Tag: The New World Order

We Can Make the Post-Coronavirus World a Much Less Violent Place

The pandemic has decreased some kinds of crime and increased others. But the world is much safer than it used to be, and we know how to make it even safer.

By Robert Muggah, Steven Pinker

Protesters at a vigil for murdered social leaders in Bogotá, Colombia, on July 6, 2018. JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AFP via Getty Images

The world is convulsed by the novel coronavirus, but that is not the only pathogen that afflicts us. Criminal violence is also endemic, contagious, and highly virulent. More than 464,000 people were killed in homicides in 2017 (the last year for which we have reliable data), at least five times as many as were killed in war. Millions more suffer from physical and psychological injuries left by domestic abuse, gang fights, and extrajudicial violence.

The coronavirus pandemic will surely affect the patterns of this violence, but how? Conventional wisdom suggests that times of great stress produce more violence, but the data doesn’t bear that out: During the horrific Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919, neither the United States nor Britain experienced a significant increase in violence. Homicide rates actually fell during the Great Depression of the 1930s. They also declined during the recession that began in 2007.Conventional wisdom suggests that times of great stress produce more violence, but the data doesn’t bear that out.

With nighttime curfews and enforced quarantines keeping people off the streets and out of the bars, some forms of violent crime are dropping quickly in North America and parts of Latin America. But with people cooped up and getting agitated, domestic abuse appears to be increasing. Cybercrime is rising as well. And in countries such as Mexico that are beset by organized crime, homicide rates have spiked to record highs—which suggests a breakdown of public order as the pandemic spreads.

The longer-term prospects are even less clear. A major worry is what will happen if food prices rise when supply chains break down. The price of basic food products is a life-or-death issue for the more than 60 percent of the world’s population who depend on the informal economy. There are also fears of increased social disorder when governments violently enforce lockdowns and quarantines, as they are doing in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. In the Philippines, the president has issued shoot-to-kill orders for those protesting the lockdown. Meanwhile, in Brazil, El Salvador, and Italy, gangs and mafia groups are imposing their own curfews to keep the virus from spreading.

But the potential for certain forms of violence to escalate in the wake of the pandemic should not blind us to the fact that the world, on average, has become a much safer place. Most countries experienced sharply declining rates of lethal violence over the past two decades. Just as importantly, we are starting to understand, based on evidence from around the world, which kinds of policies and programs actually work to diminish violent crime, and which don’t. Armed with this evidence, we have the power to reduce violence further—whether it is caused by the pandemic or not.

The scale of these reductions in lethal violence has been stunning. Between 1990 and 2015, North America halved its homicide rate, which is now close to historic lows in the United States and Canada. European countries also registered sharp drops. In Asia, the homicide rate was was 38 percent lower in 2017 than in 2000. Declines of more than 50 percent were recorded in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Sri Lanka.

In many cities and neighborhoods, the drop in homicides has been staggering.

In many cities and neighborhoods, the drop in homicides has been staggering.

In the United States, most of the 30 largest cities are much safer today than a few decades ago. New York recorded more than 2,200 murders in 1990, but barely 300 in 2019. Washington, D.C., experienced a drop from more than 700 homicides in 1990 to just 163 in 2019. Other North American and Western European cities have followed a similar trend.Good news even comes from some of the world’s most violent places. The onetime murder capital of the planet, Medellín, Colombia, experienced a dizzying decline of lethal violence, from a high of 266 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the early 1990s to 30 per 100,000 in 2015, a fall of nearly 90 percent. Bogotá’s homicide rate fell from 81 per 100,000 in 1993 to roughly 17 per 100,000 in 2015. São Paulo, a notoriously homicidal city, is currently registering the lowest homicide rate since records began.

Notwithstanding these improvements, homicide rates remain stubbornly high in Latin America and the Caribbean. The region still registers a third of the world’s homicides, even though it contains less than 9 percent of the world’s population. Of the 50 most murderous cities in the world in 2016, 43 were in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Why has life in so many places become so much safer? As so often happens, there are many causes, and they are not easy to separate with confidence. Individual violence is largely a young man’s game, and societies with a higher proportion of teens and young adults tend to have higher levels of violent crime. By contrast, countries with older populations such as Japan, Italy, and Germany are often more peaceful.

But a country’s age distribution changes slowly and cannot explain a halving of violence in a decade by itself. When we compare regions, violence is statistically correlated to the level of inequality, perhaps because men at the bottom of a steeply unequal income distribution become more sensitive to social status and react violently to minor affronts. But that hypothesis cannot explain why violence is poorly correlated with inequality over time: Violence has dramatically decreased even as income inequality has increased in many countries.

It may not be inequality in income that predicts violence but inequality in protection against violence by institutions. In A Savage Order, the security expert Rachel Kleinfeld observes that in the most violent societies, the state acts as a security force for elites rather than a universal guarantor of peace. When societies begin to entrust their protection in a capable police force and justice system, they come to enjoy more law and order for all.Political leaders need to decide that homicide reduction is an achievable goal, not a campaign slogan or source of pork-barrel spending.

A common thread in regions that have reduced violence is larger and better-trained police forces targeted at reducing violence in the places where it is worst. Social and political solidarity are essential parts of this virtuous circle. When political leaders enlist police and communities as partners in enforcing norms that sanction delinquent behavior and promote collective safety, violent crime declines.

The virtuous circle of crime reduction often starts when cities and regions set clear targets spanning multiple election cycles and administrative fiefs. Political leaders need to decide that homicide reduction is an achievable goal, not a campaign slogan or source of pork-barrel spending, and commit adequate resources to the task. Implementing these plans requires sustained buy-in from mayors, police chiefs, and civic and business leaders.

The policies and programs must be selected on the basis of reliable data showing that they work, rather than on fads, slogans, or utopian hopes of extirpating root causes such as poverty and racism. Police must be seen not as antagonists but as service providers delivering what everyone in the community wants: safer streets and homes. And because criminal violence is so concentrated—we know from the data that a small number of neighborhoods and perpetrators account for a large share of the violence—successful crime reduction must focus resources on the places that are most violent.

These efforts can draw on a growing body of evidence about what works and what doesn’t. In his book Bleeding Out, which reviews a literature of thousands of studies on violence reduction, the criminal justice researcher Thomas Abt shows that one of the most effective tactics is hot-spot policing, which homes in on the cities, neighborhoods, and street corners where violence is most rampant. A complementary proven strategy is focused deterrence, which singles out the most aggressive gangs and individuals and sends them the clear message that they will be punished for committing violence and rewards them (with jobs, training, and other opportunities) for refraining from it.

When potential troublemakers are identified, another strategy whose effectiveness is clear from evidence is cognitive behavioral therapy. These interventions are designed to override the maladaptive thought habits and impulsive behavior that cause criminal delinquency, and to teach strategies of self-control that can stop an escalation into aggression before it begins. They include training in anger management and social skills, together with counselling in strategies that are explicitly designed to prevent recidivism.

These good habits can be reinforced by engineering urban environments with fewer temptations to resist—with earlier bar closings and fewer dark streets, secluded corners, and abandoned buildings. According to the sociologist Patrick Sharkey, urban renewal and local mobilization efforts to reclaim parks, city blocks, and open plazas in the United States played a pivotal role in reducing crime and victimization.

Just as important as knowing what works is knowing what doesn’t.

Just as important as knowing what works is knowing what doesn’t.

Aggressive, zero-tolerance policing, three-strikes-and-you’re-out mandatory sentencing, police-led drug awareness programs, so-called scared-straight interventions exposing young children to prisons and inmates, firearm buybacks, and slum clearance programs are either ineffective or make things worse.The goal of preventing people from killing each other in large numbers is not just desirable but achievable. The goal of reducing the global homicide rate by 50 percent by 2030—about 6.5 percent a year—has been embraced by Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a coalition of governments, national and international organizations, and foundations and private sector partners.

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The first order of business is to double down on evidence-based interventions in the most dangerous countries, cities, and neighborhoods, capitalizing on our knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, and on the fact that lethal violence tends to concentrate in a few areas and among a small number of people. When the right measures are applied in the right places, homicide and other forms of violent crime can drop quickly.

The moral value of looking at data is not just that it’s the only basis for choosing policies that actually save lives. Quantifying goals for reducing violence is also ethical because it treats all lives as equally valuable. Actions to prevent the greatest number of murders prevent the greatest amount of human tragedy. As the pandemic reminds us, there is no more important goal than saving lives.

Robert Muggah is the founder of the Igarapé Institute and SecDev Group. He is the author (with Ian Goldin) of Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years, to be published in August 2020 by Penguin.

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone family professor of psychology at Harvard University and author, most recently, of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Twitter: @sapinker

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April 15, 2020
The Hillary Doctrine

In a time of momentous change in the world, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sets out on her most heartfelt mission: to put women and girls at the forefront of the new world order.

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Stephanie Sinclair for Newsweek – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Abu Dhabi in January.

Hillary Clinton seemed to be in a rare moment of repose while the Middle East erupted. She’d just returned from a surprise trip to Yemen and now sat for 30 minutes against a blue backdrop in the State Department’s Washington broadcast studio as reports streamed in of Libya’s violent crackdown on its own people.

But Clinton was far from a passive observer. She was in energetic discussion on the Egyptian news site Masrawy.com, where her presence excited a stream of questions—more than 6,500 in three days—from young people across Egypt. “We hope,” she said, “that as Egypt looks at its own future, it takes advantage of all of the people’s talents”—Clinton shorthand for including women. She had an immediate answer when a number of questioners suggested that her persistent references to women’s rights constituted American meddling in Egyptian affairs: “If a country doesn’t recognize minority rights and human rights, including women’s rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.”

The Web chat was only one of dozens of personal exchanges Clinton has committed to during the three months since Tunisia’s unrest set off a political explosion whose end is not yet in sight. At every step, she has worked to connect the Middle East’s hunger for a new way forward with her categorical imperative: the empowerment of women. Her campaign has begun to resonate in unlikely places. In the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, where women cannot travel without male permission or drive a car, a grandson of the Kingdom’s founding monarch (Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud) last month denounced the way women are “economically and socially marginalized” in Arab countries.

“I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century,” Clinton recently told NEWSWEEK during another rare moment relaxing on a couch in the comfortable sitting room of her offices on the State Department’s seventh floor, her legs propped up in front of her. “We see women and girls across the world who are oppressed and violated and demeaned and degraded and denied so much of what they are entitled to as our fellow human beings.”

Clinton is paying particular attention to whether women’s voices are heard within the local groups calling for and leading change in the Middle East. “You don’t see women in pictures coming from the demonstrations and the opposition in Libya,” she told NEWSWEEK late last week, adding that “the role and safety of women will remain one of our highest priorities.” As for Egypt, she said she was heartened by indications that women would be included in the formation of the new government. “We believe that women were in Tahrir Square, and they should be part of the decision-making process. If [the Egyptians] are truly going to have a democracy, they can’t leave out half the population.”

“I have had quite an experience over the last three months,” is how Clinton characterizes the stamina requirements of an amped-up shuttle diplomacy. Two years into her tenure as America’s 67th secretary of state, she has out-traveled every one of her predecessors, with 465,000 air miles and 79 countries already behind her. Her Boeing 757’s cabin, stocked with a roll-out bed, newspapers, and a corner humidifier, now serves as another home as she flies between diplomatic hot spots, tackling the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tensions with Iran and North Korea, the Arab-Israeli peace process, and, now, the serial Middle East upheavals. She is, it seems, everywhere at once, crossing time zones and defying jet lag, though signs of exhaustion—a hoarse voice, bleary eyes—slip through. (A recent 19-hour “day trip” to Mexico landed her at Maryland’s Andrews Air Force Base well after 2 a.m., which left approximately six hours to get home, sleep, and make her first meeting of the day that would culminate in President Obama’s State of the Union address.)

It is hardly the life the former first lady and senator from New York envisioned. Indeed, she can fairly be described as the surprise secretary of state, the country’s first formidable female presidential candidate who had made clear her desire to shed the supporting roles of her past. When Barack Obama approached her about assuming the post, it was clear what he got out of the deal: an opportunity to reinforce his “change the tone” pledge by offering a choice role to his one-time competitor, and the credibility, gravitas—and gender balance—her appointment conferred. Less obvious at the time was what she might hope to accomplish. A sense of duty and a want of appealing alternatives may have led her to Foggy Bottom, but Clinton has turned the job into what may well be the role of her lifetime: advocate in chief for women worldwide.

Amid the current unrest and pervasive uncertainty, Clinton’s mission has only gained in urgency. As she noted in Qatar in January, two weeks before Egypt’s first “day of rage,” the Middle East’s old foundations were “sinking into the sand.” But there has been a hard core of realism to her recognition of a new opening for women. “We are watching and waiting,” she said. “People jockey for power, and often the most conservative elements once again use the opportunity to crack down on women and women’s roles.”

While Clinton views the subjugation of the world’s women as a moral question, she plants her argument firmly on the grounds of national security, terrain she knows is far less likely to be attacked as “too soft” to be relevant to U.S. interests. “This is a big deal for American values and for American foreign policy and our interests, but it is also a big deal for our security,” she told NEWSWEEK. “Because where women are disempowered and dehumanized, you are more likely to see not just antidemocratic forces, but extremism that leads to security challenges for us.”

Championing opportunity and equality for women is the fulfillment of her life’s work, but for a time, it looked as if that trajectory might be derailed. In 1974, the blazing young intellect who won national attention with an unscripted response to Sen. Edward Brooke, boldly arguing for the end of the Vietnam War in her Wellesley commencement speech (a speech that landed her on the cover of Life magazine), disappointed her feminist friends by spurning New York and Washington in favor of Fayetteville, Ark., to become the young Bill Clinton’s wife.

For two decades, Clinton put her own ambitions second to and in the service of her husband’s political rise, enduring personal struggles and eating political crow when her high-profile effort to reform health care at the start of Bill Clinton’s first term ended in a rout. A return to first-lady purdah soon followed.

And then came Beijing. The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, organized by the United Nations to advance and promote women’s opportunity and equality, stirred Hillary to reassert her own credo as a woman, on behalf of women. She would gather America’s delegation and serve as its honorary chair, lending her imprimatur as first lady to put women’s rights in the global spotlight at the largest such assembly of its kind.

When word reached the West Wing of Hillary’s interest in attending the conference, her husband’s aides saw only the political downside for the president and feared the first lady would derail already-fragile bilateral relations. “I did get a call from someone on the National Security Council who said to me, ‘My job is to make sure Hillary Clinton doesn’t go to China,’?” says Theresa Loar, who helped Clinton organize the Beijing delegation. “I am thinking, my job is to make sure it’s a rip-roaring success—and guess who is going to succeed?”

Clinton herself says she paid little heed to the political tug-of-war within her husband’s administration. “I always intended to go,” she says, stressing the word “always.” “The real question was, what would I do when I got there … It became more and more important to me that we really lay down a declaration of American values when it comes to women.” And so, clad in a striking pink suit, she ascended the Beijing stage and delivered what The New York Times called “an unflinching speech that may have been her finest moment in public life.” Thousands of delegates—women and men—from 180 countries had gathered to hear Clinton, and some of the women cheered and pounded the tables in front of them while she spoke.

“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all,” Clinton declared. “As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes—the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.”

Those who have worked closely with Clinton on women’s issues view that speech as a turning point for an embattled first lady. “What Mrs. Clinton so clearly realized in Beijing was that she had a voice and she had power,” says Alyse Nelson, president of the women’s leadership group Vital Voices Global Partnership, who paid her own way to the conference as a college student. “And she could use that voice to help those who had no power.”

Mu Sochua met Clinton in Beijing and credits Clinton’s speech with changing her career path. “That was the day I decided to enter politics,” says Sochua, now a prominent Cambodian opposition leader. “Watching her I had the sense that I could do it, that other women could do it, if we really spoke from the bottom of our hearts and reflected the voices of women.”

Significantly, at the age of 63, Hillary Clinton is once again focusing on the issues that first inspired her to seek a life of public service more than four decades ago, a time when America’s schools remained segregated and no woman had ever served on the Supreme Court, been elected mayor of a major city, or entered the country’s military academies.

Despite her punishing schedule, Clinton appears far more at ease with her own role and in her own skin than ever before. Even her oft-commented style—the coiffed hair, a wardrobe of tailored pantsuits—now shows a settled sureness. Clinton’s political instincts may have served others—principally her husband—to great effect, but over the years they have often done her a disservice. Today, she exudes not just the confidence that her White House–era trials are behind her but the conviction that they are beside the point. In crafting her role as secretary of state, she has shown remarkable political dexterity and a marked absence of inner conflict, crystallized by the moral clarity of addressing injustices faced by young girls sold into slavery or mothers raped in front of their children.

In January, Clinton became the first secretary of state in two decades to visit Yemen. It’s a country infiltrated by Al Qaeda, and so she talked security and development issues in three hours cloistered with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh at his sprawling presidential compound. It’s also a country where a man may marry a girl of 9, and so Clinton sought out the kind of people who rarely meet American secretaries of state—the students, community activists, and, most obviously, the women. She toured the narrow streets of the capital’s old city to the great dismay of her security detail; through the windows of her heavily armored SUV she caught sight of men in traditional clothes, knives dangling from their belts, and children yelling “welcome” in Arabic. Missing from the scene: virtually any sign of the country’s women.

Arriving at a packed conference center in a luxury hotel complex perched above the old city, Clinton found young men and women packed into a raucous town-hall meeting. When she finished speaking, a cluster of Yemeni women’s activists approached. A petite young woman wearing a glitter-fringed black head scarf and a denim jacket with BEAUTY embroidered on its sleeve told the secretary the women needed advice about how to stop child marriage. During her remarks, Clinton had cited the story of Nujood Ali, a Yemeni girl in the audience that day whose very public fight for a divorce at age 11 has become a global cause célèbre—one that Clinton herself follows closely.

“Today, Nujood is back in school where she belongs, learning English along with her studies,” Clinton told the crowd. “And I really see her as an inspiration and representative of so many other young girls who can contribute positively to their families and their country.”

By Clinton’s side as she spoke was Melanne Verveer, ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, a post Clinton encouraged President Obama to create when she became secretary. In 1995, while serving as Clinton’s chief of staff, Verveer helped the first lady create the President’s Interagency Council on Women. With Verveer as her trusted deputy, Clinton pushes for recognition of women’s contributions in traditional areas such as health and education, along with newer and, in her view, equally critical arenas such as diplomacy and peacekeeping. “Politics is seen in most societies, including our own, I would add, as a largely male sport—unarmed combat—and women are very often ignored or pushed aside in an effort to gain or consolidate power,” she says. Her work aims to change that.

During Clinton’s daylong stop in Papua New Guinea last November, Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare sought to dismiss concerns about domestic violence. “Sometimes there are fights, arguments do take place, but it’s nothing very brutal,” Somare said, before asserting that “a person … cannot control [himself] when he’s under the influence of liquor.” Clinton noted pointedly that one of her highest priorities was “enabling more women to have access to their rights, to take their position in society” and she added—evidently to the surprise of those traveling with her—that Verveer would be returning to Papua New Guinea to “figure out what else the United States can do, so that we have even more women playing leadership roles in every aspect of your society.”

“Let’s stay true to our values” is, Clinton says, her message to the American public. “Let’s continue to stand up for those who are vulnerable to being left out or marginalized.” It’s a pledge in sync with a growing national awareness of the unappreciated potential of women and girls around the world. Children now study the young readers’ edition of Three Cups of Tea as part of their classroom curriculum, while an increasing number of college-age students are committing time to NGOs involved with women’s issues. And though Washington is proving slower to embrace Clinton’s cause, her own popularity is soaring: she is the second-most-admired woman in America (after Oprah Winfrey), according to a NEWSWEEK poll of women in late February.

Meanwhile, the State Department’s 2012 fiscal-year request includes $1.2 billion in programs specifically targeting women, $832 million of which will go toward global health initiatives. Tellingly, comparisons with past years can’t be made, since the department only started tracking women-focused dollars in 2010. Once a month, Verveer meets by videoconference with the Afghanistan Gender Task Force, which packs into a narrow room in the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital. During a 2009 visit, she unveiled what is now the $36 million Ambassador’s Small Grants Program to Support Gender Equality, which has awarded 523 grants totaling $8 million via the USAID contractor Creative Associates. Most awards last less than four months, but two dozen have gone to organizations working on long-term change, such as a domestic violence law that went into effect last year.

Afghan grant recipient Suraya Pakzad’s Voice of Women offers refuge to women who suffer beatings and mental abuse at the hands of husbands and in-laws. Thuraya Dammaj, a Yemeni human-rights activist, plans to use a Middle East–focused $25,000 State Department grant to push for quotas to get more women into Parliament and to repeal a law allowing the marriage of young girls.

During Clinton’s last Middle East visit, former Iraqi minister Bakhtiar Amin told her he worried about the increasing invisibility of women in Iraq’s government. Once there were six female ministers, Amin noted, and now there was only one. Clinton pledged to follow up. “The secretary remembers things, she takes notes, she asks questions weeks or months” after the fact, according to Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary for management at the State Department. “She checks on the issues she cares about, deeply and specifically,” keeping track of it all with her famous to-do lists.

“I honestly think Hillary Clinton wakes up every day thinking about how to improve the lives of women and girls,” says Theresa Loar. “And I don’t know another world leader who is doing that.”

Clinton’s knack for personalizing foreign policy was evident last month, when she convened the annual gathering of the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. It’s another issue she began working on in the mid-1990s, and in a borderless world with instant communication, sexual slavery has exploded into an epidemic; the State Department estimates there are now 12.3 million adults and children worldwide in “forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution.”

Squeezed in elbow to elbow around a long wooden table in the State Department’s Jefferson Room was a virtual cabinet gathering, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. As host of the meeting, which began so promptly that several attendees sheepishly slid in late, Clinton asked each of the officials to share their team’s progress. She moved briskly around the table, then stopped to make a frank appeal. “One thing I would urge, if you do get a chance, is to visit a shelter, a site where trafficking victims have been rescued and are being rehabilitated,” she said to a room that had suddenly gone silent. “I recently was in Cambodia, and it is just so overwhelmingly heartbreaking and inspiring to see these young girls. One girl lost her eyes—to punish her, the owner of the brothel had stabbed her in the eye with a nail,” Clinton continued. “She was the most optimistic, cheerful young woman, just a tremendous spirit. What she wants to do when she grows up is help other victims of trafficking, so there is just an enormous amount of work to be done.”

The shelter Clinton referred to is run by the Cambodian activist Somaly Mam, who herself was forced into a brothel as a little girl. Mam credits Clinton’s visit with making her work rescuing young victims respectable in the eyes of her government. “She protects our lives,” Mam says simply, noting that during her visit Clinton took the time to talk with the girls and that many of the shelter’s children now keep photos of her on their walls. “Our people never paid attention. Hillary has opened their eyes, so now they have no choice; by her work she has saved many lives in Cambodia—our government is changing.”

For her part, Clinton says that her ambition now is to move the discussion beyond a reliance on her own celebrity. She must, she says, take her work on women’s behalf “out of the interpersonal and turn it into the international.” At the State Department, that goal is reflected in a new and sweeping strategic blueprint known as the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which establishes priorities over a four-year horizon. Women and girls are mentioned 133 times across the 220 pages of the final QDDR document.

By institutionalizing a process that recognizes the importance of women’s involvement, Clinton hopes her successors will continue what she has started. Many of those on the front lines of implementing Clinton’s changes say they believe her message will stick. “Once you have built this track record, it is much harder to ignore it,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served as a chief architect of the QDDR process. But some women’s-rights advocates who applaud Clinton’s leadership aren’t so sure. “When I go to Iraq or Afghanistan and I meet State Department officials, I don’t see women’s issues at the core of the discussion,” says Zainab Salbi, who heads Women for Women International. (See My Turn, page 40.) Salbi notes that on a recent trip to the southern Iraqi province of Diwaniya, she had to fight to convince her State interlocutors that spending precious program dollars on women was a worthwhile investment. “Their patriarchy and chauvinism,” she says, “was harder on Iraqi culture than Iraqis themselves.”

“There is a culture at State, and you have to break through that culture,” admits one former ambassador. “The guys who work on country-to-country relationships don’t think these issues are central.” Clinton’s efforts could easily stall or be reversed when she and Verveer leave, he adds, in part because each is so good at what she does. “I think the combination of those two personalities is crucial, and that’s why I can’t be at all sure it will last beyond this administration.”

Speculation continues that Clinton would stay on in a second Obama term, and a few pundits go as far as to suggest she might even make another White House run in 2016, though Bill Clinton joked recently that his wife now covets the title of grandmother far more than that of commander in chief. For now, Hillary Clinton is sticking to her story that she is getting ready to take a break from public life.

Asked whether she worries her eventual departure from the State Department will endanger the future of her mission, Clinton admits to feeling a great weight of responsibility for all the women and girls she has met and the many millions of others like them. “It is why there are 133 references to women and girls in the QDDR,” she says, turning reflexively to the hard evidence. “It is why I mention the issue in every setting I am in, and why I mention it with every foreign leader I meet.

“It is like any challenge,” she goes on, her tone brightening. “You just keep at it, take it piece by piece, seize the ground you can, hang onto it, and then move forward a little bit more.” She pauses. “And we are heading for higher ground.”

Lemmon, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, published this month.

www.newsweek.com, March 06, 2011

June 18, 2011
Brzezinski on WikiLeaks: VERY POINTED

“very pointed” .. [and] .. “clearly calculated in terms of its potential impact on disrupting the American-Turkish relationship.”

ANALYSIS AIR DATE: Nov. 29, 2010

How Will New WikiLeaks Revelations Affect Diplomatic Candor?

Gentlemen, it’s good to have you both with us.

So, Secretary Clinton said today she is confident that this will not have long-lasting — do permanent damage to U.S. relations with other countries.

Stephen Hadley, do you agree with her? Is she right about that?

STEPHEN HADLEY, former adviser, U.S. National Security: In one sense, yes. I think, in the short run, it’s going to have some very deleterious effects.One is, you know, confidential communications between our government and other governments are important in terms of making policy. And if we cannot keep the secret and the confidences of other governments, they will be reluctant to share their innermost thoughts with us.

It also is corrupting because our people in diplomatic posts overseas want to be able to give their candid assessments about people with whom they’re dealing in their countries up to U.S. leadership. It’s important to inform the president, secretary of state. They will now be reluctant to be as candid in the reporting cables, for fear that it will become public and harm their relationship with a country.

So, it’s very corrupting of the process of confidence on which our diplomacy depends, both internally and with other governments.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Dr. Brzezinski, what do you think the fallout is going to be?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, former adviser, U.S. National Security: Well, you know, the best assessment I can give is to cite a phrase which used to be used very often in Vienna when it was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

And when some crisis would take place, it would be said, it’s catastrophic, but not serious. And this is the way I look at. I think Steve has put his finger on it by saying that some things will pass. Of course, some things will endure.

But I think the most serious issues are not those which are getting the headlines right now. Who cares if Berlusconi is described as a clown. Most Italians agree with that. Who cares if Putin is described as an alpha dog? He probably is flattered by it.

The real issue is, who is feeding Wikipedia on this issue — Wiki — Wiki — WikiLeaks on this issue? They’re getting a lot of information which seems trivial, inconsequential, but some of it seems surprisingly pointed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, what are you referring to?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, for example, there are references to a report by our officials that some Chinese leaders favor a reunified Korea under South Korea.

This is clearly designed to embarrass the Chinese and our relationship with them. The very pointed references to Arab leaders could have as their objective undermining their political credibility at home, because this kind of public identification of their hostility towards Iran could actually play against them at home.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And I want to ask you about that, because the impression is — and I want to turn to Steve Hadley on this as well — Saudi Arabia has not been public about its view, as — and we heard the quote from King Abdullah, that the U.S. should go after or Israel should go after Iran and its nuclear weapons program.

So, what — what effect could this have now that that’s out there that it’s confirmed?

STEPHEN HADLEY: Well, actually, I don’t think that’s new.

And a lot of people have been saying, without going into details and without going into these sort of sensational quotes, that the Arab states are very concerned about Iran, very concerned about the impact of a nuclear Iran.People have been saying that’s one of the odd things about how Israel and the Arab states actually have common cause about their concern about Iran.

So, I think the fact that there is concern is not new. But, unfortunately, the way it is expressed, with these, you know, very headline-grabbing phrases, that’s what’s unfortunate and that’s what’s embarrassing. And that’s what may make people a little bit less candid in their communications in the future.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And what is it — what are you worried about with regard to the knowledge that…

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: It’s not a question of worry. It’s, rather, a question of whether WikiLeaks are being manipulated by interested parties that want to either complicate our relationship with other governments or want to undermine some governments, because some of these items that are being emphasized and have surfaced are very pointed.

And I wonder whether, in fact, there aren’t some operations internationally, intelligence services, that are feeding stuff to WikiLeaks, because it is a unique opportunity to embarrass us, to embarrass our position, but also to undermine our relations with particular governments.

For example, leaving aside the personal gossip about Sarkozy or Berlusconi or Putin, the business about the Turks is clearly calculated in terms of its potential impact on disrupting the American-Turkish relationship.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just criticizing the people around…

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: And the top leaders, Erdogan and Davutoglu and so forth, are using some really, really, very sharp language.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But this is 250 — it’s a quarter-of-a-million documents.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Precisely.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How easy would it be to seed this to make sure that it was slanted a certain way?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Seeding — seeding it is very easy.

I have no doubt that WikiLeaks is getting a lot of the stuff from sort of relatively unimportant sources, like the one that perhaps is identified on the air. But it may be getting stuff at the same time from interested intelligence parties who want to manipulate the process and achieve certain very specific objectives.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you have that concern?

STEPHEN HADLEY: Obviously, it would always be a concern.

The — what we know or what has been said publicly is it looks like a data dump through a pretty junior-level person. So, in terms of that material, it looks like a data dump. Generally, in Washington, I have had the rule that, if there are two explanations, one is conspiracy and one is incompetence, you ought to go with incompetence. You will be right 90 percent of the time.

(LAUGHTER)

But you can’t rule out what Dr. Brzezinski talked about. And if not in the past, in terms of how we got here, it would be interesting — and now, having heard this, I suspect there will be some intelligence services thinking about maybe we could seed in these data dumps something that would be useful. You can’t rule it out.

But it has the appearance at this point of a core dump. For some reason, people get a thrill out of leaking classified documents. It’s never — you know, it’s — whether it’s a sense of self-importance.

But I think it’s more likely, in terms of the volume, that that’s what’s at work. But you can’t rule out, particularly going forward, the kind of thing Dr. Brzezinski is talking about.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: But, Steve, the other foreign intelligence services don’t have to wait for me to make that suggestion.

(LAUGHTER)

I think they can think of it themselves, particularly after the first instance.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What effect do you think this will have, though, on the willingness of foreign — whether it’s leaders, diplomats — to talk candidly with Americans about their views? Is this going to affect that?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, I haven’t seen anything in it that really affects serious issues that would be constrained in direct talks.

It’s the more sensational impacting items that can have a political significance that I find that more significant. Beyond that, of course, there is a second problem which I think is serious in this otherwise, in my view, non-catastrophic situation. Namely, it’s an absolute scandal that this now is happening again.

You know, the head of the Bureau of the Budget has issued an instruction to all the heads of departments to the effect that they must safeguard classified information, and any failure is unacceptable. It will not be tolerated.

Well, this is the second instance. I would like to know what the administration has done since the first to make the second one less likely.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But a lot of these documents have been in the hands — haven’t they been in the hands of WikiLeaks for some time…

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: We don’t know that for a fact.

JUDY WOODRUFF: … because of — because of this private who is in jail and accused, Army private?

STEPHEN HADLEY: We don’t know it. And what Dr. Brzezinski is talking about, I think, also shows one of the dilemmas in all of this, is one of the things you like to do is to get information that would be useful to people in the field out to the field. And that means fairly widespread distribution.

After things like this, there is an effort, usually a reaction, understandable, to narrow down the distribution. And that could have the effect of denying information to people who could use it in their jobs day to day.

So, just exactly — this is the challenge. How do you try to limit the risk of this kind of activity in going — in a way going forward, while still making this information available to those who can use it, particularly in the field in their day-to-day activities?

JUDY WOODRUFF: And what about asking diplomats, in essence, to spy? I mean, we have learned now that Secretary Clinton and, before her, Secretary Rice were asking diplomats to collect confidential information, credit cards and so forth, on foreign diplomats.

You’re smiling.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, yes, because, look, diplomats are supposed to be reporting. They’re not supposed to shut their eyes and close their ears.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But doesn’t that blur the line?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, not really. I mean, they’re not asked to do anything that is really a violation of the laws.

But if they can obtain some information regarding key individuals, I see nothing wrong with it, provided it doesn’t become a major task or a significant assignment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And — but, on balance, you’re not worried that this changes the level of candor in diplomatic communities?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Do you think foreigners are not doing that?

(LAUGHTER)

STEPHEN HADLEY: No, I’m worried about the heads of state having their communications compromised and how willing they are going to be talk candidly going forward.

Quite frankly, there’s a difference between getting information from diplomats.Of course, that’s what you want — that’s what you have diplomats out there for, is to get you all kinds of information. And you want to know the background of the people you’re dealing with.

That’s different than stealing secrets. That’s what your intelligence services do.I don’t think there’s a line here that’s been crossed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Stephen Hadley, Zbigniew Brzezinski, thank you both.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Thank you.

STEPHEN HADLEY: Thank you.

, Nov. 29, 2010

December 10, 2010
Baron David de Rothschild: Economic Crisis Will Bring New World Order, Global Governance

The first barons of banking

Last Updated: November 06. 2008 7:11PM UAE / November 6. 2008 3:11PM GMT

Nobleman: Baron David de Rothschild, the head of the Rothschild bank. The Rothschilds have helped the British government since financing Wellington

Among the captains of industry, spin doctors and financial advisers accompanying British prime minister Gordon Brown on his fund-raising visit to the Gulf this week, one name was surprisingly absent. This may have had something to do with the fact that the tour kicked off in Saudi Arabia. But by the time the group reached Qatar, Baron David de Rothschild was there, too, and he was also in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Although his office denies that he was part of the official party, it is probably no coincidence that he happened to be in the same part of the world at the right time. That is how the Rothschilds have worked for centuries: quietly, without fuss, behind the scenes.

“We have had 250 years or so of family involvement in the finance business,” says Baron Rothschild. “We provide advice on both sides of the balance sheet, and we do it globally.”

The Rothschilds have been helping the British government – and many others – out of a financial hole ever since they financed Wellington’s army and thus victory against the French at Waterloo in 1815. According to a long-standing legend, the Rothschild family owed the first millions of their fortune to Nathan Rothschild’s successful speculation about the effect of the outcome of the battle on the price of British bonds. By the 19th century, they ran a financial institution with the power and influence of a combined Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and perhaps even Goldman Sachs and the Bank of China today.

In the 1820s, the Rothschilds supplied enough money to the Bank of England to avert a liquidity crisis. There is not one institution that can save the system in the same way today; not even the US Federal Reserve. However, even though the Rothschilds may have lost some of that power – just as other financial institutions on that list have been emasculated in the last few months – the Rothschild dynasty has lost none of its lustre or influence. So it was no surprise to meet Baron Rothschild at the Dubai International Financial Centre. Rothschild’s opened in Dubai in 2006 with ambitious plans to build an advisory business to complement its European operations. What took so long?

The answer, as many things connected with Rothschilds, has a lot to do with history. When Baron Rothschild began his career, he joined his father’s firm in Paris. In 1982 President Francois Mitterrand nationalised all the banks, leaving him without a bank. With just US$1 million (Dh3.67m) in capital, and five employees, he built up the business, before merging the French operations with the rest of the family’s business in the 1990s.

Gradually the firm has started expanding throughout the world, including the Gulf. “There is no debate that Rothschild is a Jewish family, but we are proud to be in this region. However, it takes time to develop a global footprint,” he says.

An urbane man in his mid-60s, he says there is no single reason why the Rothschilds have been able to keep their financial business together, but offers a couple of suggestions for their longevity. “For a family business to survive, every generation needs a leader,” he says. “Then somebody has to keep the peace. Building a global firm before globalisation meant a mindset of sharing risk and responsibility. If you look at the DNA of our family, that is perhaps an element that runs through our history. Finally, don’t be complacent about giving the family jobs.”

He stresses that the Rothschild ascent has not been linear – at times, as he did in Paris, they have had to rebuild. While he was restarting their business in France, his cousin Sir Evelyn was building a British franchise. When Sir Evelyn retired, the decision was taken to merge the businesses. They are now strong in Europe, Asia especially China, India, as well as Brazil. They also get involved in bankruptcy restructurings in the US, a franchise that will no doubt see a lot more activity in the months ahead.

Does he expect governments to play a larger role in financial markets in future? “There is a huge difference in the Soviet-style mentality that occurred in Paris in 1982, and the extraordinary achievements that politicians, led by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, have made to save the global banking system from systemic collapse,” he says. “They moved to protect the world from billions of unemployment. In five to 10 years those banking stakes will be sold – and sold at a profit.”

Baron Rothschild shares most people’s view that there is a new world order. In his opinion, banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance. “But you have to be careful of caricatures: we don’t want to go from ultra liberalism to protectionism.”

So how did the Rothschilds manage to emerge relatively unscathed from the financial meltdown? “You could say that we may have more insights than others, or you may look at the structure of our business,” he says. “As a family business, we want to limit risk. There is a natural pride in being a trusted adviser.”

It is that role as trusted adviser to both governments and companies that Rothschilds is hoping to build on in the region. “In today’s world we have a strong offering of debt and equity,” he says. “They are two arms of the same body looking for money.”

The firm has entrusted the growth of its financing advisory business in the Middle East to Paul Reynolds, a veteran of many complex corporate finance deals. “Our principal business franchise is large and mid-size companies,” says Mr Reynolds. “I have already been working in this region for two years and we offer a pretty unique proposition.

“We work in a purely advisory capacity. We don’t lend or underwrite, because that creates conflicts. We are sensitive to banking relationships. But we look to ensure financial flexibility for our clients.”

He was unwilling to discuss specific deals or clients, but says that he offers them “trusted, impartial financing advice any time day or night”. Baron Rothschilds tends to do more deals than their competitors, mainly because they are prepared to take on smaller mandates. “It’s not transactions were are interested in, it’s relationships. We are looking for good businesses and good people,” says Mr Reynolds. “Our ambition is for every company here to have a debt adviser.”

Baron Rothschild is reluctant to comment on his nephew Nat Rothschild’s public outburst against George Osborne, the British shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Nat Rothschild castigated Mr Osborne for revealing certain confidences gleaned during a holiday in the summer in Corfu.

In what the British press are calling “Yachtgate”, the tale involved Russia’s richest man, Oleg Deripaska, Lord Mandelson, a controversial British politician who has just returned to government, Mr Osborne and a Rothschild. Classic tabloid fodder, but one senses that Baron Rothschild frowns on such publicity. “If you are an adviser, that imposes a certain style and culture,” he says. “You should never forget that clients want to hear more about themselves than their bankers. It demands an element of being sober.”

Even when not at work, Baron Rothschild’s tastes are sober. He lives between Paris and London, is a keen family man – he has one son who is joining the business next September and three daughters – an enthusiastic golfer, and enjoys the “odd concert”. He is also involved in various charity activities, including funding research into brain disease and bone marrow disorders.

It is part of Rothschild lore that its founder sent his sons throughout Europe to set up their own interlinked offices. So where would Baron Rothschild send his children today?

“I would send one to Asia, one to Europe and one to the United States,” he said. “And if I had more children, I would send one to the UAE.”

rwright@thenational.ae

Source: www.thenational.ae, November 06. 2008

November 13, 2008
EU calls for ‘new deal for new world’ with Obama

BRUSSELS: The head of the European Union (EU)’s executive body, the European Commission, congratulated Barack Obama on his victory in the US presidential election and called on him to work with the EU to shape a “new deal for a new world”.

“This is a time for a renewed commitment between Europe and the US. I want to assure president elect Obama of the support of the European Commission and of my personal support in forging this renewed commitment to face together the many challenges ahead of us,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.

“We need a new deal for a new world. I sincerely hope that with the leadership of President Obama, the US will join forces with Europe to drive this new deal – for the benefit of our societies, for the benefit of the world,” he said in a statement.

Ahead of Tuesday’s election, politicians across Europe had expressed the hope that the successor to US President George W Bush – whether Obama or his rival, John McCain – would abandon Bush’s unilateral stance in favour of more cooperation with the EU.

The European Union seems to be in an extraordinary rush for a one world government, commonly reffered to as the New World Order. //11.08.08

Source: macedoniaonline.eu, 08.11.2008

November 10, 2008