Human Rights, Not So Pure Anymore – NYTimes.com

The changing face of human rights–less concert backdrop of idealism or soundtrack to the revolution–and more realpolitik:

Today, China is rising, and because it controls so much Western debt, it is unlikely to be as easy to target for its internal conduct. Some claim that international human rights norms undid the Soviet empire, while others say that it declined and fell because of political mismanagement and economic collapse — things that seem much more prevalent in the West than in China now.

This geopolitical shift gives today’s dissidents and their foreign allies much less leverage than their predecessors had.

BUT the main difference between then and now is that the whole idea of human rights has lost some of its romantic appeal and moral purity. Today, the issue of human rights is no longer just about limiting power in the global arena but also about how to deploy it.

via Human Rights, Not So Pure Anymore – NYTimes.com.

6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers | Inc.com

Conversation starter for the b-school crowd:

If you find yourself resisting “being strategic,” because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you’re not alone. Every leader’s temptation is to deal with what’s directly in front, because it always seems more urgent and concrete. Unfortunately, if you do that, you put your company at risk. While you concentrate on steering around potholes, you’ll miss windfall opportunities, not to mention any signals that the road you’re on is leading off a cliff.

via 6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers | Inc.com.

Booklist | What to Read on Global Policy Analysis” in IR via Stephen M. Walt

Walt’s crowdsourcing a reading list–but also identifying the gap in goodreads for global policy analysis.  He also explains why process matters so much for international policymaking, and the importance of implementation via diplomacy and military power:

In global affairs, by contrast, the rule of law is far weaker and there are often competing power centers with very different interests. Strategic interactions loom much larger, and the success of a given policy choice often depends not just on the intrinsic merits of the specific initiative but on how other key actors will respond to it. (Among other things, this is why simple game theoretic models are often useful for analyzing certain international policy problems). To the extent that the issues are truly global, the correct policy choice depends far more on bargaining, persuasion, in some cases coercion, and on developing solutions that either elicit others’ voluntary compliance or achieve the objective in the face of opposition. Such features are not entirely absent in domestic policy discussions, but they play a larger role in interactions between states, corporations, and non-state actors operating in the anarchic world of international politics.

via Is There a Good Book or Article on “Policy Analysis” in IR? | Stephen M. Walt.

Some of the commenter suggestions are worth considering:

• Maarten Hajer’s article, “Policy without Polity: policy analysis and the institutional void”
• John Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie
• Dan Drezner, All Politics is Global; Avoiding Trivia
• Being useful: policy relevance and international relations
• Managing Strategic Surprise, Ian Bremmer and Paul Bracken, eds.
• Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The Practioneer’s Game
• Bob Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails
• Policy analysis papers from Bernard Brodie, Tom Schelling and Raymond Garthoff
• Graham Allison and Zelikow, Essence of Decision
• Jeffrey Pfeffer, Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations

Following the Euro Crisis

As an addenda to an outstanding panel this week at Utah-Europe Days 2012 consider these resources for rolling the unfolding Euro crisis:

1.  Interactive table to compare cost competitiveness between unit labor costs and industrial production - Economic disjunction within the eurozone – FT.com.
2. Three-part investigation by Tony Barber of FT from October 2010 titled “Saving the euro: Dinner on the edge of the abyss” and the full in depth FT section.
3. Tracking Europe’s Debt Crisis offers a news development play-by-play, complete with vital stats, upcoming events, and even articles from the NYT treasure trove.
4. Economist.com’s feature “The euro-zone crisis” including articles organized by category, leading with “Europe’s achilles heel”
5. Smart views from SimonJohnson on the end of the Euro, two bad options and a link to a very useful “big picture” from Bill Marsh at NYT showing the interconnections.

 

Introducing … public speaking.

I think I just found the new intro for next fall’s lecture.

Ask the Esquire Guy’s Unconventional Guide to Public Speaking

Democracy Fail – What the Coup d’etat in Mali Means

One of the leading presidential contenders, Yeah Samake, was interviewed by Marco Orman of PRI’s The World.  Samake was near the radio station when the coup occurred, but he appears to be actively working to stanch the downward spiral:

Samake: Every single day I meet with the five to six presidential candidates. We just formed an alliance called L’Association Pour Que Les Démocrates et Les Patriotes Sortent de la Crise.

Werman: And that literally means the association for the democrats and patriots to get out of the crisis, literally.

Samake: Yes, the military leaders now have no choice than working with the people to transfer power so that democracy can continue to flourish. And I believe in this. It picks people apart. We cannot live under dictatorship anymore. The power needs to be given to a transitional government that needs to work for the next nine months making sure that we can hold fair and transparent elections.

via Mali Junta Unveils Constitution And Promises Elections | PRI’s The World.

But Henry Glickman at FPRI concludes with this discouraging prognosis:

Time is not on the side of restoration of the integrity of Mali and liquidation of jihadist Islamism in the region.  New al Qaeda-type franchises will probably emerge in the Sahel region. The new Mali government, with or perhaps through ECOWAS, the US, and its European allies, all need to co-operate to address the demands of MNLA as well as the threat of AQIM.At present Mali faces a humanitarian crisis: cutbacks in trade and foreign assistance at the moment of threatened drought.  Added to its current political crisis, that is a recipe for more difficulties.

via E-Notes: The Coup in Mali — Background and Foreground – FPRI.

Booklist | ‘Passage of Power,’ 4th Book of Caro’s Johnson Portrait – NYTimes.com

The series of LBJ’s remarkable life as political force of nature–part Darth Vader, part Mr. Smith–is a compelling study in leadership for anyone with the time to wade through them all.  Michiko Kakutani reviews the latest volume:

He was a man driven by a colossal ego and a genuine sense of compassion for the powerless and the poor: a man who, in the weeks and months after the assassination, was able, in Mr. Caro’s opinion, to overcome his own weaknesses and baser instincts — not for long but “long enough” — to act in a fashion that was “a triumph not only of genius but of will.”

As he did in the third volume, “Master of the Senate,” Mr. Caro finds much to admire in the legislative ends to which Johnson used power, and he employs his insights into Johnson’s personality — his insecurities, his fear of failure, his need to ingratiate himself with those above him and dominate those below — to examine the role that character plays in politics and policy making and hence in histor

via ‘Passage of Power,’ 4th Book of Caro’s Johnson Portrait – NYTimes.com.

The Skinny Inside North Korea

What do we know about life inside the DPRK?  Not much, but Bill Keller does an admirable job drawing attention by updating the slim but growing list of recent books–based on the stories of real former prisoners–and linked to such sources as a study “Hidden Gulag Second Edition” by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and a recent Foreign Affairs article.

Harden’s story of Shin Dong-hyuk differs from the best previous refugee narratives — “The Aquariums of Pyongyang” by Kang Chol-hwan, Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy” — because Shin was in every sense a product of Camp 14. Born in captivity to a pair of inmates picked by camp commanders for a loveless bit of procreation, Shin grew up with no awareness of anything beyond the electrified fences. He is like the boy-narrator of Emma Donoghue’s novel “Room,” whose entire world is the backyard shed where he and his kidnapped mother are held captive. Except that the boy in “Room” knows love.

Harden’s book, besides being a gripping story, unsparingly told, carries a freight of intelligence about this black hole of a country. It explains how the regime has endured longer than any of its bestial prototypes: longer than Hitler, longer than Stalin, longer than Mao, longer than Pol Pot. The tools are enforced isolation, debilitating fear, dehumanizing hunger and utter dependence on the state. By the time he was a teenager, Shin had watched a teacher beat a 6-year-old girl to death for hoarding five kernels of corn; worse, he had betrayed his own mother and brother, and had witnessed their public execution without remorse.

via The Day After – NYTimes.com.

Add to that rare photos from Tomas Van Houtryve in Time magazine, a chilling photo series from David Guttenfelder for the Atlantic in 2009, a BBC backgrounder from Damian Grammaticas, and a NatGeo Explorer episode and you get the sense of how bleak this country is.

All this is on the brain as our latest edition (no.9) in the Kennedy Center and Combat Films & Research Beyond the Border doc series is coming out soon.

United Nations Tunes Up for First International Jazz Day – NYTimes.com

Important global meetings at the General Assembly.  Bring your own saxophone:

“Jazz is a great music that I feel has never been given its just due or recognition for having affected so many lives in various cultures throughout the world,” said Mr. Hancock, who was the driving force behind the designation and is a special ambassador for the organization.

“Unesco is exactly the proper setting to do that. With these musicians from various nations, we’re really showing a vision for globalization that’s a positive one.”Monday night’s concert follows similar shows on Friday night in Paris, once a home to expatriate American players like Dexter Gordon, Sidney Bechet, Bud Powell and Archie Shepp; and at sunrise Monday morning in New Orleans, considered the birthplace of jazz. Scheduled to attend all three events is Irina Bokova, a former Bulgarian minister of foreign affairs, who is now director general of Unesco.

“I think there is a lot of symbolism around jazz and the multiculturalism and diversity of which it speaks,” she said in a telephone interview from Paris. “If you ask what jazz is for me, I’d say it’s freedom, human dignity and boundless spirit, which makes it a very very powerful universal force. We say around here that jazz was born in the United States, but is owned by the world.”

via United Nations Tunes Up for First International Jazz Day – NYTimes.com.

Diplomat as Defense Attorney: The Ethics of Disagreement

Occasionally students balk at defending a particular policy in a simulation.  Sometimes it amazes me how long it takes them to internalize the issues involved and the role they are asked to play.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise, as ethical issues frequently take time to internalize, process, and think through.

Diplomats face similar challenges, with documented examples involving the John Rabe‘s heroic efforts during Japanese incursion into China, various of the “righteous” during the European Holocaust, and even the more recent U.S. decision by President George W. Bush to go back into Iraq as well as consternation over President Obama’s ongoing war in Afghanistan.

In reviewing some key work on ethics and diplomacy, I stumbled upon this student research list which includes some of the greatest hits of the genre, including Kiesling’s “The Duty of Diplomatic Dissent,” “The Professional Diplomat and his Problems, 1919-1939″ by Gordon A. Craig, and “Democracy, Loyalty, Disobedience, by Howard E. Dean”–all pointing to the ethical dilemmas facing on-duty diplomats in both implementing and responding to policies they didn’t create. (See Professional Ethics of Diplomats « Ren’s Micro Diplomacy.)

In explaining the way the diplomat’s role works, my preferred metaphor is the defense attorney who represents someone viewed widely as despicable or inherently guilty.  Even so, the U.S. Constitution specifically enumerates this person’s right to a vigorous and effective defense.