In January, two days before its slated release, the Ministry of Culture pulled the “The Death of Stalin,” a new film from Scottish director Armando Iannucci, from Russian theaters. The black comedy satirizing Stalin and his inner circle – including Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet marshal extolled for his role in defeating Hitler – in the infamous dictator’s final days would have struck an awkward chord, scheduled to hit theaters mere days before the 75th anniversary celebration of the Battle of Stalingrad. The film was banned on grounds of “extremism,” implying that it is “extreme” to cast celebrated national figures – Zhukov, but increasingly Stalin – as anything less than objects of reverence.

This is not the work of a slick and sophisticated propaganda machine, but the clumsy and heavy-handed gambit of a regime hell-bent on stamping out opposition. Perhaps even a regime in fear.

Putin may have won a landslide victory by most measures – incidentally marking the longest stay in power of a Russian leader since Stalin – but his government’s ever-heightening intolerance toward opposition speech hints at desperation lurking beneath the surface. This rising repression may be effective while the general population remains content, but it evokes the image of a ceiling of tolerance that might one day be hit–but with what consequences?

A return to a Stalinesque reign of terror today is unlikely, though not impossible. Obviously, the ideological platform on which totalitarianism was justified in the Soviet era no longer stands–today Russia positions itself against the debauchery of liberalism as a pillar of Orthodox morality and traditional values. Accordingly, Putin props up his power using an image of himself as guardian of ancient, sacred Mother Russia mixed with the strongman warlord who can stick it to the arrogant West. 

Cast in this light, Putin likely does indeed enjoy overwhelming support in Russia – but any support based on suppression of even the idea of opposition is bound to wane sooner or later in an age when, as repeated hacks and leaks remind us, nothing hidden from the public can remain so for long. Of course, Putin’s precise support figures in Russia could be debated ad infinitum, given the opacity of the data and the inherent difficulty of quantifying individuals’ tangled web of inner lives. In fact, obtaining a percentage of support for Putin is both a futile and an absurd project. Focusing on fluctuating figures drawn from flawed studies misses the wider picture–the meaning and the means of Putin’s support.

What is clear, however, is that any support built on overt and graceless suppression of facts, alternate narratives and viable political alternatives might not take as much to topple as Putin’s apparent monopoly of power in Russia might suggest. Let’s not forget that a driving force of opposition to the Communist regime among the Russian youth – and perhaps the most immediately striking difference reported by those who escaped from behind the Iron Curtain into the capitalist countries – was the suffocating grasp that the Party maintained on the production and circulation of culture, art and ideas, contrasted with the cliched but palpable sense of freedom in the West. But what was necessary for the survival of the Soviet regime – strangling all alternate narratives – is no longer possible in a digital age. As the Russians themselves demonstrated in 2016, in today’s world, secrecy and censorship can only be conditional and temporary.

Let’s also not forget that Putin, like Stalin, is a mere mortal. By highlighting the great dictator’s very humanity in depicting the moment of death in its naked, absurd universality, “The Death of Stalin” poses an existential threat, not merely a political one, to Putin’s regime. Turning into art the notion that every ruler, no matter how totally sublimated into national myth, remains a man who will one day meet an end that is equal parts tragic, comic and banal is enough to make the ground quake under Putin’s project–namely, maintaining his grasp on power by mythologizing himself to the point where he is synonymous with the Russian nation in all its glory.

If this view of Putin is widespread enough to serve as a useful generalization in the country, it is completely beside the point to speak of a public opinion that supports Putin (for there is no public opinion where there is no public–no citizens, only subjects). Supporting Putin is not an active choice but a passive acceptance of an existential truth–but one that was at one point constructed, and one that must be maintained scrupulously–and unscrupulously. As the banning of the “Death of Stalin” suggests, it is one that might be slowly eroding in the deep caverns of national consciousness. To close with another cliché, desperate times call for desperate measures. 

Correction March 31: An earlier version misspelled Georgy Zhukov’s first name as Gregory.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

The post Desperate Times: The Death of Stalin and Putin’s Election appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

During the election, no one on the political Left engaged in the mental exercise of visualizing an America with a President Trump. It was an absurd, unimaginable scenario, not to mention a terrifying one—some have since taken Trump’s election as evidence that we are living in a simulation gone haywire. Day after day in the wake of Clinton’s defeat, liberals have been forced to accept a reality that contradicts all of their assumptions about American politics, values and social norms—the fiber of the nation. However, most attempts to explain Trump’s victory shift the blame outwards: the Left blames Middle America, the GOP, occasionally each other, but rarely themselves.

Though solidarity within the party is crucial at this point, Trump’s presidency should have cued an identity crisis and some long-needed soul-searching. The left needs to rethink its language, reconstruct its image and embrace new electoral strategies. But as of now, despite the ubiquity of the “Democrats have lost touch with the working poor” narrative, the Party has made no coordinated push for internal reform. Underlying divisions roughly along the Hillary-Bernie split continue to fracture the party even as the Democrats unite against Trump. Echoing this opposition, the liberal media speaks in one voice: a self-righteous one that either loudly berates or snidely raises its eyebrows at Trump’s every move.

While it is tempting and easy to rally around a shared disdain for the new president, it will take much more for the Democratic Party to pull off a sustained comeback in American politics. As the last election revealed, adherence to the status quo is now out of the question. It’s very possible that we are living through a monumental shift in the political party system on par with that of 1932 or 1968, and Democrats must react and adapt. This does not mean abandoning the best of liberal values. On the contrary, these must now be framed in a new light to fight Trump’s faux-populism with policy proposals that would actually benefit most Americans, like preserving universal health care. On the contrary—a Democratic electoral comeback will take a complete image overhaul, accomplished by a change in language and – crucially – in spokespeople.

Unfortunately, it seems that the Party has yet to recognize this need in the midst of the post-election noise. According to newly reelected Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats don’t need change. “I don’t think people want a new direction,” Pelosi told CBS. “Our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families.” Be that as it may, establishment Democrats like Pelosi apparently cannot see the growing alienation of America’s working families from the Party. If not new values, the Party desperately needs to learn to communicate its commitment to all Americans in an age of rising insecurity in almost every area of life. There is a deeply unsettling irony in a billionaire businessman chosen to champion the needs of the working-class American; it shows how broken and delusional the Democratic Party has become about its perception among voters.

 The rise and fall of the Third Way

To understand how we got to the twilight of the liberal era, we can look to its dawn. The historical and ideological underpinnings of the modern center-Left date back to Tony Blair’s “Third Way,” a label for “the new politics which the progressive centre-left [was]forging in Britain and beyond” at the turn of the century. A 1998 political manifesto of the same name aimed to reconcile traditional liberalism with social democratic progressivism, two political strains that had existed in opposition to each other thus far. The Third Way claimed there was no insurmountable incompatibility between these ideologies, and that values like “patriotism and internationalism, rights and responsibilities, the promotion of enterprise and the attack on poverty and discrimination” could all be pursued on one platform. With that utopian claim, modern liberalism was born.

The Third Way purported to be a modern outlook that used technical expertise and empirical proof to pursue policy that “works.” Practically, however, it became the platform and rallying cry of a new political and social class, a sign of a capitalist, neoliberal, globalizing Western order slowly stretching its tendrils across the globe. Days after delivering his speech unveiling the Third Way, Blair met with US President Clinton and other Western leaders to launch this new center-left ideology across the West.

Though its birth was grounded in the political realities of the day, the Third Way came to transcend its original purpose—to prop up recent electoral success of British Labour, and similar parties across the West, with an explicit ideological framework.  Over the next two decades, the Third Way remained the foundational logic of the mainstream political Left. Blair’s brand of progressivism—cool, vague, globalizing, pro-business, pro-financial sector—has had its fair share of devoted and powerful adherents across the pond: both Clintons and even Obama, if we look at his policy and not his populist image.

Though dominant, the Third Way still faced criticism within the Left. Voicing far-left skepticism, political journalist Luke Savage characterizes the Third Way as “a hostile takeover of the center-left by a new generation of center-right technocrats whose main achievement was welding a refurbished lexicon of liberal progressivism to the processes already initiated by the likes of Thatcher and Reagan.” Here Savage goes beyond the typical far-left critique of the center-left for being too moderate. He characterizes the Third Way as a usurpation of left-wing politics by conservatives (neoliberals) who have learned to speak the Left’s language, an insidious attack on traditional left-wing populism made virulent by its very lack of overt hostility.

This is far more dangerous because it eliminates any true leftist option in a two-party political system. Today, the far-left voice in American politics is largely delegitimized, its only outlet ‘radical’ movements like Occupy Wall Street that even most Democrats roll their eyes at. In the last election, we saw this situation reach its boiling point with Sanders’ unprecedented success. However, the Democrats failed to take seriously enough the anti-establishment sentiment sweeping across the nation and dismissed Bernie as abrasive and unelectable.

As Hillary’s humiliating defeat shows, it’s time to bury the Third Way once and for all and reembrace leftist populism.

How did he win?

While leftists critiqued  Clintonite policy for pandering to elite, technocratic class interests, right-wingers object as much to the liberal aesthetic as the policy itself. The conservative stereotype of the liberal, related but distinct from left-wing policy, played a major role in the last election. It revealed the extent of the rising backlash against the neoliberal persona, which Clinton typifies.

Despite Clinton’s pro-working class rhetoric and policy proposals, the working class preferred Trump for his political incorrectness and his ability to voice “true but unpopular things,” in the words of one voter. The irony of a billionaire elected on populist terms is deep—it speaks to the extent of the working Americans’ distrust for the modern Democratic establishment, controlled by a class of liberal technocrats. In the words of one Trump supporter, “Hillary Clinton represents everything that is wrong in government.”

For this reason, even her moderate, inclusive policy stances, which should have appealed to a wide range of voters including the working classes, did little to bolster her image. On the contrary, her inability to break political correctness probably contributed to her disingenuous image, while Trump became the candidate who told it like it is. In fact, even Clinton’s own supporters cited her “dishonesty/secrecy” as their top concern in a September PEW poll. Trump, on the other hand, owed his support mainly to the fact that “he is not Clinton,” closely followed by his status as a “political outsider” tied to his perceived ability to “bring change.”

Trump’s victory suggests that voters are more frustrated with the political elite than the economic. Wealth in itself is not distasteful to American voters; this is a country founded by Puritans who believed that God chose his favorites and made them rich. To this day, the mythos of the American Dream remains powerful despite evidence that upward mobility grows harder each year—in Fox’s 2017 American Dream poll, only 15% of respondents felt the Dream was “out of reach”. Despite (or because of) Trump’s personal and professional flaws, many voters believed a business-savvy political outsider to be more trustworthy than a career politician. After all, political dynasties like the Clintons are the closest thing the US has to an aristocratic class – and America was born from a distrust of aristocracy. Tapping into the prevalent strain of thought, Trump branded himself as a self-made man, the quintessential aspirational figure in the American imagination.

What now?

It would be complicated to analyze all the ways in which Americans didn’t trust Hillary, but the lesson for the Democrats is rather simple. To attract votes, the Party should distance itself from establishment figures and politics. This will not require drastic departure from the core of the party platform: economic security and prosperity for the working classes; environmentalism; equality and justice for all genders, races and sexual orientations; expanding access to healthcare and orientation. These are all common goals of most voters, at least among those who would ever consider voting Democratic. A subtler shift is in order.

The way forward: politics

To begin, the Democrats should position themselves against the status quo of Wall Street, campaign finance and big business, and make it clear that the party stands for total overhaul and increased transparency and regulation. The most obvious way to do this is simply by choosing more candidates with more appropriate records. That is to say, candidates less like Clinton and more like Elizabeth Warren, whose no-nonsense rhetorical style and “critique of an economic system she says is rigged against the little guy” make progressives squirm with excitement at rumors of a 2020 presidential bid. One of the easiest lessons of the last election was that politics today is all about personality (voters’ top reason for picking their candidate on both sides was simply that they were not the other, and top concerns about each candidate also centered on personality, not policy).

In addition, it is time to stop clinging to free trade as an ideal unto itself. Opposition to secret trade agreements like the TPP and TTIP loomed large in this election, calling into doubt the sacred neoliberal dogma of economic openness as a panacea for all social and economic problems. As of October, while scholars and academics still overwhelmingly favored increased involvement in the global economy, among the general public most opposed free trade on the grounds that it “lowers wages and costs jobs in the US.” Regardless of the technical accuracy of this view, it is clear that free trade has its costs, and the Democrats must find a meaningful way to speak to these issues. In the words of British writer and activist George Monbiot, “anyone that forgets that striking them [secret free trade agreements]down was one of Donald Trump’s main promises will fail to understand why people were prepared to risk so much in electing him.” If there is one area where Democrats can learn from Trump, it is adopting a more emphatically pro-American economic stance in their rhetoric.

Today’s most important, divisive issue remains immigration. Discussion around it has become a minefield of emotion, values, assumptions and accusations. As soon as talk turns to immigration, liberals tend to immediately make the conversation personal, relying on a mixture of emotional appeal and implied moral superiority. On the other side, conservatives go straight to national security, falling wages and violent extremists. As such, the dialogue on both sides surrounding immigration is reductionist, hostile and self-righteous. Facts only enter the equation when they conveniently prop up a priori values—conservatives like to ignore all instances of homegrown (often, white racist) terrorism and refuse to consider arguments that the so-called “Muslim Ban” could actually fuel anti-US sentiment; liberals plug their ears at the first mention any immigration reform, conveniently forgetting that President Obama deported more people than any other president.

Moving forward, the Democratic Party should hold true to its pro-immigration stance but infuse its rhetoric with more nuance and intelligence. Instead of relying on clichés like “America was founded on immigration,” etc., they must provide stronger counterarguments to false narratives of immigration hurting the economy and threatening national security. Furthermore, the Democrats wrongly dismiss all anti-immigration sentiment as ignorant and racist. Yes, purely racist arguments do not deserve valid consideration, but genuine fears about safety and economic insecurity should be addressed, not ignored. Too often, liberals refuse to engage with anti-immigration arguments, which is extremely counterproductive.

The way forward: language, image & attitude

This brings us to the largest public relations challenge facing the American Left, one much more nuanced, emotionally charged and difficult to overcome than policy direction. It has to do with language, perception and values. Increasingly, liberals are viewed as intolerant, hypocritically championing abstract values of equality while maintaining an air of moral and intellectual superiority over anyone who questions their logic. This has been the main complaint voiced by Trump voters in the wake of the election, creating “animosity in otherwise pleasant conversations” between liberals and conservatives, as blogger Sam Altman described.

After the election, Altman interviewed Trump voters across the country to try to understand their point of view, and found many feeling “silenced and demonized” by the liberal establishment and its representatives, be it the Democratic Party, coastal media channels or other citizens. If Democrats want to win over supporters, not alienate potential ones, it must find a way to relate to Trump supporters, not call them “Nazis, KKK, white supremacists, fascists, etc.” If this conflation weren’t offensive enough, the very term ‘Trump supporter’ has become a quasi-slur in liberal circles. As one Trump voter pointed out, “we have mostly the same goals, and different opinions about how to get there.” To do so, it is as difficult as it is crucial to set aside aesthetic objections to Trump and focus on concrete policy. Pointing out Trump’s racism and sexist over and over again has clearly gotten liberals nowhere—this just perpetuates an exhausting media echo chamber that drowns out more intelligent analysis.

Unfortunately, after an extremely divisive election, there has been nearly no effort to heal divisions, understand the views of the other side and emphasize commonalities. Social media trends like #notmypresident only divide the country further between two warring camps. The same is true of the deluge of righteous ‘look what Trump did now’ coverage of the regime’s every move and Trump’s every tweet. For example, liberal media coverage of Trump’s first speech to Congress ranged from incredulous to panicky; the general consensus being that it “gave his nightmarish agenda a newly ‘presidential’ gloss” and “we should be worried.” But, as the same article conceded, many would have “tuned in and simply heard a promise to provide unemployed and underemployed Americans with the jobs they sorely needed.” This is a point of view rarely emphasized in media coverage. Perhaps the worst of the media response is headlines like “It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses” that characterize the country’s division as “the sane vs. the mindlessly angry.” Though of course we should avoid drawing an overly simplistic conflation between the Democratic Party and the ‘liberal media,’ mainstream, left-leaning media sources tend to report from the center-left, and thus generally capture the elite liberal response to the Trump administration’s policy.

In general, liberals have responded with moral outrage over the regime’s policy and an aesthetic aversion to Trump supporters, voiced loudly by celebrities across elite industries like fashion and entertainment. These kinds of shows are only soothing to those delivering them and do nothing to convince those who agree with Trump’s politics.

It’s time to let go of the idea that society is on some unalterable trajectory of progress towards social justice, meritocracy, personal freedom, economic and societal openness and globalization. This Third Way line of thinking has fallen out of ideological vogue; nationalism, isolationism and unfortunately xenophobia are alive and well today. Trump’s election is just the latest in a string of political events reinforcing this reality. The good (and bad) news is that no future is inevitable. Presentism, the assumption that the current state of things will persist, has been disproven by history time and time again. If we learn anything from the mistaken belief that “if the West has broken down the Berlin Wall and McDonald’s opens in St. Petersburg, then history is over,” it should be that Trump’s election as President of the US does not necessarily signal the doomsday of electoral democracy and the “autocratic apocalypse.” Luckily or not, whatever is happening usually eventually stops happening, and today it is up to the Democrats to decide what is going to happen next.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

The post The Wrong Side of History? A New Path for the American Left appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

If President Putin signs it into law, a new piece of Russian legislation will soon relax the punishment for domestic violence. The measure has been widely denounced in Western media across the political spectrum, but within Russia itself, the argument gets hazy. Though the law faces significant opposition, it also has the support of many politicians and even some women’s rights activists.

Regardless of whether it is enacted, the law will have limited impact on domestic violence, gender inequality and family relations in Russia. These issues permeate Russian society on all levels – cultural, political, religious – and legal measures can only do so much. Still, this is a step backwards. On the brighter side, the dialogue surrounding the new legislation sheds light on the current state of gender and family relations in Russia. Debates over domestic violence expose deeper injustices that would take years to rectify. Unfortunately, in today’s Russia, women’s rights are being dismantled, not strengthened.

When I spoke to my mother about the measure, she was upset but not surprised. “Women and children in Russia have no more rights,” she said. Growing up in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia, she expects very little from the authorities. The system is not just corrupt but also cruel, so people are scared to involve the police in their lives. For the same reason, she wasn’t at all shocked that 385 of 387 members of the Duma had voted for the measure, even the mere 12% who are women. All of those seats are bought and sold, she explained. The only people who actually participate in Russian politics do it for the perks: money and connections. The idea of going into government to enact positive change is an idea that has yet to reach Russia.

No lasting damage, no problem

In January, the Russian parliament—the Duma—voted to decriminalize non-recurring domestic violence that causes no ‘lasting damage.’ This decision reverses a previous trend towards harsher policies. In 2016, the Duma had decriminalized poboi (battery without lasting harm, the least violent of assault) but kept a maximum two-year sentence for domestic violence. previously, there had been no legal distinction for domestic violence within the general category of violent crime. If this new law passes, punishment for a first offense of poboi will be softened to a 30,000 rouble fine (around US$500), community service or a 15-day detention. If incidents by the same perpetrator occur within one year, however, those will still be treated as criminal cases.

More significantly, all domestic violence cases will now be prosecuted in the private realm. This means that the responsibility for gathering evidence and bringing forward a case will fall on the victim. Before, law enforcement bodies could initiate persecution of a crime. The argument for the new law, though, claims that violence within the family is a private matter and should be handled accordingly. In practice this will make it even more difficult for a woman to escape a violent situation and to get her abuser behind bars. In addition to the more arduous process, the emotional stress for a woman to gather evidence and bring forward a case against a family member will be a powerful deterrent. This part of the legislation more than any other will keep victims from finding safety and achieving justice.

The circles of hell: gender and politics in Russia

The bureaucratic environment in Russia already makes it infamously difficult to bring forward domestic violence cases. “It’s the circles of hell, it goes on and on,” said one woman who tried and failed to bring her prosecutor to justice. Another domestic violence victim, Marina called the police when her husband threw her out of a second-floor balcony, putting her in a wheelchair with multiple serious injuries. Instead of arresting the husband, they told her, “It is your family matter; you quarrel and then you reconcile.”

Accurate statistics are hard to obtain, but according to official statistics, around 40% of violent crime in Russia occurs within the family, and 80% of violence against Russian women comes from a husband or partner. The actual figures are even higher, given that the statistics came from the Russian government and are most likely underreported. And the problem is growing: according to the Anna Centre for the Prevention of Violence, there were 20% more reported assaults on women and children in 2015 than in 2010. But fewer than 30% of women who call the Anna Centre’s abuse hotline report their case to the authorities. And of those who did, 80% remained unsatisfied with the response.

If he beats you, it means he loves you: a sexist tradition  

This phenomenon reflects a long-standing cultural tradition revived in today’s reactionary Russia. An old proverb goes, “If he beats you, it means he loves you.” The saying has survived for centuries, tracing back to a household manual called Domostroy, which first appeared in the 16th century during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Secular but permeated with Christian Orthodox morality, the text presents physical punishment for women and children as a “mere blessing” that prevents “death of the soul.” In addition to teaching new wives on how to manage their servants and distill their vodka, Domostroy instructs young Russian women to obey their husbands and know their place. When my mother married, my grandmother gave her a copy.

Though the book is dated and few today take its advice seriously, this attitude towards women is alive and well in modern Russian society, guarded by the Orthodox Church. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Church holds huge social and political influence in Russia. It supports the new law as a means to keep the government from interfering with a husband’s or parent’s so-called right to administer discipline; according to scripture and tradition, “the reasonable and loving use of physical punishment [is]an essential part of the rights given to parents by God himself.”

According to gender rights activist Alyona Popova, “traditional, or rather archaic, values have become popular again.” Activists and high-profile celebrities have been increasingly speaking out against domestic violence, but the response is often that the women “were asking for it with frivolous behavior,” or “knew who they were marrying and should have known better.’” Such attitudes reflect a culture of victim-blaming, in which both men and women often see crimes against women, including domestic violence and sexual assault, as something the woman invites and therefore can prevent.

Part of this return to traditionalism can be understood as a reaction to the communist state’s overbearing control of all aspects of citizens’ lives. Russians today are understandably wary of laws that grant the corrupt state access to their private sphere. People prefer to sort out their affairs themselves, since calling the police usually just means inviting more trouble into their homes, a sad reality carried over from the Soviet era. The rationale for the new legislation clearly reflects this fear. ‘The family is a delicate environment where people should sort things out themselves,’ argued Maria Mamikonyan, head of the All-Russian Parents Resistance movement, a group that lobbied for decriminalization.

A long road ahead

Though the new legislation will certainly not bode well for women’s rights in Russia, the issue has been oversimplified in Western media to two clear-cut and opposing sides: the corrupt and repressive Russian government granting free reign to abusers on one side, activists fighting for women’s rights on the other. In fact, not all Russian women oppose the legislation, not even in the activist community. Marina, the domestic abuse victim quoted above, agreed that ‘the law must distinguish between slaps and beatings,’ with only more violent cases like hers treated as criminal offenses. Others have brought up the possibility that with a less harsh punishment in place for minor offenses, women will be more willing to report violence without fear that their partner will end up in jail.

This is not a very strong argument, but the reluctance of some Russian women to punish their partners and abusers reflects a deeply ingrained cultural acceptance of violence in the family. In a Moscow Times article, Daria Litvinova collected testimonies about domestic violence from NGO workers and ordinary Russian citizens. According to Anna Centre’s Larisa Ponarina, relatives often disown women who report domestic violence because “keeping the family together and standing behind the father of her children is more important.” Even more appalling, the following is an account from an anonymous Moscow resident who often hears the neighbors fighting and calls the police: “the wife, with bruises all over her face, shouts at the officers, saying it is none of their – or my – business. Once they tried to arrest the husband, and she went in fists first.”

As we can see, while strong legislation is key, domestic violence in Russia begins and ends with cultural attitudes. As long as the mainstream mentality accepts a threshold for permissible domestic violence, women will continue to suffer everyday abuse. It wouldn’t matter much if the official punishment for domestic violence remained two years of jail time; police and lawyers still often ignore and refuse to prosecute the few cases that women attempt to bring forward. In a society where identifying as a feminist is a radical admission, women will continue to “bear the violence silently, hide bruisings from public and blame themselves.” In a country where domestic violence does not exist legally or in the minds of most people, it will remain a sad fact of everyday life for thousands of women.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

The post Delusion and Denial: Gender and Domestic Violence in Russia appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

It is no secret that our aggressive consumption behavior causes pollution and climate change, but we rarely think of our clothing as a main culprit. Actually, 10% of global carbon emissions come from textiles, the second largest polluting industry in the world. There are two causes for apparel’s huge environmental impact: the processes used to manufacture clothing, and growing over-consumption of clothing. Brands small and large are beginning to integrate more sustainable practices into global supply chains, but global civil society must be energized on the issue to bring about tangible change more quickly.

Processes that pollute

According to the World Bank, dying and treating textiles accounts for about 20% of all industrial water pollution in the world; only agriculture is responsible for more. This is partly because convention cotton farming relies largely on pesticides, creating runoff and contaminating water sources. Processing cotton for clothing also uses large volumes of water – 2700 liters per t-shirt – much of which is contaminated by toxic chemicals that cannot be filtered out. This renders the water permanently useless for human purposes, which is alarming considering that global fresh water usage doubles every 20 years. It is already projected that by 2025, one third of all people will live in drought-prone areas. We should be doing all we can to conserve this increasingly scarce resource, but as it is, something as integral to our lives as our clothing undermines conservation efforts.

Of course, in the West it is easy to overlook the realities of textile production when we do not directly witness its environmental harms. Much of it happens elsewhere, in developing regions of the world whose cheap labor allow them to become hubs for textile manufacturing. When the industry moves into a region, it brings new work opportunity, higher wages and a better quality of life, but not without costs.

Tirapur, India, is the perfect example of textile manufacturing success story turned ecological disaster. In 2002, the US government began investing heavily in Indian textiles. Much of the money went toward a pipeline to bring clean water from the Noyyal River to the Tirapur region, sparking a boom in textile manufacturing there. While this boom brought new employment and, somewhat ironically, access to clean water for the local population, manufacturing also polluted the water heavily. Tirapur’s farmland has become unusable from the toxic chemicals in the water used for irrigation, and an estimated 30% of locals suffered from symptoms of waterborne disease. This is hardly surprising, considering that each day, 23 million gallons of wastewater poured into the Noyyal River. When Tirapur’s dam was flushed in the mid-2000s, locals found 400 tons of dead fish at the bottom.

Such accounts are sobering for those who believe in globalization and free trade as the path to global economic development and poverty reduction. Because of intense demand for cheap clothing, the choice to enforce strict labor and environmental regulations often means losing investment inflows for a developing country. At the root of the issue, then, lies Western appetite for fast fashion: the incessant need to update our wardrobes on the ever-more-quickly changing whims of fashion trends.

Fast fashion

According to Pamela Ellsworth, chairwoman of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Global Fashion Management Program, the main responsibility for the perpetuation of environmentally damaging practices lies with Western consumers. People demand low priced fashion but also expect corporate responsibility, but the truth of the matter is that it is nearly impossible for companies to minimize pollution, pay fair wages at each stage of production and still sell $15 t-shirts. “Eventually we are going to have to train consumers in the US to pay more for clothing,” Ellsworth said. “It can’t be the only commodity that gets cheaper every year.”

Currently, more than 150 billion garments are produced globally each year, more than 20 new pieces of clothing per person. Of course, these disproportionately fall into Western closets, suggesting that the average Westerner purchases far more than 20 new garments per. Americans alone are guilty of throwing away, on average, 70lbs of clothing per person annually. This points to an attitude that clothing is seasonal and disposable – which it is, when prices stay low enough to regularly throw out and replace garments.

This attitude is fueled by the corporate trend toward fast fashion. Once upon a time, the fashion world operated on four seasons, but the industry is accelerating rapidly. Now, retail giants like Zara, Adidas and H&M put out new styles as often as 15 times per year. To sustain this frenzied pace, 97% of America’s clothing is manufactured abroad (as of 2015), compared with only 5% in 1960. And even though clothing prices fall each year, fast fashion companies continue to grow and regularly rake in the industry’s highest profits.

Even despite rising awareness of the environmental and ethical issues of fast fashions, those brands continue raking in profits while companies founded on values of sustainability struggle to compete (Patagonia is a notable exception). For instance, American Apparel and Nasty Gal have both recently filed for bankruptcy. Though not to minimize the multifaceted nature of their demise, it is worth noting that both brands kept most of their production in the US. This meant offering styles and quality comparable to clothing that consumers could buy at retailers like Zara and H&M for a fraction of the price. Speaking to the Observer, Edward Hertzman, apparel and textile supply chain expert, summed up the depressing conclusion here: though most will not admit it, companies constantly face “intense pressure from their clients to lower the price,” making investing in sustainability or ethical practices impractical if not impossible.

Not only do consumers want their clothes cheap, but they also want them now. In 2015, more and more companies adopted fast-fashion business models, fashioning themselves in Zara’s image to emulate the success of the biggest fashion retailer in the world. Retailers like Spanish brand Mango focus on “speed and immediacy” to please consumers who view fashion as another instant and ephemeral form of entertainment. Together, the demand for cheap prices and immediacy perpetuate the fast fashion industry and its unsustainable practices.

Not so fast: possible solutions to a rising catastrophe

The most obvious solution to the problems posed by fast fashion is for consumers to change their behavior: support sustainable and ethical brands, buy fewer garments and keep or donate them instead of throwing old clothes away. This is easier said than done; despite rising trends toward sustainable and second-hand fashion, the vast majority of shoppers prefer lower prices. And as long as cheap, disposable fashion remains available, consumers have no economic incentive to change their behavior.

Instead of waiting for their customers to adopt more environmentally conscious values, multinational corporations have the power to make more immediate change. Many have already taken steps toward sustainability; for instance, H&M allows customers to bring in used clothing to be recycled into new garments to meet the company’s goal of “zero garments going to landfill.” Brands like the Reformation are helping make sustainability cool by providing “killer clothes that don’t kill the environment.” Even Adidas recently released a shoe made from recycled ocean plastic, though at a retail price of $220, it is unlikely to become a brand staple. Rather, it represents a symbolic gesture towards sustainability that Adidas and its consumers can flaunt while avoiding making any fundamental changes to their supply chain. This exemplifies a caveat of sustainability efforts by fast fashion giants: more often than not, they are merely publicity stunts, a drop in the bucket compared to the company’s entire ecological footprint.

The environmental catastrophe of the textile industry is a textbook example of the negative ramifications of unchecked global capitalism; if we wait for market forces to push for more sustainability, change will be slow and the consequences dire. We can argue about where the moral responsibility lies, but the fact remains that both consumers and multinationals have proven themselves unwilling to spark change on a macro level.

The best bet for progress would involve governance on national and international levels. On the domestic level, governments can impose more stringent labor and environmental regulations on imports, allowed for in the WTO. In terms of global governance, however, the WTO promotes free trade as a means to sustainable development, though as we have seen the evidence shows that this is not always the case.

Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements also provide an opportunity to strengthen environmental governance, but more often free trade agreements (FTAs) have the opposite effect. Most recently, both the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TTP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) proposed to expand investment rules that allow corporations to sue host governments in private trade tribunals when they feel cheated of profit by domestic rules or regulations. Already, multinationals have great power to levy such complaints, and tend to win lawsuits. This then reduces countries’ ability to create and enforce strong environmental protections, especially small, developing countries.

Already environmental standards in developing countries, home to the majority of textile production, are weak and often overlooked. However, the blame rests with the countries that import their garments, not with poor countries made to choose between allowing in the textile industry and turning down a chance at growth and development. In fact, while developed countries used to be the main instigators of trade protection in the textile industry, today developing countries are more proactive in pushing for them. This reflects shifting motives for trade protection, from anti-dumping to environmental and labor protection.

A 2009 World Bank report notes that social and environmental regulations are emerging as more important barriers to trade than ever before and recommends more action in this sphere. However, no Western government wants to put in place protections that will deprive its citizens of cheap imported clothing. Most existing regulations refer to labeling but do not actually set guidelines for which products can or cannot enter into the country, nor do they govern corporations’ practices abroad. As such, current moves toward sustainability and fair trade in the industry originate from the corporations themselves, but as discussed, it is difficult to pursue these goals without compromising profitability.

The current situation is a classic chicken and egg dilemma, but with three players: global civil society, textile and apparel multinationals, and domestic governments. If any one of these actors drastically shifted its approach, the others would follow. However, one of these must make the first leap toward rectifying the social and environmental disaster of clothing, but none wants to make the first move before gaining the others’ support. The issue is clear, but not the way forward.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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Brazil is in the third year of its worst recession ever. Three years after a severe financial crisis, the political and economic future of the former Latin American powerhouse looks highly uncertain. There are signs of tentative recovery, but underlying structural and political challenges remain. On the brighter side, the current slump is so severe policymakers are finally committing to sweeping reform. However, economic reform can only achieve lasting, transformative effects when combined with an overhaul of the very broken political system. This daunting task means weeding out the rampant corruption embedded deep in Brazilian political culture.

Commodity Boom and Fiscal Irresponsibility

The recession began with a crash in oil prices in 2014, but a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal in state-owned oil company Petrobras exacerbated the crisis. Since its independence from Portugal in 1822, Brazil has relied heavily on raw material exports, even after the industrialization of the second half of the twentieth century. And this too has been sliding. As late as 2014 manufactures made up only 34.8% of Brazilian exports, down from 58.4% in 2000.^[1] Meanwhile, over half of Brazilian exports in 2015 were raw commodities, most notably oil. As Chinese demand for commodities grew, the industry and services sectors shrank, contracting 6.2% and 2.7% respectively in 2016. Such an economic profile left Brazil vulnerable to dramatic, unpredictable fluctuation in global commodity prices.

In 2003, the Brazilian economy took off after several years of sluggish recovery from an exchange rate meltdown in 1998-1999.^[2] The cause of this dramatic revival: global commodity prices were booming as China’s GDP grew at a dizzying 9-10% annually. As the economy grew, China’s demand for resources did as well.^[3] Brazil’s sales of soybeans, minerals and oil to China skyrocketed, driving economic growth. In a further stroke of luck, Brazil discovered major offshore oil reserves just as global oil prices were skyrocketing. Brazil was lauded as one of the region’s most promising economies (BRICS) and attracted large investment inflows from China and around the world.

During the economic boom period of 2003-2013, President Lula’s policies brought about great social advances. In the five years after he took office, poverty fell from 12% to 4.8% as 20 million Brazilians benefitted from initiatives like cash transfers to the poor (Bolsa Familia), aid to small farmers and reforms of pensions and labor policy. These impressive results garnered widespread admiration for Lula, who left office in 2013 with an approval rating surpassing 80%. Brazil became the gold standard of progress in the region. Unfortunately, Lula’s programs were only successful as long as export surplus and foreign investment could bring in continuous inflows of cash. Since the economic downturn, much of this social progress has reversed; poverty and unemployment rates slowly creep up as the interim government implements austerity.

Lula’s policies boosted the economy and living standards in the short term, but problems arise when governments forgo fiscal soundness to achieve easy growth. Take the global financial crisis of 2008: Brazil implemented a countercyclical^[4] approach to stave off recession but failed to reinvest trade income to boost economic diversification and efficiency. Instead, large amounts of cash went to politically popular social spending – handouts that helped people in the short term but did little for long-term economic wellbeing. In the words of Senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue Peter Hakim, “the Lula administration could not resist the temptation to spend freely in the boom years and not save for harder times.”

Unfortunately, what goes up must come down. Around 2013, global commodity prices began to drop toward their pre-2003 levels; declining revenues killed growth even as the budget structure remained unchanged.

To curb rising inflation and unemployment and avoid a deficit crisis, then-President Dilma Rousseff would have been wise to opt for austerity from the first warning signs disaster. Instead, Rousseff’s government haphazardly tried to spend its way out of recession but lacked the expertise to execute an effective stimulus. By cutting extensive subsidy programs for corporations, pension programs for the population and the generally out-of-control government payroll, Brazil might have avoided its bleak situation of 2015: debt rating degraded, inflation at its highest since 2003. Not surprisingly, the population’s confidence in its leadership and optimism for its economic future was at depressingly low rates.

The Politics of the Crash: Petrobras and Beyond

Of course, it is impossible to discuss the Brazilian economic crisis without delving into the Petrobras scandal; the two are inextricably linked.

Without strong institutions or a political culture of transparency, economic boom times enable reform backsliding.^[5] A positive balance of payments can easily provide a cover for corruption as political elites skim the top off government revenue. In a period when the population is growing more prosperous, there is little pressure to call out such corruption, so it often goes undetected and unpunished. For this reason, it was Rousseff who suffered indictment while Lula remains a beloved national figure even though he was directly implicated in Brazil’s huge government corruption scandal.

The Petrobras scandal is a textbook example of the sociopolitical consequences of the resource curse. The 60% state-held oil firm accounted for over 10% of Brazil’s GDP, which points to the huge of role oil and commodities in the economy and the extent of government involvement.  After a 2007 discovery of major offshore oil reserves, Petrobras promised to lead Brazil into a new era of economic prosperity.^[6] Then, the scandal broke. In 2014, evidence surfaced that over many years, Brazilian elites had made off with billions of US dollars of bribes, money laundering and rogue contracts.^[7] Since Petrobras was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the corruption could not be brushed under the rug but had to be investigated by US and international regulatory authorities.

Killing investor confidence and public morale, the Petrobras affair undoubtedly contributed to Brazil’s economic woes. But in a way, it also comes as a blessing in disguise. At best the scandal presents an opportunity for Brazilian politicians to weed out corruption once and for all; only when strong and transparent institutions develop can economic reform have lasting impact.

Interim president Michel Temer’s economic reforms rightfully include austerity and deregulation to create a more business-friendly regulatory environment (Brazil currently ranks pathetically low at 116 of 189 economies on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index). Even more promising, he has installed qualified economic officials in key roles who have already begun to nudge Brazil back onto a growth path. Unfortunately, the administration has been less effective in weeding out corruption. As of now, criminal charges plague many of Brazil’s most elite politicians and an alarming proportion of Congress. According to Transparencia Brasil, an independent watchdog agency, nearly 60% of senators and lower house deputies have been investigated or convicted of a crime at some point in their careers. In fact, Temer himself has been implicated in the Petrobras scandal.

These discouraging facts point to the challenges that lie ahead for Brazil. As long as a culture of corruption exists, economic reform can only be temporary. According to USC professor and political economist Carol Wise, “the current political crisis is so deep that it will impede economic reform until Brazil undertakes political reform.” Otherwise, as soon as the next cycle of economic growth hits, elites will revert to their well-worn path of least resistance, abandoning reform for personal enrichment when public pressure for change subsides.

As Hakim has pointed out, the current recession could have been prevented had either Lula or Rousseff “invested more in reforming various outmoded policies and institutions, including counterproductive labor laws, unwieldy tax codes, complex business regulations, poor education and many other roadblocks to innovation and higher productivity.” Now, their successor in the 2018 elections will have the chance to make these changes, provided they have the ability, motivation and opportunity to do so. The Brazilian electorate must recognize the changes needed and choose the political candidates committed to making them. This requires a collective understanding that while corruption benefits many in the short term, ultimately, developing sound institutions will boost the country’s prosperity and stability. Only then can financial crises like this be avoided, or at least mitigated.

^{[1] Carol Wise, Dragonomics:The Rise of China in Latin America, Yale University Press, forthcoming 2017, pg. 46.
[2] Wise 27.
[3] Wise 27.
[4] Economic policies that run counter to boom and bust cycles: reducing spending and raising taxes in a boom period, and (in this case) increasing spending and cutting taxes during a recession to stimulate growth. In contrast, a procyclical policy involves spending more and taxing less in a boom and vice versa. Economists often debate the pros and cons of each approach.
[5] Stanford political science professor Terry Karl frames this phenomenon as an institutional side of the resource curse that often afflicts “petro-states” like Brazil: “commodity-led growth induces changes in prevailing notions of property rights, the relative power of interest groups and organizations, and the role and character of the state vis-à-vis the market.” Wise 30.
[6] Wise 31.
[7] Wise 31.}

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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The end of European integration?

While today we often take the close friendship between European nations for granted, in reality it is an astonishing feat considering the region’s bloody history. Only since World War II have European leaders begun to view each other as allies by virtue of shared heritage and values, rather than enemies vying for influence and territory. The foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950 set Europe on a trajectory of increasing unity, exemplified by the Common Market and later the European Union. Removing trade barriers between countries was instrumental in allowing Europe to rebuild after the destruction of the war and sustain impressive growth for decades: in the second half of the twentieth century, GDP per capita tripled while average hours worked fell by a third as goods, services, money and people moved freely throughout the continent. Beyond the tangible economic measures, such increasing interconnectedness no doubt contributed to preserving the longest stretch of peace in European history.  

Because the image of a tolerant, peacekeeping and socialist-leaning Europe has grown so entrenched, it is easy to forget this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Far from a permanent fixture, these values reflect an ideology specific to a time in history, one that is on the decline in Europe today. The Brexit vote reflects a public opinion shift away from internationalism, not just in Britain but to varying degrees across the continent.  According to recent surveys, favorable views of the EU have dropped in each of the seven EU countries surveyed since 2004; in Greece, France, Spain and the UK, a higher percentage of respondents expressed a negative attitude toward the EU over a positive one. While part of this discontent can be attributed to dissatisfaction over the EU’s handling of issues like the economic and migrant crises, it is also importantly indicative of a general questioning of the necessity of such a close union between European countries – whether the EU actually helps Europeans address today’s most pressing problems.

Some dissatisfaction with the EU can be attributed to economic issues, especially in countries on the receiving end of the EU’s controversial monetary policy and forced austerity after the Eurozone financial crises. Greece unsurprisingly has the highest rate of disapproval of EU economic policy (92%), though wealthier economies like Germany also harbor discontent over being forced to finance bailout after bailout to keep the euro healthy. Such realities call into question the trade and currency integration that are the foundation for the EU: while the Common Market has no doubt bolstered the post-war European economy, backlash against the financial obligations of EU membership formed part of the driving force of Brexit. Despite the fact that the British economy has no doubt taken a hit in the aftermath of the ‘Leave’ vote, the decision nonetheless shows Europeans feeling more burdened than bolstered by economic integration, and beginning to envision a future outside of the Common Market.

Beyond economics, much discontent with the EU links to social tensions. Again, Eurasia Group’s 2016 prediction holds true: “a combination of inequality, refugees, terrorism, and grassroots political pressures pose a fundamental challenge to [EU] principles.” With an overwhelming majority of Europeans unhappy with the EU’s handling of refugees, many question the freedom of movement policy central to the EU model. A recent Pew Global poll reveals that collectively, Europeans view ISIL as their single greatest threat, a fear obviously related to the string of terrorist attacks linked to the radical Islamist group over the past several years. But instead of turning to the EU as a resource of collective defense, many believe that the solution lies in strengthening national borders; in most countries polled, the majority agreed that accepting more refugees will increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks at home.

This view tends to translate into isolationist, anti-EU sentiment. In most countries, the majority favors some return of power to national governments and maintains that countries should deal with their own problems before helping others with theirs. In the words of Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group, the emerging “closed Europe” is one that “closes itself to the outside world, and whose countries close themselves up to one another.”

This opinion is most prevalent among self-identified conservatives; in the majority of countries surveyed, those who identify politically with the left were significantly more likely to support the EU than right-wing respondents, linking anti-EU sentiment to rising tides of nationalism and  populist politics. From France’s Front National to the Alternative for Germany, many European countries are experiencing recent electoral revivals of far-right parties (detailed visual breakdown here) while the center-left, the traditional stronghold of European politicians, undergoes a decline. Not surprisingly, problems with immigration and terrorism bring out xenophobic tendencies in populations and thus empower nationalistic, reactionary candidates promising to restore safety through the reestablishment the integrity of the nation.  

One might imagine fear of the ‘other’ would inspire European unity, especially given the common view that Islamist terrorism represents an attack on the entirety of Western culture. Moreover, it seems clear from the outside that ISIL can only be defeated by a concerted European – and global – effort; it is futile for individual nations to fight a group which indiscriminately hates the West. But as Brexit has illustrated, the impulse to withdraw, isolate and draw up protective barriers proves stronger than this logic.

Walls and trade deals: US presidential elections

On the other side of the Atlantic, isolationist sentiment proves just as strong a force in the upcoming US presidential elections. As in Europe, economics and immigration constitute two central issues in the campaign: according to a recent poll, the economy and terrorism are the two topics most widely considered “very important” by 84% and 80% of voters, respectively.

Both the Democratic and Republican nominees have denounced a free trade deal with China as part of their platform, reflecting overwhelming American anxiety about the effects of economic globalization on domestic jobs and prosperity. Even Clinton, an avid supporter of the TPP in the past, has admitted she understands “a lot of Americans have concerns about our trade agreements” and adjusted her platform accordingly. Meanwhile Trump has declared that globalization moves “our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas.” Even democratic runner-up candidate Bernie Sanders spoke out against opening the US further to global trade.

Such a harmony of opinion on a major issue across parties is remarkable, not least because, despite increasing volatility and competition in some industries, free trade has a wealth-generating effect on economies. Most economists agree that openness to trade in conjunction with smart policy that protects the negatively impacted is the soundest path for growth in today’s globalized economy. A recent US complaint against Chinese export taxes in the WTO illustrates the crucial role that free trade plays in economic prosperity; because key US industries rely on imports of Chinese raw materials, they lobby hard for duty-free imports to remain competitive.

The near-universal backlash against globalization does not represent a logical solution to economic hardship; economies are too far gone down this path to make turning back a viable option. Rather, it is as an emotional response to a perception that free trade brings predatory competition and benefits big business at the expense of the so-called average American worker. Trump especially serves up globalization as the scapegoat for America’s economic hardships in the same way that he pins social issues on immigration. His loud call for a wall to protect the border is a crude representation of Americans’ greatest fears surrounding race, religion and terrorism, making this opinion impossible to ignore. His proposition to ban all Muslims from entering the country shows that xenophobic fears are on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic.  

The verdict on isolationism: understandable but ultimately futile

For better or worse, from European explorers to American imperialism, the West has championed the ascent of globalization. Today, however, attitudes are shifting as Europeans and Americans alike increasingly embrace isolationism as a solution to their economic troubles and security fears. In a world characterized by the ever-heightening volatility of global markets and rising hysteria over ISIL and radical terrorism, it is hardly shocking that more and more people seek protection within their own borders.

Unfortunately, shutting our eyes and borders to the outside world will not resolve any of our ever-growing array of crises. Eventually, this approach will fall through and we will be forced to address problems that only intensify the longer we push them away. Reactionary isolationism will not provide any lasting solutions, just a temporary respite.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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Rooted in emotion and ideology, opposition to charter cities is reactionary and misplaced. People living in the world’s poorest, most politically dysfunctional countries have far less to lose from an unsuccessful implementation of this avant-garde development strategy than they could gain from its success: economic growth that translates into rising living standards and expanded opportunities. And yet, successful charter city projects must take into account potential pitfalls and criticisms to ensure that opponents’ fears aren’t realized.  Economists and government officials who hope to establish charter cities within their borders must brand and implement them in a way that reassures hesitant policymakers and citizens that they mean to promote development and fight poverty, not undermine democracy or invite exploitation.

Renowned economist Paul Romer first developed the idea of a charter city as a way to promote good governance and development to finally eradicate poverty around the world. He christened his vision the “Startup City,” a “city-scale reform zone where a startup city could emerge.” In practice it meant selecting a piece of open land, creating completely new laws and institutions, then allowing citizens to move there at will. Romer’s vision also had foreign, developed governments or even multinational corporations providing funding, expertise and governance. In this way, the charter city hopes to solve entrenched issues with the political institutions of the host country in one sweep, without having to institute painstakingly slow and cumbersome reform that vested interests or corrupt officials will go out of their way to block.

A key element of Romer’s proposal is the stipulation that citizens of the country ceding the territory are free to opt in or out of living in the city, which justifies the establishment of new laws without going through traditional democratic channels. No coercion is involved, so “you can propose something new without having to go through a long process of consultation and agreement amongst the people that might be affected by a change.” This crucial detail then allows poor governments to circumvent a huge barrier to reform: in a broken system, all of the parts need fixing at once, making it difficult to decide where to begin.

As it is, many governments find themselves in a tangle of chicken-and-egg dilemmas – situations in which one structural inadequacy must be addressed to solve another, so none are ever resolved. For instance, imagine a country that wants to fix its poor education system, but can’t because its teachers are constantly striking. The government lacks the capacity to collect taxes efficiently, so it cannot adequately pay its teachers, nor its police. Without a legitimate police force, crime is rampant and the tax code can’t be enforced. A poorly educated populace and high crime rate deter foreign investment and economic development; the country remains in poverty. Romer argues that by establishing an independently governed charter city within its borders, this country could resolve all of these issues as once. It’s easier to build new institutions than to fix old broken ones. If all goes well, the new laws and institutions of the charter city will then spill over into the rest of the society, uplifting the entire country.

The spillover effect, one of the main mechanisms through which charter cities are predicted to boost economic growth, is already a well-documented phenomenon in global business. In the charter context the term refers to the way the new city will stimulate economic activity in surrounding areas by demanding labor, food and raw materials and offering an open, business-friendly environment in close geographical proximity.

And yet, this great advantage of the charter city also implies its main criticism: if not the national government, who’s in charge? Activist groups and citizens alike question the legitimacy of a project that arbitrarily sets up new, sometimes unconstitutional laws within a nation’s borders. The issue of sovereignty becomes especially problematic in light of Romer’s suggestion that poor countries invite wealthy, developed nations like the US or EU members to provide the governance structures and law enforcement in charter cities. At this point, it is plain to see why many denounce the charter city as a disingenuous strategy to perpetuate neocolonial north-south exploitation.

Certainly, the concept of Western rule on foreign territory invokes the ghost of colonialism, still a very sensitive and relevant memory in many countries’ national psyche. And yet, for the economic experiment to succeed it is necessary that charter cities be governed by some entity outside of the state to lend credibility to the institutions and ensure reliable enforcement, be it a foreign nation or a private entity. The city will only be successful in attracting the foreign investment necessary to stimulate economic growth if companies have reason to believe that their contracts will be honored and their interests protected; if the country’s own government were able to successfully foster the political and legal climate to create a hospitable investing environment, the charter city would not be necessary to begin with.

One of the few attempts to build a startup city came in 2011 when Octavio Sanchez Barrientos, Chief of Staff to the Honduran President, discovered Romer’s idea and set out to implement it in his country. The project came far enough that the Honduran legislature passed a constitutional amendment allowing for the establishment of “special development regions” that would have an autonomous political and legal framework, though intertwined with the Honduran government. Judges were to be nominated by city authorities but approved by a two-thirds vote in the Honduran legislature, and likewise Honduran lawmakers had to ratify all city laws.

Instead of following Romer’s vision of inviting foreign governments to provide governance, Honduras attempted to establish a “transparency committee” made up of disinterested specialists who could oversee the appointment of governors, supervise their rule and guard against corruption (Romer served as chair; members included economists, investors, think tank owners and Nobel laureates). In the words of Sanchez, “It is easier to create a board of trustees than to give control of part of your territory to a foreign nation.”

But even without explicit foreign governance, after Honduras first voted to approve the initiative an outcry ensued from a broad range of groups, from Honduran citizens to Latin American solidarity and California Bay Area groups to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Opponents denounced the initiative as “anti-democratic land grabbing and repression” instituted “under the guise of poverty reduction,” and “devoid of democratic structures.” It is true that democracy was meant to enter only gradually into Honduran charter cities. The transparency commission planned to oversee governance until it deemed the citizens ready to elect representatives.

Though valid, such criticisms weigh the vague ideal of democracy higher than tangible human welfare. The reasoning behind the initial suspension of democracy seeks to rectify governance issues that plague Honduras and similar countries – for the charter city to be successful, the best laws and practices must be laid down from the outset, and it is easier and safer to let a highly educated and experienced committee of economic experts to discern and implement these than to leave governance to the whims of the public. Though today it is taboo to doubt the unfaltering wisdom of majority rule, history provides ample cases of charismatic leaders who take advantage of popular support to govern corruptly and unjustly. To enable prosperity and development, pure democracy may not be the safest route, at least initially.

Romer sidesteps the issue of democracy by pointing to the complete freedom of each individual to choose whether to move to the charter city. Even if they lack representation in government, citizens implicitly agree to the laws of the city – its charter – when they elect to move there. In this way, Romer distinguishes his vision from colonially ruled cities of the past: “At every stage, there’s an absolute commitment to freedom of choice on the part of the societies and the individuals who are involved.”

But getting the general public to accept such a view is challenging to say the least, and constitutes the greatest roadblock to the Honduran charter cities though they were never, as an Al Jazeera opinion piece put it, “blatantly colonial”: Honduras deliberately chose to eschew Romer’s suggestion of inviting foreign, rich countries to govern.

Instead of foreign governments or Honduras’ failed board of trustees structure, future projects may look to international organizations like the World Bank or the United Nations to provide personnel for public services like schools, police forces and courts, and to preside over legal matters.

Alternatively, private corporations can take an active role in city governance. Songdo, a new South Korean planned city is also the world’s largest private real estate project. Real estate firm Gale International and domestic conglomerate POSCO Construction and Engineering have majority ownership and control over the city, with the South Korean government only providing public goods like schools and hospitals. To attract investment, the government copied Asian free trade zones like Pusan and Shenzhen in implementing very lax land and labor regulations and generous tax laws. Economically prosperous and sustainably designed, Songdo provides a model for a successful startup city, even if it is not technically independent from the South Korean government.

Even if the world were to embrace the idea of the charter city, there is of course no guarantee that this initiative would be an unqualified success. Even the charter city’s ideological founder and greatest advocate concedes that the idea has its limitations. “Just as many startup firms will fail, we should assume that many startup cities will fail too,” Romer admitted in an interview. But he continued to put into perspective the possible risks of the endeavor: “This is still worth doing because the cost of many failures is very small compared to the benefits offered by even one success.” After decades of largely fruitless attempts by well-meaning organizations like the World Bank to discover the panacea for poverty, development needs a radical new approach.

Countries and economists should set aside their ideological attachment to Western-style governance and colonial memory to take a chance on the charter city – at best, the world could find itself one step closer to eradicating poverty.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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At the time of the writing of this article, world population was nearing 7,304,020,300. In just about 200 years, this figure increased sevenfold from one billion; during the twentieth century alone, it ballooned from 1.5 to 6.1 billion. To understand the reason for such drastic growth, let’s review the basics of the demographic transition model, a key concept in population theory.

In the late 1700s, death rates began falling in countries with medical and technological advancements. During the industrial revolution, people became more and more likely to survive childhood and reproduce. Before, populations had been held largely stable throughout human history by high birth rates and high death rates, but when mortality rates fall and birth rates remain constant, the population skyrockets. In later phases of the model, birth rates fall to the level of death rates and the population stabilizes once more, though at a much higher number. While developed countries have already passed through the stages of this model, most of today’s world lives in the intermediate stages of demographic transition, the largest countries still undergoing rapid population growth.

Population growth in itself is not a negative phenomenon—a growing number of young people means a larger labor force for a country, which can facilitate economic growth. The problems arise when populations verge on exhausting the earth’s resources, many of which are finite or impossible to replenish quickly enough to support 11.2 billion people, the current 2100 projection. With most carrying capacity estimates ranging from 9-10 billion – for a predominantly vegetarian population – these figures should arouse some concern.

Increasing consumption destroys ecosystems and causes every sort of ecological disaster, from biodiversity loss to deforestation, pollution and climate change. In the words of Thomas Johansson, Director of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Energy and Atmosphere Programme, “Ecosystems provide essential services like climate control and nutrient recycling that we cannot replace at any reasonable price,” meaning that our civilizations rely on the very resources we currently deplete.

Typically seen as a vice of the developed world, overconsumption in less developed countries also plays a role in environmental degradation. When there are too many people for available resources to sustain, poverty ensues, and impoverished people often have no choice but to destroy their environment in order to survive. Take Nigeria, for instance: last August, the Chairman of the National Populace Committee, Eze Duruiheoma, revealed that his country’s existing infrastructure, food supply and level of economic opportunity could no longer support an exponentially growing population. He even linked population demographics to national security challenges like “militancy in the Niger Delta, Boko Haram, conflicts between farmers, among others.”

It’s clear that dramatic population growth can breed instability, becoming an underlying cause of many of today’s violent conflicts. There is a common consensus that a large, discontented young population limited by a lack of economic prospects can easily fall prey to radicalization. Acknowledging that “young, disenfranchised people” are a main target for terrorist groups’ recruitment strategies, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged for “education” and “engagement on the global level” to prevent violent extremism among the world’s youth in a 2015 Security Council debate on the topic.

Council members acknowledged “push” and “pull” factors that made young people easy targets for terrorist groups – “poverty, marginalization and unemployment” and “desires for financial gain, protection and solidarity” – and put forth constructive suggestions for countering terrorist groups’ appeal with alternate messages.

But there remained a huge elephant in the room that no one would touch, the underlying cause that created such an environment in the first place: rapid population growth that exceeds carrying capacity.

While it is imperative to craft creative, global solutions within the world’s current framework, we must not shy away from taking a stance on population growth that isn’t as PR-friendly for the UN as advocating for the “unleashing of young people’s energy and idealism.” The fact remains that the longer the world’s population keeps increasing, especially in poor countries straining to sustain themselves, the more prone the world will remain to violent conflict.

To preserve our planet and human life as we know it, the global community must take swift and sweeping measures to bring population growth under control, but we need not resort to unpopular and inhumane measures. The best way to lower birthrates, demonstrated again and again, is to give women full control of their reproductive rights through education and access to family planning. Unfortunately, this seemingly simple solution is often complicated in practice. In many cases, deep-seated cultural or religious factors stand in the way, but even in countries where these are most deeply entrenched, reducing fertility rates is feasible with a bit of creative thinking. In the words of Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau, “It took the US 200 years to go from seven babies per family to two. Bangladesh has done that in 20. Iran has more than halved its fertility rate in a decade.”

For decades, Iran has experienced a remarkably quick demographic transition as fertility rates have dropped to replacement level or below, the phenomena spread evenly across age groups and rural and urban environments. According to a UN analysis, Iran’s 1980s family planning program experienced such success due to the congruency between government policies such as “rural development, health improvement, and the rise of literacy” and sociocultural trends. Iran’s example demonstrates that by investing in related aspects of their citizens’ welfare, like education for girls, a reliable and accessible healthcare and even transport and communications can indirectly help curb population growth.

Women’s education in particular has remarkable potential to transform a country. A 2001 study of Iran concluded that access to higher education not only sways women’s fertility choices to later childbearing and smaller families, but also proclaimed that “Iranian women with rising expectations are an accelerating force of development in Iran.”

All evidence demonstrates that when women control their own reproduction, birthrates drop while health and quality of life improve for both mother and child. If governments and international regimes like the UN could swallow their discomfort with addressing overpopulation and champion humane, effective measures for halting population growth, there is no doubt that we would see an alleviation of poverty, and in turn, violent conflict. But most importantly, we’d certainly ensure a greater quality of life for generations of humans to come.   

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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Decades into the so-called war on drugs and the situation has yet to improve in any significant way. Though usage rates of arguably more addicting and lethal substances like heroin and other opiates have dropped and leveled off, cocaine shows no signs of going out of vogue. Beyond its harmful side effects, cocaine trafficking perpetuates the destabilization of entire regions, impedes good governance and supports terrorist activity around the world. As such, no country can afford to focus merely on fighting cocaine production, trafficking or use at home; the international community must cooperate in innovative ways to address an issue that entangles much of the globe.

According to an April 2011 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the value of the European cocaine market ($33 billion) now approaches that of the US ($37 billion), when a decade ago it was a mere quarter of the American market. Most of these new users are young; in almost every European country in which the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has collected data, a higher percentage of young adults (15-34) have used cocaine in their lifetime than of the total adult population (15-64). While Western European countries dominate these categories – the United Kingdom ranking first with 4.2% of young adults having tried the drug – the figures jump across the board for surveys of the school-going population. While the UK still tops the charts with 5%, Eastern European countries with negligible usage in the total adult population have comparably high data listed among school-goers. In Latvia, Bulgaria and Cyprus, 4% school attendees have reportedly done cocaine in their lifetimes, while among the adult population this figure is only 0.4%, 1.2% and 0.3% respectively.

These figures suggest that cocaine is enjoying a revival among the youth of Europe and that governmental efforts to crack down on use have been largely ineffective. With demand showing no signs of dropping, the cocaine trade will continue to thrive, its effects reaching beyond Europe and other consumer destinations.

The majority of cocaine enters the European market through Spain, where it is shipped mainly in small, local vessels coming from coastal cities in Northern and Western African countries. Tripoli, a coastal city in Libya, is the point of departure for most of the cocaine destined for Europe, according to an anonymous Nigerien trafficker interviewed by a Vice news team. To arrive there, the drugs must first pass through overland routes from African port cities like Lagos, Nigeria, Monrovia, Liberia and Dakar, Senegal, where they arrive from well-known and established Latin American cartels—many operating in Columbia and Venezuela.

There is a remarkable amount of governmental complicity in illicit trafficking. In Guinea Bissau, for instance, both the former Army Chief of Staff (Antonio Indjai) and the former Navy Chief of Staff (Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto) have been charged with involvement in drug trafficking activity.

Several years ago, US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) members posed as members of Colombian guerilla terrorist group FARC to secure Indjai’s consent to use Guinea Bissau’s international airport for shipping cocaine into Europe. According to DEA special agent Louis Milione, Indjai offered to arrange transport into Europe. In Niger as well, “the government and the drug traffickers are working together,” according to the anonymous Nigerien trafficker. “Do not bother with Niger’s government,” he told Vice, dismissing questions of whether he worried about government intervention with a laugh. Either too weak to control criminal activity or in search of personal gain, many governments allow traffickers to operate within their borders, which directly undermines the state’s policing legitimacy.

Beyond overtly engendering violence and disorder, cocaine trafficking also props up terrorist organizations. According to the DEA, of the 59 identified terrorist organizations, 22 have known ties to the drug trade, though this number could in reality be higher. In Mali, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) allows cocaine traffickers to pass through territories the group occupies in exchange for payment; this then allows AQIM to better fund its operations and recruit new members. This vicious, self-perpetuating cycle holds true for other terrorist and jihadist groups, from Movement for Oneness and Jihad (MUJAO) in Mali to Hamas in the Gaza strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Milione refers to the collaboration between South American cartels like FARC and terrorist groups as a “marriage of convenience.” Traffickers need a route by which to transport their in-demand product to European markets, while terrorists and jihadists need cash inflow to support their operations. In this case, different criminal activities blend into one another; a large portion of terrorist attacks, such as the March 2004 bombing in Madrid, have likely been funded by drug money. In fact, the Madrid bombers even used drugs as a currency in commissioning the attacks.

At a recent conference in Istanbul – “The Role of Drug Trafficking in Promoting and Financing Today’s Global Terrorism” – UNODC Senior Terrorism Prevention Officer Irka Kuleshnyk expressed concern about the scale of cooperation between traffickers and terrorists: “While it is difficult to establish how widely terrorist groups are involved in the illicit drug trade, or the breadth and nature of cooperation between these two criminal groups, the magnitude of the numbers involved make the relationship worrisome.” Estimates vary as to the extent that cocaine profits find their way into terrorist organizations, but if even a small percentage of the yearly $2 billion of cocaine exported from just one Latin American country went to terrorist activity, it would be enough to fund significant criminal acts.

Beyond contributing to terrorism abroad, the cocaine trade’s support of terrorists undermines good governance at home. Allowing these criminal groups to control territory and enforce their own laws prevents the legitimate government from establishing authority within its own borders. Moreover, when illicit trade dominates a country’s economy through corrupt exchanges, a country cannot allocate the funds necessary to develop vital infrastructure.

Though by no means a new phenomenon or particular to the regions of West Africa or Latin America, the revival of cocaine trafficking to Europe has exacerbated this issue. Senior fellow for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution, Vanda Felbab-Brown, remarked that West Africa “has been characterized by a variety of illicit economies and their deep integration into the political arrangements and frameworks of the countries in the region” for decades.

Unfortunately, cocaine trafficking and weak, unstable governments perpetuate one another. It is difficult to know whether it is more effective to attack the cocaine trade in an effort to facilitate governmental stability or to directly promote strong governance in hopes that it will also eradicate the cocaine trade and other criminal activity. But with European demand on the rise, trafficking through Latin America and West Africa will continue to rise to meet it. Nor is it enough for any country, whether responsible for production, transport or consumption of cocaine, to fight crime within its own borders. While consumer countries like Europe and the US could and should take steps to minimize demand, the past decades have shown that the war on drugs cannot be won through such efforts alone. Stronger international cooperation is essential, as well as providing resources and intelligence to countries that lack the capabilities to fight trafficking alone. Given the trade’s global reach, the problem requires a global solution integrating all affected actors.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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The recent terrorist attacks in Paris have shocked and outraged the French, Europeans and people all over the world. Undoubtedly, the tragedy will have a heavy impact on Western countries’ foreign policy in the Middle East. But perhaps less obvious is the profound effects it might have on the domestic political scene in France and across Europe. Terrorism inherently evokes a country’s preoccupation with securing its borders; but taken to too far, extreme nationalistic attitudes can spill into xenophobia. France has already seen a rise in the popularity of extreme right nationalistic parties, a phenomenon correlated to escalating ethnic and religious tensions, controversy over immigration and an overall concern with the effects of cultural mixing. As radical Islamism inspires fear in the population with horrific acts of terrorism, a more nationalistic, reactionary France may emerge.

Founded in 1972 as the French manifestation of the European neofascist movement, the Front National (FN) party has always supported nationalism and controls on immigration, stances that often earned it criticism for “fostering xenophobia and anti-Semitism.” Though the party’s popularity rose and fell throughout the last decades of the century, FN has been firmly held as a fringe group; “it placed itself in opposition to virtually the entirety of the political mainstream,” which in France already encompassed the ideologically extreme French Communist Party. FN’s polemic image was largely maintained by the controversial nature of its longtime leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Some of his public comments downplaying the Holocaust have stirred widespread criticism, not to mention a three-month suspended sentence and a Euro 10,000 fine imposed by French courts in 2005 for violation of France’s Holocaust denial statue.

But since Le Pen’s daughter Marine Le Pen took over party leadership in 2011, the National Front has undergone a reinvention. Distancing herself from her father’s radical image, Le Pen has striven to “recast the FN as a credible alternative to France’s major mainstream parties” with considerable success. FN’s performance improved steadily between the 2011 cantonal elections, the 2012 presidential elections – in the first round Le Pen finished third behind Sarkozy and socialist Hollande – and the 2014 local elections. Just last year, FN had a record performance in the May 2015 elections for European Parliament representatives; the party captured around a quarter of the popular vote, finishing first overall.

Having shed its former image as a stigmatized fringe group, the FN has now solidified its position as a legitimate, mainstream party in French politics. The facility of this transformation stems from Le Pen’s masterful leadership, manifested in her ability to capitalize on growing trends in the French populace and rebrand her party to cater to the anxieties of the French. For instance, FN appeals to a growing sector of the French population who see the European Union as an economic hindrance rather than a mutually beneficial institution, especially in light of recent economic stagnation and widespread unemployment. In her support of economic protectionism, Le Pen “has been masterful in channeling French fears of being swallowed by a hostile world.”

In addition to utilizing growing opposition to the free-market, liberal economics associated with the current political regime and seen as damaging to France’s working class, Le Pen has proven adept at harnessing growing concern about immigration and terrorism. Having “detoxified” the FN’s former image as a “dubious protest party of xenophobes, anti-Semites and die-hard fascists,” she is able to present nationalistic rhetoric and policy as legitimate and even necessary to protect France in light of recent terrorist attacks. By cleansing the FN of its former anti-Semitism, Le Pen has shifted the party’s focus to speaking out against the preferred scapegoat of the day: Muslim immigrants.  

In a news conference following the Paris attacks, Le Pen came out with a strong public statement: “We are living the horror… yesterday evening the centre of France was struck by exceptional barbarity. It was an escalation of Islamist terrorism and the sixth time this year that Islamists have attacked our country.” Such a statement is hard to dispute in light of the facts: indeed, France has seen an unprecedented number of terrorist attacks in 2015 attributed to extreme Islamic fundamentalists.

But the last attack differs from previous ones like Charlie Hebdo and the shooting at a kosher supermarket, not only in scale but also in the intended target. Prior attacks were aimed at particular people: journalists seen as deriding Islam, or specifically French Jews. But the November 13 attacks were indiscriminate in their violence against French citizens, rendering it a symbolic attack against all of France. As such, it is not difficult to imagine that more and more French citizens will tune into Le Pen’s rhetoric when she deems it “essential that France recover the control of its national borders, once and for all.” Such assertions resonate all the more loudly considering that the suspected mastermind of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was an IS militant who spent time living in Syria and Belgium and entered the EU posing as a refugee.

Le Pen is more primed than ever for a 2017 presidential bid. According to a recent poll conducted by the Institu français d’opinion publique (IFOP), she holds the lead in three different scenarios. Asking participants which candidate they would be most likely to vote for if the presidential election were tomorrow, the poll found that Le Pen would come in first with 28% of the popular vote if competing against centrist Francois Bayrou and centre-right Nicolas Sarkozy. Though such polls can often be misleading and should not be taken too literally, these results nonetheless reveal Le Pen’s current popularity with the French electorate.

These findings also force one to imaging what a France led by Le Pen would look like. Certainly the FN would be placed in a better position than ever to influence domestic policy on immigration; just last week, she proclaimed that “France must ban Islamist organizations, close radical mosques, and kick out foreigners who are preaching hatred on our soil, as well as illegal immigrants who have nothing to do here.” One can safely assume that entering France as a Muslim immigrant – or a refugee – would become much more difficult, and that even immigrants already living in France would face increasing discrimination.

In terms of foreign policy, Le Pen has been less outspoken, but one can speculate about the effect that a FN-dominated France might have on Europe and the world at large. Given the Eurosceptic identity of the FN, France could distance itself from the EU, which would seriously undercut the institution’s potential for coordinated action and its overall economic and military efficacy. As one of its largest members, France is a top contributor of money and resources to EU causes and holds a disproportionate sway in European decision-making. Le Pen’s protectionism has the potential to undermine EU economic integration—the single, defining characteristic of today’s Europe. Her emphasis on border protection would also contradict one of the EU’s flagship policies: the freedom of movement. In short, a France governed by the FN has the potential to reshape the character of Europe. Le Pen’s newfound popularity threatens a reversal of the region’s decade-long progression toward an identity as a liberal and open zone of free-flowing money, people and ideas, designed for the benefit of all its members.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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