 79 percent of Japanese in the Chicago Council’s surveys said that U.S. influence in Asia had risen over the past decade.

Another, perhaps more important, reason for the enduring American preeminence in Asia is that most countries in the region welcome Washington as the guarantor of Asia’s peace. Asian elites from New Delhi to Tokyo continue to count on Uncle Sam to keep a watchful eye on Beijing.

Whether it’s over blown or not, Asia is poised to increase its geopolitical and economic influence rapidly in the decades to come. It has already become one of the pillars of the international order. But in thinking about Asia’s future, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Its economic ascent is not written in the stars. And given the cultural differences and history of intense rivalry among the region’s countries, Asia is unlikely to achieve any degree of regional political unity and evolve into an EU-like entity in our lifetime. Henry Kissinger once famously asked, “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?” We can ask the same question about Asia.

All told, Asia’s rise should present more opportunities than threats. The region’s growth not only has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, but also will increase demand for Western products. Its internal fissures will allow the United States to check the geopolitical influence of potential rivals such as China and Russia with manageable costs and risks. And hopefully, Asia’s rise will provide the competitive pressures urgently needed for Westerners to get their own houses in order—without succumbing to hype or hysteria.

Want to Know More?

*

In “The Dark Side of China’s Rise” (FOREIGN POLICY, March/April 2006), Minxin Pei examines the corruption and waste threatening China’s dizzying economic growth.
*

Well before the “Asian century” fervor exploded, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn predicted inThunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (New York: Knopf, 2000) that the “center of the world” would eventually “settle in Asia.” Kishore Mahbubani’s The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008) has become the foundational text of the Asian-century school of thought.
*

The China vs. India debate shows no signs of abating. In “The Next Asian Miracle” (FOREIGN POLICY, July/August 2008), Yasheng Huang makes the case that India’s democratic institutions will give it a long-term growth advantage over China. Razeen Sally dismisses that suggestion in “Don’t Believe the India Hype” (Far Eastern Economic Review, May 1, 2009) on the grounds that India continues to neglect its labor-intensive sectors and avoids reforming its institutions. University of California, Berkeley, economics professor Pranab Bardhan has been one of the few respected analysts to reject both the China hype and the India hype, for reasons he lays out in “China, India Superpower? Not So Fast!” (YaleGlobal Online, Oct. 25, 2005).
*

Not everyone thinks that Asia’s rise implies an inexorable decline in American influence. Anne-Marie Slaughter argues in “America’s Edge: Power in the Networked Century” (Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009) that the 21st century will, in fact, be an American one because the United States enjoys unrivaled “connectedness.”

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Posted at 8:39 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Economist

One of two good reads on the subject in a single issue. Excepts and links follow.

A funeral in Gabon is a test of how fast and how far Nicolas Sarkozy is changing France’s policy towards Africa

AFP

TWO French presidents, one serving (Nicolas Sarkozy), one retired (Jacques Chirac), a foreign minister (Bernard Kouchner), plus a clutch of current and former ministers and other dignitaries. The weight of the French delegation that flew from Paris to Libreville for the funeral on June 16th of Omar Bongo Ondimba, Africa’s longest-serving leader and object of a big corruption case in France, reflects the close-knit ties the country has kept with leaders of former African colonies, however unsavoury. But did so many French bigwigs go to Gabon to praise what they like to call françafrique—or to bury it, along with Mr Bongo (see obituary)?

Before his election in 2007 Mr Sarkozy promised to loosen France’s complicit bonds to African leaders, calling them “networks of a bygone era”. French-African ties, he argued, needed to be more transparent and less personal, based on respect not paternalism. The post-colonial web of petrodollars, political influence and business contracts, which linked French leaders of both left and right to their African counterparts, had come to discredit France. This was starkly exposed during the 2002-03 corruption trial involving Elf-Aquitaine, an oil company, in which several French bosses were jailed. An echo from that era could be heard recently when one former French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, accused another, Mr Chirac, of receiving party finance from Mr Bongo in 1981—a charge that Mr Chirac emphatically denies.

Mr Sarkozy had other reasons to reconsider France’s Africa policy. Thanks to its permanent military bases on the continent (see map) and longstanding bilateral defence accords with many ex-colonies, France has often sought to play the role of regional gendarme. It still has 1,350 troops in Chad, where they were the largest part of a European Union force, sent in largely to support the army against rebels and to protect refugees from Darfur. Yet France is not enjoying the return it once did from its peacekeeping. Commercially it faces Chinese competition: China has overtaken France as sub-Saharan Africa’s top trading partner. So France has been picking up the security tab and getting a bad press, but losing out on both business and credibility.

Mr Sarkozy’s promised fresh start has had only mixed success. He caused widespread offence in his first big speech in Senegal in 2007 by declaring that “the tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history,” describing how the African peasant lived according to natural rhythms with “no place…for the idea of progress.” The indignation this prompted was only partly soothed by warmer words in a later speech in South Africa. Mr Sarkozy left many in Africa with the impression that he saw the continent as a hopeless nuisance—and that his real interest was tighter controls on visas and immigration to France.

Another episode last year hinted at business as usual. Jean-Marie Bockel, his overseas-aid minister, was moved to another job. His error? A bold speech, arguing for the need “to sign the death warrant for françafrique” and denouncing patronage and wasted public money. Mr Bockel lost his job, according to Mr Bongo’s lawyer, Robert Bourgi, at the request of Mr Bongo himself. “Bockel hadn’t understood anything about Africa,” Mr Bourgi told Le Point, a French magazine. “He had to go.”

Yet in other ways Mr Sarkozy has genuinely tried to ease France out of old habits, notably in defence. Last month he opened a military base in Abu Dhabi, just across the water from Iran, where France has no colonial ties. The establishment of this base, France’s first in the Gulf, followed a strategic defence review that called for a reorientation of overseas defence efforts away from military help for former colonies towards a “strategic arc” running through the Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa, the Gulf and on to South Asia.

The French are keen to stress that this does not constitute a “withdrawal” from Africa. Yet they also plan to close one (as yet unspecified) of their three permanent African military bases—in Djibouti, Senegal and Gabon. A one-time base in Côte d’Ivoire has been downgraded to a temporary “overseas mission”, and wound down from 2,400 troops to 1,150. Bilateral defence agreements, which spread suspicion among young Africans about France’s role in propping up dodgy leaders, are to be updated and made public. “This is not a retreat from Africa,” comments François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, who took part in the defence review. “But we are saying that Africa will no longer be number one.”

One test of France’s new approach will be the succession to Mr Bongo. In the old days French presidents would handpick leaders, running African affairs from an office in the Elysée. Indeed, Charles de Gaulle and his “Monsieur Afrique”, Jacques Foccart, installed Mr Bongo himself in 1967. In Paris this week Mr Kouchner vowed that “françafrique is finished”. The Gabonese, he insisted, had to decide on a new leader themselves. He added that “the French army will never back a government against the opposition.” Yet with various members of the Bongo clan manoeuvring for power, it remains to be seen if the French can resist meddling altogether.

Another test may be a corruption case against three African leaders (including the deceased Mr Bongo). The complaint was first filed by the French branch of Transparency International, an anti-corruption group. It involves charges of embezzlement and the misuse of public money. A preliminary inquiry showed that Mr Bongo, or members of his family, had no fewer than 39 French properties (many of them in swanky Paris districts), nine cars and 70 bank accounts in France. The lawsuit has had a bumpy ride. The Paris public prosecutor, who answers to the Ministry of Justice, dropped the original case. But last month France’s top investigating magistrate ruled that it should be reopened. The Paris public prosecutor has since challenged this ruling; a verdict by an appeal court is due in the autumn.

In many ways Mr Bongo was the epitome of françafrique, the mastermind behind all Franco-African networks. His departure, combined with Mr Sarkozy’s reorientation of France’s Africa policy, is sure to weaken the old personal relationships and may usher in a new era. How fast and how far is another matter. “France’s relations with Africa will be increasingly normalised,” says Antoine Glaser, a French African specialist and co-author of a book on Mr Sarkozy’s policy towards Africa. “But françafrique is like an ocean liner: you can’t just stop it from one day to the next.”

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Posted at 10:50 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Washington Post

An excerpt:

“…Obama’s policy now requires getting past the election controversies quickly so that he can soon begin negotiations with the reelected Ahmadinejad government. This will be difficult as long as opposition protests continue and the government appears to be either unsettled or too brutal to do business with. What Obama needs is a rapid return to peace and quiet in Iran, not continued ferment. His goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing.

If you find all this disturbing, you should. The worst thing is that this approach will probably not prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. But this is what “realism” is all about. It is what sent Brent Scowcroft to raise a champagne toast to China’s leaders in the wake of Tiananmen Square. It is what convinced Gerald Ford not to meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the height of detente. Republicans have traditionally been better at it than Democrats — though they have rarely been rewarded by the American people at the ballot box, as Ford and George H.W. Bush can attest. We’ll see whether President Obama can be just as cold-blooded in pursuit of better relations with an ugly regime, without suffering the same political fate.”

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Posted at 9:45 AM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Wall Street Journal

(ed.’s note: A phenomenal read, all the way to the end.)

BADIRAGUATO, Mexico — As a child, Joaquín Guzmán Loera was so poor that he sold oranges to scrape together money for a meal. Since then, the 52-year-old has built a business empire and a personal fortune currently tied for number 701 on Forbes magazine’s list of global titans.

He also has another ranking: Mexico’s most wanted man.

Mr. Guzmán is the informal CEO of one of the world’s biggest drug-trafficking organizations, the so-called Sinaloa cartel, named for its home state of Sinaloa. It smuggles a big part of the marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines that end up on American streets, and it has links to organized crime in 23 countries, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.

Mr. Guzmán’s rivalries and turf wars have contributed to a drug-war death toll that stands at 11,000 in the past two and a half years, an average of 366 murders per month. His feuds stretch back more than two decades, leaving a trail of tombstones that act as milestones of the narcotics business south of the border.

Part Al Capone and part Jesse James, Mr. Guzmán has become a narco folk hero. He is feted on YouTube videos and by musicians who pen ballads, known as corridos, in his honor. He is known throughout Mexico simply as “El Chapo,” Mexican slang for a short and stocky man.

Adding to his mystique, “El Chapo” has survived several assassination attempts by rival gangs, including a 1993 attack that killed a Roman Catholic cardinal. He also pulled off the greatest escape in modern Mexico: from a maximum security prison in 2001 — in a laundry cart. Ever since, he has stayed a step ahead of Mexican and U.S. officials in a game of cat and mouse that is now in its ninth year.

Each year that Mexico is unable to catch “El Chapo” his legend grows — a direct challenge to the authority of the Mexican state. Last year, he flouted authorities by hosting a party, complete with cases of whiskey and a norteño band, in a remote Mexican village to watch his 18-year-old girlfriend, Emma Coronel, win a local beauty contest. Months later, he married her.

With each year, too, questions grow about why Mexico, together with help from the U.S., can’t find him — despite a $5 million bounty offered by Washington (tips can be sent to chapotips@usdoj.gov) and a $2 million reward from the Mexican government.

U.S. and Mexican officials say Mr. Guzmán has used money and cruelty to build a well-disciplined organization that protects him. He is believed to be hiding in the towering Sierra Madre mountains that run through Sinaloa and bordering states, making the task of finding him a bit like finding Osama bin Laden in the forbidding mountains of Pakistan. Another factor: Mr. Guzmán is believed to have bribed enough Mexican law-enforcement and army officials to get timely tip-offs that allow him to avoid capture.

Culiacan, Sinoloa is the unofficial capital of Mexico’s drug-trafficking business. Given the shortened lifespan for drug traffickers, shrines and mausoleums honoring fallen narcos have become an integral part of the city’s landscape. David Luhnow and Jose de Cordoba reports from Mexico.

On at least three occasions during the past three years, Mexican security agencies have gotten leads on Mr. Guzmán, only to find he had vanished by the time they turned up, according to a U.S. official. Part of the problem is logistics. In the mountains, the capo’s people can spot a caravan of military vehicles coming from miles away, giving him time to flee on anything from a helicopter to horseback.

Over the past few years, Mr. Guzmán has regularly visited a ranch in the remote mountains of Chihuahua state to check on his marijuana crop, according to a 2008 Mexican intelligence document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The ranch, owned by Mr. Guzmán’s associates, has an airstrip and an underground tunnel for access. “On at least three visits, he has arrived with a caravan of at least six vehicles, under the protection of some authorities in the Mexican army,” the document says.

Mexico’s Defense Ministry said in an email that it was unaware of the allegations, but added that “various criminal organizations have used army clothing and vehicles as a cover for their activities.”

In April, the archbishop in Durango, a state known for its scorpions, outlaws and rugged wilderness, declared that Mr. Guzmán was living there. “Just up the road from [the town of] Guanaceví, that’s where he lives, but, well, we all seem to know this except for the authorities,” Archbishop Héctor Gonzalez Martinez told local reporters.

Four days later, the bullet-riddled bodies of two army lieutenants turned up near Guanaceví in the trunk of a car, blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs. Next to the dead men was a note that read: “Neither the government nor the priests can handle ‘El Chapo.’”

Purported sightings of Mr. Guzmán are common. In at least three Mexican cities, including Culiacán, Sinaloa’s capital, people have reported seeing the capo turn up to eat at a local restaurant. They say he was preceded by bodyguards who confiscated diners’ cell phones and didn’t allow anyone to leave. As repayment for the patrons’ brief loss of liberty, Mr. Guzmán was said to have paid everyone’s tab.

An owner of one of the restaurants denies any such thing happened. But a Mexican intelligence report says that at least one of the restaurant stories is believed to be true.

Mexican officials say they don’t want to get obsessed with capturing Mr. Guzmán at the expense of winning the broader war on drugs. “In the past, the strategy was just to capture top guys and ignore the operational guys. Now we are trying to weaken the structure of the cartels,” says Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora.

This week alone, Mexican troops arrested José Parra, a leading gunman for the Sinaloa cartel who police say was helping Mr. Guzmán’s outfit wage war against the Tijuana cartel, a fight that claimed 749 lives last year. And in Durango, soldiers said they killed three of Mr. Guzman’s gunmen, including the alleged head of his organization in that city, and captured two others.

A U.S. official agrees that the capture of Mr. Guzmán himself would do little to slow the illegal drug market, but said it would be a major coup. “Catching him would be like the capture of Saddam Hussein after the Iraq war,” says the U.S. official. “His capture didn’t stop the insurgency, but it was a huge victory.”

Some U.S. officials believe Mexico will catch Mr. Guzmán soon. They say his status as Mexico’s most wanted man forces him to be constantly on the move, making it harder to conduct day-to-day business. They say he has aged rapidly in appearance, and draw parallels to the late Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar, who was finally killed after years on the lam.

“Chapo Guzmán is a dead man walking, and he knows it,” says Michael Braun, who retired eight months ago as the head of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. “No one in his business lives to old age, or to enjoy his grandchildren.”

But Mr. Guzmán has been underestimated before. In 2005, then Mexican Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said Mr. Guzmán was “no longer operating” in the drug business. In early 2007, the current attorney general, Mr. Medina Mora, wrote off Mr. Guzmán as a has-been in the drug business.

From left, Mr. Guzman’s brother Arturo “The Chicken” Guzmán was murdered in prison by a rival drug cartel; longtime associate Héctor “El Guero” Palma was captured in 1995 and sent to prison in the U.S.; Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel is now considered Mr. Guzman’s top associate in the cartel.

(Photos, left to right: Reuters, Associated Press, Zuma Press)

“I don’t care where he is,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. “He’s like a washed-up soccer star.”

Since then, Mr. Guzmán has left little doubt he’s a central figure in the drug war. Experts say it was his gang’s push into northern Chihuahua state to try to wrest control of lucrative smuggling routes from rival gangs that has turned the place into a war zone. Some 3,300 people have been killed in the past 15 months, according to press reports. A separate feud between Mr. Guzmán and a former associate, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, led to a killing spree in Sinaloa that claimed more than 600 lives. Among the victims of the feud: Mr. Guzmán’s 22-year-old son, Édgar, killed in a mall parking lot outside a Bridgestone tire-repair center in Culiacán.

Today, experts say Mr. Guzmán’s group is battling other cartels in states as diverse as Chihuahua, Durango, Baja California, Guerrero, Sonora, Michoacan, and Quintana Roo.

From left, brothers Benjamin, Francisco and Ramón Arellano Félix feuded over territory with Mr. Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel for nearby two decades. They initially went to war to wrest control of the Mexicali border from Mr. Guzmán and Hector Palma.

In Culiacán, urban legends about El Chapo are daily bread. One says that a thief unwittingly robbed the capo’s niece’s car, and got his hands cut off by Mr. Guzmán’s thugs as a lesson. In another, a former top state official reportedly fell for a local beauty and sent her an expensive gift. The gift was returned to his office along with a note from Mr. Guzmán saying the girl was his. “Send her another gift and I’ll kill you,” the note said.

Separating fact from fiction is difficult. Asking Mexican officials about El Chapo usually draws blank stares. “I don’t know much about him,” says Juan Millán, a former Sinaloa state governor. A local reporter who covers the drug trade for Noroeste, a leading Sinaloa newspaper, says he stays away from writing too much about the kingpin. “It isn’t worth dying for.”

According to the few people who have met him and are willing to talk publicly about it, Mr. Guzmán comes across as down-to-earth and intelligent, despite a third-grade education.

“He’s a simple guy, a rancher type, who talks with a country accent, but he’s very smart,” says José Antonio Ortega, a lawyer who took Mr. Guzmán’s deposition in prison shortly before he escaped in 2001. Scheduled to meet Mr. Guzmán at 10 a.m., Mr. Ortega says he was kept waiting at the prison until 10 p.m. He met the capo in a well-appointed prison cell that Mr. Guzmán used as his personal anteroom.
[Poster]

Mr. Guzmán apologized for the 12-hour delay, telling the lawyer that he had had a conjugal visit that day, and had then taken a nap and a shower in order to be ready to “receive [you] with all the courtesy you deserve to be received with,” Mr. Ortega recalls.

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Posted at 11:51 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright Pambazuka News

What the US wants from Ghana

2009-06-11, Issue 437
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/56862

Not since the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of a free South Africa has the election of a national leader generated so much global interest and excitement as that of Barack Obama last November. It was therefore predictable that the announcement of President Obama’s trip to Ghana from 10-11 July would attract extensive media coverage as the first state visit by the first ‘black’ president of the United States to any African state.

While cool heads maintain it is a result of Ghana’s enviable role as a beacon of hope in the continent, proving that multiparty democracy can work in Africa, others have added a partisan spin to the visit, alleging it is because President Mills has shown a greater commitment to fighting the drug barons, which has led to cocaine being in short supply.

The US government itself states the purpose of the visit is: ‘Strengthening the US relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and to highlight the critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development.’

But who is talking about what is in it for America?

US-GHANA RELATIONS

In the past Ghana has enjoyed a strong relationship with the US ever since the first American Peace Corps volunteers came to Ghana in 1961, the same year that President John F. Kennedy created the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to assist the developing world (aside from a blip in the mid-1980s during the Soussoudis spy affair). Indeed, the setting up of the US Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs in 1958 was largely informed by Ghana becoming the first black African nation to gain independence the previous year. But for the next three decades, Africa was little more than a geo-political lebensraum for proxy campaigns of the Cold War. It was not until March 1978 that sub-Saharan Africa witnessed its first ever state visit by an American president, Jimmy Carter, who first met President Olusegun Obasanjo in Lagos, Nigeria, and then President William Tolbert in Monrovia, Liberia, a country the United States established diplomatic relations with 147 years ago for obvious reasons.

Bill Clinton’s visit to sub-Saharan Africa in March 1998 was the first by a US president in 20 years. His successor, President George W. Bush, visited the continent twice in eight years and it was even said that Africa was the place where he felt most comfortable and welcome. He returned this by pushing for the implementation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which was passed just a year before his predecessor handed over to him. This was followed by initiatives of his own for Africa that earned him respect in the eyes of millions of Africans, including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003 and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which has thirty-two African countries on its development assistance radar. Under President Bush’s watch American assistance to Africa quadrupled since 2001.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JULY’S VISIT

Against this backdrop, July’s US state visit is significant for various reasons. It will be President Obama’s first to Africa – a continent that has not only personal significance for Obama the man, but growing political significance for Obama the president – and one that has significant expectations of the first black president to sit in the Oval Office.

For Ghana, Obama will be the third successive American president to have visited in the space of 11 years, confirming the significant position Ghana has assumed as a role model for the continent. That Obama’s first visit is to one of Africa’s unquestioned success stories rather than one of its examples of stalled development or conflict zones, will draw attention to the fact that there is proof right here in Africa that freedom can serve as the means to development and multi-party democracy can work. Ghana’s extraordinarily consistent economic growth pattern for the past seven years (registering a GDP of 7.3 per cent in 2008) offers the best evidential advertisement for the new development paradigm, which seeks to show that not only can freedom and development go hand in hand, but that the former provides a helping hand to the latter.

WHY GHANA?

But we must not ignore America’s interest. After all, whatever his connection to the African continent, Obama is president of America – and acts in the interest of its people at home above all else. So what can Americans hope to gain from President Obama’s trip to Ghana?

First, this trip offers a very compelling platform for America to reaffirm to a significant mass of the world the triumph of its values of liberal democracy, rule of law and freedom. With the US’s failure to impose these in the Middle East, and China’s irksome demonstration that economic progress can be achieved without them, Ghana helps bolster the US’s argument about the centrality of these values to the development process.

But the decision to embark on this trip was also made on the basis of some tangible and concrete opportunities for America in the region.

Top on the list is the United States’ military and energy security agenda. Before the 9/11 bombing in 2001, conventional thinking in Washington perceived no vital strategic interests for the US in sub-Saharan Africa. But this has changed. Today we can see a significant shift away from America’s traditional geopolitical calculations regarding oil production and supply. The US’s National Intelligence Council (NIC) estimates that by 2015, 25 per cent of American oil imports will come from West Africa, compared to 16 per cent today – an estimate even considered as too conservative in some quarters. Already West Africa supplies as much oil to the US as Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, our oil is light and sweet, making it easier and cheaper to refine than Persian oil. Plus its offshore location reduces transportation costs and minimises risk of political violence and terrorist attacks.

This shift in global energy patterns to the Gulf of Guinea has led to a significant re-evaluation of foreign policy focus and global alliances, resulting in a multi-layered engagement with countries such as Ghana, that encompasses military and energy security, and development aid. This trip is thus at the heart of Washington’s strategy of working with its regional allies in West Africa to develop relationships that will secure its energy security in the long term.

The United States, in typical Dick Cheney oilthink, sees the Gulf of Guinea as offering the opportunity to break with the old politics which saw the US at the mercy of the geostrategic pressure of unstable or unfriendly oil-producing states in the ‘old’ Gulf (Persian Gulf) and Venezuela.

The way forward is a pro-active policy to build a new Gulf of energy security and prosperity in a part of the world that is relatively receptive to American presence. With significant discoveries being made in the Gulf of Guinea oil basin, off the coast of Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Congo and Cote d’Ivoire, according to the Energy Information Administration of the US Department of Energy, the United States will be importing in the year 2020 over 770 million barrels of African oil a year. And Ghana with its stability, notable responsiveness to America, deepening multiparty democracy and promising investment climate is seen as the perfect epicentre for the growth and fulfilment of this interest. In the eyes of America, geography, geology and ideology all favour Ghana as the gem in the crown of this new policy.

WHAT ABOUT CHINA?

But the US is not alone in seeing Africa as a better bet to provide a secure source of energy. There is a new scramble for Africa’s raw materials, especially energy resources, brought on by China’s astonishing industrial growth and its deepening influence in the global economy. It is the second largest consumer of oil in the world behind the United States. Consistently high economic growth rates saw Asia’s formerly largest oil exporter switch to become a net importer of oil since 1993. The International Energy Agency projects China’s net oil imports will jump from 3.5 million barrels per day in 2006 to 13.1 million barrels per day by 2030.

In 2006, 9 per cent of Africa’s oil exports went to China (with 60 per cent of Sudan’s oil export China-bound). The US received 33 per cent. Already, China has sped past Britain and France to become Africa’s second-highest trading partner behind the United States.

Though Angola, the second largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, supplies the US with approximately twice as much oil as it does China, China has outpaced the United States in partnering Angola’s rapid development with its multi-billion dollar investment support in the country’s infrastructure. For example, in 2006, Sinopec, China’s state-owned energy company, bid US$2.2 billion for two deep-water blocks off the Angolan coast. Two years earlier, Beijing softened the ground with a US$2 billion package of loans and aid to Angola, which has Chinese companies building telecommunications infrastructure, roads, railways, bridges, buildings, schools and hospitals.

However, in 2007, Erica Strecker Downs of the Brookings Institute think tank made some headway in calming American anxiety over China and African oil. She wrote that contrary to public opinion, China’s NOCs are not ‘locking up’ the lion’s share of African oil as part of a centralised quest for energy. But while China, with a mere 3 per cent of its FDI in Africa and controlling under 2 per cent of oil reserves on the continent, may not be winning the race for oil exploration and production in Africa, there is no question that China is winning more and more of the oil supply produced in Africa.

If the US wants to out-muscle China in the 21st century scramble for Africa, then it will have to show more aggression in investing in the development of infrastructure on the continent, as China is doing. Even if American money comes with job for American companies, Africans are not likely to complain so long as it ends in the brick and mortar of the continent’s infrastructural development. Africans believe they are increasingly feeling more and more the positive might of Beijing in their quest for advancement. Chinese investment deserves a big part of the credit for Africa’s highest ever economic growth rate, 5.8 per cent in 2007. Furthermore, China has cancelled US$10 billion in bilateral debt owed to it by African countries.

Outside of Ghana’s oil exploration and production zone, the US and China’s involvement in Ghana’s development has been most obvious in two major infrastructural projects in the energy sector. The first, the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP), is 59 per cent owned by Chevron, the US-based oil multinational company and Royal Dutch Shell. This US$700 million onshore-offshore pipeline will run 681 kilometres from the Western Niger Delta of Nigeria via Benin and Togo to Ghana, and was cooperatively underwritten by the World Bank in 2004. The bank, however, refused to underwrite the Bui Dam project designed to generate 400MW of electricity for Ghanaians. It took a 2006 visit to President Hu Jintao of China by President J A Kufuor to secure Chinese support for the dam’s construction (by Sino-Hydro) and funding (Exim Bank) at an estimated cost of US$600 million.

These two projects highlight the masterful diplomacy that the Mills’ administration will need to deploy in the coming years in order to secure optimal benefit for Ghana from its new oil-rich status.

HOW GHANA MUST UTILISE ITS NEW STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE

With the discovery of significant oil potential offshore, Ghana has not only new international importance – we also have cause for greater confidence and strength in our global interactions. The increased interest of both China and the United States in Ghana can add extraordinary oomph to Ghana’s development – but this can only happen if we become smarter, more strategic and more assertive in our dealings with these two powerful nations.

The Obama trip reinforces the extent of US strategic interest in the country. Ghana has become an object of international desire between the two super powers of the 21st century – America and China – and the Americans are in no mood to lose its ‘trusted partner’ to the Chinese.

The Americans know what they want from Ghana. But does Ghana know what it wants from America? The question is: Has the Ghanaian government taken a considered, sober decision on the price to be paid and the prize to be gained for being considered as the serene oasis at the heart of the ‘New Gulf’? President Obama came into office with the strategic objective of ‘investing in a shared humanity’ with regards to US policy in Africa, listing his three thematic policy areas of focus as:

i. To accelerate Africa’s integration into the global economy
ii. To enhance the peace and security of African states
iii. To strengthen relationships with those governments, institutions and civil society organisations committed to deepening democracy, accountability and reducing poverty in Africa.

He may well be the president who can make a bold resourceful contribution to see the realisation of the dream of an African nation breaking though the stigma of underdevelopment to act as a trailblazer for the others. Ghana has the potential to serve as this model – but it will require a wholesale adoption of a new attitude of assertiveness based on a well-founded confidence in what we bring to the table, and a permanent shift from the outdated and counterproductive assumption amongst Ghanaians that our country is simply a geographical mass of humanitarian concerns or a charity case.

But has the mindset of the Ghanaian leadership gravitated towards this new reality?

GLOBAL ECONOMIC POSITIONING

As Ken Ofori-Atta of Databank stated at Chatham House recently, ‘We have not seen such massive destruction of wealth in the history of modern civilisation and I might add also such rapid recreation of capital in the past year. Africa is truly astounded at how quickly the West can mobilise to save their companies when a fraction of those amounts could reinstate the impressive growth trajectory which Africa had achieved.’ The rich economies are prepared to spend $2 trillion to rescue their financial infrastructure. For nearly a decade now, Africans have been demanding extra funding to the tune of $60 billion a year to accelerate its development – a mere three per cent of what is being pumped into the western financial systems today to maintain socio-corporate standards there.

The UN under-secretary general and executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, Abdoulie Janneh, said the current economic downturn could cost Africa US$251 billion in 2009 and US$277 billion in 2010 in export earnings, despite earlier predictions that the continent would not be hard hit. So whatever is on offer to countries like Ghana by the IMF and World Bank only follows the old pattern of development assistance never matching what is taken out from Africa.

Unfortunately, once again, (a little over a year after Ghana issued its first sovereign bond on the international capital market) we have been forced by exogenous circumstances to make a u-turn to over-dependence on the Bretton Wood institutions for our development spending. And we are being told to adopt a kind of fiscal discipline which the developed world is also finding to be fundamentally contradictory to their programme for stimulating their economies today.

Much noise has been made both in Ghana and elsewhere about Ghana’s ‘extraordinarily huge’ 2008 budget deficit of 11.5 per cent of GDP. Indeed, the Ghanaian government has allowed it to serve as a roadblock in the way of maintaining, let alone increasing, the momentum of development Ghana has experienced in the last seven years. It is worth noting that in America the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the US budget deficit will reach US$1.85 trillion this year, 13.1 per cent of GDP. Furthermore, they project deficits averaging over US$1 trillion a year for the next 10 years, which will raise the US public debt-to-GDP ratio to over 80 per cent by 2019. Ghana’s total public debt stood at US$7,742.4 million in May 2009, representing a debt-to-GDP ratio of 49.2%. Both huge budget deficits were necessary responses to national crisis and imperatives. In Ghana’s case the energy crisis of 2007 and the urgency with which Ghana needs to invest in its infrastructure and respond to a rising cost of living contributed to our unusually high deficit.

In July 2005, when heads of the world’s leading industrialised countries (the G8) pledged to step up development aid by US$50 billion by 2010, with half of the increase going to Africa, African leaders hailed it as a significant high-gear shift in development aid from the developed world. Barely four years later, what we know today is that a lot more money can be found for productive investment to push millions of Africans out of poverty. US development assistance to Ghana in 2007 – about US$55 million – was nowhere near that befitting a nation carrying the kind of strategic weight that contemporary Pentagon thinking suggests.

In real terms it is little improvement on the 1994 assistance of US$38 million, plus US$16 million in food aid. President Bush contributed an extra US$547 million support from the Millennium Challenge Account. But this was given when America’s strategic flirtation with Ghana was purely based on its interests in Ghana as a geographical location for AFRICOM rather than the additional oil value it has today.

What has all this to do with Obama’s trip?

Negotiations are not held in a vacuum. A nation that sits around the table without prior knowledge and appreciation of its own strengths and weaknesses in its counterpart’s mind has provided gaping holes in its negotiation armoury and is bound to come out with a bad deal. A good deal depends on both an understanding of the cards in your hands and your opponent’s, and the skilful and strategic play of these cards. The first of these cards that the Ghanaian government must not fail to appreciate is the fact that Superpower America now sees West Africa as a zone of strategic importance – it is no longer a question of just us needing them, but they now also need us.

Our trump card is of course oil. But if we are to prevent ourselves being played by the US, we must deploy this to maximum benefit: Ultimately it is up to Africans to selfishly see our oil as means to provide energy security to others in exchange for support for more rapid African economic development.

In the words of US Congressman William Jefferson, ‘The strategic question is which countries we depend on for this oil. The suggestion that comes out of all of these discussions is our best partners are in West Africa for many of the reasons I’ve mentioned: the commitment to democracy. Though there may be strivings and failings, nonetheless there is a commitment. West Africa is closer, making it easier to move product from there to here; the resources are, in most cases, not landlocked. Things usually work fairly well if you’re out in deep water.’

Since 2007, Washington has become more convinced that the Gulf of Guinea is an area of ‘Vital Interest’ and Ghana is in prime position to serve as its hub, a point reinforced by the seemingly smooth transition from one democratically elected government to another of a different party.

AFRICOM

Furthermore, the US is, understandably, bent on establishing a regional command for Africa, similar to US Forces Korea, with a homeport situated on the African continent to protect their interests. West Africa is its natural home, given the need to protect energy interests in the Gulf of Guinea. Liberia has offered but simply cannot match the kind of convenience available in Ghana. It can be a win-win situation.

AFRICOM can protect US investments in our region. But, those investments (regardless of our percentage share of ownership) are also fundamentally our investments – and thus the assistance in their protection will be a welcome boon. US military presence can also help improve the level of military professionalism of our already well-respected troops. It is interesting to note that in the six decades since World War II in which America has maintained a military presence in other sovereign nations, none of the host nations has suffered instability or military takeovers, as the presence of US troops helps entrench the subordination of soldiers to civil leadership. Moreover the presence of U.S. troops boosts social and economic activities in the host countries, too.

The loudest argument against Ghana hosting AFRICOM when the possibility first arose was that it would make us a target for anti-American terrorists. But a global examination of the number and location of American military bases overseas vis-à-vis the geographical targets of terrorist attacks, shows that this argument has far greater emotive value than evidential corroboration.

At the moment the Americans say they are happy to keep the US Africa Command headquarters in Germany, to coordinate all US military and security interests throughout the African continent. But any reasonable assessment must conclude that this can be nothing but a temporary address and arrangement. Ghana should welcome that it is thus the target of America’s desire – and we should make the most of this, using it for our own advantage. After all, the process has already started.

The US and Ghanaian militaries have cooperated in numerous joint training exercises, including the African Crisis Response Initiative, an international activity in which the US facilitates the development of an interoperable peacekeeping capacity among African nations. And the head of AFRICOM has already reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to assisting the Ghana Armed Forces ‘to become more robust’.

There is also the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program. Beyond that, Ghana and the US have an active bilateral International Military Education and Training program.

In 2007, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, the managing editor of The Insight newspaper and the energy behind the pressure group Socialist Forum, warned Ghanaians against what he saw to be the looming danger of a US military base in Ghana. He cited, inter alia, the erection of the huge American Embassy complex in Cantonments as evidence of this. Meanwhile, in August 2007 Major-General Ward, who was later confirmed as AFRICOM’s first commander, visited Accra. He held discussions with President Kufuor on ‘ways of strengthening military cooperation.’ His high-powered secret meetings with the president, minister of defence and the chief of defence staff triggered huge speculation. Much was made of Maj Gen J B Danquah’s public statement about the visit when he said Maj Gen Ward had ‘done enough to resolve’ Ghana’s concerns about AFRICOM, adding, ‘I have had the chance to hear [Ward] explain what is the reasoning behind the command, and it’s all about partnership.’

General T. Hobbins, head of the US Air Forces Europe, has held discussions with his counterparts here on the possibility of establishing ‘lily pads’, landing and rapid airlift facilities in otherwise deserted terrain in certain strategic sites in Africa. Tamale Airport has come up as one of the ‘forward operating sites’ targeted. That airport is said to have a runway capacity of accommodating massive US C-3 cargo planes and troop transports.

Ghana is also already the site of a US-European Command-funded Exercise Reception Facility that was established to facilitate troop deployments for exercises or crisis response within the region. The direct link to our oil is only too apparent: The Facility came out of Ghana’s partnership with the United States on what is termed a Fuel Hub Initiative. It may sound like a mere gas station for the troops. But the choice of stable, imminently oil-rich Ghana as a Fuel Hub reflects a greater strategic interest in the country than as merely a filling station.

The Americans have not been shy in establishing a clear economic link alongside their military cooperation. Ghana is one of the few African nations, mainly those with oil, selected for the State Partnership Program to promote greater economic ties with US institutions, including the National Guard. Expanding this to deepen our cooperation with the Drugs Enforcement Agency is one other area that President Mills should focus attention on.

GHANA THE ‘NATURAL’ ALLY

This all points to the fact that the United States sees Ghana as having all the vital statistics and morphological features of a ‘natural’ ally. We have the oil reserves, we are in the stable centre of the ‘New Gulf’ and we have the military discipline and stable atmosphere to make us the perfect hosts for America’s first major military migration to our continent. America is strategically placed to maintain and deepen its stronger footing here, ensuring it rather than China becomes our dominant ally. As one analyst confirmed, Washington has no interest in seeing China’s presence in Africa extended to Ghana. The fact, however, is that China is already here and the recent dealings between the Mills administration and the ruling Chinese Communist Party means the US needs to act sooner rather than later.

Obama’s chief policy adviser assured Africans two months before the 2008 presidential race, ‘Barack Obama understands Africa, and understands its importance to the United States. Today, in this new century, he understands that to strengthen our common security, we must invest in our common humanity and, in this way, restore American leadership in the world.’ Now is the chance for him to seek and effect the real change that will finally show the world that Africans are capable of more than managing their own affairs – but, crucially, Ghana must take up the opportunity provided by the state visit and the US’s burgeoning strategic interest in us, to be the nation that demonstrates this.

* This article first appeared on GhanaWeb.
* Asare Otchere-Darko is executive director of the Danquah Institute, a think-tank based in Accra.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Posted at 11:46 PM · Comments (0)

Copyright The Financial Times

China Central Television, the country’s main state broadcaster, is planning to relaunch its flagship news programme in a quest to defend its position as the country’s paramount media organisation in the face of a changing industry.

CCTV wants to make Network News, the news programme with the largest audience in the world, more attractive to viewers by devoting less time to reporting the activities of political leaders, introducing livelier anchors and adding more critical reporting, editors involved in the plans said.
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The national evening news programme has no direct competitor and is re-broadcast on all local and provincial news channels, but has found it increasingly difficult to keep viewers from switching to entertainment and sports programmes.

“CCTV is losing out because the news programme is dull and too limited to positive messages only. You cannot do that anymore because citizens’ sources of information have multiplied,” said Tong Bing, a professor of journalism at Fudan University in Shanghai. “The news programme needs a radical overhaul, cosmetic changes will not do.”

How far the makeover will go could indicate how serious Beijing is in reforming its media landscape.

China’s ruling Communist party is trying to transform the media, still all state-owned, into more market-responsive entities while keeping them under political control. At the same time, the rapid spread of the internet is increasingly diluting the state’s monopoly on information.

The party tightened the screws around last week’s anniversary of the bloody suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen student democracy movement. But overall, the range of information and opinions available in China has broadened over the past few years.

Blogs and online social media have taken a key role in forming the news agenda. Newspapers and networks not under the control of the central government or the party have adopted more daring and more entertaining content.

But Network News has remained virtually untouched as the holy grail of Communist party propaganda. “Currently, the programme has three parts: political leaders’ activities for the first ten minutes, other news for second ten minutes, and international news for last ten minutes,” said Mr Tong. “During the first part, people tend to watch commercials. They use the second part to go to the toilet. Only for the third part will they come back to listen.”

A wave of hate and schadenfreude earlier this year in reaction to CCTV’s accidental burning down of part of its new futuristic headquarters served as a wake-up call to the Communist party over just how unpopular the network has become.

The party wants to build CCTV from a party mouthpiece into a “national broadcaster”, although politicians and advisers have yet to explain what exactly that would mean in China.

Last month, the Communist party appointed Jiao Li, a deputy head of its propaganda department, to replace Zhao Huayong, CCTV’s elderly head. The appointment of such a heavyweight figure appears a clear sign that the network is in for some serious changes.

The news programme revamp is the first sign that Mr Jiao is getting to work.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

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Copyright

An excerpt:

…”Kevin Kelly calls Wikipedia, Flickr, and Twitter the “vanguard of a cultural movement”, an emerging “global collectivist society.” Amateur photographers, he reminds us, have published over three billion photographs on Flickr. Six billion videos are uploaded to YouTube every month. The blog search engine Technorati tracks over a million blog posts published every single day. Apple’s pervasive iTunes media player serves over 125,000 podcasts, including more than 25,000 video podcasts.

The small minority of internet users who actively contribute content sure do contribute a lot of it. They review restaurants and businesses on Yelp. They fulfill the role of editors by recommending content on Delicious, StumpleUpon, Digg, and Reddit. They share their medical history on Patients Like Me and Google Health. They create high quality maps of their communities on OpenStreetMap and design 3D models of buildings, monuments, and landmarks using Google’s free SketchUp software. They report news just like traditional journalists. On Flickr they help the United States’ Library of Congress describe and contextualize the photographs in their collection. They translate blog posts, articles, magazines, and videos into different languages.

What is even more incredible is that they do this all for free, without receiving any economic compensation whatsoever. Hundreds of millions of internet users are spending a small amount of their day’s cognitive energy not on the work that they are paid to do, but rather the online projects and forms of self-expression that interest them. Kevin Kelly calls it a “New Socialism“, which is based on sharing and community, but not limited by political ideology. (The most active contributors of free content are as likely to idolize Adam Smith as Karl Marx.)
The Cloud: The Third Chapter of the Internet

A little over fifty years ago, Thomas Watson from IBM said that he could foresee a need for perhaps five computers worldwide, and we now know that that figure was wrong, because he overestimated by four.

Clay Shirky, Napster Speech 2

Whether you speak in terms of clouds, streams, or waves (the modern internet sounds like a naturalist’s dreamscape), the recent preview of Google Wave is indicative of a fundamental change that has transformed how we interact with the internet and how the internet enables us to interact with one another.

The modern web was developed in order to enable academics and scientists to share their research with one another. This was done primarily over email, but also with static (and often ugly) web pages. The second chapter began in the 1990’s when, during a bubble of investment, web programmers developed new technologies that made websites more dynamic by using databases, and more interactive thanks to JavaScript and Flash. The investment bubble burst, but those same technologies were implemented to create the tools that make up the internet as we know it today: wikis, blogs, RSS readers, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook.

We have now come to the third chapter of the Internet. The “cloud” refers to all those servers based around the world that store our personal data, but which we rarely ever think about. If you are a Gmail user, then your emails live “in the cloud”, on a server at one of Google’s many server farms. Our daily thoughts, in the form of Twitter messages, live in the cloud, as does our search history, our Facebook activity, all of the pictures we publish on Flickr and Picasa.

Just two years ago I stored all of my text documents on my own computer and would send them via email to anyone who showed interest. If they made edits to my documents, then I would need to update my own local copy. Today my documents are stored “in the cloud”, on Google Docs, where they can be instantly accessed by trusted friends and colleagues. At any time I can access the most recent copy of any document on my computer or mobile phone. Today we don’t just publish information to the internet; we actually create it online and then download it to our computers and cell phones when we need it.

The cloud is growing exponentially. Every day more and more of us spend a small percentage of our cognitive energy to add value to the cloud. And as we do so, the cloud itself becomes more intelligent, a vast social brain in which every internet user is a metaphorical neuron. In fact, the structure of the internet and the processes it depends on is similar to that of the human brain…”

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Copyright The Daily Beast

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Copyright China Matters

Monday, June 08, 2009

New Day in North Korea Policy?

I have a feeling that Pyongyang, taking a leaf from Iran’s book (and its detention and subsequent release of American journalist Roxana Siberi), has the idea of releasing the two hapless American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee—who were just sentenced to twelve years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korea from China and alleged “hostile acts”—as a goodwill gesture to the United States.

It will be interesting to see if the Obama administration will consider the journalists’ release as an adequate olive branch for resumption of talks.

In a sense of where the goalposts are set for hostage-journalists, Bill Richardson, go-to guy for North Korean jawboning (unless Al Gore gets into the act) said:

“Talk of an envoy is premature because what first has to happen is a framework for negotiations on a potential humanitarian release. What we would try to seek would be some kind of a political pardon.”

Hopefully for Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee, the Obama approach to North Korea will gain some traction.

When the old arguments about North Korea resurfaced, I wondered if I could recycle my Korea posts from the Bush administration under the heading SSDD: Same [Stuff] Different Day.

All the familiar soft-power tropes of the confront-Pyongyang years were there: Security Council resolutions, the Proliferation Security Initiative, financial sanctions against North Korean banks, heck even runaway Patriot Act 301 Banco Delta Asia investigation ubermeister Stuart Levey was still there (though the State Department briefing transcripts can’t seem to spell his name properly. Stuart Levy? Hey Stu, don’t stand for that! Freeze their bank accounts til they get it right!).

I wondered if the Obama administration was genuinely or willfully clueless about Kim Jung-Il’s desire for a special relationship with the United States.

The good news, I think, is that the Obama administration has a plan. Not exactly eager engagement, but not just overt hostility or malign neglect, either.

In other words, Different Administration Different Day

The New York Times had a useful North Korea backgrounder a.k.a. supervised spin in the anonymous sourcemobile for longtime passenger David Sanger with Obama administration insiders at the wheel.

The White House essentially put North Korea on notice that the previous exercises in negotiation centered on Pyongyang’s nuclear program won’t be repeated, no matter how many devices Kim Jung-Il sets off.

Because the current foreign policy team has decided that the current regime will never surrender its nukes:

While Mr. Obama was in the Middle East and Europe last week, several senior officials said the president’s national security team had all but set aside the central assumption that guided American policy toward North Korea over the past 16 years and two presidencies: that the North would be willing to ultimately abandon its small arsenal of nuclear weapons in return for some combination of oil, nuclear power plants, money, food and guarantees that the United States would not topple its government, the world’s last Stalinesque regime.

Now, after examining the still-inconclusive evidence about the results of North Korea’s second nuclear test, the administration has come to different conclusions: that Pyonyang’s top priority is to be recognized as a nuclear state, that it is unwilling to bargain away its weapons and that it sees tests as a way to help sell its nuclear technology.

“This entirely changes the dynamic of how you deal with them,” a senior national security aide said.

The unspoken corollary appears to be that, since regime change is also off the table, the United States has decided it can live with a nuclear North Korea—as long as it doesn’t proliferate.

The State Department press briefing on Friday displayed, to my mind, sweet reasonableness and a marked shift from security to economic terms of debate.

Assistant Secretary Philip Crowley resisted the urge to hype the red-meat issue of the trial of Lee and Ling.

He did state the official “ultimate” policy to denuclearize North Korea, but also made the case for engagement by touching on the point frequently harped on by China Matters as the proper point of departure for U.S. policy: that North Korea is an Asian economic dragon en ovo:

We want to get North Korea back into a negotiating process. We want to get them to stop doing things that are destabilizing in the region and start to focus on what it has to do in the future. I mean, if you look at South – at North Korea’s economy, I mean, 30 years ago, it was one of the wealthier countries in the region, and today it is one of the poorest countries on Earth. So I think – and certainly, its neighbors have advanced significantly from an economic standpoint – these facts are known in North Korea. So to the extent that we can find financial levers to put appropriate pressure on North Korea, it’s not – that’s not an end in itself; it is a means to an end.

What we ultimately want is a denuclearized North Korea. We want a country that is acting constructively, beginning to integrate itself into the larger community, act responsibly with respect to its neighbors. That’s our ultimate objective, and we will continue to use whatever levers that we see available and we think will be effective. But our ultimate objective is to get back to negotiations and to get – and to start to once again make progress on the commitments that North Korea has made previously.

…

I would think that over time, the increase in – the gap between North Korea and the rest of the region is growing larger. Those facts have to be known to the people of North Korea. And they eventually – I mean, this is what’s tragic about this whole situation. North Korea is spending billions of dollars to fire off missiles, conduct nuclear tests, and yet they’re not able to feed their people.[emph. added]

But even if talks do resume, North Korea will have to deal with the Obama administration’s stated intention not to enable another expensive and unproductive nuclear boondoggle as a precondition for detailed negotiations.

As Defense Secretary Gates said, “I’m tired of buying the same horse twice.”

In other words, I see the prospect for some systematic “Nixon Goes to China” diplomatic engagement, rather than another session of ritualized extortion centered on Kim Jung Il’s nuclear program.

We’ll see if the Obama administration can display the requisite ritualized aggression at the UN Security Council needed to deflect Republican charges of capitulation and appeasement.

To set the anchor for negotiation, I think the Obama administration is drawing a PSI red line for North Korea that even China may be able live with—and, more importantly, affirm in a UN Security Council resolution: no exports of missiles or missile technology, let alone nuclear technology or devices

Distinct and reasonable Proliferation Security Initiative guidelines—ones that involve inspections only by host navies in their own territorial waters—will, I believe, be important to China.

Little known fact: China was a conspicuous and helpless victim of a-U.S. directed diversion and inspection in the pre-PSI days:

In the Yin He incident of 1993, the Clinton administration alleged that a Chinese container ship was carrying chemical weapons precursors destined for Iran. Diplomatic pressure by the United States prevented the Yin He from docking at any of its planned ports of call. After futile representations and impotent protests by the Chinese government and 20 days in nautical and diplomatic limbo the unlucky vessel finally proceeded to Saudi Arabia’s Dammam Port for a joint inspection of its 728 containers by the United States, China, and the Saudis—which found nothing.

John Bolton’s subsequent effort to purpose the PSI as the tool for an indiscriminate and destabilizing economic blockade of North Korea for the purpose of regime change did nothing to endear the initiative to China.

With only a minor global naval presence, the Chinese are extremely leery of establishing a precedent for the U.S. and/or its allies to barge aboard other countries’ ships in pursuit of whatever.

China will endorse the exercise of a PSI initiative against North Korea gingerly, if at all.

But if the Obama administration can come up with a sanction that China sincerely supports (as opposed to the sanctions of the Bush administration, which targeted China almost as much as North Korea and were openly opposed by the PRC) while holding out the possibility of diplomatic and economic engagement, we might actually see some movement on North Korea.

And Kim Jong Il, eager to secure his son’s succession and a controlled opening to the global economy, might decide that the Obama administration is offering him the best opportunity he can expect from the United States in his dwindling lifetime.

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Copyright The New York Times

From a review of: THE EAST, THE WEST, AND SEX
A History of Erotic Encounters
By Richard Bernstein
Illustrated. 325 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.

“…Perhaps that is when it all began to change; perhaps it was long before the wars, in Japan and Vietnam, that brought so many sex-starved soldiers into contact with this apparently magical world. Perhaps the change happened when rich young businessmen, men armed with cash rather than carbines, came East and began to wield more freely what this exchange between Western men and Eastern women was already truly all about: power.

For that is what this book seems to miss, or if not to miss, then not to make as obvious as it should be. Perhaps there is a kernel of truth, as Mr. Bernstein observes, that “the sexual advantage of the Western man in the East is an aspect of Western dynamism, the questing spirit of Europeans, compared with the relative passivity of Asian in these matters.” .

But some will find this an almost insultingly trivial explanation, compared with what is a far more tragic certainty: that whether these sexual transactions occurred centuries ago and involved a sultan with his harem or a daimyo with his geisha, or whether they took place during the Vietnam War and involved a G.I. with his Hong Kong go-go girl, the central truth is always the same. The transactions have always ultimately been based on the same pathetic reality: poor women — and lots and lots of them in those countries that have large populations and place too little value on the female sex — must peddle their bodies and their dignity to whomever has the power to demand them.

In recent years Eastern entrepreneurs, perhaps the tawdriest of all players in an increasingly tawdry business, have cashed in on the trade, creating for millions of foreign visitors the fancy that what is on sale in today’s bars and brothels is somehow mystical, magical and a traditional sacrament of the Orient. It isn’t: it is every bit as much about power and exploitation as if it took place on Eighth Avenue or north of King’s Cross Station. There is absolutely nothing Eastern, nothing magical and nothing exotic about it. It is all just quite desperately sad.”

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Copyright USA Today

PARIS — Let the debates begin.

Roger Federer’s coveted victory at the French Open on Sunday against Sweden’s Robin Soderling will launch a cavalcade of bar stool and Internet chat-room discussions about whether he is the greatest male player of all time.

The Swiss No. 2’s first Paris win presents a strong case: It tied him on the all-time leaderboard in majors with Pete Sampras at 14, and also pushed him past Sampras as one of six men to complete a career Grand Slam — winning each of the four majors, Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.

Federer, 27, has done so over an astonishingly short span since winning his first of five Wimbledons in 2003.

“I didn’t think it would take seven years to tie it,” Sampras said in a statement to ATPWorldTour.com. Sampras won his last major at the 2002 U.S. Open, and he told news organizations the Paris win confirms Federer as the best of all time.

SAMPRAS’ ENDORSEMENT: Says Federer is now ‘the greatest ever’

If Federer’s missing Roland Garros title “settles the debate” according to Tennis Channel analyst Justin Gimelstob, it’s an argument that is far from airtight.

“I don’t think you can compare eras,” said Australian Rod Laver, the only man to win two calendar-year Grand Slams and who is often cited as the standard-bearer of greatness. “You can be the dominant performer of your time, but I don’t think anyone has the title of best ever.”

Like Laver, Federer accomplished what Sampras never did: A win at Roland Garros. The American had some success on clay but his best result in Paris was the semifinals in 1995.

Federer, of course, has been a force on clay. Were it not for archrival Rafael Nadal, he might own more than one French Open crown.

The Swiss star — whose résumé also includes five Wimbledons, five U.S. Opens and three Australian Open titles — has been the second-best player on clay of his era, reaching the last three Paris finals and the semifinals the year before. Each time, he fell to Spaniard Nadal.

But playing a speculative parlor game of hypotheticals doesn’t necessarily provide answers.

“What Laver did is god-like,” said Andre Agassi, who completed his career Slam at Roland Garros in 1999 and who handed Federer his coveted Coupe des Mousquetaires men’s trophy Sunday. “To win all of them in the same year twice — how do you argue with that?”

At the same time, Agassi said, Federer’s consistency across all surfaces — his 20 consecutive appearances in Grand Slam finals is twice as long as the second best — and his Slam mark are unmatched.

“I wouldn’t be on that side of the argument,” Agassi said of downplaying Federer’s greatness.

Many variables come into play when comparing eras.

Laver won his first Slam in 1962 as an amateur and his second as a professional in 1969.

PHOTO GALLERY: Top shots from Roland Garros

Like many of his peers, the Australian known as the “Rocket” joined the professional barnstorming tours of the day and was ineligible to play the majors for a large chunk of his career because they were reserved for amateurs only until the post-1968 Open era.

Laver might well have won many more than his 11 major titles had he been able to play from 1963-67.

Similarly, some of his greatest rivals such as Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad and Pancho Gonzalez already had turned pro, meaning Laver faced lighter competition for some of his wins. Players such as Hoad and Gonzalez, meantime, had few chances to stockpile their own cache of majors, even though many consider them among the best of all time.

“I won a lot when Hoad and Rosewall and Gonzalez weren’t able to play in those tournaments,” Laver said.

It’s even dangerous to make comparisons in modern times.

Until it grew into prominence in the 1990s, the Australian Open was often an afterthought. Eight-time major winner Jimmy Connors played it just once more after winning it in his debut in 1974. Bjorn Borg, an 11-time Grand Slam champ, trekked Down Under just once, losing in the third round.

In the last three decades, surfaces have changed.

At one time, three of the four majors — the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the U.S Open — were played on grass. Today, they are played on three different surfaces, clay, grass and hardcourts.

Sampras’ coach, Paul Annacone, said: “How many majors would Pete have won if he were playing three out of four on grass?”

Critics could point out at least two glaring holes in Federer’s sparkling record: his lack of a Davis Cup title and his 13-7 losing record against main foe Nadal.

“Roger’s numbers are hard to disagree with,” Agassi said. “And then you have a guy who’s beaten him almost twice as much. Sounds like an Achilles’ heel.”

Though no fault of his, some say Federer has had few great players to push him until Nadal, while Sampras battled numerous multiple major winners such as Agassi, Jim Courier, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Sergi Bruguera and Gustavo Kuerten.

As Annacone points out, records and best-ever discussions come with a built-in escalation factor. Who’s to say whether Federer’s 14 majors are superior to Sampras’ unprecedented six-year run of finishing the season No. 1 from 1993-98, or whether the measuring stick of greatness will shift?

“To me, that’s more impressive than 14 grand Slam titles,” Annacone said.

Roy Emerson of Australia was infrequently mentioned as the greatest of all time when Sampras passed his mark at the 2000 Wimbledon, largely because he won his 12 majors as an amateur in the pre-1968 era when professionals were competing elsewhere.

This much is certain: there can no longer be any shortlists of greats without Federer’s name attached. He joins Fred Perry, Donald Budge, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson and Agassi as the only men to win all four majors in their careers. Only Agassi and Federer did so on three different surfaces.

Asked in his postmatch news conference where he stands in history, a proud Federer mostly dodged the question.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever know who was the greatest of all time, but I’m definitely happy to be right up there, that’s for sure,” he said.

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Copyright Dissent

The Last Visitor
Daniel A. Bell - May 20, 2009

The Last Visitor Image

BEIJING IS an international city, but my neighborhood isn’t. I live in the far northwest part of the city, outside the fifth ring road, and in three years here I’ve seen a grand total of two other foreigners. I moved to this corner with my Chinese family because the air is better and there’s more of a community feel to the place. My walks through the nearby migrant worker districts serve as a reminder that China’s economic miracle has yet to extend to the bulk of the population.

Last week, my eighty-one-year-old father-in-law suffered a stroke. He had been in good health, but I could tell something went wrong when he suddenly seemed to lose his balance and his speech became slurred. I pulled him over to a chair and my wife called an ambulance. He was rushed to the nearby military hospital. A veteran of three wars—my father-in-law joined the communists at fifteen in the anti-Japanese struggle—he has taken the whole thing in stride, remains optimistic, and is gradually regaining his abilities. In my view, he is one of the few true communists left in China: meaning that his outlook is genuinely other-regarding. Relatives and friends visit him at the hospital and they want to know how he’s doing, but he seems more concerned about how they are doing. I go to visit him every day at the military hospital, a short walk from our home.

The usual routine broke down one day. I was running late because I had to take my kid to his piano class after the hospital visit. I usually combine the visit with a walk in the mountains outside my home, and I tried to take a shortcut. I should have known from the direction of the setting sun that I was heading the wrong way, but I distrust rational planning and I have an awful sense of orientation. My generally helpful rule of thumb is that I consult my intuitions and then do the opposite. I arrived at one of the peaks, which is surrounded by old bunkers and a run-down military hospice that’s still walled off by barbed wire and prison bars (though I doubt it has been used for half a century). Then I spotted a guy in military garb, and decided to follow him, thinking he might know a shortcut to the hospital. I waited a bit, then went down the same path he followed. It was a very steep and winding rocky path and it occurred to me that I’d be in real trouble if I injured myself and had to explain my location to would-be rescuers (I’ve lost the sense of physical invulnerability that I had two decades ago).

The path led to stairs, which made me feel more secure. I followed the stairs, and arrived to level ground, in what looked like a pleasant neighborhood with five story buildings in good condition. The buildings were strangely deserted, which lent an air of unreality to the place. I continued walking, noticing some small children playing tag and screeching in delight, without any parents (or grandparents) around, which was unusual. Finally, I came across an adult. By then, I knew I was lost and probably a fair distance from the hospital, so I asked him where I could get a taxi. He replied, in Chinese, “I don’t understand.” Now I may not have a perfect accent, but there’s no good reason I shouldn’t be understood. In remote Guiyang, a man had once reacted that way, apparently because it seemed impossible for him to conceive of the possibility that foreigners can speak Chinese. But in Beijing foreigners are usually expected to speak Chinese. I repeated the question, using three or four different ways of making the same point. He just shook his head and said “there aren’t any taxis around here,” and he pointed to what looked like the way out.

I kept on walking and came across a building with several uniformed soldiers standing outside. One of them saw me and exclaimed “foreigner!” Again, that was a first. Young children in my neighborhood sometimes say that, but not adults. By then I realized I had probably stumbled upon a military base. I turned to the group of soldiers and asked for directions to the military hospital. One replied that it wasn’t near here and I should quickly head to the front gate and get out of here. Which is what I had planned to do, and I walked at an accelerated pace.

I passed a group of female soldiers, one of whom said, “hey, there’s a foreigner!” I turned around and asked for directions to the military hospital. One of the soldiers asked me to come with her. She brought me to a store and said she would have to call her leader. At that point, I knew things would get more complicated. In China, dealings with officials can range from extreme flexibility to extreme rigidity (with hardly anything in between). The response usually depends on good luck, social relations, and personal attitude (modesty works best). I’ve been generally lucky, but this time I suspected we were headed for extreme rigidity.

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