Category Archives: Foreign Policy

The Link Between Poverty and Terrorism

The link between poverty and terrorism is well-known.  In theory, one of the purposes of organizations like USAID is to complement the other “D’s” of the foreign policy apparatus – diplomacy and defense – to improve conditions for people most likely to be driven to desperation: the poor.  It is not surprising that the hotbeds of terrorism today – Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Indonesia – happen to be some of the poorest countries in the world.  Nor is it surprising that many of these countries receive the lion’s share of foreign aid from the U.S. government, despite their apparent animosity toward the country.  The Nesaji cotton-and-wool factory in Kandahar is a perfect metaphor for the complex forces working against development efforts.  Built by Iran and the Soviet Union in 1971 and maintained by a motley crew of warlords and foreign countries, including its current steward, the United States, the factory has operated for only 60 days throughout its 40-year history. Governments are not the only ones concerned about the causal relationship between poverty and terrorism.

Here in Kenya, an organization called Nuru International, founded by former special ops marine Jake Harriman, is pilot-testing a holistic community-based development model.  Its mission is to end terrorism by ending extreme poverty. The connection is not difficult to make.  For people living hand-to-mouth, life is a series of struggles often ending in tragedy.  Anger, resentment, and despair are a volatile combination in the minds of young men and women who see little hope for escaping their situation.  For recruiters of organizations like Boko Haram and the Al-Shabab – literally translated as “The Youth” – these young minds can be manipulated to pick up arms.  By stoking latent frustrations at the injustice of poverty and promising a sense of a community, brotherhood, and commitment to a higher cause, a recruiter can more easily convince a teenager to become a suicide bomber.

A member of Boko Haram.

This anger and frustration is compounded by a sense of injustice.  When the gap between rich and poor is vast, the impoverished majority are more likely to consider their situation as a function of either indifference or criminality by those controlling the wealth.  It is under these circumstances that the fledgling Nigerian terrorist group, Boko Haram, has grown.

Boko Haram has killed more than 900 people since 2009, including perpetrating a massacre last month that left 300 people dead in Kano, the capital of the Kano state in Northern Nigeria.  As an Islamic fundamentalist group with ties to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghred, the North African faction of the jihad organization, Boko Haram is a growing concern for Western security analysts.  But according to some on the ground in Kano, the group’s motivations are simpler.  In an article titled, “In Nigeria, a Deadly Group’s Rage Has Local Roots,” Adam Nossiter explains the situation on the ground:

For now, Boko Haram’s targets remain largely local, despite its bombing of a United Nations headquarters in Abuja, the capital, last summer. The Nigerian state is typically the enemy, and many analysts see the nation’s enduring poverty as one reason. This month figures were released in Abuja indicating that poverty has increased since 2004, despite the nation’s oil wealth; in the north, Boko Haram’s stronghold, about 75 percent of the population is considered poor. Overall, 60 percent live on less than $1 a day. Every citizen appears aware of the glaring contrast between his or her own life and those of the elite.

Ado Ibrahim, a 22-year-old sugar cane vendor wearing a yellow soccer jersey, suspected more violence could be ahead. “Injustice, and misgovernance by officials,” he said, adding, “It’s possible, as long as injustice persists, it’s possible to have another flare-up.”

Down the street, squatting in his open-air stall where he sells cooked yams, Abdullahi Dantsabe had a similar point of view. Why had the attacks occurred? “Injustice,” he said. “The leaders are not concerned about the common man.”

A Yemeni man sits by the wreckage of tourists' cars at the site of a suspected al-Qaeda car bomb attack in Marib in July 2007. Photograph: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

Nigeria is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.   The Corrupt Perceptions Index, which is a measurement of how people view their government, ranks Nigeria 143 out of 180.  A Nigerian friend of mine once explained to me the concept of “bunkering,” which is when a businessman – usually someone with military connections at the highest levels or a general himself – connects a pipe to a much larger oil pipeline in order to siphon the product and sell it on the black market.  Add to this dynamic massive income inequality and ethnic tensions throughout the country (but mainly on situated on a north-south divide), and the elements that typically fuel the growth of groups like Boko Haram seem to be in place.

In fact, most of the countries today where Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise are generally poor and massively unequal with highly corrupt governments.  In Africa, Chad (168), Sudan (177), Niger (134), and Somalia (180), which holds the dubious distinction of last place, are all areas where for terrorist organizations have flourished.   In the Middle East and South Asia, Pakistan (134) and Yemen (164) are considered some of the most dangerous countries in the world.

I am not saying that terrorist organizations develop due to circumstances alone.  At the highest levels of these organizations are typically rich and educated planners, who are misguided, at best, or sociopathic.  Osama bin Laden was the son of a wealthy Saudi construction magnate, and many of Al-Shabab’s top leadership hail from countries outside Somalia – including one, Omar Hammami, AKA Abu-Mansoor al-Amriki, who grew up in Alabama. But the soldiers – the grunts on the ground who are blowing themselves up along with innocents around them – are disproportionately drawn from the poor underclass, the idle youth with few prospects for employment.

It is these people who economic development programs aim to help.  Whether they are successful is a different question.   In the case of the Nesaji cotton-and-wool factory in Kandahar, the answer is clearly no.


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Pushing Back on the Millenium Villages

When you want to know how someone in international development views the world, there is no surer way than asking them whether they identify with Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Easterly.  On this blog, your correspondent has made his proclivities known on multiple occasions – even once being persecuted from doing so by a former employer and being recognized by Mr. Easterly himself for his martyrdom.

Jeffrey Sachs, the pre-eminent economist, is generally associated with the top-down school of development economics, advocated substantial public investment to improve the broader systems – water, health, sanitation, education, etc. – that contribute to poverty.  In contrast, Bill Easterly, the roguish author of The Elusive Quest for Growth and White Man’s Burden, supports bottom-up interventions, preferring to search for solutions that develop organically and take into account local contexts.  Most people find themselves on one side or the other, except for the deliberators in the middle, like Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.  If Bill Easterly is 50 Cent, then Jeffrey Sachs is surely Ja Rule.

The flagship of the Sachs camp is the Millenium Villages project, a $150 million, multi-country intervention that exemplifies the concept of “the big push.”  The systems that underlie the poverty trap are extraordinarily complex, layered, and multi-faceted.  According to the top-down school of thought, it is possible to change the entire system only by changing its key components.  The Economist explains the thinking behind the idea:

In development, it seems, you cannot do anything until you can do everything. That is the idea behind the “big push” theory. Outlined by Paul Rosenstein-Rodan in 1943, this says that even the simplest activity requires a network of other activities and that individual firms cannot organise such a large network, so the state or some other giant agency must step in.

The big push came to grief in the 1970s and 1980s as evidence accumulated that, in Africa at least, public investment and foreign aid had produced no perceptible change in productivity, not least because so much of it was stolen. Recently, though, the idea has come back into vogue. The UN talks constantly about its millennium development goals (eight goals, 21 targets). Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University argues that if public investment and foreign aid are big enough, they will boost household incomes, spurring savings and boosting local investment. They should also “crowd in” external investment by improving infrastructure.

In order to do anything, you have to do everything.  Being on the ground, you see the complexities of the system at work.  Everything is interrelated and connected in a complex web.  Change an input here or there and you can transform the system.  But, more often, well-reasoned tweaks to the system have unintended consequences.  What is more, it is question whether even the smartest economists can truly comprehend that sheer magnitude of the forces at play.  They are, after all, global by nature.

These are the criticisms of Sachs and his “big push” school.  Today, randomized controlled trials – the same tests used by the pharmaceutical industry to test the efficacy of new drugs – can actually tell us a lot about whether interventions like the Millenium Villages actually work.  And, according to recent studies, it appears that they don’t.  Back to the Economist:

Now a Kenyan economist, Bernadette Wanjala of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, has raised further doubts about the project. She interviewed 236 randomly selected households in Sauri who had been offered the benefits and 175 randomly selected ones who had not. In a study with Roldan Muradian of Radboud University, she concluded the first group had raised their agricultural productivity by an impressive 70%. Yet she found that the impact on household income was “insignificant”, and that there had been little extra saving or investment. The villagers had grown more food—and eaten it. They became better nourished, but this did not affect the wider economy.

Better nutrition is important, of course. But the aim of the project is to boost income, investment and economic diversification. It is not clear that these goals are being achieved. For $60 per person per year (which increases the income of the poorest villagers by well over 25%) the project has improved village life only a little more than it would have improved anyway. So far, the project provides little evidence that “big push” development—advancing on all fronts, flags flying—is better than the alternative: gradual, step-by-step changes to remove specific barriers to growth.

The answer, as Easterly puts it, is elusive.  But certain interventions – providing an affordable education by lowering operating costs or leveraging social networks to distribute capital – affect the systems that influence poverty in a very real way.  And these, to me, are the most exciting interventions of all.


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Global Diasporas Create Economic Prosperity

The book review in the Wall Street Journal this morning discusses the Robert Guest book, Borderless Economics, which details how global labor movement increases trade, informational flow, communication, and technology.  The topic of migration has been making the rounds, partly due to book reviews of Borderless Economics in all the major journals and magazines, but also because the time is right for a frank discussion about the realities of a global economy.

Develop Economies agrees with all of Guest’s points.  The economic benefits are vast.  With engineers and PhDs from abroad and a more nimble, low-cost workforce comprised of unskilled immigrant labor, the United States can compete for first place in the global economy.  Without it, we might be battling for second place.  But, in this post, I want to discuss the role of Diasporas in preventing conflict and promoting economic development.

The world would be a better place if international movement and migration were more fluid.  One of the reasons that Ghana is considered to be one of the successful democracies in Africa, while Kenya deals with upheavals every few years and corruption scandals every day, is that an internal diaspora through the country over the last half-century led to a blurring of tribal boundaries.  Both countries have dozens of tribes, each with its own language.  But, while Kenyans, as a generalization, maintain strong ties to their familial home and typically marry within the tribe, Ghanaians intermarry and bring the entire family with them when they move.  “That’s why we are so peaceful,” one coworker told me. “We all marry each other!” (This is also one reason why mobile money is pervasive in Kenya, but not Ghana – but that is for another post.)

Now imagine that dynamic on a global scale.  Heterogeneous and multi-ethnic societies are less likely to adopt a herd mentality, because cultural exchange promotes empathy.  This, to me, is why the United States is probably the most integrated and least bigoted country in the world (seriously).  I am always amazed when I come back to the U.S. and look around the airport to see people of every color speaking different languages.  And, from a numbers perspective, it makes sense:

Mr. Guest concludes with the argument that, thanks to America’s immigrants, the U.S. is likely to remain for decades the richest and most powerful nation in the world. America has the largest foreign-born population by far—an astonishing 43 million people, 10 million more than the entire population of Canada. China, by contrast, has a foreign-born population of less than one million.

From an economic standpoint, Diasporas create global trade networks that move money and products around the world for a fraction of the cost it might cost otherwise.  I saw it in the Philippines, where the richest family in the country is Chinese, and West Africa, where the Lebanese control rice importation, and in East Africa, where the Indians control just about everything.  With greater economic integration, the cost of conflict increases drastically for both nations.  Create enough cross-border migration and trade, and the lines begin to blur completely.

Infographic from the Economist

In the WSJ article, specifically, the author examines the point purely from an international development perspective.  The author, Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor of Reason magazine, discusses the economic benefits, compared with foreign aid:

Infographic from the New York Times

‘As a tool for spreading wealth, open borders make foreign aid look like a child’s lemonade stand,” writes Robert Guest, business editor of the Economist, in “Borderless Economics,” a rapid-fire case for the free movement of labor from one country to another. [Economist Lant] Pritchett found that if developed countries slightly liberalized their immigration laws and increased their work forces by a mere 3%, the gains in remittances and other benefits to developing countries would amount to more than $300 billion.

Put another way, a Salvadorean man with a high-school education needs only to come to the U.S. to increase his annual earning power more than eightfold, from $2,700 to $22,611—a figure, by the way, almost identical to the earning potential for Americans with the same level of education. Compare the $300 billion benefit with the $70 billion spent annually on foreign aid by developed countries, much of which ends up in the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt politicians.

Sing it from the rooftops

I couldn’t agree more.  But I do have to address one point at the end of the article, in which the author feels the need to take down microfinance:

It is galling to Mr. Guest that many well-meaning people are more invested in promoting ideas like Third World microcredit than in clamoring for easier immigration. Lant Pritchett, the former World Bank economist, shares Mr. Guest’s skepticism about the importance of the much ballyhooed microloans that help the world’s poorest people to buy livestock or open a small business. The concept was pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Pritchett tells the author that the average gain for a Bangladeshi from a lifetime of these loans is about the same as the earnings from working just eight weeks in America. “If I get 3,000 Bangladeshi workers into the U.S.,” Mr. Pritchett wonders, “do I get the Nobel Peace Prize?” No, but with luck Mr. Guest’s argument in “Borderless Economics” will be rewarded with serious attention in the places that count.

This is unnecessary.  Whether or not that Bangladeshi will make more in those eight weeks is completely irrelevant if he never has the chance to go to the United States.  I think that all countries should have freer trade agreement, reduce tariffs, and eliminate ethanol and farm subsidies.  That would certainly be more effective than the most successful anti-poverty strategies in lifting hundreds of millions of people above the poverty line.  Unfortunately, it will never happen.  Because supporting the elimination of tariffs, like open borders, is political suicide.  And, like most policies supported by purist Libertarians, it will never happen.

So, in the meantime, microcredit is doing something to fill the gap.  I am sure that the Bangladeshi would prefer that to waiting for his visa to the United States to process.  If Pritchett can make that happen for even ten poor Bangladeshis, then he should get the Nobel Prize.


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The U.S. Must Pay Its Debts to Its Iraqi Allies

An Iraqi translator working in Baghdad, Iraq, in August 2007. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The following is a guest post from Sushmita Meka, a Masters of Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.  Previously, she worked as a research associate for the Centre for Microfinance at IMFR in Chennai, India and a fellow with FrontlineSMS:Credit in Nairobi, Kenya.

It’s strange to think that the end of the Iraq war has come and gone so quietly, eight years after the fact. At a cost of $800 billion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, this chapter has closed with little fanfare and muted tribute to those who have died and whose lives have been immutably changed.

Among those whose lives have been permanently altered are the unsung and largely abandoned heroes that supported our every move in the war. Without them to navigate this new physical and social landscape, our soldiers, diplomats, and aid workers would have been completely at a loss. These are the translators, the fixers, and the drivers that risked the additional burden of being deemed aameel—collaborators, agents, traitors—at home to support the American effort.

I first became aware of their plight in 2007 when George Packer of the New Yorker wrote at length about our betrayal.

But the mostly young men and women who embraced America’s project so enthusiastically that they were prepared to risk their lives for it may constitute Iraq’s smallest minority. I came across them in every city: the young man in Mosul who loved Metallica and signed up to be a translator at a U.S. Army base; the DVD salesman in Najaf whose plans to study medicine were crushed by Baath Party favoritism, and who offered his services to the first American Humvee that entered his city. They had learned English from American movies and music, and from listening secretly to the BBC….The arc from hope to betrayal that traverses the Iraq war is nowhere more vivid than in the lives of these Iraqis. America’s failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat.

These are the Iraqis who lived surreptitious lives to aid this cause and gave their lives more often than should ever have been tolerated. Five years later, America’s failure to grant refugee status to these men, women, and their families (numbered at over 100,000), even as we have pulled out our last troops, is indefensible. Five years later, and these words still ring prophetic:

America is pulling away from Iraq in the fitful, irritable manner of someone trying to wake up from an unpleasant sleep. On my last day in Baghdad, I had lunch with an Embassy official, and as we were leaving the restaurant he suddenly said, “Do you think this is all going to seem like a dream? Is it just going to be a fever dream that we’ll wake up from and say, ‘We got into this crazy war, but now it’s over and we never have to think about Iraq again’?” If so, part of our legacy will be thousands of Iraqis who, because they joined the American effort, can no longer live in their own country.

In 2007, after this article was published, there was a semblance of hope. Thanks to George Packer and Kirk Johnson of the List Project, Congress realized its folly and passed legislation allowing for the safe entry of 25,000 American-affiliated Iraqis over the following five years via special immigrant visa status. Those that had loyally served the U.S. for at least one year and that faced an imminent threat on account of their service were deemed eligible. Unfortunately, to date, at most just over 5,000 have been granted.

This is due not to a lack of perseverance on the Iraqi side but rather to an arcane labyrinth of bureaucratic procedures that these individuals are forced to navigate (including sending petition forms from Iraq to Nebraska). As a result, processing takes up to two years and requires multiple security checks (including a last-minute check before departure if one were to get that far).

As we pull out of Iraq, these lives are in even graver danger. Militias are known to have lists of individuals who served the American army, lists that are being used to coordinate assassinations. Repeatedly, those identified as assisting the occupier have been systematically targeted—in Vietnam upon our withdrawal, in Iraq as the British left, and even on our own soil following the American Revolution.

It’s not enough to leave these individuals to fend for themselves—to abandon them now would be no less than murder when there are viable options. For one, Iraqis at risk can be airlifted to Guam to await further processing—this is an option that has been exercised multiple times in the past and for which there is political support inside of Guam.

If you are still not compelled to act, read this. If you are, you can write or better yet call your Congressperson and/or representatives on the Committee on Foreign Relations to signal your concern. Please tell your friends, family members, colleagues, etc. to do the same.

As Americans, we pride ourselves on honoring our debts.  For the sake of the thousands of Iraqis and their families whose lives are now in danger, I hope we live up to our creed.


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The Strategic Value of Burma

Myanmar’s state newspapers ran commentary warning Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition democracy movement, that her continued political activity is unlawful and that her plan to tour the country could provoke chaos. The last time she toured the countryside her motorcade was attacked by a mob, apparently aligned with the government. Miss Suu Kyi was blamed for that incident.

This quote comes from the “World this Week” section of the Economist from July 2nd, 2011, a little more than five months ago.  In the interim, the government of Myanmar has undergone a series of reforms, including de-criminalizing Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party and releasing 200 out of an estimated 2,000 political prisoners.  The progress is welcome, but why the sudden change of heart?

There are a lot of possible answers to that question and no shortage of speculation.  Secretary of state Hillary Clinton recently visited Suu Kyi and the head of the new civilian government, Thein Sein, in the first diplomatic visit by the country’s chief diplomat in more than a half-century.  Clearly, the United States has an interest in extending its hand to the country.  Given its strategic location right between two of the four BRIC countries (India and China) and its abundance of natural resources, including natural gas and oil, Burma is going to only become more important, strategically, over the next few decades.  I wrote extensively about this in a previous post titled “How Burma Will Modernize.”

Another possible explanation is that Burma is just one of several hard-line regimes around the world that are opening up to Obama’s conciliatory overtures to allow dictators to escape with their lives and treasure.  In an article titled “Pragmatism Drives Burma Reform,” the Bangkok Post writes:

If credit is due for reshaping the mindset of Burma’s leaders, then no small part of it should go to President Barack Obama who a short time after he was elected president in 2009 said to despotic regimes around the globe the US was willing to extend a hand if ”you are willing to unclench your first”. According to US diplomatic cables this struck a chord with the junta’s generals who were already laying down a ”roadmap to democracy” which resulted in last year’s election, the first in two decades which was criticised by some as a show to legitimise the generals’ shift to civilian rule. The US diplomatic cable from April 2009 said conversations with the generals indicated they wanted; an ”escape strategy”, the lifting of sanctions and to be accorded the respect shown to other world leaders. They were also seeking assurances that the older generals, after voluntarily ceding power, would not be stripped of their assets and face prosecution.

This, to me, seems reasonable.  Obama may be having some trouble on the domestic front, but his foreign policy is undeniably one of the best in recent memory.  This is a corollary of his strategy of “leading from behind” – instead of forcing enemies into submission, use a combination of hard and soft power and reconciliation to entice leaders into reform.  Harsh economic sanctions took a toll on Burma at the same time the Burmese government and people were feeling the imposing hand of China securing resources in their country.  By voluntarily issuing a series of political reforms, which will hopefully be followed by more, the Burmese government starts to become an ally of the United States – something that we wanted all along, given its strategic location next to China and the fact that the winds of change are increasingly blowing to the east.

This is a good example of how a smart foreign policy achieves its goals without trying to force change.  Creating a scenario in which we coax and welcome change, and set the conditions for its genesis, has given us Libya, Egypt, and now Burma.  Conversely, trying to create those conditions by force – eliminating the government and rebuilding the nation – has given us Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is why Obama’s foreign policy has been so successful. Clearly, his biggest challenge in the next four years (insha’Allah) will be Pakistan, followed by Yemen and Somalia – all borderline failed states with weak or non-existent governments, Islamic extremism, and a shared hatred of the United States.  If Obama can bring reconciliation and development to those countries, he might just have the best foreign policy of any modern president.


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The Obama Doctrine and Smart Power, Pt. 2

This is part two of a two-part post about the Obama administration’s approach to foreign policy and military intervention in Africa and the Middle East.

The other day I discussed the first four points of Obama’s approach to military intervention – be effective, follow international law, put no American troops on the ground, and multilateralism.  Today I will talk about the last one: having a clearly-defined goal.

This is the most important tenet of all.  In Iraq, the U.S. overthrew Saddam and remarkably never planned for phase two.   In Libya, all possible post-Gaddafi scenarios were taken into account to understand exactly what we were getting ourselves into.  Not too far from where I live in Kenya, Obama just deployed 100 special forces “advisers” to hunt for Joseph Kony, the terrible leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Ugandan paramilitary organization that has killed 30,000 people throughout Central Africa over the last two years.  The objective is simple: find and kill Joseph Kony and eliminate the LRA forever.  Unlike Islamic extremists, they have little support from the local population, and most of the world agrees that the world will be a much better place with Joseph Kony no longer among the living.

Some argue that deploying more troops in yet another war with little strategic interest to the United States is a bad idea.  In one sense, these people are right – Joseph Kony and the LRA pose no direct threat to the United States.  They may have a nightmarish record of human rights violations, but their wrath is confined to the unfortunate villages that happen to reside between point A and point B on the LRA’s marching path.  But these detractors don’t really see the big picture.

Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia

Al Shabab, unlike the LRA, and Somalia in general are potentially very big problems for the United States.  It is the most failed state in the world and is a stone’s throw from Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula – a hotbed of terrorist activity.  The only thing preventing Somalia from completely collapsing (as opposed to almost completely collapsing, which is where it is now) and falling entirely into the hands of Al Shabab is the Ugandan peacekeeping force fighting in Mogadishu (with significant help from the U.S. and Europe).  Ingratiating ourselves to the Ugandan people by helping to eradicate the group that has caused so much suffering, and eliminating a destructive force – the LRA – will help stabilize the region, helping to prevent the turmoil in Somalia from spilling into other nations.  So, at the end of the day, destroying the LRA is probably as much about fighting terrorism as it is a humanitarian mission.

This is smart power.  In the chess match of foreign policy, Obama thinks several steps ahead of his opponents, recognizing the link between Joseph Kony terrorizing Uganda and Somalia becoming the new Waziristan.  He assesses the potential sacrifices, in blood and treasure, and carefully considers the outcomes.  In an op-ed titled “Stop Searching for an Obama Doctrine,” Fareed Zakaria explains why pragmatism trumps blind ideology in the way Obama views the world:

God bless the President

So what is the Obama Doctrine?

In fact, the search itself is misguided. The doctrinal approach to foreign policy doesn’t make much sense anymore. Every American foreign policy “doctrine” but one was formulated during the Cold War, for a bipolar world, when American policy toward one country — the Soviet Union — dominated all U.S. strategy and was the defining aspect of global affairs. (The Monroe Doctrine is the exception.) In today’s multipolar, multilayered world, there is no central hinge upon which all American foreign policy rests. Policymaking looks more varied, and inconsistent, as regions require approaches that don’t necessarily apply elsewhere.

Obama does, however, have a worldview, a well-considered approach to international affairs. His views have been straightforward and consistent. From the earliest days of his presidential campaign he said that he sees the basic argument in American foreign policy as “between ideology and realism” and placed himself squarely on one side.

What marks administration policy is a careful calculation of costs and benefits. The great temptation of modern American foreign policy, from Versailles to Vietnam to Iraq, has been to make grand declarations — enunciate doctrines — that then produce huge commitments and costs. We are coming off a decade of such rhetoric and interventions and are still paying the price: more than $2?trillion, not to mention the massive cost in human lives. In that context, a foreign policy that emphasizes strategic restraint is appropriate and wise.

I agree with Fareed on all of his points except one (which makes me nervous, since I agree with 100% of what he usually says, which means that, if history is a guide, I am wrong).  I think that the five points above collectively comprise the Obama doctrine, or at least something close to it.  Just because the Bush Doctrine was particularly jingoistic doesn’t mean a doctrine based on “strategic restraint” – one marked by define goals, multilateralism, limited U.S. involvement, etc. – isn’t a doctrine.   In fact, Obama received a lot of criticism for “leading from behind.”  But not only is a strategy – contrary to what some believe – it is an effective one.  Back to theRolling Stone article:

“It isn’t leading from behind,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former head of policy planning at the State Department, rejecting a quote in The New Yorker by an unnamed Obama adviser that came to dominate the debate over Libya. “We created the conditions for others to step up. That exemplifies Obama’s leadership at its best. The world is not going to get there without us – and we did it in a way where we’re not stuck, or bearing all the costs.”

If Obama gets another four years – Insha’allah – I would expect that all future military interventions stand up to the test of these five points – a retroactive rubric, of sorts.   And that, I think, is what a doctrine is all about.

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The Obama Doctrine and Smart Power, Pt. 1

This is part one of a two-part post about the Obama administration’s approach to foreign policy and military intervention in Africa and the Middle East.

In an article titled “Inside Obama’s War Room” published in Rolling Stone this month, Michael Hasting discusses the series of decisions and actions that preceded the intervention in Libya.  In classic form, Obama appears to have been measured, deliberative, and exhaustive with respect to planning for the next steps, asking key questions that were absent from the debate leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

Hastings describes Obama’s thought process in deciding to set up the no-fly zone in Libya and protect the rebels in Benghazi:

As he analyzed the crisis, Obama kept his own cards close – so much so that even those deeply engaged in the strategy sessions found it hard to get an accurate impression of where he came down on the issue. But in a move that seemed squarely aimed at avoiding the mistakes of Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama also laid down what insiders say was a set of five guiding principles for any intervention in Libya: that it be effective, multilateral, follow international law, put no American boots on the ground, and pursue a well-defined, achievable goal.

These five principles, to me, make a lot of sense, both in how one should make major foreign policy decisions and in the fact Obama himself uses them to make those decisions (I voted for Obama).  To be effective seems self-evident, but, given that the last two trillion-dollar wars have been largely ineffective, it still needs to be stated.

Follow international law

Following international law is also critical, given the modern enemies we face today.  Unlike sovereign nations, which countries typically bomb into submission, most of today’s wars are fuelled by ideology.  Specifically, Islamic extremism does not offer the convenience of being confined to a specific region or group of people.  And violating international law in waging war on extremists (think Abu Ghraib) has the counterproductive side effect of radicalizing young Muslims, increasing the size and strength of the enemy.  In Libya, this was particularly important, as it is a Muslim country and the uprising occurred during the Arab Spring.  So keeping any intervention within the bounds of international law is critical to avoid alienating potential enemies.

Put no American troops on the ground seems like an offshoot of the Biden strategy to fight these new guerrilla-style counter-insurgencies with a lethal combination of drones and special forces.   With the death of Gaddafi yesterday, you can see that in action:

The death of Gaddafi immediately raised speculation in the US that the same military model – the use of US air power combined with rebel forces on the ground and special forces from Europe – could be used again in Syria.

Vice-president Joe Biden described the military model as a “prescription” for the future, while White House spokesman Jay Carney, when asked about Syria, said Assad had lost his legitimacy to rule.

Obama’s approach to Libya was to provide US air power in support of the rebels but not putting US troops on the ground, leaving that to other countries, mainly France and Britain.

In the Rose Garden, he basked in his success: “Without putting a single US service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives, and our Nato mission will soon come to an end.”

In the 90’s, the U.S. deployed 28,000 troops in Somalia, retreating after the battle of Mogadishu killed any remaining political will.  Today, we are battling the Al Shabab militia – a nihilistic group of Islamic extremists that have terrorized Somalia for a decade – with predator drones and military advisers from a company called Bancroft Global Development, who are training the UN Peacekeepers from Burundi and Uganda.  Without explicitly endangering American troops, we are still able to effectively keep Al Shabab contained while simultaneously keeping our fingerprints off any successes, which could serve to create sympathy for the cause.

#4: Multilateralism

This brings me to the next tenet: multilateralism.  In Libya, the rest of the Arab world and the rebels themselves asked the U.S. to intervene.  We provided air support, but left the heavy-lifting to the other NATO forces and, more importantly, the rebels on the ground.  This gives the rebels legitimacy, having overthrown the Gaddafi government instead of riding the coattails of “international aggressors.” By pushing France to provide ground support and lead the NATO efforts, we allowed Western Europe, which has an even greater interest in the stability of North Africa, to take ownership of the invasion, and simultaneously get them to start carrying their weight in the NATO alliance, as we prepare to cut our defense budget over the next decade.  John Kerry, a strong voice in foreign policy, sums this up:

The Democratic chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, John Kerry, a close ally of the president, said the US had “demonstrated clear-eyed leadership, patience and foresight by pushing the international community into action.”

Maybe it is a symptom of American exceptionalism, but war hawks in the U.S. always want to claim credit for all military victories, and show contempt for the opinions of the international community.  George W. Bush’s most recent ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, famously said of the institution: There’s no such thing as the United Nations. “If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”  What Obama understands that Bolton doesn’t is that humility – allowing others to take credit for victory – serves American interests in the long-run by promoting a sense of ownership among the victors (in this case, the rebels) and stability in the region.

In my next post, I will discuss the last and most important point – having a  clearly-defined goal – and put all of these points in the context of current and future conflicts.

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The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy

The Pew Research Center just released a report detailing the foreign policy views of democrats, republicans, and tea partiers.  Much of it is what you would expect.  For tea partiers the U.S. needs to be strong on defense and Israel, tough on China, say no to illegal immigration (94% support the Arizona immigration law!).  Non-tea party republicans share similar views, though tempered a bit on most issues.  For democrats, it is a relatively simple equation: one minus the percentage of tea party republicans who support an issue equals the percentage of democrats who support an issue.

Foreign policy views never seem to change much on party lines.  But something interesting is happening today.  The defense hawks used to enjoy a disproportionate influence on shaping the foreign policy views of the GOP.  But with the country preoccupied with the debt ceiling and domestic spending and the rising influence of Tea Party, foreign policy has become as much a question of economics as it has of international relations.  The question is no longer should we do it, but rather can we afford it.  From the Washington Post:

With the exception of Israel’s security, the blank check of Republican support once afforded U.S. military operations, freer international trade and the spread of global democracy are facing the constraints of limited spending power and an overwhelming pressure among voters to refocus America’s energy at home.

Aside from the fact that most foreign policy decisions based on economic concerns tend to lead down a road that is bad for everyone.  It leads to isolationism and protectionism – two things an increasingly flat world does not need right now.  And in this question, the distinction between the Tea Party the rest of the GOP (like my old man) becomes apparent.  Because the Tea Party is, at its core, more rooted in populism than it is conservative economic theory, you can see opinions that are fundamentally at odds.

The first question in the Pew survey asks for the best way to ensure peace.  60% of the Tea Partiers say military strength, rather than good diplomacy, compared with only 38% of the non-Tea Party Republicans.  Among Democrats, 20% cite military strength.  This really cuts to the philosophical core of all the other debates – peace through strength, rather than peace through a combination of defense, diplomacy, and development.  And, most interestingly, the gap between the typical Republican and the typical Tea Partier is larger than the gap between the Republican and the Democrat.

This theme appears through the survey.  For example, more than two-thirds of the Tea Party believes we need to get tougher with China.  I assume that means trade barriers, sanctions for keeping their currency artificially low, etc.  In comparison, only 42% of other Republicans and 32% of Democrats hold this view.  A remarkable 68% of Tea Partiers believe Obama favors Palestine too much, compared with 23% among other Republicans and 8% among Democrats.  This, in spite of the fact that Obama is going to veto the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations.

This is what a populist foreign policy platform among an easily manipulated group looks like.  A disparate set of whimsical, contradictory, and often counterproductive views that reflect a concern over outsourcing, immigration, and broadly what Fareed Zakaria calls “the rise of the rest.”

I call these views counterproductive because the policy prescriptions literally do more harm than good.  Georgia just passed a law mandating that all businesses with more than 10 employees must demand to see indentification to prove that the workers are not here illegally.  So what happened?  All the illegal immigrants who used to be the backbone of the agriculture sector simply moved elsewhere, leaving farmers without laborers to harvest their crops.  Here is the New York Times:

The simple-sounding plan that resulted — hire more local people and fewer foreign workers — left Mr. Harold and others who took a similar path adrift in a predicament worthy of Kafka.

The more they tried to do something concrete to address immigration and joblessness, the worse off they found themselves.

“It is not an easy job,” said Kerry Mattics, 49, another H-2A farmer here in Olathe, who brought in only a third of his usual Mexican crew of 12 workers for his 50-acre fruit and vegetable farm, then struggled to make it through the season. “It’s outside, so if it’s wet, you’re wet, and if it’s hot you’re hot,” he said.

Still, Mr. Mattics said, he can’t help feeling that people have gotten soft.

“People have gotten soft.”  Ironically, the current president of the United States, Barack Obama, has been lambasted for suggesting the same thing.  Yet anyone who honestly thought that laid-off American workers were going to jump at the opportunity to work 12 hours a day picking onions in the burning sun were out of their minds.

In terms of defense, it is even more backwards.  At the same time we seek to alienate our economic allies, there is a belief that the brute show of force that toppled the Soviet Union more than two decades ago is still somehow relevant in today’s globalized world.   Honestly – who are we going to fight?  The wars that we are engaged in right now are effectively guerrilla battles with insurgents, in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also Yemen and Somalia.  We deposed a dictator in Libya without a troop on the ground.  Are we going to really going to attack Iran or Syria?  But despite all this, when the time comes to cut defense spending, you can guarantee that foreign aid and diplomacy are going to be the hardest hit if a Tea Party Republican is elected to office.  And that – just like draconian immigration policies, tariffs that almost certainly will lead to a  trade war with China, and supporting the expansion of settlements in the West Bank – would be a mistake:

For the sake of national security, this country cannot afford to retreat from the world. Its investment in the State Department and foreign aid helps advance peace and stability by feeding starving people, providing access to doctors and medicines, opening new markets, promoting democracy, curbing nuclear arms and strengthening allies with military and economic assistance. It also gives Washington leverage.

Savings squeezed from the State Department and foreign aid — which together are less than a tenth of the basic Pentagon budget — would be a tiny share of the $3.8 trillion federal budget. Yet the effects would be hugely damaging to American foreign policy. Washington needs resources to support new democracy movements in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. This is also a critical time in Iraq and Afghanistan, where demands for diplomatic resources are growing. National security has always depended on more than military strength. We need diplomats to anticipate problems and find nonmilitary solutions. The drive to cut diplomatic resources and foreign aid seriously harms our ability to do just that.

The partisan gridlock that makes government seem so ineffective right now is due to the fact that the Tea Party – an outlier faction within its own party – has such radically different views than alienate even people like my dad, a card-carrying Reagan-ite who is secretly praying that tornado will carry all of the Republican candidates right now, leaving only Jon Huntsman behind.

Constructive feedback

A healthy political debate in America looks like the two rightmost columns in each of these survey tables.  The Tea Party represents a minority – 40% of Republicans and right-leaning independents.  Yet their views define the debate.  Of course, the voter turnout among self-identified Tea Partiers is probably orders of magnitude larger than other groups, which is why these foreign policy views seem to dominate.  The idea that a xenophobic and isolationist leanings of a small minority of the country could potentially come to dictate our foreign policy in 2012 is a scary one indeed.

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China the Troublemaker

Develop Economies often waxes philosophic from his armchair in Africa about China’s role in the development of the continent.  For some, the China love-fest is rooted in the fact that bilateral trade is not patronizing, unlike aid.  For others, China is a ruthless competitor – a less explicit colonialist than the Europeans.  In this journal, Develop Economies tries to remain neutral, presenting the facts.  But, in recent months, he has given a disproportionate amount of airtime to the views of the former group.  So it is timely that Yuriko Koike, Japan’s former minister of defense and national security adviser, has a none-too-kind piece in Project Syndicate titled “China’s Africa Mischief.”

From 2006

In discussing China’s last-minute, $200 million arms deal to former Libyan president Muammar Gadaffi, Koike explains how China has played its cards:

But, in recent years, China became an obstacle to Qaddafi’s African ambitions, and China did so by copying his methods: buying the support of dictators with weaponry and finance. Since 2000, China has actively courted Africa’s unstable and dictatorial countries with offers of aid and a refusal to back United Nations sanctions against them. Indeed, China has blithely entered into business with African countries that Europe and America refuse to engage with, owing to sanctions.

International sanctions, it now seems, were the door through which China rushed to gain access to Africa’s mineral wealth for its voracious industries. For example, instead of making an effort to foster peace in Sudan, as a permanent, veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council should, China’s deep involvement with Sudan, through the provision of oil infrastructure and weapons, actually prolonged the Darfur conflict. A letter to Chinese officials, signed by many members of the US Congress, and a report by Amnesty International state that China exported weapons to Sudan in violation of UN resolutions. The Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg embarrassed China by resigning from an advisory post for the 2008 Beijing Olympics because of its support for the government in Khartoum, calling the Chinese games the “genocide Olympics.”

It is hard (actually, impossible) to deny that China has been unscrupulous in its dealings with kleptocrats and dictators in Africa.  But, by its own admission, China explicitly maintains a “no questions asked” policy when it comes to the scramble for resources.  A few things come to mind, however, when thinking about China’s role in arming Africa’s “forever wars.”

Viktor Bout doing what he does

Today, Charles Taylor is on trial at the Hague.  The ex-Russian military man who sold him the weapons – Viktor Bout – is currently sitting in a prison cell in Thailand, fighting extradition to face charges to in unleashing hell on Liberia, Sierra Leone, and countless other countries.  The film “Lord of War” chronicles Bout’s escapades in the continent.   These men are criminals of the worst kind – men whose actions, either directly or indirectly, led to unspeakable horrors.  Now they are in court, where they belong.  And Gaddafi, the jheri-curled tyrant who threatened to “show no mercy” to the residents of Benghazi, isn’t far behind (he’s hiding in Algeria, as a matter of fact).  His onslaught against the people of Libya, as it turns out, might not have been possible had it not been for the subtle, behind-the-scenes deals cut with three major Chinese weapons manufacturers.  The Canadian paper, The Globe and Mail, in a move that proves its host country is more than America’s top-hat when it comes to journalism, broke the story:

China offered huge stockpiles of weapons to Colonel Moammar Gadhafi during the final months of his regime, according to papers that describe secret talks about shipments via Algeria and South Africa. Documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show that state-controlled Chinese arms manufacturers were prepared to sell weapons and ammunition worth at least $200-million to the embattled Col. Gadhafi in late July, a violation of United Nations sanctions.

If China is supplying arms to a violent dictator – “in flagrant violation of the arms embargo instituted under UN Security Council Resolution 1970, which China approved” – then why is it not also treated as a criminal entity?  That is a rhetorical question.  It is a sovereign state and is technically free to do what it wants, particularly since the United States is bogged down in its own mess and Europe is on the brink of economic implosion.  Not to mention, the West has not exactly been a model citizen when it comes to its dealings with Africa.  China is the number two buyer of oil from Angola.  The United States is number one. This leads me to my next point.  The roots of geopolitical conflict can always be traced to oil.  Always.  From the Globe and Mail article:

The documents suggest that Beijing and other governments may have played a double game in the Libyan war, claiming neutrality but covertly helping the dictator. The papers do not confirm whether any military assistance was delivered, but senior leaders of the new transitional government in Tripoli say the documents reinforce their suspicions about the recent actions of China, Algeria and South Africa. Those countries may now suffer a disadvantage as Libya’s new rulers divide the spoils from their vast energy resources, and select foreign firms for the country’s reconstruction.

And Project Syndicate:

China has chosen a high-risk path – ignoring human rights and violating UN sanctions – to secure the energy and other resources needed to sustain its economy’s rapid growth. It is a choice that neither befits one of the permanent members of the Security Council, nor demonstrates China’s readiness to be a responsible stakeholder in the international community. China’s willingness to arm and defend African dictators, even in the teeth of UN sanctions, as in Libya, undermines its claim to a “peaceful rise.” Given China’s Libyan duplicity, the world should now determine whether it is a country that obeys international rules only when doing so suits its interests.

This principle, of course, is not limited to the countries of the Far East.  One need not look further than the tiny country of Equatorial Guinea, where the per capital GDP is around $10,000 USD, yet more than half the population lives in poverty.  Here is how Ken Silverstein describes the situation:

The United States historically had little interest in Equatorial Guinea and closed its embassy there in 1995 after the Obiang regime issued threats against Ambassador John Bennett, who had lodged protests over human rights conditions. But in an unfortunate twist, American companies soon discovered vast reserves of oil and gas in the waters off Equatorial Guinea, and successive U.S. governments have been slowly but steadily backtracking ever since. The key step came in 2003, when after an intense lobbying campaign by the oil industry, Bush approved the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s capital. (The embassy formally reopened three years later.) “With the increased U.S. investment presence, relations between the U.S. and the Government of Equatorial Guinea have been characterized as positive and constructive,” notes the State Department’s country profile.

Relations may be good, but the official U.S. assessment of the country is much less rosy. The State Department’s most recent global human rights reportcited abuses in Equatorial Guinea including “torture of detainees and prisoners by security forces; life-threatening conditions in prisons [and] arbitrary arrest.” Freedom House’s 2011 “Freedom in the World” survey put the country in its “worst of the worst” category for governments that violate political rights and civil liberties, along with North Korea, Sudan, and Turkmenistan. Equatorial Guinea’s economy depends almost entirely on oil, which generated revenues last year of well over $4 billion, giving it a per capita annual income of $37,900, on par with Belgium. “The oil has been for us like the manna that the Jews ate in the desert,” Obiang has said. It certainly has been for him. Obiang placed eighth on a 2006 list by Forbes of the world’s richest leaders, with a personal fortune estimated at $600 million. His population hasn’t fared so well. Human Rights Watch reports that one in three of Obiang’s impoverished subjects dies before age 40.

Silverstein’s article is worth reading in full.  Whenever I write about the role of oil in the world’s conflicts, I feel like the Charlton Heston in Soylent Green – “It’s people!”  Stories like these, however, lead me to believe I am at least somewhat correct in my assumptions.  And I guess China isn’t so honest about it after all.

Develop Economies’ Music Recommendation:

How Burma Will Modernize

Learning to read in Burma.

The photo on the header of this blog was taken in Bagan, a city in the center of Burma that is home to thousands of ornate Buddhist temples.  I was sitting atop another of the thousand temples that litter the skyline, wondering how such a stunning place could have so few visitors.  The temples in Bagan are relics of a once-prosperous society.  Today, the country appears frozen in time, its potential ruined by a repressive military government that has left Burma in a developmental stasis for the last thirty years.

The strategic geography of Burma is undeniable.

But all of that is changing now.  Traditionally, the West has always viewed Burma as a basketcase – a country rich in natural resources beset by post-colonial woes and chock full of human rights violations.  Despite its hideous record of government and poor economic growth, Burma has always had a few things going for it.  First, it has a wealth of natural resources.  Diamonds, natural gas, oil, etc.  Second, it is strategically located between two of the fastest-growing economies in the world, China and India.  Combined, China and India make up a third of the world population and are contributing an increasing percentage of the global GDP.  When speaking about the future of geopolitics and the world economy, these two countries are increasingly part of the conversation.  And Burma, the basketcase of East Asia, sits conveniently between these two rising giants.  Given that Russia lies further north, and Brazil dominates the Americas south of the Equator, Burma holds the distinction of being the only country in the world to sit directly in between two of the BRIC countries.

It makes sense that China and India would want to facilitate trade as efficiently and cheaply as possible.  To do that, only one thing stands in the way: Burma.  Given the Chinese government’s track record of long-term strategic thinking when it comes to developing its future trading partners, China has taken an active role in building up the infrastructure in a future vital trading partner.  On Burma’s western front, India is taking a similarly proactive approach in making sure it takes advantage of the country’s location and resources.  And, amazingly, it sounds like it could be a win-win-win situation:

A Hindu rite of passage. Day one in Burma

Watching these developments, some have warned of a new Great Game, leading to conflict between the world’s largest emerging powers. But others predict instead the making of a new Silk Road, like the one in ancient and medieval times that coupled China to Central Asia and Europe. It’s important to remember that this geographic shift comes at a very special moment in Asia’s history: a moment of growing peace and prosperity at the conclusion of a century of tremendous violence and armed conflict and centuries more of Western colonial domination. The happier scenario is far from impossible.

The generation now coming of age is the first to grow up in an Asia that is both post-colonial and (with a few small exceptions) postwar. New rivalries may yet fuel 21st-century nationalisms and lead to a new Great Game, but there is great optimism nearly everywhere, at least among the middle classes and the elites that drive policy: a sense that history is on Asia’s side and a desire to focus on future wealth, not hark back to the dark times that have only recently been left behind.

And a crossroads through Burma would not be a simple joining up of countries. The parts of China and India that are being drawn together over Burma are among the most far-flung parts of the two giant states, regions of unparalleled ethnic and linguistic diversity where people speak literally hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages, of forgotten kingdoms like Manipur and Dali, and of isolated upland societies that were, until recently, beyond the control of Delhi or Beijing. They are also places where ballooning populations have only now filled out a once very sparsely peopled and densely forested landscape. New countries are finding new neighbors. Whereas the fall of the Berlin Wall reopened contacts that had only temporarily been suspended, the transformations under way are enabling entirely new encounters. There is the possibility of a cosmopolitan nexus at the heart of Asia.

Readers of this blog know that I have a soft spot in my heart for Burma and its struggle.  I’ve often ruminated on whether anything good would ever befall the Burmese people.  But now, with two of the four BRIC countries looking to one another for a mutually-beneficial partnership in the post-American world, things are finally looking up.

Trekking to Inle Lake

I will close with a long paragraph from the Foreign Policy article quoted above that speaks to the optimism in the Far East:

A new friend.

It’s a fragile opening. The president seems determined to push ahead, but his is not the only voice. There are other powerful ex-generals in parliament and in the cabinet, and the structures of repression remain intact. Burma is at a critical turning point.

And now, for the first time, Burma’s politics matter beyond its immediate borders. If this opportunity for positive change is lost, Burma may remain a miserably run place — but it will no longer be an isolated backwater. The great infrastructure projects under way will continue, as will the much longer-term processes of change. Asia’s frontier will close and a new but dangerous crossroads will be the result.

But if Burma indeed takes a turn for the better and we see an end to decades of armed conflict, a lifting of Western sanctions, democratic government, and broad-based economic growth, the impact could be dramatic. China’s hinterland will suddenly border a vibrant and young democracy, and India’s northeast will be transformed from a dead end into its bridge to the Far East. What happens next in Burma could be a game-changer for all Asia.

As it turns out, rather than sanctions and a tourism boycott, simple economics might be just what Burma needs to become a vibrant democracy after decades of brutal military rule.  I will look forward to going back.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from this amazing place.  The photos were taken by my friend, Gemma North, a fellow Kiva Fellow in Cambodia.

My first trip to the Kingdom