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Stock markets reacted euphorically Monday to the massive rescue package announced the night before to prop up crashing European economies. Passions cooled slightly on Tuesday as the market rally halted, but still, it seemed, all was as it should be: The package agreed upon in Brussels provides Europe’s embattled economies with a much needed respite and may even save the European integration project from the disaster of several countries being forced to shed the euro. It is all good news — that is, if it works.
Does the editor of Foreign Policy magazine need to be a U.S. citizen? That was my first question in mid-1996 upon learning that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the think tank that then owned the magazine, was looking for a new editor. Maybe a written or, perhaps, unwritten rule reserved the position for Americans? In most other countries, after all, it would be hard, if not impossible, for a foreigner to run an elite publication like FP. But not here: It turned out that my Venezuelan nationality was not a problem. I could apply, and to my surprise, I got the job — a job that I have decided to leave in June after 14 great years.
What’s worse: declaring war against a social problem or calling for a Marshall Plan to solve it? Both are enduring and popular metaphors. Unfortunately, both lead to bad government decisions. Public policies shaped by such thinking more often than not result in waste, blind spots, and Manichaean mindsets that limit the search for more effective approaches. Think of the long-running wars on drugs, terrorism, and cancer. The results, all too predictably, have been more confusing than the problems.
Just a few months ago, the consensus among influential thinkers was that the economic crisis would unleash a wave of geopolitical plagues. Xenophobic outbursts, civil wars, collapsing currencies, protectionism, international conflicts, and street riots were only some of the dire consequences expected by the experts.
Where are the Japanese? Why are there no Russians? Who else is missing from FOREIGN POLICY‘s list of the top 100 global thinkers?
Look at the countries whose best minds are not represented on this list of those who’ve most shaped the conversation in 2009 — a year of worldwide economic crisis and dangerous wars — and it’s clear: Understanding who’s not on the list is as revealing about today’s global marketplace of ideas as debating who’s on it.
Eighty years ago, Standard Oil of New Jersey went overseas in search of crude oil. In the late 1990s, America Online went around the world in search of subscribers. In 1899, the United Fruit Company needed to be in Central America because of that region’s advantages in the cultivation of bananas. Nowadays, Yahoo needs to be everywhere because the more visitors it attracts, the higher its stock price.
Yegor A. and Mikhail L. got their degrees in computer science from Moscow State University in the same year. Today, Yegor’s yearly income is 15 times higher than Mikhail’s. Yegor works for a private Internet company. Mikhail, on the other hand, is "just" in charge of information technology at an important Russian ministry where he makes about $140 per month. Another example of the catastrophic situation of the Russian state?
There is little difference between the economist who concludes that a country suffers from low confidence and the doctor who explains that an illness results from an unknown virus. As correct as both may be in their diagnoses, they have little to offer by way of a remedy; their treatments will likely rely on trial and error rather than on a proven cure with well-understood consequences. "It is difficult for economic policy to deal with the the abruptness of a break in confidence," admitted Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in February. That is because, as Nobel laureate Robert Solow has written, "Confidence obviously matters, and it is just as obviously unmeasurable. So it can explain anything."
Vladimir Gusinsky is a Russian banker and the owner of NTV, an independent television channel with 100 million viewers. Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an Egyptian sociologist and the director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, a think tank in Cairo. Anwar Ibrahim was Malaysia’s deputy prime minister and, at one point, the heir apparent to Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s prime minister and Asia’s longest-serving head of government. All three have been vocal critics of their respective regimes. And all three had a tough summer.
Welcome to the new Foreign Policy magazine. This issue marks the beginning of a new phase in the life of this 30-year-old publication. In it you will find new features, new ideas, and new voices, presented in a new format created by David Herbick, an award-winning designer of several world-class magazines. Driving these changes are three paradoxes peculiar to our time:
“Doha will make Seattle look like a picnic," said the World Trade Organization (WTO) official. That was a surprise. After all, one of the reasons to hold the next summit of the world’s trade ministers in Qatar’s capital was that its government and remote location would make it harder for activists to reenact the protests that made the 1999 meeting of the WTO in Seattle famous and the Genoa G-8 summit fatal. "I wasn’t talking about the action outside the building but about what goes on inside," she said. "The disagreements that scuttled the negotiations in Seattle will be even deeper in Doha. The chances of making any substantive progress are minimal."
Some countries can drive other countries crazy. When people have this effect on one another, it is because of imbalances in the brain’s neurotransmitters. With countries, it often happens because of the disproportionate influence of special interests. Cuba, for example, has long driven the United States crazy. Just think of the Bay of Pigs invasion or the outsourcing of Castro’s assassination to the Mafia. For more recent examples of irrational behavior, think of the Helms-Burton Law or Elián.
The terrorists that crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon not only killed people. They also killed ideas, shattering the certainties that previously guided policies and budgets. Some of the ideas that died on that Tuesday morning in September had been with us for decades. Others were as new as the Bush administration. In their place has come not just the revival of some useful old truths but the emergence of new assumptions and perceptions that may be as dangerous as those that have been discarded.
For all the post–September 11 focus on Islamic anti-Americanism, the world’s reaction to the carnage in New York City and Washington has actually exposed the variety, complexity, and ubiquity of antipathy toward the United States. In Argentina, Hebe de Bonafini, an internationally known human rights activist and president of the Association of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (mothers of Argentines who "disappeared" during the dictatorships in that country), said, "When the attack happened…I felt happiness." In France, the editor of Le Monde Diplomatique summarized his view of the world’s reaction: "What’s happening to [Americans] is too bad, but they had it coming."
What does al Qaeda have in common with Amnesty International and Greenpeace? All three are loose networks of individuals united by a shared passion for a single cause, and thanks to cheaper communication and transportation, each can project its influence globally. Their funding comes from small contributions made by thousands of sympathizers and from large sums given by a few major donors, while their effectiveness derives from the single-minded devotion of their idealistic activists. The difference, of course, is that while al Qaeda’s suicidal terrorists want to bring down Western civilization, the members of Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and other such nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) want to make it better. And in many cases, they do.
Current levels of world poverty are unacceptable. More money for development is needed. The approaches and institutions that guide foreign aid need to be overhauled. It is hard to disagree with these conclusions. Certainly, the heads of state who met in March in Monterrey, Mexico, did not. As a result, they will increase financing to fight poverty and will vigorously explore a range of new ideas for spending it more effectively.
Lucio García, a gardener in Merrifield, Virginia, speaks daily to his family in a remote town in Bolivia using a prepaid phone card that costs him a few cents a minute. Eddie Baron Levi, a Mexican Congressman, commutes weekly from Mexico City to Los Angeles, where he and his constituents reside. Iqbal Farouqi, a Pakistani waiter working in Milan, has used the money he earns to purchase two small trucks in Karachi that he rents to relatives and manages through the Internet.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was bad news for sovietologists. Thousands of spies, military officers, diplomats, professors, journalists and assorted experts made a living studying the Soviet Union. None predicted its collapse.
September 11, 2001, is still happening. But while it may be too soon to catalog the impact of all its ongoing aftershocks, it is not too soon to identify one widely expected consequence that has failed to materialize: the death of globalization. "The era of globalisation is over," wrote Prof. John Gray of the London School of Economics and Political Science, reflecting the views of many other commentators. Conventional wisdom argued that the terrorist attacks on the United States would drastically curb the flow of money, goods, and services across national borders. For critics, globalization’s status as a passing fad was foretold even earlier in the growing clout of the anti-globalization movement, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, economic crashes in emerging countries, heightened concern over social inequities and the environment, and looming recession. From this perspective, the collapse of the World Trade Center also symbolized the collapse of a worldview that was either intellectually flawed, rigged in favor of the rich and powerful, or both. September 11 was merely the last nail in globalization’s coffin.
President Bush should invite Brazil’s newly elected president to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and propose a bilateral economic treaty that the Brazilian leader cannot refuse. Such a deal would, of course, be a huge political gamble for a U.S. president facing plenty of difficulties elsewhere. But the benefits for the two countries and the rest of the Western Hemisphere would be enormous. And the continued failure to reverse some of South America’s current trends poses enormous dangers to the United States.