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4 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
“Yesterday’s Tomorrow”
Ali Inan
Lahore, Pakistan
S
tephen Hawking once thought of writing a book
titled “Yesterday's Tomorrow”; NASA has
embarked upon a journey to literally determine
yesterday's tomorrow. What was then unthinkable; it is
now almost achievable. The dark recesses of the past
shall be brought to life; what had passed long ago would
be brought back from somewhere it is existent now.
Time waits for none, but it can be chased back where it
has gone away from man. NASA’s James Webb Space
Telescope, the agency’s successor to the famous Hubble
telescope, was launched on December 25, 2021 on a
mission to study the earliest stars and peer back farther
into the universe’s past than ever before.
Coasting through space for two more weeks, the
Webb telescope will reach its destination in solar orbit
one million miles from Earth — about four times farther
away than the moon. And Webb’s special orbital path
will keep it in constant alignment with Earth as the
planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem. By com-
parison, Webb’s 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble
Space Telescope, orbits the Earth from 340 miles away,
passing in and out of the planet’s shadow every 90 min-
utes. Named after the man who oversaw NASA through
most of its formative decade of the 1960s, Webb is about
100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected
to transform scientists’ understanding of the universe
and our place in it. Webb mainly will view the cosmos in
the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer through
clouds of gas and dust where stars are being born, while
Hubble has operated primarily at optical and ultravio-
let wavelengths. The James Webb Telescope has a mir-
ror roughly six times the collecting size of Hub-
ble’s—and it is 100 times more sensitive. Scientists built
the telescope to see in infrared and it can look further
into space, and thus further back in time, than anything
previously constructed. While Hubble can see back 400
million years after the Big Bang, Webb can possibly look
back 100 million years after the event.
Reporter Shi en Kim reported for Smithsonian
magazine earlier this year, the telescope is an astro-
nomical Swiss Army knife of sorts, with—when all of its
tools are clicked open in space—the ability to study a
host of new things about the universe. Webb will help
scientists understand how early galaxies formed and
grew, detect possible signatures of life on other planets,
watch the birth of stars, study black holes from a differ-
ent angle, and likely discover unexpected truths. If
everything goes as planned, Webb will take its first
science-quality images three months after launching,
and three months after that begin routine operation.
Should something go wrong with JWST while in space,
NASA has no capability to repair the $10 billion craft,
but the agency is already hoping to explore refuelling it
robotically. Assuming all goes right, the telescope will
be delivering astronomical gifts to Earth for years to
come.
II
Meanwhile, the 17th extraordinary session of the
OIC of foreign ministers on Afghan situation was held
in Islamabad on December 19, 2021. Instead of bridg-
ing the chasm, it further created a rift between Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was circumspect on the
matter of recognising the Taliban 2.0 govt, whereas
Pakistan had shown an inclination in favour of it. How-
ever, US State Secretary Antony Blinken on Wednesday
thanked Pakistan for hosting the extraordinary session
of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC)
Council of Foreign Ministers to discuss the situation in
neighbouring Afghanistan. The OIC, which is also the
world’s second-largest multilateral forum, in a commu-
niqué adopted at the end of the extraordinary session
said it “will play a leading role in the delivery of humani-
tarian and development aid to the people of Afghani-
stan”.
Addressing the summit, Prime Minister Imran
Khan had issued a clear warning to the global commu-
nity, stating that Afghanistan could potentially become
the biggest “man-made crisis in the world” if action was
not taken immediately. He said instability in Afghani-
stan would not be in anyone’s interest as it could lead to
refugee exodus from the war-ravaged country and a
heightened terrorism threat particularly from the mili-
tant Islamic State group. A day later, the premier voiced
veiled criticism at the US for creating a humanitarian
crisis in Afghanistan and allowing it to worsen. He said,
“A man-made crisis is being created despite knowing
that it can be averted if (Afghanistan’s) accounts (in the
US) are unfrozen and liquidity is put into their banking
system.” More than half the population in Afghanistan,
nearly 22 million people, is facing an acute food short-
age. UNICEF estimates that some 3.2 million Afghan
children under the age of five will suffer from malnutri-
tion this winter.
The ghosts of the past are haunting Afghanistan.
Yesterday has resurged with great force as it appears
catastrophic, and the future remains uncertain. The
politics of the Muslim world must take a leaf from
NASA’s book and see the past in connection with the
future because “yesterday’s tomorrow” must be bright;
otherwise, the dark recesses of the past would haunt the
lives of men and women and push them down to an
unfathomable abyss.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Current edition
January 2022

4 Editorial
“Yesterday’s Tomorrow”

Mis/Disinformation Russian Federation

8 Liars in High Places: Who’s toblame for misinformation?
Lies about other public figures—musicians, actors, and athletes, for example—can ruin people’s lives
33 The myth of Russian decline
Why Moscow will be a persistent power

Sunflower State Review Essay

11 Women have increasing economic clout, but no domestic power
Women trade; men do badly paid state jobs
37 How Apartheid Endures The Betrayal of South Africa
Why Moscow will be a persistent power

Accounting for Algorithms Worldwide Weather

12 Social media and the law
Lawsuits in America and Britain seek billions of dollars in damages
40 The International Order Isn’t Ready for the Climate Crisis
Planetary politics cannot succeed without multilateral institutions and global governance

Lawless Patch Political Economy

13 Drugs in South-East Asia
The coup in Myanmar has helped cartels ramp up production
45 The path to a new economics
With the New Deal, Washington took the unprecedented step of creating new industries and millions of jobs

Plugging the Gap Pacific Money

15 Charging electric cars
Building public networks will require business and government to work together
48 China’s Long-Term Economic Direction
Xi Jinping has been clear that China’s old economic model is a thing of the past. The new one, however, is only starting to take shape

Ageing Creatively China Green Finance

16 What the world can learn from Japan
The oldest big country has lessons for those that will soon age and shrink
50 To ‘Green’ the Belt and Road, China Needs to Set Clear Renewable Energy Targets
As China stops building overseas coal power plants, it will take more than wishful thinking to transition to renewable energy

Interest Rate China Afghanistan Policy

17 Wind down the money printer: Why America’s economy needs tighter monetary policy
Why the Fed should raise interest rates soon
51 China in Afghanistan: How Beijing Engages the Taliban
Explain China’s involvement in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of U.S. forces

American Dominance Imbalance Economy

18 What would America fight for? If the United States pulls back, the world will become more dangerous
America has become reluctant to use hard power across much of the world
54 Pakistan’s socioeconomic imperatives
We are now among the world’s ten most indebted nations and our external debt exceeds the gross national income

The Biden Plan Security Studies

20 Preventing the Next Attack A Strategy for the War on Terrorism
The George W. Bush administration and then the Obama administration developed a strategy for fighting what became known as ...
56 Who is denting CPEC?
Clearly, it is not just about the high stakes for a China-inclined prime minister but for Pakistan as a whole

Russia & FSU Religion of Peace

24 Containment Beyond the Cold War How Washington Lost the Post-Soviet Peace
What if we were to give up having to have our finger next to the button all the time?
57 NRA — a step in the right direction
Pakistan must develop robust institutions because it is going to be a long haul

6 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022

globalagemagazine.kipscss.com globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 7
Mis/Disinformation
Liars in High Places: Who’s to
blame for misinformation?
Lies about other public figures—musicians, actors, and athletes, for example—can ruin
people’s lives
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
A mericans lie on their résumés, in
their dating profiles, in
campaign ads, in their memoirs,
and, perhaps most of all, on social media.
Thanks to the First Amendment, they
can mostly do so with impunity—or, at
any rate, without fearing that the
government will punish them for it. In
most contexts, the First Amendment
p r o h i b i t s t h e g o ve r n m e n t f r o m
restricting speech because of its
message. It makes it difficult for public
figures to win defamation suits. It
precludes the government from
criminalizing falsehoods that don’t
cause serious harm. As a result,
Americans enjoy broad freedom to say
things that aren’t true.
From one perspective, this freedom
is a wonderful thing, or at least a neces-
sary byproduct of the United States’ foun-
dational commitment to popular gov-
ernment, individual autonomy, and free
trade in ideas. But in an era in which mis-
information is often described as a
scourge, this freedom takes on a darker
hue. What previously seemed like a fea-
8 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
ture of the country’s constitutional sys-
tem can begin to seem like a bug.
Is the First Amendment preventing
the U.S. government from curtailing
harmful lies online? More broadly, is a
blind commitment to free speech imped-
ing public and private institutions from
responding as they should to the prob-
lem of misinformation? These are the
questions that Cass Sunstein—a Harvard
professor, a former regulatory czar in the
Obama administration, and the most
cited legal scholar in the country—takes
up in Liars.
The book is both succinct and far-
ranging. In a brisk nearly 200 pages,
Sunstein looks at lies through the lenses
of ethics, political theory, and constitu-
tional doctrine. In attributing the cur-
rent informational crisis to a prolifera-
tion of lies, however, the book largely
overlooks the role that governments, the
media, and technology companies are
playing as agents and amplifiers of mis-
information. Sunstein’s account lets the
most powerful actors off the hook.
Sunstein argues that the United
States should regulate lies more aggres-
sively than it does, even as he acknowl-
edges that in most contexts, it is better to
allow false speech to be corrected in the
marketplace of ideas. It is usually better
to trust the marketplace, he says,
because even a government operating in
good faith will not always be able to sepa-
rate truth from fiction and because some
governments will use the authority to
police speech to suppress dissent
instead. (The “fake news” laws being
adopted around the world, including in
Brazil, Hungary, and Russia, are a
reminder that this threat is real.) There is
also a risk that falsehoods that are sup-
pressed—rather than confronted head-
on—will fester and become more dan-
gerous.
But these arguments are not always
convincing, Sunstein says. Some false-
hoods threaten serious harms that are
not likely to be corrected organically in
public discourse. With respect to these
falsehoods, policymakers must consider
regulatory responses. The U.S. Constitu-
tion is not always an obstacle to regula-
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
s At a Trump rally in Avoca, Pennsylvania, November 2020.
tory intervention, Sunstein observes.
The First Amendment permits defama-
tion suits, although it does place some
limits on them. It allows the government
to ban false advertising. It doesn’t pre-
clude the government from prosecuting
someone for committing perjury or
impersonating a government officer. In
all these spheres, the First Amendment
allows the government to punish people
who lie.
The First Amendment should be
understood to permit the regulation of
lies in other spheres, too, Sunstein says.
For example, the government should be
able to regulate misinformation that
threatens public health. It should be able
to regulate doctored videos, even if they
aren’t defamatory. These kinds of lies,
Sunstein writes, cause serious harms
that cannot always be prevented or reme-
died by responsive speech. People may
rely on false claims about public health
before the claims can be exposed as false.
A video may change the public’s percep-
tion of a public figure even if it is later
shown to have been doctored. The gov-
ernment should be able to respond to
this kind of falsity—if not by prohibiting
certain kinds of speech, then at least by
labeling the lies as such or by requiring
social media platforms to do so.
First Amendment doctrine,
Sunstein argues, too narrowly limits the
government’s ability to tackle harmful
falsehoods. One of the cases he takes aim
at is New York Times v. Sullivan, from
1964, in which the Supreme Court held
that a public official who sues a critic for
defamation must demonstrate that the
critic knew his or her statement was false
or acted with “reckless disregard of
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Sunstein is especially
concerned about all of
this because social
media allows liars to
disseminate their lies
more quickly and
broadly. But he is
principally worried
about the liars, not the
social media companies,
and in fact he casts the
companies more as
heroes than as villains
whether it was false or not.” Many
reporters, editors, and media lawyers
regard the decision in this case as synon-
ymous with press freedom, but Sunstein
is not so enthusiastic. In an age in which
anyone can disseminate misinformation
across the world with the click of a but-
ton, he says, the case “looks increasingly
anachronistic.” It makes it too difficult to
hold people accountable for lies that do
real damage, he argues.
He also takes issue with the
Supreme Court’s more recent decision in
United States v. Alvarez. That case, from
2012, invalidated the 2005 Stolen Valor
Act, a federal statute that criminalized
lies about receiving military decorations
or medals. (The defendant in the case
was an inveterate liar who had falsely
claimed to have been awarded the Con-
gressional Medal of Honor.) The Court’s
decision was based in large part on the
concern that imposing penalties for false
speech might chill true speech, a concern
Sunstein shares to an extent. But he
thinks that the Court’s decision in United
States v. Alvarez was wrong, “even pre-
posterous.” He questions whether any
socially useful speech was really chilled
by the Stolen Valor Act. In the name of
defending the truth, he suggests, the
Court merely ceded more ground to
falsehoods.
Sunstein says Americans are living
in “an age of deception,” an era in which
lies have become ubiquitous. He is espe-
cially concerned about what he sees as
the proliferation of defamatory lies
about public officials, public institu-
tions, and public figures. He mentions
the “sustained attacks” on Hillary
Clinton in the lead-up to the 2016 presi-
dential election, unjustified attacks on
the integrity of the media, and news sto-
ries that carried “false statements about
Taylor Swift, Christian Bale, and Julia
Roberts.” Lies about public officials and
institutions undermine faith in govern-
ment. Lies about other public fig-
ures—musicians, actors, and athletes,
for example—can ruin people’s lives.
“Many people are now being subjected to
‘cancellation’ on the basis of lies,”
Sunstein says, although he does not offer
specific examples. His concern extends
beyond defamatory statements. He
argues that false statements falling short
of libel are harming individuals and soci-
ety. He does not supply evidence that
lying is more common today than it used
to be. Still, he writes, “the problem is
serious and pervasive, and it seems to be
mounting.”
Sunstein is especially concerned
about all of this because social media
allows liars to disseminate their lies
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 9
more quickly and broadly. But he is prin-
cipally worried about the liars, not the
social media companies, and in fact he
casts the companies more as heroes than
as villains. “To their credit, some of them
are doing a great deal already” to combat
misinformation, he says, and “their cre-
ativity offers a host of lessons for public
officials.” (Sunstein discloses upfront
that he has been a consultant to
Facebook, including on some of the
issues discussed in the book.) The com-
panies, in his view, are doing “excellent
work”—even if they should do more,
such as fact-check political ads,
strengthen their prohibitions against
misinformation relating to public health,
and suppress a broader range of doc-
tored videos.
Sunstein has a similarly rosy view of
the government’s relationship to lies. He
does briefly mention that U.S. President
Donald Trump pushed misinformation
about the 2020 presidential election. But
the lies of government officials are
mostly beyond the scope of his inquiry.
There’s no mention here, for example, of
the false claims—all made by senior gov-
ernment officials at one point or
another—that Iraq was hiding weapons
of mass destruction, that Muslims in
New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks,
that the CIA did not use torture, that
drone strikes have not resulted in civil-
ian casualties, or that wearing masks
10 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
won’t help against COVID-19. Sunstein
says he’s especially focused on false-
hoods that undermine the democratic
process, but it is difficult to understand
why a tabloid’s lies about a celebrity
imperil democracy, whereas the official
lies that misled the country into war do
not.
Social media companies, too, bear a
great deal more responsibility for the age
of deception than Sunstein acknowl-
edges. Their ranking algorithms can
privilege sensational or extreme speech
and channel users into echo chambers
where conspiracy theories flourish.
Their decisions about which kinds of
interactions to allow on their platforms
can have similar effects. And their poli-
cies relating to ad targeting can deter-
mine how broadly misinformation
spreads and whether the misinforma-
tion can be corrected by others. Social
m e d i a c o m p a n i e s — l i k e g o v e r n-
ments—undoubtedly have important
roles to play in addressing the problem of
misinformation. But Sunstein is wrong
to conceive of them only as firefighters
and not also as arsonists.
Still, Sunstein’s policy proposals are
worth considering. His prescriptions
concerning content moderation are mod-
est but reasonable. His analysis of the
Supreme Court’s case law relating to
false speech usefully pulls apart the vari-
ous factors that courts should weigh in
deciding whether regulating misinfor-
mation in any given context would be
consistent with the First Amendment.
(The factors include the speaker’s intent,
the magnitude of the harm that could
result from the false speech, and how
soon that harm would occur.) He is
plainly right that loosening current doc-
trinal standards would create space for
regulation—including of false speech
that does not rise to the level of defama-
tion.
But he largely glosses over the ways
in which new regulations could be
abused. Even today, under a speech-
protective doctrinal framework, state
legislatures are fighting supposed misin-
formation by, for example, restricting
public schools’ ability to teach students
about systemic racism. And despite the
Supreme Court cases that Sunstein criti-
cizes, it is disturbingly easy for powerful
people to use defamation lawsuits, or the
threat of them, to suppress important
stories. Devin Nunes, a Republican mem-
ber of Congress from California, has filed
a slew of lawsuits against journalists and
ordinary citizens who have criticized,
mocked, or reported on him, even suing
the anonymous users behind two obvi-
ously satirical Twitter accounts,
@DevinNunesMom and @DevinCow.
And the Hollywood mogul Harvey
Weinstein was able to use the threat of
defamation litigation to stave off, for
years, the news reports that justifiably
ended his career.
Sunstein isn’t oblivious to these
concerns. At one point, he suggests cap-
ping damage awards to mitigate the
chilling effect of defamation suits. But
his analysis focuses on the costs of the
current doctrinal framework and mostly
skips over the benefits. It leaves the
impression that Sunstein has not fully
accounted for the possibility—the cer-
tainty, some would say—that making it
easier for public figures to sue critics for
false speech would make it easier for
them to suppress true speech, as well.
At its best, Sunstein’s book offers a
host of useful ideas about how First
Amendment doctrine and content mod-
eration policies might be adjusted to
encourage governments and technology
companies to address lies. But Sunstein
gives the most powerful actors a free
pass. A more convincing account of the
age of deception, and a more compelling
policy agenda, would place less empha-
sis on the mendaciousness of ordinary
citizens and more on the governments
that spread falsehoods—and on the
media organizations and technology
companies that amplify them.
Courtesy: Knight Institute
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Sunflower State
Women have increasing economic
clout, but no domestic power
Women trade; men do badly paid state jobs
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
B
efore she fled south six years
ago, Kim Eun Kyoung spent her
days in one of North Korea’s
many informal markets. She sold
household goods and illicit South
Korean tv dramas. In the evening, she
did the housework and looked after her
daughter. She says her husband worked
just a few hours a day at his state-
mandated factory job and spent the rest
of his time gambling and drinking. They
hardly ever saw each other. “I would
have liked it if he’d helped with the
housework, but we lived totally separate
lives,” says Ms Kim (not her real name).
“The only thing we ever discussed
honestly was our economic situation.”
Ms Kim’s story is increasingly com-
mon among North Korean women, judg-
ing from surveys of those who have fled
to the South over the past two decades.
After the collapse of the North’s planned
economy and public-distribution system
in the 1990s, the state grew more relaxed
about enforcing labour requirements for
women. The regime continues to compel
most men to work for the state, but pays
most of them very little or nothing alto-
gether. Women, who are both freer than
men to spend time working in the mar-
kets and compelled to do so in order to
feed their families, have therefore
acquired some economic power.
In many North Korean families,
women now appear to be the main
breadwinners. In 2020 the Database
Centre for North Korean Human Rights
(nkdb), an ngo in Seoul, the South’s capi-
tal, asked 60 refugees from Hyesan, a
city on North Korea’s border with China,
about their married lives back home.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Women’s extra husbands insist on being respected and
obeyed, regardless of how much they
earnings have yet to contribute. Common insults for useless
change expectations husbands include haebaragi (“sunflow-
ers” who sit pretty waiting for their wives
about what they do at
to come home), natjeondeung (“day
home, however. lamps”, as useful as a lamp turned on in
Traditional views of the sunshine) or bul pyeon (“inconve-
nience”, a play on nam pyeon, the
family life remain Korean word for husband).
common The most successful marriages
appear to be those that combine a
Fully 47% said the wife brought home
woman’s economic activities with a
the kimchi, 37% said it was the husband
man’s political influence. Ms Jeong says
and 17% said both contributed equally.
her marriage to a high-ranking police
Hyesan, an unusually open border town,
officer was a happy one even though they
may not be representative, cautions
lived mostly off what she and her mother
Hanna Song of nkdb. But testimonies of
earned as smugglers. “My husband had
refugees from other parts of the country
little money, but a lot of power,” she
suggest similar trends.
explains. Men suffer through years of
Women’s extra earnings have yet to
badly paid army or police jobs to rise
change expectations about what they do
through the ranks, at which point they
at home, however. Traditional views of
can bring both higher salaries and
family life remain common, notes Ms
opportunities to top them up by extract-
Song. Among those surveyed by nkdb,
ing bribes from smugglers or by earning
both men and women considered child
bonuses by catching them—as well as the
care and housework to be women’s work.
ability to protect their wives’ grey-
“Of course women should look after chil-
market activities.
dren, they’re much better at it,” says
The state is unlikely to offer women
Jeong Jin, a 30-something woman from
more rights or men better jobs. After a
Hyesan who came to Seoul in 2015. “My
brief period of championing female
husband always looked really unnatural
fighter pilots and engineers, Kim Jong
holding our baby.” She acknowledges
Un, the North’s dictator, has recently
that many women complain about the
reverted to promoting a traditional
double burden, but says the fault lies
approach to family life, urging women to
with the system that forces the men to
look pretty for their husbands and to
work without much pay.
care for their children. For North Korea’s
Even when people blame the state,
harried married women, Mr Kim is
the gap between expectations and reality
about as useful as a natjeondeung.
has begun to cause conflict. Some over-
burdened wives demand help with
chores or a say in family decisions. Many Courtesy: The Economist
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 11
Accounting for Algorithms
Social media and the law
Lawsuits in America and Britain seek billions of dollars in damages
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T hat facebook was used to spread
rhetoric that incited carnage in
Myanmar is hardly up for debate.
According to the lead author of a un
report published in 2018 the firm’s
platform played a “determining role” in
the violence inflicted on Rohingya
Muslims by marauding Buddhists.
Facebook acknowledges that it did not
do enough to prevent its services from
being abused. But whether it is liable for
what happened is a trickier question.
It may soon be answered. A legal
campaign is under way on both sides of
the Atlantic. It claims that Facebook,
now renamed Meta, should be held liable
for allowing users to spread such content
during the Rohingya genocide. A letter
delivered to Facebook’s London offices
on December 6th gave the firm notice of
intent to sue it in the High Court. That
suit will be on behalf of Rohingyas living
everywhere in the world outside Amer-
ica, including Bangladesh, where 1m or
so dwell as refugees.
The American complaint, filed on
the same day in California, is a class
action on behalf of Rohingyas living in
12 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
America. It is seeking “at least” $150bn
in compensation for “wrongful death,
personal injury, pain and suffering, emo-
tional distress and loss of property”.
Although American internet companies
typically are shielded from liability for
content that is disseminated through
their platforms, the suit argues that the
court must apply Burmese law for harms
done in Myanmar. American courts can
theoretically apply foreign laws in this
way, though there is little precedent for
it.
Meta did not comment on the law-
suit when asked, but said that it was “ap-
palled by the crimes committed against
the Rohingya people”. It added that it
has improved its capacity to moderate
Burmese content.
The allegations fall into two catego-
ries. The first is that since 2010 Facebook
failed actively and effectively to moder-
ate content on its network that was con-
tributing to the incitement of genocide in
Myanmar, despite being aware of what
was happening. The second is that
Facebook’s own content-
recommendation algorithms amplified
the spread of this content. (Meta has
been approached for comment.)
No precedent exists for such a case,
at least when it comes to social-media
companies. One distant parallel is with
Radio Mille Collines, a Rwandan radio
station that was instrumental in inciting
the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which
perhaps 500,000 people, mostly Tutsis,
were killed. Some of those who ran the
station were convicted of incitement to
genocide. The difference is that that was
Radio Mille Collines’s main purpose. (Its
former chairman is also accused of
financing the import of machetes.) Inter-
national courts went after those who
urged the killing, not the manufacturers
of the radio equipment.
The current lawsuits argue that
Facebook is both manufacturer and, to
some extent, messenger: its algorithms
decide what people see. Whether and
how the firm is liable for what its algo-
rithms do will now be tested.
Courtesy: The Economist
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Lawless Patch
Drugs in South-East Asia
The coup in Myanmar has helped cartels ramp up production
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
O
ctober was a stellar month for
the Lao police. On the 27th an
officer in Bokeo, a northern
province, waved down a truck packed
with Lao Brewery beer crates. Contained
inside them were 55.6m meth-
amphetamine pills and over 1.5 tonnes of
crystal meth, a more potent version of
the drug. It was Asia’s largest drug bust
ever, according to the un. Just the week
before, the police had seized 16m
amphetamine tablets during two
operations in the same area.
Law-enforcement agencies in
South-East Asia have grown accustomed
to breaking records. In almost every year
between 2011 and 2020, the authorities
seized more meth, as the drug is com-
monly known, than they had the year
before. Between 2015 and 2019, the only
other region to impound as much of the
stuff as East and South-East Asia (which
the un groups together) was North Amer-
ica—though the overall volume of drugs
flowing through Asia is probably greater,
because authorities there are more cor-
rupt and less well-equipped to intercept
traffickers, says Jeremy Douglas of the
United Nations Office on Drugs and
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Crime (unodc), an un agency. And
recorded seizures are likely to be just the
tip of the iceberg.
Most such hauls occur in Indochina.
Even though it is home to just 10% of the
population of East and South-East Asia,
it accounts for nearly three-quarters of
the meth detected in the region. The
meth labs that feed Asia’s habit are found
in Shan state, a lawless patch of eastern
Myanmar. Even before Myanmar’s mili-
tary coup in February, it was a big centre
of meth production. But the putsch has
distracted already negligent authorities,
making the area even more enticing to
drug cartels. In neighbouring countries,
seizures this year are once again break-
ing records—six times more meth has
been seized in Laos in 2021 than in 2020.
“It’s been a mess since February, espe-
cially the last few months,” says Mr
Douglas. “It’s pretty clear the post-coup
breakdown in governance and security
in drug-production areas has had an
impact.”
Cartels sell their product as far
afield as Japan and Australia, where
richer consumers can afford to pay a
premium. But they are increasingly tar-
geting customers closer to home, too,
where the population dwarfs that of
Asia’s richest countries. Syndicates
appear to have tailored their business
model accordingly. Over the past decade
the price of meth has plummeted across
the region. That suggests that whereas
once cartels tried to maintain prices at a
certain point, now their strategy is to
flood the region and build up sales by
increasing levels of drug use.
The strategy of jacking up demand
by increasing supply seems to work. Data
are sketchy—few people will admit to
being a drug user or addict—but suggest
there is enormous appetite for meth. In
2019, according to unodc numbers,
0.61% of East and South-East Asians
aged between 15 and 64 used amphet-
amine-like substances, including meth,
at least once a year, compared with a
global average of 0.54%.
That translates to 10m people, mak-
ing it the biggest market for meth in the
world. Recent household surveys show
that roughly 1m people in each of Indo-
nesia, the Philippines and Thailand tried
meth at least once in the past year.
Between 2016 and 2019, the number of
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 13

people who used meth at least once annu-
ally grew eight-fold in Vietnam and ten-
fold in Thailand. In 2019 the un reck-
oned that the regional market was worth
$60bn.
Meth appeals to users for several
reasons. It is often the easiest drug to
get—there is very little cocaine in the
region—and is in plentiful supply.
Suchart (not his real name), a Thai user,
says that meth is even easier to procure
in Bangkok today than it was two
decades ago, and back then “people were
giving it away”. Many prefer it to heroin,
which was South-East Asia’s drug of con-
cern until it was supplanted by meth
about a decade ago. Heroin’s numbing
effects “blank you out”, says Suchart.
“Meth makes me more active, gives me
more strength to do things.”
That appeals to people who work
long hours, like Somchai (a pseudonym),
who was a truck driver when he first
started popping yaba, tablets containing
four parts caffeine to one part meth.
Meth use was once confined to the work-
ing class but since crystal meth, the qual-
ity of which is higher than yaba, started
flooding the market about seven years
ago, it has attracted a well-heeled crowd.
Stronger and purer than yaba, crystal is
often used by those who want more
energy to party.
Dealers can count on their custom-
ers coming back to them. About one in
ten meth users will develop a depend-
ency. That number rises to one in five for
regular users of crystal meth. It is hard to
get a clear picture of the number of meth
abusers in South-East Asia because the
only metrics of drug dependency in the
region are unreliable. Drug-treatment
admissions are inflated by involuntary
14 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
Dealers can count on
their customers coming
back to them. About one
in ten meth users will
develop a dependency.
That number rises to
one in five for regular
users of crystal meth. It
is hard to get a clear
picture of the number
of meth abusers in
South-East Asia because
the only metrics of drug
dependency in the
region are unreliable
referrals while the number of drug
arrests may be fuelled by arrest quotas.
Even so, indicators in most coun-
tries are trending up. In the five years to
2020 the number of known meth users
in Vietnam increased eight-fold. In Thai-
land admissions for treatment doubled
in the three years to 2018. In Malaysia
the number of crystal-meth users who
had contact with the authorities
increased six-fold between 2016 and
2019.
This is taking its toll on public
health. Meth kindles feelings of eupho-
ria, often spurring users to engage in
risky behaviour, such as having unpro-
tected sex at “chemsex” parties. The urge
to strengthen the rush leads some users
to inject meth, which increases the
chance of transmitting diseases like hiv.
Once the high wears off, some suffer
from anxiety and paranoia. Over a third
of recreational users will acquire meth-
induced psychosis, which is akin to
schizophrenia. A hospital in Thailand
discovered that six years after the treat-
ment between 2000 and 2001 of patients
diagnosed with meth-induced psychosis,
8.2% had died—a share that is ten times
greater than Thailand’s overall mortality
rate. The top three causes of death were
accidents, suicide and aids. (Meth users
tend to have higher rates of sexually
transmitted diseases.) Apinun
Aramrattana, a professor of medicine at
Chiang Mai University in Thailand, says
that the country’s “meth epidemic” is
fuelling growing rates of mental illness.
Hospitals, he says, have struggled to
accommodate the number of patients
with meth-induced psychosis.
The response of South-East Asian
governments has not helped. Too often,
the authorities punish users, locking
them up or throwing them into “compul-
sory treatment” centres, where the only
treatment provided is abstinence and
labour. This punitive response “has sim-
ply failed to work”, says Ann Fordham of
the International Drug Policy Consor-
tium, an advocacy group based in Lon-
don, pointing to the rocketing number of
users.
The un argues that addicts should
be treated like patients rather than
rounded up as criminals. Many govern-
ments are starting to come around to
that idea. But until they divert funding
for drug treatment from law enforce-
ment to health agencies, the number of
addicts will continue to grow—much to
the satisfaction of the cartels that supply
them.
Courtesy: The Economist
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Plugging the Gap
Charging electric cars
Building public networks will require business and government to work together
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T ake the wheel of an electric
vehicle (ev) and prepare to be
astounded. The smooth, instant
acceleration of battery power makes
driving easy and exciting. The latest
technology is there, with tablet-like
screens instead of old-fashioned
switches. Add falling prices which make
owning and running many evs as cheap
as fossil-fuel alternatives, and the open
road beckons.
Except when you look under those
sleek exteriors. The tangle of cables in
the boot is a reminder of the need to plug
in and recharge cars roughly every 250
miles (400km). And when you do find a
public charging point, it is sometimes
damaged or inaccessible (see Business
section). Little wonder that one of the
main reasons drivers give for not buying
an ev is “range anxiety”.
A society-wide switch from hydro-
carbons to electrons is required if the
world is to stand a chance of reaching its
net-zero emissions targets. However as
evs become more common, the charging
problem will become more severe.
Today's mostly wealthy owners can often
plug in their ev at home or at work. But
many less-well-off ev drivers will not
have a drive in front of their house or a
space in the executive car park. By 2040
around 60% of all charging will need to
take place away from home, requiring a
vast public network of charging stations.
At the end of 2020 the world had just
1.3m of these public chargers. By some
estimates, to meet net- zero emissions
goals by 2050 will require 200m of the
things.
Who might install them? Drivers
will need a mix of fast “long-distance”
chargers installed near motorways that
can rapidly add hundreds of miles to
battery ranges and slower “top-up”
chargers available at kerbsides or in the
car parks of shopping centres, restau-
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Yet the sums are puny
and the problems of
co-ordination, coverage
and convenience will
remain. Governments
should learn from
telecoms. Most countries
auction or issue a
limited number of
licences or spectrum
rights to firms to run
regional and national
mobile networks.
In return the firms have
to build networks
according to a schedule,
offer universal coverage
and compete with each
other
rants and so on. The private sector, sens-
ing an opportunity to make some money
from surging ev ownership, is already
showing an interest. Dedicated charging
firms and carmakers are investing in
infrastructure. Oil companies, with Shell
to the fore, are putting chargers in petrol
stations and buying charging compa-
nies. Utilities, which have plenty of elec-
tricity to sell, are also starting to sniff
around. Yet the charging business suf-
fers from big problems.
One is how to co-ordinate between
the owners of charging points, the own-
ers of the sites where they will be
installed, planning authorities and grid
firms.
Another is the cost. According to
one estimate, the bill for the chargers
needed to reach net-zero by 2050 will be
$1.6trn. To start with, profits may be
elusive because the networks will not at
first be heavily used. A related risk is that
the coverage will have gaps. California is
a choice spot for installing chargers, but
is anyone keen on investing in
Nebraska? And then there is the ques-
tion of competing networks.
Drivers should be able to switch
from one to the other without the hassle
of having to sign up to them all.
What to do? Governments are
experimenting. As well as subsidising ev
sales many are throwing cash at public
chargers. America's infrastructure law
sets aside $7.5bn to create 500,000 pub-
lic stations by 2030. Britain plans to
require new buildings to install chargers.
Yet the sums are puny and the prob-
lems of co-ordination, coverage and con-
venience will remain. Governments
should learn from telecoms. Most coun-
tries auction or issue a limited number of
licences or spectrum rights to firms to
run regional and national mobile net-
works. In return the firms have to build
networks according to a schedule, offer
universal coverage and compete with
each other. Regulators set rules to allow
roaming between them. This approach
has its flaws. Poorly designed auctions in
Europe left firms with too much debt,
and competition has become less intense
in America. But in the past two decades
the world has marshalled over $4trn of
spending on telecoms infrastructure.
And the mobile phone has turned from a
shiny object for rich people into some-
thing in everyone's pocket. The bright
sparks running climate policy should
take note.
Courtesy: The Economist
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 15
Ageing Creatively
What the world can learn
from Japan
The oldest big country has lessons for those that will soon age and shrink
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T wo tales are often told about
Japan. The first is of a nation in
decline, with a shrinking and
ageing population, sapped of its vitality.
The second is of an alluring, hyper-
functional, somewhat eccentric
society—a nice place to eat sushi or
explore strange subcultures, but of little
wider relevance to the outside world.
Both tales lead people to dismiss Japan.
That is a mistake.
As our special report this week
argues, Japan is not an outlier—it is a
harbinger. Many of the challenges it
faces already affect other countries, or
soon will, including rapid ageing, secular
stagnation, the risk of natural disasters,
and the peril of being caught between
China and America. The fact that some of
these problems hit Japan early makes it a
useful laboratory for observing their
effects and working out how to respond.
One lesson is that societies must
learn to live with risk. As the climate
changes and natural hazards proliferate,
countries must be able to bounce back
from shocks. Painful experience has led
Japan to invest in resilience. Bridges and
buildings are retro fitted to make them
earthquake-proof. After a big quake hit
Kobe in 1995, leaving many without
water, the city built an underground sys-
tem to store 12 days’ supply for residents.
Many Japanese people understand that
responding to disasters is everyone’s
problem, not just the state’s. That has
helped during the pandemic: mask-
wearing has been virtually universal.
Among g7 countries, Japan has the low-
est death rate from covid-19 and the high-
est rate of double-vaccination.
Another lesson is that demography
matters. Most societies will ultimately
age and shrink like Japan. By 2050, one
in six people in the world will be over 65
years old, up from one in 11 in 2019. The
populations of 55 countries, including
China, are projected to decline between
now and 2050. Recent data suggest
India will shrink sooner than expected.
Like climate change, the demographic
sort is vast, gradual and seems
abstract—until it is not. And like climate
16 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
change, it will demand a transformation
both of institutions and of individual
behaviour. Remaining active for longer
is essential. The Japanese government
urges firms to keep staff until they are 70.
Many stay on: 33% of 70- to 74 -year-olds
now have jobs, up from 23% a decade
ago.
Demographic change brings big
economic challenges. Japan owes its
sluggish growth in large measure to its
shrinking population. If you look at the
well-being of individual Japanese peo-
ple, however, the picture is far rosier. In
the decade from 2010 to 2019, Japan
enjoyed the third-highest average rate of
gdp growth per head in the g7, behind
only Germany and America. Japan is a
major creditor and the third-largest econ-
omy at current exchange rates. Its people
live longer than the citizens of any other
country. It is home to the biggest tech-
nology investor on the planet, a pioneer-
ing 5 g firm, and a host of global brands,
from Uniqlo to Nintendo. Expertise in
robots and sensors will help its firms
make money from a wide range of new
industrial technologies.
Geopolitically, Japan plays a pivotal
role between China, its largest trading
partner, and America, its key security
partner. It should not, in short, be a
global afterthought. Japan's mistakes
offer another set of lessons. Living with
lots of risk makes setting priorities
harder. In the face of so many potential
hazards, Japan took its eye off climate
change, the greatest ongoing disaster of
all.
In 2020 it at last pledged to reach
net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but
the details are sketchy. Politicians pin
their hopes on restarting nuclear plants
mothballed after the Fukushima melt-
down in 2011; this is unlikely as long as
the public overestimates the dangers of
nuclear power. Many bureaucrats, mean-
while, remain stubbornly sceptical of
renewable energy. So Japan keeps burn-
ing coal, the filthiest fuel. One way to
cope with a shrinking population is to get
the most out of people. Japan will never
live up to its potential while so many of
its highly educated citizens are denied
the chance to live up to theirs. Seniority-
based promotion at traditional compa-
nies, combined with excessive defer ence
to grey hairs, silences young voices and
stifles innovation. That is why many of
the brightest new graduates prefer to
work for startups.
Japan has done a good job of getting
more women into the workforce in
recent years, but they still have too few
chances to rise. A dual-track labour sys-
tem traps young people and women in
precarious part-time jobs (which, among
other things, makes them less keen to
have children). Politicians tolerate all
this in part because they feel little pres-
sure to do otherwise. The Liberal Demo-
cratic Party has remained in power
almost uninterrupted since 1955, thanks
to a pathetically weak opposition. Senior
figures, typically old men from political
dynasties, are more conservative than
the public they supposedly represent.
For the public, in turn, today’s comfort
dulls the impulse to press for a brighter
tomorrow. Japan’s final lesson is about
the danger of complacency.
Courtesy: The Economist
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Interest Rate
Wind down the money printer:
Why America’s economy needs
tighter monetary policy
Why the Fed should raise interest rates soon
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T he federal reserve has spent most
of 2021 saying that high inflation
would be temporary. And yet
price rises have persistently overshot
forecasts, reaching 5% in October, on the
Fed’s preferred measure, even as
employment remains about 4m short of
its pre-pandemic level. On December
15th the Fed will decide whether to
tighten monetary policy, probably by
accelerating the pace at which it “tapers”
its monthly purchases of assets, mostly
government bonds, which are currently
running at $90bn per month.
It should go ahead and take action.
Though uncertainty is high, the Fed
must rapidly respond to the data it has
today and then adjust as necessary as
conditions evolve. Those data indicate
that it has already fallen behind. The rise
in prices cannot be explained by a few
shortages, such as of second-hand cars.
In October the me dian item in the con-
sumer-price index was 3.1% more expen-
sive than a year earlier. Clothes prices
were up 4.3%, shelter (such as rent) was
3.5% dearer, and transport cost 4.5%
more. In the third quarter private-sector
wages and salaries grew at an annualised
rate of 6.5%—too fast to be compatible
with the Fed’s 2% inflation target with-
out incredible productivity growth.
It is true that temporary factors
have driven up inflation. The $1.9trn
fiscal stimulus President Joe Biden
signed in March will not be repeated (the
outlay proposed in the Democrats’
social-spending bill is more spread out
and partly offset by tax rises). During the
pandemic, consumers have binged on
goods. Supply chains have been bunged
up, especially as the world’s factories
have faced lockdowns and staff
absences. Despite an abnormal number
of Americans out of work, firms have
struggled to fill vacancies.
However, predicting when these
pandemic-related forces will ease is a
fool’s errand, especially now that the
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Tighter monetary
policy is therefore
justified. But if you
believe the Fed’s theory
of how its asset
purchases work, every
bond it buys adds fresh
stimulus to the
economy. It follows that
merely tapering the
pace of purchases is
not tightening
Omicron variant is spreading. For as
long as inflation remains high, there is a
growing danger that it will become
entrenched. The New York Fed esti-
mates that the median consumer expects
prices to rise at an annual pace of 4.2%
over the next three years, up from 3% in
January 2021, suggesting they may
demand higher wages.
Rising inflation expectations also
reduce the effective cost of credit,
because inflation makes debts easier to
repay. The real interest rate over five
years on government bonds is about -
1.6%, lower than in almost all of 2020,
when the economy was far weaker. The
latest argument from some doves is that
nominal gdp, or total cash spending in
the economy, is merely on its pre-crisis
trend.
This proves that pandemic-related
distortions, not excessive demand, have
driven up prices, they say. Yet though
this argument held in the third quarter, it
may already be out of date. Nominal gdp
is expected to grow at annual rates of
over 10% in the fourth quarter, com-
pared with the trend rate of just 4%.
America is seeing an unusual surge in
demand, not just constrained supply.
Tighter monetary policy is therefore
justified. But if you believe the Fed’s the-
ory of how its asset purchases work,
every bond it buys adds fresh stimulus to
the economy. It follows that merely
tapering the pace of purchases is not
tightening.
So why not raise interest rates
instead? The answer is that the Fed is
bound by its past guidance that it would
stop buying bonds before raising rates,
and that it would avoid ending purchases
abruptly. Abandoning that framework
would lead investors to question the cen-
tral bank’s trustworthiness and to expect
an excessive number of additional inter-
est-rate increases in 2022. The good
news is that the Fed can taper fast
enough to let it raise interest rates in
March. If between now and then the pan-
demic greatly worsens, consumers slash
their spending on goods or many missing
workers return to the labour force, mone-
tary policymakers can change course
again. But they must give themselves
scope to raise rates soon. In an ideal
world it is an option that would already
be on the table.
Courtesy: The Economist
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 17
American Dominance
What would America fight for?
If the United States pulls back, the
world will become more dangerous
America has become reluctant to use hard power across much of the world
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
E ighty years ago Japan bombed
Pearl Harbour. It was a grave
error, bringing the world’s
mightiest country into the war and
dooming the Japanese empire to
oblivion. A clear-sighted Japanese
admiral supposedly lamented: “I fear all
we have done is to awaken a sleeping
giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Today Japan is peaceable, rich and
innovative. It was the Japanese who
rebuilt their country, but their task was
made easier by the superpower that
defeated them. Not only was America
midwife to a liberal, capitalist democ-
racy in Japan; it also created a world
order in which Japan was free to trade
and grow. This order was not perfect,
and did not apply everywhere. But it was
better than anything that had come
before.
Unlike previous great powers, Amer-
18 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
ica did not use its military dominance to
win commercial advantage at the
expense of its smaller allies. On the con-
trary, it allowed itself to be bound, most
of the time, by common rules. And that
rules-based system allowed much of the
world to avoid war and grow prosperous.
Unfortunately, America is tiring of
its role as guarantor of the liberal order.
The giant has not exactly fallen
asleep again, but its resolve is faltering
and its enemies are testing it. Vladimir
Putin is massing troops on the border
with Ukraine and could soon invade.
China is buzzing Taiwan’s airspace
with fighter jets, using mock-ups of
American aircraft-carriers for target
practice and trying out hypersonic weap-
ons. Iran has taken such a maximalist
stance at nuclear talks that many observ-
ers expect them to collapse.
Thus, two autocratic powers
threaten to seize land currently under
democratic control, and a third threat-
ens to violate the Non-Proliferation
Treaty by building a nuclear bomb.
How far would America go to pre-
vent such reckless acts? Joe Biden can
sound forceful, at times. On December
7th he warned Mr Putin of severe conse-
quences if Russia were to launch another
attack on Ukraine. He has maintained
sanctions on Iran. And in October he
said that America had a “commitment”
to defend Taiwan, though aides insisted
policy has not changed. (America has
long refused to say whether it would send
forces to repel a Chinese invasion, so as
not to encourage any Taiwanese action
that might provoke one.) China was left
wondering whether Mr Biden misspoke
or was craftily hinting at a more robust
stance.
On December 7th America’s House
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
of Representatives passed a big boost to Japan and Australia and draw closer to the Quad, with Aus-
the defence budget. Also that week Mr tralia, Japan and America. Nato cannot
have signalled that they admit Ukraine, since the rules say an
would help defend attack on one is an attack on all, and Rus-
Taiwan. Britain has sia has already occupied Ukrainian terri-
tory. But nato members can offer
joined America in Ukraine more arms, cash and training to
sharing nuclear- help it defend itself.
If the liberal order breaks down,
submarine propulsion America’s allies will suffer grievously.
technology with Once it is gone, Americans themselves
Australia. A new may be surprised to discover how much
they benefited from it. Yet all is not lost.
German government is A determined and united effort by
hinting at a tougher line democracies could preserve at least
some of the rules-based system, and pre-
against Russia. More vent the world from sliding back towards
adaptation to a world the dismal historical norm, in which the
with less America will strong prey unchecked on the weak. Few
tasks are more important, or harder.
be required Courtesy: The Economist
nuclear-submarine propulsion technol-
ogy with Australia. A new German gov-
ernment is hinting at a tougher line
against Russia. More adaptation to a
world with less America will be required.
Democracies, especially in Europe,
should spend more on defence. Those,
such as Taiwan and Ukraine, at risk of
being attacked should make themselves
indigestible, for example by beefing up
their capacity for asymmetric warfare.
The better prepared they are, the
less likely their foes are to attack them.
Fans of the rules-based order should
share more intelligence with each other.
They should bury old quarrels, such as
the futile spats between Japan and South
Korea over history. They should forge
deeper and broader alliances, formally
or informally.
India, out of self-interest, should
relinquish the vestiges of non-alignment
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 19
The Biden Plan
Preventing the Next Attack
A Strategy for the War on Terrorism
The George W. Bush administration and then the Obama administration developed a
strategy for fighting what became known as “the global war on terror”
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
I n the immediate aftermath of 9/11,
the United States' resolve was clear:
never again. Never again would it let
shadowy networks of jihadists, acting in
the name of a perverted version of Islam,
carry out a catastrophic attack on
American soil. And so, in fits and starts,
the George W. Bush administration and
then the Obama administration
developed a strategy for fighting what
became known as “the global war on
terror.”
Washington sought to disrupt plots
wherever they emerged and deny terror-
ists safe havens wherever they existed.
When possible, it would rely on local
partners to prosecute the fight. But when
necessary, it would act alone to disrupt
plots and kill or capture terrorist opera-
tives and leaders, including with drone
strikes and daring special operations
raids such as the one that killed Osama
bin Laden. Today, the terrorist threat
looks much different than it did right
before 9/11. The U.S. counterterrorism
community has dramatically ramped up
its intelligence capabilities. Determined
20 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
to “connect the dots” in the future, the
U.S. government created new agencies
and instituted a new paradigm for intel-
ligence—share by rule, withhold by
exception—and set up a slew of “fusion
centers” and joint task forces to foster
interagency cooperation. Borders were
hardened, cockpit doors reinforced, and
watch lists created. In Afghanistan, the
United States overthrew the Taliban
regime, which was hosting al Qaeda.
Today, despite recent Taliban gains,
al Qaeda still does not enjoy free rein in
the country. In Iraq and Syria, al Qaeda's
offshoot, the Islamic State (or ISIS), is on
the run, thanks to the work of a global
coalition assembled in 2014 and U.S.-led
air strikes and special operations raids.
The group’s Iraqi capital of Mosul
fell in July, and its Syrian stronghold in
Raqqa is almost certain to follow. Owing
to the relentless pressure that the United
States and its allies have placed on ter-
rorists' safe havens, the threat of a com-
plex and catastrophic attack emanating
from abroad—although not gone—has
diminished. At the same time, however,
the threat from homegrown and so
called lone-wolf terrorism has increased.
This kind of terrorism is not new,
nor is it confined to Islamic terrorism (in
fact, according to one study by the FBI
and the Department of Homeland Secu-
rity, from 2000 to 2016, white suprema-
cists killed more people in the United
States than any other group of domestic
extremists). But these threats have taken
on new urgency as ISIS in particular has
harnessed the power of social media to
inspire mostly young men to commit
violence.
In 2014, Abu Muhammad al-
Adnani, ISIS’ now deceased media
spokesperson, urged followers to be
resourceful when confronted with the
opportunity to murder an unbeliever:
“Kill him in any manner or way however
it may be: smash his head with a rock, or
slaughter him with a knife, or run him
over with your car.” People were listen-
ing: one study, by Lorenzo Vidino,
Francesco Marone, and Eva Entenmann,
identified 51 attacks between June 2014
and June 2017 by terrorists who had
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
heeded the call to act locally in Europe
and North America, with 16 of those car-
ried out in the United States. The 2016
mass shooting in Orlando and bombings
in New York City and New Jersey likely
resulted from a mix of jihadist inspira-
tions, but in both cases, the killers had no
known external direction or training.
The common theme: consuming a
variety of extremist content online. A
threat that began with an attack planned
by a small group of veteran terrorists in
Afghanistan has transformed into a dif-
fuse movement of recently radicalized
individuals planning pop-up attacks
across the globe.
What is the right strategy for this
new phase of the war on terrorism? The
answer is one that confronts three main
challenges: physical safe havens from
which terrorists continue to plot attacks,
virtual safe havens through which ISIS
and other groups mobilize individuals to
commit violence, and a global and
domestic environment increasingly hos-
pitable to terrorists.
Although the likelihood of another
9/11 has diminished, it is far from zero.
Indeed, it appears that al Qaeda is
passing the mantle to a new generation,
with bin Laden's son Hamza releasing
several audio recordings since 2015 call-
ing on followers to commit violence.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Moreover, the group's various offshoots United States cannot take its eye off the
are busy plotting attacks. The most dan- threat of a massive, sophisticated attack.
gerous elements of its largest affiliate,
Jabhat al-Nusra—more accurately
described as al Qaeda in Syria—are still
intent on attacking the United States. So
is al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or
AQAP, al Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate, which
has proved persistently focused on
attacking airliners. ISIS, for its part,
Physical territory not
only provides terrorists
with room to plot but
also offers reliable
revenue from taxation
and, often, oil sales, as
well as human resources
through forced
conscription. And so the
United States must
continue to put
relentless pressure on
safe havens
faces almost certain defeat in Iraq and
Syria, but it seeks to sustain its brand
with no fewer than eight global branches,
from Afghanistan to Libya. And it has not
been satisfied with merely amassing
territory. Its affiliate in Egypt's Sinai
Peninsula brought down a Russian pas-
senger plane in 2015. And in August
2017, Australian police announced that
they had foiled a sophisticated plot by
ISIS to blow up a passenger jet.
In separate shipments, an ISIS com-
mander in Syria had sent followers in
Sydney the parts for an explosive device
that could be assembled in country—an
approach that the analyst Paul
Cruickshank has called “an IKEA model
of terror.”
Although authorities have said that
airport screening would have detected
the device, ISIS is testing ways to defeat
such defenses, and it's easy to imagine it
succeeding. The lesson here is that the
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 21
Department—at a time when military
leaders regularly call for increases in
foreign aid—are so worrisome. Pressure
on safe havens will merely keep a lid on a
threat from terrorists who are growing
more creative by the day. As technology
advances, so do terrorists’ capabilities to
exploit it. Consider the next generation
of aviation threats. From AQAP’s 2010
plan to stow printer cartridges filled with
explosives in airplane cargo holds to
ISIS' recent plot in Australia, terrorists
have shown a determination to over-
come the post-9/11 security obstacles to
bringing down airliners. The Trump
administration has wisely put an empha-
sis on aviation security. In March, for
example, it issued a temporary ban on
the use of laptops in the passenger cabin
on flights originating from certain air-
ports. The administration threatened to
extend the ban to all U.S.-bound flights,
prompting some international carriers
to improve their security measures.
The government should continue to
focus on aviation security, but it should
go further and partner with the private
sector to generate innovative methods of
detecting new explosive materials. Ter-
rorists, of course, are doing their own
innovation, and some of them have even
experimented with drones. In 2013, for
instance, Iraqi officials announced that
they had thwarted a plot in which al
Qaeda operatives intended to use toy
22 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
planes to deliver sarin and mustard gas.
Adding to the danger, more and
more devices are going online as part of
“the Internet of things,” creating new
vulnerabilities that ISIS and others
could exploit. That's why the Trump
administration should heed the call from
the 2016 report of the Commission on
Enhancing National Cybersecurity to
work with the private sector to build secu-
rity features into new technology at the
design stage, rather than play catch up
with terrorists' attempts to commandeer
such devices.
The United States’ future safety
demands that it, and not its adversaries,
dominate the technological domain.The
innovation that has benefited terrorists
the most, however, is social media. Lone
wolves are never truly alone; they delib-
erately search for and find communities
online. To draw in vulnerable youth, ISIS
has created a sophisticated media
machine that pumps out professionally
produced videos, multilingual tweets, a
glossy magazine, and Instagram posts,
all serving up an intoxicating narrative
that followers can belong to a cause
greater than themselves. Other groups,
including al Qaeda, are now mimicking
ISIS' tactics. Gone are the amateur vid-
eos of al Qaeda's leader Ayman al-
Zawahiri sitting cross-legged before a
drab backdrop; those rare releases are
now dwarfed by al Qaeda's Syrian
branch's steady stream of slick videos
and magazines.
The U.S. government has struggled
to beat terrorists at the social media
game, but Silicon Valley is taking prom-
ising steps. In June, a group of technol-
ogy companies created the Global
Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a
consortium devoted to making their plat-
forms less hospitable to extremists.
Facebook, which boasts more than two
billion active monthly users, is employ-
ing artificial intelligence and image-
matching technology to stop known ter-
rorist content from proliferating. Twit-
ter, for its part, has suspended more than
375,000 accounts promoting terrorism.
Deleting by hand after the fact will not
suffice, however, and so social media
platforms will need to train their algo-
rithms to detect extremist con-
tent—international and domestic—and
banish it immediately. At the same time,
companies will need to ramp up their
support for legitimate voices that rebut
terrorists' narratives. Jigsaw, a think
tank created by Google, has developed
the Redirect Method, a project that tar-
gets online users who have been identi-
fied as susceptible to ISIS' messaging
and serves them alternative content that
subtly debunks terrorist propaganda.
The government can play a role,
too—not as the messenger but as a part-
ner to the private sector. In 2016, the
State Department launched the Global
Engagement Center, an office dedicated
to supporting voices that rebut terror-
ists' messaging. But so far, Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson has refused to spend
the $80 million already earmarked for
the center, which currently lacks a direc-
tor and is losing some of the private-
sector talent recruited last year. The
Trump administration should support,
not sideline, its work. What may most
influence the future terrorist threat, how-
ever, is not the flourishing of physical
and virtual safe havens per se but the
breakdown in order that is sure to spawn
more of both.
Today, old and new powers are seek-
ing to redraw the map. Across the Gulf
and the Levant, and even in Afghanistan,
Iran and its proxies are promoting and
taking advantage of instability. Russia is
doing the same in eastern Europe, and it
has worked hard to protect its client in
Syria and create a new one in Libya. The
future threat will be defined by these
areas of chaos—the safe havens pre-
sented by them, the foreign fighters
drawn to them, and the violence inspired
by them. So there is a dangerous irony in
Trump's invocation of “America first,” a
message that has caused U.S. allies to
wonder whether they can still count on
Washington to continue as a partner
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
in—if not the guarantor of—their secu- If the United States Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
rity.
If the United States pulls up the pulls up the drawbridge
drawbridge in the name of protection, it in the name of
may deny itself counterterrorism tools protection, it may deny
that are essential to the country's safety.
By banning the travel of all citizens itself counterterrorism
from certain countries, rather than tai- tools that are essential
loring screening to specific threats, the
United States risks alienating the very
to the country’s safety.
partners it needs to fight today's terror- In the past, the United
ists and fueling the “clash of civiliza- States has taken the lead
tions” narrative that ISIS uses to recruit
future ones. As the campaign against on working with foreign
ISIS has laid bare, partnerships with governments to share
local allies are the key to successfully
taking back territory from terrorists. The
watch lists, improve
same is true when it comes to interdict- border security, and
ing foreign fighters. In the past, the impose new criminal
United States has taken the lead on work-
ing with foreign governments to share penalties on foreign
watch lists, improve border security, and fighters
impose new criminal penalties on for-
murder of a peaceful protester in Char-
eign fighters.
lottesville, Virginia, by an avowed white
Experts have warned that as ISIS'
supremacist is only the most recent
territory in Iraq and Syria shrinks, some
reminder that the United States has a
40,000 fighters who came from more
terrorism problem unrelated to violent
than 120 countries to fight for ISIS could
jihadism. The challenge that bedeviled
start to return home. But given that some
both the Bush and the Obama adminis-
of these fighters have spent years per-
trations—building trust between com-
fecting their violent craft on the battle-
munities and their government to
field, the greater concern may now be
address extremism in all its forms —
“not so much one of quantity as one of
seems harder than ever. And lately, this
quality,” as Nicholas Rasmussen, the
important work has suffered from
director of the National Counter-
neglect.
terrorism Center, put it earlier this year.
The Trump administration has pro-
Europe will continue to face an immedi-
posed a budget that zeroes out funding
ate threat from skilled returnees of the
for a Department of Homeland Security
type that participated in the 2015 Paris
program aimed at countering violent
attacks and the 2016 Brussels bombings.
extremism and has already withdrawn a
Unfortunately, however, the conti-
grant for a group dedicated to combating
nent has yet to experience the kind of sea
domestic hate groups such as the Ku
change that occurred in the United
Klux Klan. Sixteen years after 9/11, many
States, which radically rethought its prac-
Americans are weary of the war on ter-
tices for sharing information among law
rorism. Having built up its defenses, the
enforcement and intelligence agencies.
United States should no longer go
In many European capitals, the wall
abroad in search of monsters to destroy,
impeding such sharing is far too high.
some contend. Instead, they say, it
And since the Atlantic Ocean is not a
should stick to keeping the bad guys out
perfect buffer, what happens in Europe
and adjust to a new normal in which
matters for the security of the United
some attacks are inevitable. But it would
States. So rather than confusing U.S.
be a grave mistake to confuse a mitigated
allies with travel bans and mixed mes-
threat with a weak one. Rather than res-
sages about the value of NATO, the
ignation, Americans will have to demon-
United States should expand its
strate resilience—just as New York, Fort
counterterrorism cooperation with its
Hood, Boston, Charleston, San
European partners. For example, it
Bernardino, Orlando, Portland, and
should press its partners to more rapidly
Charlottesville have done in the face of
share airline passenger data and intelli-
hate and violence.
gence gleaned from investigations. And
To date, the United States' strategy
it should resume the dialogue begun by
has succeeded in preventing another
James Clapper, the former director of
9/11-type attack, largely because it built
national intelligence, on promoting
a net designed to do just that. But for the
intelligence sharing with and among
next phase in the war on terrorism, the
European countries.
country will need a new net. It cannot
It would be a mistake, however, to
afford to operate without one.
look only outward, ignoring the growing
terrorist threat at home. The hit-and-run
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 23
Russia & FSU
Containment Beyond the Cold War
How Washington Lost the Post-
Soviet Peace
What if we were to give up having to have our finger next to the button all the time?
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
O
n December 15, 1991, U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker
arrived in Moscow amid
political chaos to meet with Russian
leader Boris Yeltsin, who was at the time
busy wresting power from his nemesis,
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Yeltsin had recently made a shocking
announcement that he and the leaders of
Belarus and Ukraine were dismantling
the Soviet Union.
Their motive was to render
Gorbachev impotent by transforming
him from the head of a massive country
into the president of nothing. In the
short run, it was a brilliant move, and
within ten days, it had succeeded com-
pletely. Gorbachev resigned, and the
Soviet Union collapsed. The long-term
consequences, however, were harder to
grasp.
Even before Yeltsin’s gambit, Baker
had begun worrying about whether the
desire of some Soviet republics to
become independent might yield blood-
24 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
shed.
On November 19, 1991, he had
asked one of Gorbachev's advisers, Alex-
ander Yakovlev, if Ukraine's breaking
away would prompt violent Russian
resistance. Yakovlev was skeptical and
responded that there were 12 million
Russians in Ukraine, with “many in
mixed marriages,” so “what sort of war
could it be?” Baker answered simply: “A
normal war.” Now, with Yeltsin upping
the ante by calling for the Soviet Union's
complete destruction, Baker had a new
fear. What would happen to the vast
Soviet nuclear arsenal after the collapse
of centralized command and control? As
he counseled his boss, President George
H. W. Bush, a disintegrating empire with
“30,000 nuclear weapons presents an
incredible danger to the American peo-
ple—and they know it and will hold us
accountable if we don't respond.”
Baker’s goal for his December 1991
journey was thus to ascertain who, after
the Soviet Union’s dissolution, would
retain the power to authorize a nuclear
launch and how that fateful order might
be delivered. Soon after arriving, he cut
to the chase: Would Yeltsin tell him?
Remarkably, the Russian president did.
Yeltsin's openness to Baker was
partly a gambit to win U.S. help in his
struggle with Gorbachev and partly an
attempt to secure financial aid. But it was
also a sign that he wanted a fresh start in
Moscow's relations with the West, one
characterized by openness and trust.
Yeltsin and Baker soon began work-
ing in tandem to ensure that only one
nuclear successor state—Russia—would
ultimately emerge from the Soviet col-
lapse. This collaboration survived Bush's
1992 election loss. Yeltsin continued the
effort with President Bill Clinton, U.S.
Secretaries of Defense Les Aspin and
William Perry, and Strobe Talbott,
Clinton's top Russia adviser, among oth-
ers, to ensure that former Soviet atomic
weapons in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and
above all Ukraine were either destroyed
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
or relocated to Russian soil.
During a 1997 summit, Yeltsin even
asked Clinton whether they could cease
having nuclear triggers continually at
hand: “What if we were to give up having
to have our finger next to the button all
the time?” Clinton responded, “Well, if
we do the right thing in the next four
years, maybe we won't have to think as
much about this problem.” By the end of
the 1990s, however, that trust had
largely vanished.
Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's hand-
picked successor, divulged little in
grudging 1999 conversations with
Clinton and Talbott. Instead of sharing
Russia's launch protocols, Putin skill-
fully played up his perceived need for a
harder Kremlin line by describing the
grim consequences of reduced Russian
power: in former Soviet regions, he said,
terrorists now played soccer with decapi-
tated heads of hostages.
As Putin later remarked, “By
launching the sovereignty parade”—his
term for the independence movements
of Soviet republics in 1990–91—“Russia
itself aided in the collapse of the Soviet
Union,” the outcome that had opened
the door to such gruesome lawlessness.
In his view, Moscow should have dug in,
both within the union and abroad,
instead of standing aside while former
Soviet bloc states jumped ship to join the
West. “We would have avoided a lot of
problems if the Soviets had not made
such a hasty exit from Eastern Europe,”
he said. Once firmly in power, Putin
began backtracking on the democratiza-
tion of the Yeltsin era and on cooperative
ventures with Washington.
Although there were notable epi-
sodes reprising the spirit of the early
1990s—expressions of sympathy after
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
and a nuclear accord in 2010—the basic
trend line was negative. The relationship
reached frightening new lows during
Russia's 2008 conflict with Georgia and
its 2014 invasion of Ukraine, and it has
sunk even further since 2016, owing to
the revelation of Russia's cyberattacks
on U.S. businesses, institutions, and
elections.
Why did relations between Wash-
ington and Moscow deteriorate so
badly? History is rarely monocausal, and
the decay was the cumulative product of
U.S. and Russian policies and politics
over time. But it is hard to escape the fact
that one particular U.S. policy added to
the burdens on Russia's fragile young
democracy when it was most in need of
friends: the way that Washington
expanded NATO. Expansion itself was a
justifiable response to the geopolitics of
the 1990s.
NATO had already been enlarged a
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
number of times. Given that former found an impact as the competition
Soviet bloc states were now clamoring to itself. To grasp what went wrong in U.S.-
join the alliance, it was neither unprece-
dented nor unreasonable to let them in.
What was unwise was expanding the
alliance in a way that took little account
of the geopolitical reality. The closer
NATO moved its infrastructure—foreign
bases, troops, and, above all, nuclear
weapons—to Moscow, the higher the
political cost to the newly cooperative
relationship with Russia. Some U.S.
policymakers understood this problem
at the time and proposed expanding in
contingent phases to minimize the dam-
age. That promising alternative mode of
enlargement would have avoided draw-
Scandinavian alliance
members, such as
Norway, savvy about
living in a neighborhood
that was Soviet-adjacent
but not Soviet-
controlled, had in earlier
decades wisely
customized their NATO
memberships
ing a new line across Europe, but it faced
strong opposition within Washington.
Instead, advocates of a one-size-
fits-all manner of expansion triumphed.
Washington's error was not to enlarge
the alliance but to do so in a way that
maximized Moscow's aggravation and
gave fuel to Russian reactionaries.
In 2014, Putin justified his takeover
of Crimea as a necessary response to
NATO's “deployment of military infra-
structure at our borders.” Cold wars are
not short-lived affairs, so thaws are pre-
cious. Neither country made the best
possible use of the thaw in the 1990s.
Today, as the United States and Rus-
sia spar over sanctions, cyberwarfare,
and much else, the choices made three
decades ago carry enduring significance.
The two countries still possess more than
90 percent of the world's nuclear war-
heads and thus the ability to kill nearly
every living creature on earth.
Yet between them, both states have
shredded nearly every remaining arms
control accord, and they have shown
little willingness to replace them with
new agreements. Understanding the
decay in U.S.-Russian relations—and
how the manner of NATO expansion
contributed to it—can help the United
States better manage long-term strategic
competition in the future. As the 1990s
showed, the way that Washington com-
petes can, over time, have just as pro-
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 25
nal a willingness to pay Moscow's price,
whatever that was, in advance of the elec-
tion and “the Germans work[ed] out
unification with the Soviets,” NATO
would get “dumped.” This reality gave
Moscow the ability to undermine the
established order of transatlantic rela-
tions. There were speculative discus-
sions between the U.S. State Department
and the West Germans on February 2,
1990, about how best to proceed in this
delicate moment and what NATO might
do beyond the Cold War line, such as
“extend[ing] its territorial coverage to . . .
eastern Europe.” Genscher raised this
idea in a negative sense, meaning he was
certain that Moscow would not allow
reunification unless such coverage was
explicitly ruled out. But Bush and his
National Security Council sensed that
they might be able to finesse the way
NATO moved eastward, namely by
restricting what could happen on eastern
German territory after Germany joined
the alliance. Although they did not use
the term, they were following the Scandi-
navian strategy. But a week later,
Baker—out of the loop with evolving
White House thinking because of his
extended travels—unwittingly over-
stepped his bounds by offering
Gorbachev a now infamous hypothetical
bargain that echoed Genscher's think-
ing, not Bush's: What if Gorbachev
allowed reunification to proceed and
Washington agreed “that NATO's juris-
diction would not shift one inch east-
ward from its present position?”
The secretary soon had to drop this
wording, however, after realizing that it
was inconsistent with Bush's prefer-
ences. Within a couple of weeks, Baker
was having to advise allies quietly that
his use of “the term NATO 'jurisdiction'
was creating some confusion” and
“should probably be avoided in the
future.” It was a sign that NATO would
shift eastward after all, with a special
status for eastern Germany, which ulti-
mately would become Europe's only
guaranteed nuclear-free zone. Through
this move to limit NATO infrastructure
in eastern Germany, and by playing on
Moscow's economic weakness, Bush
shifted Gorbachev's attention away from
the removal of nuclear weapons in the
western territory and toward economic
inducements to allow for German reuni-
fication.
In exchange for billions of deutsche
marks in various forms of support, the
Soviet leader ultimately allowed Ger-
many to reunify and its eastern regions
to join NATO on October 3, 1990, thus
permitting the alliance to expand across
the old Cold War frontline. By October
11, 1991, Bush could even indulge in spec-
ulation about a more ambitious goal. He
26 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
As the Cold War’s
frontline, a divided
Germany had the highest
concentration of nuclear
arms per square mile
anywhere on the planet.
The weapons in West
Germany had been
installed to deter a
Soviet invasion, given
how difficult it would
have been for NATO’s
conventional forces
alone to stop a massive
advance
asked Manfred Wörner, then NATO's
secretary-general, whether the alliance's
efforts to establish a liaison organization
for central and eastern European states
might also “include the Baltics.”
Wörner's feelings were clear, and
Bush did not contradict him. “Yes,”
Wörner said, “if the Baltics apply they
should be welcomed.” By December
1991, the Soviet Union was gone. Soon,
Bush would be gone as well, after he lost
to Clinton in the 1992 U.S. presidential
election. By the time the new president
got his team in place, in mid-1993,
hyperinflation and corruption were
already weakening the prospects of
democracy in Russia. Worse, Yeltsin
soon made a series of tragic decisions
that cast doubt on the country's ability to
develop into a peaceful, democratic
neighbor to the new states on its borders.
In October 1993, clashing with anti-
reform extremists in the parliament,
Yeltsin had tanks fire on the parliamen-
tary building. The fighting killed an esti-
mated 145 people and wounded 800
more. Despite, or perhaps because of,
the attack, extremists did well in the sub-
sequent parliamentary elections, on
December 12, 1993. The party that won
the most votes was the Liberal Demo-
cratic Party of Russia, which was “nei-
ther liberal nor democratic, but by all
appearances fascist,” as the historian
Sergey Radchenko has put it.
For a while, a budding friendship
between “Bill and Boris” distracted the
world from these troubling events. The
two leaders developed the closest rela-
tionship ever to exist between an Ameri-
can president and a Russian leader, with
Clinton visiting Moscow more times
than any U.S. president before or since.
But Clinton also wanted to respond to
demands from central and eastern Euro-
pean countries seeking to join NATO. In
January 1994, he launched a novel plan
for European security, one aimed at putt-
ing those countries on the path to NATO
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
membership without antagonizing Rus- By December 1991, U.S. believes should emerge from the
sia. alliance's internal deliberations on
This was PfP, an idea largely con- the Soviet Union was
ceived of by General John Shalikashvili, gone. Soon, Bush would
the Polish-born chairman of the Joint be gone as well, after he
Chiefs of Staff, and his advisers. It
resembled the Scandinavian strat- lost to Clinton in the
egy—but writ large. The world created in 1992 U.S. presidential
the 1990s never fulfilled the hopes that
arose after the collapse of the Berlin Wall
election. By the time the
and the Soviet Union. PfP's connection new president got his
to NATO membership was intentionally team in place, in mid-
left vague, but the idea was roughly that
would-be NATO members could, 1993, hyperinflation and
through military-to-military contacts, corruption were already
training, and operations, put themselves
on a path to full membership and the
weakening the prospects
Article 5 guarantee. This strategy offered of democracy in Russia.
a compromise sufficiently acceptable to Worse, Yeltsin soon
key players—even Poland, which wanted
full membership and did not like the idea made a series of tragic
of having to spend time in the waiting decisions that cast doubt
room, but understood that it had to fol- on the country's ability
low Washington's lead. PfP also had the
benefit of not immediately redrawing a to develop into a
line across Europe between states with peaceful, democratic
Article 5 protection and those without.
Instead, a host of countries in disparate neighbor to the new
locations could join the partnership and states on its borders
then progress at their own pace.
would be a high-precision police action
This meant that PfP could incorpo-
to counter separatists in the Chechnya
rate post-Soviet states—including, cru-
region. Instead, he started what became
cially, Ukraine—even if they were
a brutal, protracted, and bloody conflict.
unlikely to become NATO allies. As
Central and eastern European
Clinton put it to the visiting German
states seized on the bloodshed to argue
chancellor, Kohl, on January 31, 1994:
that they might be next if Washington
“Ukraine is the linchpin of the whole
and NATO did not protect them with
idea.” The president added that it would
Article 5. A new term arose internally in
be catastrophic “if Ukraine collapses,
the Clinton administration: “neo-
because of Russian influence or because
containment.” Such thinking, along with
of militant nationalists within Ukraine.”
the relationships that Polish President
Clinton continued: “One reason
Lech Walesa and Czech President Vaclav
why all the former Warsaw Pact states
Havel established with Clinton, increas-
were willing to support [PfP] was
ingly made an impact on the American
because they understood” that it could
president. So, too, did domestic political
provide space for Ukraine in a way that
pressures.
NATO could not. The genius of PfP was
In the November 1994 U.S. midterm
that it balanced these competing inter-
elections, the Republican Party took the
ests and even opened its door to Russia
Senate and the House. Voters had
as well, which would eventually join the
endorsed NATO enlargement as part of
partnership. Clinton later noted to
the Republicans' winning platform, the
NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana
“Contract with America.” Clinton
that PfP “has proven to be a bigger deal
wanted to win a second term in 1996, and
than we had expected—with more coun-
the midterm results factored into his
tries, and more substantive cooperation.
decision to abandon the option of
It has grown into something signifi-
expanding NATO through an individual-
cant in its own right.” Opponents of PfP
ized, gradual process involving PfP. He
within the Clinton administration com-
shifted instead to a one-size-fits-all
plained that by making central and east-
enlargement with full guarantees from
ern European countries wait to gain the
the start. Reflecting this strategy, NATO
full Article 5 guarantee, the partnership
issued a public communiqué in Decem-
gave Moscow a de facto veto over when,
ber 1994 stating outright: “We expect
where, and how NATO would expand.
and would welcome NATO enlargement
They argued instead for extending the
that would reach to democratic states to
alliance as soon as possible to deserving
our East.” Yeltsin, conscious of these
new democracies. And in late 1994,
words' significance, was enraged. Pri-
Yeltsin gave PfP critics ammunition by
vately, the State Department sent the
approving what he reportedly thought
U.S. Mission to NATO a text “which the
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January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 27
As promised, on New Year's Eve, Yeltsin
shocked his nation with the broadcast of
a brief, prerecorded resignation speech.
The president's stiff, weak delivery of his
scripted words intensified the atmo-
sphere of melancholy. Seated against the
backdrop of an indifferently decorated
Christmas tree, he asked Russians for
“forgiveness.” He apologized, saying that
“many of our shared dreams didn't come
true” and that “what we thought would
be easy turned out to be painfully diffi-
cult.” Putin would subsequently uphold
his end of the bargain by, in one of his
first official acts, granting Yeltsin immu-
nity. Yeltsin left the Kremlin around 1
PM Moscow time, feeling immensely
relieved to have no obligations for the
first time in decades, and told his driver
to take him to his family.
En route, his limousine's phone
rang. It was the president of the United
States. Yeltsin told Clinton to call back at
5 PM, even though the American presi-
dent was preparing to host hundreds of
guests at the White House that day for a
lavish millennial celebration. Mean-
while, the new leader of Russia made
Clinton wait a further 26 hours before
making contact.
On January 1, 2000, Putin finally
found nine minutes for a call. Clinton
tried to put a good face on the abrupt
transition, saying, “I think you are off to a
very good start.” It soon became appar-
ent that Putin's rise, in terms of Mos-
cow's relations with Washington, was
more an end than a start. The peak of
U.S.-Russian cooperation was now in the
past, not least as measured in arms con-
trol. Letting a decades-long trend lapse,
Washington and Moscow failed to con-
28 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
clude any major new accords in the
Clinton era.
Instead, nuclear targeting of U.S.
and European cities resumed under a
Russian leader who, in December 1999,
had started a reign that would be mea-
sured in decades. For U.S. relations with
Russia, these events signaled, if not a
return to Cold War conditions preclud-
ing all cooperation, then certainly the
onset of a killing frost.
Of course, for central and eastern
Europeans who had suffered decades of
brutality, war, and suppression, entering
NATO on the cusp of the twenty-first
century was the fulfillment of a dream of
partnership with the West.
Yet the sense of celebration was
muted. As U.S. Secretary of State Mad-
eleine Albright remarked, “A decade
earlier, when the Berlin Wall had come
down, there was dancing in the streets.
Now the euphoria was gone.” The world
created in the 1990s never fulfilled the
hopes that arose after the collapse of
both the Berlin Wall and the Soviet
Union. Initially, there was a widespread
belief that the tenets of liberal interna-
tional order had succeeded and that resi-
dents of all the states between the Atlan-
tic and the Pacific, not just the Western
ones, could now cooperate within that
order. But both U.S. and Russian leaders
repeatedly made choices at odds with
their stated intentions to promote that
outcome. Bush talked about a Europe
whole, free, and at peace; Clinton repeat-
edly proclaimed his wish to avoid draw-
ing a line. Yet both ultimately helped
create a new dividing line across
post–Cold War Europe.
Gorbachev sought to save the Soviet
Union; Yeltsin sought lasting democrati-
zation for Russia. Neither one suc-
ceeded. NATO expansion was not the
sole source of these problems. But the
manner of the alliance's enlarge-
ment—in interaction with tragic Russian
choices — contributed to their extent and
impact. Put differently, it is not possible
to separate a serious assessment of
enlargement's role in eroding U.S.-
Russian relations from how it happened.
Washington's error was not to expand
the alliance but to do so in a way that
maximized friction with Moscow. That
error resulted from the United States
misjudging both the permanence of coop-
erative relations with Moscow and the
extent of Putin's willingness to damage
those relations. The all-or-nothing
expansion strategy also incurred those
costs without locking in democratiza-
tion. Former Warsaw Pact states suc-
ceeded in joining NATO (and eventually
the European Union), only to find that
membership did not automatically guar-
antee their democratic transformations.
Subsequent research has shown that the
prospect of incrementally gaining mem-
bership in international organiza-
tions—the process offered by PfP —
would likely have more effectively solidi-
fied political and institutional reforms.
Even as strong a supporter of NATO
enlargement as Joe Biden, then a U.S.
senator, sensed in the 1990s that the way
the alliance was enlarging would cause
problems. As he put it in 1997, “Continu-
ing the Partnership for Peace, which
turned out to be much more robust and
much more successful than I think any-
one thought it would be at the outset,
may arguably have been a better way to
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
go.” and scar tissue when a strategy's imple-
What should Washington learn mentation is measured in years rather
from this history? One of the biggest than months. Success in long-term stra-
contemporary challenges for the United tegic competition requires getting the
States is the way that confrontation details right.
between the West and Russia has once
again become the order of the day. Dur- Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
ing Donald Trump's divisive presidency,
Democrats and Republicans agreed on
little, but at least some segment of the
GOP was never comfortable with
Trump's embrace of Putin.
A shared sense of mission in dealing
with Moscow offers a path toward a rare The world created in
U.S. domestic consensus—one that leads
back to NATO, still standing despite the 1990s never fulfilled
Trump's toying with the idea of a U.S. the hopes that arose
withdrawal. Even with Trump gone, how-
ever, critics continue to question the after the collapse of both
alliance's worth. Some, such as the histo- the Berlin Wall and the
rian Stephen Wertheim, do so in general Soviet Union. Initially,
terms, arguing that Washington should
no longer “continue to fetishize military there was a widespread
alliances” as if they were sacred obliga- belief that the tenets of
tions.
Other critics have more specific
liberal international
complaints, particularly regarding the order had succeeded
recent chaotic withdrawal of Western and that residents of all
forces from Afghanistan. Even Armin
Laschet, at the time the candidate for the states between the
German chancellor from the right-of- Atlantic and the Pacific,
center Christian Democratic Union (a
party normally strongly supportive of
not just the Western
the Atlantic alliance), condemned the ones, could now
withdrawal as “the biggest debacle that cooperate within that
NATO has suffered since its founding.”
European allies lamented what they saw order
as an unconscionable lack of advance
consultation, which eviscerated early
hopes of a new, Biden-inspired golden
age for the alliance. Pundits should think
twice about writing off NATO, however,
or letting the chaos in Kabul derail post-
Trump attempts at repairing transatlan-
tic relations.
European concerns are valid, and
there is clearly a need for a vigorous
debate over what went wrong in Afghani-
stan. But critics need to think about how
a call to downgrade or dismantle the
alliance will land in a time of turmoil.
The Trump years, the COVID-19
pandemic, and Biden's Afghan pullout
have all damaged the structure of trans-
atlantic relations. When a house is on
fire, it is not time to start renova-
tions—no matter how badly they were
needed before the fire started.
There is also a larger takeaway from
this history of NATO expansion, one
relevant not just to U.S. relations with
Russia but also to ties with China and
other competitors. A flawed execution,
both in terms of timing and in terms of
process, can undermine even a reason-
able strategy—as the withdrawal from
Afghanistan has shown. Even worse,
mistakes can yield cumulative damage
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January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 29
28 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
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January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 29
 Russian Federation
The myth of Russian decline
Why Moscow will be a persistent power
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T he Biden administration came
into office with a clear and
unambiguous foreign policy
priority: countering a rising China. The
administration’s public statements, its
early national security planning
documents, and its initial diplomatic
forays have all suggested that pushing
back against Beijing’s growing global
influence will be Washington’s national
security focus, alongside transnational
threats such as climate change and the
COVID-19 pandemic. The question of
how to deal with Russia, by contrast, has
taken a back seat, returning to the fore
only when Russian troops amassed on
Ukraine’s border in April. That crisis
served as a reminder of the danger of
looking past Moscow—yet by July,
President Joe Biden was back to
declaring that Russia was “sitting on top
of an economy that has nuclear weapons
and oil wells and nothing else.”
Biden is not the first American
leader to think along these lines. Ever
since the end of the Cold War, American
politicians have periodically suggested
that Russia’s days as a true global power
are numbered. In 2014, John McCain, a
Republican senator from Arizona, called
Russia a “gas station masquerading as a
32 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
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country.” That same year, U.S. President
Barack Obama dismissed Russia as a
mere “regional power.” Not long thereaf-
ter, Russia successfully intervened in the
Syrian war, interfered in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election, and inserted itself
into the political crisis in Venezuela and
the civil war in Libya. And yet, the per-
ception of Russia as a paper tiger per-
sists.
The problem is that the case for Rus-
sian decline is overstated. Much of the
evidence for it, such as Russia’s shrink-
ing population and its resource-
dependent economy, is not as conse-
quential for the Kremlin as many in
Washington assume. Nor should the
United States expect that Russia will
automatically abandon its course of con-
frontation once President Vladimir
Putin leaves office. Putin’s foreign policy
enjoys widespread support among the
country’s ruling elite, and his legacy will
include a thicket of unresolved disputes,
chief among them that over the annex-
ation of Crimea. Any disagreements with
the United States are here to stay.
Expectations of Russian decline
contain important truths. The country’s
economy is stagnant, with few sources of
value other than the extraction and
export of natural resources. The entire
system is rife with corruption and domi-
nated by inefficient state-owned or state-
controlled enterprises, and international
sanctions limit access to capital and tech-
nology. Russia struggles to develop,
retain, and attract talent; the state
chronically underfunds scientific
research; and bureaucratic mismanage-
ment hinders technological innovation.
As a result, Russia lags considerably
behind the United States and China in
most metrics of scientific and technolog-
ical development. Military spending has
largely plateaued in the last four years,
and the population is forecast to decline
by ten million people by 2050.
With such a dismal outlook, it is
natural to assume that Russia’s capacity
for disruption and hostility on the inter-
national stage will soon diminish,
too—that the Kremlin will simply run out
of resources for its aggressive foreign
policy. But those data points miss the
broader picture. They highlight Russia’s
weaknesses and downplay its strengths.
Russia may be “a downshifter country,”
as Herman Gref, the head of Russia’s
largest bank, complained in 2016. But its
economic, demographic, and military
potential will remain substantial, rather
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 33
than entering a precipitous decline.
Consider the country’s economy,
which, stagnant as it may be, is still
larger and more resilient than many
believe. Analysts like to point out that
Russia’s GDP of $1.5 trillion is compara-
ble to that of Italy or Texas. But that $1.5
trillion is calculated using market
exchange rates. Factor in purchasing
power parity, and it balloons to $4.1 tril-
lion, which would make Russia the sec-
ond-largest economy in Europe and the
sixth-largest in the world. Neither mea-
sure is wholly accurate—one is likely an
underestimate, the other an overesti-
mate—but the comparison shows that
Russia’s economy is nowhere near as
small as the conventional wisdom holds.
At any rate, raw GDP is often a poor mea-
sure of geopolitical power: it no longer
translates easily into military potential
or international influence.
To be sure, Russia’s economy has
not been kind to its citizens. Real dispos-
able incomes are ten percent lower today
than they were in 2013, wiping out nearly
a decade of growth. But macroeconomic
indicators are stable enough to allow
Moscow to project power well into the
future. After Russia’s annexation of Cri-
mea and occupation of eastern Ukraine
in 2014, international sanctions and
falling oil prices caused its economy to
tumble. In the years since, however, the
government has reined in its spending
and adapted to lower oil prices, creating
budget surpluses and a growing war
chest. The latest estimates, as of August
2021, put the value of Russia’s National
Wealth Fund at about $185 billion and
its foreign currency reserves at $615 bil-
lion—hardly a picture of destitution. A
new policy of import substitution,
devised in response to international sanc-
tions, has breathed new life into the agri-
cultural sector, whose exports now rake
in more than $30 billion annually. The
Kremlin has also reoriented trade away
from the West and toward China, cur-
rently its number one trading partner.
Trade with China is expected to exceed
$200 billion by 2024, twice what it was
in 2013.
What of Russia’s dependence on
extractive industries? Oil and gas sales
continue to account for about 30–40
percent of the government’s budget,
meaning that a future shift away from
fossil fuels will sting. But it is unclear
how near that future really is. And Russia
produces energy at such a low price that
other exporting countries are likely to get
squeezed well before it sees its budget
crimped. In addition, Russia is the main
energy supplier to the European Union,
whose dependency has only grown over
the past decade: the EU gets 41 percent of
its natural gas, 27 percent of its oil, and
34 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
47 percent of its solid fossil fuels from
Russia. The problem Moscow faces is
that its resources are not infinite. Rus-
sia’s oil production will peak in the com-
ing decade—some think it may have
done so already—meaning that the coun-
try’s capacity to export easily extractable
(and thus cheap) oil will hit a ceiling.
Meanwhile, although Russia lags
behind the United States in technologi-
cal innovation, it still ranks among the
top ten worldwide in research-and-
development spending. In the case of
artificial intelligence, it may not even
matter whether the country is a leader or
a follower: given the many applications
and the commercial utility of this tech-
nology, Moscow will likely realize some
second-mover advantages while letting
the United States and China take on the
costs and risks of pioneering its develop-
ment. Moreover, Russia has a struggling
but viable technology sector and has
developed its own analogs to Facebook,
Google, and other popular online plat-
forms, all of which are fairly successful
within Russia.
Among the most common miscon-
ceptions about Russia is that the coun-
try’s demographic outlook will dramati-
cally constrain its future capabilities.
Such demographic determinism has
historically failed to predict Russia’s
fortunes. According to UN forecasts,
Russia’s population will shrink by about
seven percent by 2050; more pessimistic
projections see a decline of up to 11 per-
cent. Even in the latter case, Russia
would remain the most populous coun-
try in Europe and Eurasia by a wide mar-
gin. It may lag behind highly developed
Western countries in life expectancy and
mortality rates, but it has substantially
narrowed those gaps since the 1990s.
The country is certainly not on the brink
of demographic collapse.
More important, the relevance of
demographics to state power needs
rethinking. Modern great powers are
defined not by the size of their popula-
tions but by their populations’ quality:
people’s health, educational levels, and
labor productivity, among other indica-
tors. Were it otherwise, countries such as
Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Nigeria
would be among the world’s most power-
ful states. As the American scholar Hal
Brands has written, “All things equal,
countries with healthy demographic
profiles can create wealth more easily
than their competitors.” On this front,
Russia has shown considerable improve-
ment since the 1990s, with reduced mor-
tality, increased lifespans, and an
improved fertility rate. Until 2015, it
steadily rose on indexes such as the UN’s
Human Development Index and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development’s labor productivity
measures. An economic recession has
since slowed down this trend, and
undone some of the progress, but Rus-
sia’s overall situation has considerably
improved from a demographic crisis in
the 1990s and predictions of demo-
graphic doom in the early years of this
century.
Brain drain remains a major prob-
lem, with many of Russia’s brightest
leaving the country. Its economic
impact, however, has been difficult to
measure. And even as many middle-
class Russians who are essential to the
knowledge economy leave, Russia bene-
fits from substantial immigration by job
seekers from the former Soviet repub-
lics. Russia’s demographic profile is com-
posed of mixed indicators that show qual-
itative improvements alongside quanti-
tative decline. Meanwhile, the demo-
graphic outlooks for many of the United
States’ allies and partners are equally
problematic, if not more so.
Above all, Russia will remain a mili-
tary force to be reckoned with. Military
power has historically been a Russian
strength, compensating for the country’s
relatively undiversified economy, tech-
nological backwardness, and lack of
political dynamism. It is in part why Rus-
sia managed to sustain prolonged com-
petitions with economically much stron-
ger states in the past, whether it was the
United States or the British Empire.
After its nadir in the early post-Soviet
era, Russian military power has been
revived—and will only improve in the
coming decade, even as American
policymakers turn their attention to
China.
Russia remains the United States’
primary peer in nuclear weapons tech-
nology. Aside from NATO, it also fields
the strongest conventional military in
Europe, reforged following a period of
military reforms and investments since
2008. That transformation was largely
overlooked prior to 2014, which explains
why Russia’s military moves in Ukraine
and, later, in Syria took many analysts by
surprise. Today, the Russian military is
at its highest level of readiness, mobility,
and technical capability in decades.
NATO remains superior on paper, but
much is contingent in war, and NATO’s
apparent superiority does not guarantee
victory or the ability to deter Russia
across the range of possible conflicts.
Russia also fields a flexible array of spe-
cial forces, mercenaries, and military
intelligence operatives. This is before
considering the country’s status as a lead-
ing power in space or its extensive
cyberwarfare capabilities, which were
recently demonstrated by the so-called
SolarWinds breach, in which Russian
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hackers penetrated and spied on several
U.S. government agencies.
Adjusting for purchasing power
parity and for the peculiarities of
autarkic defense sectors such as Rus-
sia’s, analysts have estimated that Russia
spends somewhere between $150 billion
and $180 billion per year on defense,
considerably more than the market
exchange rate figure of $58 billion sug-
gests. Half of Russia’s annual defense
budget is spent on procuring new weap-
ons, modernizing old ones, and
researching military technology, which
is a far greater share than is spent in
these areas by most Western militaries.
Those, moreover, are conservative esti-
mates, since some Russian expenditures
remain hidden, obscured, or classified.
Using these generous budgets, the Rus-
sian military-industrial complex has
developed many next-generation weap-
ons, from hypersonic missiles to
directed-energy weapons (such as
lasers), electronic warfare systems,
advanced submarines, and integrated
air defenses, along with antisatellite
weapons of various types.
The Russian military is not without
its problems and remains a laggard in
some areas. In practice, however, Russia
is well positioned to remain a dominant
actor in the post-Soviet space and to chal-
lenge U.S. interests in other regions,
such as the Middle East. Russia retains
the airlift and sealift capabilities needed
to deploy its troops at some distance
from its borders. Its defense spending
looks stable at current levels, despite the
triple shock of an economic recession,
low oil prices, and international sanc-
tions. The Russian military still sees
itself as a relative underdog, but it has
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grown more confident that it can deter
NATO even without nuclear weapons,
and the outcome of a prolonged war
between Russian and NATO forces is
difficult to predict. Under these circum-
stances, the United States and its allies
should stop dismissing Russia as a mere
“disrupter” and recognize it as a serious
military adversary in both ability and
intent.
Tied up in the narrative of Russian
decline is the notion that the United
States primarily has a Putin prob-
lem—that once the Russian president
leaves office, his country’s foreign policy
will grow less assertive. Yet that is
unlikely to be the case. For one thing,
Putin can legally remain in office until
2036, thanks to a referendum that he
pushed through last year that allows him
to serve two more six-year terms after his
current term expires in 2024. Research
that one of us (Kendall-Taylor) con-
ducted with the political scientist Erica
Frantz showed that such longevity is
common for leaders like the Russian
president. In the post–Cold War era,
autocrats who, like Putin, had made it to
20 years in office, were at least 65 years
of age, and had concentrated power in
their own hands ended up ruling for 36
years, on average.
Research on longtime authoritarian
leaders also suggests that once Putin
does depart—even if earlier than
expected—there will be little prospect for
substantial political improvement. Most
often, the regimes that such longtime
leaders create persist, or a different dic-
tatorship emerges. The odds that democ-
ratization will follow a regime like
Putin’s—run by an older, personalist
leader who has clung to power for 20
years or more—are less than one in ten.
Extending term limits, as Putin did after
last year’s referendum, is also a bad sign.
According to data from the Comparative
Constitutions Project, 13 leaders around
the world pursued term-limit extensions
in the period from 1992 to 2009. In all
but one case, their regimes either are still
in power or simply transitioned to a new
authoritarian regime after the leader’s
departure.
This is not to suggest that Russia is
doomed to authoritarianism or that a
change in the president would not mat-
ter. Nonetheless, the empirical record
shows that the actions longtime authori-
tarian leaders typically take to ensure
control—such as undermining civil soci-
ety and hollowing out institutions that
could constrain their power—create bar-
riers to the emergence of democracy.
Likewise, a mere change in leadership
would likely matter only at the margins.
Unless Putin’s departure ushers in a sig-
nificant turnover in the ruling elite, key
pillars of Russian foreign policy, such as
the notion that Russia maintains the
right to a sphere of influence in the post-
Soviet space, will remain incompatible
with the values of the United States and
its allies. Simply put, American
policymakers must prepare for the possi-
bility that the contours of Russian for-
eign policy, and thus the Kremlin’s
intent to undermine U.S. interests, will
endure long after Putin leaves office.
The United States should think of
Russia not as a declining power but as a
persistent one, willing and able to
threaten U.S. national security interests
for at least the next ten to 20 years. Even
if China proves to be the more significant
long-term threat, Russia will remain a
December 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 35
long-term challenger, too—a “good Review Essay
enough” power, as the political scientist
How Apartheid Endures
The Betrayal of South Africa
Why Moscow will be a persistent power
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
I n July, two of South Africa’s largest
cities — Johannesburg and Durban
— descended into civil unrest and
mass looting. In the deadliest week of
political turmoil since the end of
apartheid in 1994, 337 people were
killed, and millions of dollars’ worth of
infrastructure and property was
destroyed. For almost five days, I
worried about my family as I watched
television and social media footage of
people breaking into shops and raiding
them for food and other basic items. I
live in Australia, but my relatives are
split between the areas hardest hit by the
unrest. Even in places that were
unaffected by the violence, panic buying
caused food shortages, and news of the
looting set off class anxieties. When you
live in a society as unequal as South
Africa, the sense that the country might
explode at any minute is always
palpable.
In the midst of the chaos, a short
video of a tiny boy, aged eight or nine, rail
thin, and wearing faded clothes, made
36 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
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the rounds on social media. He had been
stopped by two women—both strangers
expressing motherly concern—as he
walked out of a shop that had just been
looted. The women asked the boy what
he had taken, and he held up a small plas-
tic bag for their inspection. Inside were a
few pairs of underwear, new shoes, and a
few T-shirts.
He had been heartbreakingly frugal,
taking only what his conscience would
allow. Visibly moved, the women sent
him on his way, his little frame disap-
pearing into the darkness. The scene
spoke volumes about the crisis gripping
South Africa. Driven by the sudden avail-
ability of items that are unaffordable for
most people, the turmoil reflected the
stark inequality that has long divided the
country, and it laid bare the economic
precariousness that characterizes most
people’s lives. People took what they
could as quickly as they could, some-
times trampling others in the process.
But they did not act out spontaneously: a
faction of the ruling African National
Congress (ANC)—mainly supporters of
the jailed former president Jacob
Zuma—appears to have instigated the
unrest in a bid to destabilize the govern-
ment. The attempt at insurrection failed.
Instead of a revolution, the week turned
into a large-scale grab for goods.
There were no marches or demands,
no manifestoes, and no calls for the pres-
ident to step down or the ruling party to
vacate office. It was easy to see these
events as a metaphor for the rampant
corruption that has come to define South
African politics. The country's democ-
racy is not on the brink of failure, as some
Western commentators have opined.
South Africa has regular free and fair
elections, a noisy public sphere, an inde-
pendent judiciary (indeed, too inde-
pendent in the eyes of some in the ruling
party), and sophisticated media—all of
which remain intact. Yet the ANC has
failed to meaningfully improve the lives
of most South Africans, even as many
within its ranks have grown rich. And so
decades after attaining political free-
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 37

The strength of
Prisoners of the Past is
its insistence that even
though South Africa is
exhibiting many morbid
symptoms, the country’s
real problem is that the
old is not dying.
Friedman examines
the resilience of
apartheid South Africa,
showing how the old
order has repeatedly
prevented the new one
from delivering on its
promises of racial
justice
dom, many South Africans have been left
to wonder when—or if—they will ever get
economic justice.This paradox is the
subject of Steven Friedman's new book,
Prisoners of the Past, which asks why
South Africa's multiracial, left-wing gov-
ernment, which has been elected again
and again with an overwhelming major-
ity and a strong mandate for change, has
failed to transform the apartheid econ-
omy. A well-known South African col-
umnist and academic, Friedman writes
with the nuance and insight of an insider.
His answer is that the post-apartheid
order established in 1994 suffers from
many of the same problems as the old
order it sought to replace. The political
theorist Antonio Gramsci once wrote of
Italy during the chaotic interwar period,
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact
38 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
that the old is dying and the new cannot
be born; in this interregnum a great vari-
ety of morbid symptoms appear.”
The strength of Prisoners of the Past
is its insistence that even though South
Africa is exhibiting many morbid symp-
toms, the country's real problem is that
the old is not dying. Friedman examines
the resilience of apartheid South Africa,
showing how the old order has repeat-
edly prevented the new one from deliver-
ing on its promises of racial justice. Soon
after the antiapartheid activist Nelson
Mandela emerged from prison in 1990,
people began to refer to his brand of
charm as “Madiba magic,” an affection-
ate nod to his clan name.
As South Africa hurtled toward the
end of apartheid, the phrase reflected a
collective belief that Mandela could con-
jure the nation's freedom out of thin air.
National and global adulation helped
shape the narrative of South Africa as a
place where something otherworldly had
happened: peace had settled on the land
not because of compromises and negoti-
ations but because of goodwill and
Madiba magic. Today, as people debate
how much or how little has changed, it is
easy to forget the immense effort that
ANC leaders made to present the transi-
tion to Black South Africans as a real
break with the past while reassuring
white South Africans that the changes
would not affect their pocketbooks or
their lifestyles. To a large extent, the
ANC has kept its promises to white South
Africans even as it has broken many of its
pledges to the country's Black people.
By protecting the rights of white
property holders, the transition to
democracy ushered in what the legal
scholar Mogobe Ramose has called the
“constitutionalisation of injustice”—that
is, a constitutional order that “reflects
the conqueror's view that injustices
which occurred a long time ago should
not be rectified.” This was partly by
necessity. South Africa could have easily
descended into civil war, and it very
nearly did in 1993, when Chris Hani, one
of the ANC's most popular leaders, was
assassinated in his driveway in view of
his 15-year-old daughter. But Mandela
calmed the nation, urging restless Black
youths not to retaliate against white peo-
ple.
After the tumult of the 1980s, when
the apartheid government kidnapped
and murdered activists and segregated
Black communities exploded in violence,
neither the ANC nor the white National
Party, led by President F. W. de Klerk,
had an appetite for continued blood-
shed.
The ANC was focused on the transi-
tion: on writing a constitution, extend-
ing the franchise to all citizens, and hold-
ing free and fair elections. And so the
political settlement its leaders negoti-
ated with de Klerk's government priori-
tized moving on—which at the time
seemed like a prerequisite for peace. But
in Ramose's view, the decision to wipe
the slate clean conflicted with the tenets
of African philosophy and, in particular,
with the notion of molatoga o bole, a
Sotho proverb that holds that debts do
not expire with the passage of time and
can be resolved only through redress and
restoration.
Another leading South African aca-
demic, Joel Modiri, has described South
Africa's post-apartheid constitution as
“a form of reiterative violence in the
sense that the fundamental injustice of
the old order was preserved in the mak-
ing of the new order.”
Friedman rejects these views, which
root the current crisis in legal strictures,
arguing that the fault lies neither with
the constitution nor with the negotia-
tions that produced it. Instead, he con-
tends that the old order has lived on
because of “path dependence”—a phe-
nomenon famously described by the
economic historian Douglass North as
“the powerful influence of the past on the
present and future.”
Throughout his book, Friedman
draws on North's ideas to argue that eco-
nomic policies in South Africa were “cre-
ated to serve the interests of those with
the bargaining power to create new
rules”—who, since the end of apartheid,
have been a new and tiny multiracial
elite. In other words, Friedman shows
that the country's economic institutions
are primarily “the product of who holds
power; they may survive even if they are
inefficient, as long as they serve the
interests of power holders.”
Friedman spends considerable time
examining how elites have guided South
Africa's economic trajectory.
In the 1990s, he recounts, the white
political elite maintained its grip on the
economy even as it lost political power by
accommodating a small number of new
Black businesspeople. Predictably, these
new Black economic elites were closely
aligned with the ANC. And when the
ANC passed new affirmative action laws
mandating that all large financial trans-
actions include partnerships with Black-
owned firms, its leaders stood ready to
benefit, being the only Black people with
whom white elites had had previous pro-
fessional interactions.
Among the biggest beneficiaries was
Cyril Ramaphosa, who acted as the
ANC's chief negotiator during the transi-
tion to democracy, led the team that
drafted the new constitution, and now
serves as South Africa's president.
Ramaphosa worked closely with
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members of the old white guard in the
early 1990s and was able to convert his
political networks into lucrative finan-
cial relationships within a few years of
entering the private sector in 1996.
Forbes has estimated that by 2015,
his net worth had soared to $450 million.
Ramaphosa's path to riches has been
well trodden by other members of the
ANC, but it says as much about South
Africa's past as it does about its present.
As Friedman points out, although
the current president cannot be com-
pared with the rapacious European set-
tlers who arrived in the Cape of Good
Hope in the mid-seventeenth century,
his stratospheric ascent was enabled by
the same patronage and corruption that
elevated the previous era's elites.
Jan van Riebeeck, the founding
father of South Africa's Afrikaner com-
munity, was sent to the Cape by the
Dutch East India Company in 1652 after
being found guilty of abusing his posi-
tion at the company to pursue private
interests. More than two centuries later,
the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes was
forced to resign as prime minister of the
Cape Colony over allegations that he
gave a government catering contract to a
friend. By the 1980s, Friedman explains,
the apartheid regime had effectively ele-
vated corruption to state policy. It came
as little surprise then that when the ANC
took office, members of the white eco-
nomic elite sought to cultivate personal
bonds of criminality with the new politi-
cal leaders. In mapping this lineage of
elite corruption, Friedman charts the
continuities between the old order and
the new, illustrating the powerful ways
in which path dependence has warped
the country's economy.
At times, Friedman depicts path
dependence as an inevitable and seem-
ingly unwitting process, the outcome of
the march of history rather than of delib-
erate contestation. Yet there was nothing
accidental about the economic approach
taken by the ANC.
Beginning with Mandela’s release in
1990, the white-dominated business
sector was vocal about its jitters. The
ANC had many internal debates about
how best to manage these fears, but
political and market realities ultimately
backed the party into a corner: had it
threatened to redistribute land and seize
bank accounts in order to pay repara-
tions, the economy would have crashed,
and the apartheid generals would never
have agreed to stand down.
At other times, Friedman overstates
the nefarious intentions of Black elites.
For example, he claims that there was an
“unspoken consensus” between Black
and white elites “to leave things largely
as they were, not because the new politi-
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cal elite feared a backlash if it sought to dominate because of South Africa's his-
change them, but because it wanted to tory. As Friedman explains, “Racial bias,
leave them intact.” Elites may have con-
verged on a similar set of objectives over
time, but the notion that the new Black
leaders simply weren't interested in
changing the status quo is an oversimpli-
fication.
In order to escape apartheid, Black
South Africans had to promise not to
seek full compensation and redress.
White economic impunity was the price
of Black political freedom. Once the ANC
assumed power, many of its leaders
believed that in due course, they would
be able to work around the white elite.
Their aim was to build a strong
Black middle class that would drive eco-
nomic growth. But partly because of the
path dependence Friedman describes,
this goal was never realized. Instead, the
middle class grew painfully slowly—and
eventually, it stopped growing alto-
South Africa is only
slightly more racially
integrated than it was
before the end of
apartheid, and it is even
more economically
unequal
gether. Estimates of the size of the Black
middle class vary, but most studies put it
at less than a quarter of the Black popula-
tion. And even this modest share may be
in jeopardy: a 2020 report by the Univer-
sity of Cape Town's Liberty Institute of
Strategic Marketing showed that the
number of middle-class South Africans
fell by more than half between 2017 and
2020—from 6.1 million to 2.7 million.
As overall economic growth has
stagnated and unemployment has
remained stubbornly high in recent
years, the new middle class has grown
restless. Friedman calls the Black middle
class “the angriest group in the society.”
As he points out, “they enjoy qualifi-
cations and opportunities which their
parents and grandparents were denied
but they experience many of the same
racial attitudes as previous generations
endured.”
As a result, their anger is often
directed at racial injustice, even when
they seem to be protesting other issues:
whether the immediate concerns are
about land, higher education, or any-
thing else, racism is almost always the
underlying concern of the Black middle
class. Poor South Africans, who consti-
tute a much greater share of the popula-
tion, seldom articulate their demands in
purely racial terms. But middle-class
narratives of racial injustice continue to
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 39
Worldwide Weather
The International Order Isn’t
Ready for the Climate Crisis
Planetary politics cannot succeed without multilateral institutions and global governance
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T he planet is in the throes of an
environmental emergency.
Humanity's continued addiction
to fossil fuels and its voracious appetite
for natural resources have led to
runaway climate change, degraded vital
ecosystems, and ushered in the slow
death of the world's oceans. Earth's
biosphere is breaking down. Our
depredation of the planet has
jeopardized our own survival.
Given these risks, it is shocking that
the multilateral system has failed to
respond more forcefully and has instead
merely tinkered at the margins.
Although the United States and the Euro-
pean Union have adopted measures to
slow the pace of global warming—by
setting more aggressive greenhouse gas
reduction targets, for example—nothing
guarantees that they will adhere to those
pledges, and such steps do little to
encourage decarbonization in China,
India, and other major emitters. These
efforts also fail to address other facets of
the looming catastrophe, not least col-
lapsing biodiversity.
40 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
The natural world obeys no sover-
eign boundaries, and neither does the
worsening ecological crisis. It is time to
take bold steps to overcome the discon-
nect between an international system
divided into 195 independent countries,
each operating according to its own
imperatives, and a global calamity that
cannot be resolved in a piecemeal fash-
ion. It is time to govern the world as if the
earth mattered. What the world needs is
a paradigm shift in U.S. foreign policy
and international relations—a shift that
is rooted in ecological realism and that
moves cooperation on shared environ-
mental threats to center stage. Call this
new worldview “planetary politics.” All
governments, starting with Washington,
must designate the survival of the bio-
sphere as a core national interest and a
central objective of national and interna-
tional security—and organize and invest
accordingly.
A shift to planetary politics will
require a new, shared understanding of
the duties of sovereign states, serious
commitments to sustainable develop-
ment and investment, and innovative
international institutions. World leaders
will need to adopt a new ethic of environ-
mental stewardship and expand their
conceptions of sovereign obligations to
include a responsibility to protect the
global commons. Governments, busi-
nesses, and communities will need to
value and account for the earth's natural
capital rather than taking it for granted
and exploiting it to depletion. Finally,
national governments will need to over-
haul and strengthen the institutional
and legal foundations for international
environmental cooperation. The United
States is in a position to lead this
charge—indeed, any such effort will fall
short unless Washington is in the van-
guard. The devastating environmental
impact of human activity is hardly a
secret. A parade of recent reports from
groups such as the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change and the World
Wide Fund for Nature document the
scope of our assault on the planet and
portend a future of searing heat, raging
wildfires, acidifying oceans, violent
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
storms, rising seas, and mass migration. If the United States is issued one week after his inauguration,
Meanwhile, human activity has Biden declared climate change to be a
serious about spear-
imperiled biodiversity as people despoil
lands and waters, introduce invasive
species, and harvest natural resources
heading the global
response to the planet’s
unsustainably. The figures are sobering:
since 1970, wild vertebrate populations ecological emergency, it
have declined by over 60 percent, and should start by working
insect populations have declined by 45
percent. And the damage is not confined
with other countries to
to fauna alone. Extractive industries, remold traditional
such as agriculture, ranching, logging, concepts of sovereignty.
and mining, have scarred the surface of
the planet, in some places irreparably. Washington can begin
Every year, the world loses an area of this process by explicitly
tropical forest the size of Costa Rica.
Today, some one million plant and
endorsing the idea that
animal species face near-term extinc- countries have a
tion. Our own species is suffering, too. responsibility to protect
Hundreds of millions of people around
the world face mounting food insecurity the earth, obliging them
and a lack of reliable water supplies. And to refrain from any
as humans and domesticated animals activity that might
increasingly encroach on and disrupt
biodiverse ecosystems and encounter fundamentally alter or
once isolated species, we are exposed to damage environmental
dangerous new viruses: in recent
decades, scientists have documented systems
more than 200 zoonotic pathogens that distracting diplomats and defense offi-
have leaped from wild animals to people, cials from the threats that have directly
including the Ebola virus, the virus that affected the survival of states throughout
causes SARS, and likely the virus that most of history. But the ecological crisis
causes COVID-19. Things are poised to has changed the nature of those threats.
get worse. Despite a declining fertility U.S. President Joe Biden seems to grasp
rate, the human population will not pla- this truth. In a historic executive order
teau until at least 2060, and the rise of
aspiring middle classes around the world
will add to the ecological strains. As we
plunder the planet, we risk rendering it
uninhabitable—a crisis that cries out for
global solidarity and collective action.
Yet most countries continue to treat
ecological challenges as second-tier for-
eign policy priorities distinct from pre-
sumably weightier matters, such as
geopolitical competition, arms control,
and international trade. The results are
predictable: what passes for global envi-
ronmental governance is a patchwork of
weak, sector-specific agreements over-
seen by underpowered bodies that are
unable to enforce compliance. The fate of
the planet largely depends on a hodge-
podge of uncoordinated national pledges
driven by short-term domestic political
and economic considerations. The
global environmental crisis requires a
new statecraft built around the proposi-
tion that every other state con-
cern—from national security to eco-
nomic growth—depends on a healthy,
stable biosphere. This revitalized frame-
work would not jettison the core concept
of national interest but broaden it to
include environmental security and con-
servation.
Foreign policy traditionalists may
recoil at such a reframing, worried about
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 41
all activities that threaten the integrity of
the biosphere, open themselves up to
external scrutiny, allow others to moni-
tor and verify their compliance, and face
sanctions and other penalties should
they violate this commitment.
Protecting this expanded commons
will require putting a price on nature.
For too long, humans have readily
invested in produced capital (buildings,
roads, machines, software) and human
capital (education, health care) while
running down the natural capital that
sustains life and provides the foundation
for all prosperity. We have taken the natu-
ral world for granted and assumed that
technological innovation and market
incentives would free us from the
resource constraints of a finite planet.
Such attitudes are no longer tenable.
According to the UN Environment
Program, the planet's total stock of natu-
ral capital has declined by 40 percent on
a per capita basis since 1992. Reversing
this trend will require reworking the
current understanding of wealth to
include the value of the world's natural
assets and the myriad benefits they pro-
vide. In January 2020, the World Eco-
nomic Forum estimated that over half of
global output—$44 trillion per year—is
highly or moderately dependent on bene-
fits from nature that are increasingly in
jeopardy. Another study, published in
2014, has placed the total annual value of
the planet's ecosystem services—water
filtration, nutrient cycling, pollination,
carbon sequestration, and so on—at
between $125 trillion and $145 trillion.
Most environmentalists, however, resist
placing a monetary value on nature, cit-
ing its intrinsic worth. But failing to do so
encourages firms and individuals to take
ecosystem services for granted and to
exploit them to exhaustion. The result is
market failure in the form of environ-
mental costs borne not by the partici-
pants in any specific exchange but by
society as a whole (what economists call
“negative externalities”). A related prob-
lem is the fact that GDP, the conven-
tional measure of wealth and progress,
does not account for natural capital, mak-
ing it a poor indicator of well-being and
long-term productive capacity.
The international community must
work to develop metrics that can account
for environmental assets. Approxi-
mately 89 countries, including all the
members of the EU, have released natu-
ral capital accounts to keep track of such
assets and to promote transparency
regarding their use. The United States
should do the same. Governments must
also adopt regulations and create incen-
tives for firms to assume the ecological
costs of their market behavior, rather
than passing them along to society. The
42 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
The international
community must work
to develop metrics that
can account for
environmental assets.
Approximately 89
countries, including all
the members of the EU,
have released natural
capital accounts to keep
track of such assets and
to promote transparency
regarding their use. The
United States should do
the same. Governments
must also adopt
regulations and create
incentives for firms to
assume the ecological
costs of their market
behavior, rather than
passing them along to
society
economist ParthaDasgupta has esti-
mated that the annual global cost of all
environmentally damaging subsidies
(including for agriculture, fisheries, fuel,
and water) is somewhere between $4
trillion and $6 trillion. By contrast, gov-
ernments devote only $68 billion annu-
ally to global conservation and
sustainability—about what their citizens
spend every year on ice cream.
National authorities can also use
taxes and fees to ensure that the prices of
goods and services accurately capture
the social value of the natural assets
involved in their production, and they
can employ sector-specific market mech-
anisms to encourage environmental
conservation. For example, measures
such as catch share schemes, whereby
communities have a secure right to har-
vest a capped number of fish in a specific
area, can effectively combat overfishing.
A robust framework for natural capi-
tal accounting could also help justify
compensating developing countries that
are rich in biodiversity, such as Bolivia
and Indonesia, to protect or restore local
ecosystems and their services. There are
small-scale precedents for this kind of
investment—when authorities pay land-
owners to preserve watersheds or give
tax breaks to farmers who plant carbon-
sequestering cover crops. But more sig-
nificant international efforts are under-
way: the Biden administration, for
instance, is working to negotiate a
multibillion-dollar deal with Brazil to ducting business as usual, without run- goods and have weak environmental Diversity. Although that treaty has failed
preserve a portion of the Amazon rain- ning afoul of the World Trade Organiza- regulations. The harm is usually suffered to slow the loss of ecosystems and spe-
forest. tion. by the local inhabitants rather than by
The global financial system must The most effective solution would the companies or consumers.
also play a bigger role in environmental be for WTO members to adopt a blanket The World Bank and other donors
stewardship. climate waiver that permits so-called can provide technical assistance to give
Some national financial regulators, border adjustments for carbon in the governments in developing countries an
including the U.S. Securities and form of taxes on imports and rebates on accurate picture of the full costs of such
Exchange Commission, are moving exports. This would permit EU coun- environmental degradation so that they
toward mandating corporate disclosures tries, for instance, to penalize imports of can begin to hold corporate perpetrators
of exposure to climate risks so that inves- carbon-intensive cement from Russia to account and force them to shoulder
tors are aware of the vulnerability of and Turkey and reward other trading the burden of these costs.
firms to the environmental shocks of a partners that use greener production Finally, the United States and other
warming planet. International financial methods. Such an arrangement would rich countries can encourage nature-
institutions such as the International encourage the formation of “climate friendly development by devoting a
Monetary Fund and the World Bank now clubs,” made up of countries committed greater share of bilateral and multilat-
encourage partner governments to to reducing emissions and thus eligible eral aid to global conservation efforts
inventory their natural capital assets and for nondiscriminatory treatment. Devel- and, more generally, conditioning their
adopt policies and laws to protect them. opment models will also need to shift. assistance on sustainable environmental
A sea change is also underway in the pri- Poor countries need the backing of inter- policies—much as the U.S. Millennium
vate sector: BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, national partners to come up with poli- Challenge Corporation makes access to
and other major players have pledged to cies and incentive structures that will its financial resources contingent on
integrate sustainability into their invest- encourage private actors and communi- good governance.
ment decisions. The practical challenge, ties to conserve nature. Extractive indus- Simultaneously, countries should
of course, is to distinguish between cred- tries, such as timber and mining, often strengthen the international legal frame-
ible corporate responses and damage the ecosystems of developing work for biodiversity conservation, par-
greenwashing campaigns, which are nations that rely on the export of primary ticularly the Convention on Biological
merely intended to burnish a company's
public image.
Environmental advocacy organiza-
tions, such as Greenpeace and the Natu-
ral Resources Defense Council, can help
hold companies accountable by exposing
hollow commitments and raising the
specter of consumer boycotts and other
forms of civic activism to persuade them
that harming nature is a threat to their
bottom lines. Planetary politics cannot
succeed without multilateral institutions
and global governance that can foster the
unprecedented international coopera-
tion demanded by the intertwined cli-
mate and biodiversity crises. The most
pressing near-term priority is to close
the yawning gap between the desultory
negotiating process hosted by the UN
and the stark reality outlined by the orga-
nization's own Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, which envisions
catastrophic warming unless the world
takes immediate, dramatic steps to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
There is no conceivable way for the
world to meet the emission targets estab-
lished by the UN's 2015 Paris climate
accord, however, without massive
investments in terrestrial and marine
ecosystems capable of serving as carbon
storehouses.
Accordingly, governments should
make expanding such carbon sinks a
centerpiece of their contributions to the
Paris goals. Trade is another area in
which global governance must adapt.
One path forward would be to reform
global trade rules to allow countries com-
mitted to decarbonization to discrimi-
nate against countries that insist on con-
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January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 43
eventual global pact. The example of the Political Economy
The example of the 1948 UN Uni-
1948 UN Universal
versal Declaration of Human Rights,
which inspired a dozen-odd treaties,
shows that even informal declarations
Declaration of Human
Rights, which inspired a
The path to a new economics
can lay important groundwork for more
dozen-odd treaties, With the New Deal, Washington took the unprecedented step of creating new industries
formal international conventions. One
should have no illusions, of course, about shows that even and millions of jobs
the enormous legislative obstacles
standing in the way of U.S. ratification of informal declarations
the CBD, a high seas convention, or the can lay important
Global Pact. The United States has often groundwork for more
opted out of treaties—even those it
spearheaded and drafted—and today's formal international
intense partisan ideological divisions conventions. One should
may encourage this tendency. Neverthe-
less, the experience of the UN Conven- have no illusions, of
tion on the Law of the Sea, which the course, about the
United States championed and now enormous legislative
mostly treats as customary international
law (despite never having ratified it), obstacles standing in the
suggests that the Biden administration way of U.S. ratification
should seize this moment to help shape
the evolving legal framework of interna- of the CBD, a high seas
tional environmental cooperation. convention, or the
The global ecological emergency is Global Pact
the greatest collective-action challenge
we have ever faced. Bringing humanity for resignation. It cries out, instead, for a
back into balance with the biosphere will commitment to our role as stewards of
require a fundamental shift in how the the only planet we have. It cries out for
politics and purposes of foreign policy planetary politics.
are conceived. It will require Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
reimagining our place on the earth. Con-
sider the atlases we use to depict our
planet. They usually open with two dis-
tinct maps. The first map, a geophysical
one, captures the world in its natural By The KIPS Bureau
state, revealing a startling array of Lahore, Pakistan
biomes and ecosystems—rainforests and
savannas, steppes and taigas, mountains
and glaciers, river valleys and deserts,

A fter taking office in the depths of Samuelson and Milton Friedman. duces rising inequality rather than
icecaps and tundras, remote atolls and
the Great Depression, U.S. Samuelson was a Keynesian, best known shared prosperity. With these deeply
barrier reefs, continental shelves and
President Franklin Roosevelt for his work on the so-called neoclassical held convictions under assault, leaders
deep-sea trenches—shading into and
quickly upended the relationship synthesis, which advocated a measure of have a crucial opportunity to design a
overlapping with one another.
between the government and the government intervention in the econ- more equitable economy. Wapshott
The second map, a geopolitical one,
economy. With the New Deal, omy. begins his book in the mid-1960s, with
depicts the earth's terrestrial surface
Washington took the unprecedented Friedman, by contrast, was a one- the story of the Newsweek editor Osborn
carved into independent territorial units
indicated by precise lines, each colored step of creating new industries and time New Dealer who by the 1950s had Elliott's quest for new columnists who
distinctly from its neighbors. The first millions of jobs. This spending rescued become perhaps the most pugilistic and could outshine the magazine's stodgy
map is an accurate representation of the countless Americans from poverty and passionate libertarian of his day. Amid a rival, Henry Luce's Time. Perhaps great
planet. The second map, with its artifi- ultimately fueled the remarkable global pandemic, there is much to learn economists commenting on the news of
cially imposed borders, is akin to a work postwar economic boom. By the 1980s, from the Samuelson-Friedman saga. the day would appeal to his younger audi-
of fiction—and yet people tend to treat it however, a new bipartisan consensus Today, as in the 1960s and 1970s, the ence. Elliott felt lucky to secure
as more important. The crisis of the bio- had taken hold, one that saw small assumptions of a previous era are falling Samuelson, the greatest theoretical econ-
sphere has forced a collision of those two government and low taxes as the key to away. The small-government, low-tax omist of his time. He was also the author
maps, exposing the tension between an economic prosperity. In 1941, Roosevelt economy that Friedman and others imag- of what has become the best-selling eco-
integrated natural world and a divided declared that every American deserved ined and brought into being is finally nomics textbook of all time, first pub-
global polity and demanding that we “freedom from want” and that it was the slipping from power. Not only is the lished in 1948 and titled simply Econom-
reconcile the two. National sovereignty government's responsibility to lead the American public questioning old ics.
is not going anywhere, but a new interna- way. But by 1996, President Bill Clinton beliefs—that markets are best when they Samuelson, who had been made a
tional approach could help close the dis- was promising that “the era of big are free and governments are best when full professor at the Massachusetts Insti-
tance between the political and the natu- government is over.” they are small—but experts from across tute of Technology at the age of 32,
ral world. If a crisis of this magnitude What changed? Nicholas the political spectrum are also increas- needed neither the headache nor the
cannot reshape how countries formulate Wapshott's new book, Samuelson Fried- ingly admitting that these assumptions income that writing a magazine column
their national interests, definitions of man, tells that story—the victory of have proved false. could bring, but he was seduced by the
international security, or approaches to 1980s free-market libertarianism over COVID-19 has put into sharp relief idea of reaching Newsweek's 14 million
the global economy, perhaps nothing the midcentury welfare state—as a battle something the economic data have long weekly readers. Elliott also tried to sign
will. But this predicament does not call between two economic titans, Paul suggested: a laissez-faire system pro- up Friedman, a conservative libertarian

44 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022

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January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 45
at the University of Chicago who was an
outsider to the Keynesianism that domi-
nated midcentury economic thinking in
the United States. Friedman initially
refused Elliott, saying he was too busy.
But Friedman's wife, Rose, pressed the
case. “The task of explaining the rela-
tionship between political freedom, for
example, and a free-market economy . . .
has not been performed very well,” she
wrote in a 1976 article for The Oriental
Economist. (Wapshott's storytelling
could have used more from Rose Fried-
man. A distinguished economist in her
own right and a co-author of much of
Milton Friedman's work, she was
responsible for turning a collection of
speeches into her husband's most influ-
ential popular text, Capitalism and Free-
dom.) Samuelson and Friedman joined
Newsweek in 1966 and wrote for the mag-
azine until the early 1980s. Throughout
their tenure, both thinkers covered the
central economic debates of the time,
including the appropriate level of taxa-
tion and the role of the Federal Reserve.
As Wapshott documents, however,
the two fundamentally disagreed over
central elements of economic the-
ory—specifically, whether a market sys-
tem could regulate itself without exter-
nal intervention. Friedman believed that
his unfettered version of capitalism, free
from nearly all forms of government
interference, was synonymous with both
economic and political freedom.
Samuelson, by contrast, maintained
until the end of his life that “there can be
no solution without government.” The
economy that Friedman and others
brought into being is finally slipping
from power.
Samuelson Friedman subscribes to
the great man theory (gender inten-
tional) of intellectual history. In
Wapshott's narrative, the two econo-
mists represent almost the entirety of the
debate between Keynesianism, a short-
hand for active government manage-
ment of the economy through fiscal pol-
icy, and libertarian-inflected monetar-
ism, by which central banks and the
money supply take center stage. The
intellectual networks to which
Samuelson and Friedman belonged get
short shrift. This is a fundamental omis-
sion. Friedman, for instance, was a
founder, along with Friedrich Hayek,
Ludwig von Mises, Karl Popper, and
others, of the Mont Pelerin Society—an
influential group that originally devel-
oped and propagated the idea of
neoliberalism. Such networks provide
vital intellectual, social, and political
support to their members, helping their
ideas gain acceptance and legitimacy.
Wapshott pays a little more atten-
tion to the power of select academic
46 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
The inflation of the
1970s remains a
cautionary tale that still
animates American
politics. The
conventional wisdom
holds that the inability
of Keynesianism to
explain so-called
stagflation, a period of
paradoxically low
growth and high
inflation, was the major
reason for Samuelson’s
fall and Friedman’s rise.
Stagflation presented a
puzzle to which
Keynesians had no
answer
institutions—such as MIT, the Univer-
sity of Chicago, and the University of
Virginia—that educated generations of
students, both Keynesians and
neoliberals. But these institutions still
take a back seat to Samuelson and Fried-
man themselves. The larger problem is
that Wapshott fails to give readers a
sense of the times. The 1960s and 1970s
were turbulent: the Vietnam War, the
sexual revolution, and the civil rights
movement upended the United States'
old social, racial, and economic orders.
Although these changes were often liber-
ating, the accompanying chaos led many
middle-class white Americans, includ-
ing suburban housewives in the Sunbelt
and business leaders in the South, to
reject Samuelson’s vision of federal gov-
ernment intervention in favor of Fried-
man's simple and well-ordered system of
free enterprise.
Much of the anxiety stemming from
the changes crystallized in 1964, when
the Republican presidential candidate
Barry Goldwater ran on an anticommu-
nist, economically conservative plat-
form, opposing both the welfare state
and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Goldwater
cast federal civil rights laws as yet
another instance of unjust state interfer-
ence in private affairs and, in so doing,
directly linked Friedman's small-
government ideas to white southern
opposition to desegregation. By the end
of the 1960s, the civil rights movement
itself had also begun to explicitly link
race and economics, but in the opposite
direction. Martin Luther King, Jr., pro-
claimed in 1967 that “the problems of
racial injustice and economic injustice
cannot be solved without a radical redis-
tribution of political and economic
power.” The economic fight had become
an explicitly racial one. The 1960s and
1970s thus pitted Samuelson's New
Deal–era vision of government against
Friedman's business-, profit-, and share-
holder-focused worldview during an era
of intense social upheaval. For many
white Americans, Friedman's suppos-
edly politics-free version of economics
proved to be the most compelling.
According to that version, the right polit-
ical, moral, and economic answer was
wherever supply met demand. The the-
ory's monetarism—the policy of using
the money supply to influence the whole
economy instead of relying on compli-
cated legislative decisions around taxing
and spending—was similarly elegant and
apolitical. Friedman's economic and
political arguments were one and the
same. Freedom meant limited govern-
ment. This was the triumph of
neoliberalism.
The duel between Samuelson and
Friedman was perhaps most pointed and
pivotal when it came to questions about
inflation: what caused it and how gov-
ernments could tame it. The inflation of
the 1970s remains a cautionary tale that
still animates American politics. The
conventional wisdom holds that the
inability of Keynesianism to explain so-
called stagflation, a period of paradoxi-
cally low growth and high inflation, was
the major reason for Samuelson's fall
and Friedman's rise. Stagflation pre-
sented a puzzle to which Keynesians had
no answer. Inflation, which averaged
about seven percent annually through-
out the decade, was not supposed to be
possible if unemployment was high and
growth sluggish.
Friedman's characteristically sim-
ple answer to the problem was for the
Federal Reserve to arrange “a 3 to 5 per-
cent increase in the stock of money.”
Otherwise, too much money would chase
after too few goods, causing prices to rise
even more. Wapshott's narrative is
strongest here, revealing just how com-
plicated and long running the inflation
debates of the 1970s were. Over many
years, Samuelson and Friedman argued
about whether stagflation was caused by
persistently high wages propped up by
union contracts, the costs of the ongoing
Vietnam War, or shocks to the global
supply of oil. Even today, the causes of
the inflation of the 1970s remain the sub-
ject of fierce debate. The solution that
Samuelson eventually proposed was to
raise taxes and maintain high levels of
public spending—remarkable for con-
temporary economists accustomed to
thinking of increased interest rates as
the only inflation cure.
Friedman, for his part, continued to
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
advocate a combination of lower public
spending and careful control over the
money supply. By the early 1980s,
Samuelson's argument for greater
spending had lost. Sharply higher inter-
est rates and a focus on inflation rather
than employment became the order of
the day. Ronald Reagan won the presi-
dency, having built his political career on
a Friedman-inspired promise to cut
taxes and a false, racially coded cam-
paign against so-called welfare
queens—a stereotype of Black single
mothers raking in government checks.
Once in office, he cut taxes on the
wealthy (while raising them for working
people) and fought against trade
unions—famously firing striking air traf-
fic controllers. The postwar Keynesian
welfare state was dead, at least in the
United States. Although the economy
was in deep recession, the paradigm had
shifted. For Friedman, however, even
this outcome was no victory. Wapshott's
description of Friedman's anguish as
Paul Volcker, then chair of the Federal
Reserve, implemented sharp interest
rate hikes in the fall of 1979 contains
some of the book's most powerful
insights. Friedman, who called Volcker's
20 percent rate increase “monetarism
lite,” had long advocated steady and
algorithmically determined changes in
the money supply, with no discretion left
to the Federal Reserve chair or other
political actors. But simple theories,
where simplicity itself is the virtue and
the appeal, are rarely easy to implement.
Even the highest of economic priests
bitterly disagree, constrained by their
own prior assumptions. Americans can
learn much from the 1970s. Although it
is easy to reduce to a simple clash of eco-
nomic titans the rupture that broke
Keynesianism and brought Reaganom-
ics to power, that change took more than
a decade.
The transformation was rooted not
in individual personalities but in how
economic theories filter through com-
plex political realities. Today's economic
paradigm shift has also taken place over
time, having begun long before the emer-
gence of COVID-19, as Wapshott docu-
ments. Understanding the current
upheaval means examining the policy
failures that led to the 2008 financial
crisis and the subsequent recession.
Americans' veneration of private capital
faltered with the collapse of the financial
giants Bear Stearns and Lehman Broth-
ers. Everyday people quickly came to
believe that these institutions no longer
had their best interests at heart. Accord-
ing to Gallup polling, public confidence
in the banking system dropped from 53
percent in 2004 to 22 percent in 2009
and has never recovered. Now, more
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Most mainstream already coming to life.
The $4 trillion allocated for the
economists, in fact, now
reject the latter for its
relentless focus on the
amount of money in
circulation. Instead, the
emerging framework is
about encouraging the
federal government to
play various roles meant
to promote the health of
the U.S. economy and
society. Public
institutions, its
advocates argue, should
make and enforce strict
rules to prevent
corporate monopolies,
invest in green energy,
and spend much more
on such public goods as
health care, childcare,
and education
than a decade after the crisis, something
very new is emerging at the highest levels
of government: Brian Deese, the director
of the Biden administration's National
Economic Council, has made it clear that
the current government's COVID-19
economic recovery plan is “quite differ-
ent” from previous ones. The American
Rescue Plan, the stimulus package
passed by Congress in March, prioritizes
providing funds directly to unemployed
Americans and struggling states and
cities. Austerity, that watchword of
decades past, is finished. President Joe
Biden himself has argued for a new eco-
nomic paradigm. “We can't go back to
the old, failed thinking,” he proclaimed
in July. This new paradigm is notably
more complicated than Friedman's mon-
etarism. Most mainstream economists,
in fact, now reject the latter for its relent-
less focus on the amount of money in
circulation. Instead, the emerging
framework is about encouraging the
federal government to play various roles
meant to promote the health of the U.S.
economy and society. Public institu-
tions, its advocates argue, should make
and enforce strict rules to prevent corpo-
rate monopolies, invest in green energy,
and spend much more on such public
goods as health care, childcare, and edu-
cation. Government should also deliber-
ately seek to close racial gaps in wages,
wealth, housing, education, health, and
other areas. Parts of this new vision are
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 47
Pacific Money
China’s Long-Term Economic
Direction
Xi Jinping has been clear that China’s old economic model is a thing of the past. The
new one, however, is only starting to take shape
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
A
s geopolitical conflict between
the United States and China
continues to grow, some China
watchers have called into question the
country’s economic direction. It could be
said that China’s economic trajectory is
the least clear it has been in decades, as
China moves from a period of rapid
growth and reform to what it deems
“high-quality” growth and development.
Due to the strong guidance of Xi Jinping,
the best way to understand China’s long-
term economic direction is through the
words of its president.
So, what can we say about Xi? Xi
Jinping is heavily guided by Marxist the-
ory, particularly as viewed through a
Chinese lens. While Marx called for capi-
talism to be entirely overturned, the first
leader of economic reform in China,
Deng Xiaoping, stated, “Both planning
and the market are economic means. The
essence of socialism is to liberate the
productive forces, develop them, and
eliminate them. Eliminate exploitation,
48 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
polarization, and ultimately achieve
common prosperity.” This diverged from
the Marxist view that a market-based
economy, viewed as unique to capital-
ism, was to be rejected. Deng believed
that socialism would eventually lead to
communism after economic develop-
ment has been completed: “Socialism
itself is the primary stage of commu-
nism, and China is in the primary stage
of socialism, the stage of underdevelop-
ment.”
Xi has clearly stated that China will
move away from its previous economic
trajectory beginning in 2021, and this is
what has happened. “The ‘14th Five-Year
Plan’ period is after my country has built
a moderately prosperous society in an
all-round way and achieved its first cen-
tenary goal,” Xi said. “In the first five
years, our country will enter a new stage
of development.” This stage of develop-
ment involves moving toward common
prosperity of the people and less empha-
sis on GDP growth rates. Xi has said that
“we must strive to promote the common
prosperity of all people and achieve more
obvious substantive progress. … [We
must] no longer simply talk about heroes
based on the growth rate of GDP.”
Xi further says that development
must be sustainable and healthy, in line
with customer interests, and not in viola-
tion of the law. Xi has also noted that
“practice tells us that development is a
constantly changing process,” so that the
development process will change over
time.
Interestingly, Xi has also promoted
market forces, stating that “market allo-
cation of resources is the most efficient
form….the market should play a decisive
role in resource allocation.” The 14th
Five-Year Plan has a section devoted to
stimulating market vitality. In this sec-
tion, it is written that “we will be
unswerving in consolidating and devel-
oping the non-publicly owned sector and
in encouraging, supporting, and leading
the development of the non-publicly
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
The speeches made by
Xi himself, do not attack
the private sector in the
wholesale way that some
observers fear
owned sector.” This section also com-
mits to continued support for the state-
owned sector.
Given the complexity of China’s
ideological backdrop and the lack of pre-
cedents for a Chinese-type socialist mar-
ket economy, it is challenging to inter-
pret these statements. Perhaps the best
way to understand them is to look at
what China has been doing in 2021,
when the country entered what its lead-
ers called “a new stage of development.”
Since that time, new regulations have
been implemented, including a policy
that lays out plans to further regulate the
economy in the next five years. Regula-
tions have sought to protect consumer
data, curb excessive marketing prac-
tices, reduce gaming time, break up
monopolies, and reduce tutoring profit-
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
ability. Such regulations appear to con-
stitute a weird hodge-podge of rules
thrown out by an overzealous govern-
ment. However, they are in line with
what Xi Jinping has committed to do –
protect the people, Communist style.
The new regulations, and the
speeches made by Xi himself, do not
attack the private sector in the wholesale
way that some observers fear. While the
rules have called out tech companies in
particular for becoming too large or
harming consumer interests, they have
not sought to obliterate private firms,
and according to statements by Xi and
the 14th Five-Year Plan, noted above,
this is not in the works. If this were the
case, Xi’s economic trajectory would be
clearer; what we are left with is an
uncomfortable coexistence between a
heavy-handed Communist government
and a market economy. This domestic
economic tension coincides with an
increasingly hawkish view of China from
the Western world, led by the United
States, with international economic rami-
fications embodied in tariffs, blacklist-
ing, and sanctions. This has created a
substantial amount of economic fragil-
ity, which can be seen in China’s slowing
growth numbers.
China’s long-term economic growth
prospects are therefore far more muted
than prospects in previous decades.
Whether China can balance internal and
external tensions is unclear, and gives
rise to some questions, such as: will gov-
ernment economic intervention be suc-
cessful in promoting common prosperity
without stamping out market forces?
Will the China-sanctioning international
order force China to take a different
path? What exactly will come to be
included under the auspices of “common
prosperity,” and will this become a
euphemism for damaging practices?
Finally, is China’s new stage of reform
compatible with its anticipated role on
the world stage?
While China’s intentions for long-
term economic reform have been laid out
in its speeches and doctrine, and embod-
ied in recent reforms, this transition
comes at a time of great uncertainty.
China wants to usher in quality GDP
growth; whether China will indeed be
successful in implementing a phase of
common prosperity is unknown.
Courtesy: The Diplomat
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 49
China Green Finance
To ‘Green’ the Belt and Road, China
Needs to Set Clear Renewable
Energy Targets
As China stops building overseas coal power plants, it will take more than wishful
thinking to transition to renewable energy
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
C Chinese public and
hina could develop as much as
679.69 gigawatts (GW) of solar
polar in Belt and Road countries
by 2030, and 26.55 GW of wind, which
would effectively cut 1.8 billion tons of
carbon emissions and create 310,000
new jobs.
These figures come from two
reports compiled and published in Chi-
nese by my team at Greenpeace East
Asia’s Beijing office. This research pro-
ject also showed, in clear terms, that Chi-
nese investors won’t deliver that impact
– which would amount to a 17 percent
cut in Belt and Road countries’ 2018 car-
bon emissions – without clear targets
from the central government.
“Green” and “low-carbon” develop-
ment have been buzzwords that fre-
quently appear in bilateral or multilat-
eral agreements around the world.
China’s overseas finance deals are no
exception. At the Forum for China-
Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in early
December, the importance of green and
low-carbon development were running
themes. But despite frequent invocation,
there are still no clear policy standards or
targets for power capacity, investment,
or policy.
Unfortunately, the lack of clear tar-
gets leaves the major roadblocks for
solar and wind projects firmly intact.
Around the world, and especially in
developing economies, solar and wind
projects face many obstacles in markets
50 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
private investors can be
conservative and
reticent to move without
a nudge from the central
government that they
will see support moving
forward. Chinese
regulators and
policymakers need to
establish clear, binding
green finance policies
that have long slanted to cater to fossil
fuel finance. These include inflexible
project finance standards, which were
designed around massive coal projects,
and an inflated perception of risk for
renewable energy projects despite them
outperforming fossil fuel projects in
most regions in revenue and socioeco-
nomic co-benefits.
China leaving coal is no clear guar-
antee that it will be a renewable energy
leader; there is yet work to be done. After
China announced an end to new over-
seas coal build-outs in September, 350
Africa, a coalition of more than 120 civil
society organizations from across the
continent, called for China to be a
responsible partner in supporting
renewable energy. A research report
from the African Climate Foundation
called for “clearer long-term and short-
term policy signals for promoting Chi-
nese overseas renewable energy activi-
ties, particularly around wind and solar
energy.”
Public banks can reach corners of
the market that are still inaccessible for
private investment. But Chinese public
and private investors can be conserva-
tive and reticent to move without a
nudge from the central government that
they will see support moving forward.
Chinese regulators and policymakers
need to establish clear, binding green
finance policies. This involves both the
regulation and standards for Chinese
financiers and the sectors for their
investments in recipient countries,
where investors should establish not
only renewable energy projects, but also
the infrastructure for these systems,
including energy grids and the supply
chain in upstream and downstream
industries.
Renewable energy advocates
around the world face a steep climb.
Even after the end of coal finance, the
specter of coal remains in energy mar-
kets that were structured around financ-
ing massive coal projects. The infra-
structure and financial tools that will
deliver an energy transition require that
same cultivation. In the coming post-
coal world, the role of energy finance
needs to grow, not shrink away.
Courtesy: The Diplomat
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
China Afghanistan Policy
China in Afghanistan:
How Beijing Engages the Taliban
Explain China’s involvement in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of U.S. forces
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
F ollowing the Taliban takeover,
China was the first foreign
country to pledge emergency
humanitarian aid (worth 200 million
yuan) to Afghanistan. The Taliban, who
were facing a humanitarian catastrophe
and economic meltdown, welcomed
Beijing’s prompt delivery of food and
medical supplies. Additionally, China
recently funded a construction project in
the Ministry of Justice compound, and
there are reports suggesting that Chinese
firms have visited Afghanistan to explore
mining opportunities.
China has maintained direct com-
munication with the Taliban administra-
tion, and both sides have met on several
occasions, bilaterally and internation-
ally, to discuss plans for Afghanistan
reconstruction. Beijing has also been
active in various international, multilat-
eral, and bilateral talks on Afghan issues
with regional governments and interna-
tional powers. The Taliban regard
Beijing as an important partner with
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
economic prowess, and Beijing has
proven itself to be a reliable partner with
its sustained assistance.
In what ways is China
assisting the Taliban
government and what are
Beijing’s strategic
interests in Afghanistan,
if any?
At the moment, providing humanitarian
aid and donation of COVID-19 vaccines
are China’s main assistance to the
Taliban. On the diplomatic front, China
has made efforts to rally international
support and aid for rebuilding Afghani-
stan, particularly by calling the interna-
tional community to lift sanctions and
unfreeze Afghan foreign assets. Corre-
spondingly, Beijing and other regional
states have come together to urge the
Western powers to engage the Taliban
and to provide assistance to the country.
There are two aspects to Beijing’s
interest in Afghanistan – securing secu-
rity in its western frontiers and securing
security for its Belt and Road projects in
Central Asia and Pakistan. Beijing sees
“three evils” – terrorism, separatism,
and religious fundamentalism – as
threats to its national security and has
openly urged the Taliban to make a clean
break with other terrorist groups, partic-
ularly the East Turkestan Islamic Move-
ment and Islamic State. China also wants
the Taliban to fight off these forces to
prevent cross-border terrorism and
spread of radicalism into Xinjiang.
Second, China needs a favorable
security paradigm in the region to pro-
tect its economic interests. Since 2013,
China has made substantial investments
in Central Asia and Pakistan via the
China-Central Asia-West Asia and
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
These investments around Afghanistan
have drastically increased Beijing’s vul-
nerability to conflict in the region. There
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 51
 Furthermore, when
we look at China’s
previous successful
projects in Afghanistan,
we see that they were
mostly smaller scale,
lower risk infrastructure
projects like housing
and laying of fiber optic
line. Larger and longer-
term projects often
failed due to the
precarious security teed, Chinese firms are unlikely to rush
situation, which eroded into business in Afghanistan.
investors’ confidence What incentives can the
exist worries in Beijing of militants Taliban offer to secure
launching attacks on Chinese personnel
and projects. A stable Afghanistan would Chinese investment?
reduce security threats, improve invest-
ment climate, and assist China to
advance its economic goals.
Analyze China’s interests
in developing
Afghanistan’s lithium
and copper deposits.
China has expressed interest in Afghani-
stan’s mining sector since the 2000s, but
past initiatives were fraught with diffi-
culties. The Mes Aynak copper mine,
which was leased to the China Metallur-
gical group for 30 years in 2008, is one
well-known example. The project has
been stalled due to security troubles and
concerns surrounding preservation of
ancient Buddhist ruins in the area. The
progress of the project remains uncer-
tain today.
The untapped resources in Afghani-
stan are attractive to China, which faces
growing domestic demands for energy
and primary commodities. However,
Beijing is aware that mining ventures
into Afghanistan would be a long shot,
requiring many pieces to be put in place
first, such as security guarantees and
proper infrastructure.
While the Taliban recently stated
that they will ensure the security of Chi-
nese investors, the security threat
remains high as there are other militant
rivalries and activities on the ground that
threaten China’s interests. As in early
October, the Islamic State Khorasan
linked their suicide bomb attack on a
mosque in Kunduz, Afghanistan, as
retaliation for the Taliban’s close cooper-
ation with Beijing, which the ISK
regarded as mistreating the Uyghurs.
Until security and safety for Chinese
projects and personnel can be guaran-
52 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
rebuilding Afghanistan alone. In the
short term, Beijing will continue to pro-
The Taliban would need to demonstrate
that they have abolished ties with other
terrorist organizations. Another incen-
tive is to cut down on drug trafficking.
This may prove to be a tough ordeal
given the Taliban’s reliance on drug reve-
nue for its operations.
The Taliban can adopt Pakistan’s
example of deploying special security
forces to safeguard Chinese ventures and
personnel. Another option is for Chinese
companies to hire security from Chinese
private security companies, who already
have a presence in the region. If these
private security companies enter
Afghanistan, it will be interesting to con-
template their potential affiliations to
the Chinese government and whether
their presence would symbolize, to some
extent, a kind of military involvement by
Beijing.
We have to be realistic about how
much Beijing is willing to invest. Before
the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s over-
seas financing and BRI activities had
begun to slow down. Furthermore, when
we look at China’s previous successful
projects in Afghanistan, we see that they
were mostly smaller scale, lower risk
infrastructure projects like housing and
laying of fiber optic line. Larger and lon-
ger-term projects often failed due to the
precarious security situation, which
eroded investors’ confidence.
Assess the geostrategic implications
of China’s presence in Afghanistan and
potential impact on U.S. interests in the
region.
China is still waiting for the interna-
tional community to confer diplomatic
recognition to the Taliban, and its next
move will likely be determined by inter-
national responses. It’s clear that China
does not want to shoulder the burden of
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Imbalance Economy economy are the Public Sector Enter-
prises, such as Railways, the Steel Mill,

Pakistan’s socioeconomic WAPDA and some 80 others. Their

cumulative loss amounts to 1100 billion
PKR even when these enterprises do not
add a penny to the national income. As a
imperatives comparison the nation-wide annual
development plan is also 1100 billion
PKR which rarely materialises but the
We are now among the world’s ten most indebted nations and our external debt exceeds losses to the public sector entities are
the gross national income certain to drain away equal numbers. No
A major fallout of this
selective and restricted
socioeconomic make-up
is the inequity which
further fragments
government has been able to plug this
hole for its political backlash because of
the employees that have been placed
there by their political patrons over the
years. Politics trumps rationality and
business sense but none wants to be asso-
ciated with dumping what is dragging
the economy and the nation down.
The biggest draw on national
resources is the rapidly increasing popu-
lation which none has been able to har-
ness. It too entails political capital for a
government to face the opposition of the
conservative segments of the society who
banish such mention for social or reli-
gious reasons. We remain stuck at a popu-
lation growth rate of 2.5 per cent per
annum when effective net growth in the
economy is negative. Simply stated we
are producing a lot more mouths to feed
By The KIPS Bureau or hands to employ than our collective
Lahore, Pakistan national capacity permits. This negative
acceleration has pushed us to the point
of external dependence for our staples

O
ther than the issues of current
account deficit and a poorly
structured economy which
continue to await major reform there are
four fundamentals specific to the
Pakistani economy which cry for action
without which no economy can sustain
its viability. Their existential nature not
only drags the economy down but
impacts the society and the social make-
up distorting its balance. It weakens a
nation to the point of becoming easily
manipulable by those meaning harm.
Total public debt now accounts for
the size of the GDP which in PKR nears
50 trillion (290 billion USD). External
debt in dollar terms is around 127 billion
USD and counting. We are now among
the world’s ten most indebted nations
and our external debt exceeds the gross
national income. What we earn in reve-
nues is a drop in the ocean and barely
serves the mark-up on borrowed princi-
pal which continues to pile because the
salaries must be paid, the government
must keep functioning and the country
must still be defended. We do these
through additional borrowing. We bor-
row almost 14 billion PKR (almost 83
million USD) every day to keep the coun-
try functioning. This is untenable by any
measure. We need to begin to earn more
than we spend to ensure our sustenance
as a nation, an economy and a society
and then to pay back what we have bor-
rowed from others internally and exter-
nally. Modern finance can be easily mis-
leading but in crass terms when a coun-
try earns less than it spends and does not
rectify its expenses or enhance its earn-
ings it is economically and financially
bankrupt.
Pakistan’s energy predicament con-
sists of its power and gas sectors. These
have accumulated liabilities of 2500 and
1200 billion PKR respectively in circular
debt which continues to mount as the
nation remains bound in a debilitating
policy to pay for capacity charges in for-
eign currency even when those power
units produce no power and none is
bought off them. We hold the capacity to
produce twice as much electricity than
we need and pay for it regardless. This
liability isn’t even shown as debt in the
total debt stock. How will we ever get out
of this stranglehold created by our own
wizards who tie us to non-efficient power
producers with up-front payments in FE
and contractual obligation to provide the
most efficient fuel at preferred prices
which the country and its economy can-
not afford, is anyone’s guess. All efforts
to find a solution out of this morass have
only returned a blank. On its own it is
almost half of the size of country’s GDP
which we must still pay out above and
beyond the national debt stock. Mean-
while, people and businesses reel under
the weight of unaffordable energy prices
while the industry finds the input costs
beyond rational to match commercially.
Other major leakage which sucks
out trillions from the public exchequer
without any contribution to the national
and other dietary needs. Malthus, the
famous economist, who always warned
against the world reaching its dead-end
in its production capacity vis-a-vis the
population that the planet can afford,
has come alive. Even more worriedly we
are an exception to the global trend of
reducing populations despite having
descended to the depths of impoverish-
ment.
When so many are jobless, home-
less and striving to fight off hunger for
themselves and their families they
become a desperate lot. Look back at the
last four decades and see how easily has
our youth turned itself over to violent
terror groups or been radicalised by one
or another thought. It correlates directly
to the diminishing opportunity in the
country in an economy which has only
shrunk in size and is embarrassingly
inequitable. The much touted promise of
the youth bulge has turned into a night-
mare. We count 220 million but may well
be over 250 million; certain to cross 350
million by 2050. Some 150 million of
these are below the age of thirty, without
jobs and a future. This is a ticking time-
bomb. Something must give. We will
either implode or we must restructure,
become more equitable, produce more in
the economy and produce less mouths to
feed. Law and Order is impossible in a
populace which increases in such rapid-
ity, when governance is a shamble and
administration helpless to catch up to
keep a society and a system orderly.
A major fallout of this selective and
restricted socioeconomic make-up is the
inequity which further fragments and
fuels social divisions which then anchor
around tribalism, ethnicity, religious
sentiment or simply language to coalesce
and find a more nefarious purpose in the
name of rights. Societies which lose their
cohesion and coherence around dismal
social and economic indices for lack of
equitable opportunity descend rapidly
into a ghoulish mould. We have seen the
making of it over time in recent examples
of mob lynching and depraved social
behaviour against women and children.
The wheels of justice are badly corroded
in another indication of how the society
has lost its purpose and moral anchor.
The obvious disconnect between the
elites and the common man has never
been as stark and as assiduously
entrenched than it is today. There is a
clear need to get the society back to a
more hopeful, centralised anchor for its
existence. Each segment of the society
needs a focused address of what is para-
mount to their wellbeing. Politics needs
to re-evolve itself to deliver what is
expected in such times of crises. Neglect
is criminal. Purposeful political leader-
ship is both our bane and a crying need.
Courtesy: The Express Tribune

54 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022

globalagemagazine.kipscss.com globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 55
Security Studies
Who is denting CPEC?
Clearly, it is not just about the high stakes for a China-inclined prime minister but for
Pakistan as a whole
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
C
PEC appears to be facing some
headwinds. Some of the
mainstream media has openly
begun parroting the narrative of
Pakistan’s bureaucracy i.e. an unhealthy
addition to loans and a begging mindset,
and loath to prompt action. The onus of
fixing the situation is often relayed in the
form of what the Chinese should or
should not do (instead of fixing problems
within), and leans favorably towards the
contextual mantra under contemporary
geopolitics.
Is CPEC facing a combination of
national and external malign influence?
Will the Pakistan-China friendship sur-
vive this turbulence? These questions
merit some introspection when trying to
ascertain where the responsibility for
this asymmetrical situation rests –
Islamabad or Beijing?
Pakistani officials claim the first
phase of CPEC is almost complete with
an injection of at least $25 billion since
2016. Khalid Mansoor, chairman of the
CPEC Authority, promises a much more
comprehensive second phase. But this
promise pales if viewed against the cur-
rent financial bottlenecks and tardy exe-
cution challenges, which seem to stem
squarely from the Pakistani side.
If insiders were any indicator, more
than 90 per cent of the CPEC projects –
road, electricity generation or transmis-
sion, mass transit, Gwadar Port – are
either completed or near completion,
but most are facing multiple financial
and administrative hurdles that have
slowed down execution.
The recent protests in Gwadar pro-
vided just a glimpse of these challenges
but the malaise is much deeper. The
major reason is unimplemented or defi-
cient sustainable monitoring and con-
trolling governance systems. Addicted to
foreign loans, the bureaucratic machin-
ery refuses to shun its habitual inclina-
tion and expects further waivers and
grants, despite poor performance and
tardy processes. Hence its advice on
securing more loans to continue to feed
an ever-hungry corrupt, and hemorrhag-
ing system.
Understandably, this leaves inves-
tors in a conundrum. What answers will
they get if they sought verification on the
power sector problems and went for due
56 | GLOBAL AGE January 2022
diligence of the sector they may be inter-
ested in? How will Pakistan regain their
trust?
Prime Minister Imran Khan and
others in his retinue keep imploring
investors to come to Pakistan for invest-
ment in special economic zones and look
at new areas of cooperation i.e. science
and technology, agriculture, tourism,
and information technology. He also
recently met the Chinese ambassador as
well as businessmen and instructed rele-
vant departments to address their issues
on a priority basis. But those under him
– the advisers, and bureaucracy that
actually steers policies – think differ-
ently and have instead adopted a policy
that amounts to forcing Chinese inves-
tors to revise already approved and exe-
cuted projects, particularly those in the
energy sector.
Other underlying factors that retard
progress and create significant hurdles
are: a) inconsistency in enforcement of
approved policies; b) refusal to abide by
terms of signed agreements; c) divergent
interpretation of rules; and d) lack of
prompt responses by various central and
provincial government authorities.
For example, a major steel firm has
been waiting for the environmental No
Objection Certificate (NOC) as well as
electricity connection in the much-
touted Rashakai special economic zone
for well over one year, with no end in
sight. That is not an insignificant amount
of time.
The 720MW Karot Hydropower
Plant was given conflicting ratios of pro-
vincial services tax, and the 700MW
Azad Pattan Hydropower Plant has been
facing stay-order litigation for two years
from the Punjab government.
The federal Economic Coordination
Committee (ECC) and the Cabinet have
mutually extended the commercial oper-
ation date (COD) of Pakistan’s first-ever
660KV HVDC Matiari-Lahore Trans-
mission Line Project from 31st March
2021 to 1st September 2021 without tak-
ing the regulator (NEPRA) in line with
the verdict. The company is now facing
coherence complications in the agreed
pre-COD tariff from NEPRA, the
National Transmission Dispatch Com-
pany (NTDC), and the Central Power
Purchase Agency-Guarantee (CPPA-G).
These are but a few of dozens of
examples.
The promised revolving account – a
fund supposed to be equal to some 22 per
cent of the total energy funding – in sup-
port of energy project has not been
opened yet. No one seems to know what
prevents fulfilment of this promise.
This context – rooted in bureau-
cracy’s anti-China mindset as well as
disinclination to swiftly act and react to
urgent task – has caused the Chinese
insurance company SINORSURE to
under-write further finances for CPEC
projects.
Clearly, it is not just about the high
stakes for a China-inclined prime minis-
ter but for Pakistan as a whole. The net
result of all this is partially-stalled CPEC
projects, plummeting confidence in
investors. Chinese lenders have withheld
fresh payments, major international
embarrassment, and incalculable dam-
age to Pakistan and its economy in the
long term – all because the bureaucracy
cannot get its act together.
This makes it pretty obvious: the
fault lies in Islamabad.
Courtesy: The Express Tribune
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
Religion of Peace
NRA — a step in the right direction
Pakistan must develop robust institutions because it is going to be a long haul
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
D ecember hasn’t been kind to
Pakistan. Fifty years ago, this
week, the nation lost its eastern
wing — many say on mere
misunderstandings. Misunder-
standings, too, haven’t been forgiving to
us, either. Less than three weeks ago,
Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan
national employed by a Sialkot-based
garment manufacturing business as its
manager, lost his life to a
misunderstanding: he was accused of
tearing down a poster purportedly
featuring religious content. The content
he didn’t understand!
In the West, Pakistan and the reli-
gion of the majority of the inhabitants
have long been a victim of misunder-
standings. To clear those relating to the
latter, Prime Minister Imran Khan in
October established the National
Rehmatul-lil-Aalameen Authority, a
body mandated to research how best to
disseminate lessons from the life of
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon
him) to the people. Addressing the
launch of the body, he said it would be
composed of scholars who would be
tasked with researching how to spread
the teachings of the Holy Prophet (peace
be upon him) among children and adults
and make them relevant to their lives.
The authority is a welcome step — in
globalagemagazine.kipscss.com
fact, a much-needed one. It comes on the
heels of scores of incidents of violence in
the name of religion and a rather deliber-
ate exercise of the right to freedom of
speech in the West to hurt the senti-
ments of billion-strong Muslims across
the globe. Just in September last year,
Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly,
republished the blasphemous sketches
of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon
him), triggering worldwide protests.
When confronted, French President
Emmanuel Macron simply shrugged and
said it was “not my place to pass judg-
ment” on the offensive sketches.
It’s timing, and actions like this that
elicit the need for a coordinated
response. PM Imran Khan was very wise
and sane in doing so when he, in October
last, wrote to the leaders of Islamic
nations, urging them “to act collectively
to counter growing Islamophobia in
non-Muslim states”. Preceding the letter
was a personal rebuke delivered by the
prime minister to President Macron for
“encouraging Islamophobia” in the lat-
ter’s response to the domestic political
compulsions. It was against the thought
of Khan to set up a body to synchronise
the response to the religious offences
delivered by the West.
The National Rehmatul-lil-
Aalameen Authority, with Premier Khan
as patron-in-chief, will have an interna-
tional advisory board, above the prime
minister, that will feature top Islamic
scholars, not only from Pakistan but
from across the world. “We have looked
at many names and are approaching
them as well,” the prime minister told
the gathering. Islam is a religion of peace
and humanity, Khan said but lamented
the fact that the West did not understand
it. So, the body would also be tasked with
explaining Islam to the rest of the world.
Pakistan is faced with an image prob-
lem. It is, often, portrayed as a hub of
fanatics and religion-based extremism in
the world. Meanwhile, the startling dis-
closures made in the EU DisinfoLab
report highlighted the extensive magni-
tude and global influence of Indian pro-
paganda and the most ambitious disin-
formation campaign against Pakistan —
one which the world has failed to take
notice of. The post-9/11 attack’s press
coverage projected political Islam as a
global threat. This highlights the fact that
Pakistan and other Muslim countries
have failed to sensitise the global com-
munity about the real picture of Islam
and Muslims and the message given by
the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him).
The Muslim nations, especially Pakistan,
must develop robust institutions because
it is going to be a long haul. This author-
ity should give particular attention to
inclusive representation: scholars from
faiths other than Islam and eminent
female scholars since they are Pakistan’s
soft underbelly.
Courtesy: The Express Tribune
January 2022 GLOBAL AGE | 57
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