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.

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.

Turning the Tables on Russia – NYTimes.com

This issue hits me more on an emotional level rather than politically or intellectually–perhaps because it seems so hard to improve life in Russia:

I have to confess that when I first began receiving press releases about this effort, which has gained traction in Europe as well as the U.S., I didn’t take it very seriously. Visa restrictions didn’t seem like much of a price for allowing an innocent lawyer to die in prison. But after watching the reaction of the Russian government, which has repeatedly and vehemently denounced the bill — and which is now, out of pure spite, prosecuting Magnitsky posthumously — I’ve come to see that it really does hit these officials where it hurts them most.

via Turning the Tables on Russia – NYTimes.com.

Following the Crisis in Syria

Who are best sources to use if you want to follow the latest revolution in Syria?

• Syria Comment by Joshua Landis, University of Oklahoma with some of the most current and important ideas.  See also his Amazon reading list on Syria.
• The Syria Page by Camille Otrakji includes a number of articles on the current situation
• Marc Lynch, also known as Abu Aardvark on FP.com cover’s the Middle East widely but is a must read source for broader information–and Syria is definitely well covered in his posts.
• Nir Rosen on Al Jazeera is a journalist who has had a rocky career recently–but appears to be getting back to his on-the-ground roots.  His early work on Iraq (from Iraq) mirrors his recent reporting on Syria (from Syria).
• Beyond the Fall of Syria from The Middle East Research and Information Project

Who to Follow on Twitter?

Twitter is a great resources and so far the only list I can find that suggests who to follow is Social Media Chimps.  (Checking the Twitter account of people listed above, including for lists focusing on Syria, would be the next best bet.

Keep in mind that Syria is not Libya, nor is it Egypt.  As Steven Cook of CFR astutely observes:

I’ve been struck by the way in which proponents and opponents of intervention have used precisely the same evidence to marshal support for their claims.  For example, Moscow’s support for the Assads is leveraged in a way both to suggest that only force can stop the killing and  as a reason not to intervene because with the help of the Russian (and Chinese and Iranians) whatever force that is brought to bear will do little to bring Assad down while killing a lot of people.  This is not a function of muddled thinking.  (There are many very smart people who are engaged in this debate.)  Rather, we are dealing with a complex problem, with little information, faulty analogies, and fresh memories of a searing decade of violence and intervention in the Middle East.  Unlike Libya, Syria is hard.

via Syria and the Limits of Diplomacy – Steven A. Cook – International – The Atlantic.

The Failing State of Greece – NYTimes.com

Before we can fix Greece we have to understand the nature of the problem.  What is wrong with this nation-state?

What are we to make of Greece, which borrowed beyond its means and now has been pushed to the brink by its lenders? Is it the “problem child” of Europe, more corrupt and dysfunctional than its neighbors? Is it a special case, as the lenders are saying, hoping that after the write-down of Greek debt last week they won’t have to restructure other ailing euro zone countries’ large public debts? Or is it in fact a harbinger, a vision of how economic collapse transforms a country — or of what happens to democracy when banks become more powerful than political institutions?

While the mainstream political parties suffer under the weight of their own mismanagement and of the austerity they have pledged and reforms they have often struggled to enforce, unemployment and homelessness rise and the European Union inches toward transforming its institutions to get behind a currency battered by fast-moving market forces. Something profound and distressing is happening: the rapid dissolution of a democracy in plain sight. As I stood outside the Attikon last week, I asked myself: Where is the line between a weak state and a failed state?

via The Failing State of Greece – NYTimes.com.

Booklist | Drezner’s Reading List for U.S. Politicians

In the throes of the U.S. Republican Primary to recognize John Huntsman’s exit today  take a look at these suggestions from regular FP.com blogger Dan Drezner for informing your inner pol:

1)  Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence.  Comment:  An excellent introduction to the myriad strains of thought that have permeated American foreign policy over the past two and a half centuries.  International relations theorists might quibble with Mead’s different intellectual traditions, but I suspect politicians will immediately “get” them.

2)  David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (for Democrats); James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans (for Republicans).  Comment:  Each side should read about their greatest foreign policy mistake of the past century to appreciate that even the best and smartest advisors in the world will not necessarily translate into wise foreign policies.

3)  Richard Neustadt and Earnest May, Thinking in Time.  Comment:  Politicians like to claim that they don’t cotton to abstract academic theories of the world, that they rely on things like “common sense”  and “folk wisdom.”  …  Neustadt and May’s book does an excellent job of delineating the various ways that the history can be abused in presidential decision-making.

via My three must-read U.S. foreign policy books for aspring politicians | Daniel W. Drezner.

Watch for my year in review list of best books for thinking about diplomacy and international affairs.  (I’m up to my neck in booklists, another great things about year end and the start of a new semester.)

Liu Xiaobo’s Plea for the Human Spirit – NYTimes.com

Compelling insight into Chinese progress and problems:

Nothing escapes Liu’s scalpel. The economic reforms that have transfixed many foreigners who claim that China is on its way to being No. 1 were not the result, he insists, of top-down policies. They arose, he says, from demonstrations in Beijing and the countryside that began even while Mao was alive: peasants called for control over the crops they grew, and ordinary workers like Wei Jingsheng put their mark on Democracy Wall in 1978-79. Liu writes that Deng Xiaoping and his colleagues in the Chinese leadership granted a little more space to those who demanded to be treated like citizens — before stamping on them. “These spontaneous popular forces for reform were rooted in the human longing for freedom and justice, not some slogans of the rulers.”

via Liu Xiaobo’s Plea for the Human Spirit – NYTimes.com.

For Turkey, Lure of European Union is Fast Fading – NYTimes.com

Turkey tips eastward.  Is the european moment lost, or just faded?

Meanwhile, Turkish officials say relations with the European Union have reached a state of hopeless disrepair, made worse by the prospect of Cyprus taking over the rotating presidency of the union next year.Turkey has been locked in an intractable political fight with Cyprus since 1974, when it invaded the island to prevent a proposed union with Greece and set up a rival government in the ethnic Turkish part of Cyprus that only it recognizes. In London last month, President Abdullah Gul disparaged Cyprus as “half a country” that would lead a “miserable union,” Milliyet, a Turkish newspaper, reported. Then, when France took the unusual step last week of proposing that Turkey be invited to take part in a meeting of the union’s foreign ministers to discuss Syria, Cyprus vetoed the idea.

via For Turkey, Lure of European Union is Fast Fading – NYTimes.com.

To Know Brazil, Read Stefan Zweig

An important literary figure in the development of a rising world power:

In a recent televised discussion of Mr. Zweig, Alcino Leite Neto, editor of the publishing house Publifolha, compared his importance in Brazil to that in the United States of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker who wrote about American concepts of liberty and equality in “Democracy in America.”

“We had Stefan Zweig,” said Mr. Leite Neto, “who left us this book advocating tolerance, comprehension between people, an indictment in favor of peace, written right during World War II.”

via Stefan Zweig, Viennese-Born Writer, Gets Fresh Look in Brazil – NYTimes.com.

Qatar Presses Decisive Shift in Arab Politics – NYTimes.com

File this under “the power of small states” as well as an interesting commentary on how soft power amplifies national interests:

This thumb-shaped spit of sand on the Persian Gulf has emerged as the most dynamic Arab country in the tumult realigning the region. Its intentions remain murky to its neighbors and even allies — some say Qatar has a Napoleon complex, others say it has an Islamist agenda. But its clout is a lesson in what can be gained with some of the world’s largest gas reserves, the region’s most influential news network in Al Jazeera, an array of contacts many with an Islamist bent, and policy-making in an absolute monarchy vested in the hands of one man, its emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.Qatar has become a vital counterpoint in an Arab world where traditional powers are roiled by revolution, ossified by aging leaderships, or still reeling from civil war, and where the United States is increasingly viewed as a power in decline.

via Qatar Presses Decisive Shift in Arab Politics – NYTimes.com.

I should note that this is a retread both in my posting and in the Times’ reporting.