NYC Junta

UPDATE: The date was changed to the 11th, as the venue is closed on the 9th.

Jeremy will lead us in a post-Halloween discussion of piracy, its history and geopolitical background. Jeremy currently provides risk mitigation solutions to shipping companies who operate in areas where piracy is a problem, and he used to cover the issue as a journalist. Here is a piece he wrote for the South China Morning Post on pirates in the Malacca Strait. [PDF]

Maritime piracy is currently most widely known off the coast of Somalia, in the Gulf of Aden. But it is also a problem in the waters off the coasts of Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia and elsewhere. It is a problem that has been with us with for hundreds of years. This recent excellent piece in the New Yorker is a great historical overview and also provides some insight into the culture of pirates.

The conventional wisdom is basically that these guys should be blown out of the water. But a closer look reveals a more nuanced problem than just bloodthirsty criminals out to plunder and kill. In Somalia, piracy has been a result of the breakdown of the Somali state and inability for any central government to protect local waters from illegal fishing. With their livelihoods threatened, local fisherman realized that they could make money hijacking ships and demanding ransom from the companies that own them. Typically these pirates aren’t killing anyone; in fact, they tend to treat their hostages rather well.

Much as with other problems, unless the root causes of piracy are addressed, no just solution will be reached. We’ll talk about how the example of the Straits of Malacca supports that argument. Once one of the most pirate-infested waters in the world, many of the pirates were wiped out in the tsunami of 2006. The Indonesian government smartly capitalized on a unique moment to establish peace with the Aceh rebels, who used piracy to fuel the insurgency, and piracy has fallen off significantly since then. A lasting solution—though possibly far-off—is probably the only way to solve the Somalia problem.

Somalia is getting worse though as it suffers from an Islamic insurgency that is threatening to topple the weak central government. That insurgency is being fed by jihadists who are exiting the Afghan/Pakistan region due to pressure from drone strikes and the Pakistani army and are moving holy war to other areas. Will Al Qaeda be able to regroup in Somalia with pirates providing a valuable financial lifeline? Will they revisit the plans they coveted once in the Malacca Straits to execute a spectacular attack that would cripple global shipping, this time in the Gulf of Aden? We’ll use the piracy question as a precursor to talk about lawlessness, terrorism and the breakdown of nation-states.

The venue will be China One, 50 Avenue B, between 3rd and 4th street. China One has really good (and organic) Chinese food for decent prices, so a bit of eating this time as well.

Announcements, Meetings indonesia, law, malaysia, pirates, somalia, terror, the sea

China Economic Review highlights this WSJ story on American diplomatic efforts to get the Chinese to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia. The idea is that if China buys less oil from Iran, they will be more inclined to support the sanctions the Americans are proposing.

What about a converse situation? Instead of pressuring the Chinese to abandon their Iranian contracts, we could be lifting sanctions and doing more business with Iran. Didn’t someone once say that if goods don’t cross borders, armies will? We should be increasing ties to the Iranians – including business, academic and cultural connections – so as to decrease animosity.

Some will say that this would “reward” the Iranians for “bad behavior.” Nonsense. What have sanctions brought us, except more hostility? Even the Iranian protesters who were out on the streets demonstrating against Ahmedinejad do not favor sanctions against the regime they have far more reason to despise than we do.

If we really care about the brave Iranian souls who were out fighting for democracy this summer, we should reject sanctions and work toward the normalization of relations, which means doing business together.

In the News china, energy, iran, oil, saudi arabia

Thinking a lot this weekend about Afghanistan. I just finished Dexter Filkin’s excellent book, “The Forever War“, and read the piece Filkin’s also had in this weekend’s NY Times Magazine on General Stanley McChrystal, who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan. He is requesting at least another 40,000 troops to win the war in Afghanistan. I have a hard time thinking about any compromise with the Taliban that puts them in charge and abandons the Afghan people to their brutal, primitive rule. But the US has been there for over 8 years now, and I doubt that we can (or should) build a modern state there, in particular with the corrupt Karzai government stealing elections and trafficking in narcotics. Obama has a tough call on his hands, but I think I’m against sending a large number of troops. I think the fight is in Pakistan and dealing with that country’s disfunction. I still feel that way, but reading Part I in journalist David Rhode’s kidnapping saga, I was struck by this section:

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

I’m not so sure we can strike a balance in trying to limit an extremist sanctuary and not have a huge number of troops there. Either way we are confronted by a series of bad decisions, it’s just a question of which one is worse.

In the News afghanistan, kidnapping, taliban, war

Obama’s DOJ just made it official: they will not go after people using medical marijuana under the protection of state law.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

Of course this provides no relief for our friend Dave, who is still caught up in the dragnet. But it is progress for legalization advocates, even if this sort of policy can just as quickly be rescinded by the next administration. If pot activists use the next few years to pass more state laws and open more dispensaries, however, it will be harder in the future to re-introduce full prohibition.

In the News drugs, law, legalization, marijuana

I attended this conference this past weekend in Copenhagen put on by my ex-employer, Project Syndicate. Firstly, it was really great on a personal level to catch up with old colleagues and see how the association has continued to grow. When I left in early 2007 it was around 300 newspapers in around 100 countries; it is now 429 in 129. All of this goes back to 1998 when I joined up with them and it was roughly 20 in 12 countries, so pretty great to revisit that growth.

The conference itself was attended by some major figures like Kofi Annan, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Kenneth Rogoff, and George Soros, to name a few. The focus of the conference was on climate change, and speaking of Soros, perhaps the biggest news of the conference was when Soros announced at the Saturday dinner at the Copenhagen town hall that he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and donate $100 million to an environmental advisory group to aid policymakers.

For me, one of the most interesting conversations was one I had with an editor from Israel, a former editor of the left-leaning newspaper Ha’aretz. He told me that while he is deeply cynical about the possiblity of a real peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, there is a lot of good happening right now. The lull in violence has created a space for the West Bank to prosper and he claims (haven’t checked on this) that the number of checkpoints in the West Bank are very few. Meanwhile, the economy in the West Bank has flourished and Israel has had a break from attacks from the West Bank. In fact, I was told that the security forces in the West Bank are hunting terrorists, and are very effective at that. Meanwhile, Gaza festers and fundamentalism is on the rise there. But generally, things could be a lot worse. Here is a good column reflecting on what’s going on with the Palestinians.

In the News israel, palestine