Dharamsala,

by Ankur Aras.

Huanqiu Shibao, the Gallup BRIC Satisfaction Survey, and the Chinese Passive Voice

The following is a Xinhua news article published by Huanqiu Shibao on Tuesday.

Xinhua/Washington, April 9, 2012. By Zhi Linfei. Opinion poll results published by American Gallup opinion poll organization Gallup show that during the past three years, among the five BRIC states’ population, the Brazilians and Chinese are most satisfied with their living standards, and only the Chinese felt during three successive years that the living standard had continuously improved.

新华网华盛顿4月9日电 （记者 支林飞）美国盖洛普民调机构9日公布的民调结果显示，过去三年，金砖5国中巴西和中国国民对生活水平的满意度最高，而且只有中国人连续三年感到生活水平持续得到改善。

According to this survey, 77 per cent of Brazilians felt satisfied with the living standard in 2011, same as in 2010, but a higher share than 74 per cent in 2009. 72 per cent of the Chinese felt satisfied with the standard of living in 2011, which was higher than 2010′s 66 per cent and 2009′s 60 per cent. By contrast, the share of Indians, South Africans, and Russians who felt satisfied with the living standard stood at 61, 45 and 39 per cent respectively.

根据这项调查，巴西国民2011年对生活水平感到满意的占77%，与2010年持平，但高于2009年的74%；中国国民2011年对生活水平感到满意的占72%，高于2010年的66%和2009年的60%。相比之下，印度、南非和俄罗斯国民2011年对生活水平感到满意的比例分别为61%、45%和39%。

Among the five countries, only Chinese citizens felt for three years in a row that the living standard had improved. in 2011, 79 per cent of Chinese citizens felt that the standard of living had continued to improve, more than 78 per cent in 2010, and 76 per cent in 2009; in South Africa, 47 per cent felt that the standard of living had continued to improve, which was more than 34 per cent in 2010 and in 2009. In contrast, the share of citizens in Brazil, India and Russia who felt in 2011 that the standard of living had continued to improve was at 65, 44, and 26 per cent respectively, compared to the previous year, this had either remained the same share, or a reduced share.

在5个金砖国家中，国民连续三年感到生活水平持续改善的国家只有中国。2011年，79%的中国国民感到生活水平持续改善，高于2010年的78%和2009年的76%；南非国民2011年感到生活水平持续改善的占47%，高于2010年和2009年的34%。相比之下，巴西、印度和俄罗斯国民2011年感到生活水平持续改善的比例分别为65%、44%和26%，与上一年相比，要么持平，要么下降。

Gallup said in its survey’s result that the level of satisfaction with the living standards was being high in Brazil and China could be attributed to the two countries’ efforts to eliminate poverty. China carries out a plan to eradicate poverty in cooperation with the World Bank, and Brazil has funded projects for poor families to get rid of poverty.

盖洛普在发布该项民调结果的报告中说，巴西和中国国民对生活水平的满意度高，归功于这两个国家在消除贫困方面所作的努力。中国通过与世界银行的合作大力推行消除贫困计划，而巴西则实施了向贫困家庭提供资助的脱贫项目。

Possibly partly thanks to the mention of the World Bank in the article’s last sentence, recent commenters or comments aren’t convinced:

A bunch of pigs who have eaten their fill (一群能吃饱的猪, 2012-04-10 14:51);

May I use foul language? (我可以说脏话吗？, 2012-04-10 14:51);

This is an absolute fart! How many different kinds of satisfaction do the common people have? (绝对是放屁！老百姓有几个满意的？, 2012-04-10 14:50);

and

I’ve been satisfied [in the sense of harmonized, bei hexie] by the Americans! (我被美国人满意了, 2012-04-10 14:47)

Another comment suspects either the critical comments or the article itself to be orchestrated:

怀疑你整天在网上和大家唱反调，是大人物指使和委派的吧，要不然是小团体利益驱使，很危险啊。

Got no time to seek the original survey online – if available – right now, but maybe you – the readers of this post – will find the survey findings during the day, or information about the sample of the population taken in either country, or other bits of information.

____________

Related

» The Pew Global Attitudes Project, July 22, 2008

____________

Update/Related

Samples are Nationally Representative unless noted otherwise
(nothing noted re China – JR).

Gallup release more in general here.

____________

BRIC – One Summit, many Interpretations, and Staying Alive in Tibet

The full text of Delhi Declaration, i. e. the BRIC leaders’ declaration of Thursday, can be found on the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ website.

It describes a number of international trends, including the Eurozone crisis:

The build-up of sovereign debt and concerns over medium to long-term fiscal adjustment in advanced countries are creating an uncertain environment for global growth. Further, excessive liquidity from the aggressive policy actions taken by central banks to stabilize their domestic economies have been spilling over into emerging market economies, fostering excessive volatility in capital flows and commodity prices. The immediate priority at hand is to restore market confidence and get global growth back on track. We will work with the international community to ensure international policy coordination to maintain macroeconomic stability conducive to the healthy recovery of the global economy.

No matter if American quantitative easing in recent years, or the European sovereign debt crisis, low interest rates in these countries usually lead to flows of money into emerging markets, seeking better investment conditions, i. e. interest rates there. However, Anand Shankar, a researcher at the Department of Economic and Policy Research, argued late last year that FII (foreign institutional investment) inflows to India had actually fallen after the November 3, 2010 announcement of the American central bank of quantitative easing 2, but attributes this to factors that do not refute the general rule of capital flows from low-interest-rate regions into emerging markets’ equities.

In China’s case, according to an undated paper (including early 2011 data) by Zhang Liqing and Huang Zhigang of the Central University of Finance and Economics, empirical results show that the effect of hot money on both stock price and housing price is insignificant, and the key factor to fuel asset bubbles is the monetary aggregate^*). “Hot money” had, however, been an important contribution to foreign reserve increase. That problem, however, at least according to Michael Pettis, is at least as much China’s responsibility as it is America’s.

The Delhi Declaration basically states that it is the low-interest-rate regions’ responsibility to address the problem, and leaves it there.

The mention of goals like peace, security and development in a multi-polar, inter-dependent and increasingly complex, globalizing world are essentials, but not news – nor are calls on advanced economies to adopt responsible macroeconomic and financial policies, avoid creating excessive global liquidity and undertake structural reforms to lift growth that create jobs. The G20 is determined as the premier forum for international economic cooperation, global governance institutions like the IMF are urged to reform themselves more quickly, the possibility of setting up a development particularly for projects in BRICs and other developing countries was considered on the summit, the Doha Round and global trade get a mention, so does all international, political mega-news, particularly Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and terrorism.

Fortunately, there’s an action plan, too. Or, rather, an appointment diary for the coming fifteen months or so.

Such touch-on-everything statements seem to be the rule at BRIC meetings – at least Stefan Wagstyl, the Financial Times‘ emerging markets editor, doesn’t appear to see anything unusual in it. They “made the right noises”, he wrote in a blog post on Thursday, but missed the opportunity to back a common candidate for the World Bank presidency from the developing world, even though there is a first-class contender in the race, Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

The [wo]man would probably still lose, writes Wagstyl, but the point was that the divisions among the Brics are as significant as their common interests – details there.

Maybe this is the most interesting bit within the declaration:

We welcome the conclusion of the Master Agreement on Extending Credit Facility in Local Currency under BRICS Interbank Cooperation Mechanism and the Multilateral Letter of Credit Confirmation Facility Agreement between our EXIM/Development Banks. We believe that these Agreements will serve as useful enabling instruments for enhancing intra-BRICS trade in coming years.

The master agreement, explains IANS news agency,

is aimed at reducing the demand for fully convertible currencies for transactions among BRICS nations, and thereby help reducing the transaction costs of intra-BRICS trade

.

Russia had made similar suggestions in 2008, in its business with Belarus and Vietnam, plus the increased use of both Ruble and Yuan for mutual Russian-Chinese trade.

South Africa, by now the event’s fifth member, but not represented in its four-letters household name, keeps a low profile in the global summit coverage. But president Jacob Zuma isn’t unhappy:

Africa feels, through the participation of South Africa in BRIC, we have reached, indeed, the mainstream of the global issues. The fact that our independent development banks have signed an agreement to support our projects of BRIC which include those in the continent of Africa brings hope to the African continent, to one billion people who have been, in the main, excluded from the mainstream positive developments abroad.

click logo for audio clip

Wagstyl, being a Financial Times editor (see this post, further up), likes the Delhi Declaration insofar as it makes the right noises – this most probably refers to its call on the advanced economies to undertake structural reforms to lift growth that create jobs. But he also points out BRIC’s weaknesses, using the World Bank presidency issue as a case in point: The truth is that the divisions among the Brics are as significant as their common interests.

In Huanqiu Shibao‘s words, quoting the China News Service:

Chinese state chairman Hu Jintao met with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, on March 29. Singh said that India neither is neither intending nor in a position to participating in any strategies to contain China. India acknowledges that the Tibet Autonomous Region is part of China’s territory and doesn’t allow Tibetans to engage in anti-China activities in India. India hopes to work together with China to protect peace and tranquility on the two countries’ border regions, and to properly solve the border issues through friendly negotiations.
中新社新德里3月29日电(记者 张朔)中国国家主席胡锦涛29日在新德里会见印度总理辛格。
辛格表示，印度无意也不会参与任何遏制中国的战略。印度承认西藏自治区是中国领土一部分、不允许藏人在印从事反华活动。印方希望同中方一道努力，维护两国边境地区和平安宁，通过友好谈判妥善解决边界问题。

And in real-world terms, outside the diplomatic phrasebook:

There are border issues (with two Indian divisions wanting to die on or near what China thinks is her territory), India hosts Tibet’s government in exile (and will probably continue to do so), and it is, above all, noteworthy that there is a need to state that India won’t participate in containing China, even though there seem to be different interpretations about basically every sensitive issue the two sides keep discussing.

Anyway, many among the Huanqiu commenter public aren’t buying the diplomatic achievement. 说一套，做一套 (they say one thing and do another), one of them wrote today, and 其实银度也是老美的一颗棋子 (in fact, India is just America’s chess piece), another recalled.

That said, Sandip Roy, the First Post‘s editor in Calcutta, anticipates trouble for New Delhi, when it comes to its role as a host for Tibetan clergy, officialdom, and refugees:

Jamphel Yeshi burned himself alive to protest Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to New Delhi. Hu is in Delhi, impassive as ever. The Chinese brushed this off as just another nefarious plot by the Dalai Lama.

The country that really loses face is India. Tibetans were once the feel-good symbol of India’s democratic munificence. Now they have become India’s democratic headache, the inconvenient poor relation who refuses to stay discreetly out of sight. India wants the BRIC summit to go off without a hitch, the interactions with Hu Jintao to be photo-op perfect.

But instead an unemployed Tibetan refugee grabs the international media spotlight, dying with 98 percent burns and leaving behind a handwritten call to action.

[...]

These restless Tibetans, a part of India, yet apart, put New Delhi in a fix. “I think India is playing the Tibet card consciously. But it should not allow it to burst. This kite-flying is part of our diplomacy,” Indo-China expert CP Bhambhri told The Telegraph.

The same phenomenon as in Dharamsala and around can be observed among Tibetans in China, and worldwide: the older they are, the more they seem to be horrified by the ongoing series of self-immolations, and – one may suppose – worried about the repercussions they may have on how Tibetan concerns will be viewed by a global public, too.

Tsering Woeser, currently under house arrest in Beijing, wrote in a statement published online on March 8 that such self-destructive measures did nothing for the cause of Tibetan rights, and called on influential Tibetans, including monks and intellectuals, to help end the self-immolations. Gade Tsering and Arjia Lobsang Tupten also signed the statement.

Staying alive allows us to gather the strength as drops of water to form a great ocean,

they wrote.

Previously, on January 25, Woeser had extensively quoted her husband, Wang Lixiong, in an editorial for Radio Free Asia. Woeser and Wang show due respect for the self-immolators, but also note that

No matter how brave and devoted the self-immolaters are in sacrificing their lives, it will make people think that it is mainly an act of desperation. Any act of self-immolation while doubtlessly instigating emotional turmoil, is also always a sign of helplessness and loss.

Wang tries to formulate a sketch of a Tibetan civil society (without using the word):

Village autonomy can be implemented only through the participation of every single common villager; this will turn the people into initiators and they will no longer have to passively wait for long and inconclusive negotiations by leaders; if this is not done, they will demonstrate under gunpoint and even go up in flames as self-immolators to give pressure to the “game” played at a high-level.

____________

Note

^*) Monetary aggregates comprise monetary liabilities of MFIs [monetary financial institutions] and central government (post office, treasury) vis-á-vis non-MFI euro area residents excluding central government, according to a ECB definition (see “background” there).

____________

Related

» All India Radio Press Review, Aug 21, 2011
» Teaming up for Copenhagen, Dec 6, 2009
» Thich Quang Duc,app. SMSU, ca. 2000

____________

“Only the Self-Confident will be Successful”

Excerpts from Joachim Gauck‘s speech after the inauguration ceremony – rough translation.

Every day, every encounter with the media creates new fears and worries. Some devise escape routes, distrust the future, and fear the present tense. Many ask themselves: what kind of life, what kind of freedom is that? My life’s central issue, “freedom”, to them is no promise, but uncertainty.

Even though I understand this reaction, I do not want to abet it. Fear lowers our courage and self-confidence, at times that crucially so that we may lose both – until we may consider cowardice a virtue, and flight a legitimate attitude in the area of politics.

Instead, I want to use my memory as an energy to teach and to motivate myself and ourselves.

[...]

What should this country look like, that our children and grandchildren shall call “our country”? It shall be “our country” by combining social justice, participation, and opportunities of advancement. The path leading there is no paternalistic welfare policy, but a social state which provides and empowers.

[...]

In “our country”, all those who live hear shall be at home. By now, we live in a state where religions like Islam have added themselves to the understood German and Christian traditions, as well as other languages and traditions. Here, the state becomes ever less defined by its citizens’ national belonging, but by their belonging to a political and ethical community of values,  [in a state] where not merely a common destiny determines the polity, but where, increasingly, the pursuit by diverse [people] for what we have in common: this state in Europe, where we want to live in freedom, peace, and solidarity.

[...]

Not only here, but in Europe and beyond, representative democracy is the only system suitable to balance group interests and the common good.

[...]

Different from the Weimar democracy, there are sufficiently many democrats who resist the demons of fanatics, terrorists, and killers. Their testimonies are based on various political or religious reasons: we won’t allow anyone to take our democracy away; we stand by our country – not because it would be perfect, but because we have never had a better one. And we tell the right-extremist spurners of our democracy in particular: your hatred is our incentive. We won’t let our country down. We won’t give you our fears as a gift. You will be past, and our democracy will live.

[...]

Gandhi said that only people with self-confidence will forge ahead and be successful. This is true for individuals and for a country. We can’t tell if we will bequeath our children and grandchildren possessions. But we have shown^*) that we can choose courage, rather than following fears.

Thanks to God and to the people, this is what they will inherit.

____________

Note

^*) A reference to West Germany’s emergence in/after 1949, and East Germany’s in 1989, apparently.

____________

Links to Tibet: German Sycophants, few Secular Books, no Indian Friends

-

Huanqiu Shibao on Tibet Action Day

On March 10, some 1,150 (if not more than 1,200) cities, counties, and communes  in Germany took part in a Tibet Action Day which includes flying a flag from administrative buildings, usually the town hall. Huanqiu Shibao‘s count was that more than one-thousand German cities and towns had raised the Tibetan independence flag, remembering the so-called Tibet revolt (纪念所谓西藏起义):

According to “Berliner Morgenpost” on March 12, more than 1,000 German cities and towns flew the Tibetan “freedom” and “justice” flags in front of their city government houses to remember the so-called Tibetan revolt’s 53rd anniversary.

However, Huanqiu Shibao’s correspondent in Germany did some research on official German websites and found that many of these activities were mostly carried out at small communes and towns, and that in other cases, only single departments had participated. All the same, Huanqiu (apparently) quotes an expert – Lian Xiangmin (廉湘民) of the China Tibetology Research Center (中国藏学中心) -, history has proved that Germany holding such supportive actions of the Dalai Clique created harm for Chinese-German relations.

The report was filed under Huanqiu’s military category.

How afraid should Germany be?

Either way, there is constructive advice in the commenter thread (where the soothing effect of Huanqiu’s investigative journalism appears to remain rather limited):

if Germans love that dreg of society (the Dalai Lama) so much, they should cut some German territory and hand it over to the Dalai. Or, chancellor Angela Merkel should hand political authority to the Dalai, given that her subjects (子民) had sworn allegiance to him anyway, because they had capitulated, by hoisting the Dalai’s independence flag on German soil, and by kneeling under his feet as his sycophants.

-

The Epic of King Gesar – Cultured without Buddhism

Tibetan history has often swung between centralized and stateless poles, and the epic of Gesar reflects the tensions between central authority, as embodied in religious orthodoxy, and the wild, nomadic forces of the autarkic periphery. There are versions that adopt Gesar as a lama showing him as a tamer of the wild, but, in so far as his epic retains his old lineaments as a maverick master of shamanic powers, he represents the stateless, anarchic dimension of Tibet’s margins, and is rather a tamer of corrupt monastic clerics and, thus, it is not coincidental that the epic flourished on the outlying regions of Kham and Amdo.

According to Mountain Phoenix, the story of Ling Gesar Gyalpo is one of rather few not-so-religious Tibetan books,  or a story of indigenously Tibetan, heathen origins – one that her father had kept reading through all his lifetime.

Few years ago at a Tibetan gathering, I heard the Dalai Lama talk about the importance of the Tibetan language and he gave tips to youngsters on how to work on their Tibetan. He said: “If you want to improve your Tibetan, you should read Peja (Buddhist scriptures)”.

We can all imagine the youngsters jumping for joy on the inside exclaiming: “Yeah, Peja! Finally! So exciting”!

Her father never touched a Peja in all his life, but

Still I conclude from comments his surviving peers make that his Tibetan didn’t pale in comparison to some of the erudite clerics who used to live in our vicinity. Astonishing for a Tibetan of his generation, that he somehow managed to become “cultured” without cosing up to Buddhism.

-

Indian-Tibetan Relations

Woeser quotes Tibetan voices from India – nothing representative, she cautions, and collected through social media, but with an eye-catcher among the statements:

Lobsang Wangdu, for instance, says that only in recent years did he see some civil society groups supporting Tibet appearing in India and after having lived in India for over 10 years, he has never had a single Indian friend, many Tibetans are like that. I asked him whether this may be because India is too big, has too many people, too many different religions and cultures? He said that this could be one reason, but also thought that Tibetans had not made enough effort; at the same time, however, he also felt that it is difficult to come into contact with Indians.

The debate described by Woeser also involves the Karmapa incident, apparently referring to Indian allegations that the Karmapa Lama were a man of many connections into China, i. e. a Chinese spy, and in violation of India’s Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. The Lama was reportedly cleared of the forex allegations soon after.

Kabir Bedi, an Indian television and film actor whose mother converted to Tibetan Buddhism, urged the authorities to show the Karmapa Lama more respect:

The Karmapa’s office applied for, and received, permission to bank the money under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. Inexplicably, this permission was withdrawn after the first $1,00,000 was received. And the Karmapa’s re-application has been pending, and pending, since 2002. What can a monk do with a growing pile of donations that can’t be banked, except to keep it in cash and use it for expenses?

And [h]ow would we look if he – the Karmapa Lama – sought asylum in a friendlier country?

To look at clerics as useless moneybags is a tradition that goes far beyond China, India, or Tibet. But while Mountain Phoenix may prefer secular literature, Chinese politics has proven that Tibetan Buddhism is actually much more scientific than she might think.

Shortwave Log, Northern Germany, February 2012: Feel the Tibetan Happiness

============

Recent Radio History

-

Radio Impacto, Costa Rica: semi-clandestine, but happy to confirm your sintonía.

Don Moore, of the Association of North American Radio Clubs, described Radio Impacto‘s anti-Sandinista propaganda efforts in an article published in 1992, less than two years after the station had closed down.

-

============
-

Recent Shortwave Logs

International Telecommunication Union letter codes used in the table underneath:
ARS – Saudi Arabia; CHN – China; CUB -Cuba; IND – India; TIB – Tibet.

Languages (“L.”):
A – Arabic; C – Chinese; E – English; F – French; S – Spanish.

-

kHz	Station	Ctry	L.	Day	Time GMT	S	I	O
5025	RHC Habana	CUB	S.	Febr 19	21:40	2	3	2
4920	PBS Tibet1)	TIB	E.	Febr 22	22:55	4	3	3
17615	Riyadh	ARS	A.	Febr 23	15:42	4	5	4
17660	Riyadh	ARS	F.	Febr 23	15:48	4	5	4
7550	All India Radio	IND	E.	Febr 23	21:55	4	5	4
4920	PBS Tibet	TIB	E.	Febr 23	22:30	4	4	4
5060	PBS Xinjiang2)	CHN	C.	Febr 23	23:30	4	3	3

____________

Notes / Soundtracks

¹⁾ Listen to PBS Tibet in English, and you may feel the happiness and energy of these Tibetan young people as Tibetan New Year is here. Interesting sample of local soft-power efforts there.
——– Soundtrack »

²⁾ “The East is Red” – once the identification tune of Radio Beijing (now China Radio International) is still in use on PBS Xinjiang.
——– Soundtrack »

____________

Related

» Do We Need a Common Losar, High Peaks, Pure Earth, Febr 20, 2012
» Previous Logs, November 2011

____________

Responsibility to Protect: Where’s the Iceberg?

Open civil war in Libya created the vacuum that drew the United Nations in. It was the grim outlook for Benghazi, its militias, and its inhabitants which stirred much of the Arab, European, and probably global public. Whenever you heard a discussion about Libya in everyday life, it was mostly about what was officially referred to as the responsibility to protect, or R2R.

MasasitMati: Beeshou's Nightmares - click picture for video

Every time when military intervention is considered, many supporters of the option suggest that the situation is exceptional, and that it requires exceptional responses. But the frequency of such military interventions – in Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, in Sierra Leone and in East Timor in 2000, in Iraq in 2003, in Lebanon in 2006, in Georgia in 2008, and in Libya in 2011, just to name a few -, hardly suggests that military intervention can still be seen as an exception.

Now, military intervention in Syria appears to become more likely – depending on the sources you read, it may already be in progress -, and one in Iran may be somewhat further down the queue.

Responsibility to protect is a norm, not a law. Even if it were a law, different states with different interests could still disagree if the law applies,or if it doesn’t. When it’s a norm, decisions will depend either on ethics, or on interests, or on a combination of both. What counts in the decision-making process is which laws or rules may serve to make international “norm enforcement” legal.

In Libya’s case humanitarian considerations were only the tip of the iceberg – in global politics, anyway, not necessarily in the press. The need to help the vulnerable – the need to “do something”, as Aidan Hehir referred to this humanitarian urge  in his The responsibility to protect and international law chapter^*) -, seemed to dominate everyday discussions.

What was the actual iceberg about? I don’t know, obviously, but the first step to understand it better should be to look at the document that made military intervention in Libya legal. UN Resolution 1973

[...] Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory [...]

An occupation force isn’t the same thing as ground forces, as far as I can see. The mandate was maxed by the intervening forces, but they weren’t necessarily in breach of it.

Which reasons did the resolution give for what was, after all, an intervention in a sovereign country? Civilian casualties, gross and systematic violation of human rights, the need for unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance, the Arab League’s support for a no-fly zone to be established, concern for the safety of foreign nationals in Libya, and the plight of refugees.

The Council welcomed the response of neighbouring States, in particular Tunisia and Egypt – tens of thousands of Libyans had fled their country, either to the east or to the west. It wouldn’t have taken too many months until Europe had faced an influx of refugees, too – in fact, Muammar Gaddafi had previously been Europe’s cooperation partner in keeping refugees from all over Africa south of the Mediterranean, and his sons had been welcome guests in Europe.

The first thing to do when judging the need to “do something” is to cool down – or to try, anyway. The beautiful language UN resolutions are wrapped into might as well be put into much more common words. Resolution 1973 became possible because Gaddafi – to various degrees – had become a disturbing factor in the business of all the stakeholders – Arab countries’, China’s, European countries’, and Russia’s.

The need to cool down also applies when it comes to the suspicions against political motivations. Many of these suspicions are certainly called for, but similar to the way many proponents of intervention monger their “morally superior” positions, many of the objections, too, are applied like cluster bombs.

It is probably wrong to think that there was that one overriding motivation (“Libyan oil” would probably be cited the most, when searching angry blog posts). It should  be more accurate to think of goal hierarchies, rather than of single goals that would define the military mission. Among a bundle of goals, the desire to avoid growing flows of refugees was probably among the bigger ones, at least in Arabia and Europe.

But while the UNSC managed to integrate all the stakeholders’ positions in 2011, concerning Libya, interests seem to differ too widely this time, concerning Syria. Besides, even benign powers like Brazil and India distrust interventionism. Brazil seems to put its reservations forward constructively:

In November, Brazil pushed the debate further by circulating a concept paper to all UN members on a new concept: “responsibility while protecting.” While the Council had cited the “responsibility to protect” civilians from mass atrocities over Libya, the Brazilians argued that the Council should develop stronger guidelines for the use of force and procedures “to monitor and assess the manner in which resolution are interpreted and implemented.” Although the Brazilian paper never mentions Libya, the purpose of its recommendations is clear: to set out constraints that would prevent a repeat of NATO’s escalation of the campaign against Gaddafi, which so quickly slipped beyond the Council’s control.

Not that only America, the Arab League, Britain or France were to blame. Practically everything deemed necessary by the authorized member states had been made “legal” by the 1973 resolution – at least in the widest sense. That couldn’t have happened without the UN security council’s agreement.

But while more  or less humanitarian initiatives might fool stakeholders with legitimate interests once, you can’t fool them every time you want.

____________

Note

^*) Critical Perspectives on the Responsibility to Protect, Interrogating theory and practice, ed. Philip Cunliffe, Oxon, New York, 2011, p. 85

____________

Related

» Sheikh Hassoun interview, Der Spiegel, Aug 11, 2011

____________

“Yiwu Incident”: All India Radio Coverage

-

Trade Advisory, Jan. 3

New Delhi has cautioned Indian businessmen and [Indian] traders in Yiwu, a major hub for commodity trading in Zhejiang province in China. A trade advisory posted on the Indian embassy website said yesterday, all people who have businesses with Yiwu are cautioned against doing businesses there, and all people who do not have business with Yiwu are requested to be careful that they do not do business with Yiwu. [...] Indian businessmen to stay away from Yiwu. The advisory has been issued in the backdrop of illegal detention of two Indian businessmen in the locality, and manhandling of an Indian diplomat.

All India Radio (AIR), , January 3, 2012 »

- – -

Safety of Utmost Importance, Jan. 4

The news in detail. India has secured the release of two Indian traders, tortured and taken captive by locals in a trading hub in China. They have safely got to the consulate in Shanghai. External affairs minister S. M. Krishna said after talks with the Chinese ambassador Zhang Yan that they had been assured that Beijing was paying [full] attention to the safety of Indian traders Deepak Raheja and Shyamsunder Agrawal. Mr. Krishna said the incident should not be blown out of proportions. The minister said the two countries agreed that the safety of the two Indians involved in a civil litigation in Yiwu is of utmost importance. Asked about the return of the traders to India, Mr. Krishna said that Indian consular officers have met them and they will perhaps work out the details. Chinese ambassador Zhang said the authorities in Beijing are working hard to resolve the issue. Zhang also met joint-secretary East-Asia, Gautam Bambawale, and informed him about the incident.

All India Radio, , January 4, 2012 »

____________

Related

» “Tortured like Animals”, Hindustan Times, Jan 5, 2012
» No Way to treat a Diplomat, January 3, 2012

____________