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HOME THE BOOK Praise for Excerpts About the publisher About the editor Buy the book THE AUTHOR REVIEWS CALENDAR |
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Q: Why is it important that we understand what the J curve is? A: At its heart the J curve explains how national decision makers define their interests and make their choices, and how those choices effect the rest of the world, so it's hardly surprising that you literally can't turn on the news today, or open a newspaper, without seeing something that the J curve can explain. If you really want to understand why our gas prices are so high in the summer when we all try to go on vacation, why there have been layoffs in your home town caused by U.S outsourcing, the real story behind the current conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, or how we could impact what happens next in Cuba with succession looming, you need to understand the J curve, how it works, and what it reveals. The J curve is not just for foreign policy types or business execs. It applies to what is happening on the front pages of our newspapers every day and it affects us all. Q: One of the central tenets of "The J Curve" is that we're not properly dealing with authoritarian regimes and their leaders because we don't truly understand how they define their interests. Can you elaborate? A: Any leader of any government has as their first goal the stability and continuity of their own governance-their ability to continue to rule. If you're the leader of a stable democracy that means you're going to want to continue integrating your country into the global order and improving the educational level and economic well-being of your people. And you'd tend to respond to outside incentives to do keep that going. But in authoritarian countries-in the most threatening rogue states-leaders accomplish their goal of remaining in power not by educating their population or improving their country's integration into the broader global community but rather by furthering their country's isolation and keeping it there. Every week we see headlines about President Bush, Condi Rice, and various European leaders expressing a policy toward rogue states that amounts to a variation of "If these guys don't behave we'll isolate them." Well, that makes sense if you're an adult talking to a child. But what they don't understand is that's precisely what the leaders of authoritarian countries need to stay in power. I'm not saying that the U.S. is wrong in what it's trying to do, or that the goals of the Bush administration (or the Clinton administration before it) are malevolent or wrong-headed. America has long stood for individual rights and freedoms, liberty, openness, and economic prosperity. Those are all great goals. But we're being increasingly challenged all around the globe and it's vitally important we get things right. Unfortunately the policies and incentives that we and the international community have been using to deal with these crises are not working; they're not resolving the conflicts because they're based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates the leaders of countries in the developing world with which we have the greatest problems. And these problems will only get bigger as the energy crisis deepens and as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons technology increases. We ignore this misunderstanding at our peril. Q: Why exactly are sanctions so ineffective? A: Effective sanctions serve no purpose (and by "effective" I mean sanctions that the U.S. can get the international community to buy into, as opposed to, say, the U.S. sanctions on Iran which the international community essentially ignores.) The end result of these sanctions is that targeted countries have less access to the world. They're closed off from a certain level of economic interaction. In that kind of environment, and particularly in an authoritarian state, what typically happens is that the limited measure of goods and services that do come into the country get controlled by the regime's leader, making that person even more important. At the same time the cross-pollenization of ideas and communication and international standards outside the country have no way of getting in. Look at Iran today. The U.S. and Europe need to recognize that they have two goals with Iran. One is to prevent them from developing nukes and the other is to change the Iranian regime. The first goal may be impossible to attain. And to the extent that it is possible, limited international inspections as well as constraints-with Russian cooperation-on selling the Iranians nuclear relevant goods and technologies may potentially be effective. As to the second goal, the best way to do that is to globalize the country. Wire it. Invest more in it. Allow more travel to Tehran and more Iranians to travel to other places. Encourage more foreign direct investment into the country. Do everything you can to increase the capacity for the average Iranian to be aware of how the developed world functions. The reason North Korea continues to be run by a ruthless dictator is that he has hermetically sealed his country off. There's essentially no way into that country, no defectors, no information getting in or out. The average North Korean doesn't have a clue as to what things are like in the out side world. Similarly, there's a reason why the world's longest serving head of state (at least until the recent transfer of power) is in Cuba. And a large part of the reason is U.S. sanctions. I want to emphasize, once again, it's not because the U.S. is being malevolent or because our goals are somehow impure. The point is not that the U.S. wants to do the wrong thing with Cuba, but rather that the mechanism we're using to implement our goals is not actually punishing Castro but rather helping him maintain his grip on power. Q: If punitive sanctions, and a policy of isolating rogue states, are so ineffective why did they work so well in forcing South Africa to give up apartheid in favor of stable, open governance? A: I think part of the answer is the South African government did not want to be completely isolated; they didn't want to be an authoritarian state. They were keeping a significant portion of their population out of governance but they recognized they needed international investment to survive. And they recognized if they continued what they were doing they were going to fall apart no matter what. South Africa never made it to totalitarian and was never going to get there. They knew for their survival they needed a certain level of engagement or investment, so cutting off the international community wasn't an option like it was for Cuba, Turkmenistan, Albania or North Korea. Another interesting point to make here involves China, which has been buffeted by increasing openness. They recognize it causes them instability-and so they're trying to slow it down-but they also want to grow economically. The very same factors that make China more interesting to investors and which are helping their economy to grow are also destabilizing that regime. And they're caught. It's not yet clear whether economic growth or political tensions will eventually win out. But both are growing. China may be a lot like South Africa in that regard. It may be that they'll make it through with fundamental changes to the nature of their regime. But they may also fall apart. Or they could try to go back to being a much more authoritarian state and lose some of their economic growth. The J curve tells you what your options are. If you're on the far left of the curve you have to have isolation to keep it all together. South Africa wasn't on the far left of the curve. Q: Why do you say a descent toward instability in Saudi Arabia is virtually inevitable? A: Saudi Arabia is facing a demographic disaster. With a high birthrate and virtually no family planning its population is growing at a radical rate. And while the country's energy resources are enormous its economy has never really diversified beyond the energy industry. That's not changing anytime soon. The way they've been able to hold the country together so far has been by using that oil money for unprecedented amounts of state sponsored patronage. This ensures the loyalty and dependence of local leaders, creates temporary make-work projects to appease the angry unemployed, and buys off the regime's critics. But over time per capita income has declined and a significant percentage of the population lives below the poverty line. The country is slowly moving in the direction of becoming a normal developed state. They're trying to join the World Trade Organization, improve education, improve the political process, and bring women into the workplace. But these moves will also sow the seeds of instability. Saudi Arabia has always functioned with an iron hand. Dissent was never tolerated. (You get the benefit but you also don't question it.) The more you provide education and open the country to the global economy-things that will allow the Saudis to survive long term-the more you also free the government's grip on dissent. That's a real problem in a country where per capita income is slipping, where the population of young people is growing, where there are no jobs for them, and where their only opportunities to find a place for themselves are in Wahhabi-controlled schools and mosques run by men well armed with money and influence who are at war with the modern world. It's a sure-fire recipe for instability. Q: President's Bush's rationale for going to war and the poor planning for operations designed to stabilize and rebuild Iraq have been soundly criticized. By this time it is universally accepted that better preparations for all these problems could and should have been made. You argue that these critiques, although justified, miss the heart of America's failed policy there. What is the true lesson of the J curve as far as Iraq is concerned? A: U.S. policymakers should never have had to choose between the best of three bad options: counterproductive sanctions, capitulation, or a costly war that left U.S. troops to play a principal role in rebuilding Iraq's stability. The lesson of the J curve is that a process of creating opportunities for ordinary Iraqis to profit from access to the resources of the outside world would have destabilized Saddam at less cost to both the Iraqi people and to the United States. To be fair, it's not realistic to believe George H. W. Bush or Bill Clinton could have made an effective political case for punishing Saddam by extending Iraq an invitation to join the WTO. Nonetheless, policies that provided resources and created opportunities for Iraqis to interact as fully as possible with the outside world and with one another might have forced Saddam to contend with pressures for change from within Iraq. U.S. policies designed to isolate North Korea and Cuba have led to the same false choice: capitulation or costly confrontation. Q: If the key to averting disaster in today's world is stability, shouldn't we stop pushing for political reform in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, Egypt and other countries on the left side of the J curve that are at least somewhat friendly to U.S. interests? Why shouldn't we encourage them to consolidate domestic political power in the interests of global stability? A: There are a number of authoritarian regimes around the world that are quite stable and yet you wouldn't want them to stay in place in the long-term because they still represent a global threat. There are other authoritarian regimes that are likely to become deeply destabilized because of the process of globalization. This is true of much of the Arab world where regimes at present have been quite stable and friendly to international interests but are not likely to persevere in their present form for another generation. Take Pakistan for example. What happens if Musharraf dies? Consolidated authoritarian regimes typically have stability invested in one leader or a small coterie of leaders. When they destabilize they destabilize very quickly. So in both those cases it behooves the international community to try to prepare for better outcomes. Not taking a decision and ignoring the problem has widespread implications for our national interests, particularly in an age of weapons of mass destruction and transnational terrorism where the damage such states can do on the way down is unprecedented in human history. Q: What does the J curve have to say about the current situation in Lebanon? A: As a country moves from left to right on the curve you're going to find entrenched interests that see themselves as losing. What happened in Lebanon is that the radical wing of Hezbollah saw the more moderate integrationist wing becoming part and parcel of governance in Beirut. They knew that if that were to continue Lebanese society would be better off economically but their political careers-their ability to hold sway and influence events-would be finished. After seeing Israel's response to the kidnapping of a single solder in Gaza it was clear to them that the taking of two Israeli soldiers (and the killing of at least eight others) would lead to an overwhelming Israeli military reaction and that's exactly why they did it. They were already on the back foot in Lebanon: the U.N. Security Council had passed resolutions calling for their disarmament and one of their key supporters, Syria, had been kicked out of the country. They're not on the back foot anymore. Q: What do you think will most surprise readers of this book? A: I think they'll be surprised at how global it is, and how consistently its arguments apply over space and time. These are processes that have affected nations and empires throughout history. And although I do a detailed analysis of just twelve countries, I actually write about more than 90 countries in the book. Q: What is the connection between the war on terror and the war on drugs? A: America's war on drugs has never yielded the hoped-for results because the clear majority of resources devoted to winning it have been focused on combating the supply of drugs-at the expense of efforts to lower demand (through treatment or rehabilitation.) Seventy-five percent of the $40 billion spent on the drug war over the past two decades has gone to destroying crops, capturing or killing cartel members, and locking up dealers. But the suppliers of drugs can always find new vendors to peddle their wares. Why? Because there is demand. And where there's demand there'll always be supply. It is precisely on this supply-side principle that the U.S. risks losing the war on terror. There is demand for terrorism in parts of the Muslim world. Unfortunately there are also plenty of undereducated, underemployed, angry young Muslims willing to supply that demand-willing to surrender their lives in exchange for an outlet for their anger and a sense of pride and purpose. These men have little stake in the success of their nations. They have little hope of lawfully altering their fates. If this or that Al Qaeda captain is captured or killed, a young Muslim looking for a war will find another officer to enlist him. Just as a drug-dealer can always find a new street corner on which to pedal his product, bin Laden moved from Saudi Arabia to Sudan to Afghanistan. And when he's finally captured or killed, those who demand a champion to lead the terrorist jihad will create a new leader. Clearly the real war that has to be fought is the battle to decrease the demand. Unfortunately the current strategy for both the war on drugs and the war on terror assumes that the devotion of overwhelming resources to a steady stream of high-profile victories over the suppliers of drugs or terrorism is the only way to show tangible, consistent progress: high-profile arrests, infrastructure destroyed, "bad guys" slain. The patient methodical work of reducing demand for drugs and terrorism doesn't make the men who wage the war any more popular with their electorates. Demand-side strategy has therefore been neglected. But it is precisely that effort, combined with the continuation of an aggressive strategy to bring to justice the purveyors of drugs and terrorism that will bring change from within the troubled societies that produce them. Q: Why do you feel America's Cold-War strategies hold the key to winning the war on terror? A: During the Cold War, Western governments used every means at their disposal-military, diplomatic, cultural, economic, and social-to help open Communist-bloc states and to undermine both the Soviet supply of Communism and the demand for it from within Soviet satellites, the USSR itself, and the developing world. The former Warsaw Pact countries aren't democracies today because America imposed democracy from the outside. In fact, the U.S. never directly attacked the suppliers of Communism by invading a country under Moscow's direct control. The former Warsaw Pact states embraced democracy because they wanted democracy. The West contained the advance of Communism successfully enough and long enough for reformist forces inside the Soviet Union and Communist-bloc countries to unravel the fortress mentality of their closed societies. If such an achievement were possible in the effort to open other authoritarian states from within, the results would bring more global stability than a dozen successful military regime changes, each of which might be prohibitively expensive in terms of money and lives, and each of which might produce terrible unforeseen consequences. Q: 9/11, and subsequent attacks in Europe, has helped create a bit of a siege mentality. That in turn has provoked calls for limits on immigration-essentially for the establishment of the U.S. and EU as "gated communities," protected by a security perimeter that keeps outsiders out. Why do you consider this an unwise strategy? A: There's no doubt that Homeland Security needs to continue focusing on keeping terrorists out of America. The same goes for security forces in the European Union. Anyone who could have blocked the entry into the U.S. of the 9/11 hijackers would have done so without hesitation, even if it meant excluding a thousand innocent Saudis or Egyptians or Pakistanis as well. But we also need to recognize that at the end of day one of the few things that creates a stronger level of relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and the like is that a large number of their sons have been educated in this country. They've lived with average Americans. They have a sense of what life is really like here. And some of them are going to translate those experiences into working at home for political and economic reform. It's going to be a huge problem if those countries end up with a generation of leaders whose only experience of the U.S. is what they see in the media. There are also economic implications to the notion of closing our borders to outsiders. The U.S. has always attracted the best and brightest from around the world-top engineers, software designers, scientists and the like. There's a price to pay-that others such as China will gladly take advantage of-if we allow that to stop in the interest of keeping outsiders out. And finally, if the vast majority of would-be immigrants from Muslim countries are denied access to the U.S., if the European Union demonstrates to the Muslim world that Europe is a Christians-only club, demand in the Muslim world for terrorism and Islamist authoritarianism will surely grow. Left to their own devices, the citizens of states excluded from globalization's benefits will turn to the only widely practiced method of leveling the global playing field available to them: insurgency and terror. Q: What do you want readers to get out of this book? A: I want them to be able to see the world in a new way. When they're reading their newspapers, watching TV, listening to the radio I hope they'll see applications of the J curve around them in the world. I hope they'll say, "I get it! I hadn't thought about it in that way before but it makes sense." That's what a good book does. It shouldn't just confirm what you know it should make you think about the world in new ways. If "The J Curve" succeeds in doing that then I've done my job. |
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