Obama's foreign policy going down the drain?

They might also be asking questions about why the protests so quickly fizzled and why so many Arab governments and political activists denounced the attacks and their perpetrators.
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 I have heard almost nobody arguing the opposite -- certainly not the White House, which consistently has warned that "We’re under no illusions -- Libya will travel a long and winding road to full democracy. There will be difficult days ahead."
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But for all those concerns, the intervention in Libya should be recognized as a success and real accomplishment for the international community.  

The NATO intervention did save Libya's protestors from a near-certain bloodbath in Benghazi.

 It did help Libyans free themselves from what was an extremely nasty, violent, and repressive regime.  

 It was fought under a real, if contestable, international legal mandate which enjoyed widespread Arab support.

Libya's success didinspire Arab democracy protestors across the region. 
Marc Lynch

Reuel Marc Gerecht. 

a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. You are a former media specialist at the CIA's Directorate of Operations, now the National Clandestine Service. 

Remember when he repressed and killed thousands of his own citizens, when he actually used the veil of Islamism at different times and passed laws in the name of Islam to try to establish his credibility? Remember Muammar Gaddafi used terrorists who actually bombed airlines and killed hundreds of Americans around the world, setting off the sorts of things that I think we're debating here tonight. Remember that?

Brian Katulis: 

 I want to stress this. The transition in the Middle East is in the very early stages, sorts of violence that we saw and we've been talking about, that killed our ambassador in Libya, those extremists that killed him and murdered him, those sorts of things -- we need to recognize that those threats have not been completely eradicated. We also need to recognize that the large protests against those extremists in Libya would never have actually happened under Muammar Gaddafi. We need to recognize that there's a space there, that I'm not in favor of elected Islamists or liberals or anything. I'm in favor of systemic change that has legitimacy. And I think this is a key distinction between what Reuel and I are saying and what the other team is saying. We can't implant this. 

We need to recognize the reality that because of the dysfunction caused by dictatorships for decades, you're going to have this first early result. And, yes, there's still going to be violence and risks, but I actually think it's less than what we saw in terms of the hundreds of thousands killed by the dictators in these countries. And I actually think the more that you have popular reaction of the sort that we saw in the streets Benghazi 

against those murderers, you have I think a possibility then to push them and further marginalize them in that debate. 

 

 

 


Egypt
The fact that al-Qaida and its affiliates had virtually nothing with the removal of leaders in places like Egypt and Tunisia and the widespread calls for political reform and the battles that are still going, I think, is telling. The fact that Ayman Zawahiri, the head of al-Qaida, wrote a book attacking the Muslim Brotherhood for actually participating in democratic politics is telling. Looking ahead, it seems that al-Qaida's popular appeal, I think, will remain low, given that many of the protesters are out there supporting democratic reforms. People are going to the ballot box, the very thing that radical jihadists are opposed to.
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In Egypt, the Nour party of the Salafis is absolutely morally repugnant, all right? No doubt about it. But they are actually in the process of collapse right now because they haven't figured out how to handle the pressure of democracy yet. The Muslim Brotherhood is having serious internal debates because they haven't figured out how to handle -- this is all new terrain for them. That's what we want. We want them to fight it out. It's not going to produce something pretty in the short term. But what they're suggesting, having dictatorship and somehow having the United States, oh, I'm going to create a liberal here and a liberal there and a liberal here, it makes no sense. 
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 SCOTT MCCONNELL • September 26, 2012, 

.....Mohammed Morsi, who is proving rapidly to be one of the more pleasant surprises in world politics.  

 He has a doctorate in materials science from USC, earned during the 70s, and is able to say “Go Trojans” with the best of them. According to an interview with the New York Times, he dislikes the libertine aspects of American culture, including “naked restaurants” like Hooters–an attitude which may distinguish him from about half the American population.

Dr. Morsi was widely considered a political neophyte at the outset of the election campaign. But since being elected, he has shrewdly maneuvered to put to rest dangers of a military coup (and has disappointed many American neoconservatives) by appointing a new army chief of staff, General Sedki Sobhi, to replace the generals who toadied to Mubarak for a generation. Sobhi is likewise a product of American universities, in this case the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.

Both Morsi and his new army chief of staff (the latter, in an essay written seven years ago) stress the issue of Palestine. It is a neoconservative talking point that Arabs either do not have, or should not have, any real emotion about the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians–though of course Americans on the eastern seaboard managed to get worked up over the Alamo well before the age of modern communications.

Their perspective on Israel-Palestine is hardly radical: Morsi regularly mentions that the 1978 Camp David Accords also called for Palestinian autonomy (as well as securing peace between Egypt and Israel)–to which Israel has replied by moving a half million settlers into the West Bank. Egypt’s treaty obligations toward Israel are often taken as the beginning and end point of America’s interest in Egypt, but Israel had West Bank obligations under the treaty too–less clearly spelled out, which it evaded from the very beginning.

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D Larison

Was Friedman similarly apoplectic when Morsi traveled to Saudi Arabia last month? I don’t believe he was. Saudi Arabia is even more repressive and its government is even less representative than Iran’s, but Friedman wasn’t saying that Morsi’s visit meant that he was siding with despotic monarchy against the Saudi people, was he? If Morsi were on the side of “democracies” against dictatorships, he would have to be at odds with most of America’s client states in the region.

Friedman’s makes two mistaken assumptions. He assumes that attendance at the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement is an endorsement of Iran’s government and Iranian policies, which isn’t the case. Traditionally non-aligned governments are probably not interested in taking clear sides in the midst of the growing tensions between the U.S. and Israel and Iran, and why would they be? If they aren’t endorsing Iranian policies, it doesn’t follow that most of the NAM members are interested in taking orders from Washington on how to conduct their foreign affairs, either. If Morsi is going to Iran, he is probably doing so with the knowledge that it demonstrates a break with the old Egyptian leadership and shows that Morsi can act independently of the U.S. Morsi is likely much more concerned with his domestic audience and exercising the power of his office than he is worried about the plight of the Iranian opposition, and it would be very unusual if it were otherwise. The impulse to see all other countries’ dealings with Iran, no matter how minimal, through the distorting lens of our hostility towards Iran leads many Americans to jump to badly flawed conclusions about those other countries and their governments’ intentions.

Arab Spring Notes

Debate at Intelligence Squared

Reuel Marc Gerecht. 

a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. You are a former media specialist at the CIA's Directorate of Operations, now the National Clandestine Service. 

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"Better Elected Islamists Than Dictators," Brian Katulis. He is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. You have been studying, Brian, the Middle East since your days as undergraduate. Actually you lived in Amman, Jordan, as did I a long time ago, but you were a Fulbright scholar. I was just a journalist. In the '90s you also lived in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and you were in Egypt doing work for the National Democratic Institution for International Affairs, and considering your breadth of experience and the depth of your experience as actually having lived there, 

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{Either] a dictatorship forever than allow the Muslim common man, woman to elect Islamists in a free vote. Now, that's a pretty, I think, ironic position for them to take, because what they're essentially saying is they want to perpetuate the political systems which have allowed Islamic fundamentalism, including its most radical offshoots, jihadism, most famously al-Qaida, to actually grow stronger.  It is no accident that Islamic radicalism has grown enormously during the period of dictatorship, secular dictatorship, throughout much of the region. It has been jet fuel for that cause. The societies that have been ruled by dictators and kings with ever coarsening, I think, rigor have very -- have harmed their societies, have caused, more or less, an ethical collapse.  RMG

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Although I suspect much of the debate tonight will focus on the Middle East and North Africa, it's important to note that this region of the world actually represents a minority in the vast Muslim world. It's about 20 percent of the entire population of Muslims in the world. Six in 10 Muslims actually live in the Asia-Pacific region. Muslim majority countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have activist Islamist political parties and systems that work. So the debate over whether Islam and democracy is compatible is the persistent charm of an irrelevant question, one that's no longer relevant. 

In the Middle East right now we're in the very early stages of a transition that I think will last for years. And a year and a half into these uprisings we've only seen four leaders fall out of about 19 or 20, depending how you add them up. And you've seen only serious infighting in the five or six countries, but you look at the crushing demographic political and economic conditions that these countries face, no dictator can hold that back. And I think you look at the political dynamics in places like Egypt and Tunisia, it's quite natural to see why Islamists did very well for reasons that were well explained. They were suppressed, and the debates in these societies were pushed to the dark corners of the mosques. And that debate was radicalized, and, yes, there is a threat from radicalized Islam. But it is the consequence of dictatorships, the very thing that if you vote against the proposition you will be voting in favor of that and continuing that sort of system. 

It's simply not sustainable. Number two, elected Islamists will change in response to the politics. And I think tonight we'll talk a lot about statements that elected Islamists will say. What I'm focused on are the people, and I lived over there, and I understand that the basic needs, basic security, jobs, and other things will drive politics, maybe not in the early stages, maybe when things get a little rough they'll be a little ideological, but, by and large, Islamist politicians will be politicians, and we will need to support this long effort to actually push them to face the same pressures and constraints that other politicians face around the world. And the open debates that we have like the open debate we're having here tonight in Intelligence Squared, I think this forum is phenomenal. I've watched it now a number of times. And these sorts of open debates expose the voices of fear, expose the voices of hatred and demonization in ways that I think clarify. 

And this is what these societies in the Middle East are just starting to experience. So, again, a vote for the proposition is a vote for the possibility of change in these societies. A vote against it, it's for the status quo, which, as we said, is unsustainable and has harmed us. Now, I hope we get into this debate over a liberal democracy. You talked about it a little bit early on. And certainly we shouldn't be naïve. There's a very real risk that if we simplistically define democracy as the ballot box and going to the ballot box, you could see Christian minorities, other religious minorities, women see their rights suffer. But my argument, again, against that and against the arguments of one man, one vote, one time, which is often brought up, is that that threat in the context of this debate tonight, the proposition you have to vote for or against, there's an inherent contradiction there, because if the biggest threat resulting from elected Islamists is a dictatorship that imposes upon the human rights and basic rights of individuals, you've got a dictatorship. 

 Third point, elected Islamists, not dictators, will defeat the radical ideologies of groups like al-Qaida. Now, I think we've done a damn good job over the last three or four years going after al-Qaida, and I know that's a debatable proposition among a lot of people. But I think the targeted strikes and other things, that's a separate debate, which I hope Intelligence Squared has. But if you look at what's going on ideologically in the battle of ideas, al-Qaida, over the last three decades, essentially, has tried to build its ideological platform on two core pillars. Number one, tapping the popular discontent with dictators. Number two, anti-Americanism. That's a combustible mix, and breaking that, and having the people in the region break that, I think, is extremely powerful. 

The fact that al-Qaida and its affiliates had virtually nothing with the removal of leaders in places like Egypt and Tunisia and the widespread calls for political reform and the battles that are still going, I think, is telling. The fact that Ayman Zawahiri, the head of al-Qaida, wrote a book attacking the Muslim Brotherhood for actually participating in democratic politics is telling. Looking ahead, it seems that al-Qaida's popular appeal, I think, will remain low, given that many of the protesters are out there supporting democratic reforms. People are going to the ballot box, the very thing that radical jihadists are opposed to. So I'm going to close up here. I must say that we're faced with a great opportunity here. The popular uprisings in the Middle East. And, again, we'll probably focus on that, because it's the hot topic, and it's the most uncertain, and Reuel and I agree that there's no clear path forward. And I think we're probably going to have a couple of steps back. 

We're going to see these countries fight with this all along. But tonight, if you vote against this motion, your vote is essentially saying -- remember those good old days when Muammar Gaddafi was in power in Libya? Remember those good old days? 

Remember when he repressed and killed thousands of his own citizens, when he actually used the veil of Islamism at different times and passed laws in the name of Islam to try to establish his credibility? Remember Muammar Gaddafi used terrorists who actually bombed airlines and killed hundreds of Americans around the world, setting off the sorts of things that I think we're debating here tonight. Remember that? Then vote against the proposition. A vote for the proposition, is it a clear, certain proposition that we're going to see liberal democracy appear? I can't guarantee you that. But I actually think it's a better pathway forward than sticking with dictatorships. Brian Katulis. 

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Reuel Marc Gerecht: Yeah. It's pretty hard to find an instance where you can find the United States successfully encouraging a dictatorship to evolve liberally in the Middle East. Daniel said, "I wish we had." Well, of course I wish we had. I wish we had taken the Shah -- had we put more pressure on him so he could have evolved and developed elections so you wouldn't have had a revolution. I mean, I just have to say this, Daniel's premise is that by the mighty hand of the United States, we're going to discover these hidden liberals in the Middle East. And suddenly, through America's 

 But let's just take Turkey. I mean, Turkey is the ideal. They elected an Islamist party. I mean, what would you have done differently in Turkey? As you just said, the 1990s created a more liberal order. Guess what happens? The people freely vote and bring in the Islamists. So I don't see -- if Turkey's not going that way, how is Egypt, which is far less Westernized, which has been much farther from the European tradition. 

-- and it's not about the leaders or what Morsi says and what he might not say -- when I see Egypt today, Egypt after Mubarak is an Egypt where there're multiple centers of power that are competing for this. And they're fighting with each other. And, yes, Islamists did well in the first round of elections. But guess what? I actually think in the next round of elections you're going to see even more competitive space here. You stick with dictatorships, you don't let Islamists go out there and make fools of themselves in the way that I think elected democracies open up that space -- 

Reuel Marc Gerecht: In the sense that the central governing structure had collapsed. It wasn't there. I mean, one reason the Islamic fundamentalists were to come -- able to come in and have such growth is because the social order from the central government, it just basically ceased to exist and also because there are a lot of Egyptians out there who don't have a problem with much of the holy law. And I don't think you get to take the holy law, as tried -- as you tried to do in other places in the Middle East, and just suddenly throw it -- Ben Ali tried to do it, just take it, throw it away -- you have to have it organically evolve. 

There is no other way, and I think you will. I mean, you suggest with Mubarak that you could have nudged him. But every time we tried to nudge Mubarak -- and the American government did try to nudge Mubarak -- he would say, "If not me, then the Islamists." 

My old friend and teacher, Olivier Roy, made the -- I thought the pithy remark where he said, "If France had to wait for the development of a democratic culture, France would still be a monarchy." The notion that you are somehow going to push off into the distance four or five years, and you get to four or five years, another four or five years, that you're going to have suddenly liberals become strong and the dominant party I think isn't serious. 

Brian Katulis: Yeah, I started out my presentation talking about the vast majority of Muslims living in South Asia. Indonesia, the number one largest Muslim country in the world. Prime examples of where Islamists ran as political parties and they failed. 

They failed. And their populations actually voted them out. You have -- they are weakened, because they didn't deliver, and I think the central premise that you guys have is that elected Islamists don't change or morph, or somehow don't become like other politicians. Well, guess what -- they do, when you actually have open systems. We see this in Turkey too. And I think there -- steps forward and steps backward on Turkey's democracy, but by and large, Turkey, I think, is a much more sustainable proposition than what Daniel was talking about 

ut I just don't see that you've got the traction. And I don't see if you go to Mubarak -- Mubarak made a real hobby out of squashing liberals like he made a hobby of squashing everybody else. And Mubarak says, no, I don't want to do that. And what's the United States going to do? All right. Take the money away. Take the money from him and he

says, all right, you're going to weaken me. The Islamists are coming. You've already said the Islamists did come. So I don't think you can create liberals in the Middle East out of sand. There has to be a process, an evolution. In the West, liberals were not born overnight. They came into being. It was -- I don't want to go through Occidental history here. It was a very ugly process. What he is saying is that, no, you don't get to have that process. We had that process, but no, not you. Muslims don't get to evolve. You have to be born liberals now. 

[applause] 

Reuel Marc Gerecht: -- how do you bring about a political system where you have evolution, where you have some chance -- if you are going -- you're not going to get a situation -- and I think we've seen that since the Arab -- great Arab revolt started. You're not going to get a situation where liberals are going to win an election. People of faith are going to win the election. Islamist parties are going to win the elections. So you're going to have to take that as a given. You're not going to be able to have the United States come in there and dictatorially essentially say -- I mean, Kissinger made the great line, "Democracy is great, but I really want to know who gets to win." You don't get to know who gets to win. You've got to go through the process. You have to set up a system where you have a jousting ethic. Fundamentalists have to fight with fundamentalists. 

19:49:33 

In Egypt, the Nour party of the Salafis is absolutely morally repugnant, all right? No doubt about it. But they are actually in the process of collapse right now because they haven't figured out how to handle the pressure of democracy yet. The Muslim Brotherhood is having serious internal debates because they haven't figured out how to handle -- this is all new terrain for them. That's what we want. We want them to fight it out. It's not going to produce something pretty in the short term. But what they're suggesting, having dictatorship and somehow having the United States, oh, I'm going to create a liberal here and a liberal there and a liberal here, it makes no sense. 

And it's very enticing to believe that the Islamists will morph. What I don't understand is how will they morph if there's so much violence that once they begin to change they are in tremendous danger of being killed by other Islamists? There's so much murder, so much violence as part of that culture, aren't they afraid to morph? 

John Donvan: Perfect question. This side. 

[applause] 

This side. Brian Katulis or Reuel Marc Gerecht. Brian Katulis. 

Brian Katulis: Look, I think they have a greater possibility to morph now than if they were facing Saddam Hussein who killed hundreds of thousands of people, more possibility in places like Tunisia to morph than they did in Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, when you had organized mass murder. 

19:53:37 

And let's be clear about this. I want to stress this. The transition in the Middle East is in the very early stages, sorts of violence that we saw and we've been talking about, that killed our ambassador in Libya, those extremists that killed him and murdered him, those sorts of things -- we need to recognize that those threats have not been completely eradicated. We also need to recognize that the large protests against those extremists in Libya would never have actually happened under Muammar Gaddafi. We need to recognize that there's a space there, that I'm not in favor of elected Islamists or liberals or anything. I'm in favor of systemic change that has legitimacy. And I think this is a key distinction between what Reuel and I are saying and what the other team is saying. We can't implant this. 

We need to recognize the reality that because of the dysfunction caused by dictatorships for decades, you're going to have this first early result. And, yes, there's still going to be violence and risks, but I actually think it's less than what we saw in terms of the hundreds of thousands killed by the dictators in these countries. And I actually think the more that you have popular reaction of the sort that we saw in the streets of 

Benghazi against those murderers, you have I think a possibility then to push them and further marginalize them in that debate. 

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Reuel Marc Gerecht: I have to say this. It's not a question of imposition. I mean, what we're talking about here is, in fact, people in the Middle East have absorbed, profoundly, western ideas. 

They haven't, by any means, absorbed them perfectly, ideally, to the level that we would like. But one of the things I'm arguing is, in fact, the idea of popular sovereignty has been absorbed through a wide body politic, including the faithful, including within those that we call Islamic fundamentalists. If you can -- when I was in Najaf in Iraq and I was having discussions with one of the elder sons of Grand Ayatollah Hakim, and we were discussing what democracy was, I mean, he understood to be, in his own conception, ma'ruf, that it something that was sacred, that popular sovereignty was sacred. Now, in the next breath, he said, "I don't know where the red lines are." He had no idea where they are. We have red lines, too, in democracy, whether they be about abortion or other issues. We're not quite sure where certain issues in our ethics collide, where we don't want to compromise. They have, for the very first time, this problem. 

It is great that an elder son of one of the senior clerics in Iraq has this problem. That's where you want to take this. And it's not a question of imposition. It's a question of they, themselves, taking the imports that they have voluntarily taken in and trying to figure out how they work out a more humane society. In their case, it's easy, given where they came from with Saddam Hussein, because they could screw up for a long time and it would still be more humane than what they had before. 

Katulis: Actually, I didn't say that there are no innate liberals. And I lived and worked for five years in the Middle East. I go to Pakistan frequently. I talk to them all of the time. They're fighting that struggle. And I'll tell you right now, Pakistan's at an interesting moment that everybody's negative about Pakistan and what's going on. There's an interesting dynamic that's been underplay there. And you've seen this. And I was there in 2009 when there was Sufi Mohammed, the head of Pakistani Taliban group, extremist group. 

20:03:33 

He said that courts are un-Islamic. He said that elections are un-Islamic. And this was at a time, a territory called Swat, about an hour outside of Islamabad, was taken over by Intelligence Squared U.S. - 39 - 10/5/2012 

Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd., #1016 Arlington, VA 22203 

those very same extremists. And I was on the ground there. And the national outcry against Sufi Muhammad and the national protests against a video of a woman being beaten in that very same territory, the liberal and democratic response was there. And you saw it in the previous elections in 2008, the MMA. You know it very well, an Islamist party that said that they were going to ban cable television in northwest frontier Pakistan. You know what? You know what a lot of men love watching WWE wrestling in Pakistan. These parties tried to rule theocratically and by a basis of religious ideology, and they failed. 

20:04:34 

They were voted out in the ballot in 2008. And as you know, not end of story, not end of story at all, because Pakistan is at a dangerous place. But yes, there are liberals there. And they are fighting against those radical Islamists. They are going to have an election. Guess what? Next year. And they are having an open debate. That did not exist under Zia. That did not exist under the dictators that ruled, the military dictators that quite frankly were backed by the United States, like these gentlemen want us to do. 

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Brian Katulis: And I'm all in favor of that because I spent five years of my life in the Middle East working with liberals, with people pushing for human rights, working for women's rights in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Egypt, across the region. 

And I'm in favor of it, and I think it's a nice idea. And I was against the war in Iraq, but the reality is -- and this is what we're debating tonight is that good intentioned Americans who want to go in peacefully and try to orchestrate the politics of these places won't produce the sorts of results that you expect. What you need is the rough and tumble, the jousting that Reuel talks about. We can help. We were trying to help with the tools of, "How do you organize?" and I think this is a fundamental struggle in the next wave of Egypt because there will be a next wave. The Islamists swept in this first round of elections. There's still a lot of uncertainty about the constitution, but there'll be another round of elections. And I do believe that American, European, and other organizations have a role to actually support these groups to become better organized. That's not what we're arguing. We're not arguing for elected Islamists. We're opening -- we're arguing for open politics in these places, and it doesn't come by invading these countries, and it doesn't come by simply trying to negotiate with some of these dictators and say, "Please open up." 

20:14:36 

It comes through an organic process, a political process, that what Reuel and I are saying that in the first waves are likely going to lead to elected Islamists -- but that's not going to close off the debate. It's going to open it up and lead to multiple centers of power in these countries. 

There was a distinction made early on, and that wasn't addressed, that the same repressive regimes can operate, but one tends to operate local and local- regional, and as the against side indicated that there is a vast globality of vision and intent on the part of Islamists, that they have a vision that goes far beyond the periphery and the boundaries of the state -- nation and state. And that wasn't addressed, and so I'd like this side, pro side, to address, "Isn't that a valid distinction that, that would suggest a far greater potential for ill on a global level from Islamic fundamentalists and elected Islamists and -- 

John Donvan: Can I restate the question and -- 

Male Speaker: Yeah. 

John Donvan: -- make sure that I'm understanding what you're asking? You're saying -- you're asking about the point that dictators are working from one state. Islamists are a part of a 

global worldwide aspiration to control many, many states -- 

Reuel Marc Gerecht: I think it's highly likely that if you have more than one election, that what you're going to see -- and you always see it with democratic politics, is that your aspirations become much more localized. And I don't think that you're going to see any Caliphate. I think the notion of that is a bit farfetched. I think it runs against the most successful Western export to the Middle East which is nationalism which has profoundly affected even Islamist movements throughout the area. So I don't think that's a big problem. Now, you could find common purpose. It's entirely possible that you will have Islamists in one country look fondly and affectionately at Islamists in another country and seek to support them. 

Reuel Marc Gerecht: Well, that's because the primary -- the OIC is really about them saying, in a rather childish way, you know, "Here we are; here we are. Notice us. We're not the West, et cetera, et cetera." The OIC is -- has been, in the past, sort of a concoction of dictatorships that, virtually, the only thing they could agree on is how much they dislike the United States, how much they dislike the Israel, and other, you know, less concealed forms of anti-Semitism. 

It's -- I don't really see that the OIC actually has anything to do with the democratic process. It has a lot to do -- it's sort of like an Islamic version of the United Nations, which I don't recommend. I don't think it's a moral paragon. Most of the time, it's not very serious. 

John Donvan: Let me -- we have to wrap -- we have to wrap up this section. And I just want to bring up a topic that I thought would come from the audience, and it didn't, and we don't have much time, so I want to ask it very quickly to this side. We haven't heard very much about the issue of women's rights. You all acknowledge that, at this point, most Islamist movements are not friendly to women's rights in the way that we would understand it. And I want to ask this side, you know, where do you draw the line on that? Where do you say, you know, it can be open and it can be evolving, but in the meantime, in the short term, this abuse of women's rights just cannot be tolerated? 

Brian Katulis: It's a red line, and I think we see the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia as one of the worst offenders of women's rights. And I think you see the places that have -- again, Muslim majority countries, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other places with Islamist parties -- respect for women's rights, like everything else. 

In places like Morocco too, where you have space for a discourse and a debate about this. And in Morocco, they had Mudawwana, a code to improve the status of women's rights. So a big debate is happening here. And I don't believe, for a moment, that the rights of women under Saddam Hussein were a lot better than what we have today inside of Iraq. I don't believe that at all. And I think there's a fight that women, as long as they can go back to the ballot box, as long as there are institutions there, as long as there's accountability in the system, as long as women have a voice in those debates, I believe that you'll see, eventually, a more sustainable and legitimate foundation for women's rights in these countries. Intelligence Squared U.S. - 48 - 10/5/2012 

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Reuel Marc Gerecht: You know, I think Daniel started off by talking about tactics. And I have to say this is the part I simply don't understand. I mean, he says we have dictators to push around and make evolve. But we've -- they didn't evolve, and we did push them around. I don't understand how you actually make a dictator become -- allow liberals to win in a democracy and deprive everybody else. I mean, would that were possible. But it's not possible. Doesn't actually make any sense. If liberals are going to triumph, they're going to have to triumph in a free election sometime. 

20:24:29 

You're not going to be able to hold off an election and know -- you only get to have that election when you know that they are going to win. And until that moment, you can't have the election. Now, I think that's a recipe that any dictator can look at and say, I think I'm a dictator for life. And I think I have to be honest here. I think that's what Daniel is saying too. I think what he is really saying is it's just too big a risk, so we're just going to have to keep the dictators more or less forever because unless you actually are tested at the urns, you're never going to know how popular you are. And I would suggest to you it's only by being tested at the urns that you're actually going to begin to develop a liberal framework, a liberal process that makes sense. It's only by defining yourself against those who are not liberal that you're going to be able to gain votes. 

I don't see how in the Middle East, where the region has been defined by faith, increasingly so under dictatorship, that you get to imagine a scenario whereby suddenly, through American pressure, intelligently applied, of course, because Americans always 

apply pressure intelligently, that you are going to create a liberal order without coming to the ballot box and testing yourself. 

[

John Donvan: Thank you, Reuel Marc Gerecht. Our motion is "Better Elected Islamists Than Dictators." And here to summarize his position against this motion, Zuhdi Jasser who is president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. 

Brian Katulis: we really have a choice here tonight. It's either to accept the reality, a reality that the dictatorships in the Middle East and in parts of South Asia have fostered the sorts of ideologies that led to the deaths of people in those societies and right here in Manhattan on 9/11. 

 We can stick with that old system that is crumbling, a system in countries that have a population where more than half of the population is under the age of 25. And change is coming, whether we like it or not. And we can pretend like the system of dictatorships that we see in Saudi Arabia or in Iran or in other places, that we can work with them somehow and they'll open up, and that we'll actually whisper in the ear of liberals, and they'll bring about change in those societies. We can continue to pretend that that's the pathway forward. I believe that the rough-and-tumble jousting of politics in these societies are the only thing that's going to produce the sort of legitimate change that comes from within. It's going to take a long time. It won't be simple or easy. But I actually think we stick with the process of democratization as it's unfolding, or we continue on 

" is there a better alternative to drone strikes for counterterrorism in northwest Pakistan?"

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are down 15% according to the BBC and the Guardian.  

 The following are highlights of an article written by Atlantic writer, Joshua Faust.

A new report, "Living Under Drones," jointly authored by Stanford University and New York University -- and reviewed yesterday by Conor Friedersdorf here at The Atlantic -- is harshly critical of the drone campaign in Pakistan. 

But the report then makes some questionable claims based on incomplete data, and seems to argue that the drone campaign should be paused or radically altered. Those arguments are not well supported.

 the sample size of the study is 130 people. In a country of 175 million, that is just not representative. 130 respondents isn't representative even of the 800,000 or so people in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the region of Pakistan where most drone strikes occur. Moreover, according to the report's methodology section, there is no indication of how many respondents were actual victims of drone strikes, since among those 130 they also interviewed "current and former Pakistani government officials, representatives from five major Pakistani political parties, subject matter experts, lawyers, medical professionals, development and humanitarian workers, members of civil society, academics, and journalists."


The authors did not conduct interviews in the FATA, but Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Peshawar. The direct victims they interviewed were contacted initially by the non-profit advocacy group Foundation for Fundamental Rights, which is not a neutral observer (their explicit mission is to end the use of drones in Pakistan). The report relies on a database compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which relies on media accounts for most of its data. The authors discount the utility of relying on media accounts, since media in Pakistan rely on the Pakistani government for information (reporters are not allowed independent access to the FATA). Even accepting their description of the BIJ data as the most "reliable," these data are highly suspect.

Left unstated in the report, though, is a bigger question: is there a better alternative to drone strikes for counterterrorism in northwest Pakistan?

It is not a simple one to answer. Looking at how residents in the FATA have behaved in other violent campaigns is instructive. In early 2009, the Pakistani Army announced its campaign to "clear" the Swat Valley, north of Islamabad, of terrorist groups that had been systematically murdering elders and tribal policemen and destroying hundreds of schools and other government buildings. As the campaign proceeded, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 300,000 people fled the fighting. By the end of the campaign, more than 1 million people got displaced by the army-Taliban fighting in Swat, which left the region completely devastated.
There have been no reported mass movements of people fleeing the drones in the last four years. The mere threat of a Pakistani army offensive into Waziristan, however, prompts thousands to flee in terror. There are several possible explanations: for example, people in heavily affected drone areas might be terrified to leave their houses.

But there is a simpler explanation: Perhaps drones are not as scary as opponents claim. A Februaryinvestigation by the Associated Press -- which, unlike the Living Under Drones study, interviewed Pakistanis inside the FATA -- reported that civilian casualties from drones are far lower than Pakistan civil society figures, journalists, and party officials assert publicly. This calls into question the wisdom of relying on such interested parties to build a picture of the utility and morality of targeted killings in Pakistan. Furthermore, the Community Appraisal and Motivation Programme (CAMP), a Pakistan-based research group, consistently finds in its surveys within the FATA that the most pressing security fear among residents is bomb blasts by terror groups, followed closely by the Pakistani military. When asked open-ended questions about their greatest fears, very few ever mention drones.


In the short run, there aren't better choices than drones. The targets of drone strikes in Pakistan sponsor insurgents in the region that kill U.S. soldiers and destabilize the Pakistani state (that is why Pakistani officials demand greater control over targeting). They cannot simply be left alone to continue such violent attacks. And given the Pakistani government's reluctance either to grant the FATA the political inclusion necessary for normal governance or to establish an effective police force (right now it has neither), there is no writ of the state to impose order and establish the rule of law.
Drones represent the choice with the smallest set of drawbacks and adverse consequences. Reports like Living Under Drones highlight the need for both more transparency from the US and Pakistani governments, and for drawing attention to the social backlash against their use in Pakistan. But they do not definitively build a case against drones in general. Without a better alternative, drones are here to stay.
===

Democracy Now

AHMED RASHID: Well, you know, initially—initially, at least—for the first four or five days after this happened, the leadership, including the army chief, the prime minister, the president, they all congratulated President Obama. But the press lashed out very strongly against the army. What was the army doing? Did the army know about the presence of Osama? If so, was it guilty of keeping him there? And if it didn’t know, is it so incompetent that they couldn’t even guess where he was, and it took the Americans to guess where he was?

So, then the army, in kind of self-defense and in a way of retaliation, basically said, "This is not the issue. The real issue is that the Americans impinged on Pakistan’s sovereignty by invading Pakistan’s territory and launching this attack in Abbottabad." So the whole argument was shifted, you know, by the military, essentially, and that this was all about America’s breaking our sovereignty. And the key argument, which was accountability of the army and the ISI, were completely left behind.

And what happened, the army still had enormous influence in the media, amongst the politicians. It managed to turn this whole argument around. And as a consequence, this, you know, public opinion, to the media, etc., changed and then started questioning the Americans as to what on earth were the Americans doing trying to attack Pakistan? What happens if they repeat this and kill other people through such raids, etc.? And to date, quite frankly, there has still been no accountability, and no questions have been answered about what Osama was doing there, you know? Did anyone know that he was there? Was anyone helping—

==

rea 06.05.12 at 6:39 pm

There are organized groups of people who regard themeselves at war with the United States and who have attacked the United States and its allies in the past, who are armed, and who are located in a place where the judicial proces cannot reach them. Such people can legitimately be subjected to military attack. Noncombatants cannot be targeted, but sometimes noncombatant are going to be killed in legitimate attacks on military targets. The laws of war require reasonable steps to be taken to minimize noncombatant casualties, but recognize that some noncombatant casualties are inevitable. There is no evidence that the US is breaking these rules.

For example, Greenwald complains about the death of Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-year old son in a drone strike. That’s tragic, but the article Greenwald links point out that the young man was with a group of al Qaeda officials when killed, and there is no evidence that the young man, rather than the al Qaeda officials, was targeted.

Or, see the following account, to which Greenwald links, and which he citte s an isntance of the US deliberately targeting rescuers:

Taliban militants had gathered in the village of Khaisor. After praying at the local mosque, they were preparing to cross the nearby border into Afghanistan to launch an attack on US forces. But the US struck first.

A CIA drone fired its missiles into the Taliban group, killing at least a dozen people. Villagers joined surviving Taliban as they tried to retrieve the dead and injured.

But as rescuers clambered through the demolished house the drones struck again. Two missiles slammed into the rubble, killing many more. At least 29 people died in total.

‘We lost very trained and sincere friends‘, a local Taliban commander told The News, a Pakistani newspaper. ‘Some of them were very senior Taliban commanders and had taken part in successful actions in Afghanistan. Bodies of most of them were beyond recognition.’

For the Americans the attack was a success. A surprise tactic had resulted in the deaths of many Taliban. But locals say that six ordinary villagers also died that day . . .

It’s very hard to see how this account shows that rescuers were deliberately targeted, or that the whole affair was anything other than an attack on a leigtimate military target.

The Wikipedia article on Operation Overlord estimates that 13,632–19,890 French civilians were killed or injured by Allied operations in the battle. Was that an Allied war crime?

The man [obl] had issued press releases taking credit, but that’s not good enough, evidently.

CHINA AND CAPITALISM

SOME PARTS FROM AN IQ2 TRANSCRIPT

Clearly, the rule of law is much more developed here. Property rights are more secure, and we encourage innovation by protecting intellectual property. As a result, the American economy is far more innovative. The Googles and Facebooks and Apples of the world are American companies. Nothing comparable has come from China. We permit individuals to move freely in search of jobs and opportunities. For hundreds of millions of rural Chinese, there is no such freedom. Corruption and abuse of power by government officials is far more prevalent in China. And crony capitalism, which is certainly an aspect of American life, is absolutely rife in China. As usual, there is a lot to be said on both sides. And in the final analysis, this debate is not just about economics but about which system, American democratic capitalism or Chinese state capitalism, will be the model that developing countries around the world admire and seek to emulate. 

=

And your partner also saying that China does not do capitalism better than America, Minxin Pei. Minxin, you are a professor at Claremont McKenna. You were born in China, but you’ve been here 27 years and counting. You’re a dual citizen. You also have another duality. You’re a political scientist with a Harvard Ph.D., but you also have a Master’s in creative writing. 

=

IAN BREMMER

First of all, Orville said that China is a fickle mistress. And so getting China right is hard. 

19:07:30 

And one thing we do all need to admit is that the level of volatility in outcomes in China over the next 10 to 20 years is vastly greater than the level of volatility in the United States or in Europe or Japan. Can China make it? Can they fundamentally transform their economic and political system? A country of 1.3 billion people. We know they need to it. The World Bank just made it very clear. The Chinese government admitted it themselves. Doesn’t mean they can do it, it’s never been done before. It’s a bet. I’d bet against. But it’s a bet. If you have to make a bet, you bet on the United States. Lots of people do, that’s why the U.S. still has the world’s reserve currency. I don’t know even where to start on this frankly, having just heard that China needs to bribe the right bureaucrats--but same in the United States, we’re not as above board about that... That’s on its face ludicrous, right? China is a system where if you want to do well, the highest levels, 52 percent of the GDP -- 62 percent of the GDP is state-owned enterprises, absolutely there is no rule of law. There’s no transparency. You don’t have as many regulations in China as the U.S. That is true. Does that mean China does capitalism better? No. It means that if you’re China and you want to move a village and build a road, you can. It is not clear to me that that is capitalism in its most effective or even most rapacious form. That’s the state doing what it wants to do for the state. 

That’s the problem. You want to talk about state intervention? We’ve got it. We’ve got it in China. Look, it’s unfortunate to me we’re even debating this. Five years ago, we wouldn’t. It shames me. It shames me as an American because there are people out there that believe that the United States can’t do capitalism as well as China. There are countries now that are doing capitalism better than the United States. If we were having this debate about Canada, we wouldn’t have as much of a problem. We wouldn’t, right. On a lot of fronts -- I’m willing -- I’m not saying the United States is worse on everything. 

19:09:33 

I’m saying that life increasingly, if you look at issues like the deficit for the U.S., if you look at financial regulations -- I’m not going to stand behind all that. But I am going to go after China, because ultimately we have a problem. Look, the Chinese system is not just capitalist; it’s state capitalist. State capitalism is a system where the state is the principal actor in the economy. And it uses markets ultimately for their own political gain. If it turns out that profit is useful for their political gain, they’ll go for it. If it turns out it isn’t, they’ll go against it. And that’s true whether we’re talking about Chinese firms or whether we’re talking about Western firms. I mean, Facebook’s doing a pretty good IPO, but they’re not in China. Why? China doesn’t want Facebook in China. It’d make a lot of money. It’d make a lot of money for China. That’s not the point, right. That’s not capitalism. That’s a problem. Ultimately, when we’ve seen state capitalism work globally, it works until it fails. 

19:10:32 

And it works because despite the fact that the state is massively inefficient, and I suspect Peter admits that the state is massively inefficient, and it is in lots of forms, but it can hide its inefficiency through cheap stuff. Argentina was state capitalist, looked as good as the United States in the Western hemisphere over 100 years ago until they ran out of cheap land. And then they started defaulting. Venezuela looked great on cheap oil. Not so much anymore, right. China’s looked great for 34 years on the basis of cheap labor. China will ultimately run out of cheap labor. So, what we have in China is this extraordinary car with a huge engine going very fast down a long road. And that road has been straight for 34 years, but coming up there’s a big turn in the road…. And we’ve never seen steering. 

19:11:41 

And the fact is that if you are China, there’s one thing you’re going to have a very hard time doing. There are no more Zhu Rongjis and Deng Xiaopings in China. You don’t have strong individual leadership. You have leadership by consensus, individuals that are moving together very incrementally. They’re very cautious. They understand the importance of the stakes they are playing for. The one thing that you will not do well is go after your own intrinsic interests. The state-owned enterprises that are providing you money -- that’s where the inefficiencies are going to be as labor gets more expensive. That’s where the inefficiency will be when the United States and other Western multinationals stop giving them technology to rip off. Another problem with Chinese state capitalism is it creates enemies, you know. There are a lot of folks around Asia. They see the Chinese economic miracle, but they’re begging the United States to maintain a presence. 

19:12:32 

Why? Because China does capitalism better than the United States? I don’t think so. We got to watch what people do, not what people say, what they do. Did you see that piece in the Wall Street Journal, talked about the disposition of Chinese millionaires, how over 50 percent of Chinese millionaires say they prefer to live in the United States than China? And yeah, it’s about quality of life. Yeah, it’s about the environment. Yeah, it’s about opportunities for their kids. It’s also about no rule of law in China and worrying about corruption and the sanctity of their assets over the long term. Your assets are okay tomorrow. The United States, we’re over-litigious. China doesn’t have that problem. You don’t have to worry about lawyers in China. You have to worry about someone ripping off your stuff or being forced out of the country or not being heard from again. Now, maybe Peter believes that those 50-plus percent of Chinese millionaires are stupid. Because ultimately, the United States is in decline, and so they shouldn’t be coming here, in which case, fine, but then China’s millionaires aren’t that bright. And those are the entrepreneurs, so we shouldn’t bet on them either way. You’re in a catch-22, sir. 

[laughter] 

You know, I’m interested in what the Chinese do with their money. I understand that the Chinese are saying that they don’t like the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, but where are they putting their cash? In the U.S. Now, Ron Paul and Peter say they shouldn’t do that, and then we’re in big trouble. Okay, well, when are they going to stop? Because I don’t believe the Chinese are stupid. For me, that’s not an interesting analytical model. For me, what’s interesting is presuming the Chinese understand their Intelligence Squared U.S. 

interests and they’re putting all that money into treasuries because they believe that’s safe over the long term. We are entering an environment of fear. We’re entering an environment of volatility. When things get more volatile, we don’t just bet on go-go-growth any more. We put our money under the mattresses. Central banks do that too. And in that environment, the world’s largest economy, also ultimately the most resilient, the United States of America. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Ian Bremmer. 

=

Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd., #1016 Arlington, VA 22203 

Minxin Pei: 

I'm not going to speak in Chinese. I think that the impression that China is doing capitalism better than the U.S. is understandable. That's because it's a very superficial impression. One reason why that impression is widespread is that China has been growing fast. But there's a reason China is growing fast. Low income countries tend to grow much faster than rich countries because they have much bigger growth potential. Just think of two things. Consumption of energy. Chinese consumption of energy is about one-fourth of the U.S. consumption. 

19:23:30 

So the Chinese, if they consume more energy, they will grow a lot faster. The same with steel production. China consumes one-tenth of the steel that the average American consumes. So if they want to reach American consumption, they need to build a lot of steel plants, and that makes economic growth. So first of all, do not judge whether a country does capitalism better or worse by just looking at its growth numbers. Second is that when you compare the two countries, the U.S. and China, you have to look at facts. This presentation is nothing but man [spelled phonetically] the facts. So what are the facts? If you look at corporate profits, U.S. companies are far more profitable than Chinese companies. And that is to think that we can trust Chinese accounting. 

[laughter] 

And then you look at tax collection. I have to disagree with Peter. 

19:24:32 

He says the Chinese, they collect less taxes than U.S. The opposite is true. The U.S. government takes about federal/state, about 30 percent of GDP. The Chinese government collects 35 percent. But that’s not the end of the story. Because in the U.S., you actually get something back from the government in the form of Social Security, health care, Medicare, Medicaid. In China, you get very little back because the bulk of government taxes are spent on government consumption, administration. If you go to China and get treated to a 20-course meal, you think great, that’s Chinese hospitality. But don’t forget, it’s being paid for by Chinese taxpayers. Not in the USA. You do not get that kind of treatment when you go to Washington, D.C. 

[laughter] 

And then you look at whether China’s growth is using less natural resources. 

And here the U.S. is three times more efficient as China. Because for every dollar of GDP produced in China, China has to consume three times more in terms of its natural resources, water, clean air, land. The U.S. in other words, is a lot more efficient. Then you look at international comparisons, and here we’re using third-party numbers. And here, China does not look nearly as good as the U.S. Corruption. There’s a NGO based in Berlin called Transparency International. It publishes every year, a global index called Corruption Perception index. This index, the U.S. is ranked 24th in terms of, as the least corrupt country in the world. China is ranked 75. So if you think our average politician in Washington is corrupt, wait until you meet a Chinese politician. 

[laughtER]

Then you look at overall economic competitiveness because capitalism is known for its efficiency and competitiveness. Here, the U.S. is ranked not number one, number five. What about China? China is number 26. So way, way behind the U.S. Then you look at something like innovation ranking. The U.S. is number seven; China is 29. You look at ease of doing business. This is by the World Bank. Because, a real capitalist country should be one in which it is very easy to do business. Overall ranking for the U.S. is number four in the world. China is number 91. Then starting a business, U.S. is number 13; China is number 151. Getting credit, the U.S. is number four; China is number 67. The list goes on and on and I don’t want to bore you. 

19:27:31 

Finally, I want to imagine, what will the politburo members think about this debate? If for some reason, they’ve learned that in New York City, they’re debating whether China does capitalism better than the U.S. I think their first reaction is not to laugh. 

[laughter[ 

Then the second reaction, they say the Americans are really easy to impress. You stage an Olympics. They think China is number one. 

[laughter] 

You build the world’s largest high-speed rail at enormous cost. They think the U.S. is falling behind. Then you lend the Americans $2 trillion. They think, China is definitely number one. So, the third thought that would come to their mind is that the Americans have very short memories, because when Sputnik was launched, everybody thought the Soviet Union was to dominate the world. 

And then in the late 1980s, I think in this city, people should have good memories about who was buying the Rockefeller Center, right. Japan was dominating the headlines. Everybody thought Japan was doing capitalism better than the U.S. Now, look at where Japan is after 20 years. So, I think what we’re seeing here is not that China does capitalism better than the U.S.; we are experiencing a period of self-doubt. I’m sure the real issue is not about China. The real issue is about the U.S. The U.S. can do capitalism much better than it does, but China, at least for the moment and for the foreseeable future, will not be doing capitalism anywhere better, anywhere close to the U.S. in terms of competition, efficiency, even social justice. 

=

Bremmer: 

 Look, the United States has so many strong intrinsic advantages in terms of not just the matter of where the dollar sits but also, I mean, 30 percent of the world’s calories comes from the United States. People are increasingly fighting over food. That’s a real problem for China. The environment in China is absolutely falling apart. If you look at environment-adjusted GDP, it’s so much worse than the growth you see presently. We already heard from Minxin about just how much more profitable American multinationals are than Chinese SOEs, and yet that China is moving more in the direction towards SOEs, not towards private sectors, especially since 2008.

All of these things are problematic, and the ability of the Chinese to suddenly make a decision to go away from the dollar, you have to go into something. What exactly are you going into? You’re going into the euro in an enormous way. I don’t see that in terms of massive growth opportunities. You’re going into Japan? We already said we had two lost decades there. You’re going to go into gold or hard commodities? You can do some of that. You can only do so much. And as you go away from the dollar, you of course ruin the position that you have in the rest of those dollars. So China’s not going to do that. They haven’t, and they’re not going to. 

=

John Donvan: 

Minxin Pei, take on the question of whether the existence of Social Security compromises the U.S. claim to be capitalist, which I think is Peter’s point. 

Minxin Pei: 

I don’t think so, because capitalism produces efficiency, but it also has a lot of risks. Modern capitalist societies are a lot riskier than traditional agrarian societies because in a modern capitalist society, once you lose your job, you really have no source of income. You cannot grow your own potatoes. Let me just say something about China. The debt we know about -- because Peter says that in the U.S., you -- every citizen gets a lot of -- is responsible for a lot of government debt. The same thing is true of China, because the Chinese national debt is actually higher than the American debt. In China -- 

Peter Schiff: 

What are you talking about? 

Minxin Pei: 

Okay. In China, the nominal debt is low, 20 percent, but the Chinese government knows better than Bernie Madoff, okay, does a much better job in hiding its liabilities. It would -- 

We owe them over $2 trillion. 

Minxin Pei: 

No, two trillion dollars is not -- is foreign exchange reserve and I -- 

Peter Schiff: 

Well, that's three trillion, if you want -- 

Minxin Pei: 

No, no, that's three trillion. 

Peter Schiff: 

Are you saying that liabilities exceed that? 

Minxin Pei: 

Oh, the Chinese liability is about 80 percent of GDP. The U.S. public health debt is about 60 to 65 percent. The trouble with the Chinese people is that after paying taxes, having their government incur so much debt, they get no Social Security, they get no social protection, so that's why I think even capitalists are coming to this country, to enjoy some kind of protection. 

=

Clearly Chinese citizens are doing better on average than they were before. There's no question, although if you ask where a lot of the profitability from that development has gone, it's gone to the United States. I mean, you look at Apple, you look at the manufacturing of the iPad, $9, $10 is captured by China, about 60 goes back to Apple and its shareholders, most of whom are American. I like that trade, right? I mean, there's a reason why American multinationals actually do better, but we have a problem in the United States with an increasingly large percentage of Americans, right, a book that I think you probably have read by Charles Murray, "Coming Apart," increasingly, they're not doing as well. 

They don't have as much opportunity. We have to address that because if not, long term those folks are going to get upset. But they're not going to be as upset as the hundreds of millions of Chinese that will eventually face a crash and will have no opportunity, no option to really revolt against -- 

Second point, if you want to talk about Chinese profitability compared to American, look at the few -- the dozens of firms in China that are supposed to be some of the best in breed that have wanted to come to the United States to list. And they list, and they -- I

and we get inside the books, and we realize they're completely cooked, and they get in massive trouble. And even you know sort of billionaire brilliant folks like John Paulson, who figured out the big -- 

[ 

Ian Bremmer: 

-- absolutely lose lots of money on that. But yet we do not have -- these companies are not anywhere near as sustainable or profitable as the Chinese government makes them out to be, and that is a fundamental structural problem. 

I.B.

=

Minxin Pei: 

Well, people inside China are not very optimistic either about the country’s future prospects. The high growth period for China is over. I urge you to read the World Bank’s latest report on China called China 2030. It’s free for downloading on the World Bank’s website. This is what it says. From now on until 2030, if China does well, its average growth will be somewhere between 6 and 7 percent. 

And if China does not do the set of reforms the World Bank recommended, probably China cannot even achieve a much reduced level of growth because China is coming into an era where savings will be a lot lower. The population will be a lot older. The environmental costs will be a lot more visible if you -- I’m sure a lot of you have been to Beijing. In the future when you’re in Beijing, you should bring along a space suit. 

[laughter] 

=

Bremmer: 

Yeah, I don’t think that China has that kind of luster internationally. And it’s part because the Chinese system is really one that is focused on China, period. One of the major problems China has is that for them to build the state capital system, they have to support China and the Chinese market. Where the system that the United States supports is really one of having as much access to global competition in markets as possible. And ultimately, that’s a much more efficient system. The United States corporations benefit from it. We’re the ones who are pushing the WTO. We’re the ones who have been pushing the Doha around. When that doesn’t work, we go for the TransPacific Partnership, the TPP. 

The U.S. still makes -- does a lot of things wrong. That’s like this broader debate. The U.S. does a lot of things wrong on capitalism but still vastly more effective than China. The U.S. has a lot of problems in human rights, but China isn’t in the same league, right, not on the same league sheets. Let’s be very clear. And while I think that a certain level Intelligence Squared U.S. - 33 - 3/14/2012 

Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd., #1016 Arlington, VA 22203 

of human rights abuses facilitates rapacious capitalism, especially in the short term, in the long term, it will bite you in the hiney. And there are other places that you get problems, too. I did talk about transparency and the fact that places like Facebook and Google and Twitter are a problem for China because they want to own that data. They want to control it. They want to shape it. They want Chinese state Internet just like they have state capitalism. That’s a problem for them. When I think about responses in terms of general transparency, in the United States you do actually know largely what your officials are up to. Solyndra was a disaster. It was a bad thing for the United States. Peter and I will agree on that. But we found out about it. And we found -- on balance, people got egg on their faces. 

Orville Schell: 

Here I would say the advantage is emphatically on the American side because we have immigration. China does not and China has one of the most rapidly aging populations. And the lower reaches are not being replenished with the one-child policy, so it’s going to have a huge burden of taking care of elderly people and not have younger people coming in on the bottom to support them. That’s going to be a giant problem. 

Ian Bremmer: 

I agree with Orville, not surprisingly. And furthermore, it also leads China to export not just capital when they try to extract commodities for example in sub-Saharan Africa, but also labor because they need to do something with those men. That’s a problem for African countries that want to have employment in addition to Chinese cash. And eventually it leads to a backlash. Again, Chinese state capitalism is a problem not just because of domestic inefficiencies but because of the backlash it creates globally. That’s one we haven’t started to experience yet because China isn’t big enough yet. But as it gets bigger, it’s going to get squeezed. 

=

question is as China, like other low and mid-income countries, moves up the value chain, it’s going to eventually have to start to turn ideas into products instead of just assembling products. How do you expect that to occur in China, given the current status of intellectual property rights and in other related terms like that where it’s just very hard to create ideas and own them in China? 

This is a huge problem for China. And China is creating intellectual property, and as it does, I think it’s going to bring itself to heel. One hopes it will, and it simply must or it can’t be a world player. But China must move up the value chain, because the labor is getting more expensive. They’re just lower down than we are. America doesn’t do much manufacturing anymore, not as much as it used to. It’s had to move up the value chain into knowledge and information technology. That’s China’s challenge too. 

John Donvan: 

Ian Bremmer: 

No, I think that it’s absolutely a problem, and I guess I would say that I’m more skeptical than Orville they’re going to be able to do it. I see the problem as you do, in part because the educational system doesn’t support it. They create a lot of engineers, but they don’t create a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of innovators because they’re still teaching by rote as opposed to teaching students to actually question, you know, sort of what’s behind. And there’s a reason why so many folks that create things in the United States are college dropouts or, you know, sort of came from these kind of unusual background systems. They really want to know not just what four times four is but also why it works that way. That doesn’t work well within authoritarian system. Again, human rights are a part of that. Transparency is a part of it. I think when you look at the U.S. system, you have to put it all together. It works in part and it’s resilient in part because it’s so integrated, the political and the economic together. You can’t take the politics out of the Chinese economic system. If you could, they’d be doing much better right now and they’d have a longer term trajectory that I’d be much more supportive of. 

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Pei: 

As the World Bank’s prognosis shows that the slowdown is coming no matter what. The debate is when it’s going to happen and the speed at which the slowdown is going to happen. 

20:11:35 

What the Chinese government is going to respond -- there are two paths. One is to double-down and to do the things they’ve been doing, that is a lot of investment in infrastructure that’s going to yield increasing returns and growth will continue to slow. And that will be a dead end. The other will be a very different trajectory; that is, to really become capitalist, which means to increase domestic consumption, to allocate capital much more efficiently, incidentally, in China, the capital market as we know it does not exist. Most of the savings is allocated through the state-controlled banking sector. So, they’ve got to change that. And they’ve got to privatize state-owned enterprises -- lots and lots of things that can be done to avert that kind of dramatic slowdown. But that means China will have to do capitalism. 

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Minxin Pei: 

 if you are a private entrepreneur in China you cannot go into -- you cannot open a private bank. You cannot get into telecom services. You cannot get into energy. You cannot get international resources. You cannot get into 14 other very important sectors because these are the sectors reserved for state owned companies. You cannot get bank loans. You don't have secure property rights. If you get into a dispute with another entrepreneur, with another businessman, whether you win that dispute does not depend on whether you have a good case, it depends on whether you know the communist party secretary in charge of the legal system. 

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Ian Bremmer: 

This matters. I know that the Chinese are doing more patents. They're small, they're engineering patents, there's a slight improvements on processes. Don't take away from them. They're very smart in China. They're being educated well. They're great. But if you want to talk about the game changing stuff that you want to bet on that's going to make the world work over the next 20 years, overwhelmingly that stuff is being driven in the United States of America. I don't know if it's Bill Gates's new battery technology that's going to work and be the next game changer, it's going to be in biotech, it's going to be in nanotech, but if you want to make that bet -- and, by the way, the Chinese central bank wants to make it, too -- you're going to make it here. I love the fact that we live in a society as well where broad ideologies can come together, work together, and make lots of money. I applaud the fact that we live in a place that a guy like Peter Schiff can make an