One World, Many Peaces

Al Franken and Ahmadinejad Have Court-Run Democracy in Common

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The dramatic increase in court-won elections worldwide in recent years is proving to be a pivotal issue in deciding who is and stays in power, and in this sense Al Franken and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have a lot in common. This transformation of democratic victories from free elections to the application of rules and regulations by the courts hit a high profile point with Bush and Florida in 2000 but has since become a political plateau that risks shaking the very foundation of liberal principles, especially those conservatives depend on most.

Comparing the statements made by the Minnesota judges in the Franken case and that made by Iranian Guardian Council makes all too clear the unabashed power of court intervention in deciding victors of 'democratic' elections. "Based on Iran's constitution, the Guardian Council is the top legislative body to review complaints over the election," says Abbasali Kadkhodai, the Council's official spokesman. "The council members have unanimously approved the election result." Unanimity is not democracy.

The judges in the Franken case also approved their decision unanimously, saying in their  official statement that "because strict compliance with the statutory requirements for absentee voting is, and always has been required, there is no basis on which voters could have reasonably believed that anything less than strict compliance would suffice." Although it is unlikely that protests will erupt in the Midwest as they did in the Middle East, they would both have the selfsame cause.

What the two cases have in common aside from the fact that they were decided by judges on technicalities pales in comparison to what makes them different: one is based on the US Constitution, the other on Islamic law.  Or maybe, when it comes to deciding elections, they are not so different after all, a real possibility which all democracies like them in the world need to confront head on or risk ceasing to be the vehicles of the people's will they were designed to be. Judges implement laws, not people's wills, and therein lies the rub.

When democracy rests almost entirely on a set of rules and regulations devised by those in power and implemented by judges placed by them, democracy stops meaning free elections or rule by the people and begins to mean automated bureaucracies devoid of relations to people's needs and aspirations. The Roman Republic was for the vast majority of its existence a totalitarian regime in disguise, which court-run democracies as current events creating the future portend.

Global Green Tech Rivalries Provide Model for Competitive Peacemaking

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'Green race' must now be added to the notions of 'space race' and 'arms race': global competition between nations and their associations for supremacy in environmentally sound technology. China, Japan and Korea will unite in a pledge to cooperate to become worldwide leaders in green tech next month, opening possibilities for other kinds of beneficial 'races' to come, notably in peace and peacemaking.

"A new paradigm of qualitative growth which uses less energy and is more compatible with environmental sustainability" is what Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo is seeking by devoting 81% of the country's economic stimulus package to green initiatives. In contrast, the fuel-fossil based industrial economy of the US will receive a green booster shot of only 12%. China and Japan, between these figures, only add momentum to Asia's speed in the green race.

Developing and commercializing green tech is easier when you're flushed with cash already, like Korea and China are and Japan seeks to be as a result of the race. Even European nations, not so well off, have embraced carbon trading. All the US has and is providing is green rhetoric and GE-type ecomagination, neither of which should be underestimated. Put together, all of this points to a "new paradigm" beyond Han Seung-Soo's green dreams.

The point I am making is that the very same buttons being pushed in this global green tech rivalry can readily be used in global peace and peacemaking. Imagine countries competing, racing to end conflicts quickly and permanently, provide basic necessities and establish viable infrastructures, what is called 'peace-building' today. Then, imagine them competing for friends on Facebook as on electronic commodities and stock exchanges. Sound crazy?

It shouldn't because that's what green tech companies do now, when just a few years ago they were 'tree-hugging hippies', and will only do more of as the green race becomes a sprint. A Time Magazine columnist calls these green rivalries 'green wars'; as current events creating the future, let them never be won or lost and spark others. Survival is itself a race for peace.

Appalled by Iranian Protest Crackdown more than by One Billion Hungry People

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Foreign police forces confronting teenage-like rebelliousness apparently makes for more advertizing revenue and moral posturing than starving babies, children and parents. With world news fixated on the Iranian protests more for their dramatic than political value, much too little attention is being paid to the announcement late last week that over one billion people worldwide are hungry. One billion, or a seventh of our species, more than ever previously recorded. One billion.

Facile as it is to feign impotent outrage as the first step in trying to forget this horrification, even fathoming its scale is difficult without being a demographer. The cause is not an easily identifiable singular event, say election fraud or street violence, but rather a systemic mismanagement on both local and global levels that is nearly invisible to all but its victims and perpetuators. This is why last week's announcement is so important, and disappeared so astonishingly quickly.

No single terrorist act, no mass protest or government crackdown is as scary and potentially effective as the prospect of one billion people hungry enough to risk life for food. Exacerbated by the economic crisis in the range of 100 million empty stomachs, hunger is currently the greatest impediment to world peace collectively, to say nothing of the individual peace of the sufferers and that of the societies in which they live and which fail them. Fighting for rights with a full belly is irreconcilably different from being hardly able to because more basic needs are not being met.

What we are appalled by says as much about us as the values we profess, and yes I am referring to Obama's statement today. The officials who broke the one billion hungry people news in Rome stressed the broken link between hunger and peace: soaring prices for staples such as rice triggered riots in the developing world last year. The Iranian protests and crackdown will seem like playground games if one billion hungry people globally revolt in desperation. Meanwhile, we must guard against misplacing our revulsion.

As I contend in the Pyramid of Peace presented as the conclusion of Peace: A World History, nutrition is the cornerstone of world peace, as of all individuals, societies and collectives. And so one billion hungry people is a grossly ignored current event creating a dangerous but preventable future.

Obama Administration Corruption and Activist Indexing Measurements

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If measuring corruption is the first step towards reducing it, then a comparative index of corruption is at least the next three, as the Corruption Perceptions Index makes clear. Why? Because assessing to what degree a government or country is corrupt, such as the Obama administration and the US more generally, provides less of an impetus for change than knowing who their nearest and best competitors are in the same fields of error.

The annual Corruption Perceptions Index, first released  in 1995, is widely credited with putting the issue of corruption on the international policy agenda according to its producers, Transparency International. "The Index ranks 180 countries by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys." So, to be clear, the Index does not measure how corrupt countries are, but how people who study them for a living perceive them to be. 

Nevertheless, the results are both intriguing and indicative. In 2008, Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden shared the highest score (lowest corruption), while Somalia, Iraq and Myanmar ranked bottom (highest corruption). As the US ranked only in the upper middle tier during Bush's presidency, the Index could become a key indicator of the Obama administration's success or failure in fulfilling the campaign promise to "clean up government" at home. Considering the US' global involvements, we may add abroad.

The Corruption Perceptions Index, like the Global Peace Index and others, belong to a still new breed of entrepreneurial knowledge creation and dissemination ventures that seek change second only to accuracy. The term activist indexing is meant to distinguish from other 'neutral' indexing practices long in use, such as stock indexes on the basis of industry, region or market capitalization. Taking this comparison further is telling in that it opens up constructive possibilities.

The impact of trading on the monetization of activist indexes, such as futures or options contracts on placement predictions for a government or country, is a compelling idea but not yet reality. Profit would thus become an enemy of corruption and other indexed vices, a dream Obama had his American electors and global supporters believing during his campaign. Yet a practical and philosophical problem remains, for me, with not addressing the historically immense overlap between corruption as evil and governments getting things done as good.

There may soon come a time when all collective characteristics we seek to perpetuate or eliminate will be indexed as a means to their accomplishment. It is in this light that activist indexes and indexers, as influential current events creating the future, are pioneers not only in the quantitative statistical technologies they use directly, but also in the qualitative modalities of societal improvement they are indirectly developing.

'BRIC' to Counter Western Bloc as Brazil, Russia, India and China Join Forces

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Five major emerging economies are joining forces to create a coalition that may have no rival at present, historically or in the foreseeable future. Their acronym is BRIC, strongly suggesting an object that may soon smash the Western block's cracked and cracking glass house called the global economy, for better or worse. Calling any other formal economic coalition-- the EU, APEC, NAFTA, etc.-- ever formed "small potatoes" would be an overstatement.

As powerhouses separately, BRIC members combined could soon exceed even the impact of the Anglo-American alliance that created the World Bank and Internal Monetary Fund. With weighty ambiguities remaining after their recent inaugural meeting, whether or not BRIC will flex its muscles within or against these Breton Woods institutions is hard to tell, if they will collectively at all. These economic considerations leave out the facts that all except Brazil are nuclear powers, military mights and brokers of world politics as well.

In any case, the specter BRIC poses is full of paradoxical potentials: a balance to Western world dominance or a co-conspirator; a wiser or exponentially more volatile competitor; a partner with Cold War bones to pick or a skeletal public relations tactic; a way to gett the world off its US-dollar dependency or stay on? If these questions don't create an existential angst for concerned global citizens of any country, few will.

Strangely enough, the notion of BRIC was put forth five years ago in a report by investment bank Goldman Sachs. Indicating just how much economic power BRIC has, meaning how much freedom in any course they may choose to take and forcing others to go along: China has foreign exchange reserves of more than $1.5 trillion, Russia more than $500 billion, India close to $300 billion and Brazil around $200 billion.

The scale of the Scramble for Central Asia, pitting Europe's Eastern Partnership against China's formerly single-handed efforts, has just been tipped. BRIC, as a current event creating the future, has shown that to notions of constellations of nations must be added overlapping galaxies of their associations.

Three Lessons Libya can Teach Iran and North Korea

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Libya was considered a rogue, terrorist-harboring state with an active nuclear weapons program just a few short years ago. Today, its Prime Minister Moammar Gadhafi compared the US to Al Qaeda by likening the 9/11 attacks to US strikes on the capital in 1986. Yesterday, a longtime Gadhafi ally and compatriot Ali Abdessalam Treki was acclaimed (rather than voted) President of the United Nation's General Assembly, and recently the Libyan economy has been one the rising stars of Africa.

Other states considered pariahs, notably Iran and North Korea, thus may have a lot to learn from Libya and its leaders, especially as Gadhafi announced an Obama-like "new era" in relations with its former colonizer, Italy, where he visited for the first time and made the comparison of terrorist tactics in validly urging a shift of focus to terorrists' motives. Here are three such lessons:

3. You don't need to stop the critical rhetoric if it is part of a constructive dialogue. Gadhafi took power by coup in 1969, a non-democratic means by definition, and was this February elected Chair of the African Union. Days later, his son and likely heir-to-be was welcomed in Washington on the assumption that the country will transition to a constitutional democracy. The point is that the legitimacy gained by doing what foreign powers want-- however gradually-- is much more valuable than radicalism.

2. Drop the nuclear weapons program and terrorism support, reap the benefits of being accepted by the international community. It is that simple. Libya currently has a non-permanent seat on the 15-nation UN Security Council, arguably the most powerful body ever put in place by humankind. They did this by playing the global security game not on their terms, but on those demanded of them.  

1. Pretending can get you there, but not keep you there (sort of). One of the ironies of Gadhafi's speech was his insistence that Western powers do not interfere in internal affairs of other countries, a pillar of the 17th-century Westphalian system. What he might have meant was that non-Western countries can get away with almost anything domestically if they bowto the West in foreign affairs. As things stand there is dangerously close to no limit to this principle, and rogue states stand to gain.

Libya is a litmus test for 21st-century coercion of the best kind (paradox intended), that geared towards creating a safer world. Whether these lessons are worth learning by Iran and North Korea will be determined as much as by these states as their adversaries. They are jointly but asymmetrically current events creating a future in which nations can gain universal respect and legitimacy on two falsely disconnected fronts: domestically and in foreign affairs.

Communist Reconciliations: As Europe Veers Right, Others Seek Left

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With sharp right turns across Europe and Hezbollah safely losing in Lebanon, it surprises little that world news headlines only briefly blinked with two momentous events involving formerly vehement anti-communist faction now seeking them out. Below the surface, what China cementing economic ties with Japan and the Organization of American States welcoming Cuba means for now and the future may be very different than what appears to be the case on the surface.

Japan and China, the world's second and third biggest economies respectively, formally agreed to combine their might to fight the current economic crisis at their second "High-Level Economic Dialogue," over the weekend. The two countries are a strange mixture of partners in manufacturing and competitors for markets and resources. But what is stranger still is that in the name of the economy they both seem eager to forget their severely strained historical ties going back a century, and look towards a future in which the US apparently has no part, if this summit is an indication. With Communist China shifting to a domestic consumption society and Japan being the exporter par excellence, this may be a match made in economic heaven, though with other countries standing outside the gates.

The Organization of American States (OAS), a bloc set up specifically to counter the proliferation of Communism during the Cold War, reopened its doors to Cuba late last week. Unlike The China-Japan reconciliation, this one seems much more symbolic than pragmatic or strategic, excluding the US' possible ulterior motives such as obviating domestic opposition to direct communist reconciliation. The invitee, no worse off than it has been for the past half-century, may thus have found no reason to change the status quo in rebuffing the offer, hopefully not burning bridges in the process. With the hemisphere concerned with a pending post-Castro situation, Castro is being provocatively nonchalant.

The one reconciliation, between China and Japan, presents itself like a rescue mission for the world now and to come, but may really be the first step in a bilateral global domination. That the second reconciliation, between the US-backed OAS and Cuba, has already failed presents itself like a vindication of those who see nostalgic, symbolic gestures as inherently empty, but are too short-sighted to see their deeper import today and tomorrow. These two current events point to a third that cannot be ignored, North Korea: these Communist reconciliations may be creative dress rehearsals for a near-future encounter with that new nuclear force.

The Economic Crisis, Liberalism and Military Spending

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Obama's Cairo speech today proved at least three things: that his reconciliatory rhetoric has been fleshed out with a bit of reason and logic, that his eloquence can lend itself all too easily to demagoguery, and that Bin Laden still sees him as Bush in disguise. What does this have to do with the economic crisis, liberalism and military spending?

In a brilliant BBC article today, business -- I repeat, business--writer Jorn Madslein uses subtitles like "Valuable Violence" and "Profitable Peace" in highlighting self-evident yet self-contradictory facts in current government spending and private sector production. While military spending tends to rise during economic hardships as conflicts are fueled by such downturns, reducing military spending would free up resources and boost investing beyond any stimulus package yet imagined. Though only reducing military spending is orthodox liberal thought, increases have been predominant in liberal action.

Pointing out that some $2.4 trillion or 4.4% of the global economy "is dependent on violence," Madslein goes one to quote Steve Killelea, founder of the Global Peace Index, in saying that "There is a very, very strong correlation between peace and wealth."  Killelea continues: "If the cost of investing in proactive peace-creation was minimal compared to the lost potential caused by violence, then would it not be fitting for business to engage with government to create peace in the markets in which they operate?"

Two big problems with the article are that, first, it perpetuates the limited and limiting notion that peace is solely the absence of violence by countering the "defense industry" with the "peace industry," as if they were really opposites. Second is in not going deeper into the tradition of liberalism in which the Global Peace Index as well as Obama's Cairo speech are based, and which originated modern takes on ancient notions that can offer practical solutions to our economic crisis in the short-term, long-term and indefinitely.

For the founders of the liberal tradition in economics and thought, such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mills, peace as the absence of violence was an integral part of their advocacy for individual liberties and free markets. Indeed, for them individual liberties and free markets were predicated upon peace in this sense, as I document in the chapter on the Modern Economics of Peace and Peacemaking in Peace: World History, and Obama was diplomatically preaching in Cairo today.

These current events creating the future-- which offer an opportunity to simultaneously end the economic crises while better ensuring global and domestic peace and prosperity--  actually have a much longer history going back to Ancient Greece, China and Mesopotamia. By learning from them now and in the future, most importantly their mistakes in theory and practice, there is infinitely more to gain than to lose.

Read Jorn Madslein's "The purchasing power of peace."

Christian-Shiite Coalition in Lebanese Election is a Double-Edged Sword

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This week, a historic election of immense consequence to the Middle East generally and peace prospects in particular will take place. But the pressing reason why Vice President Joe Biden was in Lebanon recently is only now becoming clear: Christians, a newly emerging key swing vote, are beginning to side with Hezbollah, the Shiite party which is anti-Israel, pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian. No surprise, then, that this coalition-- which may actually win a majority-- is sending shivers down the spines of the US-backed factions from which it is seeking to take power.

More precisely, the Shiite-Christian Alliance was formed three years ago and is only at this juncture taking center stage as a potent political force.  This is indeed an odd coupling for more reasons than one: its Christian leader, Michel Aoun, fought against Syria during the Lebanese Civil War, an adjacent country Christians generally opposed as the once most powerful Lebanese religious faction. Today, Shiites, Sunnis and Christians number about a third of the population of four million each. An election victory on Sunday would give the militant Hezbollah Party a national legitimacy it hitherto lacked.

So on the one hand, a rare intra-national inter-religious political partnership may take power in Lebanon, but only at the expense of another, with Sunnis. On the other hand, a victory would signal a serious danger for inter-national religious peace with Israel next door, and would could further destabilize the already volatile chemistry that continues to prostrate regional, and ultimately global, peace.  "No one can govern on his own," says Hezbollah's leader to placate the opposition, who frame the election as a choice between war and peace.

Religious-based voting may be reinvigorating democracy in Lebanon in ways only the US Republican Party has been able to in contemporary times, or destroying it depending on your point of view. Whether or not the Christian-Shiite coalition takes power from Western-backed forces in four days, this phenomenon points to a major underestimated current event creating the future: that alliances are always sharp double-edged swords no matter who belongs to and who are against them, though without them little or nothing can get done.