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Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are illustrating that the unrest spreading across the Middle East will not happen the same way in any two places, nor are all authoritarian countries equally susceptible.
Writing in the Washington Post, Scott Wilson offers a hint at why Saudi Arabia has remained largely quiet:
The aging monarchy of Saudi Arabia, home to roughly a fifth of the world’s proven oil reserves, governs a population where many are influenced by the most extreme interpretation of Islam, one hostile to Western culture. The cosmopolitan Saudi elite fear the majority and have accepted the Sauds as an alternative to a more severe Islamist government. How the octogenarian leadership would weather a popular uprising is unclear.
In other words, the kind of cosmopolitan, educated elite who were crucial to the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt may know that instability, and perhaps even democracy, would not bode well for them or their values. Wilson implies that they see the Saudi government as a force tamping down the retrograde inclinations of the country’s populace, and that a (post-)Saudi democracy might be even more repressive, because that is what the populace might want.
The Saudi rulers also have enough money that they can prevent the level of poverty that have helped bring people to the streets in many countries.
As for Bahrain, Vali Nasr tweeted today, “Bahrain protest is existential threat to Sunni monarchy and minority rule. Regime will react much more harshly than Mubarak.”
Nasr is identifying a key variable: whether a country is ruled by a minority — Syria with its Alawis is an example — that would have much to lose in a democracy.
Bahrain is dominated by a Sunni minority. Unlike in Egypt, where the ruling partly might plausibly win an election in a few years, democracy in Bahrain likely means defeat: the Sunnis could plausibly foresee being shut out of power for years, even decades. They might even be subjected to economic reprisal as the Shia majority use government to divert resources and opportunities to themselves.
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Image courtesy NASA
The Washington Post has a handy tool for calculating when China’s economy becomes the world’s largest.
The short answer is: not very long from now.
- If China grows rapidly, its economy is largest by 2025 EVEN IF the US grows at an improbably fast 4%.
- If China slows to 7%, and the US grows at 4%, it is only put off an additional 17 years, till 2042.
- In what seems most plausible, the US reverts to its long-term average (2.5%), and China slows to 7%, yielding 2032.
| US RATE |
China fast (11%) |
China current (10%) |
China slower (7%) |
| US fast (4%) |
2025 |
2027 |
2042 |
| US current (3%) |
2022 |
2024 |
2034 |
| US long-term (2.5%) |
2022 |
2023 |
2032 |
These scenarios are not inevitable, of course: economic disaster scenarios for both countries are accumulating. They seem more likely for China, and range from social instability to the “middle-income trap,” in which China’s growth strategy stalls at a midpoint on the development ladder.
Some patterns are emerging from the Middle East unrest that began in Tunisia.
This chart combines three factors that seem relevant:
Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, and Yemen are highly similar when plotted against these variables.
- They all have a “5″ level of civil liberties, as assigned by Freedom House; this might be characterized as medium-bad.
- While their income levels vary, they have similar poor levels of economic freedom, characteristic of the state-heavy Arab approach. This chart reflects a multiplier effect for higher levels of economic freedom.
Is it predictive? Where countries end up on the plot may reflect these factors:
- Countries too far to the right on civil liberties — at 6/7 levels — may be too repressive for people power to succeed. Thus, Iran already had its Egypt moment (for now), but it was suppressed. This will be tested as people attempt to demonstrate in Syria.
- Countries too high on the chart may be purchasing stability with wealth (and economic openness). Poverty is absent as a driver, and more of the population is effectively middle class. (Though note Bahrain, which cannot be called truly stable.)
- Countries to the left on civil liberties may be offering enough room to prevent a buildup. Morocco — which is hardly free — may be the test of that.
This is a roundup of some of the fast-accumulating forecasts for Egypt and the Middle East, particularly those taking a longer view (including some of my own).
General
- Threats to US interests — “Were demonstrations to spread in a big way to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, a catastrophe could be looming. A more enlightened, pro-American regime than the one now in Jordan is hard to imagine. As for the Saudi royal family, it is probably the worst possible form of government for that country except for any other that might credibly replace it. (Robert D. Kaplan, Foreign Policy, 1/28/11)
- Relations with the US — “Any freely elected govt will want to distance itself from U.S policies.” (Shadi Hamid, The Atlantic, 1/25/11)
- The Gulf — The Gulf states are relatively safe from unrest. (Michael Binyon, Al Jazeera English, 1/28/11)
- Diversity of outcomes — Even if protesters were going into these protests intending the same outcomes (and they aren’t), the outcomes will be different. A relatively secular, middle-class nation like Tunisia will emerge drastically different from a crisis than a place like Yemen. Look to Eastern Europe in 1989, which yielded everything from rapid democratization in Czechoslovakia to a murky power transfer in Romania. (Future Atlas)
- “Normalized” politics — “Whatever the outcome of these uprisings, it seems clear that Arabs and their new leaders will be focused for years to come on the imperfections within their own societies — perhaps to a greater degree than on injustices committed by Israel and the West abroad. …. Politics may thus become normalized in the Arab world, rather than radicalized.” (Robert D. Kaplan, Foreign Policy, 1/28/11)
Economics
- Jobs and poverty — The demands of so many protesters around the region — jobs and food — may be internally at odds. Statism in the Middle East suppresses growth and entrepreneurship, but also provides the region a lower level of abject poverty. Freeing up the economies of the region could provide opportunity but could cause poverty and inequality to spike. (Future Atlas)
- The Chinese model — For the portion of the protesters who are motivated by economic opportunity and prosperity above all, the “Chinese model” — authoritarianism with freewheeling capitalism — could look good. (Future Atlas)
Israeli-Arab issues
- Israel — Democratic Arab states will tend to be less friendly to Israel than many current regimes, as long as the peace process is frozen. While the occupation continues, peacemaking will tend to be viewed as collaboration. (Future Atlas)
- The peace process — “Prolonged crisis in Egypt will hurt Palestinian-Israel peace process, not clear what following Mubarak may mean for peace process either.” (Vali Nasr, 1/29/11)
Egypt
- Limited unity — “Once Mubarak goes, the open source movement will evaporate — after that, divergent motivations repeatedly fork the movement.” (John Robb, 1/30/11)
- Uncertain outcomes — “The ideology and composition of protesters can wind up having very little to do with the political forces that end up in power.” (Stratfor, 1/29/11)
- Islamists — “The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt functions to a significant extent as a community self-help organization and may not necessarily try to hijack the uprising to the extent as happened in Iran.” (Robert D. Kaplan, Foreign Policy, 1/28/11)
- Getting the army to stand down — “Militaries don’t leave politics easily. Even after Mubarak goes there could still be a battle to get military to leave politics.” (Vali Nasr, 1/30/11) “If the military’s senior leaders decide that Mubarak’s ouster and a subsequent democratic transition would unacceptably risk reducing the military’s political and cultural power, they will be more likely to defend the regime.” (Michael Wahid Hanna, The Atlantic, 1/29/11)
- Military vested interests — The Egyptian military may not look favorably on a more open and equitable economic system, as it has its own business interests, established to help invest it in the status quo. (Future Atlas)
- End of Mubarak — “Until Mubarak finally does leave, the unrest in the streets is unlikely to subside, raising the question of just how much more delay from Mubarak the armed forces will tolerate.” (Stratfor, 1/29/11) Mubarak will fall and the army will take over. (Mike Murphy, “Meet the Press,” 1/30/11)
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Image copyright FutureAtlas.com — usable with attribution and link. Fire background courtesy Dave Hogg (Flickr).
In a recent piece in The New Yorker article, writer Rohinton Mistry mentions growing up in India in the 20th century, “raised to believe that this ancient country was futureless, the only solution to settle in the West, to make a better life.”
This raises a basic question: how do people come to believe they are or are not the future? This belief is central to civilizational confidence, and to a society’s momentum, but it is hardly universal.
The present is here, it is just unequally distributed
People do not even necessarily believe that their societies are in the present, a prerequisite for believing one is the future. It is common to hear people in developing countries say, “We want to be a normal country, we want to join the present.” They have an active sense of dyschronicity: that there is a progression toward a future, and they are further from it than others.
And some cultures may feel shut out of the present. This is a political issue in some societies. In Latin America, for instance, over the last few decades indigenous peoples emerging from quasi-colonial treatment explicitly demand to be considered part of the present, not relics of the past.
Battling for the past
To believe one’s way is the future, it is helpful to believe that you are the culmination of the past. This is a strength of many religions, including state Marxism as practiced in the 20th century.
The American right grasps this concept, incidentally, and is working hard to redefine the American past, sometimes straining historical realities in the process.
China seems to be working through this redefinition now too. In its new narrative, China is not the formerly oppressed vanguard of the Third World—its story for a while—but the global leader for millennia, now emerging from a temporary (150-year) bad patch. (You don’t have to pick a real past to go back to. Some groups that see themselves as the future seek to go back to a past that never was: the glorious rule of the Caliphate, or a free America without government.)
Losing faith
A society can lose its belief in its own place in the future. That happened gradually to the Soviet Union, as its faith-based Marxism was gradually proven to be inferior to other systems, until Gorbachev came along and announced that not even the leadership believed any more.
There is a sense that this is happening in the United States now, that the American narrative is faltering. This is implicit in comments that many Americans make about the Chinese: “They just want it more” and the like. And it seems to underlie the seeming inability to contemplate — or fund — any large projects.
It is unclear whether this is a bigger loss of faith than other periodic doubts, but it is a departure from the normal narrative. From de Tocqueville on, Americans and others typically assumed that America was destined for greatness.
The “American exceptionalism” argument is partly about this: if you are the anointed leader, you must be the future. And in the past, the sense of exceptionalism was in no small sense based on reality: America was the future in so many areas: we had levels of democracy, electrification, car ownership, college education, etc. that other countries would not reach for years.
That reality is gone in almost every area, from health care to Internet speed to political dynamics. Perhaps it is time to find some new ways to be exceptional, to be the future?
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Image: The Wandering Angel (Flickr)
Journalists often write lazy articles compiling forecasts that have not come to pass, attributing them to futurists. Real futurists always respond, “Futurists don’t make predictions!”
That is true: the goal of futurism is not to make predictions. In any case, the mockery-inducing forecasts are usually by non-futurists. (Defensive futurists might also note that other sort-of-respected professions such as economics differ from futurism chiefly by getting things wrong much faster than futurists do.)
Still, the truth is that real futurists, people who get called futurists, and people who could be called futurists make forecasts that sound a great deal like predictions all the time.
You can go after these forecasts cheaply and sloppily, as the media often does, but they can also be approached as genuinely useful tools in diagnosing the quality of someone’s thinking. Forecast accuracy can help illuminate three things:
- Subject knowledge: If the person is making a forecast about a topic, this is fair game, even if many futurists concentrate on process, not content. Accuracy can help reveal whether they know enough about a topic to work effectively in the area — and whether they understand the limitations of their knowledge.
- Perceptions of change: A basic futurist skill is having a feel for change: how fast or slow change tends to go, and the plausible bounds of that speed, in different arenas and systems. Incorrect forecasts are often due to a failure in this critical area.
- Systems thinking: Forecast failures often reveal inadequate systems thinking, another basic futures competency. The person may not have understood the driver or actors in the system, or might have failed to anticipate a discontinuity.
Forecast accuracy should be used judiciously and carefully, but it can be a meaningful yardstick.
Image courtesy Ckaroli (Flickr)
In November 2008, prominent peak oil advocate Jim Kunstler said in a New Yorker article that the airline industry as we know it would not exist in two years.
The two years are up. It is fair to say that this forecast has not come to pass. Broadly speaking, the same companies fly the same routes at the same prices as they did two years ago. There have been changes, including consolidation, but massive change has not occurred.
Perhaps Kunstler would argue that the system was saved by the Great Recession, which artificially masked oil shortages by suppressing demand, but he seems to have stated his forecast pretty firmly.
This is worth noting as a data point in evaluating peak oil theory, at least at its more dire fringe. (Checking in on old predictions can be a dubious practice, but it can also be a useful diagnostic tool–more about that here.)
Image copyright Futureatlas.com — usable with link and attribution
The Washington Post covered China’s rising scientific prowess today, revealing both impressive gains and some weak spots.
China is steadily accumulating bragging points:
- China has the world’s second-fastest supercomputer.
- China has gone from 14th place in 1995 in publications in scientific and technical journals to 2nd now, behind the US.
- A Chinese institute made the largest-ever purchase of high-tech genome-sequencing machines, and with them “could very well surpass the entire gene-sequencing output of the United States.”
- More Chinese researchers are being lured back to their homeland after training in the US (raising issues around the risks and rewards of hosting so many Chinese students).
Chinese weaknesses are apparent too:
- Government bureaucrats “mandate discoveries,” completely missing the nature of innovation (and likely promoting shoddy work).
- China engages in huge amounts of junk science–the articles cites dubious stem cell therapies–and junk patents.
- Plagiarism and doctored results are commonplace — which should give Western researchers, especially those in health and pharma, pause.
Perhaps most interesting are indications that Chinese researchers are less constrained by ethical concerns than Western scientists. One Chinese geneticist mentioned in the article is studying the genomes of his most adept peers in school, comparing them to “normal kids.” If something is too controversial for the West — cloning, human enhancement, or genetic interventions, for instance — it could well end up happening in China.
The Washington Post reports that Confucianism is enjoying a revival in China, propelled both by state promotion and popular enthusiasm.
The Party, Andrew Higgins suggests, sees the philosophy as a counter to Westernization, but it is not without danger to existing power structures, as it requires rulers to be virtuous and benevolent. Still, Confucianism could fill a philosophical vacuum that the last 40 years has left in China, and provide a map for changing relationships between the government and the people.
It could also be a means that China enhances it now-weak soft power, which currently is based on little more than pragmatic utility: development that can appeal to the masses, and legitimized authoritarianism which many elites might like to emulate.
A successful, Confucian China would have real ideas to offer to much of the developing world. Large portions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America would benefit from a Confucian social contract, in which elites have strong obligations to the populace. Even without Western democracy, that would be vastly different approach from the predatory practices of many states today.
Domestically, the relationship of China’s rulers and ruled will have to evolve as well. A Chinese executive in this article suggests why: “For the past 30 years, China has constantly stressed the economy, not culture, philosophy, and reflection,” he said. “But after you reach a certain economic level, you can start to think.”
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Image of Confucius courtesy Ivan Walsh (Flickr)
The powered armored battlesuit is a staple of science fiction, and is getting increasing attention from real militaries. They are the future of warfare in Friedman’s The Next 100 Years. But how close are they to reality? The science fiction site Io9 has broken down the capabilities of the battlesuit in “Iron Man,” and how much it would cost to replicate (sort of) such a suit. Their breakdown:
- Exoskeleton — $10 million
- Head-up display — $54 million
- Portable power source — $36 million
- Jet packs — $400,000
- Wearable computers — $20,000
- TOTAL: $100 million
Io9 correctly notes that this is roughly the cost of an F35 fighter plane. Given that such a suit has capabilities much greater than such a fighter plane, why aren’t we making them? Because we can’t.
- Power: We don’t have anything that can generate anything like the output of Iron Man’s power pack, so the suit would be far weaker than the movie version.
- Flight: Because of the power problem, a flying suit could not fly long or far.
- Armor: Today’s exoskeletons are not armored. Even if we could build a powerful suit, it could not stand up against even small-arms fire, much less cannons and missiles. And the more we armor present-day exoskeletons, the slower and clumsier they’d be.
On the positive side, one could build a highly capable head-up display for a fraction of $54 million, so the battlesuit wearer would be able to see which insurgent with a $200 AK-47 knockoff was going to take him down.
The power and armor problems are not insurmountable, but a battlesuit that is fast, agile, powerful, and armored still seems to be decades away.
(Image courtesy BobbyProm, Flickr)