Cross-Culture

It could never happen in Norway

But it did. Norway is still in shock after the events of Friday 22 July 2011 - a date that will forever be remembered as a turning point in Norwegian history.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, Norway, with its nearly 5 million inhabitants, experienced its first terrorist attack. A car bomb exploded in the street outside the main government buildings in the centre of Oslo. The bomb was so big and the blast so powerful that it could be heard far outside the city. It destroyed nearby buildings and smashed hundreds of windows throughout the capital.

News about the explosion contained further information about a possible shooting on Utøya. There was some confusion to begin with as to whether the two episodes were related and at first the shooting was thought to be fireworks.

As the day wore on, a shocked Norwegian public tried to make sense of what was happening. There had indeed been shooting on Utøya and many had been killed. Utøya (literally “the outside island”) is about two hours drive from Oslo and is well known as the venue for the Labour Party's yearly summer youth camp.

Three hours after the explosion, Oslo was empty of all but police cars, ambulances, commando trucks and fire engines. With typical Norwegian efficiency a central command was immediately established on the largest town square. The sound of sirens continued throughout the evening and night, and the media confirmed that a man had been arrested on Utøya and charged for both crimes.

A native Norwegian man in his thirties admitted responsibility for the home-made bomb and for the massacre on Utøya. A right-wing extremist with strong anti-Islamic views, he blames the Norwegian Labour Party for allowing the immigration of Muslims to Norway and turning Norway into the multicultural society it is today. The attacks were aimed at destroying the Labour Party and killing its new recruits on Utøya.

Numbers of dead and injured were expected to increase during the night as rescue teams continued to search the government buildings and the island. Thankfully these were adjusted down the next day, but they were horrific. 8 people had been killed in the government buildings and 69, the youngest 14 years old, had been shot and killed on Utøya.

Oslo was a silent, mourning city on Saturday. Television stations sent continuous updates showing pictures taken immediately after the bomb exploded. Nearly all the shops were shut and the task of assessing the damage had begun. The normally busy city centre was empty and most of central Oslo had been fenced off as there was speculation about further undetonated bombs.

Ever the pragmatists, the Norwegians discussed positive aspects. For example, the government “high-rise building” or “Høyblokken” built in 1958 could, after all, be salvaged. The bomb had done extensive damage but the foundations were sound. Also, the majority of those who would normally be working in these buildings were on holiday - July is the main holiday month. In addition, the car containing the bomb had been parked over the extensive underground passages which connect the government buildings and this helped to absorb some of the blast.

By Monday morning carpenters and renovation teams had replaced broken windows with weatherboards and removed all the broken glass from the streets. They had been working all weekend - an amazing feat.

The first flowers and candles were already being placed outside the Cathedral in Oslo and as the days went by they filled more and more of the area around the church. Groups stood silently looking at the sea of flowers, many crying openly. This happened in towns all around the country. Very different Norwegians from the rather private people they are known to be. This somewhat Catholic tradition for showing public sorrow started when King Olav V died in January 1991 when the snow outside the Royal Palace was covered by candles and flowers.

Strangely, Norwegian flags were missing from the floral tributes. Norwegians are proud of their flag and exhibit a friendly and good-natured nationalism. The sorrow shown after the massacre was personal and the sense of bereavement transcended nationality.

This could be seen in the rose procession. 200,000 people each carrying a rose filled the streets of Oslo to express their support for a society that condemned terrorism, whoever was responsible. Norway has always defended her open society. Locked doors with codes and entrance cards are relatively new here. However, Norwegians are sceptical in spite of promises from the Prime Minister that there will be more openness in the future.

There has been much soul-searching in the aftermath of the terror. As would be expected of a society concerned with details and punctuality, the rescue operation on Utøya has been studied minute for minute. Could the police have been more efficient? Could more lives have been saved? What if, what if?

An immigrant was stopped in the street by reporters and asked for his comments. His reply was “My first thought when I heard about the bomb was 'I hope it is not one of ours' ”.

This is a sentiment that has been expressed by many Norwegians. They are thankful that the perpetrator was a so-called native. Norway struggles to integrate its immigrants like so many other nations and had one of them been responsible, this wonderful country would have looked very different today.

Flowers are still being laid outside the Cathedral and there are always roses on the fences around the government buildings. The heavy silence over Oslo has now lifted and voices and laughter can be heard again in the streets but it is going to take a very long time to get back to normal - whatever “normal” will mean in the future.

by Veronica Biong

The Glory that was Greece

The Greeks may currently owe us a lot; but our debt to the Greeks is immeasurable.

Small comfort to a country for which – according to Jeff Randall in a recent article in The Daily Telegraph – ‘there is no deus ex machina. The tragic dénouement will involve its default or withdrawal from the single currency, perhaps both.’

The deus ex machina, in classical drama, was the god who descended from the stage machinery, in order to intervene in human affairs and the phrase is generally used to mean a positive intervention, or rescue of the hero.

Randall’s whole article casts what is happening in Greece as a tragedy – which, of course, they invented, along with the foundations for Western philosophy, literature, mathematics, science, art, architecture etc. Greek intellectual achievements have been unparalleled in the history of the Western world, and they know it.

They also feel that we often fail to respect the source of our heritage enough. So the present humiliation must be all the more bitter for a justifiably proud people.

Starting with Minoan Crete, where there was evidence of settlement in 128,000 BC, real signs of civilization from 5,000 BC, and reaching a pinnacle with the city states of Sparta and Athens – which established the basis for Western civilization and liberal democracies – Greece really was the cradle of Europe.

No wonder that the Greek ideal inspired the Romantics – so much so that Lord Byron, the British poet, died (admittedly of a fever) fighting for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, into which it had been absorbed for hundreds of years. Independence was finally achieved in 1832 with the Treaty of Constantinople.

Some of the most famous lines written about Greece are in fact Byron’s:

‘The mountains look on Marathon/And Marathon looks on the sea/And musing there an hour alone/I dream’d that Greece might yet be free.’

Modern Greeks tend to see themselves as culturally-aware, eloquent, sophisticated Europeans, experienced in social and commercial matters, with strong intellectual powers, intuition and a sense of artistry.

Key values are reason, freedom, thrift (paradoxically in the current circumstances!), a love of the sea, theatre, rationalism, debate, close family ties, a talent for business (especially small entrepreneurism), democracy, and architecture.

They are a multi-active, dialogue-oriented culture, very tactile, putting lively human interaction above clock-time, and having been scientifically proven to have the strongest eye contact in Europe. Their style of communication tends to be verbose, theatrical and intense.

Yet their intellectual heritage has given them a strong rationalism to counter the emotion, rather like the French.

To deal with them effectively in business, you should really read up something on their illustrious history as the longer-term historical perspective is important for them and a source of great pride.

Other advice:

• Avoid discussion of Greece’s decline, historical and current
• Don’t mention the problems with Cyprus
• Avoid the topics of Serbia, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia
• Don’t praise the Turks too much
• Use some Greek
• Be prepared for long, roundabout discussion
• Let them get their emotions off their chest – they can use emotion as a weapon, so remain calm yet show compassion
• Be aware of differences in body language – a backward nod of the head means ‘no’. A tilt of the head to either side means ‘yes’
• Keep strong eye contact
• Identify the boss and address him or her directly. The boss can be extremely tough, in a paternalistic way, especially in more traditional businesses like shipping. Even nowadays, he may motivate his senior team by lining them up and slapping their faces to show them who is boss!
• Be flexible – they may well be flexible on agreements, so be prepared for them to propose modifications
• Be generous and friendly, but remain tough enough
• Even if they are in a weak position, preserve their dignity at all times
• Socialise (even till the late hours) and invest time in relationships
• Be aware they may try to charm you, so try to use your own charisma too
• Bow to their experience
• Understand that, in the end, they are pragmatic
• Above all, be aware of their shrewdness. It is probably their key defining characteristic. It is no coincidence that Odysseus, the best-known hero in Greek literature was primarily characterised for his cunning. It was he, after all, who came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse.

We began by referring to the current Greek tragedy, but does the word describe the current situation in the truest sense of the word? For instance, however sad it is, an accident is not a tragedy. A tragedy is a fall, usually ending in death, brought about by a fatal flaw in character of an otherwise great hero.

There is no doubt that Greece is a heroic nation, based on its intellectual achievements, but do those achievements contain a fatal flaw?

Probably the greatest philosophical contribution the Greeks made to the world was the idea that it is rational to strive for an ideal – whether that is at a personal or political level. The question then arises, as to what that ideal should be. At a political level, Plato’s Republic tries to build a picture of the ideal state, governed not as a democracy – maybe surprisingly – but by the ‘guardians’, who, to simplify it grossly, ‘know best.’

This idea of a Utopia has probably been the root cause of all the various ‘-isms’ that have eventually had to give way to more pragmatic forms of government.

Could it be that the European Union, with its bold single currency experiment, has pushed the ideal of an economically united Europe too far too soon?

If so, how ironic and how truly tragic, that Greece – the source of the idealism that made Europe great, and the concept of the EU possible – should be the first EU member state to bear the brunt of the harsh realities of real politik. The gods above Olympus must be shaking their heads at human hubris, or maybe giving a backward nod or two.

by Michael Gates

The English – in a class of their own

Cecily:  When I see a spade, I call it a spade.

Gwendolen:  I am glad to say I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

Oscar Wilde – The Importance of Being Earnest

It is fitting that one of the best-known examples of the English class system in action in literature should have been written by an Irishman.

For the English, ‘class’ is what Richard D. Lewis describes as a ‘cultural black hole’: an aspect of a culture so powerful that it sucks everything else in. The problem is that when you are in a black hole, it is hard to see clearly what is going on around you. An outsider may have a clearer perspective.

The current argument about social mobility that recently dominated the headlines in the UK goes to the heart of an inescapable part of understanding the English that is complex, and one of the biggest sources of both our angst and our humour.

When Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, declared that access to the most selective universities is too restricted to those from the most privileged backgrounds, and that internships at companies would in future have to be based on ‘what you know rather than who you know’, the reaction was fast and furious. One of the most cutting comments was from Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph. He remarked that Clegg ought to have known that the phrase should have been ‘whom you know.’ Clegg’s Dutch mother may have given him a certain scepticism about class segregation, but woe betide anyone who tries to do something logical about it. It is beyond logic.

One fatal error is to assume that class is based on wealth. That may be the case in the USA, but in England the self-made man or woman can never really escape his or her roots. And in many cases may not want to. Though class may still be an irritant. The richest person I know – a multi-, multi-millionaire by his mid-thirties – told me that his working-class background means that there are still people who ‘cut him dead’ socially. And I will never forget my first seminar at Oxford University, when a class-mate (in more ways than one) from Lancashire was asked to read out his brilliant essay on the Victorian poets Tennyson and Browning. One of the girls suddenly walked out and never came back. Afterwards she told us she ‘had to go and vomit, as she couldn’t stand listening to that Northern, working-class accent.’

Accents, and the words you use, are the first indicator of class. Even the way the word ‘class’ is pronounced is an immediate give-away. A short ‘a’ rather than a long one, and you are immediately relegated to the lower rankings.  Use the word ‘toilet’ rather than ‘lavatory’ or ‘loo’, as Kate Middleton’s mother apparently did, and you could nearly cost your daughter the throne.

This language question is a source of great anxiety to politicians. Harold Wilson, former Labour Prime Minister, was famous for his strong Yorkshire accent and his cunning. However, as a student and later teacher of politics at Oxford, he assumed a clipped upper middle-class pronunciation. You can’t blame him. At that time, he would have had difficulty getting his students to trust his intellect otherwise. But on moving into politics, he reverted to his Yorkshire vowels. There is no way Labour’s traditional voters would have trusted his beliefs if he hadn’t. I am sure that David Cameron’s ‘posh’ voice, and appearance (a small chin is considered a sign of the upper classes in England) are at least partly to blame for the Conservative Party’s poor showing in the North of England, resulting in a Coalition Government.

A sort of reverse snobbery has emerged in the past 20 years or so, with some politicians – no names mentioned – deliberately making their naturally polished tones sound more like the man on the street, especially the streets of Essex: a county whose accent has become synonymous with the median voter.

Tony Blair also got into hot water for trying to play to all classes in other ways. He was ridiculed for two consecutive interviews where he was asked what his favourite food was.  In his Sedgefield constituency (a traditional mining community in the North East of England), he answered ‘fish and chips’ and in a trendy area of London ‘pasta and sun-dried tomatoes’.

Observing which foods people eat is a sure-fire indicator of class. Fish and chips, sausages (bangers) and mashed potatoes, frozen food, etc. for the working-class; foreign food – especially Italian – for the middle-class, and bangers and mash and English ‘nursery food’ for the upper-class.

Which brings me to my final point that the working-class and upper-class tend to have far more in common with each other, as D.H. Lawrence frequently observed, than either of them does with the middle class.

As well as a preference for plain, English food, the working-class and upper-class tend to have similar interests in sports (rugby, horse-racing, sports involving dogs); cars (tend to be older, and they are not so fussy about keeping them clean) and in many other areas beyond the scope of this blog, but described well in social anthropologist Kate Fox’s book ‘Watching the English’.

Above all, both working and upper-classes seem to be easier in their own skins than the middle-classes, who tend to be pre-occupied with what others think about them. Though the middle-class is essential to progress and, as Aristotle recognised, the basis of a successful society:

‘The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate.’

If you are not English, you have the luxury of by-passing the class issue in your dealings with us. You are not part of a game which is even more complicated than cricket. Yet to understand us, it is still relevant and important to get beneath the surface of this English obsession with where people are from and whom they know, not just what they know. But please do it in secret, and never ever mention it!

I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet and satirist

by Michael Gates

Long before the No Fly Zone, the US hit Gaddafiland hard

‘Why consult the crystal ball when you can read the book?’ – Aneurin Bevan

The Anglo-French led air incursion over Libya is being presented in Europe as unprecedented. It isn’t. 15 April 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the American attack on Tripoli and Benghazi by a force of eighteen F‐111 bombers and twenty-eight KC10 and KC135 tankers from airbases in and around what then was the Suffolk constituency I represented in the British Parliament. The raid was a success in so far as it convinced Muammar Gaddafi to give up his reach for nuclear weapons and to reduce his support for terrorist bombing and assignations in Britain and the murder of Americans in the Middle East and Europe. The complex military details and subsequent political fallout have never been fully revealed but (studied in depth by a subsequent generation of USAF pilots and commanders) undoubtedly played a part in making the Pentagon reluctant to get involved in a contemporary No Fly Zone.

I was closely involved in the preparations for and political fallout from Operation El Dorado Canyon as the US attack was codenamed. Like the British and French air crews overflying Libya today, the Americans were under strict order to ‘avoid collateral damage’ – not to kill or injure civilians. That was why the 48th tactical air wing at Lakenheath in England was tasked to carry out the attack. Only its 493 squadron could deliver the air to surface television guided glide bomb (GBU‐15s) that could penetrate the Libyan defences and carefully selected military targets without inflicting casualties on the population of surrounding buildings.

The targets selected were Gaddafi’s own headquarters, located in a bunker under the Bab Al Azziziyeh barracks in the diplomatic sector of Tripoli and the Libyan Air Force’s facilities at Tripoli International Airport, where large numbers of Soviet‐supplied Ilyushin transports were stationed. A secondary target was the Sidi Bilal naval centre where, under Soviet supervision, the Libyans were training underwater demolition teams some of whom were believed to have taken part in the laying mines in the Red Sea that damaged ships transiting the Suez Canal.

On Tuesday 9 April President Reagan got Margaret Thatcher’s approval for the British bases to be used. The orders already had been typed by a senior clerk in the Pentagon, but no date and time was shown for commencement of the attack. The Secretary of the Air Force inserted these in long hand and moved them up 24 hours to ensure against leaks that might alert the Libyans. A four‐star general then carried the orders across the Atlantic by hand to Major General McInerney, Commander of the Third Air Force in Suffolk.

Only then did Tom McInerney learn that France and Spain had refused to allow US flights across their territory. This would add up to 2,400 miles and six more hours of flying time for his crews to reach Libya and return. The F‐111s must therefore launch from England several hours earlier, thus increasing the risk of the Libyans being tipped off in advance by Soviet reconnaissance aircraft. Because of the greater distance, many more air refuellings would also be needed on both the outward and return legs of the mission.

Each of the F‐111s regardless of weather or any other contingency had to rendezvous with a tanker, on four separate occasions at exactly the right place, the right height and the right time – without using their radios (for fear of the Libyans overhearing them).

My diary records how the mission unfolded:

12.36 pm: Twenty four khaki and brown camouflaged F‐111s began taking off from Lakenheath. Six of these aircraft were spares, reserves to fill any gaps that might arise because of malfunctions among the eighteen aircraft tasked to make the strike.

12.50 pm: Five other US aircraft flew out of RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire. Specially equipped with state of the art electronics. Their task was to put the Libyans’ radars out of action.

6.55 pm: The radar jammers cross into Africa, heading south into the Sahara, then wheeling north. They made their final run into Tripoli – not from the Mediterranean as might have been expected, but from the south across the desert. Their radar‐suppression worked. Though the Libyans loosed off more and denser anti‐aircraft missile fire than the Americans had experienced in Vietnam, virtually the whole of the attack force came through unscathed.

7.00 pm: Complete tactical surprise is achieved. Not a single alarm was signalled in Tripoli. Not one Libyan fighter aircraft took off as the main F‐111 strike force roared in at low level from the Mediterranean. Eight bombed the Sidi Bilal naval training area; nine others aligned themselves on Gaddafi’s command post in Al Azzizyah.

In the event, only five of these aircraft pressed home their attack. The pilots of the other four aborted their attacks to guarantee that they stayed within the constraints laid down by the President – avoid collateral damage. One attacking aircraft released its bomb prematurely. This almost certainly was responsible for most of the 49 Libyans, including Gaddafi’s 10 year old adopted daughter, who were killed.

8.14 pm: Heading home through the Straits of Gibraltar to avoid flying over Spain and France, the Lakenheath F‐111s rendezvous with their first return leg tankers over the Atlantic west of Gibraltar.

3.10 am Tuesday 15 April: Landing at Lakenheath, some of the pilots are so stiff after 14 hours cramped up in their narrow cockpits that they have to be bodily lifted out of their seats.

How effective was the raid?

I subsequently discussed this with Gaddafi when he invited me to Libya in my capacity as National Chairman of the World Affairs Council of America. He received me at the rebuilt Habbinayah Barracks in Tripoli from which he and his son, Saif, would later direct the counter attack against the rebels (March 2011). We sat outside the goatskin tent that accompanied him to New York when he subsequently addressed the United Nations (and made a fool of himself with a 90 minute harangue that led scores of delegates to walk out!).

I began the conversation with Libya’s support for terrorism citing the murders of Libyan exiles in Britain, his supplying of weapons and cash to the IRA and the destruction of Flight 103, killing 258 US passengers and 11 Scots in the village of Lockerbie.

Gaddafi: “We Libyans did not kill them. But Libya has offered to pay large sums to the victims.” His eyes flashed as he went on: “Is Libya not entitled to compensation for the victims of the American attacks on our children?”

We came to the key issue. Griffiths: “Is Libya trying to build atomic bombs?” Gaddafi: “Why should we? Libya does not need them.”

I pressed him to be more specific, but he danced around the subject. “Who would we use (nuclear weapons) against?” he asked. “Not our Arab neighbours; they are our brothers. Not the Europeans, they are our friends and trade partners; as for the United States, how could we reach America?”

It was at this point that I made what may have been a small contribution to Gaddafi, and therefore Libya’s decision to abandon its reach for nuclear weapons.

Griffiths: “If you make a bomb, Libya will not be safer. You will only make it certain that the United States will come after you again, and next time, Libya could be obliterated.”

Tough talk? Yes it was, and I had no authority whatsoever to say this, only my own judgement of the Bush Administration’s outlook and some experience of speaking frankly to political leaders who knew that I no longer had axes to grind, goods to sell or electors to impress.

Gaddafi made no reply. Though he understood my English, he asked his interpreter to repeat my words in Arabic. Unusually, he then fell silent as I had thanked him for receiving me and left.

*   *   *

President Bush later made the claim that Gaddafi’s nuclear ambitions ‘crumbled’ in response to America’s use of force against Iraq. That was too simple by half. On the basis of the talk I had with him and my subsequent contacts with Libyans, there were two main reasons why Gaddafi dismantled his underground bomb-making labs and turned over the blueprints to Britain and the US. One was that oddly named air strike – Operation El Dorado Canyon. The other, as one of his confidants told me was that Gaddafi wanted to ‘come in from the cold’; to reopen Libya’s trade links with the US and the EU, allowing the imports of the components needed to revive its limping oil industry: above all to take its turn as a member of the UN Security Council.

For close to a decade, Libya came close to achieving this. International traders and investors poured into Tripoli; western leaders, among them Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy and Hilary Clinton, flew to Tripoli and embraced Muammar Gaddafi. Not until the Arab revolutions brought down the despotic rulers of Tunisia and Egypt in January 2011 did Britain, France and the United States abandon ‘reconciliation’ and reverse their pragmatically benign approach to Gaddafiland.

The Americans involved in today’s No Fly Zone will undoubtedly share with their allies the critical lessons learnt from Operation El Dorado Canyon.

One is that Libya’s radars and air defence missile batteries must be put out of action ‐ in advance. Another is that no matter how carefully the pilots may try to avoid ‘collateral damage,’ civilian casualties are inevitable, not least because the enforcers have no alternative but to strafe Gaddafi’s tanks if they advance on Benghazi and shoot down any of his warplanes and helicopters that may take off. These are acts of war. David Cameron was talking nonsense when, in one breath he pledged UK participation in a No Fly Zone, while declaring in the next “we will not go to war”.

A third lesson is that while armed intervention may save the revolutionaries from being crushed and at first may be welcomed by many, though by no means all the Arab states, the longer term response is more uncertain. Whatever its merits in human rights’ terms, the No Fly Zone could yet rekindle a new version of the hostility to the West that followed Operation El Dorado Canyon.

by Sir Eldon Griffiths

 

Egypt: Discontents of modernity, promise of antiquity

When Ibn Khaldun, the 14^th-century polymath and forefather of modern-day social sciences, arrived in Cairo after spending 50 years in Andalusia and Maghreb, he described the city as “metropolis of the world, garden of the universe, meeting place of nations, ant-hill of peoples, high place of Islam, seat of power” (Albert Hourani: A History of the Arab Peoples). He also remarked that he who has not seen Egypt could never understand the power of Islam.

Such was the centrality accorded to Egypt by the Arabo-Islamic world. Even today, many historians argue that the true glory of Cairo is to be found in its medieval Islamic architecture which came to being on the back of the prosperity produced by the Ummayad, Ayyubid and Mameluk dynasties. Some of the wealthiest families in Muslim countries that are as far removed from Egypt as Malaysia and Indonesia continue to send their scions to study at Cairo’s ancient Al-Azhar university and other schools. Al-Azhar’s Moorish-inspired campus has held classes since 970 CE and its religious education caters to all four madh’hab or mainstream schools of Sunni jurisprudence. During the current unrest, the large presence of international students in Egypt made headlines as the Malaysian government has gone ahead with a mass evacuation of its nationals from Egypt.

Given that social thought in the Islamic tradition exposes the inherent limitations of man-made as opposed to revealed knowledge, it is not without irony that since the middle of the 20^th century, Egypt has embarked on nearly every–ism described in political science textbooks. Once the old monarchical order was toppled, the country lurched to secularism and militarism followed by pan-Arabism and nationalism. In the past few decades, these have given way to a somewhat Asian-style developmental dictatorship that combines old political instincts with Western economics. To its credit, Egypt has in recent years gained more than a foothold in emerging business sectors such as infocommunications, data services, call centres and outsourcing. Drawn to its respectable tradition of engineering expertise and a young and often multilingual urban population, the likes of Intel have chosen Egypt as one of a handful of their global product definition centres. The government – until recently headed by a former infocomm minister – put its best foot forward, to the extent of making call centre skills an integral part of university curricula. And with its sizable domestic consumer market, the country has billed itself as a logical extension of the up-and-coming BRIC wave of world economic leaders.

These new trends never quite discouraged Western news reports from playing up the physical constraints of providing for a population of eighty-plus million predominantly concentrated in the Nile river delta. In the minds of many social commentators in developing countries, this was yet another example of the West’s “dogma of development”. At present, from either perspective there is no denying that no matter how successful, the outcomes of the recent economic expansion have created opportunities for dozens of thousands rather than millions. Case in point: Flagship companies like Telecom Egypt are headed by exceptionally astute management teams who earned their MBAs and PhDs at the best US and British universities, and know all there is to know about technology migrations and climbing the value chain. Many of their offices are teeming with Western management consultants and development experts. But below this top echelon, there is a reality of hundreds of thousands of employees, most of them breadwinners, who have been on the payroll for decades.  

Prior to the outburst of popular discontent in early 2011, Egypt had for years strived to reconcile its business-friendly, outward-looking face with a repressive government whose brutality has been well documented in global media: for instance, whereas in many other developing countries, blogosphere writings that are critical of the government might earn the author a surprise tax audit, some of Egypt’s bloggers have been dragged out of internet cafes in broad daylight by members of the security services and beaten to death in front of passersby. During my own visit, taking a photo from a downtown bridge has earned me a brisk trip to a nearby interrogation room. Afterwards, when I shared this encounter with other Europeans, they laughed it off as an attempt to collect a bribe; but standing alone in a windowless chamber and surrounded by half a dozen military men felt far from trivial.

Perhaps my friends were right: social hardship and rising prices have created a pervasive if stereotypical bakshish mentality among the crushing majority of local people. On a visit to the stunning Al-Azhar Mosque, a local imam will invite foreign visitors for a guided walkthrough, all the while reciting prayers and bestowing praises on spiritual leaders and martyrs whose fate was linked to these hallowed grounds. Afterwards, he will eagerly and insistently collect cash from each member of the visitors’ group, making it clear that in addition to the amount that goes to the mosque’s upkeep, there is money that is due to him. For a first-time visitor and for many Muslims from other countries, this is a startling sight that will nonetheless follow them everywhere, including Cairo’s holiest Islamic sites that are home to relics of the Prophet’s descendants.  

Similarly, whereas in other Arab societies, haggling is practised as a jovial art form and a facet of local culture, in Egypt it has an air of desperation. It doesn’t hurt to remind oneself that many of the young men loudly peddling their wares and pulling at your sleeve have eight, ten or more unmarried sisters and other dependants back in their village. Granted, true Egyptian hospitality still exists in abundance, but much too often it is to be found among business partners and even government officials as opposed to the creaking and heavy-handed tourism industry.

Faced with intransigent obstacles, for many Egyptians the uncomplicated and glamorous life as captured in local films from the 1950s becomes a past that is nostalgically re-imagined. The fin-de-siècle mansions of Heliopolis still stand as a witness to that era. By contrast, today’s cities are largely a chaotic jumble of shabby apartment blocks and roads where millions of cars wrestle for every inch of space on the carriageway. Over the years, this has given rise to a lifestyle where residents of Cairo eat breakfast they picked up in an “On the Run” cafe at a petrol station, sleep, study, call friends and conduct business inside their vehicles.  

Today’s Egyptian identity is built on such contradictions. During a long car journey through the city one day, I chatted with my local associate, a pious yet outgoing young woman who (unlike many of her more senior colleagues) wore a headscarf, dressed modestly yet very smartly, and spoke flawless English despite never having had the opportunity to travel abroad. Casually, she confessed to spending every last penny of her salary on weekend trips to Citystars, Cairo’s landmark shopping mall. As the car was passing rows upon rows of new housing blocks that spelled the same type of aspiration as her branded clothes and gadgets, I asked if she and her workmates were perhaps sharing one of these apartments while exploring life in the big city. “You see – I am not married,” she explained cheerfully. “And in Egypt, you live with your Mum and Dad till the day you get married.”

Could this clinging to tradition amidst change provide clues to a way out of the current crisis? Predictably, foreign pundits have been talking with disquiet about the rise of so-called Islamist politics as a result of the government’s loss of legitimacy. But contemplating Egypt’s social and economic issues, drawing on the local Islamic tradition may be the only viable way forward, particularly if the emphasis is on social justice and creative local solutions to local problems. There is indeed a rich tradition to draw on: according to historians, a hundred years ago up to an estimated 70% of all commercial land in Egypt was managed through awqaf (plural form of waqf) – charitable and philanthropic endowments. It might not be too far-fetched to trace the roots of the present-day malaise to the secular, military-sponsored shift away from this traditional economic order, coupled with blind faith in physical development – the treadmill of building ever more (housing, roads, schools) yet inevitably falling short. Meanwhile, sheer numbers dictate that a huge role for central government be retained, regardless of its ideological shade: a typical Egyptian civil servant supports a stay-at-home spouse and five or six children. In aggregate, this means that any new government will find itself directly and indirectly feeding half of the country’s total population.

Those that witnessed the ongoing wave of unrest in Cairo have also drawn parallels with the 1989 fall of “real socialism” across central and eastern Europe, a chain of events I had the privilege to participate in back then as a first-year student with a Prague university. With the benefit of hindsight, I can only hope that Egypt will escape the many traps that befall societies in transition and chart its own, meaningful path to post-authoritarian rule. A re-reading of Ibn Khaldun might just be the first step on this arduous journey.

by Martin Králik

Cultural musings from a visit to North Korea

Before going to North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) I tried to prepare myself for what I knew would be the biggest culture shock imaginable because it is a country like no other. Would it be a mixture of the culture to be found in South Korea blended with the Soviet Union under Stalin and China under Mao? The simple answer, of course, is “none of the above”, and yet, every so often during a one-week visit, I would be reminded of all three of these comparators.

I had been invited to Pyongyang to teach the United Nations country team there how to become more effective negotiators. Half of my students were expats from a dozen different countries, working for UNICEF, WHO, FAO and a number of other agencies. The other half worked for the same UN agencies, but were North Korean nationals – an elite group who spoke English, were trusted by the regime and who had three jobs: their official UN job, taking on the role of “minder” for UN expats and visitors, and being the eyes and ears of the government within the UN offices.

The thinking of my UN hosts was that it would be good for representatives of the most difficult government with which the international community has to negotiate to be exposed to a negotiation philosophy that emphasizes the gains to be made by putting one’s self in the other person’s shoes and recognizing the interests of both sides in a negotiation. I wasn’t optimistic that we would make much progress!

Arriving at Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport, the first oddity was the customs declaration, which, inter alia, asked if I was carrying any “killing devices” or “exciters”. My laptop was inspected carefully, but my small camera attracted no attention. However, all mobile phones are confiscated and placed in a small pouch, with a receipt being issued for collection on departure. The execution in March 2010 of a North Korean man for using a smuggled mobile phone to call a defector friend in South Korea, is a measure of the sensitivity of communications in North Korea.

The airport has a fairly large and impressive terminal building, but the lack of activity there, with several decrepit Tupolev and Antonev Air Koryo jets sitting ready to provide the airline’s only two daily flights from Pyongyang (to Beijing and Vladivostok) hints of the moribund state of the economy. I was fortunate in that Air China had resumed service from Beijing a week before I travelled, so I was able to avoid the Air Koryo experience.

As my UN car had not shown up to meet me, I looked for a taxi rank, but was stopped from exiting the terminal unaccompanied, and fellow passengers told me that taxis simply didn’t exist. Fortunately, a New Zealand investment banker who lived in Pyongyang (yes, really! At least he will be in on the ground floor if and when investment opportunities open up) was able to call the UN offices where they had thought I was arriving the next day.

When my car finally arrived, I met my 30-something female “minder”, who worked for the UN and who escorted me everywhere and was a participant in the programme I taught. Each time she delivered me to the Hotel Koryo, she made a call from the front desk to tell her controllers where I was, and although she had two children at home, she had a room at my hotel throughout my stay.

Everywhere in Pyongyang there are massive statues and portraits of the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung, and equally impressive murals of revolutionary figures or of him. Even the office of UNICEF has a large oil painting of a kindly Kim Il-sung, surrounded by children, one of whom is wearing his hat. Surprisingly, his son, the current leader, Kim Jong-il, is featured much less prominently, reflecting the concept of Kim Il-sung being the “eternal president, the supreme leader, and the sun of all people” according to the Juche philosophy that he established. It is Kim Il-sung, rather than Kim Jong-il, whose portrait is on the little enamel badges that everyone wears on their lapels.

The personality cult surrounding North Korea’s only two leaders is reminiscent of the adulation of Lenin (and to some extent, Stalin) in the Soviet Union, and Mao in China. But the family dynasty element is different. In some ways the idea of a family being in charge (leaving aside traditional hereditary monarchies) is similar to the chaebol in South Korea – conglomerates of companies owned, controlled and managed by the same family. Ironically, these family industrial empires, closely tied to the political elites of South Korea, have been engines of growth, in contrast to the economic decline of North Korea under its “family leadership”.

Any observations on North Korean culture have to be seen in the context of the omnipresent Juche ideology.  Juche demands absolute loyalty to the Workers Party of Korea and to (currently) Kim Jong-il. It places the ordinary people as the masters of the country’s development, eschews any relationships with the great powers, and emphasises independent thought and self-reliance in both economic and defence terms.

The reality, of course, is that North Korea has never been self-sufficient. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was reliant on aid from Moscow. It has lurched from economic crisis to economic crisis with masses of its people suffering starvation. China has provided tremendous quantities of aid for more than a decade and other countries are providing assistance under the six-party talks framework. North Korea is the second largest recipient of food aid in the world.  All the English language literature in my hotel excoriated American “warmongers”, yet on the day that I arrived in Pyongyang, a team from the United States embarked on talks with the government to provide American food aid.

While it has replaced Marxism-Leninism in North Korea, Juche acknowledges the influence of traditional communist doctrine, although over the past two decades, the military rather than the proletariat or working class, is the main revolutionary force. To the traditional hammer and sickle, symbolizing the factory worker and the farmer, Juche’s icons also include a writing brush for the “Samuwon” class of writers, professors, engineers, and bureaucrats – a departure from the emphasis in other communist nations.

Revolutionary posters all follow the same formula: a farmer, a factory worker, an office worker or engineer, usually carrying a T-square, and a soldier. One is always a woman.

The Juche philosophy controls everyone’s activities and leaves no room for the thought that any ideas emanating from Western or Asian management concepts would have any value. It is uncompromising, and visitors to North Korea are left in no doubt that their hosts are setting the terms of any discussion.

This was a depressing thought as I set out to teach cooperative, interests-based negotiation to 11 North Koreans and 11 foreign UN officials at a hot-springs resort two hours away from Pyongyang.

The resort was reached via an empty eight-lane highway that extended for the first ten miles or so from the capital.  I was told that this also served as a runway and a military access road. Communities through which we passed were clearly very poor, but the rice paddies appeared to be well maintained in this, comparatively visible, part of the country.  The resort itself was surprisingly comfortable and the people running it were considerably friendlier than their counterparts at the hotel in Pyongyang.

Knowing that the North Korean nationals among my students were reporting back to the authorities, I felt a bit self-conscious as I started teaching. Rather like a Western politician whose offhand remarks come home to roost in the pages of the tabloid press, I envisioned myself being grilled by steely faced interrogators, seeking an explanation for the code word, BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, a key element of negotiation strategy) or for clarification of the punch line of a joke I had made. Indeed, the sessions got off to a tense start, with the two groups, whom I had deliberately mixed together in the seating arrangements, regarding each other with suspicion. Early on there was a worrisome moment when I realized that a simulation I had written and for which I was about to hand out roles, referred to something having taken place in Seoul, the very mention of which is taboo. I was quickly able to revise the scenario with the substitution of Bangkok.

To my surprise, I soon found that the North Korean nationals started to catch my eye and smile, asking questions, and enjoying playing roles of people very different from themselves. They cheerfully engaged in negotiations ranging from selling a line of pickles to a Canadian supermarket chain, to being the top civil servant in a finance ministry or his counterpart in the education ministry of a small country, haggling over the latter’s annual budget allocation. After a bit, everyone was laughing a lot, and the inflexibility and hardness that was evident from my minder and most of the others melted away.

There were, of course, constant reminders of where we were. The television offered a steady diet of Kim Jong-il “directing and inspiring” workers at a factory/mine/farm, interspersed with military parades and droning propaganda and martial music. A variation of the latter woke me up each morning both in Pyongyang and at the resort, as recorded music of massed choirs extolled the achievements of Kim Jong-il, the Workers Party of Korea and Juche.

At the end of the two-day workshop, all the North Koreans clamoured to be included in photographs taken with me. It had turned out very differently than I had expected and at the inter-agency meeting (comprising all the UN agencies and foreign ambassadors), which I attended before I left, the expat UN officials reported that this was the first time they had ever experienced such congeniality with their North Korean “colleagues”.

I had no illusions that my teaching had worked some alchemy, but I felt I had learned a bit from living at close quarters with these intelligent and, ultimately, friendly North Koreans. I detected an element of “face” which plays such a big part in Chinese, Japanese and South Korean (where it is called kibun) cultures. At first they didn’t want to make a fool of themselves in front of their expat colleagues or even amongst themselves, but they soon found that much of what I was teaching was making everyone realize the mistakes we all make in decision-making and negotiation, so everyone felt they were in the same boat.

Even though I was with them for a very short time, I also detected elements of guanxi, which underpins successful business relations in China. Guanxi is about mutual dependence in relationships, and reciprocity, key elements of a pragmatic approach to negotiation. In the role-plays we conducted, everyone realized that they depended on others and relationships are very important. This sense of having built a relationship came across very noticeably with my minder, who had been very cold and authoritarian when she met me at the airport the first evening, but who opened up and talked about her hopes and aspirations for her children in a very natural way towards the end of my visit, while remaining firmly focused on the infallibility of Kim Il-sung and professing her love of the very strange country in which she lived.

As someone who teaches cooperative, give and take, and comparative advantage negotiations, was I able to draw any lessons from the implacable hard-nosed approach that the North Korean government displays in international arena?

There was one very compelling lesson from the negotiations between the US food aid delegation and the North Koreans that were underway when I arrived. The Americans had come woefully ill-prepared and insisted on starting the negotiations right away while they were still under the influence of jetlag. They did not, for instance, know which provinces were closed to NGOs, which would be used to distribute the aid, surely an essential piece of homework. In contrast, the North Koreans knew everything about the issues in play and the constraints to which the American team was subject. They were also very happy to let the Americans keep negotiating until 2:00 AM when they were exhausted and no longer on top of their arguments. Thorough preparation and then easing slowly into the negotiations are wise approaches for anyone to embrace.

When I took off on my Air China Boeing 737 (symbolizing, perhaps, the pragmatic Chinese approach of engagement with the West), and flew back to Beijing, which, in contrast seemed such a bustling, open and tolerant place, I reflected on the sad lot of the North Korean people, starving, imprisoned, and cut off from most of the world. I felt depressed when I recalled that a couple of senior UN officials had told me that they had no idea who was in charge in North Korea – certainly not Kim Jong-il, they said. As I write, there is evidently a power struggle between the dynasty represented by Kim Jong-il’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un, and other forces in this secretive state. 

Who knows how long it will take for things to change in North Korea and whether change can come about peaceably. In China, the excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution created an environment where big changes, brought about by Deng Xiaoping through, in part, opening up to the rest of the world, were the only way forward. Maybe the sheer desperation of a failed state will lead to change. Maybe the little green shoots of potential engagement like the Najin-Sonbong free trade zone, the six-party and the reunification talks, and the inclusion of North Korean nationals in my UN negotiation workshop, should give me hope that change is possible.

by Tim Cullen

The Chilean Miners – Culture & Team-work

Chilean President, Sebastián Piñera, recently made a European ‘victory tour’ following the successful rescue of the now world-famous 33 miners. The tour had been previously planned, and some more cynical commentators speculated that one driver to speed the operation to extract the miners from their predicament was that it should be accomplished before this visit. Yet it would be churlish to carp at an opportunism – arising from a heroic rescue bid - that was aimed at lifting Chile’s international profile and attracting foreign investment in new industry.

Chile’s economy had been suffering from decades of dictatorship, but those who know the country well understand that it has a long-term reputation for stability, relative to most other Latin American countries. Geography and history have probably played a part:

• Chile has been handicapped by difficult terrain – uninhabitable mountains, deserts, and rain-soaked forests. And, true to form for land-hungry nations, Chileans have maximised their options by exploiting a variety of land resources and exporting them vigorously to Asia, North America and Europe. The ‘Andes barrier’ has effectively diminished Chile’s interaction with her own continent. The country has been described as a South American ‘Tiger’, or ‘like Taiwan but with better wine’. It seems likely that the constraints of their geography have forced them into ingenuity and a degree of stability, as a means of survival.

• A key historical factor in stability and order may be a strong Germanic influence. The 1845 Law of Selective Immigration was aimed at encouraging the immigration of people who would be able to help colonise the Southern region of Chile – from good social backgrounds and with a high level of culture and skills. The move was helped by the failed liberal German revolution of 1848, resulting in a wave of German immigration – and not just from Germany, but also Austrians, Swiss Germans and others. There is little doubt that German values have affected the Chilean national character through continuing immigration well into the 20^th century, and influenced Chilean economic, political and cultural development. Carlos Anwandter, leader of the first colonists, pledged that they would be ‘honest and laborious’ – a firm Lutheran statement if ever there was one!

So, no surprise that a Chilean official, talking just prior to the President’s visit, signposted the main theme by saying “The President will speak of the Chilean way of doing things which means that it is a country where everything really works. Everyone related to Chile thinks that the rescue of the miners shows that we can do things properly and we hope that business and investment will recognise that.”

Chile, with its mixture of Latin and Germanic influences, may have a good formula for benefiting from a mix of approaches. This diversity of viewpoints can give a broader spectrum to human activity, and better performance:

For a summary of what we mean by linear-, multi- and reactive in the first diagram, see below:

But what about the miners themselves?  How did they behave as a team?  There has been plenty of discussion in the press about the behaviour, and what we can learn – from those initial dark days of chaos and fighting that they have sworn not to talk about in detail, down to the emergence of Luis Urzua as the leader, and the assignment of roles  - presenter, doctor, priest, poet, etc. And management writers, like this one, are already having a field day relating the behaviour to team theory, such as Meredith Belbin’s discovery of nine team roles necessary for success.

From a cultural point of view, one of the reasons German companies have tended to be so successful is their ability to give extremely clear roles and responsibilities to different people, units and departments. And, in fact, the Chilean army was highly influenced by the Prussian army. Military service of 12-24 months is obligatory for all Chilean males over 18. Might it be too fanciful to think that the organisation and discipline which ensured survival relates back to Germanic military tradition?

On a wider level, the team was not just the miners below the surface, but the wider team of the international community, involving players from the USA, Japan, South Africa, China, Canada, Australia, etc.

How did this international collaboration come together so smoothly and effectively?

Many culturally-diverse teams fail.  Research published by Joseph J. Distefano and Martha L. Maznevski has shown that while homogeneous teams cover a wide bell-curve of performance, from not so good to very good, the worst-performing teams are diverse. But so are the best...

The difference is leadership. Although the team below the surface was, apart from one Bolivian, exclusively Chilean, there was certainly a diversity of personality types, and it was Luis Urzua’s adaptive leadership that helped them turn the corner. And whether or not it was the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera’s leadership that pulled the international collaboration together, there must have been some clear leadership going on somewhere to get the diverse effort to work.

A very wise British diplomat, Alyson Bailes – who has a first class degree from Margaret Thatcher’s old Oxford college, Somerville, speaks more than a handful of the world’s more difficult languages, and has decades of experience running international teams – once wrote 5 very simple rules for building winning multicultural teams. These are:

1. Understand very clearly who you are
2. State objectives and roles very clearly
3. Define them in ways which mean something to everyone
4. Use diversity as an asset
5. Have fun

As business becomes ever more global, such rules are increasingly important to bear in mind.

by Michael Gates

“The Islamic Republic won’t last forever. The Iranian Phoenix will be reborn”

No country, except perhaps North Korea in recent years has attracted so much adverse attention as the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its theocratic regime is rightly charged with persecuting dissenters, forcing women to wear the veil and chawdor, bloodily suppressing the protests of hundreds of thousands of Teheranis who believed that its 2009 election was rigged in favour of President Ahmadinejad. Worse, in the eyes of the US and most (though not all) EU Governments, Iran is seen to be using its nuclear power programme covertly to develop atomic warheads for its missiles that could be used to carry out Ahmadinejad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map”.

The trouble with this analysis is that like the curate’s egg, it is bad in parts. Born of fear and the same kind of flawed intelligence that plunged the US and Britain into Iraq and an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, it fails to take account of the ‘other Iran’ that I have come to know over a lifetime of interaction with the largest, most populous and in the long run, most potentially pro-Western nation in the Middle East.

We need to get back to basics if the Obama Administration in Washington and the new Con-Lib coalition in London are to pursue with any hope of success the “dialogue with Iran” that is the only sane alternative to a slide into bombing and war. So let’s start again – with the history, geography and culture that mean far more than the dithyrambics of the transitory regime of the Mullahs. Iran is big. Put one end on the Bristol Channel and the other would stretch eastwards from Istanbul. Iran is also rich, a reservoir of more oil and gas than anywhere except Saudi Arabia. Climatically it is hot and arid, yet in the turrets of the Zagros Mountains and in the snows of the 11,000 ft tall peaks where Iranians ski and from which streams gush down to the forested shores of the Caspian, it is not hard for the visitor to fall in love (as I did in my youth) with what one of my more distinguished Parliamentary colleagues described as “those plains of amber, those peaks of amethyst, the dignity of that silence of two thousand years”.

Lord Curzon, who was the British Viceroy of India when he said that, grasped the significance of the continuity over the millennia of Iranian culture. Most classical civilizations have seen their ancient history fade into the mists of time. Today’s Egypt, Greece and Italy cherish the memories but bear little contemporary resemblance to the glories of the Pharaohs, of Athens in the 5th Century BC or the Empire of Rome at its peak.

Not so Iran (and China). Visit Esfahan, Shiraz or Yazd and Iranians in three piece suits as well as gowns and turbans, will regale you with tales of Cyrus and Darius, their great emperors who carried the power and culture of Persia to Sudan in the south and Pakistan to the east.

Therein lies one of the keys to dealing with Iran. Far more important, because it is more deeply rooted than the Koran-thumping of the Ayatollahs  - or the consumerism of the Americans – is the self-image of the Persians. Above all, they are proud. They too believe that – like the Brits – they are unique.

Personifying this critical quality of the Persian character is a wise old man living in Le Chateau des Roses, overlooking Lake Geneva in the Swiss city of Montreux. Meet Ardeshir Zahedi, son of the Persian general who restored the late Shah to the Peacock Throne in the long-ago 1950s. Foreign Minister of Iran, Ambassador to Britain and (twice) to America in the ‘80s, Zahedi has even more reason to be hostile to the current regime than other members of the Iranian diaspora. Its agents targeted him for assassination in the 90s. Nor has this muted his calls for an end to the Ayatollahs’ persecution of dissent, their mis-management and corruption of the Iranian economy, their support for terrorist causes among extremist elements of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Zahedi is broadly, though not uncritically, pro-British and pro-American. Above all else he incarnates the cultural characteristics of the Persian. In his youth he was passionate and playful. As an Ambassador he was generous to the point of extravagance in the parties he gave for Presidents and Prime Ministers. As Foreign Minister he could be prickly and sometimes profane in his pursuit of Iranian interests, for instance in his insistence that the Gulf must never be referred to as anything other than Persian, and that its islands must be Iranian.

Zahedi today is a pragmatist to whom increasing numbers of thoughtful Iranian exiles look for advice and guidance on how to interpret the cross currents of Iranian politics. Iran watchers at the UN Security Council and the EU Commission in Brussels – though not, alas, the know-it-alls of the State Department and Pentagon – study his occasional speeches and excerpts from his memoirs that appear in the Swiss-Iranian and Persian language journals of west coast America. But Zahedi’s advice is very different from that which might be expected from the ‘Bourbons’, the term traditionally used to describe exiles who ache to destroy the regimes that dispossessed them.

Consider just two examples:

“Bomb Iran to stop it making atomic bombs?”

“Madness,” says Zahedi. In addition to murdering the innocent, this would be more likely to consolidate support behind the regime that he, no less than the hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv, wants to displace.

“Tighten up sanctions to squeeze the Iranian economy and bring the regime to its knees.”

“It won’t work,” says Zahedi. Iran is self sufficient in food, energy and minerals. Unemployment is a major problem for the rapidly increasing numbers of school leavers in a country of 74 million, more than half of whom are under 20 – but as in Cuba and Myanmar, it is not hard for a regime that controls the press and TV to put the blame for the lack of jobs and declining living standards on “outside enemies” seeking to punish the Iranians for failing to bow to the “Great Satan” (as the Mullahs describe America).

Ardeshir Zahedi’s anaylsis, like mine, is that the dialogue with Iran that the Obama Administration in Washington now says it wants, will get nowhere if it is confined to the nuclear question. Between the US and Iran, there are other festering issues that cry out to be tackled.

For instance, compensation – to the Americans, for the 1979 seizure of their Embassy and incarceration of their diplomats; to the Iranians for the families of the 248 pilgrims killed in 1988 when the US cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner en route to Mecca. Both sides also accuse the other of aiding and abetting terrorism. Iran helps fund and arm extremist elements of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The CIA makes use of money appropriated by Congress to assist anti-Iranian forces not only among Kurds on the borders of Iraq and Turkey but inside Iran itself.

There are nevertheless broad interests that Iran and the West have in common. Trade is one example. As Britain and Europe strive to pull out of the global recession, Iran is too large a market to be left to the Russians and Chinese. And Iran could pay for its imports if only its oil and gas were allowed back onto world markets. Politically too, an Iran at peace with the West could help stabilize the Persian Gulf by removing the Arab fears of Iranian over-lordship after the Americans leave. It could also assist in resolving the Middle East’s most dangerous confrontation, between Israel and Palestine.

There are, as yet, few signs that the Mullahs will put aside their proclaimed intention to export the Islamic Revolution. But that is not the aim nor the wish of the “Other Iran” that constitutes the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people. For them the best way forward is to restore the links with the West that in Ardeshir Zahedi’s day (and mine) made Iran our closest friend and stoutest ally on the crucial land bridge that links greater Europe (including Turkey) with the tomorrow-lands of Central Asia, India and China.

A pipedream? I do not think so. For the Mullahs are not forever. One way or another, they too will pass or be absorbed into the cultural fabric of historic Iran. With Ardeshir Zahedi, I cling to the belief expressed by a mutual friend, Houshang Navahandi, when he served as Rector of Shiraz University:

“Four thousand years of history with so many ups and downs have taught this to the Iranians: Iran has always survived, overcome its invaders… absorbed its occupiers. The Phoenix is always re-born from the Ashes.”

by Sir Eldon Griffiths

France as a model?

It was not long ago that France was regularly criticised by the more liberal economies of the world and its leaders. The intervention of the State in many facets of the French Economy was often seen as being backward and a hindrance to the free market flow of goods and services.

Recently however, these criticisms have been more subdued and you can nowadays hear comments and read more and more articles explaining that the heavily regulated French economy together with its massive public and social spending have actually helped cushion the negative effect of the worldwide economic crisis. “L’Etat-providence” in this situation proved to be the right choice and have made some governments think that more regulations and state intervention may actually help to avoid the type of crisis we experienced caused by economic liberalism and lack of real control of financial institutions.

Indeed, the French Economy has been more resilient than many other developed countries and President Nicolas Sarkozy has been quick to state that France has been one of the countries that best resisted the crisis.

The situation is in fact not that rosy and 2010 and beyond will hold many challenges for the French Economy. The pick up from the crisis is actually quite slow and quarterly GDP growth projections for 2010 are between 0.3 and 0.4%.

The immediate problem will be a further deterioration of the unemployment figures now at almost 10% with this percentage much worse for the young. Consumer consumption is badly damaged and is not expected to recover easily. The business climate is not healthy and recent surveys show that activity will actually slow down rather than pick up in the coming months. Many of the economic measures that the Government implemented in 2008 and 2009 will not be extended and that won’t help.

Additionally, one should also not forget that public finances have been heavily used recently and will continue to be through, among others, its recently announced “Grand Emprunt” (grand loan). As a result, the public deficit is forecasted to soon represent an unprecedented 8.5% of GDP, far above the EU’s target of 3%.

President Nicolas Sarkozy promised back in 2008 to implement many necessary reforms to the way things were organised in France and the majority of the population supported him at the time of his election. While quite a number have been implemented in the last 30 months, many have been actually watered down and quite a few have been postponed partly due of course to the crisis, but also partly due to the steady unpopularity of the President whose rating is nowadays below 40%. 

His style is leaving many French people uncomfortable to say the least. Trying to do everything himself and taking all the decisions or at least giving that impression is actually putting him at the front line constantly. The recent debate regarding “L’Identité Nationale” (what it means to be French) is actually further polarising the electorate and is very much seen as an attack on the immigrant population and more of an extreme-right idea coming from someone like Le Pen.

But this is actually a sign of a much deeper problem. While the official country’s motto has been historically “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”, a good part of its population, not only immigrant, is not seeing much of these words practiced in reality. The social fabric is breaking down and a growing percentage of French citizens are “falling by the roadside”. The immigrant population especially from the former colonies is struggling to integrate into French society and the number of “new poor” is growing regularly and dangerously. Paradoxically, the number of “privileged” civil servants in France has grown in the last 20 years much more quickly than the private sector to reach 5.4 million or 1 in 5 employed people, but this has not benefited much the above mentioned groups of people. France will need to tackle this problem seriously to avoid more unrest in its cities’ suburbs.

There is no doubt that France needs more essential reforms partly to cut down on huge public expenses even in time of “normal” economic condition. France is living beyond its means and President Sarkozy has again recently insisted on getting them through. One of these reforms will be the delicate one on retirement age and pension benefits, but at a time of slow economic growth, implementing all the planned reforms will not be easy. Of course, almost everyone still continues to believe that these reforms are needed, as long as one is not touched by them.

We can of course here easily recognise one of the key characteristics of the French character, but this is basically what the French government is up to. Contrary to the Swedish population which had to accept many painful reforms a few years ago for the common good, a good percentage of the French population does not see it that way and will resist any attempt to modify earned privileges or any set arrangements. With 2010 just starting and to duplicate last spring’s demonstrations by 3 million people all over the country, one can easily envisage more unhappy people ready to fill up again the streets of France and/or going on strike to stop reforms or to demand improvement in their conditions. It remains to be seen how well the French Model copes!

by Jacques Méon

Japan – why did it take them so long?

On 30 August 2009, a good part of the Japanese electorate finally decided to interrupt the Liberal Democratic Party’s half century in power and gave instead a clear majority to the Democratic Party of Japan.

One can question why it took the Japanese people some 20 years and several elections to decide this political shift ever since the bursting of the economic bubble. This would certainly have not been the case in most Western countries where a percentage of the population happily changes sides at each election.

The answer is partly historical but also cultural.

Historically, ever since Japan’s emergence as a modern state, political parties have tended to be a sideshow to the real business of running the country’s economy. This was left to the various Ministries’ elite bureaucrats who dutifully steered Japan towards prosperity and stability. During the last 50 years or so, the LDP was able to surf on that wave and even after the bubble burst in the late 80s, the politically apathetic public did not mind reconducting the party in power despite the regularly recurring scandals and deepening economic problems facing it.

After all and despite its shortcomings, the LDP was seen as having played an important role in Japan’s overall economic success of the 60s, 70s and 80s and was therefore able to gain a high level of loyalty from a good part of the middle class electorate especially in the countryside. The LDP was able to convince it that there was no other party able to run Japan effectively. Over and over again, the public fell for it.

Culturally, the Japanese are usually very cautious people and are reluctant to change. Stability and patience are also two of their key cultural characteristics. When Junichiro Koizumi became Prime Minister in 2001, there was great popular support and great hope that the LDP was going to change internally under his leadership and that he would be able to introduce the reforms that the country needed.  This was an ideal situation for the electorate as it would not actually and conveniently need to alter its allegiance to the LDP.  On all accounts, this proved to be wishful thinking as much of what was implemented went against many of the traditional Japanese values. Some will be seen later in this article.

The recent world crisis came maybe at the right time or rather at the wrong time for the LDP. After lacklustre performances by three successive Prime Ministers namely Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda and Taro Aso, each lasting about a year and despite numerous stimulus plans, the Japanese economy is registering its worst performance with a forecasted decrease in 2009 in GDP of 6.2%, with exports having decreased recently by about 50% and unemployment reaching currently 5.7%. This situation helped destroy once and for all both the LDP and the bureaucracy’s reputation for economic competence. As a result, the electorate decided to turn towards the DPJ more out of disgust and despair than real belief that it will solve their problems.

So what will the DPJ do now that it occupies more than 300 seats in the Lower House of the Diet of the 480 available?

The DPJ manifesto is attractive. Some of its promises include large child-care allowances (about 200 euros per child a month), pension guarantees and higher medical spending, tax breaks for small businesses, a postponement for at least 4 years of the increase in consumption tax (VAT) currently set at 5%, income subsidies for farmers, cutting petrol taxes, scrapping expensive highway tolls, allowing greater political autonomy and an end to the bureaucrat-led government.

Although there are worries about how to pay for all these policies, the DPJ maintains that it will be able to finance them by diverting funds from the recent stimulus plans traditionally focused on building more public works and infrastructures such as roads and airports. In its own words, by a transfer from the “concrete” to the “people” as its key slogan is to put “People’s Lives First”. The result is still likely to be a worsening of the fiscal debt amounting already to 180% of the country’s annual GDP.

Other worries lie in the DPJ’s plan to ban the use of temporary workers in manufacturing and to set a higher minimum wage level. The powerful Keidanren, Japan’s Business Federation, is seeing these measures as being counter productive as they will reduce labour flexibility.

Despite its clear victory, many Japanese also wonder how effective its leader, Yukio Hatoyama, will be as Prime Minister. Like all four recent Prime Ministers, he also is a ‘hereditary’ politician with a family having held important positions over three generations in the LDP – his grandfather was actually one of the founders of that Party. Like many older DPJ members, he is in fact a defector from the LDP. With a PHD in Engineering from Stanford University and a higher education from Japan’s top University (Todai), he was really seen more as an academic scholar than a shrewd politician. He actually started his professional career as professor at one of Tokyo’s universities (Senshu). Of course, politics in Japan has for a long time been associated with rich and powerful families who do not have to fight and struggle to get in.

To make things even more questionable, the DPJ, although showing a more social face, is not radically different from the LDP. If the LDP can be categorised as conservative and centre-right, the DPJ can be seen as just a little to the left of it but it would certainly not qualify as being socialist although the Party opposes the kind of privatisation and liberalisation reform that was highly valued by former LDP Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Socialists and Communists are represented in both Chambers of the Diet but with just a few seats and have never been a threat to the LDP.

An even bigger challenge is the DPJ’s promise to lower and even eliminate the influence of the powerful bureaucracy which has worked hand in hand with the LDP all these years. It remains to be seen how it will handle this very delicate task. As Atsuo Ito, an independent political analyst who recently wrote a book on the Democratic Party, said “the bureaucracy will survive Mr Hatoyama like it survived many past historical events”. The Party’s Manifesto’s pledge to send 100 of its Diet members to various Ministries and Agencies to control them seems quite unrealistic.

Even Hatoyama’s handling of the DPJ itself will not be easy. After all, the Party, founded in 1998, is an amalgam of six smaller parties which have come together in the opposition but who have different views on many issues. Only four newly elected parliamentarians have had ministerial experience in the past, all under the LDP umbrella. The same can be said about his handling of the Party’s ex-leader and powerful figure Ichiro Ozawa, who had to resign his position a few months ago due to a fund-raising scandal.

Although Yukio Hatoyama is often praised for his openness, his idealism, his concern for the public good and his long term vision, his reported lack of leadership and his tendency to change stance are not going to help him in meeting all the challenges that he now has in front of him. Last but not least, his position vis-à-vis the United States and the planned international role of Japan in the coming years remain vague. His statements have shifted from “forging a new and more equal US alliance” to promising “continuity”.

As most of readers will remember, Japan went through a severe economic crisis back in 1989-90 when its ‘economic bubble’ exploded or, more correctly, imploded. The most visible sign was the drop in the Nikkei from a high of almost 40,000 to about 10,000 within a fairly short span of time. The damage to the banking sector was huge and the value of real estate plunged. The government repeatedly announced huge stimulus packages mainly in public works, building more roads, more airports, etc. Many companies were forced to restructure and Japanese workers for the first time started to feel the pain: unemployment increased especially among middle age employees; salaries for the employed were frozen and many were left with negative equity. Interest on savings dropped to basically zero. Even after 20 years, the situation has not improved and annual GDP growth has been minimal.

When one visits Japan however, one cannot fail to notice that it is still a very wealthy country and at first glance does not seem to be in trouble. The number of luxurious cars has never been higher. Foreign brands have taken the opportunity of lower real estate costs to open new flagship stores. New buildings pop up everywhere, whole new districts are developed, department stores are full of well-dressed buyers, restaurants are doing well and people in general continue to look happy. In fact, none of my Japanese acquaintances complained about the economic or political situation. Of course, this was not really a surprise as in Japan one doesn’t criticize unduly nor complain about difficulties and hardships.

In reality however the situation has reached a critical stage. The Nikkei is still around 10,000. The now defunct government and its unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso, launched four stimulus plans in the last 12 months worth 1,000 billion euros, on a par with the amounts being spent in the US and China. The last phase of this investment programme is supposed to focus on reviving internal consumption, creating employment, helping companies to develop green technology and energy saving industries. It also covers improvements in health, social and education services.

Needless to say, most Japanese viewed these efforts positively even if some of them saw also some clever government maneuvering ahead of the parliamentary elections. This indeed smelled desperately of election strategy coming in addition to the cheque (about 150 euros per person) received earlier this year by all Japanese households.

Under the more popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the government had encouraged the hiring of temporary workers to give more flexibility to companies. As a result, a third of all employees are now temporary workers. This policy created a lot of instability as it made it difficult for people to plan their careers or obtain bank loans to buy property, in addition to going against the Japanese tradition of life-long employment security, which in turn fosters employee loyalty and obedience. In many ways, this measure has had a profound negative effect on Japanese society and many of its core values. The defunct government finally realised this and was planning to promote long-term employment again. Unfortunately, it was too late and this will now be done by the DJP.

The long-term employment system has done well for Japan in the past. The company for many Japanese is like a family, even often the family ahead of wife and children. The employee was ready to sacrifice himself for this family, giving up their bonus or part of their pay for example, for the good of the company. Permanent employment was seen as protecting employees and taking care of their needs in line with traditional Confucian doctrine.

In the meantime, statistics coming out of Japan have been quite alarming. Japan is even now on the verge of losing its number two worldwide economic ranking to China. Of course, Japan cannot be compared to China. China’s economy is continuing to grow as a developing country with a population of 1.3 billion at an annual speed of around 10%. Japan on the other hand has a mature economy with saturated markets. Companies cannot easily find new products/services to sell. Some in despair have even resorted to start selling clothes for dogs and cats!

The aging population, the low birth rate of 1.2 and the decrease in population are also worrisome factors. Projections indicate that the population will decrease to 95 million from the current 128 million by 2050. There may be no other option but to further lengthen the retirement age and possibly lower pension amounts, two measures, which the DPJ has naturally not included in its manifesto. On the contrary it wants to encourage the population to have more children but that measure will take time to become effective.

As one can see, plenty of challenges await the new government. Of course, many of these problems are not unique to Japan. The Western world is struggling with many of them as well.

Since World War 2, Japan has worked hard to become a leading economy. Most of its population has enjoyed the results and experienced the rewards. Japanese people gave ample time and opportunity to the LDP to sort out the country’s problems but instead just witnessed a worsening of the situation year by year. Reluctantly, a majority of the electorate decided without enthusiasm to try someone else. It only took it 20 years to do so. The next 12 months will tell if their decision was the right one.

by Jacques Méon