Turkey and the Arab Awakening

Ever since the revolutionary train swept across North Africa and the Middle East (MENA) pundits have been asking whether Turkey could offer a model for post-Revolution Arab states to follow, so maybe it was not so surprising that the Turkish Review (for which I occasionally write) should highlight the issue at its UK launch at the House of Lords earlier today. Three very diverse speakers were on the panel (chaired by the LibDem peer and former President of Liberal International, John Alderdice): the journalist Kerim Balci, the young Oxford academic and political writer Miriam Francois-Cerrah and Gulnur Aybet, who teaches at the University of Kent, as well as in Turkey and the United States. Each put a totally different slant on the subject, Kerim Balci claiming (with some justification) that the so-called Arab Spring actually started earlier than in Tunisia in December 2010, in Kyrgyzstan, and that it is mirrored in various parts of Central Asia, China and India. What we are dealing with has a universal dimension, he argued. Miriam Francois-Cerrah declared that the majority of Arabs do see Turkey as a role-model, largely because it is a secular state that has nonetheless accommodated a variety of parties, including the AKP, with its Islamic origins. Gulnur Aybet emphasized that Turkey is seen by the West as a strategic partner in dealing with the MENA region, which maybe leads to a certain degreee  of wishful thinking as to how much of a model it can be. More a source of inspiration, stated Miriam Francois-Cerrah, echoing a line I have often taken. But in the meantime Turkey has itself all sorts of internal contradictions to overcome; Gulnur Aybet deplored the growing polarisation she has noticed. Certainly Turkey has an enviable economic growth rate and has many things going for it, but it is by no means a perfect state that others might necessarily try to emulate.

Why the EU Needs to Integrate More

It’s 40 years since Britain joined the EU and siren voices among UKIP and the Tory right are arguing that it’s time to turn the clock back and pull out. They couldn’t be more wrong. On the contrary, this is the time for the EU to integrate more — as the eurozone now seems destined to do — and Britain should be an enthusiastic participant. In the 1950s it was clear to the Founding Fathers (sorry, ladies, they were all men) of what developed into the EU that a degree of economic integration, notably between France and Germany, was necessary to make wars between western European states impossible. That goal was so smoothly achieved that European peace is taken for granted, especially by the young. A second huge victory since 1989 has been the absorption of formerly Communist states of central and eastern Europe ino the EU. This year, Croatia will be the next. But there is an urgent reason why EU integration should move ahead, namely the way that the global economy is developing, with the rise of new heavyweights including Brazil, Russia, India and China — the BRICs. As EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso has rightly pointed out, by 2050 not a single individual European country will be among the world’s top 10 economies* — not even Germany. So in order to compete — indeed, to survive as an economic force — Europe must unite further and start operating more as not just a single market but also a single economic force. It would be madness for Britain to stay out of that, condemning itself to a form of offshore irrelevance. It is not the Europhiles in Britain who are unpatriotic, as some of our critics allege, but rather UKIP and the Europhobic Tory right who want to consign us to the role of an historical theme park. 

*A new entry at number 10, however, could well be Turkey, which makes it all the more important that Turkey be embraced into the European family.

Misha Glenny on Cyber Crime

The writer and broadcaster Misha Glenny was the guest at the Association of European Journalists (AEJ) lunch at Europe House yesterday; many of us had worked with him at the BBC and elsewhere, mainly during the period when he was a leading authority on the Balkans. But as he explained at the lunch, by 2000 editors around the world had had their fill of the Balkans. Nobody was interested in the area anymore. 9/11 and its aftermath further sealed his fate as he then had to find a new area of expertise, which is why he has spent much of the past decade in the company of gangsters. Some of these were involved in traditional crimes, such as gun-running, people trafficking and prostitution (more details of which you can find in his books). But more recently he has tended to focus on cyber crime — hacking and the like. People engaged in this type of activity usually don’t need to resort to the violence employed by other sectors of the international criminal fraternity, and many of them are young. One of his star interviewees in recent research was a teenager in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who made millions in a short period of time. States, intelligence services and commercial companies also increasingly engage in cyber crime, be it cyber warfare — of the type that forced Estonia to shut itself off from the Internet for a while — or the deliberate infection of Iran’s nuclear facilities by US and Israeli cyber-operatives, and indeed the blitz on Western countries — including Britain — by China and Russia in particular. Most people tend to think of cyber crime in terms of phishing scams which result in one’s credit or debit card being hacked. But such offenses are piffling compared with the high level stuff being carried out by the real professionals, including extortion of banks and commercial companies by people who have the ability to bring down their whole IT system or steal all their contact lists, emails and future product specifications. Having brouht out his book on the subject, Misha Glenny can now turn to a much less dangerous project: the rise of Brazil as an emergent world power.

The TeamEU versus China debate

There’s been a lot of chatter on twitter and elsewhere about the fact that were all 27 member states of the EU competing as TeamEU at London2012 then we’d be way ahead of China in the Olympics medals table. That is of course statistically true and it’s interesting to note that China’s population is more than twice that of the EU. However, it ain’t going to happen, at least for the foreseeable future, as the 27 EU member states are all sovereign states and the Olympics is one of the few occasions when their citizens can all get together and jump around waving their national flags. Besides, I think we should compare like with like. Thus is would be perfectly reasonable to compare TeamEU with TeamASEAN, as the 10 nations of South East Asia have also formed a regional organisation and coincidentally have a very similar combined population size to that of the EU. And if one does that then I’m sorry you guys from South East Asia, the Europeans have wiped the floor with you. But it’s important not to take that or any of this seriously. The Olympics are a time when normal life is put aside and we all get ino the spirit of things, with only mock national or regional rivalry. And of course, in ancient Greece, the athletes competing in the Games did not wear any identifying  sign or indeed anything at all. And if they won, they were rewarded not with a ‘gold’ medal but an olive sprig. Amateurism rules, OK!

Tiger Head, Snake Tails

Later this year, in the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the new top leadership of China will be unveiled. The so-called fourth generation will be stepping down — thanks to a two five-year term rule and retirement at the age of 69 — and we will know who are the fresh creme de le creme of the Communist Party hierarchy by the order in which the nine members of the Politburo’s Standing Committee walk out on stage. Most China-watchers believe that the new President will be Xi Jinping and the new Prime Minister Li Kechang, though one can never rule out a last-minute surprise. One absentee will be the Chongqing party chief, Bo Xilai — a high-flyer who has gone down in flames over an extraordinary scandal that allegedly involves the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood by Bo’s wife, Mme Gu, who is a figure straight out of pulp fiction. I am sure someone is busy writing the synopsis of a novel based on the affair right now. But in the meantime, anyone who wants to know what is going on in China, how it got where it is and where it is going could do no better than buy and read the latest book by Jonathan Fenby, former editor of the Observer and the South China Morning Post, whose Tiger Head, Snake Tails is a brilliant study of a country that might not yet rule the world (as Martin Jacques predicted in a book a few years ago) but is probably heading to be the world’s largest economy within a generation, providing it doesn’t trip up along the way. The fall of Bo Xilai happened after Fenby’s tome went to press, but otherwise it is admirably up-to-date. More importantly, it draws on many years of intelligent study and reporting in China and Hong Kong. It is full of statistics and telling anecdotes, but written in a style that successfully walks the tightrope between popular journalism and academe. It is thus accessible to the uninitiated and illuminating to old China hands. Highly recommended.

Tiger Head, Snake Tails, Simon & Schuster, £20

Jeremy Browne the Golf Club

Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne has increased his empire recently, adding India to East Asia and Latin America. But as he told a meeting of London Liberal Youth and others which I chaired at SOAS this evening, there is logic to this, in that he is now broadly responsible for emerging economies (outside the former Soviet Union). These are now ranked, reasonably, in FCO terms in three bands: the top one including China, India and Brazil; the second, countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Colombia et al; the third, the Philippines and others. He used some inventive analogies in his talk and during the subsequent Q&A, saying that at Foreign Affairs question times in the House he often feels like that oddly-shaped golf club which a player almost never uses, but you are jolly glad to have with you when the need arises. Almost all questions tend to be about Europe, the Middle East (including Afghanistan) and North Africa, with the United States being a recurring point of reference. But he is on to a good thing (my editorialising) by concentrating on countries that are on their way up. Europe, including Britain, is shrinking both in its share of global population and in its share of the global economy. But the EU is still the world’s largest economic bloc, and Britain still maintains considerable influence over ideas (through the Financial Times, the Economist, the BBC, etc). So providing Jeremy remains a reasonably long time in his job, he’ll be performing at question time in the House not so much as a chipper but as a wood.

 

Cannes Washout

The G20 met in Cannes in pouring rain and failed to exude glamour, despite the best efforts of host Nicolas Sarkozy, who is in a fine state of PR denial, beaming as if all in the world is rosy. Of course, it isn’t. Cannes was a washout, in more ways than one, not least because the Big Boys (and a few Girls) of the world failed to address adequately the problems facing not just the eurozone but the global economy. It didn’t help that Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi was wandering around with his usual clownish antics, as if global summits are a sort of It’s A Knockout, with a bit of bunga bunga thrown in. The Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, should have worn a sign on her derriere, proclaiming ‘Any fellow Prime Minister giving me an inappropriate leer will be given a red card — and go straight to jail. Do not pass Go. And above all, do not collect any backhanders.’ The other oddity was to see how totally marginalised Barack Obama was in all this. This is inevitable, of course, now that the United States is well on its way downhill after a half-century (at least) of global domination. The Chinese are not grinning, however – they have too much to lose — but after Cannes the name of the game has changed.

 

When China Rules the World

Chinese Liberal Democrats and the Liberal International British Group (LIBG) scored a first this evening when they enticed former editor of ‘Marxism Today’, Martin Jacques, to address a packed meeting in the Board Room at the Liberal Democrats’ HQ in Cowley Street, Westminster, on the theme ‘When China Rules the World’. Martin’s book of the same name has been enjoying success in some unlikely places; a Latvian edition has been arranged, for example. But his theme is of truly global interest. His thesis is that China is growing economically even faster than had been thought previously. It has already leap-frogged Japan to become the second largest economy, behind the United States. And it will move into first place before too long. More contentious was Martin’s argument that the Chinese currency, the renminbi, will overtake the US dollar as the preferred currency of trade within a generation, initially in East/South East Asia. One has to remember that the RMB isn’t even convertible yet and few people believe that will happen before 2020. But what does seem certain is that by that symbolic date, China will effectively be the world’s Number One, as the USA continues its relative decline. I raised the issue of sustained unity: on several occasions in China’s long history, the Middle Kingdom has broken up. If that were to happen again, it would throw a spanner in the works. Nonetheless, all the indicators point to the 21st Century belonging to China — but with some of the other BRICs, notably Brazil and India, snapping at its heels and even Indonesia rising fast.

http://libg.co.uk http://chineselibdems.org.uk

Libya and the Responsibility to Protect

UN Security Council resolution 1973 regarding Libya is a milestone in the development not only of the concept of the Responsibility to Protect but also the realisation of its practical implications. Muammar Gaddafi had shown such flagrant disregard for the well-being of his people, in his brutal attempts to suppress the popular uprising against him, that the international community could not just sit back and watch a massacre take place. This of course goes counter to a longstanding principle in force really since the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648: the concept of the sovereignty of the nation state — in other words, that other countries should not interefere in the internal affairs of sovereign states. That is a principle that both Russia and China are keen to see maintained (because of their fears over restless regions such as Chechnya and Tibet) and explains why they both abstained on Resolution 1973. At least they did not veto it, thus giving a green light to international action, with UN backing. Britain, France and Lebanon took the lead on this, with the United States coming on board soon after. At least two other Arab states — the UAE and Qatar — have also indicated their willingness to be involved in the operation to protect the Libyan people. But inevitably the main thrust will come from NATO, with France and Britain again taking the lead. Like many who opposed the Iraq War, I feel that UN action on Libya was essential. But the challenge will be to bring a swift end to Gaddafi’s attacks on the rebels without things escalating or becoming too protracted. And then ideally Gaddafi must go — perferably pushed out by his own people.

Will Hutton Effs and Blinds for Europe

There was an unusual twist to tonight’s Gladstone Club Annual Dinner, held at the National Liberal Club in Westminster, as the guest speaker, economics writer and Chief Executive of the Work Foundation, Will Hutton, asked each table to come up with things they wanted him to talk about in his speech. Not surprisingly, there were many questions about tax policy, the national deficit and the solidity (or otherwise) of China’s economic performance. But things got really heated when one young man — clearly a Euro-sceptic — asked in a rather convoluted way whether Will thought Britain’s ‘subscription’ to the EU was worth it and whether Greece wouldn’t be better off leaving the eurozone. At this, Will sprung into a spirited attack — liberally laced with effing and blinding — about the British public and their refusal to accept that much of what the media feeds them about the EU is lies. Some diners were stunned by the language — there are many, quite formal Conservative and non-aligned members of the Gladstone Club, as well as numerous Liberal Democrats — but Will got a hearty round of applause for his tirade from the Euro-enthusiasts present. It’s a long time since the David Lloyd George Room at the NLC has seen such fireworks, but I can’t feeling that both the Grand Old Man and Lloyd George himself would have been pleased with the passion, if not with all of the vocabulary.