India | Normative Narratives

February 9, 2015
by bzupnick Leave a comment

Conflict Watch: The End of Team America World Police (Part 7)

Obama’s Strategic Plan For National Security:

The latest installment of my ongoing series “The End of Team America, World Police” focuses on President Obama’s second and final National Security Strategy (full document can be found here):

“The question is never whether America should lead, but how we should lead,” Mr. Obama writes in an introduction to the document, a report that seems to mix legacy with strategy. In taking on terrorists, he argues that the United States should avoid the deployment of large ground forces like those sent more than a decade ago to Iraq and Afghanistan. In spreading democratic values, he says, America should fight corruption and reach out to young people.

“On all these fronts, America leads from a position of strength,” he writes. “But this does not mean we can or should attempt to dictate the trajectory of all unfolding events around the world. As powerful as we are and will remain, our resources and influence are not infinite. And in a complex world, many of the security problems we face do not lend themselves to quick and easy fixes.”

“There is this line of criticism that we are not leading, and it makes no sense,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “Who built the effort against ISIL? Who organized the sanctions on Russia? Who put together the international approach on Ebola?”

The strategy lists eight top strategic risks to the United States, starting with a catastrophic attack at home but including threats like climate change, disruptions in the energy market and significant problems caused by weak or failing states.

Regardless of your opinion on how effectively the Obama administration has handled foreign affairs, it is hard to argue the United States is not leading from the front on major global issues. Yet it is important that our future leaders recognize, as President Obama has, the limits of both our government’s resources and our ability to sustain democratic revolutions through unilateral military intervention.

In a highly interconnected world, confronting global problems is in America’s economic and security interests (not to mention ethical considerations). This does not mean, however, that we should rush headlong into battle without carefully considering the probability of success and costs of alternative courses of action. There are other tools in America’s foreign policy toolkit–the other components of the D.I.M.E (diplomatic, intelligence, military, economic) framework–which should be considered before sending our military (and particularly ground troops) to war.

Military interventions are never quick, easy, or cheap. Even when successful, they leave a power void that must be carefully managed, lest that void be filled by ineffective leaders or extremist groups (or, as is often the case, both). When mismanaged, even the most well intended interventions can be counter-productive, fueling anti-Western propaganda and empowering the very ideologies we seek to destroy.

American tax dollars are a precious resource. Every dollar we spend abroad is a dollar we cannot use for nation building at home. The American government is solely responsible for managing America’s domestic affairs, but we have many allies who share the same ideologies and interests as us (and who should therefore more proportionately shoulder the cost of defending them).

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A NATO By Any Other Name…:

NATO was established in recognition that global security was part of the “global commons” (and remains even more-so today). This brings us to recent comments on NATO’s future by outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel:

Hagel, making his final appearance at NATO as U.S. defense chief, said the alliance faced several challenges, including violent extremism on its southern rim, Russian aggression in Ukraine and training security forces in Afghanistan.

“I am very concerned by the suggestion that this alliance can choose to focus on only one of these areas as our top priority,” Hagel told a news conference. “And I worry about the potential for division between our northern and southern allies.”

“The alliance’s ability to meet all these challenges at once, to the east, to the south and out-of-area, is NATO’s charge for the future,” Hagel said.

“This is a time for unity, shared purpose and wise, long-term investments across the spectrum of military capability,” he added. “We must address all the challenges to this alliance, all together and all at once.”

Often times, one can speak most candidly when their tenure at a position is coming to an end. Those who oppose the ideals of NATO will not coordinate their attacks one at a time. In fact, knowledge that NATO resources are strained (due to say, simultaneous humanitarian crises, a wear weary American public, or underinvestment in the global security commons by the rest of the international community) is only likely to embolden our enemies. While NATO needs to be able to effectively counter more than one major threat at a time, this does not mean the American army alone needs that capacity.

As the world becomes “smaller”, the exclusively Northern Atlantic nature of NATO should be reconsidered. Two major democracies–India and Japan–are not members of NATO, limiting the groups ability to fulfill its goals. Furthermore, having regional actors involved in security operations helps builds legitimacy, underscoring the strategic importance of greater Indian and Japanese involvement.

President’s Obama and Modi recently met and discussed, among other things, defense cooperation. India must become a major partner in promoting peace and democracy in the Middle-East (particularly in coordinating the fights against the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban) even as it itself modernizes.

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More Turkey Please:

An Op-Ed published in the NYT today by two Arab professors teaching at American Universities was very supportive of Turkey’s level of involvement in the Middle East:

There have been sharp disagreements over the 2013 coup in Egypt, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the need for intervention in Syria. Turkey’s critics have called into question its reliability as a NATO ally, including in the fight against the radical Wahhabi group known as the Islamic State.

But much of this concern is misguided. The ongoing crises in the Middle East have only underscored Turkey’s pivotal geostrategic position: It’s no surprise that Pope Francis, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain have visited Ankara in the past few months. And Turkey’s detractors, partly because they do not understand the sources of its new assertiveness, fail to see that its transformation actually serves America’s long-term interests.

The United States has long allowed client states like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel to pursue shortsighted goals in the Middle East. This has only brought despotism and strife. Washington’s failure to fully support the democratic government of Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt contributed to its collapse, and so to the instability and violence that have occurred there since. And it was President Obama’s cynical abandonment of the Syrian opposition during the first two years of the uprising against Mr. Assad that set the stage for the advent of the Islamic State.

To avoid any more such calamities, policy makers in Washington, and other Western capitals, should abandon their counterproductive approach: They should embrace Turkey’s growing, and positive, engagement in the Middle East.

I could not agree more.

But I do not think America’s leaders are opposed to Turkey asserting itself in the Middle-East. Indeed, as a primarily Muslim democracy and NATO member, it must play a large role in Obama’s plan of relying more heavily on regional partners in curtailing Islamic extremism.

I agree the Obama administration was wrong on Syria and Egypt, I am on the record saying as much. But in this case, two wrongs don’t make a right. Turkey cannot afford to play the moral high ground on these issues while the dogs of war bark at it’s door-step. Furthermore, Erdogan’s delayed and half-hearted support of the Kurdish peshmerga reeks of political calculus, not someone who considers ISIS a serious threat to regional stability.

So I am not exactly sure what these professors are talking about–they appear to be building a straw-man just to knock him down. I think it is pretty clear the Obama administration wants more Turkish involvement, including ground forces, in the fights against Assad and ISIS, not less.

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Japan and Germany (Finally) Begin to Shed Their Post-WWII Identities:

Updating a previous blog about Japan and Germany shedding their post-WWII pacifist identities, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing Japan to change it’s pacifist Constitution:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said that he wants to start the process of revising Japan’s Constitution as early as next year, a senior lawmaker in his party said Thursday, giving the clearest indication yet that the Japanese leader will seek to change a document that has undergirded the country’s postwar pacifism.

Mr. Abe told Hajime Funada, the leader of a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers, on Wednesday that the best time to begin the difficult political task of amending the Constitution would be after elections for the upper house of Parliament, scheduled for the summer of 2016…

The Constitution, which also prohibits Japan from possessing the means of war, was written by American occupiers after World War II to prevent the defeated nation from ever again engaging in militarist expansion. The document proved so popular among Japan’s war-weary people that it has never been amended.

But Mr. Abe has seized on the murders of the Japanese hostages to make some of his strongest appeals yet for unshackling the nation’s military. Saying Japan was unable to save the hostages, he has called for easing restrictions on its purely defensive armed forces to allow them to conduct rescue missions, evacuations and other overseas operations to protect Japanese nationals.

The hostages, Kenji Goto, a journalist, and Haruna Yukawa, an adventurer, were beheaded a week apart by the Islamic State, a militant group in Syria and Iraq that had demanded a $200 million ransom for their release. The murders outraged and sickened Japan, which had seen itself as largely immune to the sort of violence faced by the United States and other nations that have been involved militarily in the Middle East. Since 1945, Japan has adhered to a peaceful brand of diplomacy that has seen it become a major donor of economic and humanitarian aid to the Middle East and elsewhere.

It remains unclear whether the shock of the killings will swing the Japanese public in favor of Mr. Abe’s harder line. Since the murders, opposition politicians have stepped up attacks on the prime minister, accusing him of provoking the Islamic State by allying Japan more closely with the United States-led efforts to destroy the militant group. Just days before the ransom demand appeared, Mr. Abe pledged $200 million in nonmilitary aid to countries in the region confronting the Islamic State.

However, on Thursday, the lower house of Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the killings and calling for increased coordination with the global community to combat terrorism.

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Germany to Play a More Active Role in Global Security?:

Germany must ramp up defense spending starting in 2016 to ensure its military is able to take on a bigger role in crisis zones, according to two top lawmakers in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition.

Germany spends about 1.3 percent of gross domestic product on the military, short of the 2 percent level pledged informally by North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.

Merkel’s spokesman has said no additional funding will come in the short term as the government struggles to hold on to its target of balancing the budget next year and with 2015 spending already largely negotiated.

Germany must engage in international missions “earlier, more decisively and more substantially,” Gauck told the Munich Security Conference on Jan. 31.

Fiscal responsibility is usually good, but like anything, overzealous attachment to an ideology can preclude pragmatic policy. Economics is context sensitive, and in the current context, Germany’s dedication to running a balanced budget has left holes in the Eurozone economy and the global security commons.

A large scale increase in German defense spending would bolster global security efforts (particularly in countering Russian aggression in former Soviet Republics), while simultaneously providing a partial answer to Europe’s economic stagnation (by “buying European“).

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Please do not confuse my views with war-mongering or advocating for the military-industrial complex, I just recognize that there are bad actors in the world who only understand realpolitik. In order to provide room for the forces of human dignity and freedom to flourish, these bad actors must be marginalized.

July 17, 2014
by bzupnick 2 Comments

Economic Outlook: Malnutrition and Sanitation in India

Original article:

So why was Vivek malnourished?

It is a question being asked about children across India, where a long economic boom has done little to reduce the vast number of children who are malnourished and stunted, leaving them with mental and physical deficits that will haunt them their entire lives. Now, an emerging body of scientific studies suggest that Vivek and many of the 162 million other children under the age of 5 in the world who are malnourished are suffering less a lack of food than poor sanitation.

Like almost everyone else in their village, Vivek and his family have no toilet, and the district where they live has the highest concentration of people who defecate outdoors. As a result, children are exposed to a bacterial brew that often sickens them, leaving them unable to attain a healthy body weight no matter how much food they eat.

“These children’s bodies divert energy and nutrients away from growth and brain development to prioritize infection-fighting survival,” said Jean Humphrey, a professor of human nutrition at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “When this happens during the first two years of life, children become stunted. What’s particularly disturbing is that the lost height and intelligence are permanent.”

“Our realization about the connection between stunting and sanitation is just emerging,” said Sue Coates, chief of water, sanitation and hygiene at Unicef India. “At this point, it is still just an hypothesis, but it is an incredibly exciting and important one because of its potential impact.”

Half of India’s population, or at least 620 million people, defecate outdoors. And while this share has declined slightly in the past decade, an analysis of census data shows that rapid population growth has meant that most Indians are being exposed to more human waste than ever before.

Other developing countries have made huge strides in improving sanitation. Just 1 percent of Chinese and 3 percent of Bangladeshis relieve themselves outside compared with half of Indians. Attitudes may be just as important as access to toilets. Constructing and maintaining tens of millions of toilets in India would cost untold billions, a price many voters see no need to pay — a recent survey found that many people prefer going to the bathroom outside.

One analysis found that government spending on toilets pays for itself in increased tax receipts from greater productivity, but the math works only if every member of a family who gets a toilet uses it.

“We need a cultural revolution in this country to completely change people’s attitudes toward sanitation and hygiene,” said Jairam Ramesh, an economist and former sanitation minister.

India now spends about $26 billion annually on food and jobs programs, and less than $400 million on improving sanitation — a ratio of more than 60 to 1.

The present research on gut diseases in children has focused on a condition resulting from repeated bacterial infections that flatten intestinal linings, reducing by a third the ability to absorb nutrients. A recent study of starving children found that they lacked the crucial gut bacteria needed to digest food.

Just building more toilets, however, may not be enough to save India’s children.

Phool Mati lives in a neighborhood in Varanasi with 12 public toilets, but her 1-year-old grandson, Sandeep, is nonetheless severely malnourished. His mother tries to feed him lentils, milk and other foods as often as she can, but Sandeep is rarely hungry because he is so often sick, Ms. Mati said.

“We all use the bathroom,” she said.

The effluent pipe that served the bathroom building is often clogged. Raw sewage seeps into an adjoining Hindu temple, and, during the monsoon season, it flooded the neighborhood’s homes. The matron of the toilet facility charges two rupees for each use, so most children relieve themselves directly into open drains that run along a central walkway.

Much of the city’s drinking water comes from the river, and half of Indian households drink from contaminated supplies.

“India’s problems are bigger than just open defecation and a lack of toilets,” Dr. Laxminarayan said.

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When determining the efficacy of social programs, one must consider both supply and demand side factors:

Supply Side — Investment in public toilets, clean water / sanitation infrastructure.

Demand Side — People in India do not seem to think funding for sanitation is a priority. An Educational / media / social media campaign to increase demand is required alongside greater investment (supply side). Furthermore, even a small fee can be enough to discourage toilet use when an alternative (public defecation) exists, particularly in a country such as India where extreme poverty makes such fees prohibitory to society’s most vulnerable.

My World 2015 survey results show global demand for nutritious foods and sanitation / clean water at roughly same priority level across level development / education level–this is clearly not the case in India.

In a democracy such as India, supply side impediments can sometimes be caused by (or blamed on) inadequate demand (voters do not think the issue is important). Therefore, people must be better educated about the costs of open defecation and benefits of modernized sanitation systems.

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There are temporal / necessity reasons that nutritional support receives such greater attention and resources compared to sanitation support. There is no substitute for food–without food, people die relatively quickly (typically 10-14 days). One can always defecate in public, with little immediate risk to their health (although, as the article highlights, there are real health problems and externalities associated with public defecation).

Furthermore, compared to food delivery, the upfront costs associated with sanitation infrastructure may seem very high (even if, as the article proposes, these costs “pay for themselves” in the long run). One potential solution could be the proliferation of composting toilets, which do not need to be attached to plumbing systems.

Sanitation is, of course, not a substitute for nutritious / vitamin fortified foods. Even with perfect sanitation services, people can still go hungry / be malnourished. They are compliments; investing in sanitation yields greater returns on investments in nutrition, education, etc. Public resources must more closely reflect that (reduce the 60:1 discrepancy).

For example, providing school meals has been a popular program in developing countries, meant to improve attendance rates. But the ultimate goals of education, human development and social mobility, are decidedly less effective if parasites and infections divert nutrients from cognitive / physical development towards survival.

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This article highlights a general realization in the field of development economics, the need for a context-sensitive, human rights based approach to poverty alleviation and human development.

Without taking into consideration cultural attitudes towards public defecation present in India (but not in many other developing countries), and providing a wide variety a basic services (sanitation, nutritional support, healthcare, education, etc.–a human rights based approach to development that recognizes human rights violations as interconnected), the malnutrition epidemic in India might never improve, regardless of the amount of resources dedicated to nutritional support alone.

The situation in India also presents an prime opportunity for information sharing, what those in the field of development call “South-South cooperation“. This concept is simple; by sharing experiences of what has worked (and failed) in other developing countries, a country may be able to avoid common policy mistakes (and the subsequent misallocation of scarce financial resource). At first this may seem antithetical to a context sensitive approach to human development, but it is not. While lessons learned from other countries through south-south cooperation must be amended to reflect the context of the country considering them (in this case India), this does not mean that there is not real value in the information shared through South-South cooperation.

December 27, 2012
by bzupnick 2 Comments

Transparency Thursday: Climate Change, Pollution, and Premature Death

Smog in central Shanghai. Credit: oliverlaumann/flickr.

Here at Normative Narratives, the negative impacts of Climate Change are always a hot-button issue. In previous posts, I have examined the linkages between climate change and drought / conflict and assessed the sustainability of development in the BRIC countries.

In this assessment, we saw that a disproportionately large amount of total world coal production is in China (49.5%) and India (5.6%). Furthermore, 2/3 of all proposed new coal plants worldwide are in India in China.

In light of these facts, it is alarming when there are reports of record numbers of pollution-related premature deaths in China and India. In 2010, 2.1 million people died prematurely in Asia from pollution-related causes. Including indoor (unclean cooking techniques) and outdoor pollution, pollution is the second most common cause of death in the world after blood pressure.

Before we go any further, I would like to reiterate that these are premature deaths. Perhaps many of these people were not in great health to begin with or led otherwise unhealthy lifestyles–you must view these figures with this in mind and draw your own conclusions.

To put this number (2.1 million) in perspective, in 2000 800,000 people died from pollution related causes in the whole world. There were 6.8 million combat related deaths in the four year span covering WWI, averaging 1.7 million a year. Japan estimates that a total of 440,000 people were killed from atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People are dying prematurely from pollution in numbers eclipsed only the most egregious events in human history, such as WWII and select genocides.

No wonder China vetoed U.N. R2P action in Syria on sovereignty grounds; there are mass killings in China going unchecked by the government. The numbers are even more troubling when you consider the Chinese governments dismal history of transparency and openness–these numbers are probably understated.

China continues to develop economically, however unprecedented economic growth has led to only modest standard of living improvements. China has yet to become truly “modernized”. Continued reliance on cheap labor and lax environmental standards, coupled with restrictions on human rights and questionable government transparency will cause China to be highly scrutinized in the international community, and will prevent it from fulfilling its true potential as a world power.

India, as a democracy, is much more transparent and accepting of western values than China. However, in search of economic growth India, like China, has foregone environmentally sustainable development. This is especially relevant as many global climate initiatives have stalled in recent years, with developing countries and the developed world remaining in stalemate over who should pay for the majority of global “cleanup” projects. It is true that the developed world has been the leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the past, but if going forward the developing world (or Asia at least) is the main contributor to these emissions, then it must pay its fair share too.

Experts believe it is booming automobile demand that is the catalyst behind this disturbing trend. While this is indisputable, I would also have to imagine large-scale coal production is a leading contributor to air pollution related premature deaths. Health-related accountability of emissions by producers, alongside a global carbon tax, could stimulate in the global transition from “dirty” to “clean” energy.