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This must the question that the Syrian tyrant asks himself every day. While the world’s democracies have discussed long and hard the options for bringing a stop to the slaughter, far less time has been spent identifying the options that remain for Assad himself. I imagine him contemplating his possibilities while he looks at two photographs taken last year. One of his lovely wife Asma in a flattering report that appeared in Vogue magazine, and the other of the dead body of Muammar Gaddafi. The first reminds him of a life and alternatives that he no longer has, while the second brutally illustrates his possible future. The hope, symbolized by Vogue's flattering article, that Assad might be able to reform the murderous dictatorship he inherited from his father, is now gone forever. The thousands of innocent people he has killed put an end to that. In which case, what possibilities remain? I see three:
You may not have heard of Lt. Colonel Davis of the US army, who now works at the Pentagon, after several tours of duty in Iraq and more recently, Afghanistan. Davis just returned and wrote a report that begins thus: “Senior ranking military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regard to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility both among our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan. It has likely cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars Congress might not otherwise have appropriated had it known the truth, and our senior leaders’ behavior has almost certainly prolonged this war. The single greatest penalty our nation has suffered, however, has been that we have lost the blood, limbs and lives of tens of thousands of American Service Members with little to no gain to our country as a consequence of this deception.” And this is just the public version of his report. He also produced a confidential version, for a few congressmen and senators with security clearances.
Daddy (Papá) is Hipólito Mejía, who wants to be president of the Dominican Republic. Llegó Papá! (Here is Daddy!) is his campaign slogan. His promise to the voters is that Daddy will give them what they don’t have and have never had. The elections are in May, and Mejía, who already was president between 2000 and 2004, may be re-elected despite the fact that during his tenure the country suffered a disastrous economic crash .
A lot happened in 2011. This year's news roundups will surely be long and interesting. In this column I am not going to run through the main news stories but rather focus on five ideas that had a bad year.
Despite the widespread disenchantment with politics and politicians, there are two events that often engage even the most cynical and uninterested. Voting on election day is one of them. Everywhere, the number of people who actually abstain from voting tends to be lower than what the pre-election opinion polls suggested. On election day, something magical happens, and many of the erstwhile reticent stand in line and vote. The other magical events that engage even those least interested in politics are the televised debates between contending candidates.
Some weeks ago I was in Brussels, and by chance found I was sharing the same hotel as many members of the delegations to the EU summit, with whom I had numerous conversations after work or at breakfast. Their tales, anxieties and exhaustion (working nonstop through months dominated by emergencies, bad news and frustration) brought back many memories.
Today's emergencies are crowding the thinking about the long-term. The anxiety over Europe's economic crisis, the political infighting in the United States, social unrest in many other countries, and a possible slowdown of growth in China, are just some of the concerns about the immediate future that are preventing us from thinking beyond the coming weeks or months. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the think tank where I work, has just celebrated its 100th anniversary. Spurred on by the centenary, we are considering the dilemmas that will define the world in the coming century. Many will quickly dismiss such an exercise. Why bother? It is not very likely that the answers will turn out to be true and, in any case, we will not be around to see if we got it wrong - or to deal with the consequences. Yet, these are questions that stimulate interesting ideas and synthesize our options in a number of critical areas. Just thinking about alternative futures and the factors that will shape them helps us better understand where we are, where we might be heading, and which efforts are needed to take us closer to the more desirable scenarios.
His name is Mansour Arbabsiar, his nickname is "Scarface" and some of his friends in Texas, where he has lived for many years, call him Jack. He is one of Iran's James Bonds. If Jack is Teheran's 007, then Gholam Shakuri, a member of Iran's Al Quds unit, the special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, may be 006. Abdul Reza Shahlai is perhaps the equivalent to Miss Moneypenny, who in the Bond movies was the secretary to M, the boss of all the spies.
While the world's attention remains glued to the crisis in Greece (population 11 million), in China (population 1.34 billion) things are going on that we are mistakenly overlooking. Should the world's economic engine stall, the consequences would be much more serious than any Greek problem, even taking into account its impact on the wider European economy. Here are a few boring facts about what is happening in China: manufacturing has fallen for the third consecutive month; the construction boom is about to bust; property prices are falling, and companies in the sector are finding it hard to access financing. Local government debt is now equivalent to 27 percent of the economy, and experts say that 80 of that debt cannot be recovered. Share prices of Chinese companies on the New York Stock Exchange fell on the news that regulators found serious faults in their accounts.
Denial (nothing's the matter). Rage (why me?) Negotiation (what can I do to postpone the inevitable?). Depression (why do anything more? It's all over). Acceptance (the world will go on). According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, these are the five stages one goes through in facing death or catastrophic loss. Perhaps she never imagined how useful her schema would be in understanding the behavior of a government faced with a grave financial crisis. The Argentineans (several times), Brazilians, Mexicans, Russian and Asians passed through these stages. Now it is the turn of Europe (and the US, but that's another story). I do not know (and think nobody knows) how the present economic convulsions will evolve, or how the governments and the financial markets will react in their interminable interplay. We know that the 150 billion that the EU sent to Greece did not buy much, and that heretofore unimaginable austerity measures have been passed in Italy, Spain and other threatened countries. But nothing seems to work.
A lot is happening in Latin America. The dynamism in business, politics, society, international relations, and even the criminal cartels is obvious. In contrast, U.S. policy toward Latin America is lethargic, unimaginative, and surprisingly irrelevant.
It is as impossible not to be moved by the images of suffering and destruction in Japan as it is not to be surprised by the stoicism of the victims. Usually, the scenes following a disaster are of panic, disorder, and even looting. In Japan, we see long lines of people calmly awaiting medical attention or buying food. And faces that reflect an unimaginable pain that is seldom expressed stridently. The Japanese deserve our admiration and solidarity.
Forbes magazine just published its annual list of the richest people in the world. There are no surprises. The number of billionaires increased, as did their average wealth ($3,500 million). And while the majority of billionaires are still American, that percentage is declining as the percentage of rich people from poor countries grows. Thus, countries like China, Brazil, India, Mexico, Turkey, Ukraine, or Russia produce many mega-millionaires.
Raúl Castro and Otmar Issing could not be more different. The first is a Cuban soldier and the second a European economist. Castro is one of the founding fathers of the communist regime in Cuba and Issing is one of the fathers of the euro. While Castro was fighting to export the Cuban revolution, Issing was working for Europe’s integration and is one of the architects of the European monetary system. Castro is about to turn 80 years old and Issing is 75. I don’t know if they know each other, or if they have ever spoken, but I doubt it.