Turkey and Egypt?

The Financial Times writes today that Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a passionate speech in Cairo yesterday has said the “Israel must pay a price for its aggression and crimes”. They also write that this has alarmed Israel and that it worries the US. Erdogan also calls for the acceptance of Palestine as a state via the UN.

Turkey has now permanented its policy shift with this tough stance against Israel where it also tried to work up an aggression among other states in the area. Erdogan has also said that he will bring a Turkish naval escort to a new Ship to Gaza flotilla at the same time as he says the Mavi Marmara incident was an act of war.

In the mean time rioters attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Israel brought home some 80 embassy personnel but has since said that they will try to restore the for them important mission in Egypt. After all, Egypt is one of two countries in the Middle East that has a diplomatic relationship with Israel. The other one is Jordan. The Turkish diplomatic relationship is on hold as is the earlier close military collaboration. Turkey has, though, agreed under the flag of NATO to harbor radars for missiles from Iran on their territory. It seems like Erdogan is forcing the US and NATO to choose him or Israel.

Erdogan is currently on a trip to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya hopefully as a model for Arab modernization. It would be of great concern if the trip in reality turns out to be forging a coalition against Israel in these fledgling states. The problem at hand is that Erdogan is not acting favorably to a fellow democratic nation but rather walks the religious line.

September 11, 2001?

Daniel Pipes claims, in his book In the Path of God from 1983 which was republished 2002 after the 9/11 catastrophe, that militant Islam, or fundamentalism, is hopeless which I agree with. He drew the conclusion in 2002 and 1983 that Muslims had to westernize in order to modernize. I guess this is not valid because Asian countries have been modernizing without completely westernizing, keeping a distinct original character. Samuel P Huntington, in his book Clash of Civilizations from 1996, claims that the Western civilization is not universal hinting at the possibility that the Sinic and Muslim civilizations will never merge into the Western.  My analysis of this extremely important issue is that the western culture is the most biological and psychologically most correct one. Other cultures have to use more coercion to get people to thrive. This would be an argument for advocating westernization. Already John Locke, who was trained as a physician, set forward psychologically relevant rules and rights. A major risk is that an Asian country could with harsher, inhumane methods push their people to challenge the West economically. Someone said that an equivalent of the Roman Empire development could take place from this time’s democratic embryo. I don’t believe this will happen though. The West is more significant than Greece was at the time.

Why did the destruction of the 11^th September 2001 take place? Pipes argues that westernization is more problematic for the Muslims than modernization and the Arab Spring that we witness today is probably more a modernization attempt rather than a westernization ditto. Since 1983 the population of Egypt and Iran has doubled, and this madness creates a very large youth unemployment. Most Muslims adhered to traditional Islam where people realized that sharia did not work and had come to a compromise which Pipes calls The Medieval Synthesis, although there has been fundamentalists all the way from the beginning. Pipes argues that from about 1970 oil wealth has made Muslims more fundamentalistic although he says in the foreword of the 2002 edition of his book that the issue is more complicated.

Looking back ten years it has become seemingly conventional wisdom, especially in Europe, that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have been completely in vain. I’m not so sure. If the US had not reacted forcefully, terrorism might have been encouraged. Now the swift occupations told governments in the Middle East to prevent terrorism on their soil that might otherwise be dealt with in a similar fashion. Saddam Hussein was also a person that was so disastrous in the region that removing him also set a precedent which Gadhafi now have faced. I therefore do not think the human sacrifice demanded so far have been in vain. What we have learned so far, however, is that being the leader of the free world is making you undeservedly unpopular.

The Climate is Worsening Around Israel

The new type of martyrship that the Turkish activists that sacrificed their lives while attacking the Israeli commandoes in the Ship to Gaza incident were revealed in a report by the UN that vindicated Israel against these marauders. Egypt was also aggressive recently after a terrorist attack against Israelis close to Eilat. However, due to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the event has worsened the relationship between Turkey and Israel to the point of retracting their ambassadors, since Erdogan demand of an Israeli apology has not been met. 

Who is this Erdogan? Well, according to Ian Bremmer in his book The J curve, he was educated in religious schools as a devout Muslim. As a teenager, he was forced off a soccer team for refusing to shave his beard he considered it his religious duty to grow. Elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994, Erdogan declared himself the city’s “imam” and opened his first city council meeting by chanting from the Koran. After reading an Islamist poem at a 1998 rally, Erdogan was convicted of using religion to provoke disorder and sent to jail for four months. The poem read in part, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets/The minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers. The jail sentence apparently made him more Kemalistically secular but how much of a religious soldier is he still while being a very popular prime minister?

Erdogan’s life witnesses the tense relationship between the democratic government and the military which characterizes Turkey and which makes it less suitable to join the EU. Erdogan has, according to Der Spiegel held a rally in Germany to 15,000 Turkish immigrants where he suggested they should not integrate into the German society. Thus supporting Turkish enclaves in Germany, his Turkey is less suitable for EU membership. At least if the current ever closer union represents the future path of development.

The question is then what path Turkey is going to find for themself in the appearing Middle East and North Africa environment at the same time as they are alienating themselves from Israel? They are playing an important part in supporting the NTC of Libya and have issued warning to Syria for their human rights violations. Will they evolve as a democratic model for the rest or will they rather become like the rest to blend in? Turkey being the most democratic Muslim country is an important phenomenon with a rather unique history to match. It does not seem likely that we will find a leader of Kemal Atatürk’s type in the area with such a will to emulate the West.

State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century?

Francis Fukuyama provides a crash course in State Building, note not Nation Building, from 2005 when he reacts to the turnover of power from the US derived CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) in Iraq to the Iraqis in 2004, a year after the invasion. No Iraqis ruled Iraq during this time. It is well worth the time to ponder the fate of Libya with this book. Which country, for example, should help Libya out, they have asked for civilian help, since cultures vary so much? The UN is a mish-mash of countries and institutions are the key to development which are highly culture dependent.

Libya is in the lowest stability phase of its Ian Bremmer J-curve now. Which way do the majority of the Libyans want to go today? Which way would they want to go in a generation’s time after adding some rule of law and primary education? Fukuyama states that the major problem in aiding a country like Libya is that there is a lack of domestic demand for reform from the elite. It is a little of what we see in Tunisia and Egypt today. The difference here is that the elite was not fighting as rebels and died in the 20,000nds. Hopefully there will be a certain seriousness due to the sacrifice that will help transcend the elite even since Libya wants in general education level due to Gaddafi’s 42 year rule.

Which culture will make the next major move?

Took a walk down to the Ersdal Bay and back via the harbor today again, as I did yesterday. 15 to 17 degrees Celsius, thus perfect. Time to make some plans for the fall. The overall subject that I am researching is which culture should carry mankind into the future. Into the unknown. It is not going to be just one. East and West will probably continue to run parallel. The two party system of the world. The main hypothesis is that the West has found out a path of higher fidelity than the East with a more mature political development. Thus assuming that there are no genetic differences between the two populations. The political system of the West is more mature for the simple reason that people are allowed to think and act politically. From Ian Bremmer’s book The End of the Free Market form 2010 it is possible to extrapolate that there is about 25% state capitalists in the world currently which is offsetting the balance and currently causing a slump in the West. Since the rich in the West are making money in the East as austerity is mandated in the West for ordinary people, notable billionaires are talking about paying more in tax for the sake of stability. Personally I think it is not wise with too progressive tax tables since the rich allocate money better than the state for the performance of the economy. Bremmer brings up this point, while claiming that the state is not that good as the shareholders in allocating funds, why state capitalism risks being less efficient economically.

Although I’m not so sure myself, it seems like most people think the power of science and innovation on all levels is going to play out equally well in the East as in the West. That would remove Joseph Nye’s argument of the higher recruitment of talent to the US than to China and leave Gideon Rachman’s focus on the economy more pertinent. The economy will depend on how people organize themselves in the functioning parts of the world and how areas like the Middle East and North Africa develops from lower levels. The fight on how to build up Libya has started and the obvious question is if it’s going to be free-market or state capitalism which is important since Libya’s development could become a blue-print for the entire area. State capitalism is probably easier to apply to a country of Libya’s type, Algeria is already state capitalist to a certain degree and also runs on oil, but I hope they will convince the Libyans to choose free-market capitalism due to the better harmony possible with the EU in this case. Bremmer has a series of comments in his book as to the prognosis of state capitalism and he seems to think that it represents a dead end, which I tend to agree with. Improvements of free-market capitalism are a more probably path of development. In an era where the economists have problems understanding the economy it is troublesome that we ask politicians to regulate it, understanding it even less, but it seems to be necessary.

Libya

I guess the Libya issue has entered the twigh-light zone for a while with Gaddafi still at large. When I first heard about the aid plans I was very skeptical and like Germany opted against it but when it actually started I said to myself OK you had your day in court and I began arguing for the air support, no boots on the ground mission because I accepted that Britain and France had so much info as necessary to change the regime. It did not come without cost for the Libyans though. I saw one figure of 20,000 casualties, a large enough figure that leaving Gaddafi in power might have caused less loss of life, but wars of liberation are often quite bloody. NATO has apparently flown some 20,000 sorties of which 7,500 involved bombing missions. Less than Kosovo in the 1990s, but still significant.



Obama's approach was leading from behind this time around. Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that the mission would not have been possible without American intelligence and the initial wipe-out of air defenses was also dominantly American. On the positive side is that the rebels have done this on their own unlike in Iraq and if an involvement like the last 6 month's does not lead to winning the hearts and minds of the Libyans, nothing will, which would be good to know. A Libya that in the future is friendly with the West would obviously be a great asset. Iraq trades mostly with Syria though so we enter a sensitive face now where people Like Nicholas Sarkozy, the savior of Benghazi, might play an important role. The Libya mission is of course in line with Sarkozy's effort with the Club Med that Germany wasn't particularly enthusiastic for.



So, enter nation building. Gaddafi had held his people down with low emphasis on education which could mean that serious nation-building would not take place within a generation which is a problem. The US asked quietly before the NATO mission begun if the European nations involved had thought through how expensive it would become, well aware that they had spent 3trn in Iraq already and that the EU was facing a debt crisis. Improving the prospects for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the Libyans is of course worth a lot and might have a stabilizing effect on the multiculturality of the EU. Well managed the oil wealth of Libya could mean a success rather than failure since it amounts to independence with the right development strategy.



On the most positive side then is that Europe might be in on a collaboration with the Arabs in moving North Africa closer to Europe. France , who was not in on the Iraq mission, is now in the front. Germany said initially that they would not mind helping out humanitarily and it would of course be good with a unified EU approach to supporting Libya. With some luck Libya might turn out to become more of a success story that the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, which would depend on a reshuffling of the security personnel in addition to a change of government.

Fragmentation of the West, then of the EU?

Well, Saddam Hussein managed to fragment the West when Germany and France did not sign up to the Iraq War. It is now evident that Muammer Gaddafi has managed to fragment the EU since we find France and the UK on one side and Germany on the other. The fragmentation of the Franco-German axis is interesting because the credit rating of France depend on its close association with Germany according to Georg Soros. NATO is not really functional since Germany and Turkey are against the Libya intervention and the EU is a joke.

I'm not talking about the UK standing at the side of the Euro-zone, which is another type of fragmentation, but of the divide along the line of the interpretation of multiculturalism. One definition of this word means that all cultures are equal and should get equal respect in society where they coexist. I guess this is an extension of an anti-racial idea where race equals culture. In my mind all cultures are not equal even if human rights are equal in all cultures.

It is very easy to make claims that violate such an idea. Take for example the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. A culture, not good. The Burmese culture, for example, is not known for its beauty either. In Sweden the cultural solution that the Sweden Democrats want is not popular but almost 7% of the Swedes want to subscribe to it.

Gaddafi's culture, his idea of a society, is regarded by many as something the like of Cosa Nostra even if they generally do not send their sons to the London School of Economics and get awarded PhD's. Gangster cultures have to be taken seriously these days when the Mexican's fight for law and order against the drug mafia.

You run into problems with multiculturalism when cultures become civilizations like the Muslim world and the Chinese world. I believe that mankind can evolve optimally from the Western culture but not from the authoritarian cultures due to the superior freedom of thought. However, just like democracy lasted for about a hundred years in Athens the trust of authoritarianism might threaten it after about a century right now. Samuel P Huntington became famous with his "Clash of Civilizations" which we now find in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. We also find it in economic squirmishes between the West and China.

What are we then to make out of the so called Arab Spring? It seems like some countries prefer to treat it as a democracy movement and the search for universal freedom. But then we should remind us that the countries rioting have about 7% of their population liking the World Trade Center disaster. The West has many enemies in these countries and we don't know yet who will be in charge when the debacle is over only that organized religion is best poised to take over.

Which is then the best approach to take if we want to become friends with countries in North Africa and the Middle East? Do we want to participate in their civil war as some seem keen to do? It is very difficult since there seem to be different principles of engagement in different geographical regions. Dictators are good in Bahrain but bad in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. I still think it is very dangerous to enter the fray.

Civil War in Libya?

More and more people talk about an upcoming civil war in Libya. The question is if the civil war erupting in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's fall, due to the powder keg suppression of his regime, could have happened as is now potentially happening in Libya?

Even if the aspiration for freedom is driving change, the question is if people thus freed will be tolerant or if they will just reestablish a dictatorship?