In Pursuit of the Non-Secular

I got a number of responses to my last  post-unfortunately none of them through the comment function which probably says more about my ineptitude with a computer than my readers.  Be that as it may they ranged from "great" to a rather more detailed questioning of a number of my points.

One of the more difficult queries was if I were not perhaps over-egging the dangers of the Islamic State just as in the past the West might have over-egged the perils of communism.

At breakfast this morning I ventured that the communist "threat" was actually a totalitarian government bent on world domination and that the Islamic State threat was also a form or totalitarian threat cloaked in the shrouds of religious fervour.

I was whacked immediately for suggesting that the US's reaction to the Soviet threat was valid given that it was actually one imperialist power confronting another.

That set me to reflecting on imperialism in general and whether one can speak of different forms of imperialism and is one more acceptable than another.

My answer is that the subjugation of one group by another, regardless of the rationale behind it is clearly despicable.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.  And it doesn't mean that there aren't gradients to it which brings me back to my Realpolitik point that the "good" solution might not exist and the less bad proposition is often the best one can hope to achieve.

Still, supporting South American dictatorships because they were in our sphere of influence and more importantly because they were much more malleable then democratically elected governments in supporting our economic imperialism leaves me very uncomfortable.  The fear of communism as an excuse for the removal of Allende and replacing him with the monstrous Pinochet is indefensible-regardless of the fact that the domino theory was the dominant ideology at the time.

Indeed, it is the US action in Chile which made me pause for a moment with regards to the Islamic State.

But just for a moment.  

Pinochet was eventually removed-through the democratic process.  There is no way that the Islamic State can be removed through a democratic process.  They are by definition anti-democratic. In the various forms of an IS manifesto that I have read they state that they are declaring war against the current state of affairs.  The objective is to replace the concepts of law, politics, economic and sociology fashioned by the west with an implementation of law based on the Koran and the tenets of the Sharia.

Global domination predicated on a medieval interpretation of a religious law is not for me.

And just to be clear, I am not enamoured with any evangelical creed.  This is not a comment on Islam- it is as good or bad as any other mainstream religion.  It is a statement directed at any fanatic who would force their world view on me.

It's Never Black and White

As a young idealist I was continually disturbed by the fact the the United States, despite its' "freedom" rhetoric almost always found itself supporting the "wrong" regime.

From Central to South America; across the ocean to Africa and up the continent to the Middle East and over to Asia, we never missed an opportunity to support a right wing dictatorship.

This was strange in that from an ideological political point of view it made no sense that a democracy would support a dictatorship.

Then I read Huntington's axiom that strong democracies and strong dictatorships have more in common than strong democracies and weak democracies and I began to understand the rational  of Realpolitik in American foreign policy.

And Realpolitik, or Realism in foreign policy is what the United States, and therefore President Obama is currently exercising- and all the idealists and ideologues want to hang him for it.

That is what grated on me as an idealist and why idealists now grate on me.  They are unwilling to accept some home truths.

Tyranny is better than anarchy.  As bad as a Saddam Hussein was, the Iraqi's were better off in general under him than with the secular bloodbaths of the Islamic State.

Democracy takes years and institutions to be effective. Just because one institutes elections it does not follow that the rule of law is an automatic corollary.  Bribery and corruption are everywhere, but are not everywhere held in contempt.

Every problem does not have a solution, and certainly not a good one.  Often the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil.  Assad is somehow preferable to the Islamic State.  Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something, even if it appears to be indecisive.

Interests come before values.  The Arab Spring, although seemingly a revolt against royal and/or military dictatorships was not a democratic uprising, although idealists like to paint it as such.  It removed semi-non-secular dictatorships and opened the doors to secular dictatorships-even if they were "democratically" elected.

Emotion has no place in policy making.  Passionate pleas or demands to do something can quickly turn into accusations of flawed policy if the expectations voiced in the heat of the moment by idealists or the ideologues prove to have been unrealistic once you have already committed.

How Tolerant of the Intolerant are we Supposed to Be

Recently the UAE Cabinet approved a list of 83 designated terrorist organisations including al Qaeda and the Islamic State. So far so good.  They also included Muslim organisations based in the West that are believed to be allied with the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Prominent among them are two American Muslim groups: the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society.

Now my point is not to comment as to whether these two groups are terrorist organisations or not.  To be honest designating a group as terrorist or not is a political expedient and is often merely a matter of perspective. I would even go so far as to agree that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.  But that's not the hard part.

What is much more difficult is the fact that the more clever, dare I say sinister organisations are those that espouse democracy, or more importantly the democratic process but whose goals are anything but democratic.

The Muslim Brotherhood falls under this mantle.

Draping themselves with the trappings of democracy, seeking political redress in monarchical/dictatorial states while working within the system they appeal to the oppressed masses. And in this guise they are extremely effective providing social welfare within the community, focusing on health, education and promising employment.

Their method is to use the democratic process to get elected.  Their goals however are to then dismantle the democratic process replacing it with a one-party state rule according to Islamic (Sharia) law.

It is a conundrum.  

If a majority of a population were to vote for a political party whose goals were to change the style of government, even if it were by one vote, and the new government were then to "legally" dismantle the state in such a fashion that the minority would never have the opportunity to reverse the electoral decision then I question the sanity of allowing the political party to participate in the electoral process.

I started off discussing the Muslim Brotherhood, whose manifesto most definitely is to introduce a non-democratic state.  But this is true for all political movements whose goals are the end of democratic institutions to be replaced by some sort dictatorship in whatever form it might be.

So how do we as a tolerant society deal with those wishing to exploit our tolerance to undermine our society?

It is an incredibly slippery slope.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership- In Whose Interest?

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is the current free trade agreement being negotiated between the EU and the USA.  It is not your run of the mill tariff-lowering agreement as a means of furthering trade. 

It is about regulatory issues and non-tariff trade barriers like health, safety, the environment and consumer's and worker's rights.  It is also about corporations trying to create their own rule of law.

Last night on German TV the focus of the negotiations was distilled down to two issues:

1.)  The US technique of disinfecting chicken with chlorine might be introduced in Europe which the Germans/Europeans don't want.
2.)  The laxer approach to bank regulation that has been followed in Europe since the Credit Crisis in contrast to the more draconian measures introduced in the US which the Americans don't want.

I actually think these two points are intended to keep the discussion away from a much more important point but I will come to that later.

Point #1.  In the EU generally agriculture is geared towards the prevention of disease rather than focusing on how to prevent the further spread of disease once it has occurred.

In the EU the breeding/rearing of livestock is done in a manner designed to prevent as much disease as possible at every stage from breeding to feeding to slaughter and to distribution.

In the US, presumably because it is cheaper and thereby more efficient the focus is to get the livestock through the system as fast as possible accepting the presence of disease and then "washing" the disease away  with a chlorine bath to eliminate bacteria at the end of the meat production chain.

Sounds like using chemicals to make up for inadequate hygiene standards in the meat industry....

Point #2 is also a diversion.  Bank regulation is already managed by the Bank For International Settlements (BIS) and we are in the third edition of rules known as Basle III which slowly but surely are being instated across the globe. This is a regulatory issue,not a trade issue, and that is where Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), the more important point, kicks in.

My concerns about ISDS center on a few basic points:

a.)  Currently under World Trade Organisation (WTO) legislation if a company feels that it has a case against a host (ie foreign) state it first has to convince its' own state that it has a case and the home state will raise the complaint on corporation's behalf.  This is not the case under ISDS.
b.)  A company wishing to sue a host state has the choice to sue the state under that state's laws or to move directly to ISDS counter to current law which moves cases to an international court or tribunal only after the domestic legal route has been exhausted.
c.)  Only foreign companies can use ISDS ie a domestic company could "suffer" the same damages claimed by a foreign company but have no recourse to ISDS.
d.)  International Tribunals, unlike domestic tribunals and international courts are private, confidential and essentially outside the domestic rule of law.

Now it may seem that a number of my concerns are in conflict with one another, and they are.  Host States versus Home States; Foreign Companies versus Domestic Companies and Domestic versus International Law certainly provides for different views on the same subject depending on ones perspective.

Different political systems dictate different approaches to health, safety, the environment and consumer's and worker's rights. They also result in different regulatory environments.

The current buzzword is Harmonization which inevitably means lowering standards to the lowest common denominator- but at what cost?

Neither the USA nor the EU are Third World Countries which operate outside the rule of law.
They might disagree on some interpretations and there will be instances where a government decision in one bloc will have adverse effects on a company from the other bloc.  

If these governmental decisions are neither capricious nor malicious then companies engaging in said countries, be they foreign or domestic, then such government decisions constitute part of the general risk of doing business which includes market and political risk.

ISDS is another insidious form of making corporate risks/losses public and keeping corporate profits private-at the cost of the taxpayer.

Call me old fashioned but I like a level playing field.