Update your IR textbooks: Chronicle of a non-crisis

After deploying his troops to the border with Colombia, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said on television that Latin America would turn into a new Middle East, and that regional war was a possibility. The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez sent ten tank battalions and the air force to his side of the line, and threatened to use his newly acquired toys, the Russian warplanes Sukhois. He accused Colombia of state terrorism and called President Uribe a criminal. Uribe replied that they had evidence that both Chávez and Correa had ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and that he planned to send this evidence to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The President of Nicaragua, the Sandinista Daniel Ortega, jumped into the fray. They all closed borders and withdrew diplomatic delegations. Former President Fidel Castro ranted against US interference and genocidal policies in Latin America. Not to be outdone, Senator John McCain, acting 'presidential,' committed the United States to another jungle war of impossible solution if Colombia was attacked.

In the end, Latin America's worst diplomatic crisis since the brief Cenepa War in 1995 came to an abrupt and swift end at a summit of the Organization of the American States, with all of the dignitaries involved shaking hands, hugging, and exchanging jokes, back pats, and apologies. In what can be described as one of the most unscripted moments in the history of televised diplomatic meetings -Khruschev's shoe banging at the Security Council was scripted-, Daniel Ortega managed to force Uribe to commit to withdraw a Colombian warship from Nicaragua's coast. President Chavez could hardly contain his smile.

The rapid escalation and de-escalation of this border crisis, initiated with the assassination of the FARC's second-in-command during a raid in Ecuador, provides a new case study for IR theory classrooms. What defused the crisis? Realists might say that Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia were merely saber-rattling and bluffing, and that their weak military forces hardly stood a chance against one of the biggest recipients of American military aid in the world. Confident of Washington's support, Colombia had achieved its goal and was happy to offer an apology. Liberals might say that Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela are major trading partners, and a regional war would have no winners and many losers. Institutionalists might chalk this one up to multilateralism. The fact that the OAS had a summit scheduled for that week, forcing the leaders to seat at the same table and talk it off in front of their peers, highlights the benefits of these institutions of cooperation. Finally, culturalists of Hungtingtonian persuasion would say that countries that speak the same language and belong to the same cultural space and civilization do not go to war with each other nowadays. Absent an ethnic or religious cleavage, the crisis could only qualify as a family argument.

But could this truly be a happy win-win? I suspect some stand more to gain than others. Washington's persona-non-grata du jour, Hugo Chávez, effectively solidified his leadership in the region, exacerbating the isolation of the United States' biggest regional ally. Chávez has got Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba firmly in his sphere of influence. Brazil, Chile, and Argentina all came down on his side. For most Latin Americans, his recent successes mediating the release of hostages held for years by the FARC surely matters more than his embarrassing performances at the UN General Assembly or the last Summit of the Americas. And President Uribe knows that, with oil and cocaine yielding such high profits, neither the FARC nor President Chávez are likely to go anywhere.

Political Dynasties

After tipping the scale in primaries and caucuses in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, California, and others, it is now commonly known that Latinos support the candidacy of Hillary Clinton by an overwhelming margin. No one really knows why. After all, the brown-skinned candidate with an immigrant story and a different-sounding name is Barack Obama, and his campaign has poured untold sums of money into courting the Latino vote. Senator Clinton is not Latina, does not speak Spanish, and never fails to mispronounce the names of her Latino endorsers. Her biggest connections with the Latino community were her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, and her husband's appointment of Bill Richardson for two cabinet posts. Solis Doyle resigned early in the race after being singled out as main culprit of Clinton's campaign woes, and Richardson has all but endorsed Senator Obama.

Among those that flat-out reject the idea of a rift between the Latino and the African-American communities, some maintain that Latinos are much more comfortable with political dynasties, and this explains their support for the Clintons. This is always backed by a handful of examples that includes the Somozas in Nicaragua, the Pastranas in Colombia, and the Perón and Kirchner families in Argentina. However, this alleged Latino affinity with political dynasties is nothing but another example in a long list of unsubstantiated myths involving anything south of the Río Grande.

It has been a centuries-old game in the United States to depict Latin America as a disorderly riotocracy where lazy drunk men and receptive women indulge their childlike impulses; a sort of Roger Rabbit’s Toontown to be entered at one’s peril and that stands in stark contrast with the order and reason that prevail in the north; a chaotic amalgam of banana republics ruled by populist ideologues or iron-fisted caudillos. These stereotypes can be more or less fair, but the assertion that Latinos are favorably predisposed towards political families does not stand scrutiny. Comparatively speaking, dynasties in Latin America are a rare exception, rather than the norm. In fact, Latin America’s tumultuous history has worked against political dynasties. That Juán Perón or Néstor Kirchner were followed by their wives surely has little to do with the political culture of a Latino community that has few and thin ties to Argentina.

Latin America is not like the Middle East, where monarchies still prevail. Ruhollah Khomeini, after bringing down one of the world’s most famous dynasties, the Pahlavis, used to speak derisively of Saudi Arabia for being founded by, ruled by, and named after one single family. It is also clearly different from South Asia, where the Gandhis and the Bhuttos are only better known than a string of political families in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia or Malaysia. If there is one country in the American continent that has proved, again and again, that it is perfectly comfortable, if not enthusiastic, with dynasties, that is the United States. Everyone is familiar with the Clintons, the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Daleys, the Bakers, the Cuomos, the Doles, the Gores, the Tafts, the Rockefellers, the Jacksons, the Fords, the Romneys, and other dynasties in the making, such as the Bidens and the Carters. That is in the last century alone, leaving out the time of John and John Quincy Adams, when a cluster of political families controlled politics and wealth. According to Stephen Hess, there have been 700 families with two or more members of Congress. Currently, ten percent of Congress has a close relative who has also served in the House or Senate. The Frelinghuysens of New Jersey, for example, have put four senators and two representatives in Congress. Name recognition surely counts for something.

Latinos are not bringing their love for dynasties across the border. If anything, their desire to assimilate to the new environment is overriding their natural impulse to be wary of families that hold on to power for too long.

An ancient people insulted

In the midst of all that has occured and caught notice in the last week or so we have overlooked yet another shot across the bow in a centuries-old struggle between ancient peoples with a twined history. As I recently noted in another space, I think that when considering what it is that makes a nation we would do well to also weigh an idea put forward by the humorously paranoiac author Thomas Pynchon in his last novel: "maps begin as dreams, pass through a finite life in the world, and resume as dreams again."

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As Fidel Stands Down, Others Stand Up

Today, the world's attention turned to Cuba, where Fidel Castro retired and was succeeded by his younger -at seventy-six years of age- brother, Raúl. Castro's enemies have a good reason to rejoice. Or maybe not. After all, Fidel outlasted ten American presidents and the collapse of the regime's main ally, the Soviet Union; survived the longest economic embargo in history, several assassination plots, one invasion attempt, and thirteen days of a nuclear missile crisis; and he is willingly stepping down while making sure that power stays in the family and the ideological contours of his revolution are not blurred.

With time, it is likely that his heirs will toy with the free market in a gradual and centrally-planned manner, à la China or Vietnam. But I suspect that it will continue to be safer to criticize Cuba's appalling lack of political freedom than its economic under-performance. After noting that Cuba is outranked in the UN's Human Development Index by Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica, the editors of The Economist wrote, characteristically: "Forget the cigars and the posters: Cubans have had a rotten deal from a miserable regime -and they know it." The statement is incomplete. In the Americas, Cuba is also outranked by the United States, Canada, Barbados, and the Bahamas. And yes, according to the same index, Cuba is better off than the remaining 26 countries in the Americas, including NAFTA's Mexico and Brazil; better off than two EU countries, Romania and Bulgaria; better off than all the other communist, single-party regimes, such as China, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea, and than every non-EU offshoot of the Soviet Union, including Russia and Ukraine; better off, in sum, than 126 countries listed in this ranking.

On the same day but a different island, another Communist was elected president of his country. In Cyprus, Demetris Christophias made history by becoming the first Communist in the history of the European Union to reach the presidency in one of its states. Christophias is the Secretary-General of AKEL, a Marxist-Leninist party, and was labeled by his opponents as the Castro of the Mediterranean. He is, after all, Soviet-educated (Ph.D. in History at Moscow's Academy of Social Sciences), and maintains ties with the Kremlin. The party, AKEL (formerly KKK, or Communist Party of Cyprus), had never before fielded a candidate for presidential elections. No one in Europe seems, however, too worried. Demetris Christophias may do to the 'communist' label what Recep Tayyip Erdogan has done to the 'Islamist' label. If anything, some hope that Christophias will be successful in addressing one of the world's most intractable problems: the division of the island among Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots. Christophias' rejection of the UN's 2004 reunification plan was merely tactical, and his party is more inclined to a federal solution to the island's partition. It will be a hard sell and an improbable journey, but so is everything else.

What a surprise...

It is clearly noticeable that some contributors on this blog feel disappointed by what happened in Serbia today. I am honestly surprised by their reactions considering how deeply the Serbian society is divided on fundamental socio-political issues which date back long before Milosevic came to power. This partition on backward nationalists elements on one side and democratic oriented citizens on the other was further magnified during the last 20 years of political turbulence in the Balkans.

I believe such actions were actually secretly celebrated by those parties who recently lost elections in Serbia. Their argument is that aggression against Western companies and embassies will entail a sharp response from abroad which would further alienate the people in Serbia from the West. In addition, Kosovo’s crisis, evocation of the Kosovo's mythology, and calls for national unity are actually going to serve the purpose of diverting attention from more important domestic issues such as war crimes, economic issues, and origins of “dirty money” for a period to come.

On the other hand, there is an obvious responsibility of the West for the situation in Serbia. The ultimate questions that most of the Serbs would ask their counterparts in the West are: "How would you feel if 15% of your territory is forceably taken away from your country by breaking the international law (U.N. resolution 1244)? How would you feel if your country is bombed for three months because of the so-called humanitarian crisis? How would you feel if every nationality except yours has rights to self-determination?"

Additionally, the E.U., represented by the E.U. High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Mr. Javier Solana, actually put pressure on the Democratic Party to accept Mr. Vojislav Kostunica as the prime minister of Serbia even though he got only 13% of votes on the last parliamentary elections held last year in Serbia. This move kept the common and secret police under the control of nationalists. Moreover, due to a strong U.S. pro-Albanian stand, the so-called talks between the Kosovo and the Serbian leaders were condemned even before they started. Not to mention the U.S. claim of Mr. Milosevic as a "factor of stability and the main peacekeeper in the Balkans" in the mid-1990's as well as the role of the former U.S. ambassador in Serbia, Mr. William Montgomery, in defaming the reputation of the former pro-liberal prime minister of Serbia Mr. Zoran Djindjic.

Finally, I would like to address to Americans who found themselves hurt by seeing the pictures of the U.S. embassy on fire. At the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States ambassador, said he was “outraged” by the attack on the Embassy and would be seeking a unanimous statement today from the 15-member Security Council condemning it. “The government of Serbia has the responsibility under international law to protect diplomatic facilities, particularly embassies.” Now, I would like to quote my friend’s response, a graduate student of the New School at New York, Mr. Rados Piletich to Mr. Khalilzad’s demand. “Responsibility under international law, huh? Like the kind of responsibility when we invaded Iraq without UN Security Council approval? Or maybe the kind of responsibility we took when we decided not to pay Nicaragua one penny of the $17 billion in reparations that the International Court of Justice ordered it to pay for arming, training, and supporting the Contras, and mining the coast off of Nicaragua to prevent international trade? Or, perhaps the same kind of responsibility exhibited by the country that bombed Cambodia from 1969 to 1973, leading to the deaths of scores of thousands of civilians in that country, and preparing the way for the genocidal Khmer Rouge?
Mirror, mirror, on the wall... eyes wide shut."

The Pitiable Serbs

Such an outrageous display of virulent nationalism as we have seen today makes me ashamed for every time I defended the Serbs going all the way back 1991. While I have been careful to balance my position on Kosovo’s independence over the past week, I can no longer hold my tongue. The Serbs who have attacked the US embassy in Belgrade are manifesting a form of nationalism which I can only describe as pitiable.

This once proud nation has fallen behind the curve of history. Such chest-thumping nationalism in the Europe of Regions smacks of medieval backwardness. Let the Kosovars and their lignite mines go. Serbia has other more precious resources to protect. Why preserve the Field of Kosovo? To remember the loss to the Turk? Again, such backward-looking nationalism not befitting the once and future great power of the Balkans.

Why do the Serbs blame America for their loss of Kosovo? Thousands of cascading decisions led the country to this point—no small number of which were made in Belgrade, Brussels, London, and Berlin. Burning the US embassy will do nothing to reverse that long trend line.

I take back my defense of Serbia as more ready to join the EU than Croatia. I take back my defense of Serbia as the victim of a neo-liberal war of attrition in the 1990s. I take back my defense of Serbia as a misunderstood and wronged nation. Those rioters have made it clear that we in the West have often understood Serbia and sometimes Serbia is simply wrong.

Happiness: Location, location, location

“It is time we admitted that there is more to life than money, and it is time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB, that is, general well-being.” These words came not from a hippie throwback or a leftist intellectual, but from David Cameron, leader of the Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition and of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party. Of all the things David Cameron has said in the last years, no one has met as much public approval as this one. Measuring and explaining the happiness of nations is not anymore just the subject of social science research and journalistic interest. It has entered the realm of policy. Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century utilitarian philosopher that argued that the purpose of politics should be about bringing the most happiness to the greatest number of people, would be proud. The United States may be the only country -that I know of- with a constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness, but in Bhutan they take it seriously enough for the king to proclaim Gross National Happiness as the prism that should guide rulings and policy.

It may appear to some as epistemologically flawed, if not utterly bogus, but thousands of psychologists, sociologists, economists and political scientists are in the business of finding the happiness quotient of a given country, comparing it, and unbundling it in search of explanations and, possibly, policy prescriptions. The World Database of Happiness lists almost 8,000 names in its Directory of Happiness Investigators. Apart from a database of happiness research, there is a map of global happiness, competing surveys and indexes ranking the happiness of nations, and passionate debate over their findings.

Interestingly, most try to prove the old adage that money does not buy happiness. The World Values Survey made headlines when it established that the countries with the greatest percentage of people satisfied with their lives were Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, and El Salvador. Although counter-intuitive, this seemed to reinforce conventional wisdom, which long ago accepted that warmer countries are poorer but happier. Scandinavian countries top almost every ranking that matters, uniquely excelling at both creating wealth and distributing it, and finding the balance between efficiency and fairness that big-government advocates long for. But one also associates those societies with alcoholism, wife battery, weather-induced depression, and suicide. Tropical countries, despite poverty and malaria, are often thought of as happy places where people dance and mate on empty stomachs. Other studies point out that the happiness quotient of industrialized countries has not varied much since World War Two, despite a dramatic rise in income. Western nations do not get happier as they get richer. This has important policy implications. If better education, health care, and prosperity do not contribute to the overall level of well-being, why should governments even bother? Why should rich, sad countries help poor, happy countries?

The truth is that most surveys indicate that Swedes, Danes, Swiss, Norwegians, Austrians and Icelanders actually top the overwhelming majority of the happiness rankings. The United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, despite the bad reputation of its gastronomy and climate, do quite well too. In studies that measure SWB (subjective well-being), the effect of poverty and conflict is immediately apparent. Allowing for exceptions, the map of global happiness correlates very strongly with UN data on health and wealth. Whether one looks at happiness surveys or at the United Nations' Human Development Index -which combines GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, life expectancy at birth, and rates of literacy and enrollment in higher education- you will find almost the same countries at the top of the list, and the same countries at the bottom. Romania, Moldova, and other legendary sad places in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, are only rock bottom when poorer, African countries are left out of the picture. Italy is romanticized by tourists and movies as an ideal place, with ideal weather, food, and people, but Italians, appalled by economic under-performance and third-worldly levels of government corruption and instability, are reportedly very gloomy these days. Suicide is not just something that happens to Japanese or Scandinavians for whom material well-being is not enough. It happens, in much larger numbers, to poor cotton farmers in India unable to pay back loans used to buy pesticide.

The happiness debate is not immune to the geography versus culture dilemma. And one can quibble endlessly over how to define and measure well-being or satisfaction, or how to distinguish correlation from causation, but those Scandinavians, at sub-zero temperatures and taxation above fifty percent of income, are actually very happy people after all. I suspect good governance has something to do with it. It has to be either that or the alcohol.