Archive for May, 2006
The June 2006 Scientific American notes the 50th anniversary of the resignation of Trofim Lysenko from his position overseeing the Soviet Union’s agricultural science.
Lysenko famously set back Soviet science by rejecting Mendelian genetics — the science of genetics — in favor of the idea that organisms could acquire characteristics during their lifetimes, as the latter was seen as more compatible with Soviet Marxism and its pursuit of the new human.
Real damage was done; Soviet farms apparently did not even plant ideologically incorrect hybrid corn until Lysenko was out of the way.
Holden Thorpe points out in “Evolution’s Bottom Line” in the NYT that creationists could do similar harm in the United States.
Creationism, he notes, has no commercial applications, while evolution does. An understanding of evolutionary relationships enables us to use animal genomes to study human health problems, and the knowledge that evolution continues equips us to fight deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Humans and bacteria share many genes, making antibacterial treatments trickier; Thorp suggests that most people would rather use antibiotics developed by someone who understood how this sharing came to be, rather than by a Biblical literalist ignorant of this relationship.
How will American students, and American competitiveness, fare when American kids are learning an ideologically distorted version of science, while Indians and Chinese students are learning the real thing, Thorp asks?
The Soviet Union suffered when ideologues suppressed science that disturbed their religious world view; the United States will suffer if the same thing occurs here.
Riots in the Azeri portion of Iran lend credence to scenarios of ethnic separatism.
A cartoon mocking the Turkic Azeris “set off some of the worst ethnic protests in northwestern Iran since the revolution in 1979.”
The NYT also notes that “other ethnic minorities, including Arabs, Kurds and Baluchis, have staged protests in the past year as political dissent in the nation has risen.”
Rebel factions are fighting each other in Darfur, and using some of the same tactics as Sudanese government forces, displacing and killing civilians.
The tactics of the rebels have grown so similar to those of their enemies that an attack on this dusty village on April 19 bore all the marks of the brutal assault that first forced its people to flee their homes three years ago. Soldiers in uniform, backed by men toting machine guns on camels, flooded the village, burning huts, shooting, looting and raping.
This is another piece of evidence that any intervention in Darfur would not be easy or quick.
- An international force will have no real partners in either the government or the rebels.
- For the foreseeable future, there will be no one to hand off to. Darfur under either Sudan’s central government or rebel groups would be subject at any time to a return to brutality, and rule by either is unlikely to be competent or gentle. The situation will be much more dire than in Bosnia or Kosovo, and those have already required international supervision for a decade.
Ultimately, real intervention in Darfur means long-term intervention. Anything short of another UN protectorate seems likely to demonstrate that the international community was never really serious about the situation.
Michael O’Hanlon at Brookings offers an unusual approach to the Darfur issue, one which could be applied to other humanitarian intervention situations: rapidly recruit and deploy a special American division specifically to deployment in Darfur — “a Peace Corps with guns — with individuals enlisting specifically for this purpose.”
Even if somehow this force proves unnecessary in Sudan – an unlikely proposition – there will be other conflicts for which such a force could prove very useful in the future. The notion is this: of all those well-intentioned and admirable Americans rallying to call attention to Darfur and demand action, ask for volunteers to join a genocide prevention division for two years.
The new unit would allow action without much additional strain on overstretched American forces, he argues, though some regular troops would be used to leaven the humanitarian division.
This concept would also address a primary problem of humanitarian intervention: risking lives for optional actions. Enlistees in such a force would have signed up for exactly that.
However, Winds of Change suggests some problems with the idea, and notes some similar proposals from the past.
The Washington Post reports on a growing problem in China: a fast-expanding college population is producing more graduates than the economy can absorb.
While it is a sign of China’s progress, and investment in education, that 4.1 Chinese will graduate from college this summer, only 1.6 million of them are expected to find suitable work.
Some suggest this could change the relative political complacency of the Chinese populace:
Chinese students have not shown much interest in opposing the government in recent years, content to enjoy their new opportunities. Large numbers of well-educated but jobless youth, however, could become a political problem for the Communist Party and its monopoly on power, some analysts have said. In effect, the government would not be honoring its end of a tacit compact in which the party justifies its political control by providing a steady increase in prosperity for China’s 1.3 billion people, particularly educated urbanites and their children.
Well aware of this issue, the government is taking measures to reduce the flow of students.
Writing in America Abroad, Ivo Daalder points out the problems with the new UN Human Rights Commission.
The central problem is a perennial one: human rights abusers end up on the commission. New members include Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan, Russia, and Cuba.
The ideal solution would some criteria for membership could be applied. Consider, for instance, the political rights rating from Freedom House. The problematic countries above are rated thus:
- Saudi Arabia — 7 (not free)
- Cuba — 7 (not free)
- China — 7 (not free)
- Pakistan — 6 (not free)
- Russia — 6 (not free)
If the countries with free and high partly free ratings (4 or less) were allowed to serve on a human rights body, they would still constitute a majority of countries, and would not include any of the worst violators.
It won’t happen of course, for any number of reasons:
- China and Russia would use their positions on the Security Council to block such a reform.
- Excluded countries and their friends would decry “cultural imperialism.”
- Many regions would be left with rather few representatives. For instance, the Middle East has only one “free” country — Israel — but it gets a “not free” rating (6, the same as Iran) in the areas it occupies, and would seemingly be excluded on that basis, leaving “partly free” Kuwait to represent everything from Morocco to Iran.
Imperfect mechanisms will have to do for now. Daalder concludes:
It may well be that the new requirement that the human rights activities of all UN members, starting with those elected to the council, be carefully examined provides an opportunity to prove this skeptic wrong. But first indications are hardly encouraging.
Der Spiegel examines Pakistan’s aspirations, saying that Musharraf
wants to fundamentally reposition Pakistan in South Asia and turn his country into a dominant regional power — a political and economic hub strategically positioned amongst India, China, Iran and the central Asian countries. To achieve his goals, Musharraf is looking for new allies. American priorities have essentially dominated Pakistan’s policies since the attacks of September 11, 2001. But instead of limiting himself to his current alliance with the United States and its “war on terror,” Musharraf is also reaching out to China, the superpower of the future.
But troubles in Baluchistan are potential obstacles:
Pakistan’s internal conflicts could soon attain international significance, if a plan to run South Asia’s two most important gas pipelines through Baluchistan in a few years comes to fruition. The agreement for the construction of the pipeline from Turkmenistan to the Arabian Sea, which would take it through both strife-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan, has already been signed. Negotiations are currently underway for a network linking Iran, India and Pakistan.
The Baluchi troubles directly interfere with the Gwadar port project:
The new Gwadar is already seen as strategically important today. At the site 80 kilometers (50 miles) east if the Iranian border, the Pakistanis are building a giant port which, unlike Karachi, would hardly be vulnerable to a naval blockade by archenemy India. The Chinese, for their part, want to use Gwadar as a base from which to keep an eye on the Americans in the Persian Gulf and the Indians in the Arabian Sea and, of course, to monitor both countries’ movements in the Indian Ocean. That’s why Washington and New Delhi view the cooperative venture between China and Pakistan as a serious provocation.
Two recent stories suggest that the rising powers of the world will find themselves with new roles and interests:
- Brazil and Bolivia, traditionally friendly and both led by leftists, got in a spat over Bolivian energy nationalism, which threatens Brazilian investments.
- Militants in Nigeria’s Niger Delta warned that they would target Chinese working to extract oil in their region.
Brazil and China thus find themselves cast in unfamiliar roles: status quo powers with an stake in the established system working smoothly, and accused bullies.
As their interests continue to diversify and globalize, Brazil, China, and other rising powers will find their traditional outlooks challenged. Simple verities like South-South solidarity and noninterference will no longer suffice, and new perspectives on many issues — trade rules and intellectual property are only the beginning — will be required.
A Google Maps-powered mash up depicts the effects of up to 14 meters of sea-level rise.
Users can select the region at different scales, choose 1 to 14 meters of rise, and see the results in map or satellite image form.
As expected, many regions — such as Florida, the Netherlands, and Bangladesh — do not do well in many scenarios.
Cuba is about to begin drilling for oil in the Florida Straits, with the help of Indian and Chinese companies.
This could have two effects on Cuba: