When analyzing the situation of a country or when thinking about a country, it’s easy to be tempted by the idea of how desirable or good would be for a country to be able to start over, to start a new life again, from the very beginning, from zero. In many circumstances and situations, it’s always possible to star again. If there is an old building that is so dirty that when you look at it you feel bad, it’s always possible to order the demolition of that construction. The same with cars, that when get old and highly pollutant, it’s just better to dispose of it and buy a new one. Even individuals have the chance of trying to change the course of their complex lives: every time we celebrate our birthday or a new year, we think about goals for the future. Well, countries can also become as dirty or as old as buildings and cars, and their institutions can become as corrupt as the most corrupt of individuals, but now it seems, countries don’t have anymore at their disposal the privilege of starting over. There was a time when they could, that’s the era of revolutions, but that’s also a time gone. For some countries, it would be great to have that chance. One of these countries is Honduras.
This world we live in is so unfair and so uneven that, just as individuals, there are countries that were born rich and there are countries that were born poor and disadvantaged. This time I want to refer to a tiny country that is very close to my native country and which over the last weeks experienced the last coup d’Etat of Latin America. I am talking about Honduras.
I don’t know too much about the history and the specific circumstances of Honduras, but I know that this is one of the countries that were born poor and which inherited a list of problems whose complexity largely surpasses the capacities of the Honduras’ governments. Last month one more problem added to the list: on June 29th 2009, the legal government of president Manuel Zelaya was ousted by the military, and a new president Roberto Micheletti took his place. Because he was following Hugo Chavez (no need to explain my point) the deposed president was bad for the country, who was trying to force a Constitutional reform in order to extend his tenure and bad also is the fact that the military, for whatsoever reason, broke the legal order and took power.
The current situation in Honduras constitutes an unprecedented twice negative dilemma of two bad possible outcomes: if the military government headed by Micheletti stays, this clearly would be bad to the political health of the country and if Zelaya returns it would be also bad, because he has already proved that he wants to disrupt the constitutional life of Honduras. Two possible outcomes, both of them awful. Actually there’s a third possible outcome to this Honduras story that started as a drama but that very soon has become a Latin America soap opera: the possibility that violence erupts as a consequence of the two sides fighting.
Is it possible to find in the political landscape of the world of the past or of these days any other situation where all the outcomes are bad? Honduras has everything that makes it look like a building to be demolished or a car to be replaced. Unfortunately, Honduras is a country and transforming its situation will never be as simple as demolishing an old building, replacing a car or transforming an individual. It seems that Honduras can’t start over.
It’s not my purpose to deny hope for the people of Honduras. It’s not that I don’t see any hope for Honduras, it’s that I’m projecting my own despair for how I see my country, Mexico. Sometimes you would like that things change in your country as easy as if an old building was ordered to be demolished or if an old car was to be throw away. Sometimes you would desire that things change overnight and that the politicians that rule our mismanaged countries just disappear. How is possible that with that long list of problems that Honduras faces (poverty, corruption, inequality, natural disasters, deprivation), Honduras politicians still have the time to stage a soap opera of a military coup?
At first I thought that the military coup of Micheletti was born from the despair of the Honduras people, tired of having as president a Chavez like politician. I thought that like military coups of the past, this new Honduras version of military take over would be accompanied with a vast program of changes for the transformation of Honduras. However, very soon I realized that I have been too naïve. The military coups of these days are not like they used to be. There’s no more transformational radicalism embodied in the people that take power these days. There’s no program, no ideology, nor any agenda for change. So far, the Honduras military coup has proved to be only an action that broke the legal order of the country, so it was a purposeless coup.
The Honduras’ as well as the Thai military take over of 2006, constitute a big change from the past. Even the military coups of today seem to have become mild in their actions and purposeless for that they don’t present any alternative program, any agenda for change. They are born only from denial of a certain order, but they fail to offer any alternative.
As said, any of the possible outcomes of the Honduras’ crisis seems to be ideal for this country afflicted by so many threats, deformities and irregularities. Let’s just hope that these stupid political teams of Micheletti and Zelaya don’t decide to make the Honduras people pay with blood for this pathetic Latin American new soap opera.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
In soccer as in life, when everything goes bad, everything goes bad…
Look:
June 24th 2009: US 2-Spain 0;
July 9th 2009: Mexico 1-Panama 1
For Mexico, football soccer, a reflection of everything else? It’s up to you to reflect…I am just saying…
June 24th 2009: US 2-Spain 0;
July 9th 2009: Mexico 1-Panama 1
For Mexico, football soccer, a reflection of everything else? It’s up to you to reflect…I am just saying…
My perspective on the Xinjiang (7/5) riots
Sadness and regret were the feelings I first had toward the riots in Xinjiang of past July 5th. I have lived in China for seven years and Western China has always been my favorite region in the country, the only region in the country where I have been seen really different things, where I have been a tourist satiated whit what the place has to offer. Western China has always captivated my interest, in no small measure for one of its most prolific peoples, the Uighurs, whose cultural features have always been my favorites among the Chinese kaleidoscope. In short, I love China but I love also what I have seen of the Uighur culture and so, for me the conflict between Chinese Han and the Uighur people has always been something that saddens me. I say that because in many respects, even if in most of the time I have been a supporter of China among its critics, the conflict of China with some its so called minorities has been an aspect where I have not always agreed with the Chinese government nor with the extended vision that (Han) Chinese people usually hold on that matter. I see in the Chinese a certain degree of underlying racism toward Uighurs and Tibetans and this is something I don’t like.
On the other hand is impossible not to see that without the industrialization, the development of infrastructure, the urbanization and the investment of the central government of China, Xinjiang would not be that different from all its neighbors, from Pakistan to Kyrgyzstan. If you go to Xinjiang, what you see is that Urumqi is a huge city, that there’s a railway that crosses hundreds of kilometers where there’s nothing except desert and in Kashgar you see also that there´s an airport that is much bigger and efficient than the airports of most of Mexico. Like it or not, the Chinese government and the Han have played a civilizatory role in what is now Western China, they have been like the British in India that built all the railways. Like it or not, the Han Chinese and its government are the industrious hand of that area of Central Asia, they have been like the white man in tropical lands. (Actually, when I had this reflection, I thought about at what extent the Chinese are really different from the white man…topic for another time). It’s very likely that in an scenario of one wealthy China not ruling what it’s now its Western edge and one independent Xinjiang, the Uighurs and the Tibetans would be flooding the Chinese consulates trying to get Chinese visas.
In analyzing the long history of hostility between China and its Western “minorities”, especially the Tibetans and the Uighur, there is a basic list of “undeniables” from which you can depart:
1) It’s undeniable that the Han Chinese have been generally racists to the Tibetans and the Uighurs, usually referring to them as thieves or beggars and frequently saying of them that they are dirty and their culture backward. Even the Chinese Communist Party vision of harmony between the Han and the minorities has a certain dose of racisms: in all the official images of the minorities, the Han Chinese depict the minorities as colorful peoples that spend the time dancing. For most of the Han Chinese, the Uighurs are very good at dancing…it’s like, besides that, they are incapable of seeing in the Uighurs or Tibetans something different or something else. This racist Chinese vision of the world translates in the seduction that the white skin and the American culture have on the Chinese versus the general attitude of Chinese looking down at black skinned people.
2) There’s no question that the Chinese central government investment in Western China has all the potential to have a positive impact on the economy, the problem is that this economy, most of the time, has been the Han economy.
3) Closely related with this last point, in Xinjiang and also very possible in Tibet, you have the feeling when you are there that those lands are not China anymore. I am not talking about politics nor saying anything more that what I am saying here, but in Xinjiang the sun raises at least two hours later than in Beijing and the taxi drivers don’t listen to the cheesy pop music of the Taiwanese singers, but instead they like Indian music. As the result of a similar logic, in that foreign land you feel that the Han are the rulers and you feel that the locals are like foreigners in their own land. The ruling institutions function in Chinese, which is not the mother language of the local populations.
4) I don’t think that with all its propaganda directed at creating harmony, the Chinese government has been very successful at integrating Han communities with no Han communities. This is evident in Xinjiang and very evident in Urumqi, where the Han live in one area and the Uighurs in another area, where there are restaurants for Chinese and restaurants for Uighurs. At a certain point this is normal, but in Xinjiang you feel that there are two different communities that don’t talk to each other. Clearly, this is a powerful factor that has created a gap of hostility between these two communities. I don’t have any statistic at hand, but I don’t think that intercommunity marriages between Han and Tibetans or Uighurs are very frequent.
5) On the other hand, it’s also undeniable that the Xinjiang neighborhood is one very difficult to rule. Turn your eyes to Pakistan or Afghanistan, are those countries in peace? Well, those countries were bombings and terrorists attacks are daily currency are just next door to Xinjiang. As a result, the Chinese are not the first to be in conflict with the peoples of that region of the world. Ask the British, ask the Americans if they think that is easy to be in those lands?
6) No matter what the independentists or the secessionist could say about this matter, but Beijing is the ruler of Tibet and Xinjiang and anything is going to change that reality. There have been and there are large Han Chinese populations in those areas and what drives the economy of those territories is the Chinese economic activity. Besides, in a world where there’s a growing number of rogue states, who wants an independent Xinjiang or Tibet? Honestly, there are more important things to do these days.
7) Like it or not, it’s also true that the Chinese have been in Tibet and Xinjiang since immemorial times. Look at the ruin cities of the Silk Road and you will get evidence of the historical presence of Chinese in those areas. Additionally, who has been earlier in Western China, the Han Chinese with thousands of years of history or the Uighurs, who are a branch of the Turkish (Turkey lies in a very distant location from Xinjiang)?
8) Finally, it’s undeniable that protesting with violent means and rioting, aggressing and killing civilians is unacceptable anywhere in the world and that’s what has happened in Tibet in 2008 and last Sunday in Xinjiang. I don’t think that in this regard the decision of the Chinese government of sending the police is any different from any other country. This is something that the advocates of human rights or the supporters of Tibet often forget: in 2008 there are lots of pictures featuring Tibetans with knifes persecuting Han on the streets. This is also unacceptable.
Nobody knows with certainty what really happened last Sunday July 5th in Urumqi,. The Uighur sympathizers argue that there was a pacific protest that was repressed by the police. But this explains the dozens of corpses of Han Chinese on the streets? If you see pictures of the injured people in the hospitals of the city for the riots of that day, what you see more are Han Chinese civilians that are not any different from what I see in the streets or the subway everyday. Civilians killed, is what I see.
But the Chinese government doesn’t do anything to clarify the situation and inform with precision and detail what happened in Urumqi. So far, most of what I am seeing in the Chinese media these days are blames to the Uighur organizations in the US or Germany. According to the media, what happened in Urumqi were the actions of terrorists coordinated from abroad. The problem with this version is that they are not providing any evidence and, what is worse, is that are missing the point: first tell us what happened, who started the violence, who was killed and, among the 156 people death, who were Han, who civilians, who protesters, who security forces? Those details are essential if you want to present the truth, allowing everybody to interpret the facts as everybody wants.
This puzzles me: why the smart Chinese government insists in wasting those golden opportunities to show to the world that they were not the ones who started the violence? Last year, in Tibet, there were clear images of ordinary Tibetans carrying knives in the streets of Lhasa. Why the Chinese government does not denounce that instead of blaming the Dalai Lhama or now, blaming Rebiya Kadeer? It just does not make any sense to me. If the Chinese government only limited itself to highlight the violent character of the protests as well as the dangers that this sort of protests entails for the Chinese people, it would be justifying its need to send the police to control the crisis. That would be smart to do for the Chinese government. But blaming foreign leaders and resorting to the police, only makes appear China as a country where every threat to stability is confronted with military means. CNN is going to show to the world Chinese soldiers police (even if those soldiers are not Chinese, as was the case last year during the Tibet crisis, when CNN used images of the Nepali army beating Tibetan protesters in the Chinese Consulate) but not what was violent in the protests. I think that in this instance, the Chinese government has exhibited a remarkable lack of sophistication.
Is that the Chinese government does not see the damage it auto inflicts to its public image allowing the international media to project images of its police and human rights organizations to criticize it for repressing “the poor Uighurs and the poor Tibetans¨? Probably the answer has to do with the Chinese government preferring to deal with the international media better than attiring a Han ultranationalist reaction when denouncing Uighurs or Tibetans massacring Han. It’s well possible that in fact, what the Chinese government is hiding now, is not the number of “poor innocent Uighurs” killed by the police but the number of poor Chinese walking that day in the streets of Urumqi and killed by “poor innocent Uighurs”.
Something else that I observe is that it seems that the world is now much busier in other matters, such as reactivating the economy or cutting the green house emissions as for having time of bogging China with stories of autonomy of Xinjiang and human rights. In line with this reasoning, China has become a very important partner for the rest of the world, in getting the world economy out of the recession as in helping to stop the underway warming of the planet by industrial pollution. China is an important partner that holds trillions of American treasury bonds and is also a partner whose market demand can reactivate companies such as Airbus. And it happens that the system needs this partner and it’s necessary that the partner is healthy, so let the partner fix the Xinjiang crisis as best as possible. I am seeing this in the moderate reaction in the world to the Xinjiang events. If what I see is true, this is another indicator of the growing Chinese ascendancy in the world. This week, for instance, China was mentioned because the G8 summit meeting and because the Rio (the mining company) scandal. The Xinjiang riots were one story among others.
Finally, the international media show that in these Chinese crisis some journalists, newspapers, opinion leaders and TV channels are the tools of groups of interests that are opposed to the rise of China and that they are going to take advantage of any opportunity to discredit China. China has critics and detractors and these crises are the perfect pretext to talk about human rights, democracy and all that chorus that is normally invoked for criticizing China. In Mexico, my country, for instance, the media is talking about “ethnic war in China”. But, come on, don’t you think that in a country of 1.4 billion people that term sounds like too much?
On the other hand is impossible not to see that without the industrialization, the development of infrastructure, the urbanization and the investment of the central government of China, Xinjiang would not be that different from all its neighbors, from Pakistan to Kyrgyzstan. If you go to Xinjiang, what you see is that Urumqi is a huge city, that there’s a railway that crosses hundreds of kilometers where there’s nothing except desert and in Kashgar you see also that there´s an airport that is much bigger and efficient than the airports of most of Mexico. Like it or not, the Chinese government and the Han have played a civilizatory role in what is now Western China, they have been like the British in India that built all the railways. Like it or not, the Han Chinese and its government are the industrious hand of that area of Central Asia, they have been like the white man in tropical lands. (Actually, when I had this reflection, I thought about at what extent the Chinese are really different from the white man…topic for another time). It’s very likely that in an scenario of one wealthy China not ruling what it’s now its Western edge and one independent Xinjiang, the Uighurs and the Tibetans would be flooding the Chinese consulates trying to get Chinese visas.
In analyzing the long history of hostility between China and its Western “minorities”, especially the Tibetans and the Uighur, there is a basic list of “undeniables” from which you can depart:
1) It’s undeniable that the Han Chinese have been generally racists to the Tibetans and the Uighurs, usually referring to them as thieves or beggars and frequently saying of them that they are dirty and their culture backward. Even the Chinese Communist Party vision of harmony between the Han and the minorities has a certain dose of racisms: in all the official images of the minorities, the Han Chinese depict the minorities as colorful peoples that spend the time dancing. For most of the Han Chinese, the Uighurs are very good at dancing…it’s like, besides that, they are incapable of seeing in the Uighurs or Tibetans something different or something else. This racist Chinese vision of the world translates in the seduction that the white skin and the American culture have on the Chinese versus the general attitude of Chinese looking down at black skinned people.
2) There’s no question that the Chinese central government investment in Western China has all the potential to have a positive impact on the economy, the problem is that this economy, most of the time, has been the Han economy.
3) Closely related with this last point, in Xinjiang and also very possible in Tibet, you have the feeling when you are there that those lands are not China anymore. I am not talking about politics nor saying anything more that what I am saying here, but in Xinjiang the sun raises at least two hours later than in Beijing and the taxi drivers don’t listen to the cheesy pop music of the Taiwanese singers, but instead they like Indian music. As the result of a similar logic, in that foreign land you feel that the Han are the rulers and you feel that the locals are like foreigners in their own land. The ruling institutions function in Chinese, which is not the mother language of the local populations.
4) I don’t think that with all its propaganda directed at creating harmony, the Chinese government has been very successful at integrating Han communities with no Han communities. This is evident in Xinjiang and very evident in Urumqi, where the Han live in one area and the Uighurs in another area, where there are restaurants for Chinese and restaurants for Uighurs. At a certain point this is normal, but in Xinjiang you feel that there are two different communities that don’t talk to each other. Clearly, this is a powerful factor that has created a gap of hostility between these two communities. I don’t have any statistic at hand, but I don’t think that intercommunity marriages between Han and Tibetans or Uighurs are very frequent.
5) On the other hand, it’s also undeniable that the Xinjiang neighborhood is one very difficult to rule. Turn your eyes to Pakistan or Afghanistan, are those countries in peace? Well, those countries were bombings and terrorists attacks are daily currency are just next door to Xinjiang. As a result, the Chinese are not the first to be in conflict with the peoples of that region of the world. Ask the British, ask the Americans if they think that is easy to be in those lands?
6) No matter what the independentists or the secessionist could say about this matter, but Beijing is the ruler of Tibet and Xinjiang and anything is going to change that reality. There have been and there are large Han Chinese populations in those areas and what drives the economy of those territories is the Chinese economic activity. Besides, in a world where there’s a growing number of rogue states, who wants an independent Xinjiang or Tibet? Honestly, there are more important things to do these days.
7) Like it or not, it’s also true that the Chinese have been in Tibet and Xinjiang since immemorial times. Look at the ruin cities of the Silk Road and you will get evidence of the historical presence of Chinese in those areas. Additionally, who has been earlier in Western China, the Han Chinese with thousands of years of history or the Uighurs, who are a branch of the Turkish (Turkey lies in a very distant location from Xinjiang)?
8) Finally, it’s undeniable that protesting with violent means and rioting, aggressing and killing civilians is unacceptable anywhere in the world and that’s what has happened in Tibet in 2008 and last Sunday in Xinjiang. I don’t think that in this regard the decision of the Chinese government of sending the police is any different from any other country. This is something that the advocates of human rights or the supporters of Tibet often forget: in 2008 there are lots of pictures featuring Tibetans with knifes persecuting Han on the streets. This is also unacceptable.
Nobody knows with certainty what really happened last Sunday July 5th in Urumqi,. The Uighur sympathizers argue that there was a pacific protest that was repressed by the police. But this explains the dozens of corpses of Han Chinese on the streets? If you see pictures of the injured people in the hospitals of the city for the riots of that day, what you see more are Han Chinese civilians that are not any different from what I see in the streets or the subway everyday. Civilians killed, is what I see.
But the Chinese government doesn’t do anything to clarify the situation and inform with precision and detail what happened in Urumqi. So far, most of what I am seeing in the Chinese media these days are blames to the Uighur organizations in the US or Germany. According to the media, what happened in Urumqi were the actions of terrorists coordinated from abroad. The problem with this version is that they are not providing any evidence and, what is worse, is that are missing the point: first tell us what happened, who started the violence, who was killed and, among the 156 people death, who were Han, who civilians, who protesters, who security forces? Those details are essential if you want to present the truth, allowing everybody to interpret the facts as everybody wants.
This puzzles me: why the smart Chinese government insists in wasting those golden opportunities to show to the world that they were not the ones who started the violence? Last year, in Tibet, there were clear images of ordinary Tibetans carrying knives in the streets of Lhasa. Why the Chinese government does not denounce that instead of blaming the Dalai Lhama or now, blaming Rebiya Kadeer? It just does not make any sense to me. If the Chinese government only limited itself to highlight the violent character of the protests as well as the dangers that this sort of protests entails for the Chinese people, it would be justifying its need to send the police to control the crisis. That would be smart to do for the Chinese government. But blaming foreign leaders and resorting to the police, only makes appear China as a country where every threat to stability is confronted with military means. CNN is going to show to the world Chinese soldiers police (even if those soldiers are not Chinese, as was the case last year during the Tibet crisis, when CNN used images of the Nepali army beating Tibetan protesters in the Chinese Consulate) but not what was violent in the protests. I think that in this instance, the Chinese government has exhibited a remarkable lack of sophistication.
Is that the Chinese government does not see the damage it auto inflicts to its public image allowing the international media to project images of its police and human rights organizations to criticize it for repressing “the poor Uighurs and the poor Tibetans¨? Probably the answer has to do with the Chinese government preferring to deal with the international media better than attiring a Han ultranationalist reaction when denouncing Uighurs or Tibetans massacring Han. It’s well possible that in fact, what the Chinese government is hiding now, is not the number of “poor innocent Uighurs” killed by the police but the number of poor Chinese walking that day in the streets of Urumqi and killed by “poor innocent Uighurs”.
Something else that I observe is that it seems that the world is now much busier in other matters, such as reactivating the economy or cutting the green house emissions as for having time of bogging China with stories of autonomy of Xinjiang and human rights. In line with this reasoning, China has become a very important partner for the rest of the world, in getting the world economy out of the recession as in helping to stop the underway warming of the planet by industrial pollution. China is an important partner that holds trillions of American treasury bonds and is also a partner whose market demand can reactivate companies such as Airbus. And it happens that the system needs this partner and it’s necessary that the partner is healthy, so let the partner fix the Xinjiang crisis as best as possible. I am seeing this in the moderate reaction in the world to the Xinjiang events. If what I see is true, this is another indicator of the growing Chinese ascendancy in the world. This week, for instance, China was mentioned because the G8 summit meeting and because the Rio (the mining company) scandal. The Xinjiang riots were one story among others.
Finally, the international media show that in these Chinese crisis some journalists, newspapers, opinion leaders and TV channels are the tools of groups of interests that are opposed to the rise of China and that they are going to take advantage of any opportunity to discredit China. China has critics and detractors and these crises are the perfect pretext to talk about human rights, democracy and all that chorus that is normally invoked for criticizing China. In Mexico, my country, for instance, the media is talking about “ethnic war in China”. But, come on, don’t you think that in a country of 1.4 billion people that term sounds like too much?
Thursday, June 25, 2009
In the quest of “unthinkables” for Mexico: finding solutions to the drug war in the resilience of The Zetas.
“The same forces now making our world more dangerous contain the ingredients we need to make it safer. In every roadside bomb in Tal’Afar, in every death from drug-resistant tuberculosis, in each hiccup of global financial markets, we can see the workings of powerful forces that, once mastered, offer hope at the same time they present new dangers”
Joshua Copper Ramo, The age of the unthinkable, p. 15
In the opinion of the author of this cite, Joshua Copper Ramo, our traditional way of thinking is failing to solve the complex problems that we are now facing. The more we use force against terrorism, Copper Ramo remind us, greater the chances are that terrorism increases. In the opinion of Ramo we need to look at new sources if we want to find new ways of thinking. He looks, as the title of his book suggests, at the unthinkable as a source of new ideas that can make our world more resilient.
This approach has been haunting me over the past weeks. Does Mexico need also to look at the unthinkable as a source of new ideas? Does this approach suggested by Copper Ramo is applicable to the reality of Mexico?
In the particular case of Mexico there’s no question that the traditional concepts, ideas and people that have been dominant in the country in the last half century have failed to improve its overall condition. The ruling class of Mexico liberalized the economy in the 80’s to stimulate growth but since then, most of the time the economy has been stagnated. In that decade, Mexico laid the foundation for having a market economy free of monopolies, but since then the power of monopolies has increased. The examples of solutions implemented and paradoxical outcomes obtained are abundant. One in particular calls my attention: since 2006, the administration of the Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched a war against the drug mafias with the supposed goal of freeing the country of their grip, but once again, as in the other instances, the solution only made the problem more serious. Since 2006, the drug trade has worsened, the drug gangs have multiplied and the resulting violence has increased.
The time has come, as Copper Ramo suggest, to try to find innovative solutions in the “unthinkable”? To what would be equivalent the notion of the unthinkable in the context of Mexico?
Let’s focus our attention in the problem of the drug trafficking, which with all its corrupting capacity is putting at risk the functioning of the Mexican state. What the unthinkable offers to Mexico as a source of a new strategy for fighting the drug mafias? Where Mexico can turn its attention in order to find innovative strategies for confronting this threat?
In the same way as Copper Ramo presents the example of the Israeli Army analyzing in detail the reasons that make Hezbollah resilient, would it be possible for Mexican security officials to see The Zetas (a paramilitary group allied with the Gulf Cartel, formed of former Mexican Army members) as a source for keys to defeat the drug cartels?
Of course, there’s nothing in the Mexican mafias that anyone would want to emulate. There’s nothing in them that can be considered as a model for a new society. But, on the other hand, probably there’s something in their way of operating that contains the keys for fighting them. Would looking at The Zetas, at the La Familia, at the Juarez Cartel, be for Mexico a way of looking at the unthinkable for finding creative solutions for complex problems?
In the Mexico of these years, affected by such a complex array of problems, we will never know why President Calderón decided amid many other priorities to devote his administration to the fight against drugs. Being a country troubled by inequality, poverty and stagnation, why President Calderón decided to start with the fight against drugs? That’s a question for the future analysts of Mexican political decision making. Something seems to me certain: he adopted an approach doomed to fail.
With all the lessons that history offers regarding the failure of large armies, such as the Soviet, the French and the American armies in fighting guerrillas and terrorism movements, it should be clear to the advisers of President Calderón that sending the army to fight the drug cartels would not be the solution for curbing the drugs problem. Based on the experience of the US and Israeli armies in the Middle East, it should be evident for the Mexican security advisers and for President Calderón that once the Mexican government sent the army, the mafias would wave an asymmetrical war against the State. For someone that read history it should be clear that it is almost axiomatic that weak enemies tend to fight powerful enemies using assymetrical tools.
And this is precisely what the drug mafias are doing now: they are fighting the Mexican state with assymetrical tools: hand grenades, kidnappings and terrorizing ways of killing: beheading and killing their victims in acid.
Anywhere is more clear than here that the solution offered by the government made the problem worst: 10, 000 people killed since Calderón took office and, still worst, the drug mafias and cartels have multiplied. The tumor has metastasized, just as in other countries the terrorist cells multiplies when confronted with large armies.
The bad new is that this war started by Calderón can not be pursued without facing further risks nor can be stopped without making the mafia kingpins know that they won. The choices in front of the government are: if it continues the war, the drug mafias will keep reproducing and its capacity to corrupt the State will be increased. On the other hand, if the government stops the war or the next administration does so, that would send the message that the government lost and that in the future it accepts the existence of the drug mafias.
This is a terrible dilemma, because both choices tend to give the victory to the mafias.
Just as the Israeli army is adapting its strategy based on the analysis on how Hezbollah and Hamas operate, my idea would be that the Mexican government revisits its strategy adapting it to the facts that this is not a war of regular armies and that the drug mafias have attained a level of resilience, in the same way as Hezbollah and Hamas, that is worth studying.
In the complex and colorful universe of the Mexican organized crime of these days, any other organization shines as much as The Zetas. This is the most outstanding Mexican criminal gang of our days. Formed of defected special forces group of the Mexican Army, anybody else is recruiting, killing and operating as successfully as the Zetas. The Zetas are the Hezbollah of Mexico, an organization that is attracting poor young people in Northern Mexico (and Southern US) and that is becoming a legend for the cruelty of its methods.
In the Mexican government strategy for fighting drugs, is there something to learn in the resilience of The Zetas? Would it be possible to adapt the strategy based on the analysis of the Zetas?
Following Copper Ramo, my personal invitation for thinking the unthinkable would be: studying the reasons that make the Zetas resilient and departing from here for beating the drug mafias. What would be the translations of this?
If you ask me, the translation of this would be waving a dirty war against the mafias. That would include:
For the most part of Mexico, sending back the army back to their barracks but keeping in the field groups of special forces that perform covert and chirurgical actions; paying special attention to the municipal realities of the country: countering the recruiting operations of these organizations though infiltrating agents in the places where the mafias recruit their young operatives; condemning publicly their atrocities, denouncing their actions and looking for allies in the media, the Church and the academia; geographically encircling the gangs, restricting their movements, etc.
I am not a security expert, but it’s clear to me that instead of sending the bulk of the army it would be more effective to learn from the reasons that are making these organizations resilient and use that knowledge for applying chemotherapy to the tumors.
It may be, as Copper Ramo indicates, that in the unthinkable there are hidden solutions to our problems. Probably the time has come to Mexico to look at it.
Joshua Copper Ramo, The age of the unthinkable, p. 15
In the opinion of the author of this cite, Joshua Copper Ramo, our traditional way of thinking is failing to solve the complex problems that we are now facing. The more we use force against terrorism, Copper Ramo remind us, greater the chances are that terrorism increases. In the opinion of Ramo we need to look at new sources if we want to find new ways of thinking. He looks, as the title of his book suggests, at the unthinkable as a source of new ideas that can make our world more resilient.
This approach has been haunting me over the past weeks. Does Mexico need also to look at the unthinkable as a source of new ideas? Does this approach suggested by Copper Ramo is applicable to the reality of Mexico?
In the particular case of Mexico there’s no question that the traditional concepts, ideas and people that have been dominant in the country in the last half century have failed to improve its overall condition. The ruling class of Mexico liberalized the economy in the 80’s to stimulate growth but since then, most of the time the economy has been stagnated. In that decade, Mexico laid the foundation for having a market economy free of monopolies, but since then the power of monopolies has increased. The examples of solutions implemented and paradoxical outcomes obtained are abundant. One in particular calls my attention: since 2006, the administration of the Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched a war against the drug mafias with the supposed goal of freeing the country of their grip, but once again, as in the other instances, the solution only made the problem more serious. Since 2006, the drug trade has worsened, the drug gangs have multiplied and the resulting violence has increased.
The time has come, as Copper Ramo suggest, to try to find innovative solutions in the “unthinkable”? To what would be equivalent the notion of the unthinkable in the context of Mexico?
Let’s focus our attention in the problem of the drug trafficking, which with all its corrupting capacity is putting at risk the functioning of the Mexican state. What the unthinkable offers to Mexico as a source of a new strategy for fighting the drug mafias? Where Mexico can turn its attention in order to find innovative strategies for confronting this threat?
In the same way as Copper Ramo presents the example of the Israeli Army analyzing in detail the reasons that make Hezbollah resilient, would it be possible for Mexican security officials to see The Zetas (a paramilitary group allied with the Gulf Cartel, formed of former Mexican Army members) as a source for keys to defeat the drug cartels?
Of course, there’s nothing in the Mexican mafias that anyone would want to emulate. There’s nothing in them that can be considered as a model for a new society. But, on the other hand, probably there’s something in their way of operating that contains the keys for fighting them. Would looking at The Zetas, at the La Familia, at the Juarez Cartel, be for Mexico a way of looking at the unthinkable for finding creative solutions for complex problems?
In the Mexico of these years, affected by such a complex array of problems, we will never know why President Calderón decided amid many other priorities to devote his administration to the fight against drugs. Being a country troubled by inequality, poverty and stagnation, why President Calderón decided to start with the fight against drugs? That’s a question for the future analysts of Mexican political decision making. Something seems to me certain: he adopted an approach doomed to fail.
With all the lessons that history offers regarding the failure of large armies, such as the Soviet, the French and the American armies in fighting guerrillas and terrorism movements, it should be clear to the advisers of President Calderón that sending the army to fight the drug cartels would not be the solution for curbing the drugs problem. Based on the experience of the US and Israeli armies in the Middle East, it should be evident for the Mexican security advisers and for President Calderón that once the Mexican government sent the army, the mafias would wave an asymmetrical war against the State. For someone that read history it should be clear that it is almost axiomatic that weak enemies tend to fight powerful enemies using assymetrical tools.
And this is precisely what the drug mafias are doing now: they are fighting the Mexican state with assymetrical tools: hand grenades, kidnappings and terrorizing ways of killing: beheading and killing their victims in acid.
Anywhere is more clear than here that the solution offered by the government made the problem worst: 10, 000 people killed since Calderón took office and, still worst, the drug mafias and cartels have multiplied. The tumor has metastasized, just as in other countries the terrorist cells multiplies when confronted with large armies.
The bad new is that this war started by Calderón can not be pursued without facing further risks nor can be stopped without making the mafia kingpins know that they won. The choices in front of the government are: if it continues the war, the drug mafias will keep reproducing and its capacity to corrupt the State will be increased. On the other hand, if the government stops the war or the next administration does so, that would send the message that the government lost and that in the future it accepts the existence of the drug mafias.
This is a terrible dilemma, because both choices tend to give the victory to the mafias.
Just as the Israeli army is adapting its strategy based on the analysis on how Hezbollah and Hamas operate, my idea would be that the Mexican government revisits its strategy adapting it to the facts that this is not a war of regular armies and that the drug mafias have attained a level of resilience, in the same way as Hezbollah and Hamas, that is worth studying.
In the complex and colorful universe of the Mexican organized crime of these days, any other organization shines as much as The Zetas. This is the most outstanding Mexican criminal gang of our days. Formed of defected special forces group of the Mexican Army, anybody else is recruiting, killing and operating as successfully as the Zetas. The Zetas are the Hezbollah of Mexico, an organization that is attracting poor young people in Northern Mexico (and Southern US) and that is becoming a legend for the cruelty of its methods.
In the Mexican government strategy for fighting drugs, is there something to learn in the resilience of The Zetas? Would it be possible to adapt the strategy based on the analysis of the Zetas?
Following Copper Ramo, my personal invitation for thinking the unthinkable would be: studying the reasons that make the Zetas resilient and departing from here for beating the drug mafias. What would be the translations of this?
If you ask me, the translation of this would be waving a dirty war against the mafias. That would include:
For the most part of Mexico, sending back the army back to their barracks but keeping in the field groups of special forces that perform covert and chirurgical actions; paying special attention to the municipal realities of the country: countering the recruiting operations of these organizations though infiltrating agents in the places where the mafias recruit their young operatives; condemning publicly their atrocities, denouncing their actions and looking for allies in the media, the Church and the academia; geographically encircling the gangs, restricting their movements, etc.
I am not a security expert, but it’s clear to me that instead of sending the bulk of the army it would be more effective to learn from the reasons that are making these organizations resilient and use that knowledge for applying chemotherapy to the tumors.
It may be, as Copper Ramo indicates, that in the unthinkable there are hidden solutions to our problems. Probably the time has come to Mexico to look at it.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Iran and Lebanon versus Mexico
Shanghai June 19, 2009.- The past elections in Lebanon (June 7th) and Iran (June 12th) would be for me two more important international events with no further interest if the Mexican elections were not scheduled to be held on next July. These Mexican mid term elections, on the other hand, would not spark additional interest for me if the outcomes of the Lebanese and Iranian were not as they were. My mind is connecting Mexico and these two countries of the Middle East because the contrasting images of what happened in Lebanon and Iran over the past weeks and what is taking place right now in Mexico: a sharp contrast between the high participation and the passion of Lebanese and Iranian voters against the social ongoing campaign in Mexico to override the vote on the coming July elections.
As in other instances, Mexicans have come to believe that while our economy can experience a mediocre development our democracy is superior to the political situation in other countries, as Lebanon and Iran could be. And this established belief is again to be questioned, at least from a social perspective.
I’m not going dwell on the profound differences between Mexico and Iran and Lebanon. Likewise I’m also aware to the fact that these Mexican elections are mid-term elections (which traditionally call much less interest from voters in Mexico than the Presidential elections) and that low participation is a widely extended democratic malaise. Notwithstanding that, the high participation in the part elections of Iran and Lebanon and the lack of interest of Mexican people in taking part in these elections makes me think about the political reality of Mexico.
I can synthesize my reflection saying that what happened in Lebanon and Iran (a victory of the Pro Western alliance in Lebanon and a strong opposition to the Mullahs that rule Iran) shows the miracles that democratic participation can operate in countries where the political system are flawed or oppressive, as is the case in Lebanon and Iran, whereas in Mexico the widespread skepticism of electors show how the word “democracy” can be employed to put in place a system that is distrusted by society. In Lebanon and Iran, the democratic passion of society erupted and took by surprise the system. In Mexico its “democratic system” in its current form seems to be against society.
I have never been to Lebanon and Iran and I what I know of both countries is very limited. Perhaps these are systems marked by countless flaws and weaknesses (irregularities and foreign interference in Lebanon; supreme authority of Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran) but what the high participation in both countries show is that people there had some hope in their vote, some confidence in the system. At least, it seems, Lebanese and Iranian electors flocked the polls because they saw some choice among the contenders, some real options and people believed that with their vote they can contribute to the transformation of the system. Lebanese and Iranians saw options and they had hope in their vote. They believed they can change things, voting.
To me, this is a miracle. A miracle of what the democratic passion can achieve in imperfect systems.
But in Mexico the people is on the other side, campaigning to blanking the vote, voting no or voting for fictional characters.
In contrast to the authoritarianism of the Islamic Republic, in Mexico on the surface there are choices, strong institutions and the ballots are respected. On the surface, in Mexico it would be enough for a citizen to go to the polls and cast a ballot. But what is happening is that citizens don’t believe that anymore. What Mexican citizens are showing is that they don’t believe that this system they have is giving them the tools or the options to transform reality. Reality is beyond the system, not only because reality is complex but because they know that this system, as it was designed, is unable to do something to transform the Mexican reality. What is worse, what Mexican society exhibits with this attitude is their underlying belief that this system is probably the reason the Mexican reality is so bad.
And Mexican people is not on the other side because apathy or lack of interest in politics. Mexican electors are skeptical of the system because they are fed up with the daily soap opera the Mexican democracy has become. From being a public spectacle to watch on TV and enjoy (like a reality show) it has come to be a miserable, distasteful show anybody wants to participate. In Mexico participating in the system is no longer seen as patriotic or civic. Participating in the system has become irrelevant at best and self deluding at worst. What this pre elections in Mexico show is that there are a lot of people so disenfranchised with the system, so disconnected from the system, that the number of people refusing to participate or be part of the system is growing.
If Lebanon and Iran remind us of the transformational and miraculous power of the democratic passion, Mexico shows how democracy can become a label that betrays authentic democratic sentiments. In Iran the ruling class is attempting to prevail over a large portion of Iranian electors. In Mexico is like if the “democratic system” is imposing over the aspirations of society. In Mexico the democratic system is gradually coming to be against society. This is tragic. What gives me hope, is that Mexican people are noticing it and as a consequence, if reforms that authorizes independent candidates or ways of limiting the power of the political parties are not passed in the short term, the legitimacy of this democratic system is going to erode.
A “democratic” Mexico like this reminds me more of places like pre revolutionary Vietnam or Cuba or democracies as such as the Egypt of President Mubarak, all of them defined by their lack of legitimacy.
As in other instances, Mexicans have come to believe that while our economy can experience a mediocre development our democracy is superior to the political situation in other countries, as Lebanon and Iran could be. And this established belief is again to be questioned, at least from a social perspective.
I’m not going dwell on the profound differences between Mexico and Iran and Lebanon. Likewise I’m also aware to the fact that these Mexican elections are mid-term elections (which traditionally call much less interest from voters in Mexico than the Presidential elections) and that low participation is a widely extended democratic malaise. Notwithstanding that, the high participation in the part elections of Iran and Lebanon and the lack of interest of Mexican people in taking part in these elections makes me think about the political reality of Mexico.
I can synthesize my reflection saying that what happened in Lebanon and Iran (a victory of the Pro Western alliance in Lebanon and a strong opposition to the Mullahs that rule Iran) shows the miracles that democratic participation can operate in countries where the political system are flawed or oppressive, as is the case in Lebanon and Iran, whereas in Mexico the widespread skepticism of electors show how the word “democracy” can be employed to put in place a system that is distrusted by society. In Lebanon and Iran, the democratic passion of society erupted and took by surprise the system. In Mexico its “democratic system” in its current form seems to be against society.
I have never been to Lebanon and Iran and I what I know of both countries is very limited. Perhaps these are systems marked by countless flaws and weaknesses (irregularities and foreign interference in Lebanon; supreme authority of Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran) but what the high participation in both countries show is that people there had some hope in their vote, some confidence in the system. At least, it seems, Lebanese and Iranian electors flocked the polls because they saw some choice among the contenders, some real options and people believed that with their vote they can contribute to the transformation of the system. Lebanese and Iranians saw options and they had hope in their vote. They believed they can change things, voting.
To me, this is a miracle. A miracle of what the democratic passion can achieve in imperfect systems.
But in Mexico the people is on the other side, campaigning to blanking the vote, voting no or voting for fictional characters.
In contrast to the authoritarianism of the Islamic Republic, in Mexico on the surface there are choices, strong institutions and the ballots are respected. On the surface, in Mexico it would be enough for a citizen to go to the polls and cast a ballot. But what is happening is that citizens don’t believe that anymore. What Mexican citizens are showing is that they don’t believe that this system they have is giving them the tools or the options to transform reality. Reality is beyond the system, not only because reality is complex but because they know that this system, as it was designed, is unable to do something to transform the Mexican reality. What is worse, what Mexican society exhibits with this attitude is their underlying belief that this system is probably the reason the Mexican reality is so bad.
And Mexican people is not on the other side because apathy or lack of interest in politics. Mexican electors are skeptical of the system because they are fed up with the daily soap opera the Mexican democracy has become. From being a public spectacle to watch on TV and enjoy (like a reality show) it has come to be a miserable, distasteful show anybody wants to participate. In Mexico participating in the system is no longer seen as patriotic or civic. Participating in the system has become irrelevant at best and self deluding at worst. What this pre elections in Mexico show is that there are a lot of people so disenfranchised with the system, so disconnected from the system, that the number of people refusing to participate or be part of the system is growing.
If Lebanon and Iran remind us of the transformational and miraculous power of the democratic passion, Mexico shows how democracy can become a label that betrays authentic democratic sentiments. In Iran the ruling class is attempting to prevail over a large portion of Iranian electors. In Mexico is like if the “democratic system” is imposing over the aspirations of society. In Mexico the democratic system is gradually coming to be against society. This is tragic. What gives me hope, is that Mexican people are noticing it and as a consequence, if reforms that authorizes independent candidates or ways of limiting the power of the political parties are not passed in the short term, the legitimacy of this democratic system is going to erode.
A “democratic” Mexico like this reminds me more of places like pre revolutionary Vietnam or Cuba or democracies as such as the Egypt of President Mubarak, all of them defined by their lack of legitimacy.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Mourning a fallen President in Seoul
After living in China for seven years, it was only last week that I took the time to visit South Korea. For someone like me, interested in witnessing history, I came on what was probably one of the most interesting weeks in the recent history of the Korean Peninsula: only few days before my visit, two important events took place: the former President, Roh Moo-Hyun, kill himself when hiking and North Korea held its second nuclear weapon test. It was impossible to come to South Korea on a more interesting time.
I arrived in Seoul on May 27th 2009, just one day before the scheduled funeral of the former President Roh. Besides the well known Korean language salutation “Ahhn niyong ha say yo” I don’t speak or understand any Korean and what I consign here is basically what I saw during my time in Seoul.
The week I traveled from China to Korea, the headlines in the world were the news about the North Korean nuclear test. But the country was in shock more for the suicide of Mr. Roh than for anything else. During my time in Seoul that’s actually what stroke me more: the seriousness with which the Korean people took the death of a former president. On my first day, I saw the every day life going as usual: people working on a normal day and young people enjoying the prosperity offered by their country in shopping malls, galleries and coffee shops but in the evening I witnessed a generalized respect and devotion to the memory of a fallen leader that surprised me very much.
From someone like me, who comes from a country where most of the people have a negative opinion of most of politicians and who remember European friends expressing negative opinions of leaders such as Sarkozy or Berlusconi, witnessing the mourn and respect of the Korean people to its former president was very surprising. Honestly I don’t know that much about President Roh, but what I read is that he has been accused of corruption and that’s another reason that made me wonder how was that possible that the death of a leader charged with corruption had that impact in Korea.
I don’t have any explanation for that but to me that reaction of the Korean people is very different with what in my opinion would happen in my country or in any other Western country, where in most of the people it’s present an instinctive suspicion of politics and politicians and where is very difficult, especially now, that the individual sacrifices his personal time to participate in political activities.
Regardless of the causes or the differences with the rest of the world, on May 27th in the eve of the funeral, Seoul Plaza was filled with thousands of people that gathered to mourn President Roh. There were people of different ages carrying candles and pictures of their leader; there were people reading speeches and there were also people that sang sad songs having the South Korean flag and the image of President Roh as background. On the floor, there were young and old people sitting on newspapers, just there, just being part of the event. There were also screens that showed President Roh when he was young, probably during the time when he was an activist.
There were thousands of people on the street on May 27th, but there was order and there was civility. Everybody respected everybody, nobody was pushing or rushing or littering or yelling. People were just there, being part of a community, showing respect, worshiping a fallen leader. There was a heavy police presence that evening, but the order was not maintained because the police. No, the individuals showed care about the individuals. People were offering water and there was a silent dialogue going on between them, not the loud voices of confrontation.
What I saw in Seoul that evening made me think on the differences between Korea and my country, between the West and East Asia. I thought that if in my country a former president charged with corruption committed suicide, there would be some people that would have the idea of throwing a party for that. My reflection was: who on these times would resent the disappearance of a politician? I think only the sudden disappearance of President Barack Obama would make people publicly express their condolences.
But Korea apparently was different: in Korea was possible to charge and impeach a President and then to publicly mourn his death.
Something also different about Korea that also sparked my reflection is that the funeral of President Roh and the fact that millions of people watched on TV, showed that in Korea individuals had a genuine and legitimate interest on the system. Individuals, people, seemed to care about the system, showing interest in the system, whereas in other places, individuals were anomic, just as the French sociologist Durkheim said. Is the interest of the individual one prerequisite for the health of a system? Would it be possible for a system to dye without the interest of its members?
Finally, I saw in Seoul that day a highly civilized behavior of the crowds, which behaved like one educated individual. What I saw in Korea and I compared for the case of China is that crowds are not always synonymous or equivalent of chaos. The Seoul example showed to me that it was possible to have thousands of people in a public square without chaos and destruction.
I arrived in Seoul on May 27th 2009, just one day before the scheduled funeral of the former President Roh. Besides the well known Korean language salutation “Ahhn niyong ha say yo” I don’t speak or understand any Korean and what I consign here is basically what I saw during my time in Seoul.
The week I traveled from China to Korea, the headlines in the world were the news about the North Korean nuclear test. But the country was in shock more for the suicide of Mr. Roh than for anything else. During my time in Seoul that’s actually what stroke me more: the seriousness with which the Korean people took the death of a former president. On my first day, I saw the every day life going as usual: people working on a normal day and young people enjoying the prosperity offered by their country in shopping malls, galleries and coffee shops but in the evening I witnessed a generalized respect and devotion to the memory of a fallen leader that surprised me very much.
From someone like me, who comes from a country where most of the people have a negative opinion of most of politicians and who remember European friends expressing negative opinions of leaders such as Sarkozy or Berlusconi, witnessing the mourn and respect of the Korean people to its former president was very surprising. Honestly I don’t know that much about President Roh, but what I read is that he has been accused of corruption and that’s another reason that made me wonder how was that possible that the death of a leader charged with corruption had that impact in Korea.
I don’t have any explanation for that but to me that reaction of the Korean people is very different with what in my opinion would happen in my country or in any other Western country, where in most of the people it’s present an instinctive suspicion of politics and politicians and where is very difficult, especially now, that the individual sacrifices his personal time to participate in political activities.
Regardless of the causes or the differences with the rest of the world, on May 27th in the eve of the funeral, Seoul Plaza was filled with thousands of people that gathered to mourn President Roh. There were people of different ages carrying candles and pictures of their leader; there were people reading speeches and there were also people that sang sad songs having the South Korean flag and the image of President Roh as background. On the floor, there were young and old people sitting on newspapers, just there, just being part of the event. There were also screens that showed President Roh when he was young, probably during the time when he was an activist.
There were thousands of people on the street on May 27th, but there was order and there was civility. Everybody respected everybody, nobody was pushing or rushing or littering or yelling. People were just there, being part of a community, showing respect, worshiping a fallen leader. There was a heavy police presence that evening, but the order was not maintained because the police. No, the individuals showed care about the individuals. People were offering water and there was a silent dialogue going on between them, not the loud voices of confrontation.
What I saw in Seoul that evening made me think on the differences between Korea and my country, between the West and East Asia. I thought that if in my country a former president charged with corruption committed suicide, there would be some people that would have the idea of throwing a party for that. My reflection was: who on these times would resent the disappearance of a politician? I think only the sudden disappearance of President Barack Obama would make people publicly express their condolences.
But Korea apparently was different: in Korea was possible to charge and impeach a President and then to publicly mourn his death.
Something also different about Korea that also sparked my reflection is that the funeral of President Roh and the fact that millions of people watched on TV, showed that in Korea individuals had a genuine and legitimate interest on the system. Individuals, people, seemed to care about the system, showing interest in the system, whereas in other places, individuals were anomic, just as the French sociologist Durkheim said. Is the interest of the individual one prerequisite for the health of a system? Would it be possible for a system to dye without the interest of its members?
Finally, I saw in Seoul that day a highly civilized behavior of the crowds, which behaved like one educated individual. What I saw in Korea and I compared for the case of China is that crowds are not always synonymous or equivalent of chaos. The Seoul example showed to me that it was possible to have thousands of people in a public square without chaos and destruction.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The holes of the American Empire and the blindness of its Mexican follower.
In stark contrast to countries as Brazil, Kazakhstan and Turkey that are taking advantage of multidirectional diplomacies, the over reliant on the US Mexico is refusing in every possible way to play in the new geopolitical market place, essentially defined by the rise of China as a global player. In this May 2009, when the world is busy with other matters (the swine flu, the new North Korean crisis), it’s easy to forget that for the rest of this century the most crucial factor in world politics is the comprehensive stability or rivalry between the US and China. And just because of that, it’s still impossible to know whether the Mexican government is right or wrong in its decision of following the US in everything and refusing to elevate its ties with China to a higher level. If one day in the future the US-China rivalry gets out of control and the US imposes itself in a confrontation, Mexicans will thank its government it decided to be always on the US side. But if in the future, as I anticipate, there’s no major conflict between China and the US and as a consequence the global balance of power is further altered in China’s favor, we Mexicans will have all the right to criticize the refusal of our government to get to the new geostrategic market place, as Brazil or Turkey, in the search of the benefits resulting from the rising power of China.
Although the Mexican foreign policy has historically had as a principle “never putting all the eggs on the American basket”, Mexico has never been so materially dependent on the US as it is now. What is worse is that our government has never been so little interested in models different to those absorbed from the US and it has never been so psychologically dependent to the notion that the US is going to be always the master of the world. The other side of this coin now is that in contrast to other large developing countries, the Mexican government is exhibiting a staunchly antagonistic China foreign policy, as it was demonstrated during the past crisis caused for the supposed mistreatment of Mexicans in China during the outbreak of the swine flu.
The standing of Mexico is in this regard at odds with most of the world. Europe and China are linked by a strategic dialogue; in South America, Brazil is not the only country that is adapting to the rise of China: Chile signed a free trade agreement, Peru is trying to sign one of its own, Argentina has in China one of its main export markets and Venezuela is already exporting oil to China. Likewise, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy a very productive relationship with China and every country from Asia to Africa has expanded its trade and dealings with China.
Clearly, one of the consequences of the Mexican standing is that the country is practically out from all of the streams of Chinese investment in the world (highways in South America, pipelines in Central Asia, mines and harbors in Africa). I am not going to say here if this is good or bad in the long term for Mexico. What strikes me is that Mexico is behaving with a myopia that makes me think it believes its US partner will always be the master and the model for the world and in my opinion this psychological loyalty to that notion is mistaken. I think it would be wiser to look beyond the US and start playing in the new geostrategic market place, just like every body else is doing.
Looking in detail to the US standing in the world nowadays makes me skeptical of that reliance of Mexico on the US.
The US is still the most powerful country in the world, but in many regions is no longer the master. From Eastern Europe to Eastern Asia all across Africa and the Indian Ocean, there are new processes and tendencies that the US is unable to control or decide. The Russian invasion of Georgia last year, the North Korean nuclear test of two days ago, the existence of Hugo Chavez as disturbing factor in South America but especially the underway strategic rivalry between China and the US in the Pacific, convinces me of the strategic devaluation of the US over the last years. Is Mexico thinking or doing any preparation for the event of a Pacific Ocean not monopolistically dominated by the US? Is Mexican government aware of that relative strategic devaluation of the US?
In tandem with this, the political, economic and social model preached by the US is not perfect and the developing world is noticing. Throughout its history and with special intensity in the post Cold War, the US has promoted to the developing world political democracy, pluralism, small government and free market but this recipe has not had in most of the world the desired effects. Instances for this are abundant. As a result the American model is being increasingly questioned, especially in East Asia, where Asean plus China, Korea and Japan are resolute to replace the IMF in this region and where American style politics and social model have never been well regarded.
And it has also become clear for many countries that the US, with its high inequality and crime, its “crumbling” infrastructure and its poor basic education is not necessarily the best country to live or the best model to emulate. In a number of instances, as Parag Khanna says, for countries as Germany or Japan, the American life represents a “step down”. There are some countries, like China, that instead of importing American standards are more interested in European alternatives.
That’s why many countries in the developing world are adapting their foreign policies to the rise of China and Europe and are increasingly attentive to political, social and economic models different from the one preached by the US. Again, Brazil for instance, is trying to play in the new geopolitical stage and other countries are clearly giving attention and credit to alternative models.
We don’t know how the world is going to look like in the middle of the 21st century, but based on the trends underway, it’s very likely that the world becomes geopolitically and ideologically more pluralistic. If that´s the case, would it be still wise for Mexico relying as it is doing now on its American partner and at the same time overlooking all the benefits implicit in playing in this new geostrategic market place? My logic tells me it’s not.
Although the Mexican foreign policy has historically had as a principle “never putting all the eggs on the American basket”, Mexico has never been so materially dependent on the US as it is now. What is worse is that our government has never been so little interested in models different to those absorbed from the US and it has never been so psychologically dependent to the notion that the US is going to be always the master of the world. The other side of this coin now is that in contrast to other large developing countries, the Mexican government is exhibiting a staunchly antagonistic China foreign policy, as it was demonstrated during the past crisis caused for the supposed mistreatment of Mexicans in China during the outbreak of the swine flu.
The standing of Mexico is in this regard at odds with most of the world. Europe and China are linked by a strategic dialogue; in South America, Brazil is not the only country that is adapting to the rise of China: Chile signed a free trade agreement, Peru is trying to sign one of its own, Argentina has in China one of its main export markets and Venezuela is already exporting oil to China. Likewise, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy a very productive relationship with China and every country from Asia to Africa has expanded its trade and dealings with China.
Clearly, one of the consequences of the Mexican standing is that the country is practically out from all of the streams of Chinese investment in the world (highways in South America, pipelines in Central Asia, mines and harbors in Africa). I am not going to say here if this is good or bad in the long term for Mexico. What strikes me is that Mexico is behaving with a myopia that makes me think it believes its US partner will always be the master and the model for the world and in my opinion this psychological loyalty to that notion is mistaken. I think it would be wiser to look beyond the US and start playing in the new geostrategic market place, just like every body else is doing.
Looking in detail to the US standing in the world nowadays makes me skeptical of that reliance of Mexico on the US.
The US is still the most powerful country in the world, but in many regions is no longer the master. From Eastern Europe to Eastern Asia all across Africa and the Indian Ocean, there are new processes and tendencies that the US is unable to control or decide. The Russian invasion of Georgia last year, the North Korean nuclear test of two days ago, the existence of Hugo Chavez as disturbing factor in South America but especially the underway strategic rivalry between China and the US in the Pacific, convinces me of the strategic devaluation of the US over the last years. Is Mexico thinking or doing any preparation for the event of a Pacific Ocean not monopolistically dominated by the US? Is Mexican government aware of that relative strategic devaluation of the US?
In tandem with this, the political, economic and social model preached by the US is not perfect and the developing world is noticing. Throughout its history and with special intensity in the post Cold War, the US has promoted to the developing world political democracy, pluralism, small government and free market but this recipe has not had in most of the world the desired effects. Instances for this are abundant. As a result the American model is being increasingly questioned, especially in East Asia, where Asean plus China, Korea and Japan are resolute to replace the IMF in this region and where American style politics and social model have never been well regarded.
And it has also become clear for many countries that the US, with its high inequality and crime, its “crumbling” infrastructure and its poor basic education is not necessarily the best country to live or the best model to emulate. In a number of instances, as Parag Khanna says, for countries as Germany or Japan, the American life represents a “step down”. There are some countries, like China, that instead of importing American standards are more interested in European alternatives.
That’s why many countries in the developing world are adapting their foreign policies to the rise of China and Europe and are increasingly attentive to political, social and economic models different from the one preached by the US. Again, Brazil for instance, is trying to play in the new geopolitical stage and other countries are clearly giving attention and credit to alternative models.
We don’t know how the world is going to look like in the middle of the 21st century, but based on the trends underway, it’s very likely that the world becomes geopolitically and ideologically more pluralistic. If that´s the case, would it be still wise for Mexico relying as it is doing now on its American partner and at the same time overlooking all the benefits implicit in playing in this new geostrategic market place? My logic tells me it’s not.
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