Cheerful or not

Indo-Pak Update: A Future of Nudges and Hopes || via Meadia

Few bilateral relationships matter more for the long-term stability of Asia than that between New Delhi and Islamabad. But few, too, are as seemingly intractable….

[A recent report by the International Crisis Group on Indo-Pakistani relations]  provides some room for the one resource scarcer in the Indus Basin than water, optimism. The legacy media’s coverage of Indo-Pakistani relations usually takes place through the lens of Kashmir, militaries, and terrorism, but, the Crisis Group report emphasizes, there has actually been significant improvement in trade relations between the two countries. The ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government agreed to grant most favored nation (MFN) status to India in November 2011, to be implemented by the end of 2012, a decision that the largest opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N  (PML-N) also supported. This decision ‘is not merely an economic concession but also a significant political gesture. Departing from Pakistan’s traditional position, the current government no longer insists on linking normalization of relations with resolution of the Kashmir dispute. India no longer insists on making such normalization conditional on demonstrable Pakistani efforts to rein in India-oriented jihadi groups, particularly the Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and hence suspension of the composite dialogue.’

This matters. Decoupling trade from other contentious issues could have significant consequences. Pakistan’s current trade with India represents only one percent of its total balance, while Indian exports to Pakistan accounted for only 0.93 percent of its total exports. ‘India-Pakistan trade is a win-win situation’, says former Pakistan State Bank Governor Ishrat Hussain. Says a Pakistan economist, Asad Sayeed, ‘Economic growth can take place either through major structural transformation or through trade. Since Pakistan’s economic structure has remained the same for at least the last 40 years, the only way to ensure growth is regional trade and investment.’ Pakistan’s two largest industries, textiles and food processing, are sophisticated enough to compete well in Indian markets, while energy-hungry India would benefit from access to the world’s second-largest coal mines in the Thar Desert in Sindh Province.

Why We’re Losing: How free market ideas suffer from being counterintuitive || Reason

People don’t understand the private sector. They don’t like it. Intuitively, it seems selfish. Most people are busy trying to run their own lives. They’re grateful to politicians who want to take charge. It seems intuitive to think that a smart group of planners concerned about the collective good can accomplish more than free people pursing their own interests individually in the private sector. But history is filled with examples of how the solutions politicians propose create new problems without solving the old. Urban renewal wiped out entire neighborhoods without improving cities, mortgage subsidies created a damaging financial bubble, the war on drugs created a prison-industrial complex while barely taking a dent out of drug abuse. The list goes on and on.

The few politicians who manage, often against overwhelming odds, to successfully expand the sphere of private action rarely get rewarded for their trouble. Margaret Thatcher saved Britain—and got thrown out. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) may get recalled for trying to cut the budget and push back against public sector unions. Hong Kong went from Third World to First World in just 50 years because it had economic freedom. But when I went to Hong Kong and interviewed people, they didn’t know why they were prosperous. They just talked about their problems and how government should solve them….

Liberty is counterintuitive. It takes hard work to overcome the brain’s attraction to simple-sounding solutions. It’s not easy to convince people that sometimes the best way for governments to address a problem is to do less, not more. It’s easier to admire the activist or politician who talks about helping the less fortunate than it is to cheer on a hustler who wants to get rich by selling you stuff. Those of us who see expanding the private sphere as the best way to help the most people have an uphill battle in making our case….  Most people see a world full of problems that can best be tackled via wisely applied laws. They assume it’s just the laziness, stupidity, or indifference of politicians that prevents the problems from being fixed. But government is force, and government is inefficient. The inefficient use of force creates more problems than it solves….

Economics is complicated. That’s one more reason to be grateful for the Constitution: With its relatively simple rules, it helps keep government within bounds. Some Tea Party activists understand that, and it’s one reason they call for a return to constitutional, limited government. 

But getting the majority of America to sign on to these ideas might require an impending crisis. Looking around the world, the next flashpoint after Greece will probably come elsewhere on the periphery of Europe or in Japan. The populations of those countries are graying—young workers are shrinking relative to the retirees they’ll need to support—faster than America’s. Watching their problems, we will get an advance look at the financial poison we are foisting on America’s young people.

But I’m not sure voters will pay attention. If Americans didn’t learn the folly of central planning from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the stagnation of socialist economies around the world, they may not learn about the danger of unsustainable budgets from the catastrophes in Greece, Spain, and Japan….

There is nothing that government can do that we cannot do better as free individuals—as groups of individuals, working together voluntarily, not at the point of a gun or under threat of a fine. Without big government, our possibilities are limitless.

But it’s a hard sell. Things continue to get better in a free society, but nobody is out in front of the camera saying, “Yay for the marginal improvements that come with free markets!” It’s not as compelling or newsworthy as a report on someone who goes bankrupt because he got sick. If we are to foster prosperity, we must find better ways to promote the virtues of liberty.

Nigeria Burns || Via Meadia

In recent days, gunmen and suicide bombers associated with Boko Haram bombed the offices of several prominent Nigerian newspapers; killed fifteen worshippers at a church in just the latest of many attacks on Christian civilians; bombed the convoy of a prominent policeman (who survived, unlike eleven not-so-lucky guards and bystanders); launched an assault on a police station, were repulsed, only to attack another police station down the road, where they freed a number of prisoners and killed two guards. Gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped and executed five people in eastern Nigeria late last week….

The line between criminal gangs and Islamist militants has blurred in Nigeria. Unemployment is high, especially among young people. Boko Haram is no centrally organized group. Some of its members are part of an anti-West, fundamentalist Islamist insurgency. Others are thugs. Most are northerners, disillusioned by what they consider to be the unfair power southern tribes and leaders hold in the central government. They attack symbols of what they see as oppression: police stations and officers, newspaper offices, politicians. But lawlessness in Nigeria is not all attributable to Boko Haram: There are conflicts over land and resources between communities that do not get along, often divided along religious as well as ethnic and linguistic lines in the middle of Nigeria, where the Muslim north meets the Christian south. Nigeria’s social fabric is stretched very, very thin.

Real Fake Missiles? || Arms Control Wonk

There is a huge discussion about what sort of technological path these ICBMs might represent, if any.  Allow me to articulate just one view, which I suspect is the view of at least some people in the intelligence community.  North Korea imported Scud missiles from Egypt, then proceeded to build an entire missile program on this technology.  North Korean enlarged the Scud into the Nodong, stuck a Scud on top of a Nodong (Taepodong 1) and then clustered some Nodong engines with another Nodong on top (Taepodong 2.)

Now, North Korea has imported the R-27 (SS-N-6) — a better baseline technology that uses more energetic propellants: unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4).

North Korea has apparently reconfigured the Taepodong 2, sticking an SS-N-6 on top of a cluster of Nodong engines, topped by a smaller SS-N-6-derived third stage (vernier engines only, it seems).  North Korea also enlarged the SS-N-6 much as it enlarged the Scud, creating the Musudan IRBM.  North Korea may try to replicate the approach it took to Scuds, just with a better technology.  So, North Korea may try to either cluster SS-N-6 engines or stack SS-N-6-derived stages on top of one another.  One of the big debates we are having now is about what North Korea might be able to squeeze into the 2 m first stage of the new ICBM.

North Korea’s gulag || The Economist

In labour camps across its remote northern reaches, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea detains an estimated 150,000-200,000 political prisoners. The regime claims to hold precisely none. Or rather, in the formulation of the late Kim Jong Il, punishing the enemies of the state protects the North Korean people’s human rights.

The gulag’s captives are not told of their crimes, though torture usually produces a “confession”—which might admit to defacing an image of the “Great Leader” or listening to a foreign broadcast. There is no defence, trial, judge or sentence, though most inmates remain in the camps for life, unless they escape. They are victims of forced disappearances, in that neighbours, colleagues and distant family members know nothing about the fate of those who vanish. Inmates are held incommunicado, without visits, food parcels, letters or radio. Chronically malnourished, they work in mines, quarries and logging camps, with one rest-day a month. Infractions of camp rules, such as stealing food meant for livestock, damaging equipment or having unauthorised sexual liaisons are punished with beatings and torture. Guards rape women prisoners, leading to forced abortions for the pregnant, or infanticide. Inmates are under pressure to snitch. Executions are routine—and fellow prisoners must often watch….

The North Korean gulag has persisted for twice as long as its Soviet counterpart did. Yet the world looks away. The United States expends its diplomatic energies in negotiations over the regime’s tinpot nuclear and missile programme, with little to show for the effort. South Korean brethren have other things on their minds—the political left wants better relations with the North, while others just wish it was not there. As for China, an ally, it forcibly repatriates North Koreans who have fled across the border, even though they face execution.

Rarely does the gulag intrude. Perhaps the scale of the atrocity numbs moral outrage. Certainly it is easier to lampoon the regime as ruled by extraterrestrial freaks than to grapple with the suffering it inflicts (The Economist is guilty). Yet murder, enslavement, forcible population transfers, torture, rape: North Korea commits nearly every atrocity that counts as a crime against humanity.

India to test nuclear-capable missile that could reach Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai || AP

India is planning to test launch a new nuclear-capable missile that for the first time would give it the capability of hitting the major Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai.

The government has hailed the Agni-V missile, with a range of 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), as a major boost to its efforts to counter China’s regional dominance and become an Asian power in its own right. The test launch was slated to come as early as Wednesday evening, but Indian media said a delay was likely because of poor weather conditions.

“It will be a quantum leap in India’s strategic capability,” said Ravi Gupta, spokesman for India’s Defense Research and Development Organization, which built the missile.

China is far ahead of India in the missile race, with intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching anywhere in India. Currently, the longest-range Indian missile, the Agni-III, has a range of only 3,500 kilometers (2,100 miles) and falls short of many major Chinese cities.

India and China fought a war in 1962 and continue to nurse a border dispute. India has also been suspicious of Beijing’s efforts to increase its influence in the Indian Ocean in recent years.

Toward the Conquest of World Poverty || Reason

Progress can often be defined as the stuff that happens while humanity is preoccupied with everything that is going wrong. On the surface, the first decade of the 21st century looks like an ugly parade of terrorism, war and economic convulsion. But in one important sense it stands as possibly the greatest decade in human history. And that’s no accident.

Among the most vicious enemies of human welfare is poverty. In a world plagued with limited resources, bad governments and unsound economic policies, it often appears to be an inescapable scourge. Most people paid no attention in 2000 when the United Nations proclaimed the goal of halving the number of earth’s inhabitants living in extreme poverty by 2015, compared to 1990.

But way ahead of schedule, the target has already been hit. For the first time since it began tracking, says a new World Bank report, “the data indicate a decline in both the poverty rate and the number of poor in all six regions of the developing world.”

In 1981, 70 percent of those in the developing world subsisted on the equivalent of less than $2 a day, and 42 percent had to manage with less than $1 a day. Today, 43 percent are below $2 a day and 14 percent below $1.

“Poverty reduction of this magnitude is unparalleled in history: Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time.”…

The start of most global trends is hard to pinpoint. This one, however, had its big bang in the early 1970s, in Chile. After a socialist government brought on economic chaos, the military seized power in a bloody coup and soon embarked on a program of drastic reform — privatizing state enterprises, fighting inflation, opening up foreign trade and investment and unshackling markets.

It was the formula offered by economists associated with the University of Chicago, notably Milton Friedman, and it turned Chile into a rare Latin American success. In time, it also facilitated a return to democracy. Chile was proof that freeing markets and curbing state control could generate broad-based prosperity, which socialist policies could only promise.

If that experiment weren’t sufficient, it got another try on a much bigger scale when China’s Deng Xiaoping abandoned the disastrous policies of Mao Zedong and veered onto the capitalist road. The result was an economic miracle yielding growth rates that averaged 10 percent per year.

The formula was too effective to be ignored. Over the past two decades, poorer nations have dismantled command-and-control methods and given markets greater latitude. Economic growth, not redistribution, has been the surest cure for poverty, and economic freedom has been the key that unlocked the riddle of economic growth.

Why North Korea’s rocket test matters: Critics fear it’s cover for honing nuclear missiles || AP

North Korea may have the bomb, but it hasn’t perfected ways to put one onto a missile that could strike faraway enemies like the United States.

This is why Pyongyang’s announcement that it will launch a satellite on a long-range rocket next month is drawing so much attention: Washington says North Korea uses these launches as cover for testing missile systems for nuclear weapons that could target Alaska and beyond….

[B]ecause ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches “share the same bodies, engines, launch sites and other development processes, they are intricately linked,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies….

The United States has warned the launch would jeopardize a diplomatic deal settled last month that would ship U.S. food aid to the impoverished North in exchange for a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests, as well as a suspension of nuclear work at Yongbyon.

Tuareg Forces Take Tessalit || Weekly Standard

With the fall last weekend of the northern Mali garrison town of Tessalit, and its airstrip, to Tuareg secessionist forces, U.S. counter-terror policy in Africa is dealt a stunning setback. A USAF airlift brought supplies on February 14 to the besieged town, which reportedly was overwhelmed by a column of Tuareg fighters in early February only to be retaken by a Mali Defense Forces (MDF) column a few days later, which then found itself – with the military families – surrounded by a more numerous and better armed rebel detachment. Bu there are no reports of further U.S. involvement. 

Mali is a lynchpin of U.S. strategy in the region. This defeat, qualified by the Tuareg as a rout and by the Malian government as an orderly tactical retreat, is certain to cause consternation in at least some corridors of Washington, which for the most part does not know where Mali is. 

The State Department and AFRICOM (U.S. Army Africa Command) were silent on the implications of last week’s event other than to reassert support for Mali’s liberal political and economic reforms.

Regional observers, as well as spokesmen for the competing forces, remain sharply divided regarding the significance of the battle for Tessalit, whose military base and airstrip give it a strategic significance in the continuing low-level conflicts for the control of the southern Sahara. The Tuareg MNLA (from the French acronym for the Mouvement National de Liberation de l’Anawad) insist they are a secular movement concerned with liberating their “colonized” homeland, defined as the northern third of Mali and possibly some real estate in neighboring Niger to the east, Mauritania to the west, and Algeria to the north. The Mali government claims the MNLA is a small group of “armed bandits,” not representative of the Tuareg, who have made common cause with Salafists and ordinary gangsters who have used the southern Sahara as a sanctuary for many years. 

Creating economic wealth: the big why || Economist

The rich world’s troubles and inequalities have been making headlines for some time now. Yet a more important story for human welfare is the persistence of yawning gaps between the world’s haves and have-nots. Adjusted for purchasing power, the average American income is 50 times that of a typical Afghan and 100 times that of a Zimbabwean. Despite two centuries of economic growth, over a billion people remain in dire poverty….

Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, and James Robinson, professor of government at Harvard, follow in their footsteps with “Why Nations Fail”. They spurn the cultural and geographic stories of their forebears in favour of an approach rooted solely in institutional economics, which studies the impact of political environments on economic outcomes. Neither culture nor geography can explain gaps between neighbouring American and Mexican cities, they argue, to say nothing of disparities between North and South Korea.

They offer instead a striking diagnosis: some governments get it wrong on purpose. Amid weak and accommodating institutions, there is little to discourage a leader from looting. Such environments channel society’s output towards a parasitic elite, discouraging investment and innovation. Extractive institutions are the historical norm. Inclusive institutions protect individual rights and encourage investment and effort. Where inclusive governments emerge, great wealth follows….

Extractive rules are self-reinforcing. In the Spanish New World, plunder further empowered the elite. Revolution and independence rarely provide escape from this tyranny. New leadership is tempted to retain the benefits of the old system. Inclusive economies, by contrast, encourage innovation and new blood. This destabilises existing industries, keeping economic and political power dispersed.

Failure is the rule. Here, Venice provides a cautionary tale. Upward mobility drove the city-state’s wealth and power. Its innovative commenda, a partnership in which capital-poor sailors and rich Venetians shared the profits from voyages, allowed those of modest background to rise through the ranks. This fluidity threatened established wealth, however. From the late 13th century the ducal council began restricting political and economic rights, banning the commenda and nationalising trade. By 1500, with a stagnant economy and falling population, Venice’s descent from great power was well under way.

The Legal Case For Striking Iran || The Corner

[This] analysis can be boiled down to one sentence: Iran hasn’t launched an “armed attack” against America, so no, America cannot strike Iran.  

But this argument ignores a fundamental reality of the American–Iranian and Israeli–Iranian conflicts. There has, in fact, been an “armed attack” against the United States. Iran has been waging a low-intensity war against America and Israel — both directly and by proxy — for more than two decades. Iran’s Quds Force has planned and directed attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and on Israelis in Israel and abroad. Iran has directly supplied our enemies with deadly weaponry in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is responsible for hundreds of American military deaths — including the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.  

In other words, Iran attacked us long ago, and our forbearance to this point is neither required by international law nor does it bind us to continued forbearance.

Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things) || Foreign Policy

It would be great to get rid of Kony.  He and his forces have left a path of abductions and mass murder in their wake for over 20 years.  But let’s get two things straight: 1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn’t been for 6 years; 2) the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.

First, the facts. Following a successful campaign by the Ugandan military and failed peace talks in 2006, the LRA was pushed out of Uganda and has been operating in extremely remote areas of the DRC, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic — where Kony himself is believed to be now. The Ugandan military has been pursuing the LRA since then but had little success (and several big screw-ups). In October last year, President Obama authorized the deployment of 100 U.S. Army advisors to help the Ugandan military track down Kony, with no results disclosed to date.

Additionally, the LRA (thankfully!) does not have 30,000 mindless child soldiers. This grim figure, cited by Invisible Children in the film (and by others) refers to the total number of kids abducted by the LRA over nearly 30 years….

There are many reasons uninformed and oversimplified advocacy can cause trouble, and Siena Antsis catalogues some of them here, noting that Invisible Children expertly “commodifies white man’s burden on the African continent.”  Buy a bracelet, soothe some guilt.

But as researcher Mark Kersten notes, after “stopping Kony”, then what? Or what if the activism just results the the 100 U.S. advisors staying but no Kony?…

In addition to the problems of poverty and nodding disease Izama highlights, Uganda is barely (if at all) democratic, and the president Yoweri Museveni ushered himself to a 4th term last year, taking him to over 25 years in power. Corruption is rampant, social services are minimal, and human rights abuses by the government common and well documented. Oh, and oil is on the way.

Stopping Kony won’t change any of these things, and if more hardware and money flow to Museveni’s military, Invisible Children’s campaign may even worsen some problems. [More information and links if you click through]