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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

ex may sell, but so do a lot of other vicesvery well, it seems.

Whether your weakness is scotch or soda (or scotch and soda, as it was for Winston Churchill),
international corporationsas well as underworld counterparts dealing in less savory goods
have been doing everything in their power to satisfy your appetite, no matter where you live. In
fact, the farther aeld you are, the better. As developed markets max out their tolerance for indulgences like sugar and booze, companies are increasingly turning their gaze to emerging economies, which by 2030 will push billions of people into a newly expanded global middle classand
trillions of dollars into the coffers of those smart enough to seize the opportunity.
Its no wonder then that Foreign Policys contributors found
name-brand sin in a number of unlikely places. The tiny Taiwanese
islands of Matsu, for example, which nearly became a nuclear ash
point during the Cold War, are now the site of a proposed $8 billion
casino resort. The project, which is the brainchild of a former Las
Vegas Sands exec, is designed to lighten the fattening wallets of the
Chinese, who are forbidden from gambling on the mainland. In the
war-torn jungles of eastern Congo, Primus beerbrewed by global giant Heinekencontinues to ow even to the remotest outposts along
rutted roads punctuated by rebel checkpoints and ersatz tollbooths.
Meanwhile, Johnnie Walkerthe venerable scotch in the square
bottle, found everywhere from Tokyo boardrooms to Dubai barsis
reaching downward, hoping to become the Lowland whisky of lowerborn strivers aspiring to better their lot.
Here at fp, we too have been striving to better ourselvesor at least
the journalism we bring you. We are dramatically expanding our daily
news coveragethis summer several veteran correspondents joined
our teamand we will be publishing more long-form features as well.
In addition, this fall we will roll out a fully redesigned website. The
new ForeignPolicy.com will bring you the same incisive reporting, smart analysis, and on-the-ground
dispatches, but well be hosting a wider array of voices and expanding our treatment of topics from
economics to energy to Asia. Youll nd breathtaking photo essays from corners of the world that others
leave unexplored, as well as sharp infographics and greater interactivity. We will also make it easier for
you to nd your favorite writers and the articles youre most interested in. And, yes, there will soon be
a mobile app that lets you read fp on the go.
Visitors to our website will have already noticed the introduction of our new subscription plan, fp
All Access. Readers can view eight articles each month for free, after which a few dollars per month will
get you unlimited access to fps daily news coverage, features, and analysisas well as our must-read
newsletters, like Morning Brief and Situation Report. Youll also get the print magazine in the mail and
full access to our online archive. If youre a student or professor, you can knock off half the price, and
if youre already a subscriber to the print edition, congratulationsyoure automatically a member of
fp All Access.
We at fp are excited about the coming months. In the meantime, we hope you savor every page of our
vice issue to the fullest. Moderation be damned.
The Editors

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September | October 2013

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CONTENTS
S ep t e m be r | O c to ber 2 01 3

THE GLOBAL BUSINESS OF

VICE

*AND ITS VIRTUES

An FP Special Report

52 Straight Up
How Johnnie Walker conquered the world.
By Afshin Molavi

58 The FP Sindex
From sex to vanity, gluttony to sloth, FP takes
stock of the worlds vices.

60 Make Them Eat Cake

How America is exporting its obesity epidemic.
By John Norris

64 The Snaxis of Evil

Food writer Mark Bittman samples junk food from
Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.
By Justin Rohrlich

66 The Big Bet

Everyone is trying to cash in on Chinas gambling
addiction. But does Beijing have an ace up its sleeve?
By Isaac Stone Fish

71 Fluid Markets
Deep in Congos violent east, Heineken walks a ne
line between selling beer and sustaining a war.
By Jason Miklian and Peer Schouten

76 Cooking in Karachi
The worlds most dangerous megacity is the next
frontier in the global meth trade.
By Taimur Khan
4

Foreign Policy

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10 LETTERS

The United States of Tacos n It Takes

a Village n Ottawa Is No Caracas n
Congo Is Too Big to Fail n Getting
to Equal

19 IN BOX

Opening Gambit: How Lincoln

Shaped Obamas World By Kevin
Peraino n The New New Normal:
Laggard By Mohamed A. El-Erian n
The Things They Carried: The Island
Lobbyist n Geoengineering: A short
history By Ty McCormick n Ideas By
Joshua E. Keating n The Optimist:
Barriers to Entry By Charles Kenny
n Dispatch: The Long Haul By Amie
Ferris-Rotman n Pictured: Burma
Illuminated

THINK AGAIN

42 American Nuclear
Disarmament
By Matthew Kroenig

A smaller atomic arsenal isnt just

wishful thinkingits bad strategy.

IN OTHER WORDS

82 Muse of the Revolution

By Amal Hanano

A Syrian-American writer nds her

voice, with help from Libyas most
famous novelist.

CHRIS MCGRATH/GETTY IMAGES

C O LU M N

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88 And Now for Some

Good News
By David Rothkopf

Despite the headlines, the global

spread of virtue trumps the spread
of vice.
Cover: Illustration by Billy Davis
for fp
September | October 2013

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David J. Rothkopf
CEO & EDITOR AT LARGE

J. Peter Scoblic

Benjamin Pauker

Noah Shachtman

EXECUTIVE EDITOR
ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY

MANAGING EDITOR

EXECUTIVE EDITOR
NEWS

Curtiss Calleo
ACTING CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Rebecca Frankel
SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR
DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR Uri
MIDDLE EAST EDITOR David

Friedman
Kenner
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Joshua E. Keating, Ty McCormick, Isaac Stone Fish
ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Margaret Slattery
ASSISTANT EDITORS Elias Groll, Neha Paliwal, J. Dana Stuster, Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer
RESEARCHERS Park MacDougald, Suchi Mandavilli, Peter Sullivan, Lydia Tomkiw
COPY CHIEF

Preeti Aroon

SENIOR STAFF WRITER Shane Harris

STAFF WRITERS John Hudson, Gordon Lubold,

John Reed

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Daniel Altman, John Arquilla, Peter Bergen, David Bosco, Ian Bremmer,
Rosa Brooks, Christian Caryl, Daniel W. Drezner, Mohamed A. El-Erian, Peter D. Feaver,
David E. Hoffman, William Inboden, Charles Kenny, Christina Larson, Colum Lynch, Marc
Lynch, Aaron David Miller, Thomas E. Ricks, James Traub, Stephen M. Walt, Micah Zenko
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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Tara Vohra
WEB DIRECTOR Tim Showers
WEB DEVELOPER Priya Nannapaneni
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS Deborah Cunningham
VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS Alex Glass
VICE PRESIDENT, COMMUNICATIONS

Jess Dillman

SENIOR ADVISOR, FINANCE Sanjay Suri

VICE PRESIDENT, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Allen

Chin

COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING ASSOCIATE Lauren Agresti

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EDITORIAL BOARD
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Moeen Qureshi, John E. Rielly, Gianni Riotta, Klaus Schwab, Strobe Talbott, Richard H. Ullman, Stephen M. Walt

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Foreign Policy

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THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Kennedy Center

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IMF
State Department
World Bank

U.S. Institute
of Peace

ELLIOTT SCHOOL

National Academy
of Sciences

Executive
Ofce Building

Federal Reserve Board

White House
Treasury Department

OAS

Commerce
Department

wELCOMe To the
NEIGHBORHOOD
GWs Elliott School of International Affairs is just
steps from some of the most inuential U.S., international, and
nongovernmental organizations in the world. Our unique location
in the heart of Washington, D.C. enriches our teaching and
research by giving our students and faculty unparalleled
opportunities to engage with the international leaders who
walk through our doors on a regular basis.
Learn more about our innovative undergraduate and
graduate programs or view some of our superb special
events online at www.elliott.gwu.edu.
Now more than ever, there is no better place to study
global issues than GWs Elliott School of International Affairs.

connected
To the WORLD

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CONTRIBUTORS
A veteran of the international development world, John Norris has worked for ngos,
the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and now the Center for American Progress, traveling everywhere from Africa to the Balkans to South Asia for
his work on human rights, international aid, and emergency relief. In his more
recent trips abroad, Norris has observed a new problem in developing countries:
rising obesity, thanks to aggressive marketing by American junk food companies
that export their fatty and sugary snacks overseasoften with backing from U.S.
trade and agricultural policies. Now, Norris, who is working with a high-level U.N.
panel identifying new international development goals for 2030, says obesity, heart
disease, and other noncommunicable health problems will soon force themselves
onto the global development agenda, right alongside infectious disease, poverty,
and hunger. | 60

A fellow at Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced

International Studies and the New America Foundation,
Afshin Molavi has visited and lived in dozens of emerging-market
countries as a reporter, political risk analyst, and investor
for the World Banks International Finance Corporation. If
theres anything connecting these developing nations, its
what he calls the global aspirational middle classes, and
according to Molavi, the ultimate symbol of their arrival is
a bottle of Johnnie Walker. In recent years Molavi, whose
work focuses on the growing commercial and political ties
between the Middle East and Asia, has seen the Scotch whisky just about everywhere, from Cairo to Dubai, Beijing to
Istanbul. He even recalls visiting an Arab diplomats home
in Bangkok, where an unopened bottle of the premium Blue
Label sat on a mantel alongside a decorative sculpture. | 52
For someone who entered graduate school the month before
9/11, Matthew Kroenigs thesis topicnuclear weaponsmight
seem anachronistic. But sparked by talk of whether al Qaeda
could get its hands on a nuke, Kroenig began examining whether such weapons, so often dismissed as Cold War relics, still
matter. Now a Georgetown University professor who has done
stints at the Pentagon working on Iran and counterterrorism,
Kroenig recently conducted the rst quantitative analysis examining how the size of a countrys nuclear arsenal correlates with
its success in international crises. The results surprised even
himand suggest that disarmament could come with some
alarming consequences. | 42
8

Foreign Policy

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After a decade based across

the Middle East as a foreign
correspondent for Newsweek,
Kevin Peraino decided to look
at American foreign policy
through a historical lens. The
result is his rst book, about
Abraham Lincolns role in
international affairsa topic
that, to Perainos surprise,
remained largely unexplored.
Culling from diplomatic dispatches, diaries, newspapers,
and other primary sources,
Peraino spent four years doing research, from Jerusalem
(where he was then based
as a journalist) to London
to Springeld, Illinois. Now
based in Washington, D.C.,
Peraino says he has caught
the bug and plans to continue to write historical books,
with a new one already in the
works. | 20

PERAINO: GASPER TRINGALE; ALL OTHERS COURTESY OF CONTRIBUTORS

During her nearly two years in Kabul, Reuters reporter

Amie Ferris-Rotman saw life in Afghanistan deteriorate on
almost every levelsecurity threats, entrenched political
corruption, collective malaise among coalition forces
and diplomats, and especially violence against women.
Its a byproduct, she notes, of the withdrawal of U.S. and
international forces from the region. But the massive retrograde logistics operation that she writes about in this
issuebasically, packing up a war and going homealso
has immediate, and more personal, effects. After seeing
how few resources are available to female Afghan journalists trying to cover news in their own country, this fall
Ferris-Rotman begins a Knight Journalism Fellowship
at Stanford University, where she will develop an outreach, training, and mentoring program that she hopes
to launch in the summer of 2014. | 35

WorldMags.net

Whats at stake in Asia?

Micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises make up the vast majority of all businesses in Asia. In the APEC
region, more than 90 percent of businesses are MSMEs, and they employ roughly 60 percent of the workforce.
In ASEAN countries, they account for over 96 percent of enterprises and contribute up to half of each member
states GDP. The success of these businesses drives overall job creation and economic growth across
communities, countries, and the region, contributing to greater stability and prosperity.

THE ASIA FOUNDATION WORKS TO STRENGTHEN THE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT FOR

PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT IN PLACES LIKE BANGLADESH, CAMBODIA, AND
VIETNAM, WHICH IS ESSENTIAL TO EFFICIENT MARKETS AND SUSTAINED GROWTH.

www.asiafoundation.org

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LETTERS

Congo is not a proving ground for old,

toxic ideas conceived in far-ung places.

MVEMBA PHEZO DIZOLELE Page 16

DEFINING

FAILURE

FOREIGN POLICY and

the Fund for Peace
partnered to publish
the Failed States Index
for the ninth time in
our July/August issue.
But the concept of a
failed state remains
as controversial as ever,
and the index once more
provoked heated debate.
The fact that no single
state in #Africa is
considered stable raises
serious questions about
FPs FailedStates Index
@ethuin

The United States of Tacos

If you want to know how misguided Tyler Cowens arguments are in explaining the popularity of Mexican cuisine in
the United States, consider a word that he never uses in his
essay: immigration (The Cookbook Theory of Economics,
July/August 2013). Talking about the rise of margaritas and
moles in the United States without mentioning the immigrants
who brought these marvels to el Norte is like ordering a taco
without the tortilla.
I agree with Cowen that the modern-day ubiquity of Mexican food is helped by large-scale production, whether through
fast-food giants like Taco Bell or through the salsa industry,
whose annual sales have famously topped those of ketchup.
But Cowen ties this triumph to economic development in
Mexico. As I explain in my book, Taco USA: How Mexican
Food Conquered America, Americans, not Mexicans, are the
most enthusiastic acolytes of Mexican food, and it was Americans, including Mexican-Americans, who pioneered the in-

novations that allowed Mexican

food to become the global cuisine it is today. In fact, Mexico
rails against the commodification and appropriation of its culinary heritage. If it were up to
Mexicans, their cuisine wouldnt
be a worldwide phenomenon
but rather something as ossified
as the Tanzanian cookery whose
rareness Cowen laments. Chefs
and food writers like Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy feel the
same way and base their cookbooks on this stuck-in-the-amber
Mexico, so using cookbooks as
a litmus test of a cuisines reach
doesnt speak to its influence
once it leaves its native land.

So apparently #Kenya
ranks above #Syria in
the failed states index.
Can anyone else smell
the BS?
@Nanjala1
The concept of the failed
state has never existed
outside a programme for
western intervention.
Elliot Ross, the
Guardian
The problem with a
Failed States Index is
that there arent enough
truly failed states to have
an index. Also, nobody
agrees what one is.
@texasinafrica

Foreign Policy welcomes letters to the editor. Readers should address their comments to fp.letters@ForeignPolicy.com.
Letters may be edited for length and clarity. For more debate and discussion of our stories, go to ForeignPolicy.com.

10

Foreign Policy

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Thankfully, the American appetite
doesnt hew to such backward thinking.
The ceaseless waves of Mexicans to the
United States over the past century have
kept Americans intrigued with the cuisine
by introducing new items with such regularity that Mexican food is like a sevenlayer bean dip, with the most assimilated
items on the bottom and newer trends on
topeach of them authentically Mexican, each of them eagerly gobbled up by
Americans. Everything we now take for
granted, from guacamole to chili, tamales to Corona beer, was once considered
exotic, even foreign, until immigrants introduced it to los Estados Unidos. Witness the relatively recent success of burritos, a staple of northern Mexican cuisine
that has been in the United States since
the 1950s but that became popular only
after the rise of Chipotle in the 1990s. It
is Americans who decide whether these
newer meals will become commodified,
and it will be American companies, run
by gabachos and Mexicans alike, that
will be the beneficiaries of this decision,
not Mexico.
Finally, Cowen has the state of Mexican food in the United States all wrong.
He says Americans mostly get northern Mexican food, yet the only foodstuffs from northern Mexico that ever
penetrated the United States were burritos, flour tortillas, fajitas, and nachos
important contributions, yes, but they
pale in comparison with what central
and southern Mexico gifted the United
States: enchiladas, tequila, carnitas,
mescal, and so much more. And the
ubiquitous taco, that most iconic of
Mexican meals? It only entered mainstream American cuisine after the Mexican Revolution, brought forth from central Mexico bys, seorimmigrants.

GUSTAVO ARELLANO
Editor, OC Weekly
Costa Mesa, Calif.

with equal facility, one obvious example being

Filipinos. That is the difference we need to
account for.
In addition, Arellano thinks I am mostly
talking about Taco Bell and the like in my
article, when my discussion explicitly takes a
very different tack. The relevant commodification of Mexican food here is the economic
development that occurred in Mexico (largely
throughout the 20th century in squares,
public markets, and restaurants) that was a
prerequisite for carrying the cuisine forward
to other localesexactly my thesis. There are
plenty of dishes from Mexican villages that
have not yet been commodifiedin Mexico
and have had no real chance to cross into the
United States.
Oddly, Arellano portrays Mexicans in
Mexico as ossified and Americans as the
dynamic commodifiers, a gross injustice to
both Mexican culinary creativity and the
relative successes of the Mexican economy in
much of the 20th century. Among other misunderstandings, burritos were popular in the
United States well before Chipotle, which, by
the way, had little of its growth in the 1990s.

It Takes a Village

As the leaders of the Millennium Villages

Project (mvp) in Africa, we were both
amused and frustrated to read Paul Starobins critical portrait of Jeffrey Sachss plan
to end poverty (Does It Take a Village?,
July/August 2013). The jibes come mostly
from a familiar set of academics and critics who, like the author, have neither visited an mvp site nor discussed the project
with the African leaders involved. Starobin did not speak to us or other Africabased mvp coordinators, even though the
projects communications director repeatedly asked him to do so.
This strikes us as an irresponsible way
to report on an African-run project. Our
aim in the Millennium Villages is to ght
poverty and save lives here on this continent. The critics in Washington tell us
to take small steps. But why should we

go slowly in the ght against malaria,

aids, and lack of safe water when these
problems can be solved more quickly
and comprehensively? Before outside
observers tell us once more to wait on
randomized trials of already proven
innovations, let them come here to see
what can be accomplished now.
Already, governments around Africa are embracing the mvp, adopting
its methods, and showing condence in
scaling up the project. Several countries,
for instance, recently accepted a major
nancing package worth tens of millions
of dollars from the Islamic Development
Bank. If Starobin had spoken with African leaders, he would have learned how
the project is helping countries solve major problems by encouraging them to set
national policies that support the poor
and sick. The large-scale distribution of
malaria-ghting bed nets across villages
and the expansion of community health
centers are but two examples.
Eight years ago, the leaders of the
mvp, including Sachs and our colleagues
working in the villages, stated that the
United Nations Millennium Development Goals can be achieved even in the
very poorest hunger hot spots of rural Africa. We disagreed with advice to
tackle these problems in a slow, piecemeal fashion, as if Africa were the subject of a classroom experiment. And we
still do. With the help of the mvp, our
continent is solving its problems through
cutting-edge technology and science,
markets, and government programs
all of which explains why more and
more countries are joining Sachss project. If Foreign Policy had cared to
look at the real situation on the ground,
it would have told its readers the truth.

BELAY BEGASHAW and AMADOU NIANG

Director, Columbia Global Centers, Africa
Nairobi, Kenya
Director, MDG Center West and Central Africa
Dakar, Senegal

Tyler Cowen replies:

Gustavo Arellano mostly gets my argument
wrong and then piles a series of misunderstandings on top. No one doubts the role
of immigrants in transmitting Mexican (and
other) cuisines to the United States and
around the globe; that is merely stating the
obvious, so I chose to focus on other factors.
But there are many immigrants to the United
States who have not transmitted their cuisine

Americans decide whether Mexican dishes

are commodied, and American companies
will be the beneciaries of this, not Mexico.
GUSTAVO ARELLANO

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September | October 2013

11

LETTERS

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As for the claim that I did not talk to Africabased leaders about MVP, that is also not true.
I interviewed a senior Kenyan government
ofcial, Charity Ngilu, who as health minister
worked closely with Jeffrey Sachs to launch
MVP in her country, and she is quoted in the
article. I also interviewed Bright Kanyontore
Rwamirama, a member of Ugandas parliament and a cabinet ofcial who is closely
involved with MVP in his country. In addition,
an Africa-based writer, Sam Rich, visited the
Ruhiira Millennium Village in Uganda and
talked to project leaders there, expressly for
the FOREIGN POLICY article.
It is understandable that Begashaw and
Niang take issue with pointed criticism of
MVP, but they have no basis for saying that
such criticism, as voiced in the article, is
ill-informed.

Paul Starobin replies:

Belay Begashaw and Amadou Niang claim
that my articles criticism of the Millennium
Villages Project comes mostly from academics who have never visited a single MVP site.
That is simply not true. Economist Edward
Miguel at the University of California, Berkeley,
and Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global
Development, both of whom are quoted in the

article as MVP critics, have made site visits

to MVP villages and have written about their
ndings. Miguel, in a chapter of his 2008
co-authored book, Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations,
drew on his visit the previous year to the Sauri
Millennium Village in Kenya, and Birdsall wrote
in a 2012 blog post about her visit to the
Koraro Millennium Village in Ethiopia.

Promoting
Understanding
of Russia
Alfa-Bank and Cultural Vistas are pleased to
announce a call for applications for the Alfa Fellowship
Programs 2014-2015 Fellows. Now celebrating its
tenth year, the Alfa Fellowship Program is an 11-month
professional-level initiative designed to foster a new
generation of American and British leaders with
meaningful professional experience in Russia.
The Alfa Fellowship begins with language training in the
U.S. or U.K., followed by a language course in Moscow.
Throughout the summer and into the fall, Alfa Fellows
attend a seminar program with key public and private
sector ofcials to discuss current issues facing Russia.
Fellows then work at prominent organizations in Russia,
including private companies, media outlets, think tanks,
and foundations.
Eligible candidates must have a graduate degree
and professional experience in business, economics,
journalism, law, public policy or a related feld. Russian
language profciency is preferred, though not required
at the time of application. The Fellowship includes a
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program-related travel costs, and insurance.

Applications must be
received no later than
December 1.
Program details and the
online application can be
found at:
www.culturalvistas.org/alfa
For more information,
please contact:
Cultural Vistas
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440 Park Avenue South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: (212) 497-3510
Fax: (212) 497-3587
alfa@culturalvistas.org
www.culturalvistas.org/alfa

Ottawa Is No Caracas

I wish I could turn a phrase like Andrew Nikiforuk, who makes the case
for Canada as a rogue petrostate
(Oh, Canada, July/August 2013).
No, you are not misreading thatit
is Canada he compares to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Instead, I have to
rely on evidence, and unfortunately,
the evidence in Nikiforuks case is far
from convincing.
Canada has not bet its entire economy on resource industriesfar from
it. In fact, the share of gdp from oil,
natural gas, and mining has, with a
few interruptions, largely decreased
since the 1960s. In April 2007 (the
earliest date for which the Canadian
government provides a direct comparison to current economic gures), oil,
gas, and mining collectively accounted for 8.34 percent of gdp. In April
2013, that number was 8.30 percent.
Nikiforuk would have you believe
that Canadas oil sands petroproject
has led to a rapid increase in economic dependence on unconventional oil.
Hes right in a sense: Dependence has
increased 40 percent since 2007but
from just 1.3 percent to just 1.8 percent of gdp. The share of Canadians
working directly in mining, oil, and
gas has also increased, from 1.1 percent of employment a decade ago to
1.5 percent today. Even if oil and gas
production were to increase drastically to account for half of export revenues, more than a fth of gdp, and

OJSC Alfa-Bank is incorporated, focused and based in Russia, and is not afliated with U.S.-based Alfa Insurance.

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WorldMags.net
a quarter of government revenue, that
would put Canada on par with Norway, which could hardly be called a
petrostate in the pejorative sense.
Nikiforuk suggests that these small
increases, like a canary in a coal mine,
are but a preview of a disastrous future for Canada, carved out by policy
changes intended to ease access to the
resources driving this dependence.
Some laws have done so, but to focus
on them alone is to ignore many recent
decisions that have done just the opposite. For example, the federal government has curbed tax incentives for oil
and gas companies, placed further limits on asset sales to foreign companies
(including those from China), and refused, despite heavy lobbying from the
oil industry, to give favorable tax treatment to liqueed natural gas plants.
Alberta, home to Canadas oil sands,
has signicantly increased royalty rates
and even introduced a carbon-pricing
regime. These changes cost the industry
and those who invest in it.
Canadians could be forgiven for believing industry and government rhet-

Canadians should scrutinize their national

energy policies, but that scrutiny must focus
more on the evidence and less on the noise.
ANDREW LEACH

oric and concluding that their economy is or will be dominated by resource

development. But is Canada a petrostate? Hardly. The national economy
is less dependent on resource extraction today than it has been at almost
any time in the last 50 years, and that
trend is likely to continue. Canadians
should scrutinize their national energy
and environmental policies, particularly with regard to the fast-growing
oil sands sector, but that scrutiny must
focus more on the evidence and less on
the noise.

ANDREW LEACH
Associate Professor
Alberta School of Business
Edmonton, Alberta

Andrew Nikiforuk replies:

Andrew Leach not only misses the point of
my article but avoids the central issue: the
corrosive inuence of oil revenue on the
political character of oil-exporting countries.
Petrostates occupy a continuum of
dysfunction that includes everything from
Vladimir Putins Russia to Sarah Palins
Alaska. And yes, Norway is a petrostate,
too. Canada, which now supplies the
United States with 28 percent of its oil,
most closely resembles Britain during its
ugly foray into its North Sea reserves:
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used the
proceeds from offshore petroleum not only
to fund a right-wing political revolution,
but also to create a charming myth of
economic well-being based on the rapid
spending of oil wealth.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
a genuine petrolista, has followed in




 



  

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LETTERS

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Congo Is Too
Big to Fail

Thatchers footsteps and is spending oil

dollars to socially re-engineer Canada in his
own frightful image. Like an untidy tin-pot
regime, his government offers no scal plan
to deal with oil wealth, no coherent energy
plan, and no realistic targets on climate
change. You know you live in a petrostate

when the federal government obsessively

talks about pipelines and bitumen as the
countrys economic engineor when
status quo economists such as Leach try to
minimize the political side effects of resource
dependence with numbers that cant capture
the dysfunction now undoing Canada.

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For the past four years, political scientists Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills
have been pushing the idea that breaking up the Democratic Republic of
the Congo into smaller states would
make the country easier to govern.
Its an argument Herbst and Mills
an American and a South African, respectivelyhave repeatedly voiced in
Foreign Policy. See: There Is No
Congo (March 18, 2009), Time to
End the Congo Charade (Aug. 14,
2009), and most recently, The Invisible State, in the July/August 2013 issue. But as tempting as the Balkanization of Congo may be, its intellectual
foundation stands on lazy scholarship
and a misreading of Congos history
and people.
This approach is not new. It has been
tested in the past, and it failed. During
the secession movements of the 1960s,
the country became a mosaic of ma-

SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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jorities and minorities. The secessionist, genocidal war that erupted in the
regions of Katanga and South Kasai
following their decisions to break off
from Congo proper in 1960 resulted in
an estimated 1 million deaths in four
years. Despite their mineral wealth,
neither region became a model of development, and today both should chasten
the idea of Congos breakup as a road
map to peace.
And consider the latest in a long
line of attempts to partition Congo:
the Rwandan-backed M23 rebellion.
Despite an aggressive public relations
campaign and impressive logistical
and political support, reportedly from
both Rwanda and Uganda, the monoethnic, Tutsi-supported initiative has
failed to rally Congolese support at
the local and national levels. In 2012,
M23s emergence caused thousands to
protest around the country. But the
protesters werent rallying in support
of M23; many were denouncing it as
another sham to break up the country.
Congo belongs to a sovereign people
who are proud of their nation and its
history, culture, and wealth. Taken in
full measure, Congos ethnic groups,
large and small, live peacefully together.
But a new crop of non-Congolese analysts peddles a Conrad-esque narrative
that portrays Congo as a primitive land
pulled straight from Heart of Darkness
and casts the Congolese people as incapable of determining their own destiny.
These analysts emphasize local conict,
militias, state failure, sexual violence,
and poverty. Their essays rarely mention Congos strong civil society and
resourceful population, instead relying
on surveys and rankings like Foreign
Policys Failed States Index. But Congo is not a string of statistics, and no
country can be reduced to such numbers. In fact, it is impossible to get a
meaningful reading of developments in
Congo through indices and surveys due
to lack of accurate data.
There is no easy solution to Congos
problems, and no one understands these
challenges better than the Congolese.
But each crisis has made Congo stronger and better and brings the Congolese
together as a nation. Analysts with no
greater stake in Congo than their careers ought to be mindful of the ramications of the narrative and solutions

HEADS UP, MR. PRESIDENT!

In our July/August cover story, Can Silicon Valley Save the World?, Charles
Kenny and Justin Sandefur targeted tech entrepreneurs who are wildly overoptimistic about what their gadgets can accomplish in the worlds poorest
places. But barely a week after the article was published, none other than U.S.
President Barack Obama was touting just such a gadgetin fact, the primary
one Kenny and Sandefur called out in their article.
On a midsummer trip through Africa to promote business development,
Obama took time in Tanzania to play with an innovative soccer ballthe
Soccketthat can power an led light for three hours after being kicked
around for 30 minutes. Play a match and then plug the light into the balls
socket. Sounds simple, right? Not according to Kenny and Sandefur, who say
Socckets are just the type of catchy techno-solution Silicon Valley latches onto
without rst testing it in the marketplace. As Kenny wrote in a blog post after
the presidents Soccket session, Its a neat piece of tech, and kudos to the
Harvard students who designed it, but it is a very expensive and inecient way
to deliver light to o-grid households.
Better alternatives, the duo argued, are eorts like the U.S. Agency for International Development program that empirically tests poverty-ghting projects before it fully funds them. But that approach has its own complications,
as Reuters columnist Felix Salmon argued in a blog post responding to Kenny
and Sandefur. Remember that even in carefully-designed peer-reviewed settings, most published research ndings are false, Salmon wrote. And when
youre out in the eld, trying to create a replicable testwhich of necessity will
involve withholding aid from a control group of people who likely need it
becomes extremely fraught on both a practical and a moral level.

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September | October 2013

15

LETTERS

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The ongoing struggle for gender equality
in Norway will no doubt occur in the upper
echelons of the economy.
INGA MARTE THORKILDSEN

they promote. Congo, my home country, is not the property of an amorphous

international community. Neither is it a
proving ground for old, toxic ideas conceived in far-ung places.

MVEMBA PHEZO DIZOLELE

Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Palo Alto, Calif.
Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills reply:
It is notable that some Congolese are so
attached to a country and state that has
treated them so badly. It is even more
remarkable that in the 21st century,
when faced with endemic, often state-led
violence against the population and a loss
of life of world war proportions, all this is
apparently deemed an inevitable and acceptable part of a nation nding its feet.
There is little empiricism and considerable
coldheartedness in believing that each
crisis has made Congo stronger and better
and brings the Congolese together as a nation in the face of such misery and death.
Dismissing as unreliable the statistics
available to describe Congos plight is in
itself a reection of the scale of Congos
governance challenge.
Our article did not call for the
Balkanization or breakup of Congo, a
typically knee-jerk accusation of those
responding to external critiques. Defense
of the Congolese status quo based on
reverting to Heart of Darkness symbolism
is as crude and off the mark as it is
inappropriate. We argue that, if violence
and governance are any indication,
international efforts to assist Congo have
done very poorlyand at great cost. The
same could be said for attempts to govern
the countrys vast territory from Kinshasa.
We think that Congos fate should not
be determined by the international
communitys refusal to contemplate
alternatives to the current government.
Congos fate will not hinge on what that
community thinks from the safety of
Brussels, Washington, Johannesburg,

16

Foreign Policy

or Palo Alto, but on how Congolese in

Kinshasa, Bukavu, Lubumbashi, Kisangani,
and elsewhere design a better system for
their own citizens. To get there, Congolese
should be given the political space to
imagine what would be best for themselves.

Getting to Equal

An overarching goal of Norways

gender policies is to allow everyone
to participate in society on the same
footing. That means creating a society
absent of violence, discrimination, and
social exclusion. And it means providing the same opportunities for men
and women to achieve equalitythe
freedom of choice.
While Norway regularly ranks highly
on measures of gender equality, Kay Hymowitz argues that, in fact, many challenges remain for working women there,
compared with the United States (Think
Again: Working Women, July/August
2013). Although Norway has seen successes, history has taught us an important
lesson: Equality doesnt come easy.

Gender equality requires basic legislation, structures for enforcement,

social security schemes, child-care provisions, and a commitment to reproductive rights. In Norway we have all
these elements in place. The government
also provides paid parental leave, child
benets, and full coverage of early child
care. In fact, Norway has one of the
worlds most extensive paid parentalleave schemes49 weeks with 100
percent reimbursement up to a certain
level, including 14 weeks reserved specically for the childs father. I am convinced that the parental-benet scheme
strengthens mothers ability to remain
in the workforce and fathers ability to
care for their kids, which in turn benets the children. True, women continue
to take the main responsibility for family care in Norway. But the number of
fathers who have made use of the paternity quota has skyrocketed, from only
2 percent when the option was introduced in 1993 to about 90 percent today. In the long term, hopefully mothers
and fathers will share the unpaid work
of child care more equally.
The ongoing struggle for gender equality in Norway will no doubt occur in the
workplace and the upper echelons of the
economy. Norway faces a highly segregated labor market in which women tend
to choose professions within health care,
teaching, and public service, which pay
lower wages than jobs in high-tech industries, for instance. Norwegian women also work more in part-time positions
than men do, and among top management positions in the corporate sector,
women remain in the minority. Continuing our commitment to gender equality,
my government recently submitted to
parliament a white paper on the status of
gender equality, including a strategy to
strengthen cooperation among employees, employers, and public authorities,
as well as measures to prevent sexual harassment in workplaces.
Neither women nor men should be
forced to choose between family life
and careers. They should have both,
and our policies must facilitate such
freedom of choice.

INGA MARTE THORKILDSEN

Minister of Children, Equality
and Social Inclusion
Oslo, Norway

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WorldMags.net

During my studies, I interacted with

senior ofcers from the US armed forces,

leading gures in the UN and senior

managers from NGOs. This has enabled
me to gain a unique insight from
some of the most important players in
international relations.

~ Danilo Zimbres, Class of 2012

Brazilian Vice-Consul in
Frankfurt am Main

Because the World is Subject to Change

Earn Your Master of Arts in Diplomacy Online

Understanding and insight are crucial to foreign relations and global business. Perspective on
globalization and knowledge of cross cultural issues will differentiate the leaders and innovators
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Colleges, Inc.,through its Commission on Institutions of Higher Education.

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WorldMags.net

30 Years of

Democracy & Economic Reform

Te Center for International Private Enterprise

www.CIPE.org

Celebrating 30 Years
as part of the
National Endowment for Democracy,
working with the private sector to
strengthen democracies that deliver.
An afliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

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WorldMags.net
IDEAS PSYCH THE VOTE

U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY HMC JOSH IVES; SIM CHI YIN/VII; GETTY IMAGES;
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Brawny biceps and four

other hidden motivators
at the polls | 30

RETURN TO
SENDER
How to pack
up Americas
longest war. | 35

ANTHROPOLOGY
OF AN IDEA

CAN CLIMATE HACKERS

STOP GLOBAL
WARMING? | 28

OPENING GAMBIT

ABE AND BARRY TAKE

ON THE WORLD | 20

PICTURED

DAWNS EARLY
LIGHT IN BURMA | 40

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IN
BOX

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Canadas federal debtits highest in history.

OPENING GAMBIT | BY KEVIN PERAINO

ne day during the Civil War, a group of men arrived at the

White House demanding to see Abraham Lincoln. They
were determined, they told the U.S. president, to get their
man appointed as a diplomat in the Sandwich Islands
modern-day Hawaii. After making their case on merit,
one of the men added earnestly that their nominee was
in poor health and that the balmy island weather would
do him good. Lincoln wasnt buying it. Gentlemen, he said
before sending them on their way, I am sorry to say that there
are eight other applicants for that place, and they are all sicker
than your man.
The mid-19th century diplomatic corps was indeed a motley
bunch. There is hardly a court in Europe which has not had
some specimen of the American character in its worst forma
sot, or rake, or swindler, observed the New York World as Lincoln began his rst term. Lincoln himself had never been abroad
and spoke only enough German to court immigrant voters. In

20

Foreign Policy

his early days in the White House, he left foreign envoys unimpressed. His conversation consists of vulgar anecdotes at which
he himself laughs uproariously, the Dutch ambassador griped.
Lincoln, at least on some level, shared the diplomats concerns.
I dont know anything about diplomacy, he told one acquaintance as he took ofce. I will be very apt to make blunders.
Even after a century and a half of mythmaking, Lincoln is not
often remembered as a great foreign-policy president. Yet he ultimately passed the most critical foreign-policy test of the Civil
War: He avoided European intervention on the side of the Confederacya development that could have irrevocably shattered
the Union. In the process, he proved that a popularly elected
government could hold its own on the world stage during an
acute crisis. (Alexis de Tocqueville, for one, was convinced that
democracies were decidedly inferior when it came to handling
foreign affairs.) All the while, Lincoln and his Republican Party
worked assiduously to build a centralized nationa critical

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ILLUSTRATION BY KENNETH NEWBAKER

TAR SANDS IN ALBERTA. PHOTO BY VERONIQUE

DE VIGUERIE/GETTY IMAGES

How Lincoln Shaped Obamas World

U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

WorldMags.net
had been eroding U.S. power. Todays multipolar world of
prerequisite to the United States rise to power. Perhaps most
competing countries with vastly divergent interests looks
importantly, the Civil War forced Lincoln not only to rearrange
not all that different from the one that Lincoln faced. Such
the American diplomatic toolbox, but also to nd a workable
a world demands reasoned calculationnot self-righteous
middle ground between his universal moralism and the harsh
crusades. For most of its history, the United States was in
reality of the world around him.
fact a nation among others, not a preponderate superpowIt is fun but futile to wonder what Lincoln would have made
er, notes the dean of the realist school, Henry Kissinger.
of Syria, or Edward Snowden, or drones. Pundits have spilled
The era before the American century, he has argued, may
gallons of ink debating whether President Barack Obama is a
well be a more accurate predictor of what is to come.
Lincolnian gure. Yet such speculation largely misses the point.
Like ours, the 19th century was an information age, an
Obama, appealing to the idealism of an interconnected world
era of rapid liberalization and globalization. Steamships had
yet simultaneously constrained by the realities of the internacut the Atlantic passage to a little over a week, and telegraph
tional power grid, is operating on a globe that Lincoln helped
workers feverishly strung copper lines across continents and
shape. If the two men share similarities of temperament and
below the oceans. Driven by the invention of the steamcharacter, it is partly because a particular style of stolid forpowered press, American periodicals exploded in number from
bearance suited global politics in Lincolns era just as it does
850 in 1828 to more than 4,000 by the eve of the Civil War.
our own.
There has never been an age so completely enthralled by
In the wake of the Crimean War, which ended just a few years
newspapers as this, Lincolns personal secretary, John Hay,
before Lincoln became president, international politics evolved
observed in the fall of 1861. Karl
into a brutal competition for
Obama, appealing to idealism yet constrained Marx, a contemporary of Lincoln
power and resources. (A German
and himself a journalist, marveled
writer coined the term Realpolitik
by international forces, is operating on a
at the sheet lightning of the daily
to describe the phenomenon.) By
globe that Lincoln helped shape.
press and the other immensely
the mid-19th century, the world
facilitated means of communication. National differences,
was dominated by powerful, self-interested warriors. Britains
Marx believed, were daily more and more vanishing.
foreign policy was directed by Lord Palmerston, its shrewd, ruthThe new technologies revolutionized the practice of foreign
less prime minister. Dubbed Lord Pumicestone for his abrasive
affairs. Diplomacy has so few secrets nowadays, lamented
demeanor, Palmerston was perhaps best known for declaring
French Empress Eugnie as she tried to stay ahead of events.
that Britain had no eternal friendsonly national interests. The
(The 19th-century version of leaker Snowden was the acerbic
European continents leaders were no more charming. In Prussia,
Polish Count Adam Gurowski, who worked at the U.S. State
Otto von Bismarck saw Europes future emerging from the interDepartment and published his candid diary at the height of the
play of blood and iron. Foreign policy, he said, was the art of
Civil War.) The advances in communications, historian Daniel
the possible, the science of the relative. (Frances Napoleon iii
Walker Howe notes, certainly rivaled, and probably exceeded
was less competent, but no more warm and fuzzy. French writer
in importance, those of the revolutionary information highway
Victor Hugo described the emperor as a man of middle height,
of our own lifetimes. The same proliferating media empowered
cold, pale, slow, who looks as if he were not quite awake and
all types of preachers and reformers, lling the globe with a cawho was esteemed by women who want to become prostitutes
cophony of moral (and often self-righteous) appeals.
and by men who want to become prefects.)
In this changing world, Lincoln lifted a global megaphone.
Lincoln, too, could be cold and ruthless. He was better suited
By exploiting the newspaper culture and innovations like the
to the age of great-power politics than is often assumed. An avid
daguerreotype, he anticipated President Theodore Roosevelts
chess player, he was steeped in the rational philosophy and pobully pulpit by a generation. When the Unions blockade of the
litical economy of Enlightenment thinkers, and as a young poliConfederacy resulted in cotton shortages across the Atlantic,
tician, he gloried reasoncold, calculating, unimpassioned
Lincoln crafted messages designed explicitly for the consumpreason as necessary for peace and order. Lincoln, said his fortion of starving European mill workers, in the hopes of discourmer law partner, William Herndon, was a realist as opposed to
aging foreign intervention in the Civil War. The Emancipation
an idealist. He viewed the world without illusion. The future
Proclamation itself was partially a plea for propresidents mind crushed the unreal, the inexact, the hollow,
gressive European sympathies. Secretary
and the sham, Herndon recalled. Everything came to
of State William Henry Seward also
him in its precise shape and color.
seized the new tools of diplomacy,
Modern realists see strong similarities bepublishing his ofcial dispatches
tween our own time and the 19th-century
for their public relations value.
age of great powers. The post-Cold War
Yet for all the appeals that
landscape that left America as the
Lincoln and Seward made
worlds sole superpower no longer
to American soft power,
exists. Even before the recent credit
they were also driven by
crunch and stock market crash, emerga respect for the material
ing nations such as China and India

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September | October 2013

21

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forces that were reshaping the planet. The market

revolution, beginning in the
early 19th century, had produced
a sea change in the way some statesmen viewed international relations. For millennia, national strength had been measured in terms of military
capabilitiesby the size of armies, the quantity of frigates,
the courage of generals, the morale of troops. By Lincolns
presidency, at least some leaders, particularly in the United
States and Britain, had come to view power primarily in
economic terms. Access to banks, capital, and international
markets was a better predictor of future strength than the
quantity of guns and soldiers, the thinking went. Lincoln and
Seward were students of this Hamiltonian school of foreign
policy, as writer Walter Russell Mead has labeled it. Economic forcesnot simply cavalry and cannonwould ultimately
boost the United States to world power. Such thinking, Mead
observes, amounted to a radical innovation in the world of
great-power diplomacy.
Seward tended to evangelize commercial expansion more
loudly and aggressively than Lincoln. (One-hundred-fty years
before the pivot to Asia, Lincolns secretary of state was already salivating over export markets located beyond the Pacic Ocean.) Lincoln more often stressed the moral perils of
human bondage in his public remarks; he relentlessly deed
expansionists when they aimed to spread slavery. Still, these
were largely differences of rhetorical emphasis. For much of
his political career Lincoln was actually focused primarily
on issues of economic development. Like many of his fellow
Whigs, he was also a strong supporter of Americas burgeoning
navy. He considered it a short leap between promoting commerce at home and protecting it with gunboats on the high
seas: The driving [of] a pirate from the track of commerce on
the broad ocean, and the removing [of] a snag from its more
narrow path in the Mississippi river, can not, I think, be distinguished in principle. Each is done to save life and property,
and for nothing else.
There is, then, a natural tension embedded in Lincolnian foreign policyone that resonates in the corridors of the White
House to this day. The Civil Wars outcome left the reunited nation energized by both its material strength and its moral selfassurance (or what critics like Edmund Wilson later derided
as its insufferable moral attitudes). Lincoln, on one level,
embraced that idealism. I hate [slavery], he told one Peoria,
Illinois, audience years before he became president, because
it deprives our republican example of its just inuence in the
worldenables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocritescauses the real friends of
freedom to doubt our sincerity. Lincolns later justication
of the Civil War in his Gettysburg Address also rang with
reformist overtones. Only through a cleansing new birth of
freedom, he declared, would the United States take its rightful place on the world stage.
Yet on his best days and at his most mature, Lincoln tempered his moralism with an awareness of the dangers of self-

22

Foreign Policy

righteousness. Reinhold Niebuhr,

a favorite theologian of Obama,
admired the way Lincolns second
inaugural speech put the enemy
into the same category of ambiguity
as the nation to which his life was committed. While many of his compatriots crowed about regenerating
the world or taking it by storm, Lincoln took a more measured,
pragmatic approach. As a young congressman in the 1840s, he
had questioned the reasons for going to war with Mexiconot
entirely unlike the young Senator Obama would do regarding
Iraq more than 150 years later. Did Mr. Lincoln rule himself by
the head or heart? Herndon, the presidents former law partner,
once asked rhetorically. He was great in the head and ruled &
lived there. Lincolns sense of human frailty usually prevented
his democratic sympathies from sounding sententious.
U.S. foreign policy remains riven by this identity crisis.
The mercurial nature of the American approach to diplomacy, the late Sen. William Fulbright observed, is not an accident but an expression of two distinct sides of the American
character. Both are characterized by a kind of moralism,
but one is the morality of decent instincts tempered by
the knowledge of human imperfection and the other is the
morality of absolute self-assurance fired by the crusading
spirit. In our own era, with the limits of American power
on display from Damascus to Pyongyang, the knowledge of
human imperfection tends to predominate. (Perhaps thats
also why, with human imperfection on such grand display
in Congress, Obama has chosen to resist its calls for more
decisive and aggressive action.)
But for Lincoln, that knowledge led, most importantly,
to patiencewhat Hay, his personal secretary, once called
one of the cardinal elements of Lincolns character. A
lifelong fatalist, the president often felt as though he were
being buffeted by powerful winds that he could not fully
resist. I claim not to have controlled events, Lincoln once
explained, but confess plainly that events have controlled
me. Sometimes that worldview inspired hopelessness and
melancholy. At other times, it brought equanimity and longterm thinking.
Michael Burlingame, the great Lincoln biographer, has
compared the presidents fatalism to the attitude expressed in
Niebuhrs Serenity Prayerthat favorite mantra of 12-step
programs: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and
the wisdom to know the difference. In international affairs, where major shifts in the balance of power are often
the product of vast, impersonal forces, the message makes a
lot of sense. Lincoln ultimately endured both the designs of
great-power politicians and the dizzying change of a globalizing world. Obama will too, but a prayer for serenity in the
meantime would certainly not hurt.
Kevin Peraino is author of Lincoln in the World: The Making of a
Statesman and the Dawn of American Power, forthcoming from
Crown in October, from which this article is adapted.

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U.S. AIR FORCE

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THE L IONEL G ELBER
P R I Z E

ThE 2014 lionEl GElbEr PrizE

Ca l l for s u b m i s s i o n s
The lionel Gelber Prize was founded in 1989 by Canadian diplomat lionel Gelber. The Prize is
a literary award for the worlds best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to
deepen public debate on significant international issues. a prize of $15,000 CDn is awarded to the
winner. The award is presented annually by The lionel Gelber Foundation, in partnership with
Foreign Policy Magazine and the munk school of Global affairs at the university of Toronto.
To be eligible for the 2014 lionel Gelber Prize, books must be published between 1 January 2013
and 31 December 2013. The deadline for submissions is 31 october 2013. manuscripts to be
published between 31 october and 31 December 2013 may be submitted in galley form. a $50 CDn
handling fee is required per entry. Please make all cheques payable to the university of Toronto.
Complete rules of eligibility are available on our website at www.utoronto.ca/munk/gelber.
The winner of the 2013 lionel Gelber Prize is Chrystia Freeland, for her book Plutocrats: The
Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, published by Doubleday
Canada and The Penguin Press.
For more information contact:
Prize manager, the lionel Gelber Prize
munk school of Global affairs,
at Trinity College, university of Toronto
1 Devonshire Place
Toronto, ontario, Canada m5s 3K7
Telephone: (416) 946-8901
Fax: (416) 946-8915
Email: gelberprize.munk@utoronto.ca
Website: www.utoronto.ca/munk/gelber

THE L IONEL G ELBER

FOUNDATION

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THE NEW NEW NORMAL | BY MOHAMED A. EL-ERIAN

Laggard

s the worlds power brokerswell, ministers and central bankers from 188 countriesgather in October for
the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund,
they will again be confronted by evidence that the imf
is still in need of proper reform. This time, the evidence
comes not only in the form of continued global economic
malaise and nancial instability, but the imfs brutally
honest self-evaluation of its role in the insufcient Greek bailout (and, by implication, its involvement in other European
countries). On the heels of this disappointing performance, one
thing is clear: The imf is still stuck in the last century.
Nearly 70 years ago, the imf was created for what remains
a good and valid reason. Emerging from a world war that had
been fueled by a global depression, beggar-thy-neighbor policies, and inadequate economic coordination, visionary leaders
recognized that a well-functioning global economy requires a
strong, multilateral institution empowered to intervene and rescue countries from disaster.
On paper, the imf is well-equipped for the job. It commands
a virtually universal international membership. It has a highly
talented staff and a sizable budget. Its Articles of Agreement

24

Foreign Policy

give it unique and direct access to policymakers from individual

countries. And its executive board provides a condential forum for frank multilateral discussions and collective decisionmaking. But it is hamstrung by its masters in Europe over political squabbles and is not nearly representative of the shift south
and east in global economic power.
It is far from obvious that sufcient steps will be taken
to make the imf more effective. Despite the obvious, urgent
need, ofcials are still unwilling or unable to pursue the comprehensive revamp that is so critical to the global economys
well-being.
Five years after the nancial crisis that ravaged Western
and emerging countries and pushed the world to the edge of a
depression, the global economy is struggling again. Growth is
anemic, alarmingly high pockets of unemployment persist, and
social unrest is on the rise from the Middle East to Europe to
Latin America. To make things worse, economic disappointments are no longer limited to weaker countries. Whether it
is at growth in Germany, Chinas slowing economy, or lesspositive news from recently booming economies such as Brazil
and Turkey, even the strong are feeling the malaise.

WorldMags.net

SEBASTIEN PIRLET/REUTERS

The IMF is ofering 20th-century solutions for a 21st-century economy.

WorldMags.net
Global nance is also increasingly vulnerable. Despite many
new regulatory reforms to make the system stronger and safer,
discomforting instability has returned to markets. Rather than
base investment and resource-allocation decisions on sound,
fundamental analysis, too many investors rely overwhelmingly on the articial support they receive from the experimental
policies pursued by Western central banks. No wonder the U.S.
Federal Reserves mere mention a few months ago that it might
reduce its monthly securities purchases led to dizzying asset
price drops, disrupted markets, and panic. These wild gyrations severely complicate policymaking around the world, adding to the headwinds facing growth and job creation.
Yet this is the type of world for which the imfs founding fathersparticularly British economist John Maynard
Keynes and his American counterpart, Harry White
created the institution. At minimum, the imf was built to act
as an effective, decisive crisis manager; more
ambitiously, it was to serve as a global police
force to prevent the emergence or persistence
of large imbalances that could imperil the economic and nancial well-being of countries,
including those behaving responsibly.

Meanwhile, emerging economies seethefrustrated by Europes dominance of the imf and, more generally, by an institution that still seems stuck in the 1970s. Yet no one really wants
to lead the reform movement, especially as this would involve
locking horns with some of the developed worlds big bulls (or,
perhaps, bears these days). Brazil has, more than once, accompanied its private advocacy for more equitable representation with
bold public statements. But to no avail.
Leadership on this urgent matter couldand shouldcome
from within the imf itself. Yet Christine Lagarde, the imfs wellliked and charismatic managing director, has essentially punted
on this issue. Rather than signal a steadfast willingness to pursue
reforms and take on Europes angry, misguided reactions to criticism, she has reverted to diplospeak, noting the imfs very unusual and very exceptional relationship with European institutions.
We shouldnt criticize her too muchit is not easy to bite the
hand that feeds you. In a selection process that
continues to place geography well ahead of merit and inclusiveness, Lagarde owes her appointment to European politicians. And long gone
are the days when these politicians would pick
an experienced technocrat such as the highly respected Jacques de Larosire or Michel Camdessus. Instead, since 2004, Europe has opted for
n practice, however, the imfs contribupolitical personalities for a job seen as a steption to a more stable and prosperous globping stone to presidencies and prime ministeral economy continues to be undermined by
Unsurprisingly,
ships at home.
long-standing structural and governance
Greece is still
This leaves only one player with the power to
decits. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer
struggling mightily
turn the tables: the United States. As the worlds
today than in the courageous report that
most powerful economy, the United States has
the imf has prepared on its involvement
three years and
the largest voting share of any country at the
and failures in the rst Greek bailout.
hundreds of billions
imf (16.8 percent). And it has been periodically
By the imfs own admission, the institution
of dollars later.
dismayed, if not irritated, by how Europe has
allowed itself to be overly inuencedsome
handled its nancial crisis.
would say outright bulliedby some of its
But Washington cannot leador even coordinatea deep,
partners (such as the European Commission) in supporting policomprehensive reform of the imf. In normal times, most Americies that were inadequately designed and whose implementation
can politicians are highly skeptical about the role, cost, and efwas insufciently owned by Greece. Specically, the imf ignored
fectiveness of multilateral institutions. And given todays polarits own assessment of nancial viability that pointed to the need
ized and dysfunctional Congress (not to mention many of its
for an early restructuring of Greek debt. It lent into a program
members poor grasp of what the imf does), any attempt by
that was not well-enough nanced, and its understanding of the
President Barack Obamas administration to rejigger the imfs
countrys growth and debt dynamics proved incomplete.
makeup could easily be misconstrued as selling out Americas
Unsurprisingly, Greece is still struggling mightily three years
European allies to less-reliable developing countries.
and hundreds of billions of dollars later, after a huge bailout opYes, the world urgently needs a more effective imf that can
eration and massive austerity program. Anywhere else, such a
reduce the global imbalances that undermine growth and jobs
costly, visible failure would prompt governing boards to conduct
in so many countries. But dont look to the upcoming gatherserious discussions and pursue reforms. Not at the imf.
ings in Washington to deliver the needed reforms. Instead, and
Despite more than two decades of talk about updating its repdespite yet another frank and well-documented self-evaluation,
resentation and voting, the imf is still overly inuenced by Euroit is likely that the imf will continue to be undermined by politipean politicians. Two reasons for this (among many) are that (1)
cal masters who lack courage and vision. Let us just hope that
the imfs top job is still unofcially reserved for a European, just
the global economy doesnt require saving soonbecause the
like it was back in 1944, and (2) Europe still holds about oneimf is not yet ready.
third of the seats on the executive board. No wonder European
leaders dont hesitate to push back hard when the imf offers conContributing editor Mohamed A. El-Erian is ceo and co-chief
structive criticism. As a case in point, within hours of the Greece
report going public, European ofcials rushed to the airwaves to
investment ofcer of global investment management rm Pimco
condemn it as plainly wrong and neither fair nor just.
and author of When Markets Collide.

WorldMags.net

September | October 2013

25

WorldMags.net

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WorldMags.net
THE T HIN GS T H EY CAR R IED

The Island Lobbyist

INTERVIEW BY ISAAC STONE FISH
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONATHAN ERNST

kira chiba has an odd job: explaining to the U.S. Congress why Japan owns eight small, uninhabited rocks in
the middle of the ocean. It might sound inconsequential,
but these rocksthe Senkakus to the Japanese, the Diaoyus to the Chineseare thought to sit atop huge energy
reserves and are now a dangerous territorial ashpoint.
Chibas experience with China stretches back to the 1980s,
when he studied Mandarin and worked in the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. He says he felt mistreated during his eight years
there not because I was a foreigner, but because everyone is
mistreated in that country. So I have no hard feelings.
While China argues that the Diaoyu Islands are an inseparable part of its territory and regularly sends ships to patrol the

Map: This is a very ofcial, condential

1969 map from the Chinese central mapping authority stating that the islands are
part of Okinawa. In 1971, they changed
their position completely and said that the
islands are part of Taiwan. I cant tell you
where I bought this map, but it was in
Beijing. I dont want the place leveled!

Mints: Theyre very strong. I cant nd

them here in the States, so I have
to ask my son tonot smuggle, its
legalbut to bring a lot for me each
time he comes from Japan.

surrounding watersa provocation that could lead to war

Chiba sees this claim as absurd. No one complains when you
take a piece of bread at a dinner party, he says, sitting in his
spacious embassy ofce in Washington. But if a diamond ring
falls out of the bread and my neighbor starts saying, Mr. Chiba,
thats my bread because I saw it before you did!it doesnt
work that way. You get the bread because you grab it. And
thats what Japan did in 1895, and no one complained.
Heres what Chiba carries to his meetings in his not extremely durable black satchel, which he says he got for about $15 at
the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill.

Chinese newspaper: This

Peoples Daily from Jan.
8, 1953, talks about the
struggle of the Okinawan
people against American
occupation and says that
Okinawa includes the
Senkaku Islands. That
was the ofcial Communist position back then. So
again, they ip-opped.

Sushi handkerchief: This comes from Japan. I only

give them to those who do me favorsfor example,
those kind enough to drive me home from the Hill.

The Hill, Roll

Call, Politico:
I read them
for day-to-day
gossipy things,
and so I dont
congratulate
congressmen
who are not
seeking reelection. Have
to be careful
about that.

Toothbrush:
Its from Japan Airlines,
business
class. Im a
minister, so
Im entitled
to y business class,
but I rarely
do because
of shortage
of funding.
I often have
lunch on the
Hill and dont
want spinach
sticking out of
my mouth!

Sony electronic travel dictionary: Made in China, it has

eight languages. Im certied in Japan as a tour guide in
English, Chinese, and French. There are so many illegal
Chinese guides who say outrageous things to Chinese touristslike that Yasukuni is a war shrine. Thats why we need
certied guides!

Ties: I dont go to a
Republican ofce with a
blue tie on, just in case.
Most of the time I see
both sides, and so Ill
wear a purple tie instead.

Early Guide to Congress: I put a label for each member I meet

with and when. I pay attention to their background. Lets say
I meet a Jewish memberIll say to him, It is our oil, but
instead we have to buy from the Middle East. So they think,
Oh, China is forcing Japan to support Arab nations and so is
making them anti-Israel! I have to be subtle about it though.

WorldMags.net

Resolution: This is the

Senate resolution stating
that the Senkakus are
legally administered by
Japan. Ive never been
to the Senkakusits
off-limits! I might like to
have a look from the sky
but have no interest in
May
2013 31
going
on| June
the ground.

WorldMags.net

ANTHROPOLOGY OF AN IDEA

GEOENGINEERING

or most of human history, weather control has been under the strict purview of
sky gods and science ction. But today, as superstorms ravage coastal cities and
pollution blankets entire countries, averting climate catastrophe has become a
serious foreign-policy issue. Not that it appears that the worlds major powers are making much headway in their diplomatic efforts to stop global warming.
Instead, it is falling to so-called geoengineers to game out strategies for deliberate,
large-scale interventioneverything from dumping iron slurry into the ocean in order
to create massive CO2-sucking algae blooms to bombarding the stratosphere with
sulfate-laced artillery to deect sunlight. With the worlds fate potentially resting on
the shoulders of these climate hackers, its worth recalling the dubious history of
weather manipulation. Ty McCormick

1841

American meteorologist James Pollard Espy publishes The Philosophy

of Storms, in which he lays out his thermal
theory of storm formation and details a method
through which rain may be produced articially in time of drought. By setting great res
and creating heated columns of airsomething
Espy lobbies Congress to allow him to dohe
argues it would be possible to generate precipitation on command. The scheme, which rests
on shoddier science than Espys theory of storm
formation, earns him the moniker Storm King.

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnsons

Science Advisory Committee issues
a landmark report, Restoring the Quality of
Our Environment, that warns of the potentially harmful effects of fossil fuel emissions.
Considered the rst high-level government
statement on global warming, the report also
raises the possibility of deliberately bringing about countervailing climatic changes,
including by raising the albedo, or reectivity,
of the Earth.

1967-1972

Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius

investigates the impact of rising
carbon dioxide levels on global temperatures
in Philosophical Magazine and Journal of
Science. He is the rst scientist to calculate
how doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere would affect the climate. His
conclusionthat Earths temperature would
increase by roughly 9 degrees Fahrenheit
leads him to suggest in 1908 that by increasing the amount of carbonic acid in the
atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages
with more equitable and better climates.

The U.S. Air Force ies more

than 2,600 cloud-seeding
sorties over North and South Vietnam, Laos,
and Cambodia as part of a covert effort to
extend the monsoon season and inhibit North
Vietnamese troop movements. Dubbed
Operation Popeye, the program is the rst
known instance of hostile weather manipulation in military history. When columnist Jack
Anderson reveals its existence in the
Washington Post in 1971, the public is
outraged. The subsequent scandal soon
becomes known as the Watergate of
weather warfare.

1932

1974

1896

The Soviet Union establishes the

Institute of Rainmaking in Leningrad,
setting the stage for decades of experimentation with cloud seeding as a means of altering
the weather. The United States follows suit
in 1946, when researchers at the General
Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady,
New York, discover that dry ice stimulates
ice-crystal formation. In the Cold Wars early
years, both superpowers carry out hundreds of
experiments using solid carbon dioxide, silver
iodide, and other particulate matter to trigger
precipitation. The success of these experiments
is greatly exaggerated, but scientists do manage to alter weather patterns on a small scale.
28

1965

Foreign Policy

Soviet climatologist Mikhail Budyko

oats the idea of reversing global
warming by burning sulfur in the stratosphere, thereby creating a reective haze he
describes as much like that which arises
from volcanic eruptions. Solar radiation
managementor attempts to reduce the
amount of sunlight that reaches the Earths
surfacegoes on to become one of two
major branches of geoengineering (the other
being carbon dioxide removal). In subsequent
years, scientists propose everything from
injecting particles into the stratosphere to
lobbing great mirrors into space to reect the
suns rays.

WorldMags.net

December 1976

Moved to act by the United

States cloud-seeding
activities in Vietnam, the U.N. General
Assembly approves the Environmental
Modication Convention, which bans weather
warfare and other hostile uses of climate
manipulation having widespread, long-lasting
or severe effects. The treaty goes into effect a
little less than two years later and is
eventually ratied by 76 countries.

May 1990

The Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC),
established in 1988 by two U.N. organizations to assess the risk of climate change
posed by human activity, declares unequivocally that increased carbon emissions are
substantially augmenting the greenhouse
effect, resulting on average in an additional
warming of the Earths surface. Unless global
emissions are cut by 60 percent, the panel
warns, global temperatures could rise by as
much as 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the next
110 years.

June 15, 1991

Mount Pinatubo erupts,

spewing molten lava over
250 square miles of the Philippine island of
Luzon and throwing millions of tons of
volcanic ash into the atmosphere. The debris
forms a reective aerosol cloud around the
Earth, reducing the amount of sunlight that
reaches the planets surface by roughly 10
percent for most of the next two years. As a
result, the average global temperature drops
by about 0.9 degrees Fahrenheitor roughly
the same amount that it had risen over the
previous 100 years due to industrial activity.
The eruption amounts to a perfect natural
experiment, offering scientists a model for
how deliberate efforts to counter global
warming might play out in the future.

WorldMags.net

If an unfriendly nation gets into a

position to control the large-scale
weather patterns before we can, the
result could even be more disastrous
than nuclear warfare.
Howard T. Orville, U.S. President
Dwight Eisenhowers weather advisor, 1958

Paul Crutzen, winner of the

1995 Nobel Prize in
chemistry for his research on ozone, calls
international action to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions a pious wish. In a nowfamous article in Climatic Change, he
advocates for additional geoengineering
research, especially into the possibility of
using reective aerosols to decrease the
amount of sunlight that reaches the Earths
surface. Crutzens article provokes vigorous
criticismespecially from scientists who fear
it will hand governments an excuse not to
reduce carbon emissionsbut it thrusts
geoengineering into the mainstream,
inspiring reams of additional research.

August 2006

At a NASA conference
in Silicon Valley, Lowell
Wood, a former top weapons designer at
the Pentagon, lays out an instant climatic
gratication scheme to reverse global
warming. The plan involves using artillery
to re as much as 1 million tons of sulfate
aerosols into the Arctic stratosphere in
order to dull the suns rays and build up
sea ice that could then cool the planet.
Science historian James R. Fleming,
writing in Wilson Quarterly, likens
Woods plan to declaring war on the
stratosphere.

November 2006

Four hours before the

opening ceremony of the
Olympics in Beijing, Chinese authorities
launch more than 1,000 rockets containing
silver iodide into the sky outside the city to
keep rain clouds away from the Birds
Nest stadium. A storm that was forecast to
hit on Aug. 8 holds off until the 10th,
keeping the crowd of 91,000 dry for the
evenings pageantry.

August 8, 2008

Playing with the Earths climate is a

dangerous game with unclear rules.
Robert Jackson, director of Duke
Universitys Center on Global Change, 2009
Scientic American
publishes an editorial titled
The Hidden Dangers of Geoengineering that
calls out the risks of trying to tinker our way
out of a climate catastrophe. What used to be
fringe science, the editors write, has gained
respectability, but it could damage the ozone
layer, reduce precipitation, or make rainfall
more acidic. And those are just the foreseeable effects.

October 2008

U.S. President Barack Obamas

science advisor, John Holdren,
says the United States doesnt have the luxury
of taking geoengineering options off the table
in discussions of how to combat climate change.
The administrations primary focus is still to
seek comprehensive energy legislation that can
get us closer to a clean energy economy,
according to the advisors spokesman. But
deliberate efforts to counter global warming,
Holdren says, have got to be looked at.

April 2009

A British academic
consortium called
Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate
Engineering attempts to carry out the worlds
rst large-scale geoengineering eld test
aimed at reversing global warming. But the
experiment, a smaller version of the groups
grand plan to pump reective particles into
the atmosphere through a 20-kilometer-long
hose held aloft by a hot-air balloon, never gets
off the ground for political reasons.

September 2011

Special thanks to Clive Hamilton, professor of publicWorldMags.net

ethics at Charles Sturt University
and author of Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering.

The National Natural Science Foundation of China, which distributes

research funds on behalf of the Chinese
government, lists geoengineering as a scientic
research priority. Already, China is spending
at least $100 million per year on weather
modication schemesmostly to induce rain
and prevent hailstorms.

2012

The CIA partners with the

National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) to fund a 21-month, $630,000
technical evaluation of various geoengineering
techniques, including proposed solar radiation
management and carbon dioxide removal
schemes. It is the rst NAS geoengineering
study funded by the intelligence community.

March 2013

The average daily atmospheric

concentration of carbon dioxide
surpasses 400 parts per millionhigher
than it has been in at least 3 million years.
The grim milestone prompts the New
Yorkers Nicholas Thompson to opine on the
dangerous, fraught, and potentially
essential prospect of geoengineering. He
writes, [I]ts dreadful but it may be the only
way to prevent mass calamity.

May 2013

The IPCCs working group for

policy responses to climate
change will evaluate geoengineering options
including the use of aerosols, iron fertilization,
and lighter-colored cropsin its fth
assessment report, marking the rst time that
the U.N. body will have actively considered
invasive measures for halting climate change.
The move, as the Guardian put it when the
IPCCs research agenda became public in
2011, suggests the UN and rich countries are
despairing of reaching agreement on how to
combat global warming.

April 2014

September | October 2013

29

IN
BOX

IDEAS WorldMags.net

BY JOSHUA E. KEATING

Psych the Vote

As much as we might like to think were capable of objectively evaluating the

political candidates we vote for, factors like income, ethnicity, and gender strongly
affect political preferences. And now a wave of psychological research into voting
behavior is bringing to light other, much less obvious predilections.

THE GUN SHOW: A 2013 study in the journal Psychological Science found
that men with large biceps are more economically selfish than their scrawnier
counterparts. In other words, rich dudes with big guns opposed wealth
redistribution policies more strongly than rich but less ripped bros. Among poorer
guys, the men with bigger muscles were more likely to support redistribution. The
authors theorize that evolutionary factors are at work: Men with greater fighting
ability will more actively attempt to acquire or defend resources.

BECAUSE OF DIXIE:
The Confederate ag
provokes strong
opinions in the
United States,
whether as a symbol
of Southern pride or a
white supremacist relic.
But can just looking
at the Stars and Bars
subconsciously make
someone more racist? In
2010, researchers found
that study participants who
were shown a Confederate ag
reported less willingness to vote
for Barack Obama than those who
were shown a neutral symbol. The same
eect held true for a hypothetical
black candidate.

30

RAT RACE: During the 2000 U.S.

election, Democrats accused George
W. Bushs campaign of embedding a
subliminal message in an attack adthe
word rats ashed across the screen
during a description of opponent Al
Gore. (The Bush campaign denied it was
intentional.) Does that kind of thing
even work? Actually, in a 2008 study,
psychologists found that ashing the
word rats did increase participants
negative feelings toward a hypothetical
candidate. During Democratic California
Gov. Gray Daviss 2003 recall referendum,
the researchers also observed a drop in
opinions of Davis among Republicans
who were shown a subliminal photo of
Bill Clinton.

HOLY POLLERS: Some atheist

groups and civil libertarians in
the United States argue that
putting polling stations in houses
of worship violates the First
Amendments separation of church
and state. But a 2012 study suggests
that the location of voting booths
might actually aect how you vote.
A survey in the Netherlands and
Britain found that people walking
near churches expressed more
conservative views and had more
negative feelings toward nonChristians than those polled strolling
outside government buildings.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDREW ROBERTS FOR FP

Foreign Policy

WorldMags.net

POLITICAL CYCLE: The weirdest

of all voting-behavior studies
might be the 2013 Psychological
Science paper that examined
whether menstrual cycles aect
female voting preferences. It found
that ovulation made single women
more liberal and women in committed
relationships more conservative. The
study became a brief
sensation online and
was criticized for its
methodologyit
relied heavily on
survey data and didnt
control for factors like
age and incomebut
the journal stood by it.

WorldMags.net
MOMS VS. MARKETS

WHEN POOR PEOPLE SNEEZE,

FLOORTJE/ISTOCKPHOTO; GETTY IMAGES

BANKS CATCH A COLD

A

nalysts often borrow from the vocabulary of disease to describe nancial crises, using words such as
pandemic and contagion to discuss how economic disturbances spread. But recent research suggests a
more literal connection between the two: In poor countries, actual disease can infect the nancial system.
In a study for the Journal of Banking & Finance, Patrick Leoni and Thomas Lagoarde-Segot of Kedge Business
School in France looked at tuberculosis outbreaks in 80
countries between 1995 and 2009. They found that spikes
in infections were correlated with reductions in banking
deposits, nancial system deposits, and private creditall
key indicators of nancial stability.
The problem is that in poor regions, people nd medical treatment expensiveand generally an out-of-pocket
expense. Once people get infected, theyre forced to
stop working and use their savings to pay for medical
care, Leoni says. When infection spreads, a lot of small
withdrawals can send ripples through a fragile nancial
sector. Bankers, fearing literal contagion, are then forced
to anticipate further withdrawals and start dumping
long-term investments and taking shorter-term positions.
Over time, this conservative behavior affects a countrys
growth prospects.
The authors note that richer countries with strong social
safety nets are more resistant to this phenomenon. But they
caution banks in developing countries against knee-jerk responses to health pandemics. Borrowing from the language
of medicine, they write that an essential prophylactic
measure is to increase bank reserves, and somewhat reduce
long-term risk when there are signs that a disease outbreak
is under way. Saudi bankers, get your mers reserves ready.

Moms home cooking may be comforting, but it could be

stunting economic growth.
A provocative paper by economists Alberto Alesina of
Harvard University and Paola Giuliano of the University
of California, Los Angeles, argues that countries with
strong, close-knit family structures tend to underperform
economically and, adding insult to injury, have more
dysfunctional political systems.
Alesina and Giuliano looked at data from the World Values
Survey, which probes national attitudes on questions like
whether it is the responsibility of parents to sacrice for their
children and whether kids are obligated to obey their parents
unquestioningly. According to these criteria, Scandinavian
and Eastern European countries tend to have the weakest
family ties, while Southern European, Latin American,
African, and East Asian countries have the strongest. (The
United States falls somewhere in the middle.) Alesina and
Giuliano found that countries with strong family structures
tend to have lower interest in political participation and
innovation, as well as more traditional attitudes toward
women in the workplace. These countries also tend to have
lower GDPs and more corruption.
Strong family structures imply inward-looking attitudes,
low levels of trust for people outside the family, and
family rms that get passed down from one member to
anothereven if the next generation isnt the best person,
Alesina says. This is not the kind of open society and free
competition that leads to growth.
As a textbook example, he points to the country where
he grew up. Italy is a society where youngsters are very
risk-averse. They live at home until their 30s, young couples
live very close to their parents, theres very little social and
geographical mobility, and the participation of women in the
workforce is very low, he says. So Italy has been stagnating
for a couple of decades.
The researchers are quick to point out, however, that their
ndings are not an attack on family values. Its not that
family is bad or family is good. Its a trade-o, Alesina says.
In Italy, the family has negative implications for marketdriven growth, but may have positive implications for a sense
of security and support. Indeed, the paper shows that people
living in countries with close families report feeling happier
and healthier. Young people striking out on their own might
help the economy, but when they need a home-cooked meal
or a shoulder to cry on, the invisible hand just wont cut it.

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September | October 2013

31

IN
BOX

WorldMags.net

THE OPTIM I ST | BY C HA R L E S K EN NY

Barriers to Entry

mericans spent much of this summer arguing over immigration reform, and South Africans spent much of
it contemplating Nelson Mandelas legacy. But the
link between the two went unnoticed: One of Mandelas biggest legacies was to show that immigration
reformon a scale hugely more ambitious than anything proposed in the halls of the U.S. Congresscan
benet everyone, in real economic terms.
One of the earliest acts of South Africas rst postapartheid government was to break down borders within
the country that had prevented members of the black African majority from choosing where they worked and lived.
In economic terms, this reform created a true single market, equivalent to what would happen if the United States
pulled down the border fence with Mexico and gave all
comers citizenship. To many Americans, thats a terrifying

32

Foreign Policy

thoughtas it was to white Afrikaners, who predicted economic collapse. But, instead, virtually everyone got richer
after borders were opened within South Africaand in
relatively short order. Mandelas government demonstrated
that large-scale border dismantling can be good for people
on both sides of the fence.
Among its litany of evils, the white South African government had declared that blacks were nationals of particular homeland states, or Bantustans, based on their
ethnicity. The apartheid regime drew up the borders of
these supposed states with little regard to economic rationality or practicality, let alone the views and concerns
of the proposed residents. In 1970, black South Africans
were issued papers for one of the 10 Bantustans, and many
were stripped of their South African citizenship. Millions
of blacks were forcibly resettled to their new homelands,

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FARMWORKERS GET A LIFT IN CISKEI BANTUSTAN, SOUTH AFRICA, 1993

SUSAN WINTERS COOK/GETTY IMAGES

How opening borders gives economies a lift.

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desperately poor places like Transkei and Bophuthatswana

that relied on cash transfers from the South African government to function at all. Those who remained outside
the Bantustans clustered in slums around the edges of the
countrys major cities or its minesemployed, if at all, as
guest workers ineligible for the legal and nancial protections accorded South African citizens. (The process was
not dissimilar to the U.S. government drawing up reservations and forcibly relocating Native American tribes in
the 19th century.) Given the gross inequalities fostered by
the apartheid system, it is no surprise that, in 1993, white
South African households enjoyed an average income almost ve times higher than that of black households.
Days before Mandela became South Africas president
in 1994, the homeland system was rapidly dismantled. According to South African government statistics, about 12
percent of the countrys population moved between 1996
and 2001, the considerable majority to large cities like Cape
Town and Johannesburg. Beyond ending one of apartheids
most toxic institutions, the shift was a huge experiment
in what happens when barriers to labor mobility fall, as
economist and immigration expert Michael Clemens has
argued. What were essentially different countries, with
race-based quotas and employment rules, all became a
single (ofcially colorblind) labor market. A black population that today is about nine times the size of the white
population was at last free to compete for the same jobs
and even benefit from some positive discrimination in the
labor market.
Consider this parallel for scale: Brazil, China, and India
have a combined population nearly nine times that of the
United Statesthe same ratio of blacks to whites in South
Africa. Now imagine if the citizens of those three countries
were not only right next door to the United States, but
suddenly had the legal right to move in and compete for
American jobs on an equal basis with U.S. citizens. (Its
probably fair to say that support in Washington for this
kind of immigration reform would be low.)
As it turned out, what happened was that South Africans
as a whole got richer over the next 15 years. Economists

Murray Leibbrandt of the University of Cape Town and

James Levinsohn of Yale University report that average
household income in South Africa more than doubled between 1993 and 2008. For black South Africans, incomes
rose an average of 61 percent, but far more dramatic was
the 275 percent average increase in white South African incomes. Even poor white households, those potentially most
at risk from the inux of cheap labor, got richer. In the end,
everyone beneted from an economy made stronger by the
free movement of people and labor.
Its a lesson that also emerges from other experiments
in dismantling barriers to migration. In 1993, citizens of
European Union countries were given the right to work in
any other member state. Once again, the doomsday predictions proved false. Overall migration increased, but it
didnt cause Denmarks economy (with a per capita gdp of
$20,410 at the time) to collapse under the weight of Portuguese immigration, despite the fact that the Iberian pipsqueak had a per capita gdp of only $12,327. In fact, both
countries had a long run of reasonably good growth until
the eurocrisis and austerity ended the party. Denmarks annual gdp growth in the 15 years after 1993 averaged 2.2
percent; Portugals averaged 2.3 percent. And subsequent
expansion of the European Union to countries like Poland
gave a boost to Western economies, particularly Britain,
where tens of thousands of Poles ocked in search of work.
These real-world experiments in opening borders suggest that poor, less-skilled workers in a privileged region
shouldnt fear an inux of even poorer workers from outside. That holds true for the United States and Mexico,
too. South Africa demonstrates that the practical benets
of open borderswhen compared with the selsh interests
of those on the right side of the lineoutweigh the concerns. When the levee breaks, the rising tide lifts all boats.
So perhaps its time to think big and loosen that most peculiar and outdated institution: the right to work only where
youre born.
Charles Kenny is senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and author, most recently, of Getting Better.

Real-world experiments in opening borders

suggest that poor, less-skilled workers
in a privileged region shouldnt
fear an inux of even poorer
workers from outside.

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VAL LAWLESS/BIGSTOCK

IN
BOX

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DISPATCH | BY AMIE FERRIS-ROTMAN

The Long Haul

The monumental task of packing up a war.
Kabul
t the sprawling Bush Market deep within Afghanistans
capital, the American war is for sale. The maze of some
500 interconnected stores, named for the U.S. president
who invaded in 2001, is a chaotic emporium brimming
with goods carted in by truck to supply nato troops. For
more than a decade, thousands of vehicles have crossed
the border with Pakistan each month, bringing food and supplies that are in turn pilfered, repurposed with price tags, and
put on display under the baking sun: Pop-Tarts, Maxwell
House coffee canisters, and squeeze bottles of maple syrup,
alongside military fatigues, body armor, night-vision goggles,
gps devices, and even some automatic ries.
Since the end of 2011, when nato forces began their retreat
from the Afghan war zone, turnover from stolen military gear
has shot upward, from about $20,000 to $30,000 per month,
market managers estimate. One morning in March, Hazullah Sa surveyed his black market empire from the corrugated
iron hut he calls his ofce. The Americans wont be here forever, the senior Bush Market manager told me. But while
they are, theyre good for business. He clasped the white,
wispy beard reaching to the middle of his chest as he looked
down on two Afghan traders who were dusting off militaryissue Falcon ii radios to show to potential customers. Over
several warm cans of Mountain Dew, Sa said 70 percent of

MASTER SGT. BEN BLOKER/U.S. AIR FORCE

his markets goods are from trucks and containers belonging to

natos International Security Assistance Force (isaf), most of
them American. The more bases shut down, said his young
deputy, Ahmad, the more money we make.
The spike in isaf gear, though only a tiny fraction of nato
materiel in the country, is a testament to the recent push to
remove military equipment from Afghanistanthe United
States has some 100,000 containers and 50,000 vehicles
in totalleading up to the Dec. 31, 2014, deadline for all
foreign combat forces to leave. Estimated to cost $6 billion,
the American pullout is a mammoth taskthe largest, most
complex withdrawal for the U.S. military since World War
iimade all the more complicated by Afghanistans landlocked geography and Americas less-than-friendly ties with
neighbor countries. Not to mention that the withdrawal of
equipment must be timed with the withdrawal of forces, so
that enough supplies remain to support those still deployed.
The number of U.S. troops, who make up the lions share of
nato-led forces in Afghanistan, is slated to halve to 34,000
from current levels by February, down from a peak of about
100,000 in 2011.
From a service component, from a war-ghting perspective, from a green [environmental] perspective, most of this
has been worked out, says U.S. Brig. Gen. Steven Shapiro,
who until this summer was deputy commander for the U.S.

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September | October 2013

35

IN
BOX

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Army unit tasked with removing materiel. He spoke with

me at the Kabul headquarters of the 1st Sustainment Command, where the on-site mess hall buzzed with his team of
camouage-clad logisticians. Most of them munched on precooked broccoli and green beans, so-called operational rations, the latest additions to their diet now that bases are
cutting back on kitchen staff. These days,
Shapiros command is ripping down U.S.
bases across Afghanistanabout 100
nato military installations remain out of
800 in late 2011and sending the metal
and unused shipping containers to scrap
yards, hoping to boost Afghanistans tiny
steel market. Troops have even started
to eat their way out, he says, forgoing freshly cooked meals for the remaining pile of mreshigh-calorie, vacuumpacked Meals, Ready-to-Eat.
The work isnt glamorous, but war
logisticians such as Shapiro like to conjure up grand visions of victory through
their ability to tidy up after battle. Contemplating the Afghanistan retrograde,
the U.S. military term for the reverse ow
of materiel out of war zones, more than
one general quoted to me the words of
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower: You will not
nd it difcult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or
lost primarily because of logistics. A
seamlessly executed withdrawal, Shapiro
says, is all part of winning. But after
the longest war in Americas history, the
job wont be easy.

cember 2011, the nal U.S. troop convoy simply rode across
the border under the cover of darkness.
Afghanistan is a different story, given its hostile terrain, unforgiving winters with temperatures that regularly drop well
below freezing, and the menace of being landlocked. The countrys well-worn reputation as the graveyard of empires is not lost
on todays logisticians. The Taliban often
point to Britains catastrophic 1842 defeat
in the First Anglo-Afghan War, when all but
a handful of Brits were massacred while retreating from Kabul. Although Moscows
1979 invasion of Afghanistan was a mere
road trip through Soviet Central Asia, its
exit almost a decade later, over the Sovietbuilt Friendship Bridge connecting Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, was harder to
pull off. Withdrawing troop convoys were
regularly ambushed while snaking through
the Salang Tunnel, the sole passage through
the Hindu Kush. The Soviets managed to
remove their helicopters and planes, but
the decaying superpower left behind as
many as half of its armored personnel
carriers and tanks, which are still strewn
across Afghanistan, frozen in moments of
abandonment by eeing soldiers. Just this
past January, a construction crew hit a Soviet tank that was buried underneath isafs
headquarters in Kabul.
Today, some nato equipment will intentionally be left behind in Afghanistan
as a gift for the 352,000-strong Afghan
forces, which took charge of the countrys
security in June. This bequest primarily
includes gear desperately needed to detect
and dismantle improvised explosive devices, as well as some hardened vehicles,
according to Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, who
stepped down as isafs deputy commander in July to become the British armys
commander of land forces. Empty shipping containers, battered vehicles, and the
metal skeletons of bases, meanwhile, are
destined for local scrap yards. Unlike the
Soviets, however, the Americans will take
home the bulk of their materiel, including high-value equipment
such as mraps (mine-resistant ambush-protected vehiclesthe
sand-colored monstrosities that roam Kabuls streets in trios)
and vehicle-mounted artillery used against the Taliban in places
such as Kandahar. At Bagram Aireld, an hour north of Kabul,
scores of mraps sit parked in neat rows, ready for their long
journey home to bases and depots across the United States.
For the most part, Pakistan is the way out, Shapiro says
(just as its been used to ship in materiel during the war). The
gear is conveyed initially by trucktraveling approximately
1,000 miles overland from the major bases in southern and

ompared with Afghanistan,

withdrawals from previous U.S.
wars were more manageable feats.
That is true even of Vietnam,
where almost 540,000 U.S. troops
were stationed at the wars peak
in 1968. Over the next two years,
when U.S. troop numbers dropped by
150,000 as part of a planned drawdown,
the bulk of their gear was shipped to the
U.S. base in Okinawa, Japan, before traveling back home
across the Pacic Ocean. Other equipment was housed in depots in the safer parts of southern Vietnaman option that
volatile security makes unthinkable here in Afghanistan.
The Iraq War retrograde, which logisticians feared could
go awry, was also pulled off with relative ease. From 2010
to 2011, about 120,000 containers of equipment were driven
across the border to U.S. bases in Kuwait, where the supplies
could then sit safely for months, if not years, before making
their way home on ships. The United States left behind tens of
thousands of live-in trailers, but little of military use. In De-

36

Foreign Policy

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1ST LT. BENJAMIN J. POSTLE/U.S. ARMY; MARK DORAN/U.S. ARMY

Contemplating the retrograde,

more than one general
quoted Dwight Eisenhower:
Battles, campaigns, and
even wars have been won
or lost primarily because
of logistics.

WorldMags.net
eastern Afghanistan, through large, often dangerous swaths of
the Pakistani countrysidebefore reaching the gang-plagued,
multicultural metropolis of Karachi on the Arabian Sea. The
gear is then loaded onto cargo ships that set sail for the Saudi
port of Jeddah and Egypts Port Said before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to the United Statessome 8,300 miles in total.
The trucking and shipping process is managed by U.S.
Transportation Command (Transcom), the Defense Department arm that oversees air, land, and sea transport for the military, and Transcom chief William Fraser makes routine trips
to Afghanistan from his Illinois headquarters to check on the
progress. I spoke with Fraser, a burly, no-nonsense general, on
the sprawling grounds of the military section of Kabuls international airport, where several C-5 Galaxy cargo planes, their
hulking gray bodies reecting the sunlight, sat in a row beside the runway. He explained that on an average day, major
global shipping rms, such as Singapore-based apl and U.S.
logistics giant Supreme Group, submit bids to move equipment from Afghanistan, via Karachi, to its nal destination.
Once the U.S. military agrees to a price, the contractor hires
Pakistani subcontractorstruckers and cleanersto move the
gear and prepare it for voyage.
But relying so heavily on Pakistan has worsened Americas
logistical headache. Oil tankers are frequently blown up by
militants in the country, while other trucks are attacked and
robbed, with their cargo making its way to black market ven-

dors like Sa. And agonizingly for the Americans, for seven
months starting in late 2011, the Pakistani route was closed,
a setback that still chills logisticians. After a U.S. air attack
accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the border with
Afghanistan that November, Islamabad shut the supply lines,
abruptly halting all nato-led convoys coming in and out of
Afghanistan. (Expats in Kabul felt the closures shock waves
several months later when we suddenly found ourselves without any bootlegged alcohol.) In July 2012, supply lines were
reopened, and the following December, Washington and Islamabad reached a nal agreement that kept the routes open
in exchange for increased fees from the United States.
While the nato supply lines were closed, several months
worth of fuel, food, and weapons coming into theater
Fraser estimates about 7,000 shipments in Karachi alone
and military equipment heading out for retrograde piled up
at Pakistans main port and the Torkham border crossing. The
blockage has only recently started to clear, Fraser says. The
rst shipment of materiel to arrive on U.S. shores after the
border reopened, a consignment of several containers and vehicles, didnt reach its destination, Jacksonville, Florida, until
this past April. Pre-closure in Pakistan, I want to say we were
looking at about 3,500 to 3,600 crossings [across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border] a month, he says. And we are looking
forward to getting back to that level now. He wouldnt say
where the gure currently stands.

Are you part of the Pacic Century?

Visit irps.ucsd.edu

Oliver Petzold, IR/PS Graduate 08,

Program Ofcer, Asia Foundation

Focused on understanding the Pacifc region since 1986.

Explore our masters and Ph.D. programs focused on the dynamics
of trade, policy, and development in Asia and Latin America.

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September | October 2013

37

WorldMags.net

In conversations with logisticians, diplomats, and even Bush

Markets black market traders, the elephant in the room is
always the increasingly strained Washington-Islamabad relationship. Just hours before taking ofce in June, Pakistani
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made a point of repeating his
demand for an end to U.S. drone strikes, arguing that they undermine Islamabads sovereignty. The strikes have continued,
but Pakistans proven ability to pull the plug on nato supply
lines means Americas ckle ally has some leverage over Washington. Several senior Afghan and Western ofcials in Kabul
and Islamabad told me Pakistan is demanding discounted U.S.
military gear in exchange for using its territory. A U.S. State
Department ofcial, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
such re sales might become an option.

he United States does have ways out of Afghanistan

that avoid Pakistan. Were not putting all our eggs in
one basket, Shapiro says.
There are three other exit strategies. Air direct allows
Transcom to y materiel directly out of Afghanistan to the
United States. Then there is multimodal, which involves
third-party countries and switching between various land, air,
and sea routes. Equipment-hauling U.S. Air Force planes are
being refueled at a base in Thailand, for example, and ships
laden with U.S. materiel have set sail from the Romanian port
of Constanta on the Black Sea. American gear is even being
transported partway along the 120-year-old Trans-Siberian

38

Foreign Policy

Railwaywhose leather-lined carriages take a week to trudge

through the Russian wilderness from Moscow to Vladivostok
before the gear eventually makes its way to Washington state.
The third option is the Northern Distribution Network
(ndn), which was originally set up in 2009 to share the burden of transporting supplies with Pakistan and, according
to the United States, is one of the worlds longest military
supply lines. With its long-standing wariness of nato, Russia does not allow isaf weapons to cross its territory. But
nonlethal gear leaves Afghanistan via former Soviet Central
Asian countries and then moves either across the Caspian
Sea to Southern Europe or through western Russia, where it
travels along the countrys vast and sophisticated railways,
through Eastern Europe, and into the Baltic states. A single
piece of equipment might pass through 10 countries in total.
In short, the retrograde is global.
But theres no question that the closure of the Pakistani
route turned the withdrawal from a complicated though manageable task into a full-blown logistical nightmare. Using
alternate shipping options, such as ying equipment directly
to the United States or trucking it across the former Soviet
countries north of Afghanistan, ended up costing the Pentagon more than $100 million per month, compared with $17
million to transit through Pakistan, according to the Defense
Department. Pentagon requirements and a security situation
in permanent ux mean the amount of trafc on the alternate
routes is constantly changing, with Fraser and his team jumping across continents to nd the cheapest itineraries. Earlier
this year, for instance, Transcom said the ndn was carrying
about 20 percent of retrograde materiel; according to the Pentagon, that gure had dropped to 4 percent by midsummer.
Although U.S. military ofcials wont say how much of the
retrograde is complete, they insist it is on track. So far, several hundred bases, some accommodating no more than 30
troops, have been transferred to the Afghans. Were leaving fully functioning base camps for them, Shapiro says.
Its their country, but the T-walls are still erected, the guard
towers are still erected, the generators still run. The mood
in Kabul, meanwhile, is consumed by the withdrawal: The
number of foreign reporters is dwindling, the streets feel more
dangerous, and embassies are further fortifying their heavily
barricaded compounds as fear of the unknown reverberates
throughout the city. At isaf headquarters in central Kabul,
the drawdown is palpable. What was once a manicured, enclosed garden where diplomats, generals, and soldiers lunched
at inviting picnic tables is now a shabby, overgrown enclave
with wobbly chairs and window frames in desperate need of a
paint job. There is an overwhelming sense of the end.
Back at Bush Market, the trader Sa, though disheartened
that his business will soon dry up, sees the retrograde as just another chapter in Afghanistans entanglements with foreign powers. I am Muslim, he says wistfully, cracking open another
can of stolen Mountain Dew. I believe in God, not America.
Amie Ferris-Rotman, a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford
University, was formerly Reuters senior correspondent in Kabul.

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PERETZ PARTENSKY

IN
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Become an FP ALL ACCESS Subscriber today.

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PICTU RE D | S IM CH I YI N

Burma Illuminated

hen photojournalist Sim Chi Yin traveled to Myanmar

in the spring of 2012, Aung San Suu Kyis smiling
face was plastered on posters and stickers, hats and
T-shirts. The air crackled with hope and expectation.
Change was nally coming to Myanmar.
When Sim returned a year later, in 2013, she could see
that change had indeed arrived, and very quickly. Now that
restrictions on vehicle imports have been lifted, affordable cars
have brought more trafc jams and honking horns to the streets
of Yangon, embodying globalizations onslaught. There is a sense
of trepidation, Sim says, intermingled with the enthusiasm for a

Advertisements for
Western-style clothes
tower over Yangon
food stalls selling
traditional noodles.

new Myanmar (still called Burma by many). Some Burmese are

vexed by the darker, nonnative inuences. They see teenage girls
dropping out of school to work in nightclubs so they can buy
clothes and mobile phones, and they say its as if some people
have become obsessed with money overnight. Others worry
that the Burmese are losing their sense of community as their
world expands well beyond the countrys borders.
How did it happen so fast? As one local tour guide told Sim:
We were like a spring kept totally compressed inside a box
for a long, long time. And now, suddenly, the lid of the box has
been taken off and the spring has jumped out.

WorldMags.net

SIM CHI YIN/VII MENTOR PROGRAM

A young woman
uses her cell phone
on a ferry ride
across Lake Inle.

WorldMags.net

See more from this series at ForeignPolicy.com/pictured.

WorldMags.net

Passengers crowd
into a bus as dusk
falls in downtown
Yangon.

Children play in
a fountain at
Yangons Junction
Square, a brandnew mall.

WorldMags.net

THINK AGAIN:
AMERICAN NUCLEAR
DISARMAMENT
A smaller atomic arsenal
isnt just wishful thinking
its bad strategy.
BY MATTHEW KROENIG

WorldMags.net

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Partnering for Protection and ProsPerity.
Committed to advancing global security and strengthening local economies, Lockheed Martin has launched
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Lockheed Martin International is devoted to helping our customers achieve their missions with proven
performance, key industrial partnerships, and an expanded base of operations.

www.lockheedmartin.com

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2013 Lockheed Martin Corporation

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THINK AGAIN: AMERICAN NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

Nuclear Weapons Are

Cold War Relics.
NOT SO.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991, the era of nuclear competition
seemed to be at an end, and the United
States and Russia began to get rid of
many weapons they had used to threaten each other for more than 40 years. In
1967, the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal peaked at 31,255 warheads, but by
2010, under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New start) signed with
Russia, the United States had promised
to deploy no more than 1,550.
In June of this year, U.S. President
Barack Obama announced his intention to go even lower, to around 1,000
warheadsa move that would leave the
United States with fewer nuclear weapons
than at any time since 1953. Whats more,
inuential gures around the world, including erstwhile American hawks, have
increasingly supported steps toward total
disarmament. In his major 2009 address
in Prague, Obama committed to seek
the peace and security of a world without
nuclear weapons.
Nuclear reductions and the heady
dreams of abolition are driven in part by
a belief that nukes are Cold War anachronisms. But it would be incorrect
dangerous, in factto assume that the
conditions that have allowed the United
States to de-emphasize its atomic arsenal
will persist. Nuclear weapons are still
the most potent military tools on Earth,
and they will remain central to geopolitical competition. They have been relatively unimportant in the recent past not
because humanity has somehow become
more enlightened, but because we have
been blessed with a temporary respite
from great-power rivalry.
The Soviet Unions collapse left the
United States as the worlds sole superpower, and Americas unmatched conventional military overawed other countries.
Nuclear weapons have not been central
to Americas national security for the past
two decades because its primary foes
Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and al Qaeda
did not have them. Whatever Americas
problems in prosecuting its recent wars,
a lack of repower was not one of them.

44

Foreign Policy

But times are changing. Economists

predict that China could overtake the
United States as the worlds largest economy in the coming years, and international relations theory tells us that transitions between reigning hegemons and
rising challengers often produce conict. Already, China has become more
assertive in pursuing revisionist claims
in East Asia, confronting Americas allies, and building military capabilities
including anti-ship ballistic missiles and
submarinestailored for a ght with
the United States. In September 2012, a
dispute between China and Japan over
the Senkaku Islands nearly caused a war
that could have easily drawn in the United States. Beijings contested claims to
natural resources in the South China Sea
and ever-present tensions with Taiwan
could also lead to Sino-U.S. conict.
Even relations with Russia, Americas
partner in arms control, are becoming
more competitive: The civil war in Syria
bears every hallmark of a Cold Warstyle proxy battle. In short, great-power
political competition is heating up once
again, and as it does, nuclear weapons
will once again take center stage.
The writing is already on the wall.
Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and
North Korea are modernizing or expanding their nuclear arsenals, and Iran
is vigorously pursuing its own nuclear
capability. As Yale University political
scientist Paul Bracken notes, we are entering a second nuclear age in which
the whole complexion of global power
politics is changing because of the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a vital
element of statecraft and power politics. Nostalgia for simpler times can be
seductive, but the United States needs
a nuclear force that can protect it from
the challenges that lie ahead.

It Takes Only a Handful of

Nukes to Deter an Enemy.
WRONG.
Advocates of further cuts argue that a
secure second-strike capabilitythe
ability to absorb an attack and retain
enough nuclear warheads to launch
a devastating responseis sufcient

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PAKISTANI MILITARY INTER SERVICES PUBLIC RELATIONS/REUTERS/CORBIS

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WorldMags.net
for nuclear deterrence. Although secure and devastating are imprecise
terms, many analysts would say that a
few dozen submarine-launched ballistic
missiles, each with multiple warheads,
is plenty because at-sea subs are difcult to target in a rst strike and the
repower provided by, say, 200 nuclear
weapons is impressive. By their logic,
anything more is overkill that can be
cut with little loss to U.S. security.
Although it is possible that no sane
leader would intentionally start a
nuclear war with a state that possesses
even a small deterrent force, nucleararmed states still have conicting interests that can lead to crises. And it
turns out that, contrary to widely held
assumptions, the nuclear balance of
power is critically important to how
such disputes are resolved.
Recently, I methodically reviewed the
relationship between the size of a countrys nuclear arsenal and its security. In
a statistical analysis of all nuclear-armed
countries from 1945 to 2001, I found
that the state with more warheads was
only one-third as likely to be challenged
militarily by other countries and more
than 10 times more likely to prevail in
a crisisthat is, to achieve its basic political goalswhen it was challenged.
Moreover, I found that the size of this
advantage increased along with the
margin of superiority. States with vastly
more nukes (95 percent of the two countries total warheads) were more than
17 times more likely to win. These ndings held even after accounting for disparities in conventional military power,
political stakes, geographical proximity,
type of political system, population, territorial size, history of past disputes,
and other factors that could have inuenced the outcomes.
When the United States operated from
a position of nuclear strength during the
Cold War, it stopped the Soviet Union
from building a nuclear submarine base
in Cuba in 1970 and deterred Moscow
from increasing support to its Arab allies
in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.
By contrast, when the nuclear balance
was less favorable to Washington, it was
unable to achieve clear victories in crises
against the Soviet Unionfor example,
failing to roll back Moscows 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

In a game of chicken,
we should expect the
smaller car to swerve
first. The United States
has always driven
a Hummer, but it is
trading it in for a Prius.
In addition, qualitative evidence from
the past 70 years shows that leaders pay
close attention to the nuclear balance
of power, that they believe superiority enhances their position, and that a
nuclear advantage often translates into
a geopolitical advantage. During the
Cuban missile crisis, American nuclear
superiority helped compel Moscow to
withdraw its missiles from the island.
As Gen. Maxwell Taylor, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote
in a memo to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, We have the strategic
advantage in our general war capabilities. This is no time to run scared.
Similarly, Secretary of State Dean Rusk
argued, One thing Mr. Khrushchev
may have in mind is that he knows that
we have a substantial nuclear superiority, but he also knows that we dont really live under fear of his nuclear weapons to the extent that he has to live
under fear of ours.
We see similar patterns in South Asia.
When asked years later why Pakistan ultimately withdrew its forces from Indian
Kashmir during the 1999 Kargil crisis,
former Indian Defense Minister George
Fernandes cited his countrys nuclear
superiority. In the event of a nuclear exchange, he said, We may have lost a
part of our population [but] Pakistan
may have been completely wiped out.
This may sound crazy. To most people, But you should see the other guy
would be scant consolation for losing
perhaps millions of ones fellow citizens.
But the truth is that nuclear war might
well be more devastating for one country than for the other, even if both sides
can inict unacceptable damage. As
Cold War nuclear strategist Herman
Kahn wrote, Few people differentiate
between having 10 million dead, 50

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million dead, or 100 million dead. It all

seems too horrible. However, it does not
take much imagination to see that there
is a difference.
This is not to argue that leaders of
countries with bigger arsenals believe
they can ght and win nuclear wars. The
logic is more subtle. Nuclear states coerce each other through brinkmanship.
They heighten crises, raising the risk of
nuclear war until one side backs down
and the other gets its way. At each stage
of the crisis, leaders make gut-wrenching
calculations about whether to escalate,
thereby risking a catastrophic nuclear
war, or to submit, throwing an important geopolitical victory to their opponent. If the costs of nuclear war are
higher for one state than another, then
giving in will always look more attractive to leaders in the inferior position
whatever payoff they might get from
escalating would always be offset by a
higher potential cost. So, on average,
we should expect that leaders with fewer nukes at their disposal will be more
likely to cave during a crisis. And this is
exactly what the data show.
Competition between nuclear powers
is like a game of chicken, and in a game
of chicken, we should expect the smaller
car to swerve rst, even if a crash would
be disastrous for both. The United
States has always driven a Hummer, but
it is trading it in for a Prius, even though
games of chicken are likely for decades
to come. Rather than cutting its forces,
the United States should, as President
John F. Kennedy promised, maintain a
nuclear arsenal second to none.

But Doesnt Superiority

Increase the Risk of War
in the First Place?
DONT BE SO SURE.
It is true that many strategists have
long argued that having a nuclear arsenal second to none could increase
the risk of nuclear war. Their logic is
simple: If a state has a rst-strike advantagethat is, the ability to launch
a nuclear attack that disarms its opponent and leaves it relatively invulner-

September | October 2013

45

THINK AGAIN: AMERICAN NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

able to retaliationthen, in a crisis, it
might be tempted to start a nuclear war.
Alternatively, the weaker state might be
tempted to use its weapons rst, lest it
lose them altogether. By this reasoning,
nuclear superiority is dangerous for everyone, and the most stable situation is
one in which both sides have survivable
arsenals of roughly the same size, leaving both vulnerable.
Today, it is still widely believed that
it is a bad idea for the United States
to possess a nuclear advantage over
Russia, and the Obama administrations 2010 Nuclear Posture Review
identied strategic stability as a primary goal. That is why New start and
Obamas proposed follow-on agreement aim for equal limits on the United
States and Russia. Some analysts also
apply this logic to China, over which
the United States has tremendous nuclear superiority. (China is thought to
have a mere 50 or so warheads capable
of reaching the United States.)
But an American rst-strike advantage is just that, an advantage, and arguments that try to make a vice out of
a virtue rest on tortured logic. After all,
the United States possesses a rst-strike
advantage against the worlds 184 nonnuclear states, and it doesnt wring its
hands about that. Would Americans be
better off if these countries could hold
them hostage with nuclear threats? No.
Would they feel better if North Koreas
missile tests did not routinely fail, giving the Hermit Kingdom a more reliable ability to nuke Los Angeles? Of
course not. Then why is the United
States so fearful of pursuing superiority over Russia and China?
The answer often given is that, while
the United States can trust itself not to
start a nuclear war, it doesnt want to
make a Russian or Chinese leader feel
the need to use em or lose em. But
this fear is unfounded. A leader in a
position of inferiorityinferiority so
extreme that his country could be vulnerable to a disarming first strikehas
a choice of launching a nuclear war he
will surely lose or simply conceding
the contested issue. Faced with that
choice, there is every reason to believe
he will back down. Indeed, this is exactly the dynamic that my research
demonstrates. To make any other deci-

46

Foreign Policy

sion, a leader would have to be either

crazy or at the end of his rope. But
if either were the case, nuclear parity
would, if anything, make him more
likely to gamble on nuclear war.
In sum, a U.S. nuclear advantage is
a major problemif you are one of
Washingtons adversaries.

But a Smaller
Arsenal Will Help the
United States Discourage
Nuclear Proliferation.
KEEP DREAMING.
Proponents of deep cuts claim that a
smaller arsenal will help the United
States stop the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorists because
having so many nuclear weapons makes
it difcult (if not hypocritical) to tell, say,
Iran that it cannot have any or to convince non-nuclear countries (such as Brazil and Turkey) to help pressure Iran.
This argument makes sense at a supercial level, but on closer inspection it falls
apart. As Irans leaders decide whether
to push forward with, or put limits on,
their nuclear program, they likely consider whether nuclear weapons would
improve their security, whether they
have the technical capability to produce
nuclear weapons, whether they could
withstand economic sanctions or mili-

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tary strikes from the United States and

its allies, and a host of other factors. The
size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal would
not affect any of these calculations.
Similarly, in considering whether to
pressure Tehran, Turkey likely considers the threat posed by a nuclear Iran,
whether it can actually affect Iranian policy, how curtailing trade with Iran would
hurt its economy, and how its Iran policy
will affect relations with other countries.
But, again, it is implausible to think that
if Washington possessed 1,000 warheads
instead of 1,550, Turkey would suddenly
get tougher with Iran.
In my research, I systematically
searched for a correlation between the
size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and a
variety of measurable nonproliferation
outcomes: state decisions to explore,
pursue, and acquire nuclear weapons;
voting on nonproliferation issues in
the United Nations Security Council;
and the transfer of sensitive nuclear
technology to non-nuclear-weapon
states. I couldnt nd any evidence of
a relationship. The United States has
been cutting the size of its nuclear arsenal since the late 1960s, but there is
no reason to believe that its cuts have
slowed or reversed proliferation. In
fact, the most important diplomatic
breakthrough in stopping the spread
of nukesthe opening for signature of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(npt)occurred in 1968, at nearly the
peak of the U.S. arsenals size. And,
remember, 177 countries have never
pursued nuclear weapons at any

OBAMA IN PRAGUE, 2009. JOE KLAMAR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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WorldMags.net
point, including when the United States
possessed more than 30,000 warheads.
Some advocates argue that many
states signed the npt only because it
mandates cuts to existing nuclear arsenals, but in fact the npt does not require cuts or disarmament. It simply requires all states to pursue negotiations
in good faith on measures relating to
disarmament. So though the United
States can by all means pursue negotiations, it should not come to a deal that
further reduces its nuclear stockpile
until the world has been made safe for
disarmamentand that, unfortunately,
will not happen anytime soon.

The U.S. Can Save

Money by Shrinking Its
Nuclear Arsenal.
DONT COUNT ON IT.

In the climate of budget austerity now aficting Washington, some supporters of

nuclear cuts turn to another, nonstrategic

argument to advance their case, saying
that reducing the size of the nuclear arsenal would save money. But it would not
save much, and it might even cost more.
It is important to understand that
warhead reductions alone will not result
in savings. As any employee of the U.S.
national nuclear laboratories can tell you,
the cost of nuclear weapons is in the infrastructure; the warheads, in comparison,
are virtually free. If the United States is
going to retain even a handful of nuclear
weapons, it will need national laboratories with scientists and technicians, delivery vehicles, military units trained to
handle nuclear weapons, and many other
capabilities. These are large, xed costs
regardless of the number of warheads in
the arsenal.
Moreover, reducing the number of nuclear weapons the United States deploys
can actually result in short-term budget
increases. Reducing arsenal size means
pulling missiles out of silos, dismantling
retired warheads, and decommissioning
and decontaminating nuclear facilities.
All of this costs money.

It would only be by failing to fully modernize the systems that deliver the warheadsintercontinental ballistic missiles,
bombers, and submarinesthat the United
States could hope to save money. But unless
it completely disarms or kills a leg of this
triad, the countrys aging missiles, bombers, and subs will need to be upgraded.
Delaying the modernization of delivery vehicles, as some have suggested, would save
only an estimated $3.9 billion annually
over 10 years, an amount that is nothing
short of trivial compared with the overall
U.S. defense budget, which is roughly $600
billion per year.
Over the long term, the budget-savings
argument becomes even less compelling.
Nuclear weapons provide a lot of bang for
the buck, literally and guratively. President Dwight Eisenhowers New Look
policy in the 1950s emphasized nuclear
weaponsas does current Russian military doctrinebecause they are less costly
than comparable conventional capabilities. If the United States continues to cut
its nuclear arsenal, it will need to develop
new conventional capabilities to ll the
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47

THINK AGAIN: AMERICAN NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

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by nuclear weapons. At present, nuclear

weapons provide a strategic deterrent at
a cost of only about 4 percent of the defense budget. Do we really think equivalent conventional forces would be more
cost-efcient?
Furthermore, only if we think the
United States can maintain a diminished
nuclear force indenitely is it plausible
to think that nuclear cuts will save
money, but this would be an unwise bet
given that other countries are moving
in the opposite direction. In 1989, the
Energy Department shut down its only
plutonium-pit manufacturing plant at
Rocky Flats, Colorado. Decommissioning and decontaminating the facility cost taxpayers $7 billion. In 2007,
however, the department restored pitmanufacturing capability at a cost of
billions of dollars, and it is seeking billions more for a new facility. This poor
decision teaches a broader lesson: It
would be much more costly to cut now
and build back up later, rather than simply recapitalize current capabilities.
To justify kneecapping the U.S. arsenal as we enter a second nuclear age, the
savings would have to be overwhelming.
But they are not. As Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently said, Nuclear weapons dont actually cost that
much. You dont save a lot of money
by having arms control.

If the United States Cant

Go Lower, Who Can?
MAYBE NO ONE.
Fashionistas sometimes quip that Americans are always a couple of years behind the rest of the world in adopting
new styles. Trends in nuclear weapons
policy are apparently no different from
the catwalk. While it is still fashionable
in Washington to talk about nuclear reductions, for the rest of the world, nukes
are the new black.
Russia needs nuclear weapons to offset
the conventional superiority of the United
States and nato and afrm its great-power status. President Vladimir Putin has already poured cold water on Obamas proposal for additional nuclear reductions,
and Russias military doctrine emphasizes

48

Foreign Policy

While it is fashionable
in Washington
to talk about nuclear
reductions, for the rest
of the world, nukes
are the new black.
nuclear weapons, including their rst use
early in a crisis, to compensate for its
weakened conventional military. Russia
is subject to the same strategic-warhead
limits that apply to the United States under New start, but it also maintains an
arsenal of 3,800 tactical nukessmaller
weapons intended for battleeld use.
Moscow is building a rail-mobile missile,
has commissioned new nuclear-capable
submarines, and plans to construct a next
generation of heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles (icbms).
Chinas nuclear weapons also serve as a
deterrent against Americas superior conventional power. During the Cold War,
China appeared content with a minimum
deterrenta result, experts speculated, of
Mao Zedongs strategic thinking. But recent scholarship suggests that Chinas nuclear arsenal was stunted by organizational and political pathologies. The kinks are
now out of the system and Beijing is going
bigger. According to the Pentagon, China
is expanding its arsenal of warheads,
building new nuclear-armed submarines,
and developing next-generation, roadmobile icbms with multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle warheads. If
U.S.-China relations deteriorate, Beijing
might eventually leverage its massive
economy to match or surpass Americas
nuclear capabilities. Additional U.S. reductions would only make such a sprint
to parity all the more tempting.
At this very moment, India and Pakistan are engaged in the most intense
nuclear arms race the world has seen
since the Cold War. India needs nukes
to deter Chinas superior conventional
and nuclear might to its northeast and
to counter Pakistans nuclear weapons to
the northwest. New Delhis nuclear arsenal has grown by more than 200 percent
in the past decade and now includes an
estimated 100 warheads. It is developing

submarine-launched ballistic missiles and

building longer-range ballistic missiles,
and last year it ordered more than 100
nuclear-capable aircraft from France.
For Pakistan, the pursuit of nuclear
superiority over India is seen as a matter of national survival given its recurring
conicts with its much larger neighbor.
Pakistans nuclear arsenal has also tripled
in the past decade and is now estimated
to include roughly 110 warheads. Moreover, it is rumored that Pakistani military
ofcers openly talk about an arsenal that
will eventually contain more than 1,000
warheads. Islamabad is testing longerrange ballistic missiles, developing new
nuclear-capable aircraft, and working on
a sea-based nuclear capability.
North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests in the past decade and is estimated
to have an expanding arsenal of roughly
a dozen warheads. It is also working on a
ballistic missile designed to reach the U.S.
West Coast. Iran is vigorously pursuing a
nuclear capability, and experts assess that
Iran could have enough weapons-grade
uranium for its rst bomb in months.
Moreover, the Pentagon estimates that
Iran could have a ballistic missile capable of reaching Americas East Coast by
2015. These efforts are making countries
in Asia and the Middle East nervous. Ofcials in Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and
Turkey have oated the idea (some more
loudly than others) of building their own
nukes in response to the new nuclear kids
on the block.
World leaders dont need to read this
article to know that large nuclear forces
can make them safer. Some scholars
might protest that building nuclear arsenals larger than required for retaliation
is illogical, but when academic theories
are consistently contradicted by evidence
from the real world, it is not the real
world that is mistaken.

But So Many Important

People Want to Go to
LowerEven to Zero!
GET REAL.
In a 2007 op-ed, Henry Kissinger, William Perry, George Shultz, and Sam

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WorldMags.net
Nunna bipartisan group of minences grisesendorsed setting the goal
of a world free of nuclear weapons and
working energetically on the actions
required to achieve that goal. Their
article reinvigorated the nuclear disarmament movement and helped spark
an international Global Zero campaign that has drawn the support of
former generals, ambassadors, and political ofcials from the United States
and around the world. It is on the
wave of this support that Obama announced his intention to reduce nuclear arsenals radically and move toward
a world without nuclear weapons.
But it is not clear that a world without nuclear weapons would be desirable, and it certainly isnt feasible.
Only if we could fundamentally transform international politics such that
states no longer faced security threats
might there be reason to think that the
world could be made safe for global
zero. And even proponents admit this
day may never come. In his famous
Prague speech, Obama confessed, Im

not naive. This goal will not be reached

quicklyperhaps not in my lifetime.
After all, the United States cant rid the
world of nuclear weapons on its own;
other states, including its enemies, get
a vote. Russia, China, Britain, France,
Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea
possess nuclear weapons not because
they blindly imitate the United States,
but because they fear their neighbors
and, in the case of Washingtons enemies, Americas awesome conventional
military power. Even if the United States
gave up its entire nuclear arsenal, other
countries would not be compelled to
follow its lead.
Instead of striving for the smallest
possible arsenal in the erroneous belief that less is better, the United States
should strive to maintain clear nuclear
superiority over its adversaries. Ideally, this means the ability to wipe out
an enemys nuclear forces before they
can be used and to annihilate its homelandbecause the more devastating
that adversaries nd the prospect of
nuclear war, the less likely they will be

to start trouble. Where this is not possible, the United States must aim for a
posture that limits damage to the U.S.
homeland to the greatest extent possible
and that at least ensures destruction of
an adversary.
That means the United States should
refrain from additional nuclear reductions and should maintain the hedge
force of weapons it keeps in reserve. The
Obama administration must also follow
through on its promise to fully modernize U.S. nuclear infrastructure. Finally,
the country must prepare for the possibility that if China or other strategic
competitors continue to expand their
nuclear arsenals, the United States might
once again have to build up its strategic
forces. You dont bring a knife to a gunght, and America shouldnt bring a
crippled nuclear arsenal to the second
nuclear age.
Matthew Kroenig is associate professor
and international relations eld chair in
Georgetown Universitys Department of
Government.

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September | October 2013

49

WorldMags.net

THE GLOBAL
BUSINESS OF VICE*

*AND ITS VIRTUES

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their
virtues, Napoleon Bonaparte said. But for all his world-conquering
ambition, the French ruler never envisioned an empire like this. Where
once the commerce in humanitys baser instincts was conned to the
shadows, today the business of viceboth legitimate and altogether
illegalis a global enterprise, corporatized and commoditized by private
rms, governments, and nonstate actors alike. From drugs to gambling to
booze, fps rst vice issue takes a hard look at the business of sin. Whether
anyone can stop the marketing of decadence and debauchery isnt really
the question. Its whether anyone still wants to.

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76

Whisky
Sugar
Gambling
Beer
Meth

58
64

The Sindex
The Snaxis of Evil

52
60
66

BERTRAND GARDEL/GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CURTISS CALLEO AND BILLY DAVIS

71

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32
52

Foreign Policy

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EXICO IS RISING. You can see it in the countrys swelling exports,

the net-zero migration to the United States, the excitement of

international bond investors, a recent credit upgrade from Standard
& Poors, a newly confident middle class, and a per capita GDP that has doubled
since 2000. Not to mention a young, dynamic, handsome new president.
In case you missed all these signs, though, you can also see Mexicos surge
forward in a Scotch whisky ad.
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September | October 2013

53
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The television spot says nothing about the product but everything about the countrys long march from poverty toward
prosperity. In the advertisement, thousands of Mexicans, men
and women, young and old, are bound by chains to a massive
boulder. They trudge forward up a dusty mountain, faces contorted and blackened, eyes downcast. The boulder pulls them
back. A buzzard circles above. They push forward again, straining and wincing, and thenwith a crunchthe boulder slides
back downhill, throwing them to the ground.
But not so fast. One by one, they stand up and unchain themselves. Unburdened, they walk with gritted smiles and purpose
up the dusty talus slope, leaving the boulder behind. Cue the
soaring music. Cue the blue-sky vistas. Cue the tag line: Keep
Walking Mexico.
Its a brilliant ad, and youd be forgiven for not immediately
realizing its for Scottish booze. (Frankly, the Sisyphean strivers look like theyd prefer water.) The only hint is the familiar
Johnnie Walker logo, the stylized Striding Man, accompanying the tag line. The metaphor of national achievement is
clear, but the ad doesnt just tell the story of Mexico today. It
also highlights Johnnie Walkers aggressive push into emerging markets and the rush by multinational consumer-products
companies to catch the middle-class tsunami that is transforming the world.
The Brookings Institutions Homi Kharas estimates that the
global middle class will hit 4.9 billion people by 2030, growing by 3 billion from todayand theyll spend $56 trillion a
year, up from $21 trillion today. Virtually all that growth will
come from emerging economies. Thats a lot of people walking
upwardand a lot of potential Johnnie Walker drinkers.
Thats why executives from Starbucks to McDonalds to
Coca-Cola see their future in the global middle class, and
thats why Johnnie Walkers parent company, the booze behemoth Diageo, is pushing into liquor stores from Chile to
China. Paul Walsh, a Diageo board member and former ceo,
said in a statement about 2012 business results that the rms
expanding reach to emerging middle class consumers in faster growing markets was the key driver of our volume growth.
And Johnnie Walker, the worlds No. 1-selling Scotch whisky,
has been a crucial part of that growth. Today, four bottles of
Johnnie Walker are consumed every second, with some 120
million bottles sold annually in 200 countries. Five of Johnnie
Walkers top seven global markets are in the emerging world:
Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, China, and a region the company
calls Global Travel Asia and Middle East.

From a small town in the Scottish Lowlands, the Striding

Man has come a long wayand hes still walking.

sk anyone who travels in emerging markets or developing economies, and chances are theyve been offered
Johnnie Walker. These are just some of the places Ive
seen it poured: at a Beijing gathering of techies, a fourday wedding in Jaipur, countless bars in Dubai, a Nile
cruise in Egypt, the home of an Arab diplomat in Bangkok, private homes in Tehran, a middle-class Istanbul house,
and diplomatic parties in Riyadh.
Journalists who spent time in Baghdad during the Iraq war
marveled at the easy availability of Johnnie Walker Black Label, even when food staples were scarce. The late writer Christopher Hitchenswho fondly referred to the drink as Mr.
Walkers amber restorativeaccurately noted that Black
Label was the favorite drink of the Iraqi Baath Party. In
Saddam Husseins era, a smuggler could make a good living
taking crates across the border for thirsty Iranians. On a trip
from Tehran to Irans Kurdish regions on the Iran-Iraq border
in the late 1990s, I stopped at the small city of Mahabad. A
local smuggler peered into the car window, saw a group of city
slickers from the capital, and asked simply in his Persian accent: Johnnie Valker? He, of course, offered us very good
price, my friend.
Its uncanny, the ubiquity of the striding Scot and his blended
whisky (no e for the Scottish kind). Its everywhere, particularly among the upper end of the middle classes that the worlds
corporations are chasing. In Thailand, businessmen place a
bottle of Black Label on the table before a closing negotiation.
In Japan, bottles have become an essential part of the ritualized
gift-giving culture. In India, one of Bollywoods most famous
comedians even took the name Johnny Walker. Its such a status
symbol in Asia that Johnnie Walker knockoffs arent hard to
nd. You probably wouldnt want to serve guests the counterfeit liquor, but the bottle looks good on the mantle.
And in Africa, the newest gold mine of emerging markets,
Diageo is cultivating a fresh generation of whisky drinkers. In
downtown Nairobi, a 20-story billboard of the Striding Man
towers alongside a skyscraper. African musicians and athletes
have been named brand ambassadors, and premium magazines are running a series of print ads that say simply: Step
Up. As in, step up to a better life, step up to the middle class,
step up from that stale beer to a higher state of being: Become a whisky drinker. The print advertisement hawks Red

Its a classic strategy: reach the growing

middle classes by selling them not just a
product, but a lifestyle, an aspiration.

54

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BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Label, the brands cheapest distillation (a favorite of Winston

Churchill, with soda) and the presumptive rst step in Johnnie
Walkers color-coded upward journey through Black, Green,
and Gold labels toward that nirvana of prestige: Blue Label.
The campaign seems to be working. Johnnie Walker sales
are up 38 percent in East Africa and 33 percent in South Africa, and Diageo is doubling down, investing $368 million to
expand operations in Nigeria, Africas biggest market.
Its a classic strategy: reach the growing middle classes by
selling them not just a product, but a lifestyle, an aspiration.
Starbucks ceo Howard Schultz often talks about selling an experience; coffee is an afterthought. The message from Diageo
is similar: Keep Walking, you emerging middle classes; keep
rising, and oh, by the way, treat yourself to a little Johnnie
Walker while youre at it.

o how did a little whisky company from a little country become the global brand of upward mobility? Or, to
repurpose a question once posed by Scottish judge Lord
Cockburn, no fan of his countrymens favored drink:
Whisky no doubt is a devil; but why has this devil so
many worshippers?
In 1819, a young John Walker, the son of a local farmer,
opened a small general store on King Street in Kilmarnock,
a town in Ayrshire, Scotland. A general grocer, Walker also
sold wines and spirits, including his own blended whiskies.
The author Robert Bruce Lockhart noted that Walkers capital was tiny and his business small and purely local, but he
had his full share of Ayrshire grit and thrift. For the rst 30
years, his business was steady but unremarkable and gave no

indication of the fortune that was to come, Lockhart wrote

in his 1951 book Scotch: The Whisky of Scotland in Fact and
Story. In 1852, a devastating ood nearly ruined Walker. He
lost everything and had no insurance.
But that Ayrshire grit and thrift kicked in, and he methodically rebuilt his business, gradually bringing his son,
Alexander, into the trade. This would prove to be a turning
point. Although the bottle carries his fathers name, Alexander Walkerwhom Lockhart described as a man of immense
energy, vision, and abilitytook the elixir global. When he
joined the business, whisky produced only a fraction of the
companys revenue. By the time Alexander died four decades
later, handing Walkers Old Highland Whisky to his two sons,
it was one of the worlds largest purveyors of Scotch whisky,
and a global brand was born: Johnnie Walker.
Alexander Walker actively engaged in the Adventure Merchant Business, a guild of sorts that tied together Scottish
manufacturers and shipownersall of whom beneted from
their membership in an empire on which the sun never set. The
terms of the companys arrangement were fairly simple: The
shippers would take goods with them on their journeys around
the world, sell them, take a commission, and remit the remaining prots to the rms. Walkers whisky thus bobbed along the
British Empires trading routes for decades.
But Walker understood that to truly make his mark, he
needed to conquer a market much closer to home: London. In
1880, he opened ofces in the city and became his companys
rst brand ambassador. As Lockhart noted, he understood
the art of personal advertisement, riding around town on a
specially built open carriage known as a phaeton, a mode of

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BEIRUT

In 1908, the owners reached out to a leading artist of the era,

Tom Browne, to help them design a poster. Over lunch, with just
a few sharp strokes of his pen, Browne sketched what would
become one of the worlds most recognizable advertising icons.
The Striding Man was critical, whiskey historian Kevin Kosar
told me, because it differentiated Walker from other scotch purveyors, which tended to play on Scotlands traditions of bearded
men in kilts playing bagpipes, an image that lacked universality.
The Striding Man looked English, not Scottish. He carries a
monocle, so he is literate. He carries a walking stick and wears a
top hat. He is a dandy, Kosar explains. No rough Scot blowing
funereal horns; here was a gentleman on the move.
By the early 20th century, the rm had it all: a growing business, a winning icon, new markets. Then came World War i,
and business slowed worldwide. By 1925, John Walker & Sons
found itself forced to enter a whisky cartel known as the Distillers Company. After the war, there was a strong incentive
for the big companies to lean on each other for strength, says
Kosar. Grain had been requisitioned, markets shut down. It
seemed like a good idea to partner up to weather the storm.
World War ii brought another storm, but its aftermath produced a historic march of growth in the West and rising fortunes elsewhere. Johnnie Walker made a big push into the U.S.
market, advertising in gentlemens magazines and targeting the
successful, aspirational male. But the company also went after
newly opened overseas markets. Japan, where men soon developed a copious thirst for Black Label, proved to be an early
post-World War ii success. Back in the States, Johnnie Walker
started appearing on the silver screen in movies from Blade
Runner to Raiders of the Lost Ark, making it not just a drink
but a cultural icon.
In 1986, the Distillers Company was bought by the Irish
brewery Guinness, which merged 11 years later with Grand
Metropolitan to create Diageo. Listed on the London and New
York stock exchanges, Diageo is now the worlds largest spirits
group by revenue, with bold-faced brands including not just
Johnnie Walker but Smirnoff vodka, Captain Morgan rum,
and Tanqueray gin. Diageo is an alcohol colossus that already
generates nearly 40 percent of its sales from emerging markets,
and that fraction is set to rise to 50 percent by 2015.

oday, Diageo is walking toward India and the acquisition of United Spirits, the countrys largest alcoholic
drinks rm, with 60 percent of the market. In July, it
acquired a 25 percent stake in the company, and it aims
to own more than half. Indians consume more whiskey
than any other country in the world, and the distribution
network Diageo would get with the purchase of United Spirits
is akin to a raw materials producer gaining access to internal
rail networks or shipping ports. Diageo has also acquired Brazils Ypioca, the third-largest producer of cachaca, the popular sugar-cane-based spirit that adds the kick to caipirinhas
from Sao Paulo to San Diego. It also recently had its eyes on
Mexicos Jose Cuervo, the worlds top-selling tequila-maker.
China is the big prize, though. There alone the middle class
has grown to some 350 million people. According to consulting rm Ernst & Young, by 2030 China could see 1 billion

BEIJING

56

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AFP/GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES FOR JOHNNIE WALKER

transport favored by royals and the superrich. Drawn by two

superb ponies, the conveyance attracted the desired attention and increased the still-more-desired sales.
Walker is also credited with the unique square-shaped
bottle and its distinctive sticker, angled at precisely 24 degrees. The square shape allowed more bottles to t on a
shelf, and the logos angle helped catch the eye. (Later, in
Prohibition-era America, the square-shaped bottle proved
ideal for smuggling: It t perfectly inside a hollowed-out loaf
of bread.) Walker died in 1889, but the steady hands of two
Walker kinsmen and a young Ayrshire native of great ability,
James Stevenson, guided his growing enterprise over the next
half-century.

JOHNNIE WALKER

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people in the middle classsome 70 percent of its projected
population. And theyll be toasting to their success: The market research company Euromonitor International predicts that
China alone will contribute 50 percent of the volume growth
of the spirits industry in coming years. China is already the
worlds largest spirits market, followed by Russia and then India, though the South Asian giant will move into the second
spot this year, according to industry estimates.
But will Chinese start quafng scotch? On a per capita basis,
whiskey consumption is still relatively low, with baijiu, a heady
clear-colored liquor distilled from sorghum, still the preferred
blend. But Johnnie Walker is striding ahead. In 2011, Diageo
acquired a controlling stake in Sichuan-based Shui Jing Fang,
a maker of baijiu, and the company has actively been courting
young, urban professional Chinesechuppieswith the familiar Keep Walking ad campaign. Since 2011, two Johnnie
Walker Houses have opened, in Shanghai and Beijing, offering tours that mix a dab of Scottish heritage, a dash of whisky
education, and a jigger of clubby exclusivity. On sale, of course,
is the full array of Johnnie Walker blends, including exclusive
limited-run editions of the super-high-end King George V Blue
Label, which can run north of $600 per bottle.
Admittedly, Johnnie Walker and Diageo have made a few
mistakes as well. A recent ad campaign for Blue Label, featuring a computer-generated Bruce Lee spouting inanities about
the good life in a Hong Kong penthouse, drew ire from devoted
fans of the martial artist, who was a teetotaler. The companys

big investment in Turkey in 2011the $2.1 billion purchase of

Mey Icki, a major raki distillercame as the Turkish economy
started to cool and the government clamped down on alcohol
ads. Whats more, the World Health Organization is issuing
warnings about rising alcoholism in AfricaDiageos next big
growth market.
Meanwhile, some scotch devotees argue that Johnnie Walker has forgotten its roots. Clearly, its not soaked in nostalgia
for ye olde Scotland. Today, Johnnie Walker is part of a massive conglomerate that has more than 25,000 employees and
production centers in Australia, Cameroon, Canada, Ghana,
Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, the United States,
and the United Kingdom (including Scotland). In late 2012,
Diageo bulldozed the last production plant in Kilmarnock, the
birthplace of Walkers Old Highland Whisky.
As Kosar and I spoke about the future of Johnnie Walker,
he sent me two images. The rst was the original Striding Man
design, Tom Brownes big advertising hit. The second was todays logo. I saw the difference right away: The Striding Man
has had a face-lift, literally. His face no longer exists. He has
become a silhouette, a colorless everyman. He could be anyoneand you could be him.
Afshin Molavi is nonresident fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins Universitys Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies and senior research fellow at the New
America Foundation.

THE STRIDING MANS MARCH

1908
Johnnie Walkers
original Striding
Man, sketched by
British illustrator
Tom Browne.

2013
Todays faceless logo,
seen on Scotch whisky
bottles from Melbourne
to Mexico City.

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Which country is the drunkest of them all?
The laziest? The fattest? Someone has
to ask the tough questions. Fortunately,
human vicesfrom vanity to gluttony to
slothare a favorite subject of organizations
around the world dedicated to exposing and
(sometimes) reforming our worst habits.
The result: FPs rst Sindex. We hope you
enjoyresponsibly, of course.

THE

X
E
D
N

SI

VANITY:

The United States is

getting more nips, tucks, and Botox
injections than any other country,
with a whopping 3.1 million
procedures performed in 2011
alone, accounting for 21 percent
of the worlds total.
When it comes to rhinoplasty,
China is ahead of Japan by a nose
more than 5,000 noses, actually
with 51,680 procedures, or nearly 11
percent of the worldwide total.

zzzz

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surstic
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NEW

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-$

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TOOL

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A
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I
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O

-$
J
8

GAMBLING: Australia and

Singapore annually lose the most

money gambling per capita by far
$1,288 and $1,174, respectively
double the nearest competitors.

Sources: International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, H2 Gambling Capital,
Companies & Markets, Forbes, Adam & Eve, United Nations Oce on Drugs and Crime, World Health Organization Global Health Observatory
Data Repository, CIA World Factbook, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Euromonitor International, World Bank.

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GETTY IMAGES

SLOTH:

The Dutch work the fewest hours each

year (1,381 per worker on average), while Mexicans
work the most (2,226), among oecd countries. The
French spend the most time eating and sleeping
snoozing for over an hour longer each night than
South Koreans, who get the least sleep.

WorldMags.net
SEX:

$1

Americans buy some $430 million

worth of condoms yearly, but the U.S.
market for vibrators is more than twice
that, at $1 billion. The biggest U.S. retailer
of sex toys reports that per capita
sales are highest in some of the least
populous statesWyoming, Alaska,
and North Dakota.

BILLION
RS

O
AT
IBR

XX
X
T
FAS

M
AL
RE

IT
BB
RA

IN

US

ALL
SM

S
OM
ND
CO

$430
MILLION

GA
ME

XL
M

XS
GA
ME

DRUGS:

Italians, New Zealanders,

Americans, and Nigerians are most
likely to use marijuana, with 14 percent
or more of adults lighting up.
El Salvador leads in meth, with 3.3
percent getting high on amphetaminetype stimulants.
Scotland had the worlds highest rate
of cocaine use in 2011, with 2.4 percent
using the drug.

bar

ALCOHOL:

South Koreans
drink the most hard liquor
(approximately 24 liters per
capita annually); the Cook
Islands qua the most beer (182
liters per capita); and France, no
surprise, imbibes the most wine
(55 liters per capita).

-$

GLUTTONY:

A body mass index of 30 or

above is considered obese; by that measure
American Samoa has the planets fattest
population, with almost three-quarters of
adults extremely overweight.

+$

LUXURIES: The Japanese, it seems, just want to have fun. The

country spends more disposable income on recreationa total of
$339 billion annuallythan everywhere except the United States.
In contrast, China outsaves the rest of the world, socking away
more than half its gdp.

Produced by Rebecca Frankel. Illustration by Sabrina Smelko.

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Yet Austrians consume the most calories

(3,800 per day). In fact, nine of the top 10
countries with the highest caloric intake
are Europeanthe United States is No. 2.

GETTY IMAGES

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ith this summers news

from the United Nations
that Mexico has surpassed
the United States in adult
obesity levelsone-third of
Mexican adults are now
considered extremely overweight
U.S. foreign policy has come into
sharper, or perhaps softer, focus.
Despite rst lady Michelle Obamas
continued emphasis on good diet
and exercise, the United States
seems secretly intent on fattening
everyone else on the planet. Apparently, America has adopted the old
piece of ursine humor as grand strategy: You dont have to run faster
than the bear to get away. You just
have to run faster than the guy next
to you.
At rst blush, it might seem unfair
to blame the United States for the
stoutness south of its border. Surely,
Mexicans (like Americans) are getting fatter because they are eating
more, exercising less, and spending too much time watching television. When one digs beneath the surface, however, it quickly
becomes apparent that a complex web of American agricultural, trade, marketing, and scientic practices together are helping drive a globesity epidemic. Many of these policies were
designed to give U.S. rms a leg up in international markets,
but the domestic economic benets of this culinary oligarchy
are increasingly being outweighedliterally and guratively
by the toll on international health, particularly among
the poor. The American taxpayer is directly underwriting
a food-production system in which nutrition has become a
distant afterthought.
Perhaps America is ultimately guilty of nothing worse than
trying to remake the world in its own hefty imagea case of
soft-power inuence gone horribly literal. As the global costs
of obesity continue to spiral, however, it is time to rethink the
changes that the United States has brought to the table.

t is no accident that Mexicos weight gain has coincided

with increased soft-drink guzzling. The countrys national
statistics agency estimates that Mexicans drink 43 gallons
per capita annually, giving the country the worlds highest
rate of soda consumption. The Institute for Agriculture and
Trade Policy, a Minnesota-based think tank, has shown that
the countrys sharp spike in obesity and soda consumption
correlates with the 1994 passage of the North American Free
Trade Agreement (nafta), which opened Mexico to a ood
of cheap junk food and soda pop: After the agreement took
effect, there was a more than 1,200 percent increase in highfructose corn syrup exports from the United States to Mexico
between 1996 and 2012, according to the U.S. Agriculture De-

partment. (At one point, the Mexican government began taxing drinks
sweetened with high-fructose corn
syrup, but the erce objections of
U.S. corn reners prompted Washington to complain to the World
Trade Organization and the tax was
eventually struck down.)
In many ways, Mexicos diet is
being devastated by Americas perverse economic incentives. The United States has long imposed relatively
high tariffs on sugar imports and
granted large subsidies for domestic
crops such as corn and soybeans.
In the 1970s, however, when sugar
tariffs rose even further and technological advances from Japan helped
perfect high-fructose corn syrup
production, agribusinesses use of
the sweetener exploded. Suddenly,
it was cheaper to put high-fructose
corn syrup in everything from spaghetti sauce to soda. Coke and Pepsi
swapped out sugar for high-fructose
corn syrup in 1984, and most other
U.S. soda and snack companies followed suit. U.S. per capita consumption of high-fructose corn
syrup spiked from less than half a pound a year in 1970 to a
peak of almost 38 pounds a year in 1999. As it did, American
obesity spiked as well.
The problem was not just that shoppers were more willing
to buy (and consume) a cheaper product, but also that highfructose corn syrup actually seems to be less healthy than natural sugar. Despite a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign
backed by corn producers, with gauzy pictures of mothers assuring us that high-fructose corn syrup is simply a form of
sugar made from corn, there do seem to be important differences. Yale University researchers released a study this past
January suggesting that fructose simply does not trigger the
same sense of being satiated as glucose does. This builds on
2010 research from Princeton University scientists who found
that rats ingesting high-fructose corn syrup gained signicantly
more weight than those eating sugar, in addition to experiencing abnormal increases in body fat. Research released this year
from Canadas University of Guelph found that a high-fructose
corn syrup diet in rats produced addictive behavior similar to
that from cocaine use.
Ill admit that an evil American plan to fatten the world
sounds like an outlandish conspiracy theory. But consider the
sad saga of Samoa and the American turkey tail. Turkey tails,
which can be some 40 percent fat, were long a largely unwanted byproduct of the U.S. poultry industry. James Sumner, president of the usa Poultry & Egg Export Council, acknowledged
this year that turkey tails would likely only be used for pet
food in the United States. But after World War ii, clever marketers began dumping them on Samoa, which enjoyed strong

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NAGALAND, INDIA

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Foreign Policy

ocking to Western-style fast-food chains in Singapore were

younger and better educated, exercised more, and smoked
lessall factors normally associated with lower risk of heart
disease. Yet those Singaporeans eating fast food once a week
had a 20 percent higher likelihood of dying from coronary
heart disease than those eschewing fast food; people eating fast
food two or three times a week had a 50 percent higher likelihood; and those wealthy, educated patrons downing fast food
four or more times a week were nearly 80 percent more likely
to die from heart disease. The big picture, one of the studys
authors said, is that this [fast food] aspect of globalization
and exportation of U.S. and Western culture might not be the
best thing to spread to cultures around the world.

hy is the United States determined to export fat?

In part because button-popping sums of money are
at stake. The market research rm Euromonitor International notes that the global sale of packaged
foods (everything from potato chips to cereal to preprepared meals like Lunchables) has jumped more
than 90 percent over the last decade, with 2012 sales topping
$2.2 trillion. PepsiCo alone sells more than $10 billion in potato chips annually. Kraft Foods global snack-food spinoff,
Mondelez Internationalmeaning world delicious, in a
blend of Romance languages and corporatespeakoperates
in 165 countries and is ramping up investments in the developing world, which already accounts for more than 40 percent of its $35 billion in annual net revenues. Coca-Cola and
PepsiCo together control almost 40 percent of the worlds
$532 billion soft drink market, according to the Economist.
Soda sales, meanwhile, have more than doubled in the last
10 years, with much of that growth driven by developing
markets. McDonalds investors were disappointed that the
company only turned $1.4 billion in prot during the second
quarter of 2013, having become used to years of double-digit
gains every three months.
But the focus on promoting unhealthy lifestyles abroad has
also increased, ironically, because the United States has succeeded in promoting healthier ones at home. Americans are
eating less fast food and ingesting fewer calories than they did
a decade agoa trend that should begin to lower U.S. obesity rates, which have largely plateaued. San Francisco actually tried to ban McDonalds Happy Meals because they target
kids with fat and sugar, and this summer Taco Bell announced
it is dropping food-toy combos for children altogether. As eating patterns have changed, the food industry has looked to
new markets.
Take high-fructose corn syrup. U.S. consumption, at around
27 pounds per capita last year, has declined in large part due to
mounting concerns that it is an important driver in the obesity
epidemic. So American corn producers have looked to export
markets to pick up the slack. According to the U.S. Census
Bureau, in 2012 the United States exported 1.47 million metric
tons of fructose, a 1,450 percent increase from 1995.
This shift abroad mirrors the strategy of the tobacco industry as anti-smoking efforts and cigarette taxes have pushed the
U.S. smoking rate down steadily over the past half-century,

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JERRY REDFERN/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

economic ties with the United Statesand the tails became an

unlikely local delicacy in the Pacic island nation. (Neighboring islands with closer ties to New Zealand have been ooded
with a similarly unhealthy fatty food byproduct: mutton aps.)
By 2007, Samoans were each consuming more than 44 pounds
of turkey tails every year. Unsurprisingly, Samoan obesity rates
skyrocketed from the 1960s onwardreaching 56 percent by
2008as the turkey butts and other imported foods squeezed
out seafood, a much leaner option, in the local diet. A 2005
study concluded that the acceptance and/or belief that foreign goods and services are superior led many Pacic islanders to consume foods of low nutritional quality, which directly
correlated with adverse health outcomes. Nine of the worlds
10 most obese countries and territories are in Oceania, according to the cias World Factbook.
When desperate Samoan ofcials, facing a mounting public
health crisis, banned turkey-tail imports in 2007, U.S. agricultural producers said, Not so fast. Even as Samoan ofcials
pleaded with the World Health Organization (who) for help
in combating American poultry companies food-marketing
strategies on the island, the World Trade Organization (wto)
blocked Samoas application for membership. The turkeyrump dispute bogged down Samoas wto bid for years, until
it agreed in 2011 to open itself back up to turkey-tail imports.
Sumner insisted at the time, We feel its the consumers right
to determine what foods they wish to consume, not the governments. The Samoans were rolled into accepting a compromise whereby they can maintain steep tariffs on turkey tails
until 2016, when they hope to have better public health education in place.
Meanwhile, nothing has been more American in recent
years than exporting fast-food chains. McDonalds boasts that
it now has restaurants in 118 countries. kfc is second only to
the Golden Arches in global fast-food market share. The friedchicken chains parent company, Yum! Brands, which also
owns Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, saw $13.6 billion in revenue
last year alone and is focusing some 86 percent of its restaurant development in emerging economies.
The results are as depressing as you might expect. A University of Minnesota study published last year found that those

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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from 42 to 18 percent. Economists have estimated that every 10 percent rise in the price
of a pack of cigarettes reduces cigarette consumption in the United States by as much as
5 percent, helping explain why American tobacco companies are looking more to China
and other less regulated and taxed markets
for future growth. It does not seem coincidental that Americas twin behemoth tobacco companies, R.J. Reynolds and Philip
Morris, moved into the food businessbuying up or merging with snack companies including General Foods, Kraft, and Nabisco
in the 1980sto diversify their portfolios as
domestic tobacco sales came under mounting
pressure.
The big players in the U.S. food industry
have certainly acted like the tobacco pushers
MEXICO CITY
as they have deployed an incredible array of
scientic and marketing research designed to
get people to eat more, often at the obvious expense of their
health. In his book, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants
Hooked Us, journalist Michael Moss offers a damning portrait of food companies that have entire research wings dedicated to creating the ideal bliss point so that brain receptors
crave a food without ever triggering a sense of being satiated.
More often than not, adding sweetness has been the easiest
way to fool the brain, resulting in products like Yoplait yogurt, which tries to project a healthy image but, as Moss notes,
has twice as much real sugar per serving as Lucky Charms
cerealthe poster child for an unhealthy breakfast when I was
growing up.
Taking another page from Big Tobaccos playbook, whenever
food companies and high-fructose corn syrup manufacturers
talk about obesity, they rely heavily on language stressing personal responsibility. They argue that kids around the globe just
arent exercising as much anymore and that consumers have every right to eat whatever they want to, using obvious truths to
gloss over the fact that they are ruthlessly maximizing science
and marketing to get people to embrace unhealthy lifestyles. As
the Center for Consumer Freedom exclaims, Eating a balanced
diet and getting plenty of physical activity is crucial. Unfortunately, Americans have been force-fed a diet of bloated statistics
hyping the problem of obesity. (The executive director of the
Center for Consumer Freedom also happens to run a Beltway
pr rm that specializes in defending corporate interests, and he
has acknowledged that the center has received signicant funding from food and restaurant companies.)
American consumers are wising up a bitin 2009, Kellogg
was forced to drop its claim that Frosted Mini-Wheats were
clinically shown to improve kids attentiveness by nearly 20
percent after a public outcrybut the costs of global obesity
are enormous and rising sharply. According to the who, many
low- and middle-income countries are, ironically, facing the
twin problems of obesity and undernutrition. More than 30
million overweight children now live in the developing world,
and many of themin a cruel trick of human biologyare

more prone to obesity because they were undernourished

in the womb and as infants. A 2012 study by University of
Southern California and Oxford University researchers found
that the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes is 20 percent higher in
countries with larger availability of high-fructose corn syrup
than in countries where its use is comparatively low, and the
studys lead author, Michael Goran, argued that the sweetener
appears to pose a serious public health problem on a global scale. Cardiovascular disease is already the No. 1 global
killer, and the who notes that more than 80 percent of cardiovascular deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries
because those countries are exposed to more risk factors, including unhealthy diet.
Samoan government ofcials have plans to implement a
public health campaign to talk people out of eating turkey
tails, but the health minister will be competing with the marketing divisions of major American poultry companies. Mexicos Education Ministry is trying to get schoolchildren to drink
fewer soft drinks, but it is ghting an uphill battle against the
marketing arms of major American cola companies that have
spent years perfecting drinks that are cheap and designed to
leave you wanting more. The African Union holds an Africa
Food and Nutrition Security Day, but what is it to do when
local McDonalds franchises push kids to join the Happy Meal
Club and receive loads of great offers, promotions & competitions every month?
The United States, meanwhile, seems to be doubling down
on the export of fat and fructose. The farm bill that passed the
House of Representatives in July not only stripped out food
stamps but also made a number of key agricultural subsidies
including for corn, soybeans, and peanutsself-renewing in
perpetuity. Legislation like this, mixed with relentless corporate marketing, means the rest of the world is likely to keep
getting heavierand its clear whose hand is feeding them.
John Norris is executive director of the Sustainable Security and
Peacebuilding Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

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S
I
X
A
N
S EVIL
F
O
E
H
T

By Justin Rohrlich
Photographs by Lauren Coleman

rom Pepsi in Prague to Hershey bars

in Hong Kong, American snack-makers enjoy a de facto oligopoly on global
junk-food consumption. But what do
snackers in U.S.-sanctioned countries
eat when they get peckish? To nd
out, I embarked on a global scavenger hunt
of sorts, collecting candy, chips, and soda
that you wont nd in American stores
sometimes straight from the source (a recent
reporting trip to Cuba) and sometimes by
way of friends, acquaintances, and strangers
around the globe. I enlisted New York Times
food writer and bestselling author Mark
Bittman to sample my collection of enemy snacks, which ranged from the mildly
exotic to the blatantly imitative. Here are
Bittmans tasting notesand a few words
of warning.
Justin Rohrlich is a journalist based in New
York City.

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Foreign Policy

HAJABDOLLAH COTTON CANDY

IRAN

The packaging might promise vanillin cotton candy (pashmak in

Farsi), but whats inside is sort of sui generis, Bittman said. The candy
contains heavy wheat our, which gives it a texture he likened to a
combination of hair, processed lambs wool, and berglass insulation,
without the sting. As for the taste, theres almost no avor whatsoever.

GUSTAZO CHOCOLATE BAR

CUBA

The company behind the pitted, uneven surface and dry, waxy
consistency of this chocolate is Stella, a Cuban government venture
nanced in part with Italian capital. One bite was all Bittman
needed. Oh, thats not good chocolate was his rst reaction. But
it is chocolate. I mean, it tastes like chocolate. Its chocolate.

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RYONGSONG ASIAN
PEAR JUICE AND
OMIJA SODA
NORTH KOREA

CHEE.TOZ
IRAN

U.S. trademark law apparently isnt a concern for

Irans Dina Food Industries, the maker of Chee.Toz.
Although surprisingly short on preservatives (the
primary ingredients are cornmeal, vegetable oil,
whey powder, and cheese powder), these electricorange curls didnt impress Bittman. Theyre just
like Cheetos, he said. Sort of goes to show, you
can grind up anything into a powder and turn it
into a snack.

The state-run company that

bottles these drinks, Pyongyangs
Ryongsong Foodstu Factory, was
lauded in 2010 by Kim Jong Il, for
achieving what North Koreas news
agency called leaping progress
in the production of foodstus by
modernizing and scientizing the
production processes on the highest
level. Omija, which translates
to ve-avor berry, is native to
Northeast Asia and is the base for
this lightly carbonated soda, which
Bittman deemed not overly sweet,
not overly avorful, eitheractually,
pretty good. The pear juice is more
intense but still far less sugary than
American juicesbetter than our
Western equivalents, he said.

CHEER UP SODA

PELLY PELLETS

This lemon-lime soft drink is

produced by Ugarit Trading Co.,
based 25 miles south of Latakia,
the capital of Syrias largely
pro-Assad Alawite region. Ugarit
claims it once held franchises
from a number of international
companies, but its current
strategyperhaps no surprise
given heavy sanctions on
Syriais to develop our own
brands and products. Like
Cheer Up, whose name feels
sadly more apt than ever.

Pelly Pellets are a product of Havanas

Papas & Co., an outt within the
governments Coralsa food-production
arm. They are, in fact, not pellets at all,
but extruded strips of wheat our and
potato starch, striped to look like bacon.
Bittman gave them a superhigh grade
for avor and took the rest of the bag
to nish at home.

CUBA

SYRIA

SHAM GARDENS
BREADSTICKS
SYRIA

ZAM ZAM COLA

These Syrian-style sesame

breadsticks are produced
by Damascus-based Sham
Gardens Food Industries,
which boasts of its products
distinguished pleasant ne
taste. Sugar and mahlab, a
Middle Eastern spice made
from ground cherry pits,
combine for an unexpected,
almost biscotti-like avor.
Kind of sweet, Bittman said.
Not crazy about these.

Zam Zam cola is what became

of Pepsis Iranian distributor
after it was seized by the state in
the wake of the 1979 revolution.
The two big glasses of the soda
that Bittman and I poured over
ice sat untouched after one
taste. Something went wrong
here, Bittman said, wincing.
Everything about this is
terrible. It tastes a little like bad
iced coee.

IRAN

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EVERYONE IS TRYING TO CASH IN ON CHINAS GAMBLING ADDICTION.

BUT DOES BEIJING HAVE AN ACE UP ITS SLEEVE?

By Isaac Stone Fish

he Taiwanese islands of Matsu do not seem like an ideal spot for

one of the worlds biggest casinos. Although they are ringed by rocky
beaches and azure water, only about 10,000 people live on the 19
tightly clustered yspecks, some 126 miles away from the main island
of Taiwan. An Associated Press reporter who visited in 2012 described
Matsus few shops as a complex of decaying concrete structures that
are most notable for their low-wattage gracelessness. Besides a small
tourism industry, the islands chief draw is a sorghum-based liquor that, to
the uninitiated, smells like embalming uid.
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Matsu is best known in the
United States as a footnote
of Cold War history. China
and Taiwan fought a battle
there in 1958Chiang Kaisheks Nationalist forces had
held onto the islands in their
1949 retreat from the mainlandcausing U.S. Secretary
of State John Foster Dulles
to oat the idea of dropping
a nuclear weapon on the
Peoples Republic in order to
defend Matsu and the nearby island of Quemoy from communist incursion. As recently as 1999, tensions were high enough
that Taiwan, fearing an invasion, ordered troops stationed on
Matsu and Quemoy to cancel their holidays and remain at
their posts.
Relations between China and Taiwan have improved markedly since thenin June, the residents nally cleared the last
land mine from Matsuand so have prospects for holidays
on the islands. In 2009, in an attempt to encourage tourism
and revitalize economic growth, the Taiwanese legislature
passed a law allowing the outlying islands to vote on whether
to legalize gambling. The idea is to take what has historically
been one of the islands greatest vulnerabilities and turn it
into a strength: At its closest point, Matsu is just a few miles
from Chinaand its legions of big-spending gamblers.
Gambling is illegal in the Peoples Republic, but its residents
are some of the worlds highest rollers, both domestically,
where they wager billions of dollars annually on underground
games of chance, and abroad, where over the last decade a
growing number of increasingly wealthy Chinese have driven
a huge boom in casino construction and prot. Spurred by
the success of Macau, the worlds hottest gaming spot, casinos have mushroomed in Singapore, the Philippines, and Australia. The consulting rm PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts
that the Asia-Pacic gaming market will net nearly $80 billion
in 2015, more than double its take in 2010and investors
and gaming companies are looking for the next best spot to
capture Chinese clientele.
William Weidner, owner of an eponymous resort development company and former chief operating ofcer for gambling
giant Las Vegas Sands, wants to make Matsu that spot. He
rst considered building a casino in Taiwans nearby Penghu
archipelago, but after that island countys referendum to allow
gambling failed, he turned his attention to Matsu. As part of
his charm offensive, Weidner has said he will spend $2.5 billion of the projects $8 billion budget to upgrade the islands
infrastructure and turn Matsu into a world-class resort. In
addition to a casino, the project envisions elevated causeways
linking Matsus two main islands, a university campus, a golf
course, a ferry terminal (complete with luxury high-speed ferries), an expanded airport built on reclaimed land, boutique
hotels, and Mediterranean-style villas for the visitors, the majority of whom the developers expect to be Chinese.

In April 2012, Weidner Resorts posted a slick Chineselanguage public relations video on its YouTube channel,
seemingly to impress upon
Matsus residents the ventures cosmopolitan nature.
The video features glamour
shots of Weidner with celebrities ranging from George
W. Bush to Sylvester Stallone
MATSU
and promises Matsu locals
the opportunity to realize
their dreams, create history and create wealth for their future generations. To sweeten the pot, Weidner said in July
2012 that if the casino opens and hits its targets, hell pay each
resident $609 a montha sum that will rise to $2,670 after
ve years. The Matsunese bought the pitch, and that month
the islands became the rst Taiwanese territory to approve
gambling.
Yang Sui-Sheng, the magistrate who oversees Matsu, is optimistic that the casino will be built, but he has no illusions as
to why Weidner chose his tiny corner of the Pacic. If casinos
were legalized in China, there would be no chance that investors
would come here, he says. This raises an interesting question:
Why doesnt China, with its growing wealth, consumptiondriven economy, and huge unmet demand, take advantage of
its own gaming market?

hina, where no vice is legal but every vice is tolerated,

has a complicated history with gambling. Like opium, it
was rife in the early 20th century. Gen. Chiang Kai-shek,
the countrys nominal leader in the 1930s and 1940s, saw
gambling as a threat to his armys morale and unsuccessfully tried to curtail it. After Chiang and his supporters
made a run for Taiwan and Matsu in 1949, Mao Zedong took
power in China and swiftly outlawed gambling, as well as other vices. But in the years following his death in 1976, drugs and
prostitution re-emerged, and by the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese
people could be found betting on everything from horse racing
to soccer matches to cricket ghting.
Today, signs of gambling are nearly ubiquitous in mainland
China. Tables for the rummy-like game of mahjong dot street
corners around the country, while more serious wagering takes
place in parlors that, like Chinese brothels hiding behind footmassage signs and barber chairs, make little attempt to hide
their purpose. If you dont play for a prot motive, its legal
but if you play to make money, thats illegal, explains Chen
Haiping, a researcher at Beijing Normal Universitys lottery
research center. But there are also much, much bigger games:
In June, 17 people were indicted in Shanghai for the crime of
opening an online casino into which they allegedly funneled
$13 billion in bets.
Theres a rich Chinese tradition of legitimizing morally questionable behavior like gamblingyou just call it something
else. In the sixth century B.C., Confucius established his theory

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of the rectication of names. He believed that social disorder stemmed from the failure to accurately perceive reality,
and the solution was describing things as they are. Ever since
then, the Chinese have tried to subvert Confuciuss dictum:
Feet shaped by the excruciatingly painful process of footbinding, for example, were called golden lotuses. The communists under Mao were notoriously good at euphemisms. The
famine caused by the collectivist government program known
as the Great Leap Forward, which killed tens of millions of
people, is referred to as the three years of natural disasters.
And euphemism remains the key to vice in China. Because a
percentage of state lottery proceeds accrue to the Ministry of
Civil Affairs, the lottery is not considered gambling but a legal,
even benecial, social welfare project.
Foreign gaming companies have tried to use this trick in
their tful efforts to penetrate the Chinese market. In 1993,
for example, a Malaysian company opened a slot machine
parlor in the dreary northeast city of Harbin, but because it
paid out gifts, not cash,
it was licensed for entertainment, not gambling,
according to Hong Kongs
South China Morning Post.
Harbin tolerated foreign slot
machines for a little while
a 2010 article in a provincial
newspaper described 1994
and 1995 as the craziest era for gambling in the cityuntil
it formally banned the machines in January 1996.
In 1993, another Malaysian company said it had obtained
a license to operate electronic and electrical entertainment
machines in the nearby city of Dalianan experiment that
appears to have fared worse. Soon after the company announced the agreement, the citys then-mayor, Bo Xilainow
best known for a 2012 political scandal involving coup rumors, attempted defections, and murdersaid he was not
aware of any such deal. He added that gambling was strictly
prohibited and disapproved of by the central communist government, according to a report in the Straits Times, a Singaporean newspaper. If a club with betting machines should
open its doors in Dalian, it would be immediately closed, and
you can consider that an ofcial statement, a Bo aide said
in July 1993.
That doesnt mean that people in Dalian and Harbin actually stopped gambling or that enterprising businesspeople
stopped providing them with illicit opportunities to do so.
As Chinas economy has grown, however, the stakes have
gotten higher. In 2003, the disposable income of the average
urban resident was about $1,000; in 2012, it was roughly
$4,000. Chinese with the means to scratch the gambling itch
go overseas; last year, Chinese people took 83 million trips
abroad, on which they spent more than $100 billion. The
Chinese are now the partygoer everyone wants to invite,
says Ben Lee, managing partner at IGamiX, a gambling consultancy in Macau.
Macau has laid out the red carpetnearly 90 percent of
its visitors are Chinese, says Martin Williams, Asia editor of

GamblingCompliance, a market analysis rm. The tiny former Portuguese colony borders southern Chinas Guangdong
province; with the right travel permit, it is an easy ferry, rail,
or plane trip from the mainland or Hong Kong. Once a sleepy
backwater, Macau allowed foreign companies to open casinos
in 2002. In just a decade it has become the worlds undisputed
gaming capital, with revenue six times greater than Las Vegas. On the day that the Sands Macao, that territorys rst Las
Vegas-style casino, opened in 2004, more than 20,000 people
swept in, literally ripping the doors off their hinges. Over the
next three years, gaming companies will build at least six more
casino resorts in Macau, at a cost of $20 billion.
Most countries that abut China have built casinos to cater to
the countrys legion of gamblers. Myanmar, Vietnam, and Laos
host gaming resorts near the border that exist just because of
China, says Andrew Klebanow, co-founder of the consultancy
Gaming Market Advisors. Singapore, which only allowed casinos to open in 2010, already hosts the worlds two most protable, with 2012 gaming revenues of $5.9 billion driven
by Chinese puntersjust
under the combined haul of
all of Las Vegass dozens of
casinos. Even Kazakhstan
has gotten in on the game.
The Astoria Club, for example, a gambling resort in
a lakeside town outside Almaty, provides a Chinese-language
book of rules and tutorials, says the casinos event manager,
who asked to go by his rst name, Batikhan. Chinese visitors
are welcome here, for sure!
But Almaty is quite a trip for the roughly half of Chinas
population that lives along the countrys east coastthe Kazakh city is some 2,000 miles from Beijingand investors and
developers are looking for the next big opportunity to draw
those visitors. Major casino projects have recently been announced in the Philippines and Vladivostok, the largest city
in the Russian Far East, which is a short ight for many of
the 120 million people who live in northeast China. Currently, their nearest legal gaming option is in the basement of the
Yanggakdo International Hotel, on an island in a river in the
middle of Pyongyang, North Korea. (South Korean casinos
are somewhat farther but a lot more inviting.) If it is built,
Weidners Matsu casino would be the closest optionand a
much swankier onefor tens of millions of people in southeast China.

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Foreign Policy

f course, building a casino in China would presumably be the most convenient option, but doing so has
proved difcult.
In 2005, fresh off the success of opening the Sands
Macao, American gaming magnate Sheldon Adelson announced in a statement that the nearby city of Zhuhai
had selected his company, Las Vegas Sands, to proceed with
master planning for a resort on the citys Hengqin Island, and
in January 2007 the company issued a news release noting that
the local government had formed a committee to advance

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STUART DEE/GETTY IMAGES

Euphemism is the key to vice in

China, where gambling is illegal,
but the lottery is embraced as a
social welfare project.

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the development of the project. The island is right next to
Macau, but unlike its neighbor is part of mainland China, so
Chinese can y or drive there without having to worry about
Macaus sometimes onerous visa regulations.
The resort might have been a good testing ground, serving
as a beachhead that could eventually host a casino, if laws
changed. But by 2008, with the economic climate worsening
and the Hengqin project still not approved, Las Vegas Sands
announced it had suspended its plans for the resort. In August 2012, the New York Times reported that a contractor
hired by the Sands was the focus of a U.S. federal investigation for bribery; early this year, the companys annual regulatory report acknowledged that it may have violated the
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.S. law that prohibits
bribing foreign ofcials. The company remains under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities
and Exchange Commission. (A Sands spokesman declined
to comment.)
Gambling operations in China may have a greater chance
of success a few hundred miles to the southwest in Hainan,
Chinas smallest provinceprincipally composed of a large
tropical island that administers the Spratlys and the Paracels, archipelagos whose ownership China disputes with
several Southeast Asian countries. Its a linchpin to Chinas
regional policies, says Lee, the IGamiX consultant, so the
central government wants it to be economically healthy.
They want to see Hainan succeed. Sanya, Hainan Islands
southernmost city, has a number of large resorts, says
Adam Pliska, president of World Poker Tour, which hosts
and manages poker tournaments. If you look [at them],

they look like any nice casino in Las Vegasminus one

thing. There are no table games and slot machines, but its
certainly ready.
Hainan has been irting with legalizing gambling since
at least January 2005, when four delegates to its provincial
legislature submitted a resolution to legalize gambling to
increase employment and boost local economic revenue,
according to an article in Beijing Youth Daily, a Chinese
newspaper. That resolution didnt pass, but in 2009 nearly
60 Hainan government ofcials suggested a partial easing
of gambling restrictions. And in 2010, in a little-noticed report, the State Council, Chinas cabinet, approved a resolution allowing Hainan Island to function as a testing
ground for Chinas lottery and gambling industry. In December 2012, Pliskas company was allowed to host a poker
event, which looks very much like what the government
has prohibited in the past, he says. The event was held at
the mgm Grand Sanya, a massive new resort built by the
American gaming and hospitality company now called mgm
Resorts International, which had tried but failed to build a
casino on Hainan in the 1990s.
The closest Hainan has come to legalizing casinos came
this past February, when Zhang Baoquan, a Chinese property tycoon, told Reuters about a cashless casino bar in his
Mangrove Tree resort in Sanya. There, gamblers could exchange winnings for items like luxury goods, jewelry, artwork, and accommodations. Zhang told the reporter that
China was not yet ready to legalize casino gambling, but
my personal opinion is, in future, there is a big possibility
that they will have.

RIZWAN TABASSUM/STRINGER

MACAU

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Two days after the Reuters story was published, Chinese
authorities said they had shut down the casino. We are investigating it, and so far it looks like they have violated their
operating regulations, Chen Guangfa, the deputy director of
the Sanya Culture and Sports Bureau, told the wire service
for a follow-up article. In a July 23 interview, Chen told Foreign Policy that Zhangs bar got shut down because it offered entertainments that went beyond what our permits had
allowed. Zhang declined an interview request. Chen added
that the bar is now closed and undergoing reorganization.

he benefits to Beijing of legalizing casinos are plain to

see. Macaus economy, for example, has grown dramatically in the last decade, and its citizens have hit the jackpot: The territory now boasts an annual per capita gdp of
$78,275considerably higher than the average Americans
income and more than 12
times that of the average Chinese. But while Macau captures
an average of roughly $1.4 billion a month in tax revenue,
according to Williams of GamblingCompliance, the central
government in Beijing gets none
of that windfall. With Chinas
economy expected to continue its recent slowdownannual gdp
growth dropped from 9.2 percent in 2011 to roughly 7 percent in
2013casinos could be a helpful source of revenue. Of course
I hope the government will open up the market for gambling,
says Wang Xuehong, executive director of Peking Universitys
China Center for Lottery Studies. She believes legalizing gambling would help create jobs, bring in tax revenue, and allow
Chinese enterprises to participate in the industry. Li Hai, associate dean of the School of Management at Shanghai University
of Sport, agrees. Peoples demand is there. Its a choice between
blocking it and channeling it, he says.
But ofcials worry about the downside. Throughout Chinese
history, there has been a fear that the central government will
not be able to maintain its grip on power and that the provinces
might go their own way (a sentiment captured by the centuriesold expression The mountains are high and the emperor is
distant). Legalizing casinos would help provincial ofcials not
only increase local tax revenues but also strengthen their power
basessomething Beijing doesnt want.
Whats more, high-ranking Communist Party ofcials are ardent students of their own history. Gambling was a major social disruption in the 19th and early 20th centuriescausing
bankruptcies, breaking up families, and spurring other vices like
opium useand they fear that legalizing gambling would revive
those problems. The governments main concern is its potential
to disturb social stability and harmony, says Li. It is a very sensitive subject. The Communist Party is also aware that casinos
often attract organized crimeas they did in Macau, as well as
Las Vegas, which for decades was controlled by the mob.
Teresa Du, a communications manager at mgm Grand Sanya,
doubts there will be any signicant policy changes for at least

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Foreign Policy

the next ve years, which is frustrating, she said. Everyone

knows mgm specializes in operating casinos, but the only thing
we can do is send petitions to the government. (A spokesman
for mgm Resorts International said Dus comments dont accurately reect the companys views.) For investors, then, the key
may be to put your chips where theyre supposed to be, says
Desmond Lam, a marketing professor and gambling expert at the
University of Macau. That way, if gambling is legalized in China,
they are in a good place.
William Weidner appears to be taking the other side of that
bet. We think the likelihood of China allowing casinos, even
in Hainan, is very low, says Jennifer Lee, vice president of
Weidner Resorts Taiwan. But Matsu has its own complications. Although relations are much better than in the past,
tensions between Taiwan and mainland China still are up occasionally. In June, Taipei deployed a multiple-launch rocket
system in Matsu to fend off a
potential Chinese amphibious
landing. The irony, one imagines, is not lost on Weidner,
whos hoping for a different
sort of Chinese invasion.
Other obstacles stand in the
way of this ood of tourists.
Unlike traveling to Hong Kong
and Macau, its actually not that easy for Chinese to travel to
Taiwan. And in February, testy Chinese ofcials in nearby Fujian province suggested they might ban residents from visiting
the Matsu casino. (Lee said such comments are standard and
not cause for concern.) Yang, the magistrate for Matsu, admitted that ofcials are still trying to work out the visa situation.
The Matsu project has been met with skepticism by many
in the industry. Lee says that other companies have looked at
building casinos on Matsu but admitted, As far as I know, their
interest has not been very high. Steve Tight, president of international development for Caesars Entertainment, which has
been eyeing the more-developed Quemoy as a potential casino
site, says his company rejected the idea of trying to build on
Matsu because it was not as attractive a spot for investment.
Theres no way [Weidner] can spend $8 billion on a small
island, says one gaming analyst, who asked to speak anonymously. Thats insane! He could spend that money, but theres
no way he could make it back.
In January, Weidner announced that he plans to build clusters
of 30-oor hotels that would offer 26,000 roomsas many as
Macaus total capacity and 13 times the number in Weidners
original proposal for Matsu. Three months later, Weidner Resorts posted a new video on its YouTube Channel titled Weidners Destiny, A Gem Now AwakeningMatsu, The Mediterranean of Asia. The video opens with old images of artillery
re, describes the economic benets that a casino resort will
bring, and ends with a statement from Weidner himself. Its
time to change, he says forcefully. Matsu is my destiny.

Casinos would help provincial

ofcials strengthen their
power basessomething
Beijing doesnt want.

Isaac Stone Fish is an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Helen

Gao contributed reporting from Beijing.

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By Jason Miklian and Peer Schouten

ts a june night in Kinshasa, and rapper jb Mpianas weekly vip bash is just starting to
heat up. Toned groupies splash like mermaids in a sunken pool. Middle-aged businessmen perch on the ledge above to watch. A minute before midnight, jb runs onstage
among a huge posse of gyrating dancers in sunglasses. He rips into some of his biggest
hits; a bombastic performer, he glides across the stage with a beefy grace, dressed in a
hunter-orange jumpsuit and matching cap.
Most songs deal with the usual material, girls and gangbangers, in the Democratic Republic of the Congos Lingala language. But when jb starts to chant the lyrics of his biggest
hit of the night, the real purpose of this partyfestooned with yellow-and-blue banners
advertising Primus, the beer that everyone would be drinking anyway, even at this lush
downtown wine barbecomes obvious.
I love my Priiimus! jb yells. The crowd yells back: I love my beer!

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KINSHASA

After the show, as his black Cadillac Escalade purred nearby,

backup dancers waiting impatiently in the back seat, we asked
jb about his lucrative contract with Bralima, the Heineken
subsidiary that brews and distributes Primus. In return for
writing numerous odes to Primus and featuring its trademark
yellow-and-blue trucks in his videos, jb gets invaluable national
exposureand some $300,000 a year.
The dream contract for any celebrity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (drc) is with Bralimabetter than any Kinshasabased record company, it can guarantee its stars secure, stable
careers and fame, even in places where a different rebel group
takes over the radio station practically each month. Bralima even
played peacemaker for jbs Biggie vs. Tupac-style beef with a local rival, convincing them to share the stage for Bralimas 90thanniversary party. Theres so many advantages to being with
Bralima, jb said. They have reach all over the country.
Of course, in the drc, all over the country includes some
of the most dangerous places on Earth. The authority of the national government in Kinshasa does not extend to all of eastern
Congo, which is largely run by a rogues gallery of rebel groups,
including the notorious M23, whose list of alleged crimes against
humanity includes looting, murder, and rape. Congos civil wars
have been fueled by everything from blood diamonds to conict coltan extracted from the countrys abundant mines, which
makes operating any sort of business in the east a morally dubious proposition. But that has not stopped Heineken and many
other foreign rms, which see themselves as the countrys best
hope for postwar reconstruction.
Corporations from the East India Company to United Fruit did
shady business in conict zones for decades, inviting the wrath
of diplomats and international watchdogs who accused them
of war-proteering. By the end of the 20th century, however,
the rapidly growing international peace-building community
including ngos, the United Nations, development consortiums,
think tanks, and some developed-world governmentsstarted
taking a different tack. These days, an emphasis on economic
opening and corporate social responsibility means that many
of the worlds most powerful organizations are actively encouraging corporations into conict markets, hoping this will lead
to peace. Sometimes, though, when Bralimas yellow-and-blue
trucks hit those dusty Congo roads, the results can be messy.

72

Foreign Policy

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JASON MIKLIAN

n 1923, a group of European investors founded one of Africas rst breweries, naming it Brasserie de Lopoldville
after Belgian Congos colonial-era capital. Primus, its inaugural brew, did not fare particularly well, with drinkers
preferring better-tasting and cheaper Dutch and German
beers until the 1950s, when the companyin which the
Netherlands-based Heineken purchased a minority stake in
the 1930sbegan expanding production. Over time, Primus
became Bralimas marquee beer and a source of national pride:
a workhorse pilsner with a taste satisfaction directly proportional to the bottles coldness and the degree of grime built up
inside your sinuses from a day of breathing Congos dieselfume-laden air.
Following Congos independence from Belgium in 1960, Primus played a central role in the new country, even basing its logo
on the national ag. Bralimaas the company was now called,
for Brasseries, Limonaderies et Malteries Africainesbrewed a
whopping 145 million gallons of beer in 1974, the year Muhammad Ali and George Foreman duked it out in the Rumble in
the Jungle. When dictator Mobutu Sese Seko banned imported
beer for a time in the 1970s, he kept the Primus owing, making
it a core policy to maintain local production, while other services
and infrastructure crumbled and the state went bankrupt. Beer,
he believed, was the magic ticket to keeping his citizens happy: If
it ever ran out, his days would be numbered.
Ultimately, it wasnt beer that toppled Mobutu but a 1997
uprising supported by neighbors Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda. The country was given a new name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but its struggles continued. The current
government, under President Joseph Kabila, has faced monumental challenges, from entrenched corruption and nonexistent infrastructure to raging conict both within and around
the country. Bigger than the U.S. Midwest, the drc holds some
70 million people. But, by some estimates, nearly 10 percent
of its population has died as a result of a series of fratricidal
civil wars that began in 1996. Last years mutiny by the M23
rebel group in the eastern city of Goma, as well as the ongoing
violence since then, has displaced hundreds of thousands and
killed hundreds. Rebel offshoots are now stockpiling weapons for a potential showdown with the worlds largest U.N.
peacekeeping force, which has been in the country since 1999
but has just been given an unprecedented mandate to take offensive action against the rebels.
Heineken, which bought out Bralima in 1982, has maintained
its investment in the drc throughout the turmoil, anticipating
major shifts in the global spirits trade, as giant conglomerates like
Belgiums Anheuser-Busch InBev and Londons sabMiller have
moved away from reliance on stagnant European and American markets to snap up foreign brands. Heineken doesnt report
prots by country, but Africa and the Middle East accounted for
$873 million in prots and 14.4 percent of the companys revenue in 2012. Frontier beers like Bralima are emerging-country
lottery tickets, chances to buy into a market before the country
booms and drinkers develop new, more exotic brand loyalties.
China, the big success story, saw a 1,000 percent explosion in
beer sales in the 1990s that led to local brands like Tsingtao
and Kingway Brewery being acquired by foreign companies and
later encouraged odd imports like the luxury Chinese version of

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Pabst Blue Ribbon that sells for $44 a bottle. Since taking over
Bralima, Heineken has acquired major stakes in other national
classics like Egypts Stella, Indias Kingsher, and Mexicos Sol.
Under guidance from Amsterdam, Bralimas market share
in the drc has rocketed from 30 percent in 1987 to 60 percent todaywith Primus as the agship brand. Bralimas main
plant in Kinshasa, one of its six in the country, churns out
up to a quarter-million of the football-sized brown, dimpled
bottles every day, alongside Heineken, Coca-Cola, Sprite, and
Fanta. (Bralima is also the countrys biggest soda distributor.)
In addition to its contracts with
celebrities, the brewery has exclusive deals with many bars in
Kinshasa, which are festooned
with Primus-branded tables,
chairs, and ashtrays. Handpainted signs for Primus seem to
paper every surface in the drc, many with the slogan Toujours Leader! (Always the Leader!).

can be a checkpoint rebel in the eastern drc, including lessthan-scrupulous police and armed forces trying to supplement
their anemic wages.
M23 is one of the major players in the blockade racket.
Formed by those unsatised with a 2009 peace deal that had
only nominally integrated the Rwandan-backed rebels into the
Congolese army, the group, which is estimated to have up to
6,000 members, wants greater autonomy in parts of North
Kivu province. The United Nations sanctioned M23 late last
year, accusing it of murdering, raping, and looting across
swaths of eastern Congo in an
attempt to intimidate its way
to power. Longtime RwandanCongolese rebel general Bosco
Ntaganda, currently at the International Criminal Court on
charges of war crimes, rape, and
use of child soldiers, is one of the founders.
Eastern Congos levy bosses arent exactly hiding from international retribution. In a surprisingly easy-to-arrange conversation, we spoke by cell phone in July with a taciturn Rwandan
calling himself Mr. Damien, tax collector for M23. Damien
said that he splits his time between M23s three primary checkpoints, overseeing operations at the Bunagana, Kibati, and Kiwanja stations. As matter-of-factly as if discussing tolls on the
New Jersey Turnpike, Damien explained that he charges $38
for a van to pass, $300 for a medium-sized goods truck, and
$700 for fuel tankers, handing out ofcial-looking receipts
for payment. The three main checkpoints bring in most of the
groups funding, enough money to purchase weapons, pay
salaries and bribes, and even occasionally dole out social aid
to eastern Congos poor.
Everyone gets stopped, even the Bralima trucks painted like
big yellow-and-blue drc ags. Damien explained that M23
takes $500 from the trucks hauling crates of Primus into rebelcontrolled areas: ngos pay. People carrying charcoal pay.
Women going to the market pay. Everyone pays! We dont do
preferential treatments. So, of course, those who transport beer
also pay. Drivers leaving for rebel areas are given extra cash to
cover the payments, a security ofcer at one of Bralimas main
distribution depots in eastern Congo told us. By the time the
brown glass bottles reach their remote village destinations, prices
can rise to four times the $1 they cost in Kinshasa.
We took Damiens numbers and multiplied them by the
thousands of trips per year that Bralima runs through eastern
Congos rebel-held regions. Extrapolating from Bralimas drc

Everyone gets stopped

at the rebel checkpoints,
even the Bralima trucks.

iven the volatility of the countrys politics, remaining

the leader in Congo can call for some tricky maneuvers.
But you wouldnt immediately know that from visiting
Bralimas Kinshasa plant, where tall Dutch managers in
crisply collared shirts oversee operations from the birdseye-view walkways and negotiate employee contracts at
the plants on-site watering hole. Inside the main brewing complex, Congolese technicians wearing lab coats inject hops into a
row of massive copper vats. At the loading dock out back, the
stacks of empty crates reach 20 feet high as an endless procession
of trucks waits for rells.
Sylvain Malanda, Bralimas Congolese communications
manager, was in his quiet ofce in the building next door when
we visited in June. Under a hand-painted mural depicting
some of Bralimas charitable activities (grain handouts, people
lined up at a free clinic) and the legend Bralima: Sower of
Growth, Malanda seemed surprised when asked about corruption in the drc: We can do some favors and give gifts [to]
politicians if they get in trouble or ask us. But no corruption.
Malanda says the help is mutual: The government is helping
us a lot. Congo is open for business!
In the east, however, with its virtually nonexistent government presence and horrically bad transportation infrastructure, it is the rebels who determine what stays open. Anyone
driving through eastern Congo quickly becomes familiar with
the experience of getting stopped at checkpoints and being
asked to pay fees. The checkpoints are low-tech affairs, often
little more than a wooden log or slack rope thrown across a
muddy red jeep trail, perhaps with a shack nearby sheltering a
couple of guys holding Kalashnikovs. Still, even a single checkpoint can bring in more than $700,000 per year and probably
much more, according to a 2008 report by the U.N. Group of
Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The checkpoints are the primary revenue source for armed
groups in the area and bring in more than enough to fund an
insurgency in a country where the average wage is about a dollar a day and used ak-47s can run for as little as $50. And with
automatic weapons as prevalent as they are, almost anyone

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market share and per capita rates of beer consumption elsewhere in rural Africa, we estimate that approximately 16 million bottles of Bralima beer, or about 2,000 transport vehicles
worth, must pass through checkpoints each year. Assuming,
based on our low-end estimates, that these trucks are fortunate enough to be stopped only once per journey at the dozens
of blockades along the regions few transport links, manned
not only by M23 but also other road and river rebel sentries,
Bralima distributors could be paying upward of $1 million a
year to rebel groups.
When we presented Heineken with our gure this summer,
John-Paul Schuirink, nancial communications manager, said
that due to the complexity of the situation in the drc and the
use of local distributors, the amount and the payments were
difcult for Heineken to verify. But Schuirink said that in response to Foreign Policys inquiry, the company was in the
process of investigating and, as a precaution, had immediately suspended all payment of third party distributor invoices
in the area. Schuirink also noted in an email that this area
represents far less than 1% of
our total volume in the drc and
that the vast majority of our deliveries in the area are outside
of the territories that are under
the inuence of M23.
Bralima outsources its distribution to local independent
operators, a common way for
corporations working in militia- or cartel-controlled zones to
keep space between themselves and the road. Heineken has
denied that it uses local distributors to immunize the company,
pointing out that it operated this way for decades before the
rebels occupied the area. But the structure has certainly allowed Bralima to keep running in the east as warlords have
come and gone.
Bralima had breweries in cities under control of the rebel group
rcd-Goma during its occupation of eastern Congo between 1998
and 2003, explained Jason Stearns, who in 2008 headed the U.N.
Expert Group on Congo, conducting a special investigation into
violence in the countrys east. So the choice they would have
had at that pointand that any local businessman had at that
pointwas to disengage and to leave and stop business, or to
continue, Stearns said. Bralimas decision, along with those of
other companies that continued to operate in the region, was extensively documented in the Lutundula Report, the Congolese
parliaments 2005 assessment of conict proteering. Although
the widespread payments to rebels are common knowledge, the

Congolese government hasnt followed up the Lutundula Report

with further investigations, and business has proceeded as usual
ever since. Its not just Bralima that continued, but its every single Congolese company in the country, Stearns said.
Given beers almost mythical status in Congo, shutting
down Bralima in the east, though it could dry up some funds
going to M23, would do little beyond driving up prices and encouraging smuggling. (Last year, a logistical problem disrupted
the ow of beer in Goma for just under two weeks, leading to
a 50-cent increase per bottle, according to members of Bralimas distribution staff, who said that thousands of Congolese
took to the streets to riot throughout the city. As locals say:
You can bomb a hospital, but not Bralima!) Beer trafcking
would potentially provide an even more lucrative source of
income for rebel groups than the blockades do today. Imagine
Prohibition-era Chicago, transposed onto one of the planets
least stable regions.
The international community has placed some checks
on companies that do business, either directly or indirectly,
with the rebels. U.S. Executive Order 13413, a 2006
directive,
penalizes
any
American corporation or its
subsidiary found to have
materially assisted, sponsored, or provided nancial,
material, or technological
support to any anti-government militants operating in the drc. U.N. Security
Council Resolution 1493, adopted in 2003, also sanctions
assistance to rebel groups in the region. But the sanctions are
extremely difcult to enforce, especially given that most companies in eastern Congo work with local partners. Stearns, whose
experts group had a role in monitoring violations of U.N.
sanctions, said, We were able to prove that individuals and
small local companies were liable, but while companies above
them in the supply chain were morally negligent, it is often far
more difcult to prove legal liability. Despite all best efforts,
in a place like eastern Congo, once a corporation goes in, it
can become difcult for anyonewhether local governments,
international observers, or far-ung corporate executives
to control exactly what goes on there.

Given beers almost mythical

status, shutting down Bralima
in the east would do little
beyond driving up prices.

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AUBREY GRAHAM

GOMA

ccording to Malanda, Bralimas communications

manager, his bosses back in Amsterdam dont care much
about how he makes moneyso long as it gets made. For
Heineken, what matters is our sales goals. If we make them,
all is good. If not, big trouble! Malanda said, laughing as
he pretended to beat us with an imaginary stick. (Schuirink
told us, We do not recognize, nor condone these statements.)
At Heinekens headquarters in central Amsterdam, a vaulted
house perched across the canal from the rms original brick
brewery, global communications director John Clarke put the
companys philosophy in quite different terms. Theres a view, a
belief that you can help the most by being there, being present
being a contributor to the local economy, he told us.
Heinekens approach in the drc follows a business concept known as corporate social responsibility (csr). Part

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social investment, part public relations campaign, and part
community integration effort, csr assumes that if big companies can align their self-interest with the interests of the
countries in which theyre investing, everyone benets. Early
versions, such as the charitable works of United Fruit, may
have appeared to be little more than smoke screens for bad
practices overseas. In 1970, Milton Friedman called mixing social welfare and prot little more than hypocritical
window-dressing, a suicidal impulse for businesses. But
csr is now a multibillion-dollar industry in its own right
and an essential component of many major corporations,
complete with beautifully designed websites and thick,
glossy annual reports.
The Heineken Africa Foundation, for example, spent more
than half a million dollars last year supporting programs
for prenatal care, sickle cell anemia clinics, blood banks,
and primary schools. Heinekens 304-page csr report lists
dozens of positive projects, ranging from its comprehensive
aids program to the local sourcing of rice used at its production facilities. Bralimas foundation recently spent $90,000
building an orphanage. Almost all other international food
and drink conglomerates operating in fragile countries, from
Kraft and Mars to Pepsi and Nestl, undertake similar outreach. I have always believed that business could be a force
for good, ceo Irene Rosenfeld said upon the release of
Krafts 2010 csr report.
The most recent thinking about csr holds that the mere
presence of a major corporation in an unstable region is benecial. A century of scholarship on the complicated ties between poverty and violence has argued that greater economic
integration can help bring peace to chaotic parts of the world.
According to the World Bank, this sort of corporate opening is crucial for countries coping with and emerging from
violence and can lead to a better future for local residents.
Having Bralima in eastern Congo, so the theory goes, is a
csr activity in itself. It means better economic opportunities,
better clinics, better educational prospectsand in the long
term, a less violent society as economic growth decreases the
motivation to ght.
In reality, having Heineken in eastern Congo may boost
gdp, but its payments to rebels fuel a conict that leads
the country in the wrong direction. Will Reno, of Northwestern Universitys Program of African Studies, succinctly
described the dilemma: Will you favor csr and economic
opening, or consider the payments a violation of legal statute? You have to pick. It cant be both. Heinekens troubles
in eastern Congo, where just the cost of driving through the
region poses ethical and legal questions, point out exactly
what makes even the most socially responsible economic
opening so fraught in vulnerable countries. Who will enforce international law if, as seems plausible, Coca-Colas
reopening of its plant in Mogadishu requires taxes paid on
al-Shabab-controlled roads, if farc offshoots in Colombia
collecting money from sabMillers Bavarian-beer distributors buy more guns with the funds, or if Boko Haram shakes
down trucks laden with Nestl and Unilever products in Nigeria? Companies expanding into post-conict Afghanistan
will almost undoubtedly nd militia checkpoints awaiting

MUHANGA, NORTH KIVU

them. It is hard to imagine that these companies will not in

some way be implicated in the conicts they are supposed
to help end.

n Kinshasa, some 800 miles from the lawless eastern

drc, the difcultiesand the benetsof bringing Primus to the people seem distant. Stealing away to his afterparty, jb was clear on the upside of trusting corporations in Congo: I have faith in [Bralima], and they
have faith in me. We have faith in each other. Sidestepping dozens of fans, jb jumped into the idling Escalade and
rode off into the night, with his trademark motto, pelisa
ngwasumalight the reechoing through unpaved
slum roads. Eastern drc seems far from reaping the rewards of economic growth, or seeing peace. In fact, the
latest peace deal has only created a bigger power vacuum,
encouraging spinoff rebel franchises, like Raia Mutomboki,
to follow M23s nancial model, counting on the fact that
delivery trucks will keep lumbering through the Goma mud
on their way to new opportunities.
Back in Amsterdam, Heineken has greater ambitions than
to be the drcs liquid savior. There are always new markets
to win. As the United States has eased sanctions on Myanmar over the past year, multinationals of all shapes and sizes
have sprinted in to engage in heavy-duty economic expansion. Heineken, already in 178 countries, knocked out a $50
million joint venture with locally owned Alliance Brewery
just this past May. Clarke, the Heineken spokesman, has high
hopes for the companys global future. Think Star Trek! he
told us. There shouldnt be any frontiers for the enjoyment
of a nice cold Heineken thats enjoyed responsibly.

Jason Miklian is a researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

Peer Schouten is a Ph.D. researcher at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and a consultant for Diakonia Sweden. This article
is inspired by Schoutens forthcoming report, Brewing Security?
Heineken in the Eastern DRC.

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By Taimur Khan

he holy month of Muharram is a dangerous

time in Pakistan. It marks the beginning of the
Islamic calendar but is also a period of mourning
for Shiite Muslims. Each year, in the overflowing
metropolis of Karachi, they take to the streets in
processions by the thousands to observe Ashura,
the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hussein ibn Ali,
the Prophet Mohammeds grandson, and one of the
holiest days of the year for Shiite Muslims. It is often
a bloody affair, and not just because of the ritual selfflagellation in which many of the devout partake.
Over the past four years, with astonishing punctuality, Shiite processions and mosques have been brutally attacked by Sunni supremacist militants bent on
starting a sectarian war.

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In 2009, two bombs exploded along the parade

route, splattering the concrete street with human entrails and shredded clothing, and killing 43. The following year, on Nov. 11, the Pakistani Taliban drove
a car bomb right up to Karachis elite counterterrorism Crime Investigation Department, destroying the
building and killing 18. And in late November 2012,
in Orangi Town neighborhood, two bomb blasts
killed five people, as the citys undaunted Shiites continued with their mourning processions.
Understandably, Karachis streets were tense on the
ninth night of Muharram last year, as final preparations were being made for the Ashura festivities. Nervous government officials had cut cell-phone service
across the city for 11 hours that day, hoping to pre-

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RAJA ISLAM

THE WORLDS MOST DANGEROUS

MEGACITY IS THE NEXT FRONTIER
IN THE GLOBAL METH TRADE.

vent attacks. Some 10,000 police officers had been

dispatched to the main parade route, though in a city
with an estimated 20 million people, even this show
of force was only a drop in the bucket.
As night fell on Saturday, Nov. 24, the deputy
superintendent of police, Zameer Abbasi, was out
making the rounds. He had decided to take one
last patrol when he received a phone call around
9:20 p.m. about a small explosion at a nearby apartment building. My first thought was that this might
be a high-value target, a terrorist who had planned
to target the procession but had made a mistake with
the bomb, Abbasi later told me. When he arrived
at the scene, smoke was pouring from a third-floor
apartment window.

Abbasi didnt wait for the bomb squad to arrive. He

quickly cordoned off the street and raced inside, fearing
that there might be more explosives or a suicide bomber.
When he got to the apartment, however, the scene was
unlike anything he had seen before. A red chemical had
been sprayed across the white walls. There was what
seemed to be a laboratory: conical asks connected by
rubber tubing, sacks and boxes labeled with the names
of chemicals, a small centrifuge. A silvery blue powder
was spilled across the bathroom oor, and blood-red
footprints crisscrossed the living room. I thought this
might not be the kind of blast I thought it was, Abbasi
said. It looked like some kind of chemical reaction had
happened. He didnt know it at the time, but he had just
made the rst bust of a Pakistani meth lab.

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ts hard for an outsider to understand the pace of

change in Karachi these days. Statistics dont really do it
justice. But heres one: From 2000 to 2010, Karachis population grew more than 80 percent. Thats roughly equivalent
to adding more than New York Citys entire population in
just a decade. (For all the talk of the staggering boom of
Chinese metropolises, the worlds next fastest-growing city
Shenzhengrew only 56 percent, adding fewer than 5 million
people.) Over the past decade, millions of Pakistanis have ed
the ghting and terrorism in their countrys northwest to settle in Karachi, Pakistans pulsing commercial hearthome to
banks and corporations, shipping and transport, entertainment
and arts. But the ood of migrants in search of jobs and opportunity has also brought Karachi some less savory additions.

Drug gangs, often with links to

Iran, have brought with them
a new commodity increasingly
making its way from Karachi
to the wider world: meth.
Gangs tied to political parties have long operated in the
poorer parts of the city, running extortion rings and land-grab
schemes. More recently, Pakistani Taliban militants have also
gained a foothold in the city, carving out territory in neighborhoods like Manghopir, where they run criminal and smuggling
rackets, rob banks, and administer a cruel and terrifying justice.
From restive Baluchistan province, in Pakistans west, a war
economy driven by more than a decade of conict in Afghanistan has opened Karachi and its ports to narcotics and weapons
smuggling. Pitched reghts that go on for days between gangs,
or between gangs and the police, are not uncommon.
As a result, Karachi is far and away the worlds most dangerous megacity, with a homicide rate of 12.3 per 100,000
residents, some 25 percent higher than any other major city.
Consider this telling statistic from a megacity next door: In
2011, 202 murders occurred in Mumbai, India. Karachi had
1,723and more than 2,000 in 2012. Now added to this
combustible mix are drug gangs often with links to Iranlike
the one Abbasi and his men busted. And theyve brought with
them a new commodity that is increasingly making its way
from Karachis ports to the wider world: methamphetamine.
Opiates had always been Karachis drug of choice. With
as much as 90 percent of the worlds heroin production right
across the border in poppy-rich Afghanistan, Pakistani drug
barons have reaped the benets of proximity. Despite a ban
on opium production in 1955, Iran saw a heroin resurgence
in subsequent decades, becoming a major regional production
center. But after the mullahs came to power in 1979, the drug
trade shifted east. Heroin was produced en masse in Afghanistan and Pakistan to fund the mujahideen ghting the Soviets.

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Foreign Policy

The drugs primarily went to market through Karachis port

and on to Europe and the Americas.
Setting up the infrastructure for this trade was almost a matter of policy for military ruler Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq,
who created the National Logistics Cellessentially a military
trucking businessto transport heroin from the northwest to
Karachi and bring weapons in the other direction. Even by the
standards of rogues and dictators, Zia was unusually brazen
and corrupt, with close associates implicated in drug trafcking and money laundering plots. Pakistan seemed on the verge
of becoming a narcostate. In 1980, on his way to the United
Nations in New York, Zias diplomatic cargo was searched,
and heroin was reportedly found stuffed into marble lamps.
After the war with the Soviets and Zias mysterious death, that
transport infrastructure was more or less privatized by Pakistani cartels and drug maas, and it has lasted through the present day. Today, as much as 40 percent of Afghanistans heroin
still transits through Karachi, according to the United Nations.
But as the global appetite for heroin has waned, producers
and smugglers are turning to methamphetamine, demand for
which is soaring in nearby East Asia. Iran has emerged as the
biggest producer of methamphetamine in the region, but Pakistan still appears to be the natural transit route to eastern markets like Malaysia and Australia, as well as a major supplier of
the precursor chemicals that are the drugs main ingredients.
There are signs, however, that sophisticated labs are being set
up in Pakistan itself, perhaps by Iranian syndicates. And links
to Pakistani meth are showing up in places from Mexico to
Melbourne.

s anyone who has seen the tv drama Breaking Bad

knows, the production of methamphetamine is a complex and combustible process, requiring a laboratory
and various chemical ingredients, or precursorsthe
most notable of which is ephedrine or its close cousin,
pseudoephedrine. These precursors have legitimate uses
in cough, cold, and allergy medications (they act as a decongestant), and drug companies produce them on an industrial
scale. But in Karachi, which has an advanced pharmaceutical
industry, it has become clear that production is being diverted
to criminal enterprises.
In April 2011, Karachi port ofcials discovered 540 pounds
of ephedrine hidden in packets of spice mix bound for Australia. That same year, ofcials in Tehran reported the seizure
of 1,170 pounds of ephedrine coming from Pakistan. And in
June 2012, a group of men with more than 1,750 pounds of
meth was stopped at Karachis airport. Authorities only managed to arrest one of the smugglers; accomplices waiting outside barged into the customs hall and ed with the drugs. But
what really has international drug-control ofcials worried
is the sense that these seizures are just the tip of the iceberg.
For example, Australian police are investigating a Melbourne
biker gang, the Black Uhlans, that is suspected of setting up
a massive Indian meth lab and contacting a senior Pakistani
government ofcial about drug importations.
The U.N. International Narcotics Control Board (incb)
helps governments regulate and monitor the potential for illic-

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AFP/GETTY IMAGES

LYARI TOWN

it drug production, and Pakistan, like most countries, reports

its need for ephedrinewhat are called annual legitimate requirements. In 2007, Pakistan reported a legitimate requirement of 11 tons of pseudoephedrine to the incb. In 2010, it
reported 53 tonsnearly three times the amount that most
countries produce, making Pakistan the worlds fourth-largest
producer of pseudoephedrine. That means that either a lot
more Pakistanis have suddenly come down with the snifes
or the drug trade has, once again, corrupted ofcials at the
highest levels.
In September 2012, former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilanis son, Ali Musa, was arrested for allegedly pressuring ofcials, with help from the countrys health minister, to increase
ephedrine quotas for two pharmaceutical companies. One of
these rms, Berlex Lab International, which was granted a license to produce some 14,300 pounds of ephedrine, claims it
sold its tablets to a company called Can Pharmaceutical. But
according to an Associated Press report: [I]nvestigators discovered the address for the company was a residential house
in Multan, and nobody answered the door. The owner of the
company didnt answer his phone. No wonder that prosecutors speculated that the ephedrine was destined for meth labs
in Iran. (Gilani maintains his innocence, and his lawyer claims
the accusations were politically motivated.)
Worryingly, the trend appears on the rise. The incb notes
that in 2008, Iranian authorities dismantled two meth labs;
in 2010, that number had spiked to 166. That year, Pakistani
ofcials reported four seizures of smuggled ephedrine, totaling 585 pounds, near the border with Iran, as well as more

than 14 tons of diverted cold medicine, according to the U.N.

Ofce on Drugs and Crime (unodc). Matt Nice, of the incbs
secretariat in Vienna, said that the size of some of the recent
seizures of ephedrine originating in Pakistan suggests that a
signicant portion of legitimate cold medicine gets diverted
to the black market. If the [declared annual requirement] is
so high that 500 kilograms can go missing, then that means
you have something thats probably already been inltrated,
Nice told me.
A person familiar with the Gilani case, who requested anonymity, citing the ongoing investigation, explained how the
scam allegedly worked. You register yourself as a pharmaceutical company, he said. Then you register yourself for
a chemical like ephedrine. Then you get a quota for ephedrine on an export order, and then you say, Can I have this
converted to local consumption because my export order has
fallen through? And then I take that, I falsify my distribution
documents, and I have it smuggled. At many steps along this
path, he said, its necessary to bribe ofcials and bureaucrats
to sign documents and deect attention.
Corruption has a long, sordid history in Pakistan, but drugs
add an extra layer of societal corrosion. On paper and anecdotally, evidence suggests that the meth trade is already having
a deleterious impact on a country that doesnt need any more
problems. Drug use, particularly of opiates and cannabis, is
already high in Pakistan, with 1 percent of the population using heroin and 4.1 million people thought to be drug-dependent, according to the unodc. But a 2013 report issued by the
unodc and the Pakistani government notes that a detectable

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ust two weeks after Pakistans general elections this

spring, I visited one of Karachis largest drug-rehabilitation programs, the Drug Free Pakistan Foundation
(dfpf), which treats around 4,000 addicts annually. The
dfpfs headquarters are on a quiet street in the leafy
Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighborhood, a middle-class area ruled
by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a secular political party
that dominates politics in Karachi. The partys red, white, and
green kite-shaped posters and painted slogans still adorned
nearly every light pole and wall. Like all the major political
parties here, though, it has an armed wing, and like the rest, it
prots from an intimate relationship with criminal activities.
Approximately 1.2 million drug addicts, the majority of
whom are heroin users, live in the city, said the foundations
director, Farheen Naveed. Beginning in 2010, however, she has
seen an inux of meth addicts seeking help at dfpf. As we
toured the foundations headquarters, she noted the uptick.
At the end of May, 35 of the 101 patients in dfpfs treatment
center in the industrial neighborhood of Landhi were there for
meth abuse. The numbers at the facility today are actually
much higher than I was expecting, Naveed said.

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The gangs hire the kids, get

them addicted to crystal, and
then make them do crimes
when they are high.
If Karachis police seem helpless to combat drugs on the
streets, perhaps Pakistans Anti Narcotics Force (anf) is the
last, best hope to stem the large-scale trade and trafcking.
Staffed by former military ofcers, the anf is in practice a
branch of Pakistans powerful army, but it has received funding from the United States and guidance from the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration (dea). Its more than 1,500 wellarmed troops form the front line in the drug war, and the
forces website trumpets the staggering quantities of hash and
heroin seized: 9,863 pounds of hash apprehended on May 1
in Killa Abdullah, 613 pounds of heroin on April 26 in Karachi. And on July 26, the anf announced that its Lahore
ofce had seized some 117 pounds of ephedrine, 95 pounds
of ephedrine mixed with vanilla powder, and, bizarrely, 1,272
bottles of ephedrine mixed with jam. Often, though, the news
releases accompanying such successes contain a line of boilerplate that speaks to the scale of the problem: Although
the endeavors of anf are wholehearted and wide-ranging, the
meager strength / resources remains to be a challenge. According to Naveed, The crackdown on ephedrine has not
had an impact on the prevalence of crystal use on the streets;
it continues to rise.
Pharmaceutical executives in Karachi, however, say that the
anf has cracked down hard on access to ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, so much so that companies are afraid to apply
for new quotas. Insiders say that this is blowback from the Gilani case: anf ofcials are embarrassed that they didnt catch
the scam themselves, and in an attempt to show their underwriters that they are serious, they have overreactedbut will
soon back off. The labs and the trafckers are likely biding
their time, waiting to see whether the ephedrine spigot is easily
loosened again. I think that there is such easy money to be
made [by diverting ephedrine] that I dont think its going to go
away, said a former ofcial. Its like bootlegging.

ne year before Ali Musa Gilani was charged in Islamabad, another young Pakistani man was arrested for his
alleged role in selling ephedrine on the global black market. Shiraz Malik, then 34, was taken into custody last
year after landing at Pragues airport on a ight from
Dubai. He was later extradited to the United States,
where he awaits trial in a federal court in California. Malik
is accused of running a multimillion-dollar industrial scale
online narcotics and precursor business, according to the U.S.
attorney in Californias Eastern District.
Undercover dea agents found a website for a Karachi-based
pharmacy that offered to ship a number of prescription opiates

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AFP/GETTY IMAGES

emergence of methamphetamine use has been found in certain

areas of the country. This nding is noteworthy because it is
the rst time a study has generated data relating to the use of
amphetamine-type stimulants in Pakistan. Just as the transport of massive amounts of heroin through Pakistan inevitably
created a local market, and millions of addicts, the new focus
on methamphetamine has led to a metastasizing trade on Karachis streets.
Crystaal, as its pronounced, is everywhere, from the
citys upscale neighborhoods to the poorer sections, like Lyari.
The crime-ridden south-central district is Karachis ercest, a
dense network of slums housing some 1 million people. Its
basically a no-go zone for law enforcement. Police generally
need to ask permission to patrol and must negotiate entrance
with the districts crime boss: Uzair Jan Baloch, the head of the
now-banned Peoples Aman Committee, a gang cum political
party cum philanthropic organization. When police attempted
an operation in Lyari this past April, Balochs men held them
at bay for days under a hail of bullets until the police retreated.
In late July, an elite police ranger unit raided Balochs mansion;
he had disappeared into the night.
In Manghopir, a violent, impoverished slum in Karachis
north, the users are easy to spot. Ive seen these guys start
banging their heads against a wall; they become out of control.
Its like they are numb and dont feel pain, said a community activist who asked to remain nameless due to numerous
threats from the Taliban and gangs. Now heroin is ending
and crystal is taking over. A gram of crystal goes for anywhere from 500 to 800 Pakistani rupeesroughly $5 to $8.
Thats still more expensive than heroin, but users say the high
is more intense. Most of the young men whom the activist sees
tweaking in the streets are foot soldiers for Balochs gangsters:
The gangs hire the kids, get them addicted to crystal, and
then make them do crimes when they are high so they have no
fear. Then they pay them with more crystal.

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as well as ephedrine, according to a criminal complaint the
dea led against Malik. After agents emailed the pharmacy,
Malik is alleged to have written back offering to send samples
of his wares via express mail. Between 2008 and 2011, Malik
mailed everything from heroin to ephedrine powder to Ritalin. The agents wired tens of thousands of dollars to bank accounts associated with Malik in the United States and Europe.
After accessing his email account, the agents found that Malik
had done regular ephedrine business with customers in Mexico. (They also found photos of kilogram-sized bags of ephedrine packed in suitcases that were believed to be headed to
Mexican customers. The shipment never made it. A PakistaniAmerican mule was arrested with the cargo as he attempted to
y to Mexico City.)
Malik has pleaded not guilty. But there is still what appears
to be an online business directory listing for the pharmaceutical wholesalerShama Medical Storethat the dea alleges
was a front for Maliks operation. In the section for company
information, the site reads: we are abal to provide u any kind
of medicion and any kind of row matirial all our tha world
and we also doing drop shipping all or tha world. Theres
even a physical address, located in Karachis Hijrat Colony
neighborhood, which was described to me by an urban-rights
activist as a nursery of crime controlled by a powerful drug
gang known as the Hamid Terha Group (terha roughly
translates as crooked).
I decided to pay Shama Medical a visit this past spring and
see whether Id be able to get prices for ephedrine or bulk
amounts of cold medicine. I brought along a friend who covers
crime for a local newspaper, and we made our way to Hijrat
Colony slum, which is bordered by railway yards to the east

and a mangrove swamp to the west. We took a main thoroughfare near the port into the colony and were quickly squeezed
to a standstill by the suddenly winding, narrow streets. We
doubled back, stopping to ask for directions.
Finally, we pulled up to Street 56, got out of the car, and
walked into an alley.
After a couple of hundred yards we reached a four-story
concrete building with faded red paint that read, Shama
Hospital. Next door was Shama Medical Store. Both seemed
abandoned except for a group of young toughs loitering in the
shade outside. One of them, with a long beard and wearing a
white T-shirt and jeans, asked us what we were looking for;
the others just gave us hard stares. Shama Medical Storeis
it open? my friend asked haltingly. In the silence, I realized
that the street, in the middle of a densely packed slum, was
unnervingly empty.
Yeah, its here. But its been closed for a long time, the
bearded guy saidjust as an older man in a purple buttondown shirt, gray suit pants, and pointy black dress shoes that
looked to be made of imitation alligator stepped out of the
medical store. A cell phone was pressed to his ear.
We should go, I whispered under my breath. So we did
walking quickly back to the car and driving away, hoping we
wouldnt be followed.
Later, through a well-sourced local contact, I inquired about
whether the police and anf had investigated Shama Medical.
They said they had never heard of it.
Taimur Khan is a New York-based correspondent for the National
newspaper in Abu Dhabi. This article was reported in partnership
with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

KARACHI

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IN OTHER

WORDS

A SyrianAmerican
writer
nds her
voice, with
help from
Libyas most
famous
novelist.

MUSE

OF THE REVOLUTION

By Amal Hanano

82

Foreign Policy

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DAVID LEVENSON/GETTY IMAGES EUROPE; ISTOCKPHOTO

had two New Years resolutions in 2011: to read Leo Tolstoys Anna
Karenina and Marcel Prousts In Search of Lost Time. Anna was completed
by Jan. 25just when our lives turned into a 24-hour tv marathon tuned
to Cairos Tahrir Square as the world watched a dictator fall in 18 short
days. We Syrians knew our country was not Egypt or Tunisia, but when
even Libya ignited on Feb. 15, we collectively held our breath with hope. The
weeks passed, the uprisings around the Arab world grew larger and more determined, and the seven volumes of Proust slowly collected dust on my nightstand.
Another writer entered my life instead.

I had never heard of Hisham Matar

before February 2011. But after reading one of his early op-eds about the
Libyan revolution, I immediately
downloaded In the Country of Men,
his Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel about a 9-year-old boy in Tripoli
whose father is abducted by Muammar al-Qaddas secret police. I nished it in two days. Matar portrayed
a Libya that at once cradles the novels
young protagonist, Suleiman, and disillusions him. It was an intimate introduction to a country I knew virtually
nothing about, except that its eccentric dictator with his crazy outts was
denitely worse than our own strongman, Bashar al-Assad. I was taken by
the fact that such a courageous book,
originally published in Britain and
now widely translated, had been released back in 2006, when Qaddas
oppressive regime and police network
were still strong.
Matars personal essays often revolve around an all-too-similar subject: the real-life abduction of his father, Jaballa, a high-ranking Libyan
opposition gure who was seized from

their familys home in Cairo in 1990

and imprisoned in Qaddas notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. My
loss is self-renewing, insistent and incomplete, Matar wrote in one essay,

test in Libya, citizens demonstrating

in Benghazis streets held up posters
of Jaballa Matar and other political
prisoners, demanding their release,
Matar was told. Over the next few

Hisham Matars writing was an intimate

introduction to a country I knew virtually
nothing about, except that its eccentric
dictator with his crazy outts was denitely
worse than our own strongman.
published just after In the Country of
Men. What I want is to know what
happened to my father. But Matars
demands remained unanswered: He
lost contact with his father in 1996
and never found out what happened to
him, even after returning to Libya 16
years later in the months following the
revolution that toppled Qadda.
In that revolution, Matar found
new cause for speaking out. On Feb.
15, 2011, during the very rst pro-

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days, demonstrators were shot and

killed as they chanted for their rights.
I appeal to Colonel Gadda and his
security forces, Matar wrote in the
Guardian three days later, for the
sake of the mothers, for the sake of
those who died, for the sake of Libya, please dont shoot and torture
your people. As the revolution progressed, Matar set up a makeshift media ofce in his London apartment and
worked around the clock connecting

September | October 2013

83

IN OTHER WORDS

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activists to journalists. When his sources

conrmed that regime troops were massing outside Benghazi, preparing to raid
the city and potentially kill thousands
of Libyans, Matar was one of the voices
that called for the international community to help prevent a massacreto
assist the uprising and limit the soaring
loss of innocent life, as he wrote in the
New York Times.
It was a bold appeal and one that most
Syriansscarred by the U.S. occupation of neighboring Iraq and afraid of
inviting imperialism into our country
still struggle with after two years of
regime brutality. Instead, we merely
watch as the Syrian army and air
force, assisted by Hezbollah, Iran, and
Russia, continue to bomb our country
daily and the bodies continue to pile
up100,000 and counting. Today,
Matars pleas for intervention no longer inspire the uncertainty I felt when
I originally read his words. He was
right to stand up for Libya, and the
Syrians who have held back from such

blunt demands, whether out of pride

or fear or both, have been proved devastatingly wrong.

or me, Hisham Matars writing

became the emblem of the Arab
Spring. I read everything he wrote,
religiouslyhis articles, his second
novel, even his Facebook page. His
words were powerful and brave. He
was my guide to Libya, and then, after
March 15, 2011the rst day of the
Syrian uprisings that would morph into
nationwide devastationhe was one of
the reasons I began to write about Syria.
I still remember the exact day when
I made my decision: March 20, 2011,
as we watched Syrian police attack the
city of Daraa. A native of Aleppo, I had
left Syria for the United States more
Bya Simon
Shuster
than
decade earlier,
but my memories
of my home country were a heavy burden. I drew a straight line between the
massacre in Hama that President Hafez
al-Assad had carried out in 1982 and
the bloodshed carried out in Daraa by

his son Bashar. My parents generation

had been silent under Hafez. Now my
generation faced the same choice: speak
the truth or turn away. I did not come
from a political family and had not been
trained as a writer, but in the end, I made
a selsh choice: to write, so I could keep
a record of my own voice for later, as
proof that I was not silent. I did not
know then that I would go on to narrate
the stories of other Syrians whose voices
might be unheard otherwise.
Matars work was my compassa
shield of literary courage. In the Country of Men and his other novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, are both political treatises on tyranny and oppression
narrated from within the most intimate
of settings: a familys home. His storytelling dissects the moments when innocence is lost and family relationships
are destroyed because of the brutal,
everyday intrusions of a police state
when a schoolboy lies still in the dark
of his dorm room, for instance, wondering about his missing father: kidnap, abduction, theft?
The world Matar describes is one we
know well as Syrians: what it is like to
fear surveillance constantly, never to
trust, to be silent when an injustice happens right in front of you. He examines
those moments that break you, even as
a child: when you rst learn that people
disappear, are tortured for dissent, are
killed for voicing their beliefs. His stories help readers understand why silence
becomes the only option for survival and
how the absence of the disappeared consumes those left behind: [T]here is this
void, the young Suleiman muses, this
emptiness I am trying to get at like someone frightened of the dark, searching for
a match to strike.
Over time, Hisham and I became
friendsrst virtually, then in person. I
took every similarity between us as a sign:
the city where we were both born but did
not live in long enough to ever be from,
the profession we had studied but did
not practice, our homelands with similar
madmen lling the role of leader while
slaughtering thousands. Our countries
were parallel lines on the same path. The

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ALEPPO UNIVERSITY, JAN. 15, 2013; AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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only difference was that Libya was just a

bit closer to the nish line. But this was not
a race, we told ourselves; we would all get
there eventually. Or so we believed.
At the end of the summer of 2011,
Tripoli fell to the rebels. Two months
after that, Qadda was killed. Libya
ipped the page to its post-revolution
chapter, while my country transitioned
to an even steadier ow of bloodletting.
Syrians began to place bets on Assads
fall, always choosing randomly symbolic
dates. It would denitely be by the Eid
al-Adha holiday in the fallor maybe
on the national holiday that marks the
anniversary of Hafez al-Assads Nov. 16
military coup. By New Years 2012 for
sure, because it cant go on much longer
than that. Right?
Every few weeks, these forecasts shifted
another few months into the future. Then
the siege of the Baba Amr neighborhood
of Homs in February 2012 changed everything. The warplanes, urban destruction,
escalation of violence, mass exodus of residents, and brutal civilian massacres that
followed revealed an evil we could not
have imagined. For the rst time, I longed
for a disheveled dictator with crazy outts.
At least he was dead.
I stayed in touch with Hisham,
though less frequently. The revolutions
that had bonded us turned out to be
asymptotescurves that approached
each other but would never meet. Instead, we discussed other things: music,
architecture, books, and, of course, writing. His spoken and written sentences

were often peppered with endearing exclamations of fantastic! Hisham loves

Proust more than anyone else I know.
He insisted to me that there is only one
way to read the great French novelist:
the way he had, in one go. Suffering
from revolution fatigue, I took his challenge and renewed my resolution at the
beginning of this year. Months later and
only 185 pages in, the goal seems, once
again, impossible.

Hisham never failed to remind me

that I was more than just a reection
of the revolution. I knew at some level
that he did not completely approve of
the way I was going about things
becoming consumed by the events happening across the world and forgetting
the other parts of my life, like the novel
I had stopped writing when the revolution began or the hours I had once
spent reading purely for pleasure. I

CLINICAL ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Center for Global Affairs
NYU SCHOOL OF CONTINUING AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES (NYU-SCPS)
The Center for Global Affairs within the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies invites
applications for a non-tenured full-time clinical faculty position beginning spring or fall 2014. We seek
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Expectations are to teach three courses in each fall and spring semester. We are an interdisciplinary program which covers areas such as international relations, law and political economy, as well as
peacebuilding, international development, transnational security, energy and environment, global civil
society and gender related issues. Candidates with expertise in any of these areas may apply. Our
faculty members have diverse but complementary academic backgrounds and, in addition to teaching, are active research scholars who also play a full role in curricular development, student advisement
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activities and support its goal of promoting global citizenship.
Requirements: The successful candidate will possess an advanced degree, with an earned doctorate
preferred, in international relations, economics, or related fields, and experience of teaching at the
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The Center for Global Affairs (CGA) educates and inspires its community to become global citizens
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NYU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

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IN OTHER WORDS

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I was done with resistance, Hishams

essay announces. I did not know
how envious I was of those words
until I read them. How I longed to be
done with the battles, the bloodshed,
and everything that we could not stop.
often feel you are trapped, he once
told me, and I want to pluck you out
of this entrapment but fail in knowing
how. I didnt know either.

couldnt remember the last time I

had bought a magazine, but I couldnt
wait to pick up the New Yorker this
past April to read Matars essay on
his return trip to Libya in 2012. The
Return is the unnished chapter in a

personal saga, when Matar nally moves

beyond his fathers disappearance, from
its anatomy to its aftermath. The text is
classic Matar, lled with beautiful, short,
quiet sentences. Scenes are described by
changes in the color of light: shadows like
black claws on the cars, a Libyan landscape the color of healed skin. There
are no surprising or dramatic plot twists.
Instead there are portraits of pain and
loss: an ill-tting suit, an elderly prisoner

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who lost his memory and was found in

his Abu Salim cell with a photograph of
Jaballa Matar, a heart-wrenching phone
call between Hisham in London and a
man in Tripoli breaking open rusted cell
doors one after the other in search of
Jaballaa conversation ending with the
words, I am sorry.
As I read the essay, my mind zigzagged
back and forth between Libya and Syria.
What do you do, Matar writes of his
country, when you cannot leave and
cannot return? I thought about what
it would be like if I could travel back in
time to before the Syrian revolution. Back
before I had become immune to feeling
repulsed at the image of a corpse in any
formtortured, scorched, decapitated,
blown to pieces. Back before knowing
what it is like to hear from my brother,
then still in the Aleppo countryside, Today I had a close encounter with a MiG.
Back before I had to wonder whether a
drafting table I had once slid my T-square
against might now carry the body parts
of students from my university. Back
when my country was still whole.
I had a clear but utterly irrational
thought: What if I had never known
of Hisham Matar or his father, Jaballa,
or his resistance and courage? What if
I could be like so many people around
me who say, Syria, its so sadand
then go about their days? I might have
sat out the Syrian revolution like my
lifelong friends, who look at me now
with their pity and I told you so
smirks. I might also have been spared
the rsthand knowledge that having a
voice had turned out to be as devastating as being silent.
Living in hope is a really terrible
thing, Hisham said in a 2011 interview. Certainty is far more desirable
than hope. I used to disagree. Now
Im not so sure.
In the most powerful scene in The
Return, Matar recalls kneeling over a
metal grille on a New York City sidewalk and weeping for his father, whose
all but certain death he had nally accepted. There was no escape from the
gray, underground concrete space be-

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Continued from page 88

neath the grille, a room, barely high enough for a man to

stand and certainly not wide enough for him to lie down.
He peered into that dark space so many of us know, where
we face our fears, our sorrow, our destiny. The place where
hope dies.
I was done with resistance, he announces in the essay.
I did not know how envious I was of those words until I
read them. How I longed to be done with the battles, the
bloodshed, and everything that we could not stop. I longed
to be done with resistance too.
I composed a message to Hisham but erased it three
times before sending it. I settled with When can we talk?
When he called, I began to cry as he said in his gentle voice,
Im sorry; Im so terribly sorry. He listened to my incoherent ramblings and did not say fantastic once. He
seemed happy about my renewed attempt to read In Search
of Lost Time, though he abandoned his only way to read
Proust rule and instead kindly told me, People approach
Proust in different ways. He gave me permission to read
again for pleasure, merely to seek beauty in the sentences.
In doing so, he unknowingly gave me permission to not be
just like him.

ow do you measure time during a revolution, during a war? The seasons pass, and no one places bets
on a date for Assads fall anymore. Syrian time is
measured by massacres and tragedies and the growing number of dead. Remember when it was 2,000?
10,000? 40,000? 70,000? 100,000? Remember?
Jaballa Matar once told his son, Knowing a book by
heart is like carrying a house inside your chest. If he only
knew how Ihow Libyans and Syrians and others like
mecarry his sons heavy words in our chests and how
they are more than a house. They are entire geographies
of belonging and loss. Two long years ago, I used to ask
Syrians: Have you read Hisham Matar? I used to press
paperback copies of In the Country of Men into peoples
hands and promise, It will change your life.
Books may change you, but beware in believing that you
can change anything just because of something you read
or something you write. Most times, words cant change
anything at all. All the truth and the stories and the dead
and the time lost cant save Syria. What remains is only
the question of whether we can pull ourselves out of those
spaces of despair that we constructed out of hope.
Some months ago, my friend Hisham, who has the rare
gift of saying much in so few words, messaged me: Remember my dear that revolutions exist both to save and
destroy us. In the name of perpetually living in hope, I
had forgotten what he had said until it was too late.

Amal Hanano is the pseudonym of a Syrian-American

writer.

tools connecting them today can help them tap the resources already available to the literate. Thats why the growth
of cell-phone subscriptions from just 11 million in 1990 to
nearly 7 billion today is so promising.
Right now, according to the International Telecommunication Union, mobile-phone penetration is 128 percent in
the developed world (some people have multiple mobile devices) and 89 percent in developing countries. That means
global mobile-phone penetration has reached an astounding
96 percent. According to the same assessment, Internet penetration is currently 77 percent in the developed world and
31 percent in developing countries. That might not sound
so promisinghousehold penetration worldwide is only
41 percentbut consider that more than half the phones
sold worldwide this year will be smartphones. Who needs
desktop computers anymore? Access to essentially limitless
information will accrue to effectively everyone, and in very
short order.
On top of the entire planet becoming connected to one another and to a wealth of information, over roughly the past
quarter-century, the number of democracies in the world has
nearly doubled from the 66 that existed in 1987, according
to Freedom House. And despite some backsliding in recent
yearswitness Egypt and Bahraincountries that are not
nominally or actively democratic are now by far the worlds
outliers.
Beyond education and politics, the global growth driven
by new technologies and innovations is also producing an
extraordinarily positive outcome: real and tangible wealth.
In 1985, the global per capita income was around $6,200,
according to World Bank purchasing power parity-based estimates. By 2010, it was almost $10,000. To be sure, growth
rates have lagged in many low-income countries, and widening inequality between the top and bottom of the income
spectrum is an enormously troubling problem in many parts
of the world. Since 2000, however, global per capita income
has increased more than 25 percent. Any way you slice it,
that has to be a virtuous development.
In short, despite the headlines blaring warnings of dire
crises, gruesome developments, corrupt politicians, bullying
states, greed, lust, gluttony, and the global byproducts of all
seven deadly sins, its worth noting that the forces spreading
whats wrong with the world are simultaneously making it a
much better place to live. In fact, theyre doing it faster and
more pervasively than they are creating problems.
Dont let the media fool you. Progress, it seems, actually
is spreading.
David Rothkopf is ceo and editor at large of Foreign Policy.
FOREIGN POLICY (ISSN 0015-7228) September/October 2013, issue number 202. Published
seven times each year, in January, March, May, July, September, November, and December,
by The FP Group, a division of The Washington Post Company, at 11 Dupont Circle NW, Suite
600, Washington, D.C. 20036. Subscriptions: U.S., $35.99 per year; Canada, $47.99; other
countries, $53.99. Periodicals Postage Paid in Washington, D.C., and at additional mailing ofces. POSTMASTER: Send U.S. address changes to: FOREIGN POLICY, P.O. Box 283, Congers,
NY 10920-0283. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver
Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Printed in the USA.

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September | October 2013

87

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DAVID ROTHKOPF

ometimes we in the media cant help ourselves.

We kick the big story to the curb in favor of the salacious one. We ignore the one with lasting global
implications in favor of the one with a juicy video,
a pretty blond protagonist, or a celebrity falling off
the wagon.
This issue of Foreign Policy deals with the global
business of vice. Why? First, new technologies and old
impulses are combining to ensure that vice spreads as
never before. Drugs, corruption, and self-indulgences
of every sort are more accessible worldwide than ever.
Download it. Order it online. Hop a regularly scheduled ight to a place with laxer laws. Use new technology to cover your trail. Its a golden age for the seven
deadly sins.
We write about these things because they appeal to
baser instincts: Given a choice between a story about
how sex is selling better than ever in the information
age or one about how new technologies are helping advance literacy rates, which would you read rst? (Oh,
I know, I know, youll swear publicly that your better nature will triumph. But left alone in a dark room

with the magazine. Well, frankly, thats not an image

I wish to dwell on.)
Of course, the alchemy between the spread of the Internet and literacy worldwide is a much, much bigger
story that touches many more people and affects society
in ways far more profound than the impact of even the
hottest website offering real-life American losers access to imaginary Russian beauty queens. (If this is the
moment you start swearing your Anastasia is real and
knows you better than anyone youve ever met, you can
move on from this column. Its not for you. It contains
actual facts.)
The facts tell the real story: The global spread of virtue and its byproducts trumps in every way the global
spread of vice.
For example, while approximately three-quarters of a
billion adults on our planet still cannot read, global literacy rates have grown steadily in the past two decades.
In 1990, the rate was about 75 percent. Today its
roughly 85 percent. Whats more, even those who are
not yet able to read are no longer as isolated from society as they once were. Indeed, in the years ahead, the
Continued on page 87

88

Foreign Policy

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GETTY IMAGES/COMMERCE & CULTURE STOCK

And Now for Some Good News...

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The Josef Korbel School
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