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Is Democracy
MAY/JUNE 2018 • VOLUME 97 • NUMBER 3 •
Dying?
A Global
Report
IS DEMOCRACY DYING?
F O R E I G N A F F A I R S .C O M
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Volume 97, Number 3
IS DEMOCRACY DYING?
The Big Shift 10
How American Democracy Fails Its Way to Success
Walter Russell Mead
The Age of Insecurity 20

Can Democracy Save Itself?
Ronald Inglehart
The End of the Democratic Century 29

Autocracy’s Global Ascendance
Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa
Autocracy With Chinese Characteristics 39

Beijing’s Behind-the-Scenes Reforms
Yuen Yuen Ang
COVE R: DAN BEJAR
Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution 49

The Long Road to Democratic Decline
Ivan Krastev
May/June 2018
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ESSAYS
China’s New Revolution 60
The Reign of Xi Jinping
Elizabeth C. Economy
Fresh Prince 75
The Schemes and Dreams of Saudi Arabia’s Next King
F. Gregory Gause III
The Right Way to Coerce North Korea 87

Ending the Threat Without Going to War
Victor Cha and Katrin Fraser Katz
Perception and Misperception on the Korean Peninsula 103

How Unwanted Wars Begin
Robert Jervis and Mira Rapp-Hooper
Opioids of the Masses 118

Stopping an American Epidemic From Going Global
Keith Humphreys, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Vanda Felbab-Brown
Globalization Is Not in Retreat 130

Digital Technology and the Future of Trade
Susan Lund and Laura Tyson
Where Myanmar Went Wrong 141

From Democratic Awakening to Ethnic Cleansing
Zoltan Barany
ON FOREIGNAFFAIRS.COM
John Garnaut on Pardis Mahdavi on Susanna Blume on the
China’s influence how #MeToo became a Trump administration’s
operations in Australia. global movement. defense strategy.
May/June 2018
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THE GENE-EDITING REVOLUTION

The Ultimate Life Hacker 158
A Conversation With Jennifer Doudna
Gene Editing for Good 166

How CRISPR Could Transform Global Development
Bill Gates
Keep CRISPR Safe 171

Regulating a Genetic Revolution
Amy Gutmann and Jonathan D. Moreno
The New Killer Pathogens 178

Countering the Coming Bioweapons Threat
Kate Charlet
REVIEWS & RESPONSES

The Long Arc of Human Rights 186
A Case for Optimism
Caroline Bettinger-López
Recent Books 191
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Volume 1, Number 1 • September 1922
May/June 2018
May/June 2018 · Volume 97, Number 3

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CONTRIBUTORS
The political scientist YUEN YUEN ANG ’s work focuses on a
seeming paradox: How does a country without good
governance achieve rapid economic growth? Her prize-
winning 2016 book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap,
found the answer to that question in an approach that
she called “directed improvisation,” which mixes top-
down orders with bottom-up experimentation. A profes-
sor at the University of Michigan, in “Autocracy With
Chinese Characteristics” (page 39), Ang explains how a
richer China is resisting the pressures of democratiza-
tion—and questions whether it can do so indefinitely.
Born in Communist-ruled Bulgaria, IVAN KRASTEV is a

leading authority on eastern Europe’s postcommunist
transition. In 1996, he headed a research project that led
to the introduction of U.S.-style presidential primaries
in Bulgaria, and he went on to become executive director
of the International Commission on the Balkans, an
independent panel of experts. Now chair of the Centre
for Liberal Strategies, in Sofia, Krastev argues in “Eastern
Europe’s Illiberal Revolution” (page 49) that autocratic
rulers in Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere offer a glimpse
at how authoritarianism could come to the West.
In 2008, 33 years after he co-founded Microsoft, BILL

GATES left the company to work full time at the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation. Since its launch in 2000,
the foundation has given over $40 billion to a variety
of programs in education, global development, and public
health. In “Gene Editing for Good” (page 166), Gates
explains how CRISPR and related technologies can
transform the global fight against poverty and disease.
CAROLINE BETTINGER-LÓPEZ is not just a legal scholar; she

also served as the lead counsel in the first case brought
before the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights by a domestic violence survivor from the United
States. From 2015 to 2017, Bettinger-López was the
White House adviser on violence against women, and
she now teaches at the University of Miami School of
Law. In “The Long Arc of Human Rights” (page 186),
Bettinger-López reviews Kathryn Sikkink’s book about
global activist movements and argues that there is good
reason to be optimistic.
IS DEMOCRACY DYING?
C
entralization of power in the economic might of authoritarian powers
executive, politicization of the now outweighs that of advanced liberal
judiciary, attacks on indepen- democracies, they point out, and it is
dent media, the use of public office for probable that the future will look less
private gain—the signs of democratic like the end of history than a renewed
regression are well known. The only struggle for global ideological supremacy.
surprising thing is where they’ve turned Yuen Yuen Ang and Ivan Krastev,
up. As a Latin American friend put it finally, explore how the authoritarian
ruefully, “We’ve seen this movie before, resurgence is playing out on the ground
just never in English.” in China and eastern Europe, respectively.
The United States has turned out to At least today’s enemies of democracy
be less exceptional than many thought. are less violent and aggressive than their
Clearly, it can happen here; the ques- fascist predecessors, so war is unlikely.
tion now is whether it will. To find an And in China, the autocrats have man-
answer, the articles in this issue’s lead aged to reform their bureaucracy enough
package zoom out, putting the country’s to keep the economy moving forward—
current troubles into historical and for now.
international perspective. The most pressing dangers for the
Some say that global democracy is world’s leading democracies, in other
experiencing its worst setback since the words, are not external but internal. The
1930s and that it will continue to retreat time, resources, and opportunity to turn
unless rich countries find ways to reduce things around are there; the only things
inequality and manage the information missing are political will and leadership.
revolution. Those are the optimists. As Benjamin Franklin walked out of the
Pessimists fear the game is already over, Constitutional Convention in 1787, a
that democratic dominance has ended woman asked him, “Well, Doctor, what
for good. have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
To counsel against despair, Walter Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can
Russell Mead uses history, and Ronald keep it.” Two and a quarter centuries on,
Inglehart uses theory. Democracies in not much has changed.
general, and American democracy in —Gideon Rose, Editor
particular, have proved remarkably
resilient over time. They have faced
great challenges, but they have also
found ways of rising to those challenges
and renewing themselves. There is no
reason they can’t do so once again—if
they can somehow get their act together.
Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan
Foa offer a bleaker view. The collective
There is now a pervasive sense

of despair about American
democracy—a fear that it has
reached a point of dysfunction
and decay from which it will
never recover.
—Walter Russell Mead
The Big Shift Autocracy With Chinese

Walter Russell Mead 10 Characteristics
Yuen Yuen Ang 39
The Age of Insecurity
JAM ES G ILLEARD
Ronald Inglehart 20 Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution

Ivan Krastev 49
The End of the Democratic Century
Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa 29
Return to Table of Contents
Not many Americans can name the

The Big Shift
IS DEMOCRACY DYING?
drab presidents who drifted ineffectu-

ally through the corridors of the White
House during those years; fewer still
How American Democracy know the names of the senators and
Fails Its Way to Success representatives with whom they worked.
Almost no one not professionally engaged
Walter Russell Mead in the study of U.S. foreign policy can
remember a diplomatic accomplishment
between the purchase of Alaska and the
A
s Americans struggle to make construction of the Panama Canal. When
sense of a series of uncomfortable the politicians of those days are dimly
economic changes and disturbing remembered, it is more often for scandal
political developments, a worrying (“Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” went the
picture emerges: of ineffective politicians, campaign chant referring to President
frequent scandals, racial backsliding, Grover Cleveland’s illegitimate child)
polarized and irresponsible news media, than for any substantive accomplishment.
populists spouting quack economic rem- But if these were disappointing years
edies, growing suspicion of elites and in the annals of American governance,
experts, frightening outbreaks of violence, they were years of extraordinary impor-
major job losses, high-profile terrorist tance in American history. This was the
attacks, anti-immigrant agitation, declin- period in which the United States became
ing social mobility, giant corporations the largest and most advanced economy
dominating the economy, rising inequal- in the world. As transcontinental railroads
ity, and the appearance of a new class of created a national market and massive
super-empowered billionaires in finance industrial development created new
and technology-heavy industries. industries and new technologies, aston-
That, of course, is a description of ishing inventions poured out steadily
American life in the 35 years after the from the workshops of Thomas Edison
Civil War. The years between the assas- and his imitators and rivals. John D.
sination of President Abraham Lincoln, Rockefeller turned petroleum from a
in 1865, and that of President William substance of no commercial importance
McKinley, in 1901, were among the least into the foundation of global economic
inspiring in the history of U.S. politics. development. The United States’ finan-
As Reconstruction proved unsuccessful cial system became as sophisticated and
and a series of devastating depressions powerful as that of the United Kingdom.
and panics roiled the economy, Wash- In hindsight, it was a period in which
ington failed miserably to rise to the the United States failed its way to success
challenges of the day. as the consequences of the Industrial
Revolution made themselves felt. The
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD is James Clark Industrial Revolution began, of course,
Chace Professor of Foreign Policy and the well before the Civil War, but its full
Humanities at Bard College, the Global View
columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a effects were felt only later, as the United
Distinguished Fellow at the Hudson Institute. States overtook the United Kingdom as
10 F O R E I G N A F FA I R S
The Big Shift
Hello darkness, my old friend: the Panic of 1873

the greatest manufacturing power in the and policy elites, for the most part, are
world. The rapid technological, social, too wedded to paradigms that no longer
and economic changes that the Industrial work, but the populists who seek to
Revolution brought overwhelmed the replace them don’t have real answers,
institutions that had guided the United either. It is, in many ways, a stressful
States since the American Revolution. and anxious time to be alive. And that
It was not just the South that found its anxiety has prompted a pervasive sense
old political structures and ideas irrel- of despair about American democracy—
evant in the wake of the war; in the a fear that it has reached a point of
North, too, the political ideals and the dysfunction and decay from which it
governing institutions of the antebellum will never recover.
world no longer sufficed. The effects of rapid change are
The United States is passing through often unwelcome, but the process of
something similar today. The information transformation is one of growth and
revolution is disrupting the country’s development, not of decline and fall.
KEAN COLLEC TION / G ET TY IMAG ES
social and economic order as profoundly Indeed, the ability to cope with change
as the Industrial Revolution did. The remains one of the United States’ great-
ideologies and policies that fit American est sources of strength. In the nine-
society a generation ago are becoming teenth century, people often compared
steadily less applicable to the problems it the United States unfavorably with the
faces today. The United States’ political orderly Prussian-led German empire.
parties and most of its political leaders Today, the contrast often drawn is with
lack the vision and ideas that could solve China’s efficient modernization. Yet
its most urgent problems. Intellectual there is resilience and flexibility in the
May/June 2018 11
Walter Russell Mead
creative disorder of a free society. There Civil War, the line between employee
are reasons to believe that, once again, the and employer was more permeable than
United States can find a path to an open it later became. Young people without
and humane society that capitalizes on the capital naturally went to work as artisans
riches that the new economy will produce. in workshops, but many of them would
soon start their own businesses. As the
LIFE COMES AT YOU FAST small workshop was replaced with larger
Transitions are painful. In the post– factories, that was no longer possible.
Civil War years, the failure of politics had Horatio Alger wrote novels about plucky
grave consequences for American life. shoeshine boys who rose out of poverty
These were years of mass urbanization through hard work and good character,
in the United States, and government at but increasingly, society was divided
all levels failed to address the resulting between workers and owners.
problems. Poor housing, dangerously As those dividing lines became
bad food quality, rampant pollution, high harder to cross, the classes grew even
crime, abysmal public health services, further apart. There had been rich and
inadequate schooling—all blighted urban poor Americans in 1800—and nearly
life in the United States. one million Americans were slaves—
Farm policy was also a disaster. The but overall, there was much less poverty
federal government invited pioneers to in the United States then than in most
settle on increasingly marginal lands of the rest of the world. After the Civil
west of the 100th meridian; many lost War, this changed. A class of superrich
everything they had. The use of ma- entrepreneurs and factory owners
chinery and artificial fertilizers raised emerged, crossing the Atlantic to scour
agricultural productivity, but small Europe for art treasures. Back home,
family farms were poorly placed to industrial workers labored for subsis-
compete. Neither the establishment of tence wages, often working 12 or 14 hours
land-grant colleges to promote scientific a day, seven days a week, in noisy and
farming, nor the distribution of free dangerous factories.
land after the passage of the Homestead Financial markets were so poorly
Act, nor the subsidizing of railroads regulated that panics and crashes periodi-
could change the economic forces that cally erupted with astonishing ferocity,
were undermining the security of what destroying once flourishing businesses,
for centuries had been the foundation driving once prosperous families from
of American society: the family farm. their homes into the streets, obliterating
The Industrial Revolution was, among life savings, and swelling the ranks of the
other things, a revolution in how people jobless at a time when no social safety
earned their livings. In 1850, 64 percent net existed to mitigate the horrors of
of the American population earned its unemployment.
living through farming. By 1900, that By the end of the nineteenth cen-
figure had fallen to 38 percent, and today, tury, many Americans were haunted by
it has hit two percent. dystopian visions of a future spinning
The Industrial Revolution also led to out of control. The decline of the family
a decline in social mobility. Before the farm and the rise of large cities filled
The Big Shift
with masses of immigrants led many problems as the business cycle and the
to predict the end of democracy in instabilities of the banking system. Civil
the United States. Socialists and service reform improved the quality of
anarchists agitated for revolutionary government personnel. Social activists
change; conservatives feared for the and private philanthropists experimented
future and saw American values and with new methods and new ideas. Theo-
culture being swamped by immigrants logians rethought the relationship of
and unfamiliar ideas. social problems to the Gospel. New and
Yet beginning in the early twentieth more forward-looking coalitions began
century, the United States emerged from to take shape in American politics.
the crisis of industrialization to build The postbellum generation did not
a new kind of economy that ultimately solve the new problems that sprang up to
brought prosperity and freedom to the confront them, but they laid the founda-
overwhelming majority of the populations for future success. An intellectual,
tion. The postbellum generation was social, and political structure gradually
witnessing not, as many feared at the came together that would support a
time, the death throes of the American more successful set of policies in what
experiment but the struggle of a butter- became known as the Progressive era,
fly bursting from its cocoon. thus beginning the second stage of
adjustment. The Federal Reserve System,
NO PAIN, NO GAIN regulatory agencies such as the Food
The adjustment came in three stages. and Drug Administration, and reforms
In the first, from 1865 through 1901, such as Prohibition, women’s suffrage,
Americans struggled to grapple with the introduction of the income tax, and
the forces reshaping their society. Often, the popular election of U.S. senators
the government was too weak or too testified to the growing confidence of a
poorly organized to undertake the new generation better equipped to deal
complex tasks that the times demanded. with industrialization.
The new ideas that well-intentioned Yet for all these successes, neither the
people brought into the arena often fell Progressive era nor the more radical and
short of what was required. The bimetal far-reaching New Deal that followed it
monetary standard of the politician solved the problems of industrial society.
William Jennings Bryan and the “single It would take World War II to launch
tax” of the economist Henry George the third and final stage of adjustment.
could not solve the problems of the The rapid development of the wartime
day—but neither could the prophets economy and the large-scale planning
of orthodoxy solve the problems of necessary to win the war provided
agricultural decline, racial inequality, Americans with a template for organiz-
and urban poverty. ing their society more comprehensively
Still, Americans were learning than ever before. Only then could the
from their failures and deepening their United States harness the full potential
understanding of the new conditions. of its industrial productivity and create
Economists developed better statistics the stable and prosperous society that
and sharpened their analysis of such appeared to have fixed the most basic
May/June 2018 13
Walter Russell Mead
problems of economic and social life in large number of firms operated under
the modern world. regulations that limited competition.
In hindsight, the pattern seems clear: These employers offered their employees
the post–Civil War years transformed stable jobs with good benefits; increasing
the United States into the world’s leading numbers of workers received defined-
industrial economy, and in subsequent benefit pension plans in addition to
decades, Americans would learn how to Social Security. Wages and benefits
use the enormous wealth that industri- gradually rose in real terms. Educational
alization created to address the problems opportunity widened. On the whole, each
that it also brought. By the end of generation enjoyed a higher standard of
World War II, a rural nation of mostly living than its predecessor.
prosperous small farmers had become an This transformation was not confined
urban and suburban nation of mostly to the United States. Throughout the
prosperous blue- and white-collar workers. industrial world, the bitter class conflicts
Children went to school, not to factories of the early decades of industrialization,
or mines. The financial upheavals of in the nineteenth and early twentieth
earlier eras had been largely tamed. centuries, gradually mellowed. After
The business cycle, if not abolished, had World War II, both capitalists and
been moderated so that the depressions workers came to prefer compromise
that shook the industrializing world over struggle. Socialist parties became
became a thing of the past. The social more gradualistic, and market-oriented
safety net protected employees, the parties became more socially conscious.
elderly, and the infirm from the vicissi- International life also became more
tudes of life in a market society. Cities stable among the industrial democra-
had reliable sources of water, gas, and cies. The restless ambitions of Germany
electricity. By the 1970s, the worst of the and Japan no longer disturbed the peace.
environmental damage of the Industrial The rise of the European Union and
Revolution was being addressed; gradu- NATO pointed to a new era of deep peace
ally, the water and the air were getting within Europe and in the Atlantic
cleaner, and the slow work of assessing world more generally.
and repairing past environmental damage Beyond the frontiers of the industrial-
was under way. ized West, international tensions persisted,
The peak years of industrial society, with the Soviet bloc and across the devel-
from 1945 to 1990, saw the development oping world. But given the peaceful track
in many countries of an unusually stable record of industrial democracies, it
form of regulated capitalism closely aligned appeared that human political develop-
with the state. Regulated monopolies and ment followed a predictable path. As
oligopolies dominated many industries. agrarian societies industrialized, they
In the United States, AT&T operated the passed through a kind of adolescence, but
telephone system as a monopoly, and over time, they matured. The passions
the oil, automobile, airline, and steel and errors of youth burned away, and
industries, among others, were oligopolies delusional fantasies from fascism to
dominated by a few large producers. communism lost their appeal. In the
In other industries, such as banking, a end, like most well-brought-up youth,
these societies grew to become responsible

stakeholders in a prosperous world. They
led regular lives.
Much remained to be done, and life
in the United States and the other mature
industrial societies of the late twentieth Globalists
century was far from perfect. But their The End of Empire and the
Birth of Neoliberalism
achievements were impressive enough to
Quinn Slobodian
inspire political scientists to hail liberal,
“Imagine a novel and
industrial capitalism as the highest and interesting coverage of the
final form of human society. And the idea post-war Austrian School,
that industrial development was leading here relabeled the ‘Geneva
School,’ a well-done partial
inexorably to both social peace at home history of the WTO and EU,
and international peace abroad was and a book where the central
supremely comforting to an era struggling characters are not only
Mises and Hayek, but also
to come to grips with nuclear weapons Alexander Rüstow, Wilhelm
and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Röpke, and Michael Heilperin.”
Providence, however, had other —Tyler Cowen,
Marginal Revolution
plans. Liberal democracy in a world of $35.00
mature industrial economies turned out
not to be the end of history, after all, Zbigniew
as geopolitical and ideological rivals Brzezinski
America’s Grand Strategist
have undermined the foundations of
the liberal world order in recent years. Justin Vaïsse
As horrified EU officials in Brussels “A long-awaited biography...

Apart from Kissinger, no
followed election returns in the United adviser so dominated
Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, and Italy, a president’s agenda.
and as the Trump administration sought [Brzezinski’s] intellect was as
sharp as his tongue.”
to take U.S. policy in new directions, — Edward Luce,
the foundations of the building seemed Financial Times
$35.00
to crumble, even as the architects of
world order sought to place the finish- The Muslim
ing touches on the cathedral of peace. Brotherhood and
No longer were liberal democracies the West
the custodians of a fully developed and A History of Enmity and
Engagement
stable social system. Increasingly, the
Martyn Frampton
masses no longer believed that technocrats
“Rigorous yet absorbing...[Frampton’s] book fills a crucial
could find the right answers to eco- gap in the literature and will be essential reading...for
nomic and social questions by following anyone seeking to understand the ever-problematic
the established procedures. In many relationship between religion and politics in today’s Middle
East.”
cases, citizens of democracies around —Malise Ruthven, Financial Times
the world today find themselves in the Belknap Press | $35.00
uncomfortable situation of the postbellum
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS | www.hup.harvard.edu
generation: facing problems whose
15
Walter Russell Mead
origins cannot be fully understood, and The information revolution is likely

whose solutions will ultimately require to be even more disruptive than the
intellectual and political architecture Industrial Revolution was, and to make
that does not yet exist. matters worse, it is unfolding in an
unstable world awash in nuclear weap-
INFORMATION, PLEASE ons. History cannot reveal everything
“Industrial revolution” and “information one needs to know about the challenges
revolution”—the phrases are so hackneyed ahead. Yet as one thinks about how to
that they have come to conceal the very manage the dangerous period in which
scale of change they were once meant to the old ways are no longer adequate but
highlight. Such processes alter society even the patterns of the new world are not
more profoundly than political revolu- yet clear, reflecting on the last big shift
tions. From the family to the state, from between two forms of economic and
the corporation to the classroom, from social order can offer valuable insights.
the altar to the throne, from gender to The place to begin is where these
finance, no social institution emerges revolutions are first felt: in the world
unchanged. Political parties shatter and of work. The rapid decline of agricul-
are rebuilt along new lines; new political ture in the U.S. work force caused by
ideologies, some of them extreme, emerge the Industrial Revolution has its con-
from the chaos to command widespread temporary counterpart in the collapse
support. It is this kind of change that of employment in both factory and
swept the world during the Industrial routine clerical work. Together, these
Revolution and is sweeping it now. two categories of labor accounted for
For the United States, this is both a nearly half the jobs in the American
pessimistic diagnosis and an optimistic economy as recently as 1980; as a result
one. On the one hand, the country could of automation and globalization, these
face years, perhaps decades, of upheaval two categories accounted for only 15
and dysfunction as Americans struggle percent of American jobs in 2016.
first to understand and then to master the It appears that these historic shifts
rules of the emerging information society. are only beginning. The much-feared
On the other hand, the journey on which rise of automation is expected to destroy
the country has embarked leads not to millions of jobs. Although new ones
decline but to achievement. Just as the might appear to take their place, no one
mature industrial society of the second knows what these jobs will be—or what
half of the twentieth century offered the kind of education to give young people
vast majority of Americans greater pros- in preparation.
perity, health, and freedom than anyone Meanwhile, the nature of employ-
has enjoyed since humanity emerged from ment has changed for many of the jobs
the prehistoric mists, so can one reasonably that survive. Lifetime employment was
hope that the creative forces unleashed by often the norm in the mature industrial
the information revolution will give rise economy. In the contemporary world, in
to a new kind of society that will be more which companies can spring up overnight
conducive to human dignity and freedom and then disappear almost as quickly,
than anything ever known. lifetime employment is becoming harder
The Big Shift
to find. Outside the government sector, Louis XIV. Automobiles, radios, vacuum
defined-benefit pension plans have cleaners, televisions, and so on trans-
largely disappeared. Not only must formed the material existence of the
many workers change jobs and even masses as well as of the elites. At the
industries over the course of their same time, the revolution in health care
careers, but millions of workers also brought a multitude of diseases under
move in and out of the “gig economy,” control, extended life spans by decades,
driving passengers for Uber, renting and found new ways to dull the pain of
out rooms through Airbnb, selling surgery and childbirth.
goods on eBay, and taking on various The information revolution will
part-time and temporary assignments. likely have a similar effect on services as
cheap information processing continues
TIME CHANGE to bring sophisticated offerings within
It will be a very long time before it the price range of the ordinary consumer.
becomes clear what a mature information The average person will enjoy the kind
economy might look like. If people in the of information-based services that today
1860s and 1870s had been told that only are available only to the very rich.
two percent of the population would earn Individualized medicine, first-class legal
its living in agriculture in the twentieth and financial advice and representation,
century, they would not have been able career and professional consulting will
to imagine what jobs the displaced be near universal in an age of smart
farmers could find. That there would machines and sophisticated software.
one day be “horseless carriages” and even In its early stages, the information
“flying machines” they could perhaps revolution has increased the earnings of
have imagined, but would they have been many knowledge workers. This is likely
able to predict that people would get jobs to change. It was the guild members and
making stickers saying “Baby on Board” tradesmen who suffered the most from the
that proud parents could place in the Industrial Revolution. Spinners, weavers,
rear windows of those carriages? Or that and ironworkers saw their once prestigious
factories would one day grow up to make and highly paid jobs lose status and
“travel-size” suitcases that passengers income as machines enabled less skilled
could place in the overhead baggage workers to match their output. If, as seems
compartments of the flying machines? likely, better software and more power-
Or that health-care professionals would ful computers continue to develop, many
be tasked with writing letters to certify of today’s learned professionals risk being
that certain household pets should be replaced by machines in much the same
designated as “emotional support animals” way. Bureaucrats and managers face
so that they could accompany their similar threats.
owners on the flying machines? The full consequences of the informa-
The Industrial Revolution and the tion revolution will only gradually come
scientific revolution that accompanied into view, and the ideas and institutions
it made it possible for ordinary people suitable to it will emerge as the rising
to live lives of affluence and security generations learn to use the resources
that would have astounded the court of and wealth that an information society
May/June 2018 17
Walter Russell Mead
creates to address the problems it also today’s educational system socializes

brings. It is likely that before the adjust- young people into a world that no
ment is finished, every institution—from longer exists.
the state to the family to the corporation— The rise of large and stable employ-
will have changed in fundamental ways. ers made them central to social policy.
In the meantime, people must learn to The corporation collected taxes on
live in a world of forces that they do not behalf of the state, but it also served
always understand, much less control. as the point of intervention for many
“We do not ride on the railroad; it rides social goals. Society looked to employ-
upon us,” wrote Henry David Thoreau ers to provide pensions, health insur-
in 1854. Today, one might say that we ance, and a host of other benefits. If, as
do not so much surf the Web as the Web seems likely, the great firms of the new
surfs us. economy, such as Facebook and Google,
will employ fewer people directly than
HOW TO GET THROUGH IT such companies as AT&T and U.S.
To the extent that the experience of the Steel did in their heyday, and if many
last great transition offers some useful firms will hire and fire workers more
lessons, the first would be to remember rapidly than in the past, then it is time
that however difficult this one may appear, to rethink the close relationship between
what is happening now is an opportunity, employers and the state.
not a disaster. While one can mourn the Especially during the transition
loss of the stable livelihoods, assembly- period, it is likely that many Americans
line work is not, on the whole, an enrich- will be self-employed or work for very
ing or fulfilling pursuit. That humanity small enterprises, perhaps on a part-time
may soon be able to provide for its or freelance basis. Ensuring that these
material needs without conscripting companies, on the one hand, have access
millions of people into lives of repetitive to credit and other necessary services
toil is cause for celebration. and, on the other hand, are not crushed
Beyond that lesson, it seems clear by paperwork and compliance burdens
that many existing social institutions and designed for larger enterprises will require
policies, however well they used to work, many policy changes. Everything from
need to be changed. The contemporary zoning laws (to allow people to run small
approach to schooling was developed in businesses out of their homes) to rules
response to the needs of the Industrial about employer benefits will need to
Revolution: it provided basic literacy be reviewed.
to the whole work force, offered more One of the most important ways that
advanced schooling to a percentage of it, the information revolution can radically
and socialized children into the unique improve the lives of most Americans
working environment of the industrial involves health care. In the future, the
age. Whether toiling on the factory floor human physician may well be a worse
or in corporate or government bureauc- diagnostician than a computer program,
racies, the employees of the industrial era much as the folk hero John Henry was
worked in hierarchical organizations that defeated by the steam drill, or the chess
valued order and patience. Increasingly, master Garry Kasparov was beaten by
The Big Shift
IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue. The data,” the power that information will
characteristic effect of the information give to states is only going to grow. This
revolution on a particular industry is a raises fundamental questions of sover-
radical reduction in costs accompanied eignty, security, and, of course, civil
by a radical enhancement in quality. liberties that will need to be answered.
In health care, then, the primary focus The challenge is immense. The
of reform ought to be a shift away foundations of societies are quaking at
from providing a uniform bureaucratic home, even as the international order
experience to the entire population and threatens to splinter. In the United
toward encouraging the innovation that States, policymakers and politicians
could someday give every individual now find themselves accountable to a
American significantly better health care. public that may become defensive and
Government should also be trans- antagonistic under the stress of eco-
formed. The modern civil service is, nomic and cultural change. The old
above all, a product of the Industrial answers in the old textbooks don’t seem
Revolution; the information revolution to work anymore, the new answers
makes it possible, and perhaps neces- haven’t been discovered yet, and those
sary, for government to become much who will someday write the new text-
more responsive and effective. Industrial books are still in primary school. To
bureaucracies aimed for uniformity: reflect on the upheavals that accompa-
every person who contacted the bureauc- nied the Industrial Revolution—the
racy would ideally be treated in the most destructive wars and the most
same way. This works reasonably well unspeakable tyrannies in the history
when it comes to processes such as of our species—is to realize just how
granting driver’s licenses, but it works much peril we face.
much less well when it comes to deliv- Yet humans are problem-solving
ering complex services. In the future, a animals. We thrive on challenges.
worker who loses a job may receive a Americans, for their part, are the heirs
voucher for unemployment benefits and to a system of mixed government and
retraining, and be able to choose among popular power that has allowed them
competing firms that offer the kinds of to manage great upheavals in the past.
specialized services that a conventional The good news and the bad news are
bureaucracy simply cannot provide. perhaps the same: the American people,
Finally, it is becoming increasingly in common with others around the
clear that information is one element, world, have the opportunity to reach
and perhaps the most important, of unimaginable levels of affluence and
state power. The “revolution in military freedom, but to realize that opportu-
affairs” that defense analysts spoke of in nity, they must overcome some of the
the early 1990s—the idea that in battle, hardest challenges humanity has ever
the advantage goes to the military that known. The treasure in the mountain is
can command the “infospace”—was priceless, but the dragon who guards it
merely a foretaste of what is to come. is fierce.∂
Given the increasing importance of
signals intelligence, cyberwar, and “big
May/June 2018 19
immigration (and, in the United States,

The Age of
IS DEMOCRACY DYING?
rising racial equality). That reaction has

been intensified by the rapid cultural
Insecurity change and declining job security experi-
enced by many in the developed world.
Cultural and demographic shifts are
Can Democracy Save Itself ? making older voters feel as though they
no longer live in the country where they
Ronald Inglehart were born. And high-income countries
are adopting job-replacing technology,
such as artificial intelligence, that has
O
ver the past decade, many the potential to make people richer and
marginally democratic countries healthier but also tends to result in a
have become increasingly author- winner-take-all economy.
itarian. And authoritarian, xenophobic But there is nothing inevitable about
populist movements have grown strong democratic decline. Rising prosperity
enough to threaten democracy’s long- continues to move most developing
term health in several rich, established countries toward democracy—although,
democracies, including France, Germany, as always, the trajectory is not a linear
the Netherlands, Sweden, the United one. And in the developed world, the
Kingdom, and the United States. How current wave of authoritarianism will
worried should we be about the outlook persist only if societies and governments
for democracy? fail to address the underlying drivers.
The good news is that ever since If new political coalitions emerge to
representative democracy first emerged, reverse the trend toward inequality and
it has been spreading, pushed forward by ensure that the benefits of automation
the forces of modernization. The pattern are widely shared, they can put democ-
has been one of advances followed by racy back on track. But if the developed
setbacks, but the net result has been an world continues on its current course,
increasing number of democracies, from democracy could wither away. If there
a bare handful in the nineteenth century is nothing inevitable about democratic
to about 90 today. The bad news is that decline, there is also nothing inevitable
the world is experiencing the most severe about democratic resurgence.
democratic setback since the rise of
fascism in the 1930s. BY POPULAR DEMAND
The immediate cause of rising support Over the past two centuries, the spread
for authoritarian, xenophobic populist of democracy has been driven by the
movements is a reaction against forces of modernization. As countries
urbanized and industrialized, people who
RONALD INGLEHART is Amy and Alan were once scattered over the country-
Lowenstein Professor of Democracy, Democra- side moved into towns and cities and
tization, and Human Rights at the University of began working together in factories.
Michigan. He is the author of Cultural Evolution:
People’s Motivations Are Changing, and That allowed them to communicate
Reshaping the World. and organize, and the economic growth
Power to the populist: Trump at a rally in Florida, December 2017

driven by industrialization made them tions do not guarantee that the people
healthier and wealthier. Greater eco- will elect wise and benevolent rulers, but
nomic and physical security led succes- they do provide a regular and nonviolent
sive generations to place less emphasis way to replace unwise and malevolent
on survival and more on intangible ones. Nondemocratic leadership succes-
values, such as freedom of expression, sions can be costly and bloody. And since
making them more likely to want de- democracy enables people to choose their
mocracy. Economic growth also went leaders, it reduces the need for repres-
hand in hand with more education, sive rule. Both these advantages have
which made people better informed, helped democracy survive and spread.
more articulate, more skilled at organiz- For the past few decades, the most
ing, and therefore more effective at striking alternative to the democratic
pushing for democracy. Finally, as path has come in China. Since its disas-
industrial societies matured, jobs shifted trous experience under Mao Zedong,
from manufacturing to knowledge sectors. the country has been governed by an
Those new occupations involved less exceptionally competent authoritarian
CAR L O AL L E G R I / R E U T E R S
routine and more independence. Work- elite. That reflects the political genius
ers had to think for themselves, and that of Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping.
spilled over into their political behavior. In addition to guiding China toward a
Moreover, democracy has a major market economy, Deng established
advantage over other political systems: norms that limited top leaders to two
it provides a nonviolent way to replace five-year terms in office and mandated
a country’s leaders. Democratic institu- retirement at age 70. He then selected
May/June 2018 21
Ronald Inglehart
some of the country’s most competent German electorate viewed the Nazi
60-year-olds to run the government and Party as a lunatic fringe, giving it less
installed a carefully chosen group of than three percent of the vote in na-
50-year-olds below them. For roughly tional elections that year. But in July
two decades after Deng’s retirement, 1932, with the onset of the Great Depres-
China was governed by the people he sion, the Nazis won 37 percent of the
had selected. In 2012, that group chose vote, becoming the largest party in
a new generation of leaders. Despite the Reichstag, before taking over the
growing cronyism and corruption, this government the next year. Each period
group also seems competent, but its of democratic decline brought a wide-
leader, Xi Jinping, is maneuvering to spread belief that democracy’s spread
establish himself as dictator for life, had ended and that some other system—
abandoning Deng’s system of predictable, fascism, communism, bureaucratic
nonviolent successions. If Xi succeeds, authoritarianism—would be the wave of
China’s government is likely to become the future. But the number of democra-
less effective. cies never fell back to its original level,
Most authoritarian countries, however, and each decline was eventually followed
are not governed nearly as effectively as by a resurgence.
contemporary China (nor was China The defeat of the Axis powers in
under Mao). During the early stages of World War II largely discredited
industrialization, authoritarian states canauthoritarian parties in the developed
attain high rates of economic growth, world: from 1945 to 1959, they drew
but knowledge economies flourish best an average of about seven percent of
in open societies. In the long run, the vote across the 32 Western democra-
democracy seems to be the best way to cies that contained at least one such
govern developed countries. party. Then, in the 1960s, as the unprec-
edented prosperity of the postwar era
FITS AND STARTS took hold, their support fell even further,
The long-term trend toward democracy to about five percent, and it remained
has always had ups and downs. At the low during the 1970s.
start of the twentieth century, only a few After 1980, however, support for
democracies existed, and even they were authoritarian parties surged. By 2015,
not full democracies by today’s stan- they were drawing an average of more
dards. The number increased sharply than 12 percent of the vote across those
after World War I, with another surge 32 democracies. In Denmark, the Neth-
following World War II and a third at erlands, and Switzerland, authoritarian
the end of the Cold War. Sooner or parties became the largest or second-
later, however, each surge was followed largest political bloc. In Hungary and
by a decline. Poland, they won control of govern-
Democracy’s most dramatic setback, ment. Since then, they have grown even
which came in the 1930s, when fascism stronger in some countries. In the 2016
spread over much of Europe, was partially U.S. presidential election, the Republican
driven by economic decline. Under rela- candidate Donald Trump campaigned on
tively secure conditions in 1928, the a platform of xenophobia and sympathy
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Ronald Inglehart
toward authoritarianism, yet he won thanks to unprecedented economic

46 percent of the vote (and the Electoral growth, strong welfare states, and
College). In Austria’s 2016 presidential peace between the world’s major powers.
election, Norbert Hofer, the far-right That security led to an intergenerational
Freedom Party candidate, narrowly lost shift in values, as many people no longer
with 46 percent of the vote. In France, gave top priority to economic and
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the physical security and no longer felt as
National Front, won 34 percent of the great a need to conform to group norms.
vote in last year’s presidential election, Instead, they emphasized individual
almost double her party’s previous high. free choice. That sparked radical cultural
Ever since World War II, Germans have changes: the rise of antiwar movements,
had a strong aversion to authoritarian, advances in racial and gender equality,
xenophobic parties, which for decades and greater tolerance of the LGBTQ
never surpassed the five percent thresh- community and other traditional
old required for representation in the out-groups.
Bundestag. But in 2017, the authoritarian, Those shifts provoked a reaction
xenophobic Alternative for Germany among older people and those holding
won 13 percent of the vote, becoming less secure positions in society (the less
Germany’s third-largest party. educated, the less well off) who felt
threatened by the erosion of familiar
THE ERA OF NOT-SO-GOOD values. During the past three decades,
FEELINGS that sense of alienation has been com-
To a large degree, the shifts between pounded by an influx of immigrants and
democracy and authoritarianism can be refugees. From 1970 to 2015, the His-
explained by the extent to which people panic population of the United States
feel that their existence is secure. For rose from five percent to 18 percent.
most of history, survival was precarious. Sweden, which in 1970 was inhabited
When food supplies rose, population almost entirely by ethnic Swedes, now
levels rose with them. When food grew has a foreign-born population of 19
scarce, populations shrank. In both percent. Germany’s is 23 percent.
lean and fat times, most people lived And in Switzerland, it is 25 percent.
just above the starvation level. During All this dislocation has polarized
extreme scarcity, xenophobia was a modern societies. Since the 1970s,
realistic strategy: when a tribe’s territory surveys in the United States and other
produced just enough food to sustain it, countries have revealed a split between
another tribe moving in could spell death “materialists,” who stress the need for
for the original inhabitants. Under these economic and physical security, and
conditions, people tend to close ranks “postmaterialists,” who take that
behind strong leaders, a reflex that in security for granted and emphasize less
modern times leads to support for tangible values.
authoritarian, xenophobic parties. In the U.S. component of the 2017
In rich countries, many people after World Values Survey, respondents were
World War II grew up taking their asked a list of six questions, each of which
survival for granted. They could do so required choosing which of two goals
was most important for their country. published by a Danish newspaper. At

Those who chose things such as spurring the height of the crisis, there was no
economic growth, fighting rising prices, Islamophobic backlash in Denmark.
maintaining order, and cracking down on The next year, the anti-Muslim Danish
crime were defined as materialists. By People’s Party won 14 percent of the vote.
contrast, those who gave top priority to But in 2015, in the wake of the Great
things such as protecting freedom of Recession, it won 21 percent, becoming
speech, giving people more say in impor- Denmark’s second-largest party. A
tant government decisions, and having backlash against the European migrant
greater autonomy in their own jobs were crisis was the immediate cause of the
designated postmaterialists. party’s support, but rising economic
In recent U.S. presidential elections, insecurity strengthened the reaction.
this split has had a major influence on
voting patterns, dwarfing the effects of FOR RICHER, FOR POORER
other demographic traits, such as social Economic insecurity need not take the
class. Consider the 2012 election: those form of absolute hardship to undermine
who gave priority to materialist values democracy. In the vast literature on
in all six of their choices were 2.2 times democratization, researchers disagree
as likely to have voted for the Republican on many issues, but one point draws
candidate, Mitt Romney, as they were almost unanimous acceptance: extreme
for the Democratic candidate, Barack inequality is incompatible with democ-
Obama, and those who gave priority to racy. Indeed, it is not surprising that
postmaterialist values in all six choices the rise in support for authoritarian
were 8.6 times as likely to have voted parties over the last three decades
for Obama as they were for Romney. roughly parallels the rise in inequality
This relationship grew even stronger over the same period.
in 2016, when Trump, an openly racist, According to data compiled by the
sexist, authoritarian, and xenophobic economist Thomas Piketty, in 1900, in
candidate, ran against Hillary Clinton, France, Germany, Sweden, and the
a liberal and cosmopolitan one, who was United Kingdom, the wealthiest ten
also the first woman nominated by a percent of the population took home
major party. Pure materialists were now 40 to 47 percent of total income before
3.8 times as likely to vote for Trump as taxes and transfers. In the United States,
they were for Clinton, and pure post- the figure was 41 percent. By around
materialists were a stunning 14.3 times 1970, things had gotten better, and the
as likely to vote for Clinton as they share going to the top ten percent in all
were for Trump. five countries fell to levels ranging from
Economic insecurity can exacerbate 25 percent to 35 percent. Since 1980,
these cultural pressures toward authori- however, income inequality has risen in
tarianism. In 2006, the Danish public all five countries. In the United States,
was remarkably tolerant when protest- the top ten percent now takes home
ers burned Danish embassies in several almost half of the national income. In all
Muslim-majority countries in response but one of the countries in the Organiza-
to a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad tion for Economic Cooperation and
May/June 2018 25
Ronald Inglehart
Development for which data are available, benefits of growth, which have over-
income inequality rose from 1980 to 2009. whelmingly gone to those above them.
Although inequality in almost all Rising inequality and a stagnant
developed countries has followed a working class are not the inevitable
U-shaped pattern, there are striking results of capitalism, as Piketty claims.
differences between them that reflect Instead, they reflect a society’s stage of
the effects of varying political systems. development. The transition from an
Sweden stands out: although it had agrarian to an industrial economy creates
substantially higher levels of inequality a demand for large numbers of workers,
than the United States in the early increasing their bargaining power. Mov-
twentieth century, by the 1920s, it had ing to a service economy has the oppo-
lower income inequality than the other site effect, undermining the power of
four countries in Piketty’s study, and it organized labor as automation replaces
has maintained that to this day. The humans. This first reduces the bargain-
advanced welfare state introduced by ing power of industrial workers and
Sweden’s long-dominant Social Demo- then, with the transition to a society
crats is largely responsible for the coun- dominated by artificial intelligence,
try’s low inequality. Conversely, the that of highly educated professionals.
conservative policies implemented by
U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British THE MACHINE AGE
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The problems of cultural change and
the 1980s weakened labor unions and inequality in rich democracies are being
sharply cut back state regulation, leading compounded by the rise of automation,
to higher levels of income inequality which threatens to create an economy
in the United States and the United in which almost all the gains go to the
Kingdom than in most developed very top. Because most goods in a
countries. knowledge economy, such as software,
As long as everyone was getting richer, cost almost nothing to replicate and
rising inequality did not seem to matter distribute, high-quality products can
much. Some people might have been sell for the same price as lower-quality
rising faster than others, but everyone ones. As a result, there is no need to
was going in the right direction. Today, buy anything but the top product,
however, everyone isn’t getting richer. which can take over the entire market,
For decades, the real income of the producing enormous rewards for those
developed world’s working classes has making the top product but nothing
been declining. Fifty years ago, the for anyone else.
largest employer in the United States It is often assumed that the most
was General Motors, where workers important part of the knowledge economy,
earned an average of around $30 an hour the high-tech sector, will create large
in 2016 dollars. Today, the country’s numbers of well-paid jobs. But that
largest employer is Walmart, which in sector’s share of all jobs in the United
2016 paid around $8 an hour. Less States has remained flat since statistics
educated people now have precarious first became available about three
job prospects and are shut out from the decades ago. Canada, France, Germany,
Sweden, and the United Kingdom show nor looking for work. Work rates for
the same pattern in their high-tech women rose steadily until 2000; since
sectors. Unlike the transitions from an then, those have also declined.
agrarian economy to an industrial Life as a labor-force dropout is not
economy and then to a knowledge easy. Working-age men who are out of
economy, the move toward artificial the labor force report low levels of
intelligence is not generating large emotional well-being, and a 2016 study
numbers of secure, well-paid jobs. by the National Bureau of Economic
That is because computers are fast Research found that nearly half of all
reaching the point where they can replace working-age male labor-force dropouts—
even highly educated professionals. roughly 3.5 million men—took pain
Artificial intelligence has already made medication on a daily basis. Not sur-
huge strides toward replacing human prisingly, they tend to die early. From
labor in analyzing legal documents, 1999 to 2013, death rates rose sharply
diagnosing patients, and even writing for non-Hispanic white American men
computer programs. As a result, although with high school degrees or less, the
U.S. politicians and voters often blame group most likely to have left the labor
global trade and offshoring for their force recently. So-called deaths of
country’s economic difficulties, between despair—suicides, liver cirrhosis, and
2000 and 2010, over 85 percent of U.S. drug overdoses—accounted for most
manufacturing jobs were eliminated by of the increase. From 1900 to 2012,
technological advances, whereas only 13 U.S. life expectancy at birth rose from
percent were lost to trade. 47 to 79 years but then leveled off,
Although artificial intelligence is and in both 2015 and 2016, life expec-
rapidly replacing large numbers of jobs, tancy at birth for all Americans
its effects are not immediately visible: declined slightly.
the global economy is growing, and
unemployment is low. But these reassur- GETTING DEMOCRACY RIGHT
ing statistics conceal the fact that in the Whether this latest democratic set-
United States, 94 percent of the job back proves permanent will depend on
growth from 2005 to 2015 was among whether societies address these prob-
low-paid security guards, housekeepers, lems, which will require government
janitors, and others who report to subcon- intervention. Unless new political coali-
tractors. Moreover, the top-line unem- tions emerge in developed countries that
ployment figure hides the large numbers represent the 99 percent, their economies
of people who have been driven by dismal will continue to hollow out and most
job prospects to drop out of the work people’s economic security will carry on
force altogether. The U.S. unemployment declining. The political stability and
rate is 4.1 percent. But the percentage of economic health of high-income societies
adults either working or actively seeking a require greater emphasis on the redis-
job is near its lowest level in more than tributive policies that dominated much of
30 years. In 2017, for every unemployed the twentieth century. The social base of
American man between 25 and 55 years the New Deal coalition and its European
old, another three were neither working counterparts is gone, but the reappearance
May/June 2018 27
Ronald Inglehart
of extreme wealth concentrated in the intervene and reallocate some of the

top one percent has created the potential new resources to create meaningful
for new coalitions. jobs that require a human touch in
In the United States, taking a punitive health care, education, infrastructure,
approach to the top one percent would environmental protection, research and
be counterproductive, as it includes many development, and the arts and humani-
of the country’s most valuable people. ties. Governments’ top priority should
But moving toward a more progressive be improving the quality of life for
income tax would be perfectly reason- society as a whole, rather than maxi-
able. In the 1950s and 1960s, the top mizing corporate profits. Finding
one percent of Americans paid a much effective ways to achieve this will be
higher share of their income in taxes one of the central challenges of the
than they do today. That did not coming years.
strangle growth, which was stronger Democracy has retreated before, only
then than now. Two of today’s wealthiest to recover. But today’s retreat will be
Americans, Warren Buffett and Bill reversed only if rich countries address
Gates, advocate higher taxes for the the growing inequality of recent decades
very rich. They also argue that the and manage the transition to the auto-
inheritance tax is a relatively painless mated economy. If citizens can build
way to raise badly needed funds for political coalitions to reverse the trend
education, health care, research and toward inequality and preserve the
development, and infrastructure. But possibility of widespread, meaningful
powerful conservative interests are employment, there is every reason to
moving the United States in the opposite expect that democracy will resume its
direction, sharply reducing taxes on the onward march.∂
rich and cutting government spending.
From 1989 to 2014, as part of the
World Values Survey, pollsters asked
respondents around the world which
statement better reflected their views:
“Incomes should be made more equal”
or “Income differences should be larger
to provide incentives for individual
effort.” In the earliest surveys, majorities
in 52 of the 65 countries polled at least
twice supported greater incentives for
individual effort. But over the next 25
years, the situation reversed itself. In the
most recent available survey, majori-
ties in 51 of the 65 countries, including
the United States, favored making
incomes more equal.
The rise of automation is making
societies richer, but governments must
dominance to its inherent appeal. If

The End of the
IS DEMOCRACY DYING?
citizens in India, Italy, or Venezuela
seemed loyal to their political system,
Democratic it must have been because they had
developed a deep commitment to both
Century individual rights and collective self-
determination. And if Poles and Filipinos
began to make the transition from dicta-
Autocracy’s Global torship to democracy, it must have been
Ascendance because they, too, shared in the universal
human desire for liberal democracy.
Yascha Mounk and Roberto But the events of the second half of
Stefan Foa the twentieth century can also be inter-
preted in a very different way. Citizens
across the world were attracted to liberal
democracy not simply because of its
A
t the height of World War II, norms and values but also because it
Henry Luce, the founder of offered the most salient model of eco-
Time magazine, argued that the nomic and geopolitical success. Civic
United States had amassed such wealth ideals may have played their part in
and power that the twentieth century converting the citizens of formerly
would come to be known simply as “the authoritarian regimes into convinced
American Century.” His prediction democrats, but the astounding economic
proved prescient: despite being chal- growth of western Europe in the 1950s
lenged for supremacy by Nazi Germany and 1960s, the victory of democratic
and, later, the Soviet Union, the United countries in the Cold War, and the defeat
States prevailed against its adversaries. or collapse of democracy’s most powerful
By the turn of the millennium, its posi- autocratic rivals were just as important.
tion as the most powerful and influential Taking the material foundations of
state in the world appeared unimpeach- democratic hegemony seriously casts the
able. As a result, the twentieth century story of democracy’s greatest successes
was marked by the dominance not just in a different light, and it also changes
of a particular country but also of the how one thinks about its current crisis.
political system it helped spread:liberal As liberal democracies have become
democracy. worse at improving their citizens’ living
As democracy flourished across the standards, populist movements that
world, it was tempting to ascribe its disavow liberalism are emerging from
Brussels to Brasília and from Warsaw
YASCHA MOUNK is a Lecturer on Govern- to Washington. A striking number of
ment at Harvard University and the author of citizens have started to ascribe less
The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is
in Danger and How to Save It.
importance to living in a democracy:
whereas two-thirds of Americans above
ROBERTO STEFAN FOA is a Lecturer in
Political Science at the University of Melbourne the age of 65 say it is absolutely impor-
and a Fellow at the Electoral Integrity Project. tant to them to live in a democracy, for
May/June 2018 29
example, less than one-third of those States expanded to include Japan and
below the age of 35 say the same thing. Germany, the power of this liberal
A growing minority is even open to democratic alliance became even more
authoritarian alternatives: from 1995 to crushing. But now, for the first time in
2017, the share of French, Germans, and over a hundred years, its share of global
Italians who favored military rule more GDP has fallen below half. According to
than tripled. forecasts by the International Monetary
As recent elections around the Fund, it will slump to a third within
world indicate, these opinions aren’t the next decade.
just abstract preferences; they reflect a At the same time that the domi-
deep groundswell of antiestablishment nance of democracies has faded, the
sentiment that can be easily mobilized share of economic output coming from
by extremist political parties and candi- authoritarian states has grown rapidly.
dates. As a result, authoritarian populists In 1990, countries rated “not free” by
who disrespect some of the most basic Freedom House (the lowest category,
rules and norms of the democratic system which excludes “partially free” coun-
have made rapid advances across western tries such as Singapore) accounted for
Europe and North America over the past just 12 percent of global income. Now,
two decades. Meanwhile, authoritarian they are responsible for 33 percent,
strongmen are rolling back democratic matching the level they achieved in the
advances across much of Asia and eastern early 1930s, during the rise of fascism
Europe. Could the changing balance in Europe, and surpassing the heights
of economic and military power in the they reached in the Cold War when
world help explain these unforeseen Soviet power was at its apex.
developments? As a result, the world is now approach-
That question is all the more pressing ing a striking milestone: within the next
today, as the long-standing dominance five years, the share of global income
of a set of consolidated democracies with held by countries considered “not free”—
developed economies and a common such as China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia—
alliance structure is coming to an end. will surpass the share held by Western
Ever since the last decade of the nine- liberal democracies. In the span of a
teenth century, the democracies that quarter century, liberal democracies
formed the West’s Cold War alliance have gone from a position of unprec-
against the Soviet Union—in North edented economic strength to a posi-
America, western Europe, Australasia, tion of unprecedented economic
and postwar Japan—have commanded a weakness.
majority of the world’s income. In the It is looking less and less likely that
late nineteenth century, established the countries in North America and
democracies such as the United Kingdom western Europe that made up the tradi-
and the United States made up the bulk tional heartland of liberal democracy
of global GDP. In the second half of the can regain their erstwhile supremacy,
twentieth century, as the geographic with their democratic systems embattled
span of both democratic rule and the at home and their share of the world
alliance structure headed by the United economy continuing to shrink. So the
The dictator’s dividend: a monument in Astana, Kazakhstan, September 2016

future promises two realistic scenarios: no affluent member has experienced a
either some of the most powerful autocratic breakdown of democratic rule.
countries in the world will transition to Beyond keeping democracies stable,
liberal democracy, or the period of demo- economic might also endows them with a
cratic dominance that was expected to number of tools to influence the develop-
last forever will prove no more than an ment of other countries. Chief among
interlude before a new era of struggle these is cultural clout. During the apogee
between mutually hostile political systems. of Western liberal democracy, the United
States—and, to a lesser extent, western
THE WAGES OF WEALTH Europe—was home to the most famous
Of all the ways in which economic writers and musicians, the most watched
prosperity buys a country power and television shows and movies, the most
influence, perhaps the most important advanced industries, and the most presti-
is that it creates stability at home. As gious universities. In the minds of many
the political scientists Adam Przeworski young people coming of age in Africa or
S HAM I L Z H U MAT OV / R E U T E R S
and Fernando Limongi have shown, Asia in the 1990s, all these things seemed
poor democracies often collapse. It is to be of a piece: the desire to share in the
only rich democracies—those with a unfathomable wealth of the West was
GDP per capita above $14,000 in today’s also a desire to adopt its lifestyle, and
terms, according to their findings—that the desire to adopt its lifestyle seemed to
are reliably secure. Since the formation of require emulating its political system.
the postwar alliance binding the United This combination of economic power
States to its allies in western Europe, and cultural prestige facilitated a great
May/June 2018 31
degree of political influence. When the by making military humiliation a rarity.

American soap opera Dallas began airing At the same time, it encouraged the
in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, for spread of democracy though diplomatic
example, Soviet citizens naturally con- leverage and the presence of boots on
trasted the impossible wealth of suburban the ground. Countries that were physi-
America with their own material depriva- cally located between a major demo-
tion and wondered why their economic cratic power and a major authoritarian
system had fallen so far behind. “We power, such as Poland and Ukraine, were
were directly or indirectly responsible deeply influenced by the greater mate-
for the fall of the [Soviet] empire,” Larry rial and military benefits offered by an
Hagman, one of its leading stars, boasted alliance with the West. Former colonies
years later. It was, he claimed, not Soviet emulated the political systems of their
citizens’ idealism but rather “good old- erstwhile rulers when they gained inde-
fashioned greed” that “got them to pendence, leaving parliamentary democ-
question their authority.” racies from the islands of the Caribbean
The economic prowess of Western to the highlands of East Africa. And in
democracies could also take on a harder at least two major cases—Germany and
edge. They could influence political Japan—Western military occupation
events in other countries by promising paved the way for the introduction of
to include them in the global economic a model democratic constitution.
system or threatening to exclude them In short, it is impossible to under-
from it. In the 1990s and the first decade stand the story of the democratic century
of this century, the prospect of member- without taking seriously the role that
ship in organizations from the European economic power played in spreading the
Union to the World Trade Organization ideals of liberal democracy around the
provided powerful incentives for demo- world. This also means that it is impos-
cratic reforms in eastern Europe, Turkey, sible to make informed predictions about
and parts of Asia, including Thailand the future of liberal democracy without
and South Korea. Meanwhile, Western reflecting on the effects that the decline
sanctions that prevented countries from in the relative economic clout of the
participating in the global economy may democratic alliance might have in the
have helped contain Iraqi President years and decades to come.
Saddam Hussein in the years following
the Gulf War, and they were arguably THE DANGERS OF DECLINE
instrumental in bringing about the fall of At first glance, the conclusion that
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic affluence breeds stability seems to bode
after the war in Kosovo. well for the future of North America and
Finally, economic power could easily western Europe, where the institutions
be converted into military might. This, of liberal democracy have traditionally
too, did much to enhance the global been most firmly established. After all,
standing of liberal democracies. It ensured even if their relative power declines, the
that other countries could not topple absolute level of wealth in Canada or
democratic regimes by force and raised France is very unlikely to fall below the
the domestic legitimacy of such regimes threshold at which democracies tend to
2018-May-June-FA-2books-Vtl_Foreign Affairs 3/20/18 11:19 AM Pag
fail. But absolute levels of wealth may

have been just one of many economic
features that kept Western democracies
stable after World War II. Indeed, the
stable democracies of that period also
shared three other economic attributes
that can plausibly help explain their
past success: relative equality, rapidly
growing incomes for most citizens,
and the fact that authoritarian rivals
to democracy were much less wealthy.
All these factors have begun to erode
in recent years. Consider what has hap-
pened in the United States. In the 1970s,
the top one percent of income earners
commanded eight percent of pretax “ I have rarely, if ever, heard either
the problems of democratic politics or the
income; now, they command over 20
kind of solutions we need to find for them
percent. For much of the twentieth better articulated than in this book.”
century, inflation-adjusted wages roughly —GARETH EVANS, Australian National University
doubled from generation to generation; hc $32.50
for the past 30 years, they have essentially
remained flat. And throughout the Cold
War, the U.S. economy, as measured by
GDP based on purchasing power parity,
remained two to three times as large as
the Soviet economy; today, it is one-sixth
smaller than China’s.
The ability of autocratic regimes to
compete with the economic performance
of liberal democracies is a particularly
important and novel development. At
the height of its influence, communism
managed to rival the ideological appeal
of liberal democracy across large parts
of the developing world. But even then, “A fascinating reflection of the complex
web of interests and institutions that
it offered a weak economic alternative have converged to drive Russia’s current
to capitalism. Indeed, the share of global orientation towards biosecurity.”
income produced by the Soviet Union —GARY A. ACKERMAN, Nature
and its satellite states peaked at 13 percent hc $89.95 $45 for Foreign Affairs readers!
in the mid-1950s. Over the following

decades, it declined steadily, falling to
ten percent by 1989. Communist coun-
tries also could not provide their citizens
TEL: 303-444-6684 • www.rienner.com
with a lifestyle that would rival the
33
comfort of the capitalist West. From AUTHORITARIAN SOFT POWER

1950 to 1989, per capita income in the One of the results of this transforma-
Soviet Union fell from two-thirds to less tion has been a much greater degree
than half of the western European level. of ideological self-confidence among
As the German writer Hans Magnus autocratic regimes—and, along with
Enzensberger put it, playing off the it, a willingness to meddle in Western
title of an essay by Lenin, Soviet social- democracies. Russia’s attempts to influ-
ism proved to be “the highest stage of ence the 2016 U.S. presidential election
underdevelopment.” have understandably drawn the most
New forms of authoritarian capi- attention over the past two years. But
talism may eventually suffer similar the country has long had an even greater
types of economic stagnation. So far, influence on politics across western
however, the form of authoritarian Europe. In Italy and France, for exam-
capitalism that has emerged in Arab ple, Russia has helped finance extremist
Gulf states and East Asia—combining parties on both sides of the political
a strong state with relatively free mar- divide for decades. In other European
kets and reasonably secure property countries, Russia has enjoyed even more
rights—is having a good run. Of the remarkable success in recruiting retired
15 countries in the world with the political leaders to lobby on its behalf,
highest per capita incomes, almost including former German Chancellor
two-thirds are nondemocracies. Even Gerhard Schröder and former Austrian
comparatively unsuccessful authoritar- Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer.
ian states, such as Iran, Kazakhstan, The big question now is whether
and Russia, can boast per capita incomes Russia will remain alone in its attempt to
above $20,000. China, whose per capita influence the politics of liberal democ-
income was vastly lower as recently as racies. The answer is almost certainly no:
two decades ago, is rapidly starting to its campaigns have proved that outside
catch up. Although average incomes meddling by authoritarian powers in
in its rural hinterlands remain low, deeply divided democracies is relatively
the country has proved that it can easy and strikingly effective, making it
offer a higher level of wealth in its very tempting for Russia’s authoritarian
more urban areas: the coastal region peers to follow suit. Indeed, China is
of China now comprises some 420 already stepping up ideological pressure
million people, with an average income on its overseas residents and establish-
of $23,000 and growing. In other words, ing influential Confucius Institutes in
hundreds of millions of people can major centers of learning. And over the
now be said to live under conditions past two years, Saudi Arabia has dramati-
of “authoritarian modernity.” In the cally upped its payments to registered
eyes of their less affluent imitators U.S. lobbyists, increasing the number
around the world, their remarkable of registered foreign agents working on
prosperity serves as a testament to its behalf from 25 to 145.
the fact that the road to prosperity no If the changing balance of economic
longer needs to run through liberal and technological power between Western
democracy. democracies and authoritarian countries
makes the former more susceptible to democracy seemed to promise not only
outside interference, it also makes it a greater degree of individual freedom
easier for the latter to spread their and collective self-determination but
values. Indeed, the rise of authoritarian also the more prosaic prospect of a vastly
soft power is already apparent across a wealthier life. As long as these back-
variety of domains, including academia, ground conditions held, there seemed
popular culture, foreign investment, to be good reason to assume that democ-
and development aid. Until a few years racy would continue to be safe in its
ago, for example, all of the world’s traditional strongholds. There were even
leading universities were situated in plausible grounds to hope that an ever-
liberal democracies, but authoritarian growing number of autocratic countries
countries are starting to close the gap. would join the democratic column.
According to the latest Times Higher But the era in which Western liberal
Education survey, 16 of the world’s top democracies were the world’s top cultural
250 institutions can be found in non- and economic powers may now be draw-
democracies, including China, Russia, ing to a close. At the same time that
Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. liberal democracies are showing strong
Perhaps the most important form of signs of institutional decay, authoritarian
authoritarian soft power, however, may populists are starting to develop an
be the growing ability of dictatorial ideological alternative in the form of
regimes to soften the hold that democ- illiberal democracy, and outright auto-
racies once enjoyed over the reporting crats are offering their citizens a standard
and dissemination of news. Whereas of living that increasingly rivals that of
the Soviet mouthpiece Pravda could the richest countries in the West.
never have dreamed of attracting a mass It is tempting to hope that Western
readership in the United States, the liberal democracies could regain their
clips produced today by state-funded dominance. One path toward that end
news channels, including Qatar’s Al would be economic. The recent economic
Jazeera, China’s CCTV, and Russia’s RT, success of authoritarian countries could
regularly find millions of American prove to be short lived. Russia and
viewers. The result is the end of the Saudi Arabia remain overly reliant on
West’s monopoly over media narratives, income from fossil fuels. China’s recent
as well as an end to its ability to main- growth has been fueled by a soaring
tain a civic space untainted by foreign debt bubble and favorable demographics,
governments. and it may end up being difficult to
sustain once the country is forced to
THE BEGINNING OF THE END? deleverage and the effects of an aging
During the long period of democratic population hit home. At the same time,
stability, the United States was the the economic performance of developed
dominant superpower, both culturally Western economies could improve. As
and economically. Authoritarian com- the residual effects of the Great Reces-
petitors such as the Soviet Union quickly sion wear off and European and North
stagnated economically and became American economies roar back to life,
discredited ideologically. As a result, these bastions of liberal democracy
May/June 2018 35
could once again outpace the modern- Indeed, recent democratic backsliding
ized autocracies. in Turkey, as well as signs of democratic
Projections about the exact speed slippage in Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico,
and degree of the shifting power bal- and the Philippines, raises the possibility
ance between democratic and authori- that some of these countries may become
tarian countries should therefore be flawed democracies—or revert to outright
taken with a large grain of salt. And yet authoritarian rule—in the coming decades.
a cursory glance at Western GDP growth Instead of shoring up the dwindling
rates for the past three to four decades forces of democracy, some of these
shows that, due to demographic decline countries may choose to align with
and low productivity growth, Western autocratic powers.
economies were stagnating long before Hopes that the current set of demo-
the financial crisis. Meanwhile, China cratic countries could somehow regain
and many other emerging economies their erstwhile global position are prob-
have large hinterlands that have yet to ably vain. The most likely scenario, then,
experience catch-up development, which is that democracies will come to look
suggests that these countries can continue less and less attractive as they cease to
to make considerable gains by following be associated with wealth and power
their current growth model. and fail to address their own challenges.
Another hope is that emerging democ- It’s conceivable, however, that the
racies such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia animating principles of liberal democracy
may come to play a more active role in will prove deeply appealing to the inhab-
upholding an alliance of liberal democ- itants of authoritarian countries even once
racies and diffusing their values around those peoples enjoy a comparable standard
the world. But this would require a radical of living. If large authoritarian countries
change in course. As the political scientist such as Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia
Marc Plattner has argued, these countries undertook democratic reforms, the
have not historically thought of “the aggregate power of democracies would
defense of liberal democracy as a signifi- be boosted significantly. If China were to
cant component of their foreign policies.” do so, it would end the era of authoritar-
Following the Russian annexation of ian resurgence in a single stroke.
Crimea, for example, Brazil, India, and But that is just another way of saying
South Africa abstained from voting on a that the long century during which
resolution in the UN General Assembly Western liberal democracies dominated
that condemned the move. They have the globe has ended for good. The only
also opposed sanctions against Russia. remaining question now is whether
And they have tended to side with democracy will transcend its once firm
autocratic regimes in seeking a greater anchoring in the West, a shift that would
role for states in regulating the Internet. create the conditions for a truly global
To make things worse, emerging democratic century—or whether democ-
democracies have historically been much racy will become, at best, the lingering
less stable than the supposedly consoli- form of government in an economically
dated democracies of North America, and demographically declining corner
western Europe, and parts of East Asia. of the world.∂
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If anything, under the current regime

Autocracy
IS DEMOCRACY DYING?
of President Xi Jinping, the Chinese
government appears more authoritarian,
With Chinese not less.
Most Western observers have long
Characteristics believed that democracy and capitalism go
hand in hand, that economic liberalization
Beijing’s Behind-the-Scenes both requires and propels political liberal-
ization. China’s apparent defiance of this
Reforms logic has led to two opposite conclusions.
One camp insists that China represents a
Yuen Yuen Ang temporary aberration and that liberaliza-
tion will come soon. But this is mostly
S
“ ooner or later this economy will speculation; these analysts have been
slow,” the New York Times colum- incorrectly predicting the imminent
nist Thomas Friedman declared collapse of the Chinese Communist
of China in 1998. He continued: “That’s Party (CCP) for decades. The other camp
when China will need a government that sees China’s success as proof that autoc-
is legitimate. . . . When China’s 900 million racies are just as good as democracies
villagers get phones, and start calling each at promoting growth—if not better.
other, this will inevitably become a more As Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
open country.” At the time, just a few Mohamad put it in 1992, “authoritarian
years after the fall of the Soviet Union, stability” has enabled prosperity, whereas
Friedman’s certainty was broadly shared. democracy has brought “chaos and
China’s economic ascent under authoritar- increased misery.” But not all autocracies
ian rule could not last; eventually, and deliver economic success. In fact, some
inescapably, further economic develop- are utterly disastrous, including China
ment would bring about democratization. under Mao.
Twenty years after Friedman’s Both of these explanations overlook
prophecy, China has morphed into the a crucial reality: since opening its mar-
world’s second-largest economy. Growth kets in 1978, China has in fact pursued
has slowed, but only because it leveled off significant political reforms—just not
when China reached middle-income status in the manner that Western observers
(not, as Friedman worried, because of a lack expected. Instead of instituting multi-
of “real regulatory systems”). Communica- party elections, establishing formal
tions technology rapidly spread—today, protections for individual rights, or
600 million Chinese citizens own smart- allowing free expression, the CCP has
phones and 750 million use the Internet— made changes below the surface, reform-
but the much-anticipated tsunami of ing its vast bureaucracy to realize many
political liberalization has not arrived. of the benefits of democratization—in
particular, accountability, competition,
YUEN YUEN ANG is Associate Professor of and partial limits on power—without
Political Science at the University of Michigan
and the author of How China Escaped the giving up single-party control. Although
Poverty Trap. these changes may appear dry and
May/June 2018 39
Yuen Yuen Ang
apolitical, in fact, they have created a hold positions in both hierarchies. For
unique hybrid: autocracy with democratic example, a mayor, who heads the admin-
characteristics. In practice, tweaks to istration of a municipality, is usually
rules and incentives within China’s public also the municipality’s deputy chief of
administration have quietly transformed party. Moreover, officials frequently
an ossified communist bureaucracy into move between the party and the state.
a highly adaptive capitalist machine. For instance, mayors may become party
But bureaucratic reforms cannot substi- secretaries and vice versa.
tute for political reforms forever. As The Chinese public administration is
prosperity continues to increase and massive. The state and party organs alone
demands on the bureaucracy grow, the (excluding the military and state-owned
limits of this approach are beginning enterprises) consist of over 50 million
to loom large. people, roughly the size of South Korea’s
entire population. Among these, 20
CHINESE BUREAUCRACY 101 percent are civil servants who perform
In the United States, politics are excit- management roles. The rest are street-
ing and bureaucracy is boring. In China, level public employees who interact with
the opposite is true. As a senior official citizens directly, such as inspectors, police
once explained to me, “The bureaucracy officers, and health-care workers.
is political, and politics are bureaucratized.” The top one percent of the
In the Chinese communist regime, there bureaucracy—roughly 500,000 people—
is no separation between political power make up China’s political elite. These
and public administration. Understand- individuals are directly appointed by
ing Chinese politics, therefore, requires the party, and they rotate through offices
first and foremost an appreciation of across the country. Notably, CCP mem-
China’s bureaucracy. bership is not a prerequisite for public
That bureaucracy is composed of two employment, although elites tend to be
vertical hierarchies—the party and the CCP members.
state—replicated across the five levels Within each level of government, the
of government: central, provincial, county, bureaucracy is similarly disaggregated into
city, and township. These crisscrossing the leading one percent and the remaining
lines of authority produce what the 99 percent. In the first category is the
China scholar Kenneth Lieberthal has leadership, which comprises the party
termed a “matrix” structure. In formal secretary (first in command), the chief of
organizational charts, the party and state (second in command), and members
the state are separate entities, with Xi of an elite party committee, who simulta-
leading the party and Premier Li Keqiang neously head key party or state offices
heading up the administration and its that perform strategic functions such as
ministries. In practice, however, the two appointing personnel and maintaining
are intertwined. The premier is also a public security. In the second category are
member of the Politburo Standing civil servants and frontline workers who
Committee, the party’s top body, which are permanently stationed in one location.
currently has seven members. And at the Managing a public administration the
local level, officials often simultaneously size of a midsize country is a gargantuan
Autocracy With Chinese Characteristics
Work in progress: repainting in Jiaxing, China, May 2014
task. It is also a critical one, since the introducing Western-style democracy,

Chinese leadership relies on the bureauc- he focused on transforming the Chinese
racy to govern the country and run the bureaucracy into a driver of economic
economy. Not only do bureaucrats growth. To achieve this, he injected demo-
implement policies and laws; they also cratic characteristics into the bureaucracy,
formulate them by tailoring central namely, accountability, competition, and
mandates for local implementation and partial limits on power.
CHANCE CHAN / REUTE RS
by experimenting with local initiatives. Perhaps the most significant of Deng’s

reforms was a shift in the bureaucracy
REFORM AT THE TOP away from one-man rule toward collective
When Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, leadership and the introduction of term
unleashed reforms, he maintained the limits and a mandatory retirement age
CCP’s monopoly on power. Instead of for elite officials. These changes con-
May/June 2018 41
Yuen Yuen Ang
strained the accumulation of personal to a favorable office. Local leaders were

power and rejuvenated the party-state also entitled to performance-based bonuses,
with younger officials. Lower down, with the highest performers sometimes
the reformist leadership changed the receiving many times more than the lower
incentives of local leaders by updating performers. The government also began
the cadre evaluation system, which assesses publicly ranking localities. Officials
local leaders according to performance from the winning ones earned prestige
targets. Since Chinese officials are and honorary titles; officials from those
appointed rather than popularly elected, at the bottom lost face in their community.
these report cards serve an accountability In this culture of hypercompetition,
function similar to elections in democ- nobody wanted to be left behind.
racies. Changing the targets for evaluating Newly incentivized, local leaders dove
cadres redefined the bureaucracy’s goals, headlong into promoting industrializa-
making clear to millions of officials what tion and growth. Along the way, they
they were expected to deliver, as well as devised strategies and solutions that
the accompanying rewards and penalties. even party bosses in Beijing had not
Breaking from Mao’s fixation on class conceived. A famous example from the
background and ideological fervor, Deng, 1980s and 1990s are township and village
ever the pragmatist, used this system to enterprises, companies that circumvented
turn local leaders into more productive restrictions on private ownership by
economic agents. From the 1980s onward, operating as collectively owned enter-
officials were assigned a narrow list of prises. Another, more recent example is
quantifiable deliverables, focused primarily the creation of “land quota markets” in
on the economy and revenue generation. Chengdu and Chongqing, which allow
Tasks unrelated to the economy, such as developers to buy quotas of land from
environmental protection and poverty villages for urban use.
relief, were either relegated to a lower Through these reforms, the CCP
priority or not mentioned at all. Mean- achieved some measure of accountability
while, the goal of economic growth was and competition within single-party
always paired with an indispensable rule. Although no ballots were cast,
requisite: maintaining political stability. lower-level officials were held respon-
Failing this requirement (for instance, sible for the economic development of
allowing a mass protest to break out) their jurisdictions. To be sure, Deng’s
could cause leaders to flunk their entire reforms emphasized brute capital
test in a given year. accumulation rather than holistic
In short, during the early decades of development, which led to environmen-
reform, the new performance criteria tal degradation, inequality, and other
instructed local leaders to achieve rapid social problems. Still, they undoubtedly
economic growth without causing politi- kicked China’s growth machine into
cal instability. Reformers reinforced this gear by making the bureaucracy results-
stark redefinition of bureaucratic success oriented, fiercely competitive, and
with incentives. High scores improved responsive to business needs, qualities
the prospects of promotion, or at least that are normally associated with
the chances of being laterally transferred democracies.
STREET-LEVEL REFORMS when Chinese markets opened up,

Bureaucratic reforms among local bureaucratic agents naturally revived
leaders were critical but not sufficient. many traditional practices, but with a
Below them are the street-level bureau- twentieth-century capitalist twist.
crats who run the daily machinery of Within the vast Chinese bureaucracy,
governance. And in the Chinese bureauc- formal salaries for officials and public
racy, these inspectors, officers, and employees were standardized at abys-
even teachers are not merely providers mally low rates. For instance, President
of public services but also potential Hu Jintao’s official salary in 2012 was
agents of economic change. For example, the equivalent of only about $1,000 a
they might use personal connections to month. An entry-level civil servant
recruit investors to their locales or use received far less, about $150 a month.
their departments to provide commer- But in practice, these low salaries were
cial services as state-affiliated agencies. supplemented by an array of additional
Career incentives do not apply to perks, such as allowances, bonuses,
rank-and-file public employees, as there gifts, and free vacations and meals.
is little chance of being promoted to And unlike in other developing
the elite level; most civil servants do not countries, supplemental compensation
dream of becoming mayors. Instead, in China’s bureaucracy was pegged to
the government has relied on financial financial performance: the central
incentives, through an uncodified system government granted local authorities
of internal profit sharing that links the partial autonomy to spend the funds
bureaucracy’s financial performance to they earned. The more tax revenue a
individual remuneration. Although local government generated and the
profit sharing is usually associated with more nontax revenue (such as fees and
capitalist corporations, it is not new to profits) that party and state offices
China’s bureaucracy or, indeed, to any earned, the more compensation they
premodern state administration. As the could provide to their staff members.
sociologist Max Weber noted, before What emerged was essentially a
the onset of modernization, instead of variant of profit sharing: public employ-
receiving sufficient, stable salaries from ees took a cut of the revenue produced
state budgets, most public agents financed by their organizations. These changes
themselves through the prerogatives of fueled a results-oriented culture in the
office—for example, skimming off a share bureaucracy, although results in the
of fees and taxes for themselves. Modern Chinese context were measured purely in
observers may frown on such practices, economic terms. These strong incentives
considering them corrupt, but they do propelled the bureaucracy to help transi-
have some benefits. tion the economy toward capitalism.
Before Deng’s reforms, the Chinese A profit-oriented public bureaucracy
bureaucracy was far from modern or has drawbacks, of course, and throughout
technocratic; it was a mishmash of the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese complained
traditional practices and personal rela- endlessly about arbitrary payments and
tionships, inserted into a Leninist profiteering. In response, from the late
structure of top-down commands. So 1990s on, reformers rolled out a suite
May/June 2018 43
Yuen Yuen Ang
of measures aimed at combating petty racy has come close to exhausting its
corruption and the theft of public funds. entrepreneurial and adaptive functions.
Central authorities abolished cash pay- Since Xi took office in 2012, the limits
ments of fees and fines and allowed of bureaucratic reform have become
citizens to make payments directly increasingly clear.
through banks. These technical reforms The Xi era marks a new stage in the
were not flashy, yet their impact was country’s development. China is now a
significant. Police officers, for example, middle-income economy with an increas-
are now far less likely to extort citizens ingly educated, connected, and demanding
and privately pocket fines. Over time, citizenry. And the political pressures that
these reforms have made the Chinese have come with prosperity are, in fact,
people less vulnerable to petty abuses beginning to undermine the reforms that
of power. In 2011, Transparency Inter- propelled China’s rapid growth.
national found that only nine percent of The cadre evaluation system has
Chinese citizens reported having paid a come under particular stress. Over time,
bribe in the past year, compared with 54 the targets assigned to local leaders have
percent in India, 64 percent in Nigeria, steadily crept upward. In the 1980s and
and 84 percent in Cambodia. To be sure, 1990s, officials were evaluated like CEOs,
China has a serious corruption problem, on their economic performance alone. But
but the most significant issue is collusion today, in addition to economic growth,
among political and business elites, not leaders must also maintain social har-
petty predation. mony, protect the environment, supply
Although none of these bureaucratic public services, enforce party discipline,
reforms fits the bill of traditional political
and even promote happiness. These
reforms, their effects are political. They changes have paralyzed local leaders.
have changed the priorities of government, Whereas officials used to be empowered
introduced competition, and altered how to do whatever it took to achieve rapid
citizens encounter the state. Above all, theygrowth, they are now constrained by
have incentivized economic performance, multiple constituents and competing
allowing the CCP to enjoy the benefits of demands, not unlike democratically
continued growth while evading the elected politicians.
pressures of political liberalization. Xi’s sweeping anticorruption cam-
paign, which has led to the arrest of an
THE LIMITS OF BUREAUCRATIC unprecedented number of officials, has
REFORM only made this worse. In past decades,
Substituting bureaucratic reform for assertive leadership and corruption were
political reform has bought the CCP often two sides of the same coin. Con-
time. For the first few decades of China’s sider the disgraced party secretary Bo
market transition, the party’s reliance on Xilai, who was as ruthless and corrupt as
the bureaucracy to act as the agent of he was bold in transforming the western
change paid off. But can this approach backwater of Chongqing into a thriving
forestall pressure for individual rights industrial hub. Corrupt dealings aside,
and democratic freedoms forever? Today, all innovative policies and unpopular
there are increasing signs that the bureauc- decisions entail political risk. If Xi intends
to impose strict discipline—in his eyes, inevitable and necessary for China’s
necessary to contain the political threats continued prosperity and its desire to
to CCP rule—then he cannot expect the partake in global leadership. But contrary
bureaucracy to innovate or accomplish to Friedman’s prediction, this need not
as much as it has in the past. take the form of multiparty elections.
Moreover, sustaining growth in a China still has tremendous untapped
high-income economy requires more than room for political liberalization on the
merely constructing industrial parks and margins. If the party loosens its grip on
building roads. It demands fresh ideas, society and directs, rather than commands,
technology, services, and cutting-edge bottom-up improvisation, this could be
innovations. Government officials every- enough to drive innovation and growth
where tend to have no idea how to drive for at least another generation.
such developments. To achieve this kind of
growth, the government must release and CHINA AND DEMOCRACY
channel the immense creative potential What broader lessons on democracy can
of civil society, which would necessitate be drawn from China? One is the need
greater freedom of expression, more public to move beyond the narrow conception of
participation, and less state intervention. democratization as the introduction of
Yet just as political freedoms have multiparty elections. As China has shown,
become imperative for continued some of the benefits of democratization
economic growth, the Xi administration can be achieved under single-party rule.
is backpedaling. Most worrying is the Allowing bureaucratic reforms to unfold
party leadership’s decision to remove term can work better than trying to impose
limits among the top brass, a change that political change from the outside, since
will allow Xi to stay in office for the rest over time, the economic improvements
of his life. So long as the CCP remains that the bureaucratic reforms generate
the only party in power, China will always should create internal pressure for mean-
be susceptible to what the political scien- ingful political reform. This is not to
tist Francis Fukuyama has called “the say that states must delay democracy in
bad emperor problem”—that is, extreme order to experience economic growth.
sensitivity to leadership idiosyncrasies. Rather, China’s experience shows that
This means that under a leader like Deng, democracy is best introduced by graft-
pragmatic and committed to reform, ing reforms onto existing traditions and
China will prosper and rise. But a more institutions—in China’s case, a Leninist
absolutist and narcissistic leader could bureaucracy. Put simply, it is better to
create a nationwide catastrophe. promote political change by building on
Xi has been variously described as an what is already there than by trying to
aspiring reformer and an absolute dicta- import something wholly foreign.
tor. But regardless of his predilections, A second lesson is that the presumed
Xi cannot force the genie of economic dichotomy between the state and society
and social transformation back into the is a false one. American observers, in
bottle. China today is no longer the particular, tend to assume that the state
impoverished, cloistered society of the is a potential oppressor and so society
1970s. Further liberalization is both must be empowered to combat it. This
May/June 2018 45
Yuen Yuen Ang
worldview arises from the United States’ only by transplanting the U.S. political
distinct political philosophy, but it is not system wholesale.
shared in many other parts of the world. As for other authoritarian govern-
In nondemocratic societies such as ments keen to emulate China, their
China, there has always been an interme- leaders should not pick up the wrong
diate layer of actors between the state lessons. China’s economic success is
and society. In ancient China, the edu- not proof that relying on top-down
cated, landholding elite filled this role. commands and suppressing bottom-up
They had direct access to those in power initiative work. In fact, it’s the exact
but were still rooted in their communi- opposite: the disastrous decades under
ties. China’s civil service occupies a Mao proved that this kind of leadership
similar position today. The country’s fails. In Deng’s era, the CCP managed a
bureaucratic reforms were successful capitalist revolution only insofar as it
because they freed up space for these introduced democratizing reforms to
intermediate actors to try new initiatives. ensure bureaucratic accountability,
Additionally, observers should drop promote competition, and limit the
the false dichotomy between the party power of individual leaders. The cur-
and the state when reading China. The rent Chinese leadership should heed
American notion of the separation of this lesson, too.∂
powers is premised on the assumption
that officeholders possess only one
identity, belonging either to one branch
of government or another. But this
doesn’t hold in China or in most tradi-
tional societies, where fluid, overlapping
identities are the norm. In these settings,
whether officials are embedded in their
networks or communities can sometimes
matter more than formal checks and
electoral competition in holding them
accountable. For example, profit-sharing
practices within China’s bureaucracy gave
its millions of public employees a personal
stake in their country’s capitalist success.
Challenging these unspoken assump-
tions sheds light on why China has repeat-
edly defied expectations. It should also
prompt the United States to rethink its
desire to export democracy around the
world and its state-building efforts in
traditional societies. Everyone every-
where wants the benefits of democracy,
but policymakers would be dearly mis-
taken to think that these can be achieved
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transitions in recent decades, such as

Eastern Europe’s
IS DEMOCRACY DYING?
Brazil and Turkey, but also in the West’s
most established democracies. Authori-
Illiberal Revolution tarianism, meanwhile, has reemerged in
Russia and been strengthened in China,
and foreign adventurism and domestic
The Long Road to political polarization have dramatically
Democratic Decline damaged the United States’ global influ-
ence and prestige.
Ivan Krastev Perhaps the most alarming develop-
ment has been the change of heart in
eastern Europe. Two of the region’s
I
n 1991, when the West was busy poster children for postcommunist democ-
celebrating its victory in the Cold ratization, Hungary and Poland, have
War and the apparent spread of seen conservative populists win sweep-
liberal democracy to all corners of the ing electoral victories while demonizing
world, the political scientist Samuel the political opposition, scapegoating
Huntington issued a warning against minorities, and undermining liberal
excessive optimism. In an article for the checks and balances. Other countries in
Journal of Democracy titled “Democracy’s the region, including the Czech Repub-
Third Wave,” Huntington pointed out lic and Romania, seem poised to follow.
that the two previous waves of democ- In a speech in 2014, one of the new
ratization, from the 1820s to the 1920s populists, Hungarian Prime Minister
and from 1945 to the 1960s, had been Viktor Orban, outlined his position on
followed by “reverse waves,” in which liberalism: “A democracy is not neces-
“democratic systems were replaced . . . by sarily liberal. Just because something is
historically new forms of authoritarian not liberal, it still can be a democracy.”
rule.” A third reverse wave was possible, To maintain global competitiveness,
he suggested, if new authoritarian great he went on to say, “we have to abandon
powers could demonstrate the continued liberal methods and principles of organiz-
viability of nondemocratic rule or “if ing a society.” Although Orban governs
people around the world come to see a small country, the movement he repre-
the United States,” long a beacon of sents is of global importance. In the West,
democracy, “as a fading power beset by where the will of the people remains
political stagnation, economic inefficiency, the main source of political legitimacy,
and social chaos.” his style of illiberal democracy is likely
Huntington died in 2008, but had he to be the major alternative to liberalism
lived, even he would probably have been in the coming decades.
surprised to see that liberal democracy Why has democracy declared war on
is now under threat not only in coun- liberalism most openly in eastern Europe?
tries that went through democratic The answer lies in the peculiar nature of
the revolutions of 1989, when the states
IVAN KRASTEV is Chair of the Centre for
Liberal Strategies, in Sofia, and the author of of eastern Europe freed themselves from
After Europe. the Soviet empire. Unlike previous
May/June 2018 49
Ivan Krastev
revolutions, the ones in 1989 were in Europe, voted for a slew of populist
concerned not with utopia but with the parties in last year’s parliamentary
idea of normality—that is, the revolution- elections, or why intolerance is on rise
aries expressed a desire to lead the type in economically successful Slovakia.
of normal life already available to people Poland is the most puzzling case. The
in western Europe. Once the Berlin Wall country had the fastest-growing econ-
fell, the most educated and liberal eastern omy in Europe between 2007 and 2017,
Europeans became the first to leave their and it has seen social mobility improve
countries, provoking major demographic in recent years. Research by the Polish
and identity crises in the region. And as sociologist Maciej Gdula has shown that
the domestic constituencies for liberal Poles’ political attitudes do not depend
democracy immigrated to the West, on whether they individually benefited
international actors such as the EU and from the postcommunist transition. The
the United States became the face of lib- ruling party’s base includes many who
eralism in eastern Europe, just as their are satisfied with their lives and have
own influence was waning. This set the shared in their country’s prosperity.
stage for the nationalist revolt against The details of eastern Europe’s
liberalism seizing the region today. populist turn vary from country to
country, as do the character and policies
PEOPLE POWER of individual populist governments. In
Many have found the rise of eastern Hungary, Fidesz has used its constitu-
European populism difficult to explain. tional majority to rewrite the rules of
After Poland’s populist Law and Justice the game: Orban’s tinkering with the
party (known by its Polish abbreviation, country’s electoral system has turned
PiS) won a parliamentary majority in his “plurality to a supermajority,” in
2015, Adam Michnik, one of the coun- the words of the sociologist Kim Lane
try’s liberal icons, lamented, “Sometimes Scheppele. Corruption, moreover, is
a beautiful woman loses her mind and pervasive. In a March 2017 article for
goes to bed with a bastard.” Populist The Atlantic, the writer David Frum
victories, however, are not a mystifying quoted an anonymous observer who
one-off but a conscious and repeated said of Fidesz’s system: “The benefit
choice: the right-wing populist party of controlling a modern state is less the
Fidesz has won two consecutive parlia- power to persecute the innocent, more
mentary elections in Hungary, and in the power to protect the guilty.”
opinion polls, PiS maintains a towering Poland’s government has also sought to
lead over its rivals. Eastern Europe dismantle checks and balances, especially
seems intent on marrying the bastard. through its changes to the constitutional
Some populist successes can be court. In contrast to the Hungarian
attributed to economic troubles: Orban government, however, it is basically clean
was elected in 2010, after Hungary’s when it comes to corruption. Its policies
economy had shrunk by 6.6 percent in are centered less on controlling the econ-
2009. But similar troubles cannot explain omy or creating a loyal middle class and
why the Czech Republic, which enjoys more on the moral reeducation of the
one of the lowest unemployment rates nation. The Polish government has tried
Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution
Rally ’round the flag: at a far-right march in Warsaw, November 2017
to rewrite history, most notably through Richard Hofstadter termed “the paranoid
a recent law making it illegal to blame style” in politics. This style traffics heavily
Poland for the Holocaust. In the Czech in conspiracy theories, such as the belief,
Republic, meanwhile, Prime Minister shared by many PiS voters, that the 2010
Andrej Babis led his party to victory plane crash that killed President Lech
last year by promising to run the state Kaczynski—the brother of the PiS leader
like a company. Jaroslaw Kaczysnki—was the product of
Yet beneath these differences lie an assassination rather than an accident.
telling commonalities. Across eastern This paranoia also surfaces in Fidesz’s
Europe, a new illiberal consensus is assertions that Brussels, aided by the
emerging, marked by xenophobic nation- Hungarian-born billionaire George
alism and supported, somewhat unex- Soros, secretly plans to flood Hungary
pectedly, by young people who came of with migrants.
age after the demise of communism. If Eastern Europe’s populists also deploy
the liberals who dominated in the 1990s a similar political vocabulary, casting
were preoccupied with the rights of themselves as the authentic voice of the
AG E NC JA GA Z E TA / R E U T E R S
ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, nation against its internal and external
this new consensus is about the rights enemies. As the political scientist Jan-
of the majority. Werner Müller has argued, “Populists
Wherever they take power, conservative claim that they and they alone represent
populists use the government to deepen the people,” a claim that is not empirical
cultural and political polarization and but “always distinctly moral.” Fidesz
champion what the American historian and PiS do not pretend to stand for all
May/June 2018 51
Ivan Krastev
Hungarians or all Poles, but they do insist force in the region. Opinion polls indicate
that they stand for all true Hungarians that the vast majority of eastern Europeans
and all true Poles. They transform democ- are wary of migrants and refugees. A
racy from an instrument of inclusion September 2017 study by Ipsos revealed
into one of exclusion, delegitimizing that only five percent of Hungarians
nonmajoritarian institutions by casting and 15 percent of Poles believe that
them as obstacles to the will of the people. immigration has had a positive impact
Another common feature of eastern on their country and that 67 percent of
European populism is a Janus-faced attitude Hungarians and 51 percent of Poles
toward the EU. According to the latest think their countries’ borders should
Eurobarometer polls, eastern Europeans be closed to refugees entirely.
are among the most pro-EU publics on During the refugee crisis, images of
the continent, yet they vote for some of migrants streaming into Europe sparked
the most Euroskeptical governments. a demographic panic across eastern
These governments, in turn, use Brussels Europe, where people began to imagine
as a rhetorical punching bag while benefit- that their national cultures were under
ing from its financial largess. The Hungar- the threat of vanishing. The region today
ian economy grew by 4.6 percent between is made up of small, aging, ethnically
2006 and 2015, yet a study by KPMG and homogeneous societies—for example,
the Hungarian economic research firm only 1.6 percent of those living in Poland
GKI estimated that without EU funds, it were born outside the country, and only
would have shrunk by 1.8 percent. And 0.1 percent are Muslim. In fact, cultural
Poland is the continent’s biggest recipient and ethnic diversity, rather than wealth, is
of money from the European Structural the primary difference between eastern and
and Investment Funds, which promote western Europe today. Compare Austria
economic development in the EU’s less and Hungary, neighboring countries of
developed countries. similar size that were once unified under
Support for illiberal populism has the Habsburg empire. Foreign citizens
been growing across the continent for make up a little under two percent of the
years now, but understanding its outsize Hungarian population; in Austria, they
appeal in eastern Europe requires rethink- make up 15 percent. Only six percent of
ing the history of the region in the decades Hungarians are foreign-born, and these
since the end of communism. It is the are overwhelmingly ethnic Hungarian
legacy of the 1989 revolutions, combined immigrants from Romania. In Austria,
with the more recent shocks delivered the equivalent figure is 16 percent. In the
by the decline of U.S. power and the eastern European political imagination,
crisis of the EU, that set in motion the cultural and ethnic diversity are seen as
populist explosion of today. an existential threat, and opposition to
this threat forms the core of the new
LIBERTY, FRATERNITY, NORMALITY illiberalism.
Although eastern European populism Some of this fear of diversity may
was already on the rise by the beginning be rooted in historical traumas, such as
of the current decade, the refugee crisis the disintegration of the multicultural
of 2015–16 made it the dominant political Habsburg empire after World War I and
the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe

after World War II. But the political
shock of the refugee crisis cannot be
explained by the region’s history alone.
Rather, eastern Europeans realized
during the course of the refugee crisis
that they were facing a new global
revolution. This was not a revolution
of the masses but one of migrants; it
was inspired not by ideological visions
of the future but by images of real life
on the other side of a border. If global-
ization has made the world a village, it
has also subjected it to the tyranny of
global comparisons. These days, people
in the poorer parts of the world rarely
compare their lives with those of their
neighbors; they compare them instead
with those of the most prosperous International
inhabitants of the planet, whose wealth
is on full display thanks to the global Security
diffusion of communications technolo- Stay on top of the latest in
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the significance that inequality between including the future of
U.S.-China relations,
classes once had.” If you are a poor the causes of nuclear
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And eastern Europeans have felt
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The great irony is that although
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eastern Europe today is reacting with
panic to mass migration, the revolutions
of 1989 were the first in which the desire
to exit one’s country, rather than to gain
53
Ivan Krastev
a greater voice within it, was the primary of joining the modern world made
agent of change. After the fall of the emigration a logical and legitimate choice.
Berlin Wall, many in the former com- As a result, the revolutions of 1989
munist bloc expressed their wish for had the perverse effect of accelerating
change by immigrating to the West population decline in the newly liber-
rather than staying home to participate ated countries of eastern Europe. From
in democratic politics. In 1989, eastern 1989 to 2017, Latvia lost 27 percent of
Europeans were not dreaming of a perfect its population, Lithuania 23 percent, and
world; they were dreaming of a normal Bulgaria almost 21 percent. Hungary
life in a normal country. If there was a lost nearly three percent of its popula-
utopia shared by both the left and the tion in just the last ten years. And in 2016,
right during the region’s postcommunist around one million Poles were living in
transition, it was the utopia of normality. the United Kingdom alone. This emi-
Experiments were forbidden. In 1990, gration of the young and talented was
Czech Finance Minister Vaclav Klaus occurring in countries that already had
(who later became prime minister and aging populations and low birthrates.
then president) said of finding a middle Together, these trends set the stage for
ground between capitalism and socialism, a demographic panic.
“The third way is the fastest way to It is thus both emigration and the
the Third World.” Eastern Europeans fear of immigration that best explain
dreamed that European unification the rise of populism in eastern Europe.
would proceed along the same lines as The success of nationalist populism,
German reunification, and in the early which feeds off a sense that a country’s
1990s, many Czechs, Hungarians, and identity is under threat, is the outcome
Poles envied the East Germans, who of the mass exodus of young people
were issued German passports over- from the region combined with the
night and could spend the deutsche prospect of large-scale immigration,
mark immediately. which together set demographic alarm
Revolutions as a rule cause major bells ringing. Moving to the West was
demographic disruptions. When the equivalent to rising in social status, and
French Revolution broke out, many as a result, the eastern Europeans who
of its opponents ran away. When the stayed in their own countries started
Bolsheviks took power in Russia, feeling like losers who had been left
millions of Russians fled. But in behind. In countries where most young
those cases, it was the defeated, the people dream of leaving, success back
enemies of the revolution, who saw home is devalued.
their futures as being outside their own In recent years, a rising desire for
country. After the 1989 revolutions, by self-assertion has also caused eastern
contrast, it was those most eager to live Europeans to chafe at taking orders
in the West, those most impatient to from Brussels. Although during the
see their countries change, who were 1990s, the region’s politicians, eager to
the first to leave. For many liberal- join NATO and the EU, had been willing
minded eastern Europeans, a mistrust to follow the liberal playbook, today,
of nationalist loyalties and the prospect they wish to assert their full rights as
Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution
members of the European club. Eastern and resent external powers; they also,
Europe’s integration into the EU mirrors Bibo argued, secured these countries in
at a national level the experience of the belief that “the advance of freedom
integration familiar from the stories of threatens the national cause.” They have
immigrants around the world. First- learned to be suspicious of any cosmopol-
generation immigrants wish to gain itan ideology that crosses their borders,
acceptance by internalizing the values whether it be the universalism of the
of their host country; second-generation Catholic Church, the liberalism of the
immigrants, born in the new country, late Habsburg empire, or Marxist inter-
fear being treated as second-class citizens nationalism. The Czech writer and
and often rediscover an interest in the dissident Milan Kundera captured this
traditions and values of their parents’ sense of insecurity well when he defined
culture. Something similar happened to a small nation as “one whose very exis-
eastern European societies after joining tence may be put in question at any
the EU. Many people in those countries moment.” A citizen of a large country
used to view Brussels’ interference in takes his nation’s survival for granted.
their domestic politics as benevolent. “His anthems speak only of grandeur
Over time, they have started to see and eternity. The Polish anthem how-
it as an intolerable affront to their ever, starts with the verse: ‘Poland has
nations’ sovereignty. not yet perished.’”
If one effect of eastern Europe’s
THE RETURN OF GEOPOLITICS post-1989 emigration was to kick-start
The final ingredient in eastern Europe’s the demographic panic that would later
illiberal turn is the deep current of take full form during the refugee crisis,
geopolitical insecurity that has always another, equally important effect was to
afflicted the region. In 1946, the Hun- deprive countries in the region of the
garian intellectual Istvan Bibo published citizens who were most likely to become
a pamphlet called The Misery of the Small domestic defenders of liberal democ-
States of Eastern Europe. In it, he argued racy. As a result, liberal democracy in
that democracy in the region would always eastern Europe came to rely more and
be held hostage to the lingering effects more on the support of external actors
of historical traumas, most of them related such as the EU and the United States,
to eastern European states’ history of which over time came to be seen as the
domination by outside powers. Poland, real constraints on the power of majori-
for instance, ceased to exist as an inde- ties in the region. Bucharest’s desire to
pendent state following its partition by join the EU, for instance, was primarily
Austria, Prussia, and Russia in the late responsible for its decision to resolve
eighteenth century; Hungary, meanwhile, a long-running dispute with Hungary
saw a nationalist revolution crushed in about the rights of ethnic Hungarians
1849, before losing more than two-thirds in Romania. And the EU’s eligibility
of its territory and one-half of its popu- rules, known as the Copenhagen crite-
lation in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. ria, make legal protections for minori-
Not only did these historical traumas ties a precondition for membership in
make eastern European societies fear the union.
May/June 2018 55
Ivan Krastev
The central role of the EU and the AN ILLIBERAL EUROPE?

United States in consolidating eastern Eastern European populism is a recent
Europe’s liberal democracies meant that phenomenon, but it has deep roots in
those democracies remained safe only the region’s politics and is unlikely to
so long as the dominance of Brussels and go away anytime soon. “The worrying
Washington in Europe was unquestioned. thing about Orban’s ‘illiberal democracy,’”
Yet over the last decade, the geopolitical according to the Hungarian-born Austrian
situation has changed. The United States journalist Paul Lendvai, is that “its end
had already been hobbled by expensive cannot be foreseen.” Indeed, illiberal
foreign wars and the financial crisis before democracy has become the new form of
the election of Donald Trump as its authoritarianism that Huntington warned
president raised serious questions about about more than two decades ago. What
Washington’s commitment to its allies. makes it particularly dangerous is that
In Europe, meanwhile, the consecutive it is an authoritarianism born within the
shocks of the debt crisis, the refugee framework of democracy itself.
crisis, and Brexit have called the future The new populists are not fascists.
of the EU itself into question. This came They do not believe in the transforma-
just as Russia, under the authoritarian tive power of violence, and they are not
government of President Vladimir Putin, nearly as repressive as the fascists were.
was beginning to reassert itself as a But they are indifferent to liberal checks
regional power, seizing Crimea from and balances and do not see the need
Ukraine in 2014 and backing a seces- for constitutional constraints on the
sionist insurgency in the country’s east. power of the majority—constraints that
Huntington predicted in 1991 that a form a central part of EU law. The main
strong, nondemocratic Russia would challenge posed by eastern European
pose problems for the liberal democra- populism is therefore not to the existence
cies of eastern Europe, and the rise of of democracy at the level of the nation
Putin’s Russia has in fact undermined but to the cohesion of the EU. As more
them. For eastern European leaders countries in the region turn toward
such as Orban, already fed up with illiberalism, they will continue to come
liberalism, Putin’s combination of into conflict with Brussels and probe
authoritarian rule and anti-Western the limits of the EU’s power, as Poland
ideology has served as a model to has already done with its judicial reforms.
emulate. For many Poles, the return of Eventually, the risk is that the EU could
the Russian threat was one more argu- disintegrate, and Europe could become
ment to vote for an illiberal government a continent divided and unfree.∂
that could protect the nation. In other
eastern European countries, such as the
Baltic states, Russia has simply acted
as a spoiler by attempting to spread
disinformation. Across the region, the
return of geopolitical insecurity has
contributed to the fading attractive-
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ESSAYS
Xi has matched the dramatic
growth of his personal power
with an equally dramatic
intensification of the Chinese
Communist Party’s power in
society and the economy.
—Elizabeth Economy
China’s New Revolution Opioids of the Masses

Elizabeth C. Economy 60 Keith Humphreys, Jonathan P. Caulkins,
and Vanda Felbab-Brown 118
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Perception and Misperception on
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Robert Jervis and Mira Rapp-Hooper 103
China’s New Revolution

The Reign of Xi Jinping
S
tanding onstage in the auditorium of Beijing’s Great Hall of the
People, against a backdrop of a stylized hammer and sickle,
Xi Jinping sounded a triumphant note. It was October 2017, and
the Chinese leader was addressing the 19th Party Congress, the latest
of the gatherings of Chinese Communist Party elites held every five
years. In his three-and-a-half-hour speech, Xi, who was appointed the
CCP’s general secretary in 2012, declared his first term a “truly remarkable
five years in the course of the development of the party and the country,”
a time in which China had “stood up, grown rich, and become strong.”
He acknowledged that the party and the country still confronted chal-
lenges, such as official corruption, inequality in living standards, and
what he called “erroneous viewpoints.” But overall, he insisted, China
was headed in the right direction—so much so, in fact, that he recom-
mended that other countries draw on “Chinese wisdom” and follow “a
Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind.” Not since
Mao Zedong had a Chinese leader so directly suggested that others
should emulate his country’s model.
Xi’s confidence is not without grounds. In the past five years, the
Chinese leadership has made notable progress on a number of its pri-
orities. Its much-heralded anticorruption campaign has accelerated, with
the number of officials disciplined for graft increasing from some 150,000
in 2012 to more than 400,000 in 2016. Air quality in many of China’s
famously smoggy cities has improved measurably. In the South China
Sea, Beijing has successfully advanced its sovereignty claims by milita-
rizing existing islands and creating new ones outright, and it has steadily
eroded the autonomy of Hong Kong through a series of political and legal
ELIZABETH C. ECONOMY is C. V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New
Chinese State (Oxford University Press, 2018), from which this essay is adapted.
Party of one: Xi at the 19th Party Congress, Beijing, October 2017

maneuvers. Across Asia, it has enhanced its influence through the Belt
and Road Initiative, a massive regional infrastructure plan. All the while,
the Chinese economy has continued to expand, and in 2017, GDP grew by
6.9 percent, the first time the growth rate had gone up in seven years.
But Xi’s ambitions extend beyond these areas to something more
fundamental. In the 1940s, Mao led the communist revolution that
created the contemporary Chinese party-state. Beginning in the late
1970s, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, oversaw a self-proclaimed “second
revolution,” in which he ushered in economic reforms and the low-
profile foreign policy that produced China’s economic miracle. Now,
Xi has launched a third revolution. Not only has he slowed, and, in
many cases, reversed, the process of “reform and opening up” set in
motion by Deng, but he has also sought to advance the principles of
this new China on the global stage. Moreover, in a striking move made
in March, the government eliminated the constitutional provision
limiting the president to two terms, allowing Xi to serve as president
THOMAS PETE R / REUTE RS
for life. For the first time, China is an illiberal state seeking leadership
in a liberal world order.
THE REVOLUTION BEGINS

Xi began his revolution as soon as he took power. For more than three
decades, the Chinese political system had been run by a process of
May/June 2018 61
collective leadership, whereby decision-making authority was shared

among officials in the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top ruling
body. But Xi quickly moved to centralize political authority in his own
hands. Within the first few years of his tenure, he assumed leadership
of all the most important committees overseeing policy, such as those
concerning cyber issues, economic reform, and national security. He
secured public pronouncements of loy-
alty from top officials, such as People’s
For the first time, China Liberation Army generals and provincial
is an illiberal state seeking party secretaries, as well as from the
leadership in a liberal media. And he has used an anticorrup-
world order. tion campaign to root out not just self-
serving officials but also his political
enemies. In July 2017, for example, Sun
Zhengcai, a rising star within the CCP who served as party secretary
of the municipality of Chongqing, was charged with corruption and
removed from office; months later, a senior official announced that
Sun had plotted with others to overthrow Xi.
At the 19th Party Congress, Xi further cemented his hold on CCP
institutions and consolidated his personal power. His name and his
ideology—“Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Character-
istics for a New Era”—were enshrined in the party’s constitution, an
honor previously granted only to Mao. More allies of his were added
to the CCP’s 25-member Politburo and its seven-member Standing
Committee, such that more than half of each group is now composed
of Xi loyalists. Then came the change that left open the possibility
that Xi could serve as president indefinitely.
Xi has matched the dramatic growth of his personal power with an
equally dramatic intensification of the CCP’s power in society and the
economy. The China scholar David Shambaugh once noted, “If one
of the hallmarks of the Maoist state was the penetration of society,
then the Dengist state was noticeable for its withdrawal.” Now, under
Xi, the pendulum has swung back toward a greater role for the party.
No element of political and economic life has remained untouched.
In the political sphere, the CCP has taken advantage of new technology
and put greater pressure on the private sector to restrict access to for-
bidden content online, sharply diminishing the vibrancy of China’s
virtual public square. Even privately shared humor can trigger police
action. In September 2017, authorities detained a man for five days
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I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O N E T A R Y F U N D
after he sent a joke about a rumored love triangle involving a govern-

ment official to a group over the messaging app WeChat. The govern-
ment is also developing a massive biometric database that, thanks to
state-of-the-art voice- and facial-recognition technologies, could be
married to its vast telephone and video surveillance network and used
to identify and retaliate against party critics. By 2020, Beijing plans to
have rolled out a national system of “social credit,” integrating infor-
mation from online payment and social media apps into a database
that would allow it to punish or reward citizens based on their supposed
trustworthiness. Those whose behavior falls short—defaulting on a
loan, participating in a protest, even wasting too much time playing
video games—will face a range of consequences. The government
might slow their Internet connections or restrict their access to every-
thing from restaurants to travel to jobs, while giving preferred access
to those who abide by the CCP’s rules.
On the economic front, Xi has defied expectations that he would
accelerate market-based reforms. He has strengthened the position of
state-owned enterprises, assigning them a leading role in economic
development campaigns, and he has empowered the party committees
that sit inside every Chinese firm. In recent years, those committees had
only ill-defined roles, but thanks to a new requirement under Xi, man-
agement must seek their advice—and, in some cases, their approval—for
all major decisions. The CCP has called for similar rules to apply in joint
ventures with multinational corporations. Even private companies are
no longer outside the party’s purview. In 2017, Beijing announced
plans to expand an experiment in which the party takes small stakes in
media and technology companies, including such giants as Alibaba
and Tencent, and receives a degree of decision-making power.
AMBITIONS ABROAD
While Xi has limited political and economic openness at home, on
the international stage, he has sought to position himself as globalizer
in chief. At a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in
November 2017, for example, he proclaimed, “Opening up will bring
progress, and those who close down will inevitably lag behind.” Such
rhetoric is misleading. In fact, one of the most distinctive elements of
Xi’s rule has been his creation of a wall of regulations designed to
control the flow of ideas, culture, and even capital between China and
the rest of the world.
Although restrictions on foreign influence are nothing new in China,

they have proliferated under Xi. In January 2017, Beijing enacted a
stringent new law requiring nongovernmental organizations in China
to register with the Ministry of Public Security, obtain permission for
every activity they engage in, and refrain from fundraising within
China. By March 2018, only 330-odd groups had registered, about
four percent of the total that had been operating in China before the
law. Meanwhile, Beijing has begun the process of formally blocking
foreign-owned virtual private networks that allow users to circumvent
China’s so-called Great Firewall.
A similar pattern has emerged in the economic realm. In 2015, in
order to prevent China’s currency from depreciating and its foreign
reserves from plummeting, Beijing placed strict controls on Chinese
citizens’ and corporations’ ability to move foreign currency out of the
country. That same year, the government launched its “Made in China
2025” program, a self-sufficiency drive that sets out ten key industries,
from materials to artificial intelligence, in which Chinese firms are
expected to control as much as 80 percent of the domestic market by
2025. To ensure that Chinese companies dominate, the government
not only provides large subsidies but also puts in place a variety of
barriers to foreign competition. In the electric car industry, for example,
it has required Chinese automakers to use batteries made in Chinese
factories that have been operating for more than a year, effectively
eliminating the major Japanese and South Korean competitors.
Meanwhile, Xi has moved China further away from its traditional
commitment to a low-profile foreign policy, accelerating a shift begun
by his predecessor, Hu Jintao. Under Xi, China now actively seeks to
shape international norms and institutions and forcefully asserts its
presence on the global stage. As Xi colorfully put it in a 2014 speech,
China should be capable of “constructing international playgrounds”—
and “creating the rules” of the games played on them.
Xi’s most notable gambit on this front is his Belt and Road Initiative,
a modern incarnation of the ancient Silk Road and maritime spice
routes. Launched in 2013, the undertaking now encompasses as many
as 900 projects, more than 80 percent of which are contracted to Chinese
firms. But the effort goes far beyond mere infrastructure. In Pakistan,
for example, the plan includes not only railroads, highways, and dams but
also a proposal to develop a system of video and Internet surveillance
similar to that in Beijing and a partnership with a Pakistani television
May/June 2018 65
channel to disseminate Chinese media content. The Belt and Road

Initiative has also given China an opportunity to advance its military
objectives. Chinese state-owned enterprises now run at least 76 ports
and terminals out of 34 countries, and in Greece, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka, Chinese investment in ports has been followed by high-profile
visits from Chinese naval vessels. Beijing has also announced that it
will be establishing special arbitration courts for Belt and Road Initiative
projects, thereby using the plan to promote an alternative legal system
underpinned by Chinese rules.
Indeed, China is increasingly seeking to export its political values
across the globe. In Ethiopia and Sudan, for example, the CCP is
training officials on how to manage public opinion and the media,
offering advice on what legislation to pass and which monitoring and
surveillance technologies to use. Perhaps the most noteworthy effort
is China’s campaign to promote its vision of a closed Internet. Under
the banner of “cyber-sovereignty,” Beijing has promulgated the idea
that countries should be allowed to, as one official document explained,
“choose their own path of cyber development, model of cyber regulation
and Internet public policies.” It has pushed for negotiations about
Internet governance that would privilege states and exclude represen-
tatives from civil society and the private sector, and it hosts an annual
conference to convince foreign officials and businesspeople of its view
of the Internet.
China also dangles access to its massive domestic market to coerce
corporations to play by its rules. In 2017, for example, Apple was
convinced to open a data center in China in order to comply with
new rules requiring foreign firms to store certain data inside the
country (where it will presumably be easier to monitor). That same
year, the company removed from its app store hundreds of programs
that helped people get around the Great Firewall.
Ironically, for all the talk of sovereignty, part of Xi’s more assertive
foreign policy involves unquestionable violations of it. The govern-
ment’s Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms, which purvey
Chinese language and culture abroad, have come under increasing
scrutiny in the United States and elsewhere for spreading CCP propa-
ganda, although they probably pose a lesser threat to U.S. interests
than is commonly thought. More challenging is China’s effort to mobilize
its overseas communities, particularly students, to protest visits by
the Dalai Lama, inform on Chinese studying abroad who do not
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follow the CCP line, and vociferously represent the government’s

position on sensitive issues such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. This
effort contributes to a climate of intimidation and fear within the
Chinese overseas student community (not to mention the broader
university community), and it threatens to tar all Chinese students
as representatives of the Chinese government. Of even greater con-
cern, Chinese security officials have on several occasions abducted
former Chinese nationals who are now citizens of other countries.
After a Chinese Swedish bookseller was snatched from a train in
China and detained earlier this year, the state-supported Global
Times editorialized, “European countries and the U.S. should educate
their newly naturalized citizens that the new passport cannot be
their amulet in China.”
RETHINKING XI
Many observers view Xi as an economic reformer who has been
thwarted by powerful opposition, as the best hope for positive
global leadership, as overwhelmingly popular among the Chinese
people, and as committed to stability abroad in order to focus on
affairs at home. In fact, such assessments miss four fundamental
truths about him.
First, Xi is playing a long game. His preference for control
over competition often leads to policies that appear suboptimal in
the short run. For example, his centralization of power and anti-
corruption campaign have slowed decision-making at the top of
the Chinese political system, which in turn has led to paralysis at
local levels of governance and lower rates of economic growth. Yet
such policies have a long-term payoff. Chinese leaders tolerate
the inefficiencies that come with nonmarket policies—say, slow
Internet connections or money-losing state-owned enterprises—
not only because the policies enhance their own political power
but also because they afford them the luxury of making longer-
term strategic investments. Thus, for example, the government
encourages state-owned enterprises to invest in high-risk economies
in support of the Belt and Road Initiative, in order to gain con-
trolling stakes in strategic ports or set technical standards, such as
railway track gauges or types of satellite navigation systems, for
the next wave of global economic development. Decisions that
may appear immediately irrational in the context of a liberal political
system and a market economy often have a longer-term strategic

logic within China.
Second, although he harbors ambitions on the global stage, Xi has
only rarely demonstrated true global leadership, in the sense of showing
a willingness to align his country’s interests with—or even subordinate
them to—those of the broader international community. With a few
exceptions, such as when it comes to UN peacekeeping contributions,
China steps up to provide global public
goods only when doing so serves its own
short-term interests or when it has been
There may be more
pressured to do so. Moreover, it is in- pushback against Xi than
creasingly seeking to ignore established is commonly thought.
norms and set its own rules of the road.
In 2016, when the International Court of Arbitration rejected Chinese
claims to wide swaths of the South China Sea, Beijing simply dismissed
the ruling and carried on with its land-reclamation and militarization
efforts there.
Third, Xi’s centralization of power and growing control over infor-
mation make it hard to assess how much consensus there really is in
China about the direction in which he and the rest of the Chinese leader-
ship are taking the country. There may be more pushback against Xi
than is commonly thought. In academic and official circles, a wide-
ranging debate over the merits of many of the regime’s policies rages,
even if it is less robust than during previous times. Many of China’s
wealthiest and most talented citizens, concerned about the state’s
heavier hand, have moved their money and families abroad. Chinese
lawyers and others have condemned many of Xi’s initiatives, including
the recent move to eliminate term limits. Even his signature Belt and
Road Initiative has generated criticism from scholars and business
leaders, who argue that many of the proposed investments have no
economic rationale.
Finally, Xi has eliminated the dividing line between domestic and
foreign policy. There may have been a time when the political and
economic implications of China’s authoritarian system were confined
largely to its own society. But now that the country is exporting its
political values—in some cases, to buttress other authoritarian-leaning
leaders, and in others, to undermine international law and threaten
other states’ sovereignty—China’s governance model is front and center
in its foreign policy.
May/June 2018 69
CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE

At the heart of Xi’s revolution is a values-based challenge to the inter-
national norms promoted by the United States. The Trump adminis-
tration must now advance an equivalent challenge to China—one
that begins with a forceful assertion of enduring American princi-
ples. This means not only maintaining a strong military presence in
the Asia-Pacific but also demonstrating a continued commitment to
free trade and democracy. At the same time, the United States must
mount a vigorous defense at home. Because it can no longer count on
China to continue the process of reform and opening up, it should
stop sacrificing its own economic and political security. In the past,
Washington tolerated a degree of intellectual property theft and
unequal market access because it believed that China was making
some progress toward market principles and the rule of law. With
that logic off the table, there is no reason the United States shouldn’t
adopt more restrictive policies toward China.
Keeping up with Xi’s many new initiatives is not easy, and it is
tempting to respond to each one as it arrives. In March, for example,
reports that Djibouti—home of the U.S. military’s only permanent base
in Africa—was planning to give China control over a port prompted
senior U.S. officials to sound alarm bells and press Djibouti to reverse
course. Yet the United States offered no constructive alternative,
such as an economic development package. More important, nor did
it put forth a broader U.S. strategy to address China’s ambitions in
Africa and other places covered by its Belt and Road Initiative. (As
events played out, Djibouti awarded management of the port to a
Singaporean company.) Such a reactive and piecemeal approach will
do little to respond to the longer-term challenge posed by Xi’s revo-
lution. At the other extreme, although it may be tempting to react
to Xi’s changes by demanding that Washington come up with an
entirely new China strategy, what is actually required is not an out-
right rejection of the past four decades of U.S. policy but a careful
rethinking of that policy so as to incorporate what works and reevaluate
what does not.
An effective China policy must rest on a robust demonstration of
the United States’ commitment to its own principles. Despite U.S.
President Donald Trump’s protectionist impulses and praise for au-
tocrats, recent moves suggest that the White House has not entirely
forsaken its commitment to liberal values in Asia. On his trip to the
region in November 2017, the president articulated his support for a

“free and open Indo-Pacific” and revived the quadrilateral partnership
with Australia, India, and Japan, a dormant grouping of like-minded
Pacific democracies that could start pushing back against Chinese
aggression in the region. Indeed, the administration’s National Defense
Strategy calls for placing a renewed emphasis on alliances to counter
“revisionist powers.”
As a useful first step toward making good on its word, the adminis-
tration should elaborate on the substance of the renewed quadrilateral
partnership and establish how it will work in conjunction with other
U.S. partners in Asia and elsewhere. One potential area of collabora-
tion centers on high-stakes security issues. That could mean under-
taking joint freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China
Sea, providing alternative sources of investment for countries with
strategically important ports, or supporting Taiwan in the face of
Beijing’s increasingly coercive strategy.
Trump should also reopen discussions about the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Although he withdrew the United States from the deal
days after his inauguration, more recently, he has expressed a will-
ingness to consider a modified version of it. A revived agreement
would not only promote market-based reforms in countries with
largely state-dominated economies, such as Vietnam, but also pro-
vide a beachhead from which the United States could advance its
own economic interests over the long term.
To compete with the Belt and Road Initiative, the United States
should draw on its strengths in urban planning and technology. In the
field of “smart cities,” many of the world’s top corporations and most
innovative start-ups are American. Washington should partner with
developing countries on urban planning for smart cities and help fi-
nance the deployment of U.S. firms’ technology, just as it did in 2014,
when it worked with India on an ambitious program to upgrade that
country’s urban infrastructure. Part of this endeavor should include
support for companies from the United States—or from U.S. allies—
to help build up developing countries’ fiber-optic cables, GPS, and
e-commerce systems. Doing that would undercut China’s attempt to
control much of the world’s digital infrastructure, which would give
the country a global platform for censorship and economic espionage.
China’s push to shape other countries’ political systems underscores
the need for the Trump administration to support U.S. institutions that
May/June 2018 71
promote political liberalization abroad, such as the National Endowment

for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the National
Democratic Institute, and the Asia Foundation. These institutions
can partner with Australia, Japan, and South Korea, along with Euro-
pean allies, to help build the rule of law in quasi-authoritarian states
and buttress nascent democracies. Legal, educational, and structural
reform programs can provide a critical bulwark against Chinese efforts
to project authoritarian values abroad.
Of course, strength abroad begins with strength at home. China’s
willingness to subordinate its short-term economic interests for longer-
term strategic gains means that Washington must redouble its invest-
ment in science and technology, support the universities and national
labs that serve as a wellspring of American innovation, and fund the
development and deployment of new technologies by U.S. firms.
Without such support, U.S. companies will be no match for better-
funded Chinese ones, backed by Beijing’s long-term vision.
China is eager to restrict opportunities for outsiders to pursue their
political and economic interests within its borders, even as it advances
its own such interests outside China. Accordingly, it’s time for the
Trump administration to take a fresh look at the notion of reciprocity—
and do unto China as China does unto the United States. U.S. policy-
makers have long considered reciprocity a lose-lose proposition that
harms relations with China without changing its behavior. Instead,
they have acted under the assumption that if the United States remains
true to its democratic values and demonstrates what responsible
behavior looks like, China will eventually follow its lead. Xi has
upended this understanding because he has stalled, and in some
respects reversed, the political and economic reforms begun under Deng
and has transformed the United States’ openness into a vulnerability.
Reciprocity could take a number of forms. In some cases, the pun-
ishment should be relatively light. For example, the Trump adminis-
tration could bar China from establishing additional Confucius
Institutes and Confucius Classrooms in the United States unless China
permits more American Centers for Cultural Exchange, organizations
funded by the U.S. government on Chinese university campuses.
Currently, there are fewer than 30 such centers in China and more
than a hundred Confucius Institutes and over 500 Confucius Class-
rooms in the United States. U.S. universities, for their part, could refuse
to host Confucius Institutes or forge other partnerships with Chinese
institutions if any member of their faculty is banned from travel to

China—a punishment Beijing has often meted out to critical scholars.
Washington should also consider constraining Chinese investment
in the United States in areas that are out of bounds for U.S. businesses
in China, such as telecommunications, transportation, construction,
and media. That might take the form of limiting Chinese stakes in
U.S. companies to the same level that Beijing permits foreign firms
to have in Chinese companies. More provocatively, the United States
could tacitly or explicitly support other Asian countries’ efforts to mil-
itarize islands in the South China Sea in an effort to raise the costs
for China of doing the same. Reciprocity need not be an end in itself.
Ideally, in fact, a reciprocal action (or even just the threat of one)
would bring China to the negotiating table, where a better outcome
could be reached.
While Xi poses new challenges for the United States, he also offers
a distinct new opportunity: the chance for Washington to hold him
publicly accountable for his claim that China is prepared to assume
greater global leadership. In 2014, the Obama administration achieved
some success in leveraging Xi’s ambitions when it pressured China to
adopt limits on its carbon emissions and to increase substantially the
amount of assistance it provided African countries struck by the
Ebola crisis. Similarly, the Trump administration successfully pushed
China to adopt tougher sanctions to try to rein in North Korea’s
nuclear program. More such moves should follow. The administration
should call on China to play a bigger role in addressing the global
refugee crisis, particularly the part of it taking place in the country’s
own backyard. In bordering Myanmar, more than 650,000 refugees
from the Rohingya ethnic minority have fled to Bangladesh, over-
whelming that impoverished country. China has offered to serve as a
mediator between the two countries. But it also blocked a UN Security
Council resolution to appoint a special envoy to Myanmar and has
downplayed concerns about the plight of the Rohingya, focusing more
on protecting Belt and Road Initiative projects from the violence in
Myanmar. The United States and others should say it loud and clear:
with global leadership comes greater global responsibility.
WILL XI SUCCEED?
Does China’s third revolution have staying power? History is certainly
not on Xi’s side. Despite a weakening of democratic institutions in some
May/June 2018 73
parts of the world, all the major economies—save China—are

democracies. And it is possible to map out, as many scholars have,
potential paths to a Chinese democratic transition. One route is
through an economic crisis, which could produce a demand for change.
China’s economy is showing signs of strain, with Chinese household,
corporate, and government debt as a proportion of GDP all having sky-
rocketed since the 2008 global financial crisis. Some Chinese economists
argue that the country faces a sizable challenge from its rapidly aging
population and massively underfunded pension system, coupled with
its persistently low birthrate, even after the end of the one-child policy.
It’s also conceivable that Xi could overreach. At home, discontent
with his repressive policies has spread within large parts of China’s
business and intellectual communities. The number of labor protests
has more than doubled during his tenure. Moreover, although often
forgotten in China’s current political environment, the country is not
without its champions of democracy. Prominent scholars, activists,
journalists, retired officials, and wealthy entrepreneurs have all spoken
out in favor of democratic reform in the recent past. At the same time,
Xi’s move to eliminate term limits stirred a great deal of controversy
within top political circles. As Chinese officials have admitted to the
press, there have even been coup and assassination attempts against Xi.
Abroad, Beijing’s aggressive efforts to expand its influence have
been met with frequent backlashes. In just the past year, widespread
protests against Chinese investments have erupted in Bangladesh,
Kazakhstan, Kenya, and Sri Lanka. As China presses forward with its
more ambitious foreign policy, more such instances will undoubtedly
crop up, raising the prospect that Xi will been seen as failing abroad,
thus undermining his authority at home.
Nonetheless, there is little compelling evidence that Xi’s revolution
is in danger of being reversed. Many of his accomplishments have
earned him widespread popular support. He has survived past crises,
such as a major stock market crash in 2015, and at the 19th Party
Congress, his consolidation of institutional power and mandate for
change were only strengthened. For the foreseeable future, then, the
United States will have to deal with China as it is: an illiberal state
seeking to reshape the international system in its own image. The
good news is that Xi has made his revolutionary intentions clear.
There is no excuse now for the United States not to respond in equally
unambiguous terms.∂
Fresh Prince
The Schemes and Dreams of Saudi Arabia’s
Next King
I
t is not often that a Ritz-Carlton becomes a detention facility. But
last November, when a large slice of the Saudi elite was arrested
on accusations of corruption, the luxury hotel in Riyadh became
a gilded prison for hundreds of princes, billionaires, and high-ranking
government officials. Behind this crackdown was the young crown
prince, Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, who is attempt-
ing to remake the kingdom’s economy and social life, and even the
House of Saud itself.
At only 32, MBS is already the most powerful figure in contempo-
rary Saudi history, having sidelined other members of the ruling family
with the full support of his father, King Salman. His concentrated
authority and evident will to shake up the system make it possible for
him to do great things. But he has also removed the restraints that
have made Saudi foreign and domestic policy cautious, conservative,
and ultimately successful amid the crises of the modern Middle East.
Whether the crown prince can pull off his high-stakes gamble, which
the Middle East expert Bernard Haykel terms a “revolution from
above,” without destabilizing his country and adding to the region’s
chaos remains an open question.
Conventional wisdom has it that the Saudi regime rests on a social
compact among the ruling family, the religious establishment, and the
economic elite. The system is lubricated by enough oil wealth to also
fund a substantial welfare state. But that view is only half right. Over
the decades, oil wealth has lifted the ruling family above its partners
and the governing princes above the other members of the extended
House of Saud. Religious elites are now state bureaucrats, not equal
F. GREGORY GAUSE III is Head of the International Affairs Department at the Bush
School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
May/June 2018 75
partners in governing. The business community is also a junior partner,

more of a lobby than an independent actor. The crown prince’s cam-
paign is further redefining the role of the regime’s traditional pillars of
support while also appealing, in a most unmonarchical way, to an incho-
ate Saudi public opinion. So far, MBS appears to be popular among
many Saudis (although accurate measures of public opinion are notori-
ously hard to come by in authoritarian regimes). The problem is that
public opinion is fickle. The institutional interests of elites, as conser-
vative and self-interested as they may be, are a much
more reliable basis for monarchical rule.
The crown prince’s most ambitious goal, which he
outlined in his Vision 2030 plan, is to diversify the
Saudi economy and reduce its dependence on oil.
The collapse of oil prices in 2014 convinced him that
the kingdom could no longer support the welfare
state that has been in place since the 1970s. He has
already reduced subsidies on utilities such as
water and electricity, which were practically
free in the past, and has imposed a five percent
value-added tax (VAT) on many commercial
transactions. The private sector is key to the
plan’s success. Right now, the vast majority of
Saudi workers are employed by the state. Vision
2030 calls for the private sector to invest more
in the economy and become a greater source of
employment. The privatization of five percent
of the state oil company Saudi Aramco—the
most publicized element of Vision 2030—
aims to generate revenue for the govern-
ment’s Public Investment Fund, which
will invest both at home, in the local pri-
vate sector, and abroad, as a sovereign
wealth fund.
All of this made the Ritz-Carlton
roundup even more puzzling. Why did
the crown prince arrest the pillars of
the private sector—the very people he
needs to make Vision 2030 work? Saudi
officials contend that a dramatic, public strike
Fresh Prince
against high-level corruption will help level the playing field and encour-
age greater investment going forward. But the crackdown’s opaque
and arbitrary methods—detentions without public charge, financial
settlements negotiated for unspecified crimes, and the alleged use of
brutal coercive tactics—could lead the country in the opposite direction.
The long-term effect of the crown prince’s gambit will hinge on
what kind of leader the crown prince really is. If he is like Chinese
President Xi Jinping, he will use the anticorruption campaign not
May/June 2018 77
only to settle political scores but also to actually reform the economy.
In that case, a reconstituted and chastened private sector might, with
the right incentives and sound government policy, become an engine of
growth. On the other hand, if MBS is more like Russian President
Vladimir Putin, he will simply replace the old oligarchs with new ones
of his own choosing. That path is certainly open: the Saudi government
has obtained a substantial interest in at least one major company, the
construction giant the Saudi Binladin Group, in exchange for releas-
ing its chief executive, and it might be doing the same with the Middle
East Broadcasting Center. This approach would solidify the crown
prince’s power but undermine the potential for meaningful reform.
Equally troubling, he might be more like King Henry VIII. Faced with
mounting expenses from fighting wars overseas and consolidating his rule
at home, the king of England took over monasteries and other religious
endowments when he declared himself head of the Church of England.
But rather than maintaining these institutions as a steady source of
income, he sold most of them for a one-time infusion of funds. There is
some indication that MBS is feeling similar fiscal pressures. The Wall
Street Journal reported that King Salman had unsuccessfully implored
leading businesspeople to contribute to the government’s coffers before
the November roundup. The wolf is hardly at the door: the government
has around $500 billion in reserves. But some of the crown prince’s more
ambitious plans, such as building a futuristic city dubbed “Neom,” have
not excited much enthusiasm from the Saudi business elite. Shaking down
business leaders would yield money for pet projects, but this tactic can be
used only once. If foreign investors and domestic business elites think that
they are perpetually at risk of being arrested or having their assets seized,
they will be much less likely to invest in the country.
At a minimum, the crown prince has redefined what corruption
means in the kingdom. The problem is that observers, both domestic
and foreign, are not yet clear on what the new definition is. The path
that MBS chooses in the aftermath of the Ritz-Carlton crackdown
will determine his country’s future.
CHANGE AT LAST
On the social front, the crown prince has already made bold decisions.
In September, he tackled the most fraught Saudi social issue by
declaring that, as of June 2018, Saudi women will have the right to
drive. This decision has elicited barely a peep of domestic opposition.
Fresh Prince
As education levels rose and more Saudis experienced life abroad, the
argument that the kingdom was “not ready” or “too conservative” for
this change rang increasingly hollow. And the objections of some cler-
ics that driving would endanger Saudi women’s moral standing were
risible, given that the alternative was for Saudi women to be driven
by male drivers (either in taxis or in their families’ cars) who were
not members of their families. Saudi society had been ready for this
change for some time; the country’s leaders had simply lacked the
political will to pull the trigger. The crown prince has that political
will, in spades.
Having women behind the wheel will bring enormous changes
to the country. More women will be able to join the work force. Hun-
dreds of thousands of foreign workers employed as drivers will no
longer be needed. Men will not lose productive hours transporting
their wives, mothers, and sisters to doctor’s appointments and other
meetings. It is hard to underestimate the impact of this decision.
The crown prince has publicly talked about “going back to how we
were, to the tolerant, moderate Islam that is open to the world.” Although
this interpretation of Saudi history is questionable, his commitment
to change is real. In addition to deciding to allow women to drive, he has
limited the powers of the religious police
and opened up Saudi social life. Musical
concerts, movie theaters, female atten-
The path that MBS chooses
dance at soccer matches, and a greater in the aftermath of the
number of public social events will help crackdown will determine
make the country more “normal,” at least his country’s future.
for those Saudis who have lived or vis-
ited abroad. Undoubtedly, some in more
conservative religious circles will object to all of this, and there might be
isolated instances of a violent backlash, as there were when the country
introduced television and education for girls in the 1960s. But history has
shown that these changes will soon become normalized. The wives of
clerics will be among the first behind the wheel.
All this social change gives a more accurate picture of the rela-
tionship between the religious establishment and the ruling family.
Ultimately, the religious elites are state employees who take orders
from above, not equal players with a veto over government policy.
During every major crisis in modern Saudi history, the religious
establishment has supported the government’s decisions, including the
May/June 2018 79
implementation of social changes in the 1960s, the retaking of the

Grand Mosque in Mecca from millenarian zealots in 1979, the invitation
of foreign troops into the kingdom during the Gulf War of 1990–91,
and the crushing of local al Qaeda elements in the early years of this
century. Religious elites may not like
the crown prince’s policies, but they are
For now, the crown not leading a charge against them. Reli-
prince’s path to ultimate gious opposition to the regime comes
power seems secure. from outside official circles, from radical
groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic
State (or ISIS) and from Islamist populists who call for both greater
adherence to Islamic law and more political freedom. The state has
been able to suppress these movements for the last century. There is no
reason to think that has changed.
UNCHALLENGED AUTHORITY
Equally audacious but less noticed abroad has been the crown prince’s
consolidation of power within the ruling family. Since the 1960s, the
kingdom has been ruled by a de facto committee of senior princes—
all sons of King Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia—with
the king as first among equals. Some kings were stronger than others,
but all of them sought consensus on important decisions among their
family members who held the key ministries and governorships across
the country. This style of government had all the vices of rule by com-
mittee: it was ponderous, conservative, and not readily able to seize
opportunities. But it also had its virtues: its decisions were well con-
sidered, there were checks on bad ideas, and everyone important was
on board once a decision was made. As the sons of the founding king
grew old, some observers questioned how the system would be sustained.
Most Saudi watchers, myself included, assumed that the sons of that
generation would take the places of their fathers and reconstitute
committee governance. We were wrong.
When King Salman assumed the throne in 2015, he originally
appointed his half brother Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz to be crown
prince, keeping the succession in his own generation. But the king
jettisoned Prince Muqrin a few months later in favor of one of his neph-
ews, Mohammed bin Nayef. MBN, as he is known, is part of the Saudi
royal family’s third generation, the son of the former interior minister,
who had inherited the leadership of that ministry from his father. MBN
“The United States requires the

next generation of national
security professionals to face a
host of new issues.”
— Dr. Steven Meyer
Dean of Graduate Studies, Daniel Morgan Graduate School
M IS SION M A S T E R ’S P R O G R A M S
National Security
The Daniel Morgan Graduate School
educates and prepares future leaders to Intelligence
develop actionable solutions to global
and domestic security challenges. Managing Disruption & Violence
Visit dmgs.org/fa to learn more.
— WASHINGTON, D.C. —
also became the main point of contact for U.S. officials in the burgeon-
ing intelligence and counterterrorism partnership that had developed
between the two countries after the 9/11 attacks. MBN was a safe choice
to become the first king of his generation—experienced in government,
successful in maintaining internal security against threats from al Qaeda
and ISIS, and well known and respected in Washington.
But in June 2017, King Salman removed MBN from his position as
crown prince and from his ministerial post and elevated his favorite
son to become the heir apparent. The new crown prince’s ascent was
remarkably fast—MBS had become a minister only two years before,
when he succeeded his father as minister of defense. At that time, the
king had also appointed him to head a cabinet committee overseeing
economic and social policy (MBN was in charge of a similar committee
on security issues). With the cashiering of MBN, the new crown prince
became the focal point for all major decisions in the government. Al-
though some saw the Ritz-Carlton roundup as a consolidation of power,
MBS had already secured his position by then. To be sure, a number of
princes were involuntary guests at the Ritz. The most important of
these was Miteb bin Abdullah, a son of the former king, who served as
the commander of the National Guard. After his November arrest, he
was stripped of that position and removed from the cabinet. But no
one questioned that MBS was in charge, even before November 2017.
Today, the Saudi cabinet contains fewer members of the ruling fam-
ily than at any time since the 1950s. The king is still the prime minister,
and the crown prince is both the defense minister and the deputy prime
minister, but the only other ministerial position filled by a family mem-
ber is minister of the interior, which is held by a young nephew of the
former crown prince MBN and thus a member of the family’s fourth
generation. (There are also two royal ministers of state, one of whom
is another son of King Salman, but both lack a portfolio.)
In effect, the crown prince has cut out a large number of his older
cousins, many of whom had previously held high positions in govern-
ment and were looking to inherit their fathers’ seats at the decision-
making table. This has occasioned more than a little grumbling in family
circles, some of which has seeped out into the Western press. But there
are no indications, at least not publicly, of a serious mobilization inside
the House of Saud to block MBS from eventually succeeding his father.
Dangerous splits in the family have happened before, most recently
in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when King Saud and Crown Prince
Fresh Prince
Faisal contended for power. But the signs of that split were clear and
public. People were fired from jobs and then returned when their man
was on top, the protagonists took extended leaves outside the country
after they lost a skirmish, and family councils were called to adjudicate
the conflict. In the end, the family deposed King Saud in 1964. Nothing
approaching that kind of open contest for power is occurring now.
It is possible that MBS will face familial opposition when his father
dies. The House of Saud famously tries to keep family business out of
the public eye, so there could be things going on that outsiders do not
know about. Perhaps in anticipation of a move against him, the crown
prince has been appealing to younger family members, particularly in
the fourth generation, who are below him in the hierarchy but close to
him in age, by appointing many of them to subcabinet positions in
Riyadh and positions of authority in the regional governorates. They
could become his supporters if trouble arises. For now, his path to
ultimate power seems secure.
AN UNPREDICTABLE PRINCE
The crown prince now stands at the top of the Saudi decision-making
process. He answers only to the king, who has granted him wide-ranging
powers, allowing him to make difficult decisions that were previously
kicked down the road, such as pursuing economic reform and allowing
women to drive. But it also means that there are few checks on an
ambitious and aggressive leader who may not fully calculate the second-
and third-order consequences of some of his actions.
Some recent Saudi foreign policy decisions suggest a certain amount
of recklessness. In November 2017, for example, as the Ritz-Carlton
roundup was under way, the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri,
made an unscheduled visit to Riyadh. A few days later, he announced his
resignation from the Saudi capital, under obvious pressure from MBS.
This was clearly a Saudi power play meant to put pressure on the Leba-
nese political system in hopes of dealing a blow to Hezbollah, Iran’s ally
in Lebanon. Instead, the move backfired, as the United States and Saudi
allies in Europe told the kingdom to back down. A few weeks later,
Hariri returned to Lebanon and rescinded his resignation. Likewise, in
the summer of 2017, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led a
number of other Arab countries in a boycott of Qatar, accusing the
Qataris of supporting Islamist groups, backing terrorists, and meddling
in the domestic politics of their neighbors. But far from knuckling
May/June 2018 83
under, Qatar has withstood the pressure and drawn support from Iran
and Turkey. In both cases, Saudi Arabia did not achieve its objectives.
Many would classify the Emirati-Saudi military offensive in Yemen
as another example of an aggressive and unsuccessful MBS policy.
Undoubtedly, the Saudis and their partners assumed that the operation,
which began in 2015, would swiftly drive back the rebel Houthi militants
and restore the Saudi ally Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to the presidential
palace in Sanaa. It did not turn out that way, and international pressure
on Riyadh is mounting as the human toll of the campaign has reached
alarming levels. But unlike the Lebanese and Qatari gambits, the
Yemeni campaign touches more directly on what most Saudis see as
their national security. One can argue about the extent to which the
Houthis are tied to Iran, but Saudi Arabia considers Houthi control of
Yemen as tantamount to allowing Iran a base of influence on the Arabian
Peninsula. No Saudi government would have stood by and allowed that
to happen. The war in Yemen is a drain on Saudi resources and a blot on
the country’s international reputation, but it still enjoys broad support
among Saudi elites. The question now is how to bring it to an end.
Unlike past Saudi leaders, MBS can make dramatic and unilateral
decisions. But this freedom of action also means that he can engage in
foreign policy adventures that would not have moved forward under
previous rulers. He may be learning from his mistakes, but given his
ambition and impulsiveness, the world should expect more surprises.
THE PRINCE AND THE PEOPLE

The crown prince has few checks on his decision-making power from
within the Saudi political system, but he still has to respond to public
demands. More than any other recent Saudi leader, MBS has cultivated
public support, especially among younger Saudis.
In January, responding to public grumbling about the increased
prices of water, electricity, and gasoline and the imposition of the five
percent VAT that took effect in mid-2017 and early 2018, MBS re-
stored an annual pay raise for government employees that had been
suspended as part of earlier austerity moves, and he granted govern-
ment employees a bonus of about $250 per month for “cost of living.”
The crown prince also established a “citizen’s account,” which directly
transfers cash to Saudis in the middle and lower economic strata.
Saudi officials are now saying that the money recovered from those
held in the Ritz-Carlton will be used to support this fund.
Fresh Prince
These new benefits could be read as a move away from the goals of
balancing the state budget and making public-sector jobs less attractive,
but it is better seen as a necessary reaction to placate public opinion.
Two years of rising oil prices have made it difficult to impose austerity.
Sacrifices that might have been acceptable to Saudis when oil was $30 per
barrel seem less so with oil above $60 per barrel. Although the crown
prince may be headstrong and aggressive, he still realizes that he needs
the people behind him. But to transform the Saudi system, he will
also have to inculcate a new understanding of what the state is going
to provide its citizens. Reducing the welfare state without turning the
public against him will be his most daunting challenge.
LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES

Perhaps nowhere have the crown prince’s moves produced more curiosity,
hope, and fear than in Washington. In U.S. President Donald Trump,
MBS has an enthusiastic backer—at times too enthusiastic. The fact
that MBS became crown prince just a few weeks after Trump’s visit to
Saudi Arabia in May 2017 left the impression that Washington had
something to do with the change, and the White House was far too
quick to imply that MBS had explicit U.S. backing. The president’s
excessive friendliness has already had consequences. In June, Trump
tweeted his support for the Emirati-Saudi boycott of Qatar, stating
that isolating the country might be “the beginning of the end to the
horror of terrorism.” This created tension with the Gulf state, which
is a crucial base for the U.S. military’s air operations in the Middle
East, and undercut moves by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and
Secretary of Defense James Mattis to bring about a quick end to the
imbroglio. The sense that the Saudis (and the Emiratis) can appeal
directly to the White House through the president’s son-in-law, Jared
Kushner, has also made it more difficult for the regular organs of U.S.
foreign policy to bring the Gulf standoff to a diplomatic conclusion.
Although Trump’s close public embrace of the crown prince might
not serve either’s interest in the long term, it has undoubtedly given
Washington considerable leverage with Riyadh in the short term. The
administration should think carefully about how to use this influence.
Bringing the Saudis on board for a new effort to settle the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict would make sense, but only if the Trump plan has
a real chance of success. The administration should not play the Saudi
card on the peace process if it is not going anywhere—and there is
May/June 2018 85
little reason for optimism. When it comes to Syria, Trump has shown
little interest in a new peace initiative, so there is no reason to engage
the Saudis there. Riyadh is already in agreement with a more confron-
tational policy toward Iran. And the administration has successfully
pushed the Saudis to reengage with the government of Iraqi Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi, which is a positive step in the long-term
effort to stabilize Iraq and reduce Iranian influence there.
The place where Trump could most productively use his close
relationship with the crown prince is Yemen. The administration
should continue its efforts to push the Saudis to address the human
catastrophe through more effective aid and more discriminate military
action. The Houthis also have much to answer for regarding the suf-
fering of Yemeni civilians, and international pressure should focus as
much on them as on the Saudis. Any diplomatic initiative to end the
fighting will require that the United States decide whether it wants
to see the redivision of the country into two states, as was the case
before 1990. It will also involve sophisticated outreach to Iran, the
only regional power with any influence over the Houthis. This can be
accomplished even as the Trump administration works to contain
and roll back Iranian influence in the Arab world. Oman has acted as
a conduit to Iran before, and European countries can also deal directly
with the Iranians. If Tehran is at all chastened by the antiregime pro-
tests that broke out across Iran in January, it might be open to reducing
its involvement in the regional conflict that least affects its interests.
Stabilizing Yemen will not be easy, but such an effort would give Saudi
Arabia a desperately needed exit ramp from a costly campaign and
alleviate one of the world’s most searing human tragedies.
Meanwhile, Washington should pay close attention to how the
crown prince handles the aftermath of his anticorruption campaign.
If MBS becomes his country’s Xi, then the United States should
maintain its pragmatic alliance, which is based on mutual benefit
rather than shared values. But if MBS turns out to be more like Putin
or Henry VIII, privileging political cronies and treating the private
sector as his personal ATM, then the longer-term prospects of the
kingdom in a world where oil prices are unlikely to return to the his-
toric highs of the early years of this century will be much less certain.
In that case, the United States will need to look elsewhere for a partner
in stabilizing the region.∂
The Right Way to Coerce

North Korea
Ending the Threat Without Going to War
W
hen it comes to North Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump’s
policies have been whiplash inducing. On February 23, he
appeared to be gearing up for a conflict when he said that if
sanctions against Pyongyang didn’t work, Washington would have to move
to “phase two,” which could be “very, very unfortunate for the world.” But
just two weeks later, Trump abruptly changed course and accepted an in-
vitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—a decision that
caught even his own White House and State Department by surprise.
Trump’s newfound enthusiasm for diplomacy has temporarily low-
ered the temperature on the Korean Peninsula, but it also underlines
a bigger question: Does the United States have a strategy for North
Korea, or are these twists and turns merely the whims of a tempera-
mental president? In the past, rash and uninformed decisions by U.S.
officials on the peninsula—such as acquiescing to Japan’s occupation
of Korea in 1905 and excluding Korea from the U.S. Cold War defense
perimeter in 1950—have had grave consequences. The United States
cannot afford a similar outcome today.
Trump’s unpredictability has had some upsides. His self-proclaimed
“madman” behavior may have played a role in bringing the North Koreans
to the table, and the Trump administration’s policy of applying, in the
White House’s words, “maximum pressure” has yielded some impres-
sive results. An unprecedented summit between the U.S. and North
Korean leaders could indeed bring lasting peace to Asia. But it
could also go wrong: if negotiations fail, the administration might
VICTOR CHA is Professor of Government in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at George-
town University and a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
KATRIN FRASER KATZ is a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
She served on the staff of the U.S. National Security Council from 2007 to 2008.
May/June 2018 87
conclude that a military strike is the only way forward, greatly increas-
ing the chance of war.
The Trump administration must ground its summit diplomacy and
overall approach to North Korea in a strategy of comprehensive coercion
that clearly defines U.S. objectives, leverages Washington’s most effective
diplomatic and military tools, and aligns its Korea policy with the broader
U.S. strategy in Asia. Failure to do this would only benefit Kim and
increase the likelihood that the United States will get “played,” as Trump
has characterized past negotiations. After a year of saber rattling, and
with North Korea likely to be just months away from possessing the
capability to launch a nuclear attack on the continental United States, the
stakes could hardly be higher. In the not unlikely event that talks break
down, the United States will need a strategy that prevents the parties
from sliding into a disastrous war.
WHIPLASH
During Trump’s first year in office, North Korea conducted more than
twice as many ballistic missile tests (20) as it did during the first year of
Barack Obama’s presidency (8). The result was a constant exchange of
recriminations between the United States and North Korea. After North
Korea tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), in July,
Trump promised to rain “fire and fury” on Pyongyang. After North Korea
threatened a nuclear attack on “the heart of the U.S.,” Trump’s national
security adviser hinted that a preventive attack was becoming increasingly
likely. Meanwhile, rumors swirled that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S.
Pacific Command were drawing up plans for a limited military strike to
give Kim a “bloody nose.” Combined, we have decades of experience
working on this problem, and one of us, Victor Cha, was once under
consideration for U.S. ambassador to South Korea, before the Trump
administration withdrew his candidacy. Never before have we witnessed
more discussion about possible military escalation than in the past year.
But 2018 has brought a dramatic shift. The government of South
Korean President Moon Jae-in, who is much more open to engagement
with North Korea than his predecessor, decided to capitalize on what it
perceived as toned-down language in Kim’s New Year’s address. In Janu-
ary, it achieved a reopening of the long-suspended inter-Korean dialogue
channels and facilitated an all-expenses-paid invitation for the North
Korean team to attend the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. While
briefing Trump on the phone about these developments, Moon recalled
From Pyongyang with love: a North Korean ICBM test, July 2017
Trump’s campaign pledge to have a hamburger with Kim. Ultimately,
Moon managed to elicit a promise from Trump to consider meeting
the North Korean leader—a message that Seoul dutifully conveyed to
Pyongyang. At the Olympics, despite exchanging little more than icy
stares with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Kim’s younger sister
presented a letter to Moon that suggested her brother’s interest in
improving relations with the United States.
In early March, shortly after the Olympics concluded, Kim warmly
welcomed a group of South Korean envoys to Pyongyang, led by the
South Korean national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong. After two days
of meetings, Kim agreed to cross into the South for an inter-Korean sum-
mit by the end of April. He also promised a moratorium on missile and
nuclear testing contingent on dialogue with the United States. According
to the South Koreans, Kim said that the “denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula” was possible if the U.S. threat to his country were removed.
Not to be outdone, on March 8, Trump scrapped his daily White
House schedule to host the South Korean national security adviser in the
Oval Office soon after his delegation landed at Dulles Airport (Chung
KCNA / REUT E RS
was supposed to brief the president on his recent North Korean trip the
next day). Trump called for an immediate summit with Kim (which he
was eventually persuaded to push to May) and, in a dramatic moment
May/June 2018 89
recalling his television show The Apprentice, made an impromptu visit to

the White House briefing room to tease an imminent “major announce-
ment” on North Korea, which he later let the South Koreans deliver in
front of the West Wing. Shortly afterward, he conveyed his enthusiasm
for diplomacy in a flurry of optimistic tweets.
WINGING IT?
The South Korean government deserves credit for turning an impend-
ing crisis into an opportunity. It is possible that a face-to-face meeting
between Kim and Trump, who are both fond of making surprise decisions,
could bring progress on one of the world’s most dangerous problems.
But it is easier to understand Seoul’s and Pyongyang’s motives for
engaging in diplomacy than Washington’s.
For South Korea, the imminent threat of North Korean aggression
during the Winter Olympics, as well as long-term concerns about a
renewed campaign of North Korean missile and nuclear tests after the
conclusion of the Paralympics in late March, made engineering some
form of détente a strategic imperative. Meanwhile, North Korea’s apparent
change of heart likely stems from the economic bite of Trump’s maximum-
pressure campaign, which has cut oil imports and coal exports, dried
up hard-currency inflows, and made commodity prices spike in the
country. According to Trump administration officials, the sanctions have
caused North Korean gas prices to triple and have reduced the country’s
exports by more than $2.7 billion. Today, paper is so scarce in the North
that the state-run newspaper has been forced to cut its circulation. There
have even been reports in South Korean media that North Korea used
telephones, rather than global VSAT communications, to speak with South
Korean air traffic controllers when coordinating the arrival of high-level
North Korean delegations for the Olympics, since the state had lost access
to satellite networks after defaulting on payments. The news that the
Trump administration was seriously considering a military strike may
also have contributed to this turnaround.
But Kim also has other motivations for reengaging. A pause in weapons
testing at this point would do little to set back Pyongyang’s nuclear pro-
gram. Moreover, a meeting with Trump would give the rogue leader the
all-important recognition that he craves and, depending on what Trump
relinquished in exchange for a freeze in North Korea’s weapons testing
and development, could advance the North’s long-standing goal of getting
the United States to accept the country as a nuclear power.
What about the United States? Although there is an internal logic to

North and South Korean actions, inconsistencies abound in the U.S. ap-
proach. After spending most of 2017 discussing military options, the
administration backpedaled in January and denied that such plans even
existed. Officials have said that the sanctions campaign is designed to
compel the North Korean regime to return to the negotiating table, but
the amount of attention Trump’s National Security Council and State
Department have paid to preparing for negotiations pales in comparison
to the considerable effort devoted to developing sanctions and military
strike options. The administration’s diplomatic strategy to date has
amounted to little more than a list of don’ts: don’t reward talks, don’t let
up on sanctions, don’t make the mistakes of past administrations.
Furthermore, because Trump has jettisoned the interagency process,
which brings in experts and policymakers from across the U.S. gov-
ernment to advise the president, negotiations will occur amid ominous
conditions. Trump will be flying blind into meetings with Kim, acting on
little more than his gut instincts, without the advice of experienced for-
eign policy and Asian affairs experts, who would undoubtedly counsel
him to avoid verbose but meaningless summit statements and to press
Kim on making tangible steps toward denuclearization. Meanwhile, the
North Koreans are probably only a few tests away from gaining the
capacity to reach the continental United States with nuclear-tipped
ICBMs. The moratorium on testing that Pyongyang offered the South
Korean envoys will merely maintain the status quo. Since the pause is
contingent on talks, Pyongyang will be able to resume testing the day
the talks end, and it will likely continue covertly working on its pro-
grams all the while. Finally, there is no reason to believe that North
Korea has changed its long-standing aims of achieving recognition as a
nuclear power, ejecting U.S. forces from South Korea, and undermining
the U.S. defense commitment to South Korea.
To counter these negotiating traps, Trump might offer incremental
energy and economic assistance and sanctions alleviation in exchange for
a freeze in and the eventual dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear
weapons and long-range ICBM programs. North Korea’s missile program,
in particular, has not been the topic of negotiations in almost two dec-
ades, and Trump could score a victory on this count. Or he might choose
a bolder path that would put much bigger carrots on the table, including
the normalization of relations or even a peace treaty formally ending the
Korean War. It would be ironic if Trump, an avowed hawk on North
May/June 2018 91
Korea, adopted an approach to diplomacy that doves have advocated for

years, but it is not out of the question.
WHAT TRUMP SHOULD DO

Regardless of how talks do or do not play out, the United States must base
its policy going forward on a set of sound principles. North Korea’s effort
to develop nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States demands
an urgent response. Past behavior suggests that Kim will try to share these
weapons with other states and nonstate actors. Down the road, he might
use them in an attempt to intimidate the United States into offering con-
cessions or even withdrawing its troops from South Korea, which would
leave the country vulnerable to an invasion. More broadly, North Korea’s
acquisition of these weapons, if left unchecked, could undermine the
global nonproliferation regime. The United States must keep North
Korean denuclearization at the top of its strategic priorities. Accepting
North Korea as a nuclear power and building a new relationship from that
basis would legitimize its pursuit of nuclear weapons and send a dangerous
signal to other countries that are considering starting their own programs.
Trump’s pursuit of a diplomatic solution has the best chance of suc-
cess if it is bolstered by a strategy that ramps up the regional and inter-
national pressure on North Korea. The Trump administration’s approach
to North Korea thus far has involved swings between confrontation and
engagement without a clear link to broader U.S. strategic objectives in
the region. A comprehensive coercive strategy for denuclearization di-
plomacy would build on the strengths of the maximum-pressure cam-
paign while more fully leveraging the support and resources of regional
allies and partners in pursuing shared long-term goals. This strategy
would involve five key components.
First, Washington must continue to strengthen the global coalition that
it has mustered in its highly successful sanctions program. Unlike the
so-called smart sanctions campaign 13 years ago, Trump’s effort has the
backing of ten UN Security Council resolutions, which grant the United
States virtually unlimited authority to punish violators. Moreover, compli-
ance with the sanctions has increased because the Trump administration is
more willing than past administrations to share intelligence information
with third parties to help them stop sanctioned activities in their countries.
Second, the United States should buttress this sanctions campaign
with a statement on nonproliferation. This message should signal unam-
biguously to North Korea and any recipients or facilitators of its nuclear
weapons that the United States will hold accountable any state, group, or
individual found to be complicit in a transfer of nuclear material—if
necessary, through the use of force.
Third, the United States must upgrade its alliances with Japan and
South Korea. Militarily, that means improving capabilities regarding in-
tegrated missile defense, intelligence sharing, antisubmarine warfare, and
conventional strike missiles to deter North Korean threats. The political
scientists Michael Green and Mat-
thew Kroenig have outlined a useful
wish list: adding more missile defense
The United States must
systems in the region, deploying B-1 keep denuclearization at
and B-2 bombers to new locations, un- the top of its strategic
dertaking cyber-operations to impede priorities.
North Korea’s missile program devel-
opment, and encouraging South Korea
to purchase shorter-range missile defense systems (similar to Israel’s Iron
Dome) to defend against North Korean artillery. The United States
should also remain open to additional conventional strike capabilities for
Japan and South Korea, the use of which would require U.S. sign-off.
At the political level, the United States should push for a joint state-
ment with Japan and South Korea that pledges that an attack on one will
be treated as an attack on all. Affirming collective defense is important
because North Korea’s long-term strategy is to decouple South Korea’s
security from Japan’s and the United States’. Indeed, one of the purposes
of North Korea’s long-range missile tests last year was to reduce South
Korea’s confidence in the U.S. commitment to deterring an attack against
South Korea and raise doubts in Japan and the United States about their
willingness to trade Tokyo or Los Angeles for Seoul in the event of
war. In order to convey a clear deterrent message to Pyongyang, the
collective-defense statement should commit all three allies to the use
of force in response to a North Korean attack.
These military and political measures should be complemented by dip-
lomatic and economic strategies that treat U.S. alliances more holistically.
For example, the United States should approach updates and adjustments
to the existing free-trade agreement with South Korea or U.S.–South
Korean defense cost-sharing negotiations with an awareness that tension
in one area of these relationships can make progress elsewhere more dif-
ficult, if not impossible, particularly if the Japanese public or the South
Korean public is paying attention and anti-U.S. sentiment has been rallied.
May/June 2018 93
Although the North Korea problem is immediate, the longer-term

strategic competitor in Asia is China, whose challenge to U.S. preemi-
nence has been augmented by Russia’s spoiler role across the globe.
Bolstering U.S. alliances would strengthen Washington’s hand against
these threats, as well, by significantly improving military defense capa-
bilities, counterproliferation efforts, and diplomatic coordination among
U.S. allies and partners in East Asia. Reinforcing the U.S. military
posture in the region would also increase the costs to China and Russia
of subsidizing the Kim regime, not complying with sanctions, or under-
taking other problematic behavior.
Fourth, although Washington may seek an assurance from Pyongyang
that it will not proliferate, the Trump administration must also push for
the establishment of a counterproliferation coalition that shares intelli-
gence about maritime nuclear smuggling and cooperates on law enforce-
ment. Japan’s and South Korea’s port authorities, coast guards, and navies,
along with the United States’ considerable assets, should work together
to prevent nuclear material from leaving the country. Most of this
enforcement activity would likely take place in ports, but the allies should
be prepared to carry out interceptions at sea as needed. The United
States should also approach China and Russia about the possibility of
building a five-party counterproliferation regime in Northeast Asia.
Beijing and Moscow should see benefits to stopping any North Korean
loose nukes, but if they are not willing to participate, then they should be
prepared to face the diplomatic and economic consequences of allowing
North Korean proliferation across their borders.
Finally, the United States must continue preparing both diplomatic
and military plans for North Korea. This is critical to, on the one hand,
upholding deterrence against Pyongyang and, on the other, creating a
credible off-ramp for the regime. Washington should maintain its exist-
ing high-tempo military exercises in the region, preposition ammunition
stocks for a possible conflict, and rotate strategic assets such as B-52
bombers, stealth warplanes, nuclear submarines, and aircraft carriers
regularly to the peninsula. All these steps should prevent North Korea
from spreading its nuclear weapons, threatening the United States, or
taking offensive actions in the region.
Given the limited amount of time to prepare for a Kim-Trump
summit, the meeting is unlikely to bear immediate fruit beyond some
grandiose statements about a normalization of relations, a peaceful
end to the Korean War armistice, and denuclearization, statements that
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the leaders would then authorize their governments to begin nego-

tiations over. This outcome would itself be significant, but it should not
lead to a lifting of sanctions unless North Korea backs up its promises
with actions.
Whether the summit succeeds or not, the United States must move
beyond broad statements and invite Pyongyang to reiterate the denucle-
arization pledges it made during the six-party talks in 2005 and 2007.
The documents outlining these pledges are the only place where North
Korea has ever been forced to dump its noncommittal and vague formu-
lations about a “nuclear-free peninsula” in favor of specific and written
commitments to “abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear
programs.” These agreements are also of value to North Korea (and
China) because they state that the United States will not attack North
Korea with conventional or nuclear weapons, the only written security
assurance that addresses North Korean concerns about “hostile” U.S.
policy. Washington should also compel the regime to improve its human
rights record as a good-faith demonstration of the authenticity of its
diplomatic intentions. North Korea will undoubtedly have its own long
list of wants, but for the United States, the summit must establish zero
tolerance for any plutonium- or uranium-based nuclear weapons stock-
piles or the deployment of long- or intermediate-range ballistic missiles
and call for substantial reductions in the stocks of short-range ones. Absent
the preservation of these core security interests, neither summit diplo-
macy nor working-level agreements will be worth much.
Following this overall strategy would enhance the credibility of Wash-
ington’s negotiating position, while also securing U.S. interests in the
event of failure. Broadly speaking, comprehensive coercion would get
the United States out of crisis management mode and demonstrate U.S.
resolve without unnecessarily risking war. It would also strengthen U.S.
alliances in Asia for the long term, directly address the proliferation
threat, increase the costs to those who subsidize Pyongyang, and comple-
ment the United States’ regional commitments.
WHAT NOT TO DO
When it comes to North Korea, the only American voice that really mat-
ters is Trump’s. By agreeing to meet with Kim, Trump has improved his
media ratings, but he has also inadvertently increased the chances of war.
If his latest diplomatic gamble doesn’t pay off, the administration may
come away from negotiations more determined to use the military option.
Indeed, even amid talk of negotiations, some senior officials in the

Trump administration have continued to contemplate using a limited
military strike to prevent North Korea’s development of a long-range
nuclear missile. The rationale is that a strike on North Korea’s nuclear
and missile facilities, perhaps after its next test, would give Kim a “bloody
nose” painful enough to compel him to begin the process of denuclear-
ization, but not so damaging as to start a wider war on the peninsula.
The logic behind a limited military strike is that North Korea will be
undeterrable once it acquires the ability to hit the continental United
States with a nuclear weapon—because
the regime is unpredictable, economically
desperate, and has used chemical weap-
Trump cannot solve the
ons against a civilian target as recently as problem of a nuclear
last year. If Kim can strike the continental North Korea with a
United States, the argument goes, then preventive military strike.
Washington will not be able to prevent
nuclear proliferation or nuclear black-
mail. A strike would constitute an immediate, decisive action to prevent
that outcome. It would also demonstrate the capability and willingness
of the United States to employ all options to stop North Korea’s nuclear
program, a message that would no doubt resonate beyond the region.
Yet this logic is flawed. If Kim would be undeterrable if he had nuclear
weapons able to reach the continental United States, then why would a
limited military strike deter him from responding in kind? And if Kim
did respond militarily, then how could the United States prevent the
crisis from escalating given that Kim would have just proved himself not
to have a clear and rational understanding of signals and deterrence?
Some Americans argue that the risks are worth taking because it’s
better that people die “over there” than at home. That, too, is a mis-
guided sentiment. On any given day, there are 230,000 Americans
living in South Korea and another 90,000 or so in Japan. Evacuating
them would be almost impossible. The largest American evacuation
in history was about 60,000 from Saigon in 1975. An evacuation from
South Korea would be infinitely more difficult. Even if the State
Department tripled the number of consular officers in South Korea,
the process would likely take months. Moreover, the normal evacua-
tion points south and east of the peninsula would not be feasible to
use in a war scenario because of the North Korean missile threat,
which would mean that the only way out would be through China.
May/June 2018 97
But in a crisis, the waterways around the peninsula would be clogged

with a million Chinese seeking to leave, as well.
Under a rain of North Korean artillery, American citizens in the
region would most likely have to hunker down until the war ended.
Although those in Japan might be protected by U.S. missile defense
systems, the U.S. population in South Korea would not be as lucky.
To be clear: by launching a preventive strike, the president would be
putting at risk an American population the size of that of Cincinnati or
Pittsburgh, not to mention millions of South Koreans and Japanese,
all based on the unproven assumption that an undeterrable and unpre-
dictable dictator would be cowed into submission by a demonstration
of U.S. power.
Some may argue that U.S. casualties and even a wider war on the
peninsula are worth risking if a preventive strike would preserve the
post–World War II regional and international order in the long term.
But this proposition is highly problematic. A military strike would only
delay, not stop, Kim’s missile and nuclear programs. Washington does
not know where all of North Korea’s nuclear installations are, and even if
it did, many are hidden deep underground and in the side of mountains,
beyond the reach of even large “bunker buster” weapons. Furthermore,
a limited strike would not stem the threat of proliferation. In fact,
it would only exacerbate it, turning what might be a moneymaking
endeavor for the Kim regime into a vengeful effort to equip actors
arrayed against the United States.
This strategy also risks fracturing the impressive coalition that the
Trump administration has brought together for its maximum-pressure
campaign. A unilateral military attack would undercut what has so far
been a successful bid to deplete the currency reserves North Korea has
been using to build its programs. Finally, a strike could harm key U.S.
alliances. Japan and South Korea insist that they must be consulted
before the United States considers a strike. Going it alone is always an
option, but doing so could fracture, if not end, the very alliances that
the Trump administration has declared it seeks to strengthen in the face
of a rising China.
Ultimately, Trump cannot solve the problem of a nuclear North Korea
with a preventive military strike. This assessment is widely shared by
former members of the intelligence community, the National Security
Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department who
served in both Democratic and Republican administrations. As Steve
Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, put it in an interview: “Until

somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million
people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes . . . there’s no military
solution here, they got us.”
THE BEST OF LOUSY CHOICES

Going forward, Washington should build on the maximum-pressure
campaign, embed negotiations in a broader regional strategy, and forgo
a military strike in favor of new efforts to strengthen regional deterrence
and counterproliferation through close cooperation with U.S. allies.
Such a strategy could deliver the same potential benefits as a limited
strike without the costs. And if the Kim-Trump summit fails, it could
also keep the two countries from immediately going to war.
China and Russia would not like this approach, but from their per-
spective, it is preferable to a military strike, which could lead to a U.S.–
North Korean nuclear exchange in their neighborhood. Moreover, few
states, including China, are comfortable with the proliferation risk
posed by a nuclear North Korea. In fact, under this strategy, China and
Russia may decide to participate in counterproliferation efforts or even
in an enduring multilateral security institution.
Some in the global community fear that China and North Korea could
frame certain actions, such as an embargo to prevent proliferation, as an
act of war. To counter this, the United States and its allies should, to the
extent possible, seek legal authorization for their actions through UN
Security Council resolutions keyed to the next set of North Korean
provocations or to proliferation.
Doves may argue that this strategy would generate insecurity in
Pyongyang that would further justify the regime’s pursuit of weapons.
They may think that a better alternative would be to throw a diplomatic
Hail Mary—as Trump may well do—such as declaring peace on the
peninsula and pulling U.S. troops out of South Korea. Over the long
term, a peace treaty might be possible, but first, the facts on the ground
must change. The regime’s intention to pursue nuclear-tipped ICBMs
presents grave new threats to the U.S. homeland and allies in the region
that must be addressed. The pressure of sanctions must be maintained,
but that doesn’t mean there is no room for subtlety in efforts to shape
North Korean behavior. The sanctions campaign, if handled carefully,
might be designed to target the regime while leaving space for market
development, information dissemination, and humanitarian assistance
May/June 2018 99
among ordinary people. Still, a Hail Mary without tangible North Ko-
rean actions toward denuclearization might be great for TV ratings, but it
would also give Kim what he wants (nuclear recognition) while offering
the United States nothing but empty promises.
Finally, critics might argue that a strategy of comprehensive coercion
would simply take too much time, and time only plays into North
Korea’s hands as the country continues its nuclear sprint. This critique is
not unwarranted; in recent decades, sensitive historical and domestic is-
sues have hampered Japanese–South Korean military cooperation, which
could impede defense planning among U.S. allies. In the past, however,
crises involving North Korea have led to security cooperation between
Japan and South Korea in a timely and prompt fashion. In addition,
although the push for a Kim-Trump summit is dramatic, it may have
shifted the play to a longer game, as bold statements by leaders who love
flair and drama will have to be translated into action by policy minions
in painstaking detail over weeks and months, if not years. The United
States should use this time to invest in its alliances and strengthen its
position in the region.
Coordinating and developing the capabilities needed for security
cooperation with Japan and South Korea will take time, but it will
put the United States in a better position in the long run. It’s impor-
tant to distinguish between strategy and tactics. Tactical responses
are always possible in the near term, but tactics without a strategy
can lead one down undesirable paths. As former U.S. Deputy Secre-
tary of Defense John Hamre has argued, recent U.S. claims that
“time has run out,” which were designed to pressure the North Koreans,
have only pushed Washington further into a corner, under pressure
to carry out a threatened military attack, and they have done nothing
to advance a strategy outlining what the United States should be doing
before, during, and after any negotiations.
In the land of lousy options, no plan is perfect. But some are demon-
strably better than others. A comprehensive coercion strategy for denu-
clearization diplomacy would significantly increase the pressure on North
Korea. It would strengthen U.S. alliances in Asia against threats not just
from North Korea but also from China and increase the costs to Beijing
of subsidizing the Kim regime. It would not risk hundreds of thousands of
American lives with a preventive military attack. And it would strengthen
the United States’ hand at the negotiating table in a way that primed
Washington for success, but also prepared it for failure.∂
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Perception and
Misperception on the
Korean Peninsula
How Unwanted Wars Begin
N
orth Korea has all but completed its quest for nuclear weapons.
It has demonstrated its ability to produce boosted-fission
bombs and may be able to make fusion ones, as well. It can
likely miniaturize them to fit atop a missile. And it will soon be able
to deliver this payload to the continental United States. North Korea’s
leader, Kim Jong Un, has declared his country’s nuclear deterrent
complete and, despite his willingness to meet with U.S. President
Donald Trump, is unlikely to give it up. Yet Washington continues to
demand that Pyongyang relinquish the nuclear weapons it already
has, and the Trump administration has pledged that the North Korean
regime will never acquire a nuclear missile that can hit the United States.
The result is a new, more dangerous phase in the U.S.–North Korean
relationship: a high-stakes nuclear standoff.
In March, U.S. and South Korean officials announced the possibility
of a Kim-Trump meeting. But regardless of whether diplomacy
proceeds or the United States turns its focus to other tools—sanctions,
deterrence, even military force—the same underlying challenge will
remain: the outcome of this standoff will be determined by whether
and how each country can influence the other. That, in turn, will
depend on the beliefs and perceptions each holds about the other. The
problems of perception and misperception afflict all policymakers that
ROBERT JERVIS is Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs at Columbia
University.
MIRA RAPP-HOOPER is a Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center and a Senior
Research Scholar at Yale Law School.
May/June 2018 103

deal with foreign adversaries. But when it comes to relations between

Washington and Pyongyang, those problems are especially profound,
and the consequences of a miscalculation are uniquely grave.
Any U.S. strategy toward North Korea involves using a combination
of threats and promises to persuade Pyongyang to bend to Washington’s
will. But whether the United States can actually persuade Pyongyang
depends not just on which tools it chooses to use but also, more
fundamentally, on how it is viewed by North Korea. How do North
Korean leaders interpret the signals Washington sends? Do they see
Washington’s threats and promises as credible? And how do U.S.
policymakers perceive their counterparts in Pyongyang? How do they
differentiate plausible threats from mere bluster? The American
debate about whether Kim is “rational”—that is, capable of making
means-ends calculations and providing for his own survival—barely
scratches the surface of necessary considerations.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of any threat or promise is in the eye of
the target; the adversary has the final say in whether a particular approach
succeeds. Analysts often compare international politics to chess, a bilat-
eral contest in which players view the entire board and know all the
possible moves. In this case especially, a more apt analogy is Rashomon—
the Japanese film that depicts the same story from several vantage
points, each character viewing what happened differently.
If any U.S. strategy toward North Korea is to have a chance of suc-
ceeding (or even of just averting catastrophe), it must be guided by an
accurate sense of how Kim’s regime thinks, what it values, and how it
judges its options. Washington must understand not just North Korean
objectives but also how North Korean officials understand U.S. objec-
tives and whether they consider U.S. statements credible. If it fails to
do so, perceptual pitfalls could all too easily provoke a downward spiral
in relations and lead to the worst conflict since World War II.
YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

It has long been clear what the United States wants from North Korea.
For years, Washington has sought to denuclearize the country—that
is, to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible disassembly of
its nuclear arsenal—and to deter major military action on its part.
More recently, Trump has added that North Korea cannot be allowed to
develop an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, capable of reaching
the continental United States. Washington has also long called for,
Perception and Misperception on the Korean Peninsula
Seeing like a state: Kim watching a military drill, Pyongyang, November 2014
but never actively pursued, the reunification of the Korean Peninsula
under the democratic control of the South. Yet as North Korea has
moved toward a complete nuclear and ICBM capability, such goals have
become harder to achieve. They no longer require simply preventing
North Korea from taking certain steps. Now, they require persuading
it to reverse course and give up capabilities it has already developed,
even in the face of significant opposition, a much bigger concession.
Accordingly, the more urgent question today is less what the
United States wants than what it can reasonably live with—that is,
what it needs. As North Korea nears the end of its nuclear quest,
concessions that would have once looked attractive, such as a freeze
in further development, no longer look as desirable. What, then,
would it take for the United States to live with a nuclear North Korea?
If Washington can strengthen its alliances and military presence to
effectively deter Pyongyang and prevent it from resorting to nuclear
blackmail, would minimum American needs be met?
What North Korea wants from its nuclear and missile programs has
also become fairly clear. Above all, the regime wants to ensure its sur-
KCNA / REUT E RS
vival and deter a U.S. attack. Beyond that, it also appears to consider
nuclear weapons to be a source of prestige and thus wants acceptance
as a de facto nuclear state, much as Pakistan has. Nuclear weapons also
May/June 2018 105

help advance other long-standing North Korean desires, such as reunifi-

cation of the peninsula under Pyongyang’s control and the undermining
of U.S. security guarantees for South Korea and Japan.
The harder question to answer is whether the Kim regime now
sees a nuclear capability as inextricable from its own survival—that is,
whether it thinks it needs to keep nuclear
Both the United States and weapons under any circumstances. If it
does, then there is no security assur-
North Korea have bluffed ance that Washington can offer Pyong-
in the past. yang that will convince it to give them
up. The only steps that would work are
ones that U.S. diplomats would almost certainly never take—say,
renouncing the U.S. treaty with South Korea and withdrawing all
U.S. troops from the peninsula.
The needs and wants of other actors are also relevant. South Korea’s
objectives largely align with those of the United States. But because a
conflict would inevitably spill onto its own soil, South Korea is more
likely to privilege political solutions over military ones. Some differ-
ences in U.S. and South Korean positions can be managed, but if they
diverge too much, North Korea may have reason to doubt Washing-
ton’s security guarantee to Seoul. China, meanwhile, has traditionally
preferred to have a stable, if irksome, North Korean buffer state along
its border rather than to push for denuclearization at the risk of regime
collapse. But Chinese–North Korean relations have been deteriorating
for years, and it is now an open question how much Beijing values
its client.
CREDIBILITY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

No matter what strategy it is using at any given moment, the United
States relies on a combination of threats and promises to change
North Korean behavior. Those threats and promises must go together:
a threat only works if it is coupled with a promise not to carry out the
threatened action if North Korea complies with a demand. And both
the threat and the promise must be credible. Washington has to signal
to Pyongyang what actions it can take to avoid punishment, as well as
what actions it can take to produce better outcomes.
In discussions of international politics, credibility is often treated
as a characteristic inherent to a given state and its signals. In fact,
credibility is in the eye of the beholder: a threat or a promise is credible
1 2 5 Y E A R S O F P U B L I S H I N G
S TA N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
Tyranny Comes Home Hamas Contained Discreet Power

The Domestic Fate of The Rise and Pacification How the World
U.S. Militarism of Palestinian Resistance Economic Forum Shapes
Christopher J. Coyne Tareq Baconi Market Agendas
and Abigail R. Hall Christina Garsten
and Adrienne Sörbom
sup.org
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only if the target sees it as such. The target makes that determination
by assessing its opponent’s interests, its previous behavior, the nature
of its regime, and whether its leaders have lived up to prior commitments.
Accordingly, any U.S. attempt to exert influence over North Korea
necessarily leaves the decision to comply in the hands of North Korean
leaders. They, not officials in Washington, make the cost-benefit calcu-
lation of the value of compliance and noncompliance.
The question of how to establish credibility is especially fraught in
this case. The United States and North Korea face major hurdles to
persuading each other that their intentions are genuine. Because they
do not have formal diplomatic relations, they are basing their views
on an impoverished set of interactions and data points. In the last two
decades, state-level exchanges have taken the form of nuclear negotia-
tions. With the exception of those leading to the 1994 Agreed
Framework, which stayed in place for six years, all these negotiations
resulted in failure. As a result, each side distrusts the other.
Moreover, the two sides interpret history differently. Kim looks at
past agreements with the United States that his father and grand-
father struck and likely infers that Washington seeks to make Pyong-
yang less secure and will renege on its commitments. He looks at the
U.S. invasions of Iraq and Libya and likely concludes that nuclear
weapons are a far stronger guarantor of survival than any U.S. promise.
He sees Trump’s threats to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and likely
worries that U.S. arms control agreements cannot be trusted. And
when evaluating the prospect of U.S. military action, he may consider
prior instances in which U.S. leaders have contemplated bombing
nuclear sites in North Korea or elsewhere—and conclude that since
the United States has always refrained from doing so in the past, it
will again.
Making credibility even harder to establish, both states have bluffed
in the past. Perhaps more than any other state, North Korea has a
tendency to use incendiary rhetoric that does not result in action. It
threatened to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” in 1994, and it calls nearly
every new round of international sanctions “a declaration of war.”
After the UN Security Council approved sanctions in 2013, a North
Korean spokesperson said, “We will be exercising our right to preemp-
tive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor.”
Although Washington’s bluffing has typically been less brazen,
the effect is similar. Washington has called North Korea’s nuclear
development “unacceptable” but then gone on to accept it. It promised

to hold Pyongyang accountable for proliferation but took no action
when it sold a nuclear reactor to Syria in 2007. In August 2017,
Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never
seen” against North Korea if it made more threats, only to do noth-
ing when the country conducted more missile tests. He even prides
himself on his ability to backtrack. When The Wall Street Journal
asked him about his combative tweets against Kim, he replied, “You
see that a lot with me and then all of a sudden somebody’s my best
friend. I could give you 20 examples.” Although no single bluff com-
pletely erodes a state’s credibility, habitual empty threats degrade it
over time.
North Korea may be more likely to treat a U.S. threat or promise
as credible under certain conditions: when the United States has
previously demonstrated the capability to act as it says it will, when
the costs to the United States of action are low, when it has a signifi-
cant incentive to act, and when there are not less costly ways of carry-
ing out a threat. To increase the credibility of a threat, Washington can
make it more specific, detailing which precise conditions would trigger
which precise responses. Doing so might mean issuing an ultimatum,
one of the strongest types of threats in international politics. In the
case of military threats, Washington could send costly signals of immi-
nent action, such as evacuating American personnel from Seoul or
sharing prospective military plans with allies in the hope that they
will leak them. Such moves, in addition to causing public alarm and
giving up the advantage of a surprise attack, would make it harder for
the United States to step back from the brink.
THE DIFFICULTIES OF DIPLOMACY

Pyongyang’s perception of U.S. credibility will determine the success
or failure of any U.S. strategy. Whether the Trump administration is
relying on diplomacy, pressure, deterrence, or force, it and North
Korean leaders will interpret the same actions differently, and neither
will fully understand the other’s view. Misperception afflicts all policy
options, with different risks in each case.
Diplomacy—whether a Kim-Trump summit or lower-level exchanges—
presents its own difficulties and dangers. Each side views the other’s
behavior in a different light. The United States sees North Korea as
an insincere actor that has reneged on countless commitments in the
May/June 2018 109

past, whereas North Korea sees the United States as intent on threat-
ening its existence. For both parties to come to the negotiating table,
they must believe that the potential upsides of diplomacy outweigh
the costs, including the likelihood that the other side will agree to and
then scuttle a deal.
The United States faces what might be called a “time-technology
dilemma” in diplomacy. North Korea is close to reaching its technical
goals, making it all the more important for Washington to secure signifi-
cant enough concessions quickly enough to make the gambit worthwhile.
The more time that passes, the less the United States will be able to
gain from negotiations, and the more North Korea will be able to secure
for itself. Pyongyang may, for example, get away with making minor
concessions in exchange for significant sanctions relief or security
assurances, strengthening its hand without meaningfully improving
the security situation for the United States and its allies.
Given these perceptual dynamics and the likelihood that they will
cause diplomatic failure, why would the United States pursue diplomacy
at all? After all, many argue that it can deter, contain, and manage the
North Korean threat without talks. Any progress on constraining
Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, no matter how modest or
unlikely, will require concessions that can be made only at a negotiating
table. Just as important, engagement can reduce the risks of misper-
ception and miscalculation in the bilateral relationship, which is especially
important given how few other ties exist between Washington and
Pyongyang. That said, ill-conceived diplomacy may lead each side to its
worst-case assessment of the other. If it does, tensions will only spiral.
YOUR ECONOMY OR YOUR NUKES

Similar perceptual problems affect other U.S. policy options—
including the tool of choice in recent years, financial sanctions.
Whatever the economic impact of sanctions, their effectiveness in
achieving a broader political objective still depends on North Korean
perceptions of U.S. intentions. Sanctions are meant to decrease
North Korea’s ability to pursue its weapons programs and to inflict
pain on the regime without raising the risk of direct military conflict.
Because they are usually applied reactively and episodically, however,
their influence is only incremental.
The United States and the UN tend to apply new sanctions after
North Korea has taken a prohibited action. Because this has been the
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pattern for years, North Korea can anticipate new sanctions before it
makes a given move and decide whether the benefits will outweigh
the costs. Moreover, because sanctions are applied only after the fact,
the regime has time to adjust to the new economic circumstances it
will face after it takes the action. Indeed, because it chooses when next
to conduct a nuclear test, it actually has some control over whether
and when it will get hit with another round of economic measures,
even if the exact contents of the sanctions package are a surprise. In
other words, what international actors view as resolute and punishing
steps may not actually do much to affect Pyongyang’s preferences.
The United States hopes that its sanctions will send a message that
forces North Korea to choose between its economy and its nuclear
weapons. But the incremental nature of the financial punishment may
instead signal that it will continue but the pain will be tolerable,
encouraging North Korea to hurry up and complete its nuclear pro-
gram so that it can start negotiating the sanctions away. This repre-
sents another instance of the time-technology dilemma: North Korea
has few technical hurdles left to cross, yet new sanctions take time to
bite. Still, international financial pressure has inherent credibility,
because multilateral sanctions include the participation of countries
on which North Korea depends, such as China and Russia. Moreover,
it is difficult to draw conclusions about how multilateral sanctions
against Pyongyang are affecting its political behavior. Did Kim seek
a summit with Trump because he is desperate for sanctions relief
and willing to make concessions or because he seeks the prestige of
a presidential summit and de facto recognition of North Korea as a
nuclear power? American observers may assume the former, whereas
Kim may believe the latter, leading to a yawning gap in diplomatic
expectations.
MAKING DETERRENCE WORK

One of the foremost questions that has occupied U.S. policymakers is
whether North Korea can be deterred. But the better question is what
North Korea can be deterred from doing and what it can be compelled
to do differently. It is one thing for the United States to deter the use
of nuclear weapons or a major attack—since the end of the Korean
War, North Korea has not tried to invade the South because the U.S.
threat to destroy the North Korean regime in such a circumstance is
credible, thanks to U.S. conventional and nuclear military superiority.
But it is another thing entirely to deter lower-level provocations. When

North Korea makes such moves, as it did when it sank a South Korean
warship in 2010, it presumably estimates how the United States will
respond and then selects actions and targets that limit U.S. options.
The United States and South Korea may be able to deter some North
Korean provocations through their conventional force posture and
military doctrine, but they are unlikely to be able to prevent them all.
Further complicating matters, U.S. goals have gone beyond deter-
rence to compellence—that is, seeking to change what the North is
already doing. Coming only when deterrence has failed, compellence—
in this case, getting North Korea to abandon a mature nuclear arsenal—
is even harder to achieve. As behavioral economists have demonstrated,
decision-makers are more willing to pay costs and run risks to avoid
losing something they already possess than they are to get something
they don’t yet have. Even growing U.S. pressure is unlikely to alter this;
it may just reinforce Kim’s belief that he needs nuclear weapons to deter
Washington. Similarly, it is possible that U.S. threats only heighten
Kim’s perceived need for a better deterrent—meaning that Washington’s
messaging around deterrence undermines its own objectives.
After all, deterrence goes both ways, and so U.S. policymakers must
also consider what their messages tell Kim about his ability to deter an
American attack. When Washington declares that a North Korean ICBM
capability would pose an unacceptable threat to the United States, it is
in effect admitting to Kim that the United States is easily deterred by
such a capability. Similarly, drawing a sharp distinction between threats
to the American homeland and threats to U.S. allies is deeply problem-
atic, because extended deterrence requires demonstrating that allies are
as valuable, or nearly as valuable, as the homeland itself. Both South
Korea and Japan should be concerned that Washington appears preoc-
cupied with weapons aimed at it and relatively unconcerned about the
weapons aimed at them. Understandably, they might worry that Trump’s
“America first” stance means a weaker nuclear umbrella.
THE FOG OF WAR

Of all the ways in which perceptual pitfalls could come into play on the
Korean Peninsula, the most consequential would involve the use of mil-
itary force. The United States is unlikely to wage a campaign of total
destruction against North Korea now that Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal
is advanced enough to stave off utter defeat. If war did break out, the
May/June 2018 113

United States would be more likely to use military force as a form of

coercion. But even that would be unlikely to achieve denuclearization.
The mere fact that the United States possesses superior military capa-
bilities would not guarantee that it would prevail, since each country’s
resolve would help determine the outcome. That is why U.S. officials
must consider North Korea’s willingness to run risks and pay high costs.
After an attack, North Korea’s perception of the initial military
campaign would determine whether Pyongyang complied with U.S.
wishes. For the United States to get its way, it would have to send
signals that it would continue to use force if North Korea refused to
comply, but also that it would cease to use violence if North Korea
cooperated. In particular, the United
States would have to indicate that the
The prospect of a meeting leadership in Pyongyang had a clear
between Kim and Trump pathway to survival. If Kim believed
has raised hopes that, if that the United States was bent on his
dashed, could make war destruction no matter what, he would
have no choice but to mount an all-out
more likely. counterattack. The United States would
find this balance difficult to achieve. If
Kim anticipated some form of U.S. military action but the strike was
less destructive than feared, he might actually be bolstered in his refusal
to comply with U.S. wishes. In either case—a devastating attack or an
underwhelming one—the United States should expect to face signifi-
cant retaliation, at least until Kim figured out whether compliance or
resistance made more sense in the long term.
How third parties and domestic actors reacted to a strike could
influence any additional U.S. efforts to use violence coercively. If the
domestic audience vehemently supported a strike, the United States
could more credibly claim that it would attack again if Pyongyang
failed to cooperate. If international parties expressed outrage and
condemned the strike, as seems plausible, the U.S. threat to launch a
devastating follow-on strike would become less potent, and Pyongyang
would have far less motivation to comply. U.S. leaders would also
have to contemplate the signals they sent beyond the military strike
itself. What message would Trump deliver to accompany the use of
force? Would he demand full denuclearization? Throughout the his-
tory of warfare, once one side has resorted to violence, emotions play
a larger role in leaders’ calculations and states become prone to gamble,
willing to accept greater risks and take bigger chances to prevent major
losses. North Korea is unlikely to be an exception.
A PERFECT STORM OF MISPERCEPTION

The greatest risk is that the perceptual challenges that afflict all these
approaches could build into a perfect storm of misperception. It is all
too easy to imagine how such a crisis might develop—no less amid a
flurry of diplomacy than amid a volley of threats.
In fact, the prospect of an unprecedented meeting between Kim
and Trump has raised hopes that, if dashed, could make war more
likely. There is a real danger of a Rashomon situation: Washington
might believe that sanctions and military threats made Kim realize
that his nuclear program could lead to his demise, whereas Pyongyang
might believe that Trump’s willingness to meet without demanding
substantive concessions indicates that the United States is finally
ready to accept North Korea as a nuclear state. Even the same words
may mean different things to the two sides. For the United States,
“denuclearization” is the North giving up nuclear weapons; for North
Korea, it may mean an arms control agreement in which the two sides
bargain over each other’s force levels. Well-intentioned mediation by
South Korea could postpone the day of reckoning but make it worse
when it comes, by encouraging both Washington and Pyongyang to
believe that the other is ready to make major concessions. If face-to-
face talks reveal that neither is in fact willing to do so, the hostility
will be magnified.
It is not difficult to imagine how this scenario could come to pass.
Following North Korea’s reasonably good behavior during the Winter
Olympics, the United States’ postponement of military exercises, and
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s efforts at diplomacy with the
North, a diplomatic window has opened. Imagine that Kim and Trump
arrive at the summit only to discover that they hold radically different
views of the commitment to “denuclearize”: Trump believes that Kim
is willing to negotiate away his arsenal for sanctions relief, whereas
Kim believes that full denuclearization also requires the removal of
U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula and an end to the U.S.–South
Korean alliance (a possibility that was reinforced by comments Trump
made in March that appeared to threaten to withdraw U.S. troops from
South Korea unless the U.S.–South Korean trade deal was renegotiated).
After it becomes clear that Trump will not move forward on Kim’s
May/June 2018 115

terms, Kim is outraged and renews his August 2017 pledge to test mis-
siles over Guam.
Both Washington and Pyongyang now think the other is responsible
for derailing diplomacy. Out of a desire to induce the United States
to drop its denuclearization demands, Kim decides to show that his
willingness to negotiate does not mean his will has been broken, and
he proceeds with his missile launch. Much as the Japanese did before
they attacked Pearl Harbor, he hopes that a missile test over Guam—a
U.S. territory but not a state—will unnerve the United States enough
to persuade it to accept his nuclear program, but not so much as to
bring a full-scale war.
But then, one of his missiles expels debris over Guam. Fragments
from the reentry vehicle strike the island itself, killing a few residents—
who are, after all, U.S. citizens. Trump declares this “an act of war”
and gives Kim 48 hours to issue a formal apology and a pledge to
denuclearize. Kim does not comply, and the United States dusts off
one of its plans for a limited military strike. It attacks a known missile
storage facility, believing the limited nature of the target will induce
Kim’s cooperation and minimize the risk of retaliation. Instead, Kim
views the strike as the beginning of a larger effort to disarm him and
as a prelude to regime change. Following his conventional bombard-
ment of Seoul, the United States begins to attack other known weapons
sites and command-and-control facilities to neutralize the threat. Kim
launches nuclear weapons the following day.
The purpose of this vignette is not to suggest that war on the
Korean Peninsula is inevitable, likely, or totally beyond the control of
the parties involved. Rather, it is to illustrate how the forms of misper-
ception now ingrained in the U.S.–North Korean relationship may
interact with a situation that is already unfolding to invite a catastrophe
that neither side wants.
KNOW THYSELF
There is no set of policies that can eliminate these risks. But there are
steps U.S. policymakers can take to sharpen their own perceptions of
North Korea; better understand how U.S. actions and signals affect
the perceptions of their North Korean counterparts; and, perhaps
most important, recognize the assumptions behind American beliefs.
The Trump administration should start by deepening its assessment
of Pyongyang’s aims and bottom line. There are a handful of former
U.S. officials who have experience negotiating with the North Koreans
and who could help current policymakers more accurately read North
Korean signals. Even if it has arrived at a diplomatic opening by
accident, the administration must now work with these experts to
devise a strategy for diplomacy, including coming up with objectives
that are more limited than full denuclearization. U.S. policymakers
should also press the intelligence agencies not only to offer their best
assessments of North Korean intentions but also to be explicit about
the gaps and shortcomings in them.
Policymakers should also work with the intelligence community to
examine how existing U.S. policies may look from Pyongyang. They
should consider how those perceptions (or misperceptions) serve to
reinforce or undermine U.S. objectives and how future changes in
policy may be viewed. There is an all-too-human tendency to assume
that an action will be seen as it is intended to be seen; intelligence
analysts should help policymakers actively counter this tendency,
especially when it comes to potential military strikes.
In addition to trying to understand the assumptions of North Korean
policymakers, U.S. policymakers must work to understand their own.
They should go back and examine them, carefully mapping the causal
logic of any move they might make. By recognizing the flaws or weak-
nesses in their own assumptions, they will be better prepared to react
nimbly to unexpected North Korean concessions or to manage the
situation if engagement abruptly fails. Diplomatic encounters are not
likely to unfold according to script, and if the United States and North
Korea are not willing to be surprised and learn, they can neither take
advantage of opportunities nor avoid making worst-case inferences
that would rule out further discussions.
The prospect of grave misperceptions should instill a degree of
caution in U.S. officials and prompt them to insert the equivalent of
speed bumps into the policy process, above all in a moment of crisis.
If the U.S.–North Korean relationship begins to deteriorate further
and escalate toward conflict, they should pause to consider the prob-
lems of perception. Why did North Korea enter into direct talks if it
didn’t intend to denuclearize? What assumptions were made about
the North that must now be interrogated? Such questions may seem
basic, but they too often go unasked. Simply by considering them,
U.S. policymakers can reduce the risk that flimsy credibility and haz-
ardous misperceptions will bring about an unnecessary war.∂
May/June 2018 117

Opioids of the Masses

Stopping an American Epidemic From
Going Global
Keith Humphreys, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and
Vanda Felbab-Brown
I
n 2016, nearly 50,000 people died of opioid overdoses in the United
States, and, per capita, almost as many died in Canada. From 2000 to
2016, more Americans died of overdoses than died in World War I
and World War II combined. Yet even these grim numbers understate
the impact of opioid abuse, because for every person who dies, many more
live with addiction. The White House Council of Economic Advisers
has estimated that the epidemic cost the U.S. economy $504 billion in
2015, or 2.8 percent of GDP.
This public health story is now common knowledge. Less well known
is the growing risk that the epidemic will spread across the globe. Facing
a backlash in the United States and Canada, drug companies are turning
their attention to Asia and Europe and repeating the tactics that created
the crisis in the first place. At the same time, the rise of fentanyl, a
highly potent synthetic opioid, has made the outbreak even deadlier
and begun to reshape the global drug market, a development with
significant foreign policy implications. As a result, the world is on
the cusp of a global opioid epidemic, driven by the overuse of legal pain-
killers and worsened by the spread of fentanyl, that could mark a public
health disaster of historic proportions.
Yet in the face of this terrifying possibility, the world has remained
largely complacent. Governments and international organizations
KEITH HUMPHREYS is Esther Ting Memorial Professor and Professor of Psychiatry at
Stanford University.
JONATHAN P. CAULKINS is H. Guyford Stever University Professor of Operations
Research and Public Policy at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University.
VANDA FELBAB-BROWN is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
urgently need to learn the lessons of the North American crisis. The
first and most important of those is that the more opioids flood the
market, the bigger the problem will be—and so governments must
couple efforts to treat addicted individuals with efforts to curb supply.
That will require them to crack down on pharmaceutical companies
that abuse their positions and to take aggressive steps to regulate the
sale and marketing of opioids. And the rise of synthetic opioids means
that governments must rethink the role that fighting drug trafficking
plays in their foreign policies.
THE PRESCRIPTION AND THE DAMAGE DONE

Opioids derived from the opium poppy have long been used success-
fully to relieve short-term pain from surgery and to comfort patients
with terminal conditions, including cancer. Problems can arise,
however, when they are prescribed for prolonged periods to treat
nonterminal chronic pain. Extended use raises the risk of addiction
and increases tolerance, meaning that patients need more and more
of the drug to achieve the same effect. Opioids are so dangerous
because the difference between a lethal dose and a normal one is
only a modest multiple. Worse still, a dose that works today can kill
tomorrow, especially if the patient has taken other drugs, such as
alcohol or benzodiazepines (a class of drugs that includes Valium
and Xanax). And because an overdose kills by depriving the body
of oxygen, even those who survive risk serious organ damage.
Opioids are widely misused for three reasons. First, clinicians
can’t objectively measure pain in the way they can body temperature
or blood pressure, so they rely on patients’ accuracy and honesty in
judging pain severity. Second, opioids are highly prized, even by
healthy people, because of the euphoria they create. And third, anyone
without scruples can sell prescription opioids on the black market.
After several epidemics involving legal medications in the nine-
teenth century, in 1914, the U.S. government banned most distribution
of opioids. For nearly 50 years after that, North America saw few
opioid-related problems besides heroin use in a few U.S. and Canadian
cities. In the late 1960s and 1970s, heroin spread to more cities, but then
stalled. From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, the number of dependent
users was fairly stable.
All of that changed in the mid-1990s. Several pharmaceutical compa-
nies began aggressively marketing opioids to treat chronic, not just acute,
May/June 2018 119

pain, claiming they carried little risk of addiction. The most infamous
was Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, but other companies
rolled out similar products. As the New York Times journalist Barry
Meier and the psychiatrist Anna Lembke have documented, their tactics
were nearly as ruthless as those of any drug dealer. During the period
of mostly uncritical enthusiasm for prescription opioids, the largess of
manufacturers flowed to virtually every organization that should have
been protecting the public, including health-care regulators, profes-
sional medical societies, medical school education programs, elected
officials, patient advocacy groups, medical opinion leaders, and state
medical boards.
A study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Associated Press
found that from 2006 to 2015, the pharmaceutical industry spent
$880 million on campaign contributions and lobbying state legislatures,
220 times as much as the amount spent by groups trying to limit opioid
use. In 2013, the marketing expenditure of each of the ten largest phar-
maceutical companies exceeded the entire budget of the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration.
The resulting lax regulatory environment, coupled with a sincere
concern that many patients were living with unacceptable levels of
pain, released a tsunami of opioid prescriptions. Consumption in the
United States quadrupled from 1999 to 2014, peaking at 250 million
prescriptions per year. By 2010, the U.S. health-care system was dis-
pensing enough opioids each year for everyone in the country to be
medicated round the clock for a month.
In 2007, federal prosecutors secured a guilty plea from Purdue
Pharma for knowingly deceiving doctors and patients. The courts
fined the company $600 million and required it to more accurately
describe the risks and benefits of OxyContin. Still, that fine is dwarfed
by the estimated $35 billion of revenue that Purdue has earned from the
drug, and the three executives who pled guilty avoided jail sentences.
By contrast, someone convicted of selling 100 grams of heroin—worth
between $2,500 and $15,000—faces a federal mandatory minimum
sentence of five years. Other fines paid by opioid manufacturers and
distributors in the United States and Canada have mostly been under
$25 million—small enough that companies could treat them as just a
cost of doing business.
A recent scandal reveals the extent to which the industry has captured
regulators. In 2016, Eric Eyre, a determined West Virginia journalist,
discovered that drug companies had shipped nearly nine million opioid
pills to a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, a town with fewer than
400 residents. The Drug Enforcement Administration was already
investigating why the companies that distributed these opioids did
not report or stop the suspicious shipments. But the opioid distributors
responded by hiring away DEA officials, many of them from the division
responsible for regulating the industry, and by lobbying friendly poli-
ticians. In 2016, Congress passed legislation curtailing the DEA’s ability
to pursue any such cases.
One of the leaders in that effort, Tom Marino, a Republican congress-
man from Pennsylvania and a recipient of extensive campaign donations
from the industry, was even nominated by President Donald Trump
to serve as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Marino withdrew when The Washington Post and 60 Minutes broke the
story of his involvement with the bill, but his nomination showed that
the administration was willing to put its drug policy in the hands of a
creature of the industry. And despite Marino’s withdrawal, the pro-
industry policy created by Congress remains firmly in place.
May/June 2018 121

SELLING NIRVANA
The liberalization of painkiller prescriptions has fueled a black market
thanks to a straightforward economic calculus. The black market pays
about $1 per milligram for oxycodone pills. A typical daily dose for a
long-term opioid patient is 100 milligrams, or $36,500 worth of pills
a year. Thus, a patient with a $30 copay for a 30-day prescription pays
$1 a day for medicines that can then be sold for $100. Those skilled at
working the system can obtain prescriptions for hundreds of milligrams
a day, either from one doctor or by doctor shopping.
Although most patients are not criminals, many criminals pretend to
be patients. Furthermore, even otherwise honest people can be tempted
into crime when the payoff is that great. Just by lying about a medical
condition that doctors cannot verify with any objective test, a patient
can obtain prescriptions worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Even for those who truly need the drugs, the black market offers
attractive opportunities. A single milligram of pure heroin usually
sells for under $1, slightly less than the price that a milligram of oxy-
codone commands, even though heroin is roughly three times as potent.
Selling prescription pills and buying heroin thus lets the user more
than triple his or her opioid consumption or, alternatively, keep the same
rate of consumption and buy groceries or pay the rent.
This creates a vicious cycle: addicted people obtain prescriptions,
which they sell to others, who become addicted and seek their own
prescriptions, which they then sell in turn, addicting still others. This
process has driven a boom in demand. Heroin use, which had stayed
stable for many years, surged as people who had become addicted to
prescription opioids shifted to black-market alternatives.
Beginning around 2014, black-market fentanyl compounded matters.
Fentanyl did not create the crisis: prescribed opioids were already killing
tens of thousands of people. But it threw gasoline on the fire. Dealers
began cutting heroin with cheap diluents and then adding fentanyl—
which is less expensive and more potent than other opioids—to raise the
strength of the mixture before selling it as heroin. Deaths in the United
States from synthetic opioids other than methadone (the category that
includes fentanyl) jumped from 3,105 in 2013 to 20,145 in 2016.
A WORLD OF PAIN
So far, this dynamic has been most pronounced in the United States
and Canada. The United States has an unusually corporate-friendly
policy environment, but Canada has a stronger tradition of state regu-

lation. So other countries would be foolish to assume that something
similar could not happen to them.
U.S. pharmaceutical companies are already working to expand
foreign sales. The Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, also
owns Mundipharma, a worldwide network of pharmaceutical com-
panies that is not constrained by the U.S. federal court decision
against Purdue. As detailed by the Los Angeles Times, Mundipharma
is active in Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, Mexico, the
Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Spain and is using the same
aggressive sales tactics that Purdue Pharma employed in the United
States. It runs training seminars in which representatives encourage
doctors to overcome their “opiophobia.” It sponsors ad campaigns
that promote pharmaceutical treatment for pain. It has hired con-
sultants, local opinion leaders, and an army of sales representatives
to promote its products.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Mundipharma consultants have
claimed that OxyContin presents only a small risk of addiction, the
assertion for which Purdue Pharma was fined in the United States.
As David Kessler, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration com-
missioner, told the Los Angeles Times, Mundipharma’s strategy is “right
out of the playbook of Big Tobacco. As the United States takes steps
to limit sales here, the company goes abroad.”
In May 2017, a bipartisan group of 12 members of the U.S. Congress
wrote to the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO)
to warn against the predations of Mundipharma. But it is not clear
that the world heard the message. Already, several countries appear to
be falling into the trap of opioid use. In Germany, prescription rates
have risen to nearly the Canadian level. In Australia, OxyContin pre-
scriptions have increased sharply, and Mundipharma has contributed
funding to the development of national pain-management strategies.
In much of the developing world, where states are weaker and drug
manufacturers have a freer hand, the outlook is even worse.
A NEW PRESCRIPTION
To prevent the North American crisis from growing into a global one,
several steps must be taken now, before it is too late. First, jurisdictions
that decide to liberalize their prescription opioid policies must plan to
spend more on drug treatment and other services for those struggling
May/June 2018 123

with opioid addiction, rather than playing catch-up after the problem
has grown. But just treating addicted people will not solve the problem.
Governments must also address the incentives pharmaceutical compa-
nies have for profiting from oversupplying and overpromoting opioids.
A simple, although radical, policy would be to ban for-profit com-
panies from selling prescription opioids for extended home use, allowing
only the government or nonprofit organizations to do so. A less extreme
idea would involve a ban on branding. Regulators could require phar-
macies to sell only generic products or,
Legal drugs can bring at the least, prevent manufacturers and
retailers from advertising their drugs.
death on a scale vastly Although such bans are largely uncon-
surpassing the effects stitutional in the United States, many
of illegal ones. countries do have the power to restrict
advertising. (The restrictions on pro-
motion that have worked in the United
States have come primarily from legal settlements such as those imposed
on the tobacco industry, not legislation.)
A more complex alternative would be to develop a distinct and
more stringent set of regulations for opioids that would recognize the
unique challenges they pose. Whereas for most drugs it makes sense
for regulators to consider only whether the drugs are safe and effective
for patients when used as directed, that standard is woefully inadequate
for drugs that are as easily and widely abused as opioids. Regulators
should take all foreseeable consequences into account, not just those
likely to follow from the proper use of prescribed opioids.
Tighter regulation could also include new ways of calculating fines
for drug companies that break the law. There is little evidence that
one-off penalties change corporate behavior. But agreements that made
fines contingent on outcomes might. If opioid manufacturers faced,
say, a $1 million fine for every overdose involving one of their products,
they would have an enduring incentive to regulate themselves.
The WHO and the United Nations could help in two ways. Many
low- and middle-income countries face the opposite problem of rich
ones: they do not use enough opioids, a shortfall that leads to unneeded
suffering, particularly for the terminally ill. Rather than let profit-
seeking corporations exploit that opportunity and push the needle too
far in the other direction, the WHO or another UN agency should provide
generic morphine to patients in those countries as a humanitarian
priority. The WHO and the UN should also warn their members against
pharmaceutical companies with expansionist visions and questionable
ethics. Just as pharmaceutical companies send their sales representa-
tives to promote their drugs, the WHO and other public interest groups
could send representatives to explain how and why the current opioid
epidemic started and escalated.
TURNING OFF THE TAP

Drug policy experts often dismiss attempts to cut down on supply,
arguing that governments cannot arrest their way out of drug prob-
lems. That is largely correct when it comes to street dealers. Locking
up people who are easily replaced does little to stem the flow or use of
most drugs. Furthermore, prisoners who depend on opioids lose their
tolerance while in prison, and some then die of overdoses when they
are released.
Luckily, there is a wide space between the two extremes of waging
war on drug dealers and users and turning over the keys of public health
and safety to rapacious companies that profit by pushing addictive
drugs. Authorities can stop a doctor who prescribes illegally or irre-
sponsibly just by revoking his or her license, no expensive prison cell
needed. The tactic works because the black market cannot replace those
doctors. This practice is already used, but such investigations should be
given greater resources. Targeting corporations is even cheaper, since
the resulting fines are often larger than the costs of investigation and
prosecution. To make these investigations easier, Congress should re-
peal the law it passed in 2016 that restricted the DEA’s power. Other
countries should make sure that their law enforcement agencies are
empowered to investigate and prosecute gross corporate malfeasance.
A key lesson of the current epidemic repeats one from the history
of tobacco: legal drugs pushed by corporations can bring death on a
scale vastly surpassing the effects of illegal ones. Calls to legalize rec-
reational opioids that fail to grapple with this reality do not deserve
to be taken seriously.
Governments will also need to recognize a central lesson of public
health research: epidemics cannot be ended simply by managing indi-
vidual cases of the disease. Take Vancouver, British Columbia, which
has thoroughly embraced the idea that providing health and social
services can solve drug problems. Residents have access to universal
health care, drug treatment programs, syringe exchanges, supervised
May/June 2018 125

rooms in which they can use drugs, the overdose rescue drug naloxone,
and opioid substitution treatments, including government-provided
heroin. The city and the province have positioned themselves as world
leaders in this harm-reduction approach. Yet the overdose death rate
in the Vancouver health service delivery area rose by 36 percent in
2016, reaching 53.8 deaths per 100,000 residents last year. That is
similar to the rate in West Virginia, which has few services and is
the U.S. state that has been the hardest hit, where 52 people died of
overdoses for every 100,000 residents in 2016. Services for people
addicted to opioids are essential. But the lesson of Vancouver is that
expanding health and social services without addressing opioid sup-
ply is akin to emptying an overflowing bathtub with a thimble without
turning down the tap.
FUEL ON THE FIRE

The rise of fentanyl is both making the North American crisis worse
and complicating efforts to forestall the emerging global one. For drug
traffickers and dealers, fentanyl offers many advantages and could
reshape the global opioid market in ways that would have important
consequences for foreign policy and international relations, not just
public health. Traditional illicit drugs, such as heroin and cocaine,
flow through long distribution chains that include as many as ten
transactions between the farmer and the user. Parts of those chains,
especially the links crossing international borders, often favor large
criminal organizations that can intimidate or co-opt authorities.
Fentanyl, by contrast, can be produced secretly anywhere there is a
chemical industry, not just where poppies grow.
Fentanyl is also far less labor-intensive to make than heroin, so
its sponsors gain significantly less political capital by providing
jobs than do the sponsors of illegal poppy cultivation. Disrupting
fentanyl production is therefore less politically costly and has fewer
negative side effects for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism
efforts than eradicating drug crops. And fentanyl is so concentrated
that it can be mailed a kilogram at a time. That radically reduces
transportation costs and the role and power of organizations whose
comparative advantage lies in smuggling large shipments across
international borders.
These factors will drive down prices, raising consumption. But the
consumption of opioids tends to rise in smaller proportion to the fall
in prices. (A ten percent decrease in the price, for example, leads to

an increase in use of less than ten percent.) Hence, fentanyl will tend
to depress producers’ revenues and power. In countries that allow
drug companies to market opioids aggressively, however, that effect
will likely be more than offset by an intensifying demand for black-
market opioids.
Fentanyl also has the potential to alter the balance of power among
drug-trafficking organizations. Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, for example,
which has long dominated the distri-
bution of heroin and cocaine in the
United States, could well lose market
The largess of manufacturers
share to its rival Jalisco New Generation, flowed to virtually
which embraced fentanyl early, back in every organization that
2014. That is not necessarily good news, should have been
because the Sinaloa cartel has tradition-
ally been less violent than Jalisco New protecting the public.
Generation. If that group challenges
Sinaloa’s dominance north of the Mexican border, drug-related violence
within the United States could well increase, both among dealers and
against law enforcement and public officials.
Sinaloa has begun to adapt by moving aggressively into the dis-
tribution of fentanyl, at least on the eastern coast of the United
States. It is a major supplier of the drug to New York City, for ex-
ample, where drug overdose deaths last year were four times as many
as homicide deaths. That’s a worrying trend, but at least Sinaloa
continues to shun violence in the United States. For example, it
sometimes employs nonviolent, middle-aged couples without prior
criminal records to distribute fentanyl, sending them on one-time
drug runs by train or car. That makes stopping them harder, but it
keeps violence down.
Fentanyl’s rise could also split the global drug market. In affluent
places where heroin is expensive, including Canada, the United States,
and Europe, users might switch to cheaper synthetics. That would
leave countries that grow poppies, such as Afghanistan and Myanmar,
primarily supplying neighboring countries with high addiction rates,
such as China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia. Synthetics are less likely
to make inroads in those countries because they are close to heroin
production areas and have lax law enforcement and porous borders,
so heroin is far cheaper.
May/June 2018 127

All of this could reshape international relationships. If U.S. con-

sumption shifts from plant-based to synthetic drugs, Washington’s
interest in eradicating drug crops could wane, removing a decades-old
source of tension between the United States and Latin American
countries. From 2001 to 2009, U.S. programs to eradicate poppy fields
in Afghanistan, where a large proportion of the economy depends on
drugs, drove farmers to embrace militant and terrorist groups. Aban-
doning that approach, a major policy breakthrough of the Obama
administration, has helped with counterinsurgency and nation building.
The Trump administration should not resurrect it. If synthetic opioids
replaced cocaine consumption or a synthetic cocaine analogue were
developed, the coca-producing countries of Bolivia, Colombia, and
Peru could see similar effects.
It will be much harder to persuade larger and more powerful
synthetic-drug-producing countries, such as China and India, to crack
down on manufacturers. And because U.S. and Canadian relations
with China and India cover far more issues than those with South
American countries, drug control efforts would have to compete against
other interests.
A bifurcation in international drug markets would exacerbate splits
over global drug policy, heightening differences between the interests
of hawkish countries in Asia and the Middle East and those of more
liberal ones in Europe and Latin America. International drug control
would likely climb up the agendas of countries whose populations still
relied on plant-based drugs, especially China and Russia. Russia, which
is suffering from an opioid epidemic revolving around Afghan heroin,
might well continue pressuring the United States to eradicate poppy
fields in Afghanistan and even take it upon itself to do so. Moscow
would likely view controlling drug supplies as more important than
limiting the political capital the Taliban can gain from fighting to pro-
tect poppy fields. Already, Russia is courting the Taliban, perceiving
the group as a lesser danger in Afghanistan than the Islamic State
(also known as ISIS). Washington would be wise to engage Beijing and
Moscow to educate them on the mistakes the United States has made
in its fight against drugs that they should avoid and the successes they
should replicate.
Drug control is becoming an increasingly important aspect of the
U.S.-Chinese relationship. In March 2017, China banned the production
of four variants of fentanyl, largely in response to engagement from
the Obama administration. But the Trump administration has failed

to expand that dialogue. It needs to work with China to curb the illegal
shipment of fentanyl to the United States and the common practice
of producing new, slightly altered drugs to avoid legal restrictions.
Drug control discussions with India—an equally large producer of
precursors of illegal drugs and, increasingly, of synthetic ones—are
far less advanced. That’s because India remains in profound denial
about its part in the global drug trade. It refuses even to acknowledge
its role in the supply of illegal precursors, let alone of synthetics, and
has failed to adequately crack down on the factories that illegally
produce and distribute them. In any event, the production of syn-
thetic drugs won’t remain confined to the developing world. Already,
many are made in rich countries, especially in western Europe. If
this trend continues, drug-consuming countries, which tend to be
wealthy and powerful, may no longer need to pressure producing
countries, which tend to be neither, because the problem will have
moved closer to home.
From a foreign policy perspective, although the rise of synthetic
opioids presents new dangers, it will give countries opportunities to
improve important international relationships. But when it comes
to public health, the picture is consistently grim: a burgeoning opioid
supply—either of prescription pain medications or of black-market
opioids—could create a global pandemic, subjecting millions of people
to disabling and potentially lethal addiction. That outcome is still
avoidable, but only if the world’s governments stop sleepwalking
toward disaster.∂
May/June 2018 129

Globalization Is Not
in Retreat
Digital Technology and the Future of Trade
B
y many standard measures, globalization is in retreat. The
2008 financial crisis and the ensuing recession brought an end
to three decades of rapid growth in the trade of goods and
services. Cross-border financial flows have fallen by two-thirds. In many
countries that have traditionally championed globalization, including
the United States and the United Kingdom, the political conversation
about trade has shifted from a focus on economic benefits to concerns
about job loss, dislocation, deindustrialization, and inequality. A once
solid consensus that trade is a win-win proposition has given way to
zero-sum thinking and calls for higher barriers. Since November 2008,
according to the research group Global Trade Alert, the G-20 countries
have implemented more than 6,600 protectionist measures.
But that’s only part of the story. Even as its detractors erect new
impediments and walk away from free-trade agreements, globalization
is in fact continuing its forward march—but along new paths. In its
previous incarnation, it was trade-based and Western-led. Today,
globalization is being driven by digital technology and is increasingly
led by China and other emerging economies. While trade predicated
on global supply chains that take advantage of cheap labor is slowing,
new digital technologies mean that more actors can participate in
cross-border transactions than ever before, from small businesses to
multinational corporations. And economic leadership is shifting east
SUSAN LUND is a Partner at McKinsey & Company and a leader of the McKinsey Global
Institute.
LAURA TYSON is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of
Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Chair of the White House
Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration.
Globalization Is Not in Retreat
Printed-out kicks: a sneaker produced by a 3-D printer, Germany, March 2018

and south, as the United States turns inward and the EU and the United
Kingdom negotiate a divorce.
In other words, globalization has not given way to deglobalization;
it has simply entered a different phase. This new era will bring economic
and societal benefits, boosting innovation and productivity, offering
people unprecedented (and often free) access to information, and
linking consumers and suppliers across the world. But it will also be
disruptive. After certain sectors fade away, certain jobs will disap-
pear, and new winners will emerge. The benefits will be tangible and
significant, but the challenges will be considerable. Companies and
governments must prepare for the coming disruption.
THE NEW ERA

The threads that used to weave the global economy together are fraying.
Beginning in the 1980s, the falling costs of transportation and commu-
MICHAEL DALD E R / REUT E RS
nication, along with a raft of new multilateral free-trade agreements,

caused international commerce to swell. Between 1986 and 2008,
global trade in goods and services grew at more than twice the pace of
global GDP. For the last five years, however, growth in trade has barely
outpaced global GDP growth. A weak and uneven recovery from the
Great Recession explains part of the trade slowdown, but structural
May/June 2018 131

factors are also to blame. Global value chains, which gave rise to a
growing trade in manufactured parts, have reached maturity; most of
the efficiency gains have already been realized. Although the location
of production will continue to shift among countries in response to
differences in wages and the prices of other factors of production—
from China to Vietnam and Bangladesh, for example—these shifts
will merely change the patterns of trade. They will not increase its
overall volume.
Cross-border financial flows—which include purchases of foreign
bonds and equities, international lending, and foreign direct investment—
grew from four percent of global GDP in
1990 to 23 percent on the eve of the fi-
The movement of data is nancial crisis, but they have since fallen
already surpassing to just six percent. Trade in services,
traditional physical trade meanwhile, has increased, but it is grow-
as the connective tissue ing slowly and is unlikely to assume
the role that trade in goods has played
in the global economy. in driving globalization. That’s because
most services simply cannot be bought
and sold across national borders: they are local (dining and construction),
highly regulated (law and accounting), or both (health care).
This is where digital flows come in, from e-mailing and video
streaming to file sharing and the Internet of Things. The movement of
data is already surpassing traditional physical trade as the connective
tissue in the global economy: according to Cisco Systems, the amount
of cross-border bandwidth used grew 90-fold from 2005 to 2016, and
it will grow an additional 13-fold by 2023. The number of minutes
of all Skype calls made now equals approximately 40 percent of all
traditional international phone call minutes. Although digital flows
today mostly link developed countries, emerging economies are catch-
ing up quickly.
This surge in the movement of data not only constitutes a huge
flow in and of itself; it is also turbocharging other types of flows.
Half of all trade in global services now depends on digital technology
one way or another. Companies can cut losses on goods in transit by
installing tracking sensors on shipments—by 30 percent or more, in
McKinsey’s experience. They can also reach consumers around the world
without going through retail shops. AliResearch (the research arm of
the Chinese online shopping company Alibaba) and the consulting
firm Accenture project that by 2020, cross-border e-commerce will

reach one billion consumers and total $1 trillion in annual sales.
The countries that led the world during the last era of globalization
may not necessarily be the same ones that thrive in the new one.
Consider Estonia, which has a population of just 1.3 million but has
emerged as a giant in the digital era. Its pioneering e-government
initiative allows Estonians to go online to vote, pay taxes, and appear
in court, all with a digital identity card. Once an economy based
heavily on logging, Estonia is now home to the founders of Skype
and other technology start-ups, and it has historically been one of the
fastest-growing economies in the EU.
Digital flows are also upending the corporate world. Giant multi-
national firms have long dominated the trade in goods and services,
but digital platforms have made it easier for smaller firms to muscle
their way in. So-called micro-multinationals can use online market-
places to reach far more customers than ever before; Amazon hosts
two million third-party sellers, and Alibaba hosts more than ten
million. Some 50 million small and medium-sized enterprises use
Facebook for marketing, and nearly 40 percent of their fans are foreign.
Digital platforms and marketplaces such as these are creating vast
new opportunities for small businesses, which form the bedrock of
employment in most countries.
THE RISE OF THE REST

As globalization has gone digital, its center of gravity has shifted.
As recently as 2000, just five percent of the companies on the For-
tune Global 500 list, the world’s largest international companies,
were headquartered in the developing world. By 2025, by the
McKinsey Global Institute’s estimate, that figure will reach 45 per-
cent, and China will boast more companies with $1 billion or more
in annual revenues than either the United States or Europe. The
United States continues to produce the majority of digital content
consumed in most parts of the world, but that, too, will likely soon
change, as Chinese Internet giants such as Alibaba, Baidu, and
Tencent rival Amazon, Facebook, and Google. China now accounts
for 42 percent of global e-commerce transactions by value. The
country’s investments in artificial intelligence, while still lagging
behind those of the United States, are more than double Europe’s.
In 2017, China announced an ambitious investment plan designed
May/June 2018 133

to turn the country into the world’s leading center for artificial intel-
ligence research by 2030.
The geography of globalization is even changing within the devel-
oping world. The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that roughly
half of global GDP growth over the next ten years will come from
some 440 rapidly expanding cities and regions in the developing
world, some of which Western executives may not be able to find on
a map, such as the city of Hsinchu in Taiwan or the state of Santa
Catarina in Brazil. Moreover, as many as one billion people in these
places will see their incomes rise above $10 a day, high enough to
make them significant consumers of goods and services—at the same
time that tens of millions of Americans, Europeans, and Japanese will
enter retirement and reduce their spending.
The world economy is already adapting to this new reality. Today,
more than half of all international trade in goods involves at least
one developing country, and trade in goods between developing
countries—so-called South–South trade—grew from seven percent
of the global total in 2000 to 18 percent in 2016. So open is Asia
that the region more than doubled its share of world trade (from 15
percent to 35 percent) between 1990 and 2016. Remarkably, more
than half of that trade stays within the region, a similar proportion
to that found in Europe, a much richer region with its own free-
trade zone.
As Washington pulls back from global trade agreements, the rest
of the world is moving forward without it. After the United States
withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the remaining 11 coun-
tries negotiated their own pact, the Comprehensive and Progressive
Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was signed in March.
This version left out 20 provisions that were important to the United
States, including ones concerning copyright, intellectual property,
and the environment. Separately, a number of Asian countries are
negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a
trade deal that includes all the members of the Association of South-
east Asian Nations plus Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand,
and South Korea—but not the United States. If ratified, this agree-
ment would cover about 40 percent of global trade and nearly half of
the world’s population. Meanwhile, the EU has struck new bilateral
trade arrangements with countries including Canada and Japan, and
it is negotiating one with China. So busy is the EU making such deals,
in fact, that its agricultural, environmental, and labor standards may

soon become the new benchmarks in global trade.
One notable aspect of this realignment is that China has gained
a greater voice as a champion of globalization. To provide a counter-
weight to Washington-based economic institutions, Beijing has
launched numerous initiatives of its own, including the Asian Infra-
structure Investment Bank, which has attracted 57 member nations,
many of them U.S. allies that joined over the objection of the
United States. Together with Brazil, India, and Russia, China was
a driving force behind the creation of the New Development Bank,
an alternative to the World Bank. The China-Africa Investment
Forum, an annual meeting begun in 2016, is gaining momentum as
a platform for deals in Africa. Then there is the Belt and Road
Initiative, China’s $1 trillion plan to add maritime and land links
in Eurasia. Although still at an early stage, it could prompt a major
shift in the pattern of global investment, spurring faster economic
growth across Asia and connecting many countries that the last era
of globalization left behind.
THE COMING DISRUPTION

Although it will lead to countless new opportunities, the new era of
globalization will also present considerable challenges to individuals,
companies, and countries. For one thing, because openness will be
so rewarded, developing countries now at the periphery of global
connections risk falling further behind, especially if they lack the
infrastructure and skills to benefit from digital trade. With global
trade tensions mounting, it is essential to recognize that countries
will reap economic gains not from export surpluses but from both
inflows and outflows. In fact, as in the past, it is precisely the countries
that open themselves up to foreign competition, foreign investment,
and foreign talent that stand to benefit the most in the new era.
One consequence of openness has been immigration. In the past
40 years, the number of migrants worldwide has tripled. Today,
almost 250 million people live and work outside their country of birth,
and 90 percent of them do so voluntarily to improve their economic
prospects, with the remaining ten percent being refugees and asylum
seekers. Economic migrants have become a major source of growth.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute, they contribute approx-
imately $6.7 trillion to the world economy every year, or nine percent
May/June 2018 135

of global GDP—some $3 trillion more than they would have produced

had they stayed in their home countries.
But for some workers, the rapid expansion of trade has led to
stagnant wages or lost jobs. As the economists David Autor, David
Dorn, and Gordon Hanson have found, of the roughly five million
U.S. manufacturing jobs lost between 1990 and 2007, a quarter dis-
appeared because of trade with China. And as the economist Elhanan
Helpman has concluded, although globalization explains just a small
part of the rise in inequality over the last few decades, it has still
contributed to it, by making the skills of experts and professionals
more valuable while lowering the wages of workers with less education
and more generic skills. Globalization has its winners and losers, and
in theory, the gains should be big enough to compensate the losers.
But in practice, the benefits have rarely been redistributed, and the
communities and workers harmed by globalization have turned to
populism and protectionism.
The new era of globalization will also prove disruptive, in that it
will intensify competition; indeed, it already has. New ideas now
flow around the world at an astonishing speed, allowing companies
to react to demand faster than ever before. Fashion retailers such as
H&M and Zara can take a trendy idea and turn it into clothing on
the rack in just weeks, rather than the months it used to take. The flip
side is that the period during which a company can profit from an
innovation before competitors copy it has shrunk dramatically. As a
result, product life cycles have become shorter—by 30 percent over
the past 20 years in some industries. Meanwhile, the variety of products
is exploding, and many industries are adopting “mass customization,”
using technology to produce built-to-order goods without sacrificing
economies of scale.
The growing economic clout of developing countries is also changing
the rules of competition. Companies from emerging economies are
taking a growing share of global revenue, and their governance struc-
tures differ from those of companies in the United States and other
developed countries. In emerging markets, firms are more often state-
or family-owned and less often publicly traded. They therefore face
less pressure to hit quarterly profit targets and can make longer-term
investments that take time to pay off. Developing-world companies
also tend to enjoy lower costs of capital, lower taxes, and lower dividend
payouts, enabling them to sell goods and services at smaller profit
margins compared with U.S. and European companies. The balance

sheets reveal the difference: for companies in advanced economies,
improvements in overall profits stem largely from growing mar-
gins, whereas for companies in emerging markets, they come from
growing revenues.
Because the rise of digital flows is increasing competition in
knowledge-intensive sectors, the importance of intellectual property
is growing, generating new forms of competition around patents.
One example is the development of
“patent thickets,” clusters of overlap-
ping patents that companies acquire
In the new era, digital
to cover a wide area of economic capabilities will serve as
activity and impede competitors. rocket fuel for a country’s
Another is the practice of “patent economy.
fencing,” whereby firms apply for
multiple patents in related areas with
the intention of cordoning off future research in them. The smart-
phone industry and the pharmaceutical industry have been particularly
hard hit by these tactics.
As digital flows grow, some governments have turned to digital pro-
tectionism. Invoking concerns about cybersecurity, China enacted a
new law in 2016 that requires companies to store all their data within
Chinese borders, pass security reviews, and standardize the collection
of personal information, effectively giving the government access to
vast amounts of private data. A similar law went into effect in Russia
in 2015. Rules requiring companies to build data servers in each
country where they operate threaten their economies of scale and
increase their costs. Not surprisingly, these and other forms of digital
protectionism inhibit economic growth—reducing growth rates by
as much as 1.7 percentage points, according to the Information Tech-
nology and Innovation Foundation.
Digital technologies are also affecting companies’ decisions about
where to locate their factories. For most manufactured products, digi-
tally driven automation is making labor costs less relevant, reducing
the appeal of global supply chains premised on low-cost foreign workers.
Today, when multinational companies choose where to build plants,
they more heavily weigh factors other than labor costs, such as the
quality of the infrastructure, the distance to consumers, the costs of
energy and transportation, the skill level of the labor force, and the
May/June 2018 137

regulatory and legal environment. As a result, some types of production

are shifting from emerging markets back to advanced economies,
where labor costs are considerably higher. (In 2015, for instance, Ford
moved its production of pick-up trucks from Mexico to Ohio.) Three-
dimensional printing could have a similar effect. Already, companies
are using 3-D printers to produce parts for tankers and gas turbines in
the locations where they are needed. These trends are good news for
the United States and other developed countries, but they are bad
news for low-wage countries. It’s now far less clear that other developing
countries in Africa and Asia will be able to follow the path that China
and South Korea did to move tens of millions of workers out of low-
productivity agriculture and into higher-productivity manufacturing.
BE PREPARED
In the new era, digital capabilities will serve as rocket fuel for a country’s
economy. Near the top of the policy agenda, then, should be the
construction of robust high-speed broadband networks. But govern-
ments should also create incentives for companies to invest in new
digital technologies and in the human capital they require, especially
given how low productivity growth has stayed. Since digital literacy
will be even more essential than it already is, schools will have to
rethink their curricula to emphasize digital skills—for example, intro-
ducing computer coding in elementary school and requiring basic
engineering and statistics in secondary school.
When negotiating trade agreements, policymakers will need to
make sure that issues such as data privacy and cybersecurity figure
prominently. Currently, rules vary widely from place to place—the
EU’s new data regulations that are scheduled to come into effect this
year, for example, are far more restrictive than those in the United
States—and so governments should seek to harmonize them when
possible. The trick will be to strike the right balance between protect-
ing individual rights and remaining open to digital flows. Negotiators
should also seek to remove tariffs and other barriers that have hampered
trade in computer hardware, software, and other knowledge-intensive
products. Laws requiring data to be stored locally are particularly
burdensome in the era of cloud storage. And to make it easier for
smaller companies to ship smaller quantities of goods globally, customs
regulations will need to be revamped to do away with much of the
red tape that exists. The World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation
Agreement, which came into effect in 2017, has helped simplify the
import-export process, but there is room to broaden it.
In order to maintain political and societal support for digital global-
ization, governments will have to make sure that its benefits are dis-
tributed widely and that those who have been harmed are compensated.
(Indeed, it was partly the failure to do this during the last era of
globalization that led to the populist backlash rocking the United
States and other countries today.) To help those displaced by global-
ization both old and new, governments should offer temporary income
assistance and other social services to workers as they train for new
jobs. Benefits should be made portable, ending the practice of tying
health-care, retirement, and child-care benefits to a single employer
and making it easier to change jobs. Finally, governments should
expand and improve their worker-training programs to teach the
skills needed to succeed in the digital era, a move that would reverse
the decline in spending on worker training that has taken place over
the past decade in nearly all advanced countries.
Work-force training alone will not solve the problems faced by
smaller communities built on declining industries; what’s also needed
are initiatives to revitalize local economies and nurture new industries.
At the same time, governments should recognize that the geography of
employment is changing. In the United States, for example, the jobs
are moving from smaller Midwestern cities to faster-growing urban
areas in the South and the Southwest. So the goal should be to make it
easier for people to move to where the jobs are—for example, by offer-
ing one-time relocation payments to help defray the costs of moving.
The era of digital trade will also pose considerable challenges for
the private sector. Setting aside the serious problem of cyberattacks,
companies will need to invest more in digital technologies, including
automation, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics, in order to
remain competitive. That will mean developing their own digital
capabilities and partnering with, or acquiring, digital players. Success-
ful global companies, whether large or small, will also need to compete
strenuously in the global battle for talent, especially for top managers
who have both an understanding of technology and an international
perspective. Firms can gain an edge in this battle by spreading their
research and development and other core functions across the world,
a shift that would tap talent from different places, thus ensuring
diversity of thinking.
May/June 2018 139

Corporate strategy will also need to be reset: no longer will compa-

nies be able to rely on highly centralized approaches to producing and
selling their goods now that consumers around the world expect custom-
ized products to meet their tastes. Increasingly, companies will need a
strong local presence and a differentiated strategy in the markets where
they compete. That will require strong relationships with governments
and a commitment to corporate social responsibility.
Globalization is not in retreat. A revamped version of it, with digi-
tal underpinnings and shifting geopolitics, is already taking shape. In
its last incarnation, globalization became a battleground for opposing
forces: on one side stood the political and business elites who bene-
fited the most, and on the other stood the workers and communities
that suffered the most. But while debates raged between these two
groups about the effects of globalization, globalization itself proceeded
apace. Today, the same debates about globalization’s effects on employ-
ment and inequality continue, even as its new, digital form is gaining
momentum. Rather than relitigating old debates, it is time to accept
the reality of the new era of globalization and work to maximize its
benefits, minimize its costs, and distribute the gains inclusively. Only
then can its true promise be realized.∂
Where Myanmar
Went Wrong
From Democratic Awakening to
Ethnic Cleansing
Zoltan Barany
L
ate last year, when news broke that Myanmar’s military had
been systematically killing members of the country’s Muslim
Rohingya minority, much of the world was shocked. In recent
years, Myanmar (also known as Burma) had been mostly a good news
story. After decades of brutal dominance by the military, the country had
seen the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy,
score an all-too-rare democratic triumph, winning the 2015 national
elections in a landslide. The NLD’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, an inter-
nationally celebrated dissident who had received the 1991 Nobel Peace
Prize for her efforts to democratize Myanmar, became Myanmar’s
de facto head of state. Many analysts and officials concluded that the
county was finally on the path to democratic rule. Support poured
in from Western democracies, including the United States. Myanmar
had long been isolated, relying almost exclusively on China, which
was content to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses. Now, many
hoped, Suu Kyi would lead the country into the Western-backed
international order.
But such hopes overlooked a fundamental reality, one that was brought
into stark relief by the slaughter of the Rohingya: Myanmar’s generals
continue to control much of the country’s political and economic life.
Suu Kyi must strike a delicate balance, advancing democratic rule with-
out stepping on the generals’ toes. Her government has no power over
ZOLTAN BARANY is Frank C. Erwin, Jr., Centennial Professor of Government at the

University of Texas and the author of How Armies Respond to Revolutions and Why.
May/June 2018 141

Zoltan Barany
the army and can do little to end the military’s brutal campaign against
the Rohingya—which, in any event, enjoys massive popular support.
Yet Suu Kyi has taken the bad hand she was dealt and made it worse.
She has adopted an autocratic style. She has failed to make progress in
the areas where she does have influence. And she has alienated erst-
while allies in the West.
CITIZENS OF NOWHERE
Myanmar, which has a population of 54 million, officially recognizes
135 ethnic groups—but not the Rohingya. In fact, Myanmar authorities,
including Suu Kyi, refuse to even use the term “Rohingya.” But the
Rohingya are indisputably a distinct group with a long history in
Myanmar. They are the descendants of people whom British colonial
authorities, searching for cheap labor, encouraged to emigrate from
eastern Bengal (contemporary Bangladesh) to the sparsely populated
western regions of Burma in the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies. Today, there are around 2.5 million Rohingya, who constitute
the world’s largest stateless population. But fewer than half a million
currently reside in Myanmar; the rest have fled decades of official
repression and exclusion, often crossing the border into Bangladesh,
where they inhabit sprawling, squalid refugee camps. Those who have
remained in Myanmar are a subset of the country’s Muslim community.
The majority of Myanmar’s Muslims live in urban areas, speak Burmese,
have Burmese names, and are Myanmar citizens. The Rohingya are
different: most speak a dialect of Bengali, have traditionally Muslim
names, and have never received citizenship. The Rohingya in both
Bangladesh and Myanmar have led unusually difficult lives even by the
region’s humble standards, marked by poverty, the absence of legal
status, and multifaceted discrimination. Owing to their lack of resources
and extreme vulnerability, the Rohingya have largely failed in their
attempts at political mobilization, which have generated further resent-
ment against them. For instance, the 1950–54 Rohingya resistance
movement, which demanded citizenship and an end to discriminatory
policies, was eventually crushed by the army.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a militant Rohingya faction also emerged:
the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which formed in 2013. Most of
the ARSA’s leaders are from Bangladesh or Pakistan, and some of them
have received training from jihadist veterans of the wars in Afghanistan.
(The group’s chief leader was born in Pakistan and later became an
Where Myanmar Went Wrong
Scorched earth: houses burning after sectarian clashes in Sittwe, Myanmar, June 2012
imam in Saudi Arabia.) ARSA likely has fewer than 600 active members.
But Myanmar officials consider it a dangerous organization. In the
early morning hours of August 25, 2017, for example, about 150 ARSA
militants staged coordinated attacks on police posts and an army base
in Rakhine State. The confrontation ended with the deaths of 77 ARSA
fighters and 12 police officers and touched off a crackdown by Myanmar’s
army, which burned down scores of Rohingya villages, murdered
dozens of civilians, and launched a campaign of rape against Rohingya
women and girls, according to Human Rights Watch. The UN labeled
the operation ethnic cleansing, and others, including French President
Emmanuel Macron and eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates, have
described it as an act of genocide.
By the end of 2017, 650,000 Rohingya had fled to neighboring
Bangladesh, joining approximately 200,000 more who had escaped
earlier waves of discrimination and violence in recent years. The
large-scale forced migration seemed to have stopped by the end of last
year. And last November, bowing to international pressure, Myanmar
STAF F / R E U T E R S
signed a Chinese-brokered agreement with Bangladesh for the tentative

repatriation of the refugees to newly constructed villages. The fulfill-
ment of this plan is at best questionable, however: it calls for Myanmar
authorities to verify that each refugee did, in fact, reside in Myanmar
May/June 2018 143

Zoltan Barany
before he or she can return. But most Rohingya have no documents to

prove their prior residency. More important, few of them wish to return
to a country that has persecuted them for generations.
DAUGHTER OF THE REVOLUTION

Myanmar’s government, and especially its army, known as the Tatmadaw,
has earned worldwide condemnation for the campaign against the
Rohingya. Last September, the UN’s top human rights official, Zeid
Ra’ad al-Hussein, denounced the army’s “brutal security operation” as
a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing.” Critics singled out Suu Kyi for
at best inaction and at worst providing political cover for the army’s
atrocities. Regardless of how one interpreted her motives, it was hard
to square her actions with her status as a human rights icon. Suu Kyi
is the daughter of Aung San, the revered Burmese revolutionary who
shepherded his country to independence from the United Kingdom
in the 1940s. In the 1990s, “the Lady,” as she is referred to in Myanmar,
led the NLD to victory in national elections. But the military nullified
the results and placed her under house arrest for 15 of the next 21 years,
before releasing her in 2010 as a gesture meant to highlight the govern-
ment’s nascent liberalization program. The disappointment in her
lack of action to stop the bloodshed—or, worse, her complicity in
it—has been profound. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa,
one of numerous Nobel Peace Prize laureates who have expressed
their disillusionment, lamented the silence of his “dearly beloved
sister” and said that it was “incongruous for a symbol of righteousness
to lead such a country.”
But Suu Kyi’s response should not have come as a great surprise.
She has a long record of downplaying the Rohingya’s plight. In March
2017, Suu Kyi’s office dismissed detailed descriptions of Rohingya
women suffering sexual violence at the hands of Myanmar’s armed
forces as “fake rape.” Once a defender of press freedom, Suu Kyi has
remained mum about the case of two Reuters journalists who were
arrested by the military last December after investigating the military’s
involvement in the killing of ten Rohingya civilians. Suu Kyi’s govern-
ment did create a commission, headed by former UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, to study the Rohingya issue, and has promised to implement
its recommendations. But last January, Bill Richardson, a former U.S.
ambassador to the UN and a longtime Suu Kyi supporter, quit a separate
ten-member international advisory board on the Rohingya crisis that
the Myanmar government had set up, calling it “a whitewash” and “a

cheerleading squad for the government.” As for Suu Kyi, Richardson
said, “I like her enormously and respect her. But she has not shown
moral leadership on the [Rohingya] issue.”
Suu Kyi deserves a great deal of criticism. But in faulting her for
not publicly confronting the military, let alone restraining the generals,
some critics have ignored two fundamen-
tal realities of contemporary Myanmar.
First is the intensity of anti-Rohingya
Aung San Suu Kyi deserves
sentiment in the country. Hatred of a great deal of criticism.
the Rohingya is widespread and deep- But some of her critics
seated, stirred up by influential extremist ignore the fundamental
Buddhist monks who are the military’s
political allies and who have incited realities of contemporary
violence against Rohingya. The ugly Myanmar.
truth is that the vast majority of Burmese,
including most of the NLD’s supporters,
approve of the anti-Rohingya campaign. Making pro-Rohingya state-
ments and gestures would be tantamount to political suicide for
Suu Kyi and her government and would only strengthen the army’s
public support.
Second, the civilian-led government has no control over the armed
forces nor any means of reining them in. Even if Suu Kyi wanted
to limit the military’s campaign against the Rohingya, it would be
almost impossible to do so. Myanmar’s constitution, crafted by the
military in 2008, ensures that the military remains far and away the
country’s strongest political institution. Amending the constitution
requires more than 75 percent of the votes in the legislature—and
25 percent of parliamentary seats are set aside for armed forces per-
sonnel, which ensures that no changes can be made without the mili-
tary’s cooperation. In addition, the constitution reserves three key
ministries for the armed forces: Defense, Border Affairs, and Home
Affairs. The last of these oversees the General Administration Depart-
ment, the administrative heart of the state, which is responsible for
the day-to-day running of every regional and state-level government
and the management of thousands of districts and townships. The
constitution further safeguards the army’s interests by allowing its
commander in chief to name six of the 11 members of the National
Defense and Security Council, a top executive body.
May/June 2018 145

Zoltan Barany
The army also sets its own budget and spends it without any civilian
oversight: in 2017, the budget amounted to $2.14 billion, representing
13.9 percent of government expenditures—around three percent of
the national GDP and more than the combined total allotted to long-
neglected health care and education. Perhaps just as consequential as
the military’s political dominance is its economic clout. By some
estimates, active and retired military officers and their associates
control over 80 percent of the economy.
Drafting the constitution and then holding a referendum to gain
the public’s endorsement represented two important steps in the
military’s long-term plan to manage and control a cautious move
toward a “disciplined democracy,” in its words, and to transfer respon-
sibilities over day-to-day politics to a civilian government. Having
shed the burden of governance, military elites focused on their own
interests: modernizing the army and tending to their business empires.
They gave up little that was dear to them, and the changes they
have permitted remain easily reversible. No further democratiza-
tion will occur unless the generals relinquish their constitutionally
granted privileges.
IRON LADY
Suu Kyi has been unable to alter this basic dynamic. Following the
2015 elections, she failed to persuade the military brass to amend the
constitution by removing its prohibition against anyone who has fam-
ily members who hold foreign passports from serving as president.
This clause directly targets Suu Kyi, whose late husband, Michael Aris,
was British and whose two children are British citizens. In March 2016,
the NLD-controlled legislature elected a confidant of Suu Kyi’s, Htin
Kyaw, as president; he has served a mostly ceremonial role. Suu Kyi
created and took the position of “state counselor,” giving herself a role
akin to that of a prime minister—a fully defensible workaround to the
military’s move to block her from becoming president.
Less justifiable are the autocratic inclinations Suu Kyi has demon-
strated since taking office and the extraordinary degree to which she
has centralized power in her own hands. In addition to serving as state
counselor, she also heads the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and retains
the presidency of the NLD. As party chief, she has personally chosen
every member of the party’s Central Executive Committee—a violation
of party rules. She is a micromanager who finds it difficult to delegate;
most consequential decisions require her approval, which has led to

bottlenecks. She sits on at least 16 governmental committees, all of
which seldom produce concrete decisions. In November 2017, the govern-
ment established a new ministry, dubbed the Office of the Union
Government, just to help Suu Kyi cope with her workload.
Suu Kyi has also decided to act as her own spokesperson, but she
has done a poor job of communicating her administration’s policies.
She prefers limited transparency: according to several NLD members
of parliament with whom I have spoken, she has instructed them to
not ask tough questions during parliamentary sessions and to avoid
speaking to journalists. Her preference for personal loyalty over
competence was illustrated by her appointment of several cabinet
members with scant qualifications.
Suu Kyi is in her early 70s yet has no apparent successor, and her party
is dominated by other septuagenarians who enjoy her trust but lack the
energy, imagination, and skills necessary to carry out the comprehensive
renewal the country needs. Although Suu Kyi has been exceedingly crit-
ical of the constitution, she has used its antidemocratic provisions when
they have suited her purposes. For instance, she appointed two NLD
members as chief ministers in Rakhine and Shan States, both of which
are home to large minority ethnic communities—even though in both
places, a candidate from a local party that represents those groups had
won the popular vote.
The complex political situation in which Suu Kyi operates requires
a leader with a firm hand and a clear sense of purpose. She remains
very popular among ordinary Burmese, who admire her tenacity,
respect her authority, and consider her the one indispensable leader.
Her autocratic style and silence on the Rohingya crisis might be less
troubling if her government had made significant progress on economic
reform or on reconciliation with other ethnic minority groups. But it
has not.
WORDS AND DEEDS

Although the NLD has been Myanmar’s main opposition group since
1988, it has never formulated a policy program beyond vague promises
of democracy, the rule of law, and economic reform. One might argue
that it did not need detailed proposals to succeed as an opposition party:
it had an iconic leader, and it stood against the army. But even after two
years in power, major questions remain about the government’s economic
May/June 2018 147

Zoltan Barany
policies, positions on ethnic and religious issues, and plans for per-
suading the military to leave politics. Notwithstanding its limited room
to maneuver, the government should have accomplished much more
since taking office.
Decades of military control of the economy have turned Myanmar
into a desperately poor country. In 2017, its per capita GDP of $1,300
was the lowest in Southeast Asia, about half of that of Laos and one-
fifth of Thailand’s. GDP grew by more than six percent in 2016 and
2017, but that was a slower rate of growth than the country enjoyed in
the early years of the decade. Inflation has been nearing double digits,
commodity prices have increased, and the job market’s expansion has
been anemic. Millions of Burmese have been forced to find employ-
ment abroad, mostly in so-called 3D jobs: tasks that are dirty, dangerous,
and demeaning.
Reforming the economy should be the NLD government’s most
critical task, but it waited until July 2016 to present its first major
statement on the issue. The document turned out to be little more
than a wish list, a general outline that identified neither policy instru-
ments nor specific objectives to achieve within a given time frame. So
far, the government’s main economic achievement has been the partial
modernization of the legal framework governing investment. In January
2016, the legislature passed an arbitration law intended to boost inves-
tor confidence. Last year, it passed new rules on investment that are
designed to simplify and harmonize existing regulations and that
specify the privileges that will be granted to domestic and foreign
investors. But the NLD has offered scant details on how the new rules
will be implemented. The arrival of the NLD government had fueled
hopes of increased foreign direct investment, but partly as a result of
its lack of action, such investment has actually tapered off since 2015.
Suu Kyi’s record on other pressing economic issues has been even
less impressive. Agriculture represents 37 percent of Myanmar’s GDP
and employs, directly or indirectly, about 70 percent of the country’s
labor force. But farmers tend to be extremely poor, and farming prof-
its are among the lowest in Asia. The government must find a way to
provide farmers with what they most need to increase their earnings:
high-quality seeds and fertilizers, improved water control and irrigation
facilities, and access to affordable credit.
Farmers also suffer from a lack of land rights. For several decades,
the military expropriated hundreds of thousands of acres from helpless
peasants, offering little or no compensation. In 2016, groups of farmers

sent letters to the army’s commander in chief, Senior General Min
Aung Hlaing, requesting the return of their land. The military’s response
was to threaten the farmers and their lawyers with defamation lawsuits.
Suu Kyi’s government has said that dealing with the landownership
issue is a priority, but she has done little.
The military regime also grossly neglected the country’s infrastruc-
ture. Roads, railways, and public transportation systems all lie in a
pitiful state of disrepair. Even more serious is the shortage of electricity:
only one-third of the population has access to it, and blackouts are
frequent, even in Yangon’s luxury hotels. Economic growth will put
even more pressure on the electricity supply, and shortages will likely
get worse. These weaknesses affect every economic sector and scare
off potential investors. But Suu Kyi’s government seems to have real-
ized the importance of infrastructure only recently. A number of plans
have been drawn up, and the government has held some summits on
the issue. But on this, too, there has been little action to match the
government’s rhetoric.
A DOUBLE BIND
Despite the lack of progress, relations between the civilian govern-
ment and the military have settled into what Suu Kyi has described as
a “normal” routine. The most charitable interpretation of Suu Kyi’s
accommodation of the military is that she hopes that, over time, the
generals will conclude that their interests would be best served by
leaving politics. The army appears to be taking its time: Min Aung
Hlaing has said that the Tatmadaw intends to reduce its presence in
parliament, but he has refused to set a timetable.
Part of the problem is that the military has two conflicting goals.
The generals want to transform the army—which is plagued by obsolete
equipment, archaic training methods, and poor morale—into a pro-
fessional force comparable to its counterparts in other countries in
the region. In order to do that, the military needs help from more
developed, powerful countries—help that, in the case of Western gov-
ernments, is conditioned on the military leaving politics. But Western
governments also insist that the government must do more to resolve
its many conflicts with ethnic minority groups. In September 2017,
the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence announced that it would
suspend educational courses it provided for the Tatmadaw, citing
May/June 2018 149

Zoltan Barany
ongoing violence and human rights abuses. Similarly, the following

month, the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of
U.S. military assistance from officers and units participating in
the operations in Rakhine State and
rescinded invitations to senior members
Compared with Beijing, of Myanmar’s security forces to U.S.-
Washington today has little sponsored events. Then, in November,
sway over Myanmar. a bipartisan group of U.S. representa-
tives introduced the Burma Act of 2017,
which, among other things, would reinstate sanctions against the
Tatmadaw that were lifted the year before to reward the country for its
putative progress and to incentivize more steps in the direction of
democracy. That legislation has yet to be put to a vote. In December,
however, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution con-
demning “the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya,” and the Trump admin-
istration imposed new sanctions on Major General Maung Maung Soe,
who has overseen the brutal campaign against the Rohingya.
But the military’s troubling treatment of minorities extends far
beyond the Rohingya. Several ethnic communities have been at war
with the government for long periods—in some cases, ever since Burma
proclaimed its independence in 1948. Together, these conflicts form
something like a low-level, multifaceted civil war. Some ethnic groups
bear long-held grudges against others, sometimes related to overlapping
land claims. Individual ethnic communities themselves are often divided
by sectarian differences. Aside from causing thousands of deaths and
displacing millions, ethnic violence has prevented the consolidation
of central authority over the country, as well as the formation of a shared
national identity.
For decades, the military has prolonged ethnic conflicts in a bid to
justify its continued rule. The fighting has also given cover to generals
who profit from the drug trade (Myanmar is a major source of opium)
and from the illegal export of gems, gold, and timber. But in recent years,
the Tatmadaw has appeared more determined to end the civil war. In
October 2015, prior to Suu Kyi’s electoral victory, eight ethnic armed
organizations and the government signed the National Ceasefire
Agreement, brokered by the military, although some of the largest
and most influential ethnic groups stayed away.
During her campaign, Suu Kyi repeatedly identified achieving ethnic
peace as her number one priority. After the realization of that objective,
she was to pursue the creation of a federal system of the sort first
promised by her father in the 1940s. There is no agreement on what
precise shape that system would take, except that it would grant more
autonomy to ethnic groups but stop short of giving them the right to
secede. Suu Kyi’s promise to pursue ethnic peace was a tactical mistake,
however, since she has little influence over how the military wages its
wars against ethnic armed organizations, and the idea of a federal system
is anathema to the generals. Nevertheless, her administration organized
conferences in August 2016 and May 2017 with the aim of persuading
more ethnic armed organizations to sign the National Ceasefire
Agreement; the talks brought together armed groups, the military, and
the government. Predictably, the meetings achieved little besides pro-
viding a forum for grand speeches and gestures, and in the aftermath
of the conferences, the fighting actually intensified in several regions.
In February 2018, two additional rebel groups signed on to the cease-
fire amid much fanfare. But the groups that represent four-fifths of all
the ethnic armed personnel in the country remain as opposed to signing
as ever. Meanwhile, the generals adamantly refuse to create a federal
army that would represent the country’s ethnic groups and regions,
which is one of the ethnic armed organizations’ key demands; the
military falsely contends that the armed forces are already inclusive
and fair. At the same time, the armed groups have refused to disavow
secession—a position that the military insists they must take as part
of any final agreement.
Optimists believe that the ethnic armed organizations’ chief objective
is to maximize their gains on the ground in preparation for eventual
peace negotiations. In reality, their ultimate goal is the establishment of
a federal system. Such a system represents a redline for the Tatmadaw:
although military elites have adopted an increasingly pragmatic
approach toward negotiation with the ethnic armed organizations,
they continue to see federalism as the first step toward the country’s
disintegration. The word “federalism” is no longer taboo in public
discourse, as it had been for decades, but the top brass are unlikely to
relax their long-standing opposition to a federal system anytime soon.
BEIJING BECKONS
In the face of Western opprobrium over Myanmar’s treatment of the
Rohingya, there are signs that the military might abandon its relatively
recent quest to placate Western governments and instead return to a
May/June 2018 151

Zoltan Barany
strategy of reliance on its traditional patron, China. China has always

been Myanmar’s top trading partner and biggest investor, and for
decades, Beijing was the main sponsor of Myanmar’s military junta.
Suu Kyi’s first major trip abroad as state
counselor, in August 2016, took her to
Obama wanted to Beijing. Her discussions there centered
reward Myanmar’s progress; on business and trade issues, especially
in hindsight, that was likely a few large infrastructure projects, such
a mistake. as a $7.2 billion deep-sea port in Rakhine
State that China plans to build to give
Chinese ships access to the Indian Ocean.
Since then, the relationship between Myanmar and China has improved;
in November 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping described this moment
in Chinese-Myanmar military relations as being the “best ever.” It helps
that Chinese officials, unlike Western ones, do not admonish Suu Kyi
and her government for their human rights violations.
But the Chinese are pressing for progress on the civil war. Chinese
leaders have endorsed negotiations between the Myanmar gov-
ernment and the country’s ethnic armed organizations, and Beijing
facilitated the participation of some recalcitrant groups in the May
2017 conference. China has played a complex role in the civil war for
decades, backing the government but also providing shelter, weap-
ons, and training to some of the belligerent groups; such contacts
have allowed China to extract natural resources (mostly illegally),
such as jade, gold, and timber, from regions where militants operate.
But it now seems that the Chinese want the violence to end because
the rebels’ objectives have shifted from merely resisting government
forces to improving their status within Myanmar, an aim that is more
conducive to internal stability, and because the fighting has impeded
economic development and trade. What’s more, the Chinese want to
be seen as peacemakers in a region where they have long been regarded
as a destabilizing presence.
Compared with Beijing, Washington today has little sway over
Myanmar. That is a recent development: the Obama administration,
in one of its undisputed foreign policy successes, managed to convince
the country to take steps toward democracy. The United States was a
steadfast supporter of Suu Kyi for years before she took office, and
both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
made historic visits to Yangon. When Suu Kyi visited Washington in
September 2016, she asked Obama to lift most of the remaining U.S.
sanctions on Myanmar in order to help her government grow the
country’s economy. Obama obliged her; in hindsight, that was likely a
mistake. Obama wanted to reward progress. But lifting the sanctions
robbed Washington of precisely the kind of leverage it now needs.
Indeed, democratic activists in Myanmar and elsewhere had hoped
that the sanctions would stay in place until the antidemocratic features
of the 2008 constitution were abolished.
Since the Rohingya crisis erupted last year, there have been few
official interactions between the United States and Myanmar. Under
the Trump administration, Myanmar has lost the special place it enjoyed
on Washington’s foreign policy agenda during the Obama years. Then
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a five-hour visit to Myanmar
in November 2017. In meetings with Suu Kyi and the army chief, Min
Aung Hlaing, he raised concerns about ethnic violence. At a news
conference, Tillerson said that there had been “crimes against human-
ity,” but he did not back the idea of new economic sanctions against
Myanmar. Pope Francis visited the country a few days later and called
for peace and mutual respect. But neither Tillerson nor the usually
outspoken pope used the term “Rohingya” during his discussions with
Myanmar officials or in his public statements, likely out of a fear that
doing so would aggravate an already highly charged situation and, in
the case of the pope, out of a fear that it could endanger Myanmar’s
small and vulnerable Catholic community.
Admittedly, the United States has few appealing policy options for
stopping the ethnic cleansing. Restoring the sanctions or placing more
new ones on the generals would likely just drive the military further
into the welcoming arms of the Chinese, who are keen to fill the
vacuum left by Washington’s flagging interest. Denunciations from
Washington and other foreign capitals have failed to affect the govern-
ment’s position on the Rohingya and have actually increased domestic
support for the Tatmadaw, as evidenced by a number of major pro-
military rallies held throughout Myanmar last fall.
Still, there are ways for the United States to push for progress.
For starters, it should suspend all military-to-military engagement
with Myanmar and expand assistance to a number of sophisticated
but underfunded nongovernmental organizations, such as Mosaic
Myanmar, a civil society group that promotes tolerance between the
majority Buddhist community and Christian and Muslim minorities.
May/June 2018 153

Zoltan Barany
Furthermore, the United States should establish or sponsor programs

in Myanmar focused on health care, educational opportunities, and
cultural exchanges. In a country that tends to be at best cautious of
foreigners’ intentions, the United States is generally held in high
regard, according to Asian Barometer surveys of public opinion—a
sharp contrast to the suspicious attitudes toward China and India
that prevail throughout Myanmar. There are few societies where
prudent U.S. democracy promotion could find more fertile ground or
where it would be more gratefully accepted. Finally, in lieu of public
expressions of indignation, Washington should communicate its dis-
pleasure privately—especially through politicians with long histories of
supporting Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s democratization, such as Clinton
and Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
As for Suu Kyi, her reduced stature abroad might further reduce
her already limited leverage with the generals. She is boxed in to a
degree that many critics fail to appreciate. But she has made her own
situation worse through poor management and a lack of focus on issues
that are under her administration’s control: improving the economy,
shoring up infrastructure, and revamping the health-care and educa-
tional systems. The government should adopt a personnel policy that
emphasizes merit and accomplishment instead of personal loyalty to
Suu Kyi. Instead of alienating ethnic minorities and their political
parties and ignoring civil society organizations, Suu Kyi ought to open
a meaningful dialogue with them with a view to forming a big-tent
political and social coalition that might, in time, challenge the military’s
political supremacy. Suu Kyi and her administration should reverse
their attacks on media freedoms. And even though the government
cannot control the military, it must stop denying and defending the
Tatmadaw’s atrocities and start actively protecting those who have
suffered so terribly from the army’s repression.
Most important, Suu Kyi must shift gears quickly. International
patience with her is almost extinguished. If she does not change course
soon, she will lose what little goodwill remains.∂
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S c i e n ce s P o i s F ra n ce ’s l e a d i n g u n i ve r s i t y i n t h e s o c i a l s c i e n ce s , ra n ke d # 4 i n t h e wo r l d fo r i n te r n a t i o n a l st u d i e s (Q S 2 0 1 7 ) .

What if you could correct
mutations that cause
disease or introduce new
and beneficial traits into
a species? Now we have a
tool that can do that.
—Jennifer Doudna
DAR R E N STAP L ES / R E U T E R S
A Conversation With Keep CRISPR Safe

Jennifer Doudna 158 Amy Gutmann and Jonathan D. Moreno 171
Gene Editing for Good The New Killer Pathogens

Bill Gates 166 Kate Charlet 178
can now change a single letter in the three

The Ultimate
billion base pairs of the human genome,

for example. Ever since the discovery of
Life Hacker the structure of DNA in the 1950s, scien-
tists have been dreaming about being able
to rewrite that code. What if you could
A Conversation With correct mutations that cause disease or
Jennifer Doudna introduce new and beneficial traits into
a species? Now we have a tool that can
A
t the age of 12, Jennifer Doudna do that. And it’s getting cheaper and
read James Watson’s The Double more accessible all the time.
Helix and got hooked on science Instead of breeding creatures by trial
in general and genetics in particular. and error over many generations to get
Four decades later, she is a molecular the traits you want—and not even know-
biology professor at the University of ing what the actual code is for the DNA
California, Berkeley, an investigator with responsible for those traits—now you
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, can simply splice in a trait for a bigger
and a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley nose, disease resistance, better nutrition,
National Laboratory. One of the discov- whatever. You can do it precisely in one
erers of CRISPR, a powerful new technology generation and get exactly what you
for gene editing, Doudna tells the story want. This is changing the way modern
of the current genetics revolution in her biology is being practiced, in every-
gripping new memoir, A Crack in Creation thing from medicine to agriculture.
(written with Samuel Sternberg). She
U C B E R K E L E Y P H O T O S E R V I C E S / C O U R T E S Y: N A T I O N A L S C I E N C E F O U N D A T I O N
spoke with Foreign Affairs’ editor, Gideon How quickly is this all happening?
Rose, in her office in Berkeley in February. This technology is only a few years old,
and there are already several clinical trials
You’ve described CRISPR as a Swiss moving forward to test CRISPR-based
Army knife and said that it may cause a gene editing in patients with cancer and
fundamental break in human history. other diseases. Agricultural products
How can a Swiss Army knife cause a altered using CRISPR are already coming
break in human history? to market. Animals have already been
Because it’s a disruptive technology. altered using CRISPR—heavily muscled
CRISPR is an efficient, effective tool for pigs, micro pigs, hornless cattle. Several
editing genomes—changing the code CRISPR-related companies have been
of life, the DNA in cells. founded and already have market caps
in the billions of dollars.
Humans have been modifying the
genetics of various plants and animals The description in your book of how the
for ages, so why is this new? field of gene editing evolved, with different
What makes this different is that the researchers building on each other’s work
tool is precise and programmable. We and propelling knowledge forward, makes
it seem like the scientific community is a
This interview has been edited and condensed. model of the Enlightenment in action.
Niss as ipsunt eum, omniet

veliquatet eos res ut doler
omnihiliquis abora dem eos
aut labore lorem sipim.
Doudna in Berkeley, California
The Ultimate Life Hacker
In the early days, it wasn’t even a field. amount of special expertise. They can
There were a few people working on just do it.
bacterial immune systems. We used to
have these meetings here at Berkeley, Why is germline editing a special
and there’d be 40 people there, and that problem?
would be essentially everybody in the One kind of important near-term clinical
world working on anything to do with work is called “somatic cell editing.” This
CRISPR. Jillian Banfield organized the involves making changes to cells in a
meetings. A lot of important work done person that are already fully differenti-
in the early days of CRISPR came from ated. Those changes can’t be passed on
women scientists. Emmanuelle Char- to future generations.
pentier, of course, was my collaborator. Germline editing is different,
It was really an incredible time. I’ve because that means making changes so
never experienced anything else quite early in an organism’s development that
like it in my scientific career. There the changes become part of the DNA of
wasn’t this competitive sort of culture the entire organism and can be trans-
that we see now. Everybody knew mitted to future generations. With that
each other, and absolutely none of us kind of editing, you could remove the
expected the field would go where it did. traits that cause genetic diseases and
get rid of them forever.
It seems to be a story of several different There’s a lot of sci-fi-type appeal to
failed technologies, research on each of that, but it is doubtful whether it will
which paved the way for the later ones that become a reality anytime soon. Still,
ultimately turned out to be successful. that’s the sort of question we will have
Yes, but I wouldn’t call them failed to grapple with. Gene-editing technol-
technologies. They were successful ogy is moving very quickly toward a time
technologies. They just had flaws, aspects when it will be technically feasible to edit
that made them difficult to implement embryos or even germ cells, like sperm
widely. Those earlier methods for gene or eggs. Then it’s no longer a question
editing worked very well when they of can we do this; it’s should we do this.
worked, but they were accessible only
to the rich and patient. Are we talking years, decades, or
generations?
So CRISPR is part of the democratization I think we’re talking years.
of gene editing?
Absolutely. And that’s one of the beautiful Is using CRISPR to fix a gene that is
things about it. Somebody can be work- damaged in an otherwise healthy
ing in a lab in India, and they can decide creature conceptually the same as
that they want to use gene editing to do taking an otherwise healthy creature
something. And for the cost of reagents, and editing its genome to improve
they can get the CRISPR editing materials performance?
and start doing experiments. They don’t I have a hard time answering that
have to get a huge amount of money question. And the reason is that for the
together. They don’t have to have a huge most part, I would wager that it’s very
hard to come up with an absolute defini-

tion of traits that way. Let me give you a
real-world example. There’s a gene that’s
been identified as important for cholesterol
levels in people, and a few people have a
natural mutation in this particular gene
that gives them very low cholesterol—
so effectively, they never suffer from
heart disease or cardiovascular disorders.
Imagine you had a way to introduce that
genetic change into the entire human
population, so that you could make people
immune to heart disease. Should we do it?
Is that fixing a health problem or provid-
ing an enhancement?
Have you interacted with people who

have actually benefited directly from the
use of CRISPR technology, or soon will?
Absolutely. It’s profound to think about
being able to alter DNA so as to help
someone suffering from a genetic disease.
I can’t tell you how many people have
e-mailed or visited me to discuss genetic
disease in their family. I remember one
gentleman who came to talk to me in my
office here at Berkeley. He had met one
of my postdocs on a plane and during the
course of the flight had come to realize
the potential of the new gene-editing
technology. He told us he had watched his
father and grandfather die of Huntington’s
disease, and two of his sisters had the
trait and were approaching the age when
symptoms would start appearing. He
wanted to know how the technology
worked and how he could help advance it.
That’s a common experience for me right
now—people who come forward saying,
“I want to be involved.” It’s very exciting.
There are several players in this with

various interests—scientists, politicians
and government officials, investors and
161
private companies, the public at large. People have been breeding plants for
Who or what is coordinating everything millennia. The way it’s currently done
so that the field moves forward con- is that mutations in DNA are introduced
structively? randomly by chemical treatments or
We need help with that. When new radiation, usually with seeds, and then
scientific ideas come along and turn into the seeds grow into plants, and you select
exciting and disruptive technologies, it’s for desirable traits. Who knows what
often the case that those technologies mutations are happening where? Wouldn’t
race forward ahead of the capacity of it be better to have a tool for precise DNA
regulatory agencies and governments to alteration, one that could manipulate a
control them. Artificial intelligence is a single gene without changing anything
great example. Gene editing is in a simi- else? Of course it would. So the question
lar category. The science and technology is, How do you explain that? I think you
is advancing so rapidly that there are have to make an effort to engage the
already well over a thousand scientific public and try to explain why this tech-
publications on it, in every field imagin- nology is valuable and what it can let us
able. Perhaps the most excitement stems do that we couldn’t do before.
from the possibility that it may be a very
effective way of curing genetic diseases. You’ve said that a lot is riding on how
All of that is moving forward, globally, regulators and the public define the
for the most part without coordination. term “genetically modified” in coming
There are some exceptions. Francis years. What do you mean by that?
Collins, the director of the U.S. National In the United States, regulatory agencies
Institutes of Health, recently announced define genetic modification based on
a $190 million call for proposals that whether the modified organism includes
would bring together teams from differ- any foreign DNA. In Europe, it’s defined
ent medical disciplines to figure out how by the use of gene-editing technology
to advance the technology responsibly. to achieve the result. So right now, the
But that’s not really happening in other same organism can be considered geneti-
areas, such as agriculture. cally modified in Europe but not in the
United States.
There has been a huge amount of contro-
versy in recent decades over genetically What do you think the definition should
modified organisms. Is CRISPR going to be based on, the technique by which the
follow the path of GMOs? organism was modified or the substance
Boy, let’s hope not. The controversy of the modification?
around genetically modifying food The substance of the modification. Some-
resulted from a poorly managed effort to thing that has been edited to fix one
explain to people what it meant and how problem on a gene should not be consid-
it affected agriculture and the environ- ered the same as something containing
ment. With CRISPR, there’s an active foreign genetic material. To be clear,
effort to spur discussions about what this CRISPR can be used to do both kinds of
technology involves, what potential it editing. But in terms of regulation, people
has, and what constitutes responsible use. should focus less on how the editing is
A Conversation With Jennifer Doudna
being done and more on what changes what happens with in vitro fertilization.
are being introduced. That was something I was very surprised
to learn about when I got into all of this.
Are the development and exploitation It turns out that IVF clinics are largely
of CRISPR taking place more rapidly in regulated at the state level, without much
darker shadows of the world, beyond coordination. So people can go to IVF
the reach of regulators and the media? clinics in one part of the country and have
I suspect so, but I don’t really know. I access to different kinds of services than
think we may be moving toward that in they can get in other parts of the country.
particular areas. The advances that are happening right
now in science and technology are being
Members of your lab team have been driven by people’s fundamental interests.
approached by people trying to make Sometimes that’s commercial, but the most
CRISPR babies. fundamental advances are really driven
Definitely. Does that mean somebody by curiosity and passion. So the question
out there is actually making CRISPR is, How do you take a curiosity-driven
babies? Probably not yet. But you could research culture and map onto it some
certainly envision that kind of work kind of framework for making authori-
going on in parts of the world where tative choices about what kinds of work
there’s less oversight and less regulation. can proceed? Earlier in my scientific career,
that question would never have occurred
So who needs to do what, now, to make to me. I never would have imagined that
sure that the positive benefits of this I would see value in having guidelines
flow and the negative consequences for what should and shouldn’t be done
are contained? in science.
It’s got to be a combination of things.
The National Institutes of Health’s effort What is the appropriate level of regula-
to bring scientists and clinicians together tion? Local, national, regional, global?
with regulatory agencies here in the There has to be some combination.
United States is a very important step There might be things that are so critical
forward. There are international efforts that we want to have national-level or
to bring stakeholders together to grapple even international-level guidelines around
with issues such as the differing definitions them—but other uses that are less signifi-
of genetically modified organisms, for cant, more discretionary, and can be
example, right now—it’s critical to come regulated more locally. So it depends
up with a unified guideline. on what you’re talking about.
We’re not in a complete wasteland
with respect to regulation. In the United Should the United States spend more on
States, there’s actually a very good set scientific research?
of guidelines for dealing with embryo Undoubtedly. People should appreciate
research and any kind of clinical use of that two kinds of science produce real
technologies, and CRISPR work falls largely value. One is targeted science: aiming
under that. What we don’t have, though, to cure cancer or solve a known practi-
is any kind of coordination regarding cal problem. But there’s also incredible
May/June 2018 163

value in doing curiosity-driven research. right now. We can’t just say, “I’d like
We need to continue to invest strongly humans to have the ability to fly, so
in the second type of work as well as the let’s put genes for wings into the human
first—because the ideas and technologies genome.” It will be quite a while before
stemming from it have reshaped the we have pigmen or any other weird
American economy over the last half chimeras.
century. You could double the budget
of the National Institutes of Health and After you’ve genetically engineered
still find good things to spend the money them, which would you rather fight—
on. There are many, many worthy projects one horse-sized duck or a hundred
going unfunded. duck-sized horses?
China is investing heavily in all this. I think the horse-sized duck would be
CRISPR is huge in China. It’s one of several easier to deal with.
technologies, including DNA sequencing,
that are very rapidly being adopted there When you were sitting there as a kid on
for a broad range of applications. Now the beach in Hawaii, reading the beat-up
there’s a technology not only for reading copy of The Double Helix your dad gave
and writing DNA but also for rewriting it you, did you ever dream of writing a
and manipulating the sequence precisely. sequel?
China’s already a huge player, both aca- Never! It was the farthest thing from my
demically and commercially. If the United mind.
States doesn’t do something similar, we
will definitely be behind. I want to come back to the regulation
issue. Who now is managing the balance
Of all the crazy things that we hear between risk and reward in this area?
about CRISPR, one of the craziest is that Are there any structures setting out
something like Jurassic Park might authoritative guidelines?
become a reality. Is that actually true? No. Not really.
I think it would be very hard. Bringing
back the woolly mammoth and things So the risks are being weighed by each
like that are interesting ideas but mostly individual actor?
a fantasy. The technical challenges to Yeah.
doing that are very large. But it’s impor-
tant to recognize that we do now have Which means that we’re entirely depen-
the power to control evolution. dent on the outcome of those individual
researchers’ choices?
It’s one thing to say we can make better Yes.
corn that’s less resistant to disease. It’s
another to say we can produce pigmen, Which is not really a proper way to
like Kramer worried about on Seinfeld. collectively think about the deployment
The corn is happening now. How far off and management of a new technology
are the pigmen? that could affect human evolution.
Probably pretty far off. Genes play Right.∂
together in ways that we don’t understand
Tug of War: Negotiating Security in Eurasia

Fen Osler Hampson and Mikhail Troitskiy, Editors
Conflicts in Eurasia, such as that over the Crimea, have

been receiving significant attention in the last few years in
the media and in the foreign affairs departments of major
Western countries. Regional controversies in Eurasia
often affect relations among the great powers on a global
scale. Tug of War, edited by two global security experts
from Canada and Russia, examines negotiations that
continue after the “hot phase” of a conflict has ended and
the focus becomes the search for lasting security solutions.
This volume tackles the overarching question: how
useful has the process of negotiation been in resolving or
mitigating different conflicts and coordination problems in
Eurasia, compared to attempts at exploiting or achieving a
decisive advantage over one’s opponents?
Published January 2018.
Complexity’s Embrace:
The International Law Implications of Brexit
Oonagh E. Fitzgerald and Eva Lein, Editors
An unprecedented political, economic, social and legal

storm was unleashed by the United Kingdom’s June
2016 referendum vote and the government’s response
to it. Brexit necessitates a deep understanding of the
international law implications on both sides of the English
Channel, in order to chart the stormy seas of negotiating
and advancing beyond separation. Complexity’s Embrace
looks into the deep currents of legal and governance change
that will result from the United Kingdom’s departure from
the European Union. The contributing authors articulate
with unvarnished clarity the international law implications
of Brexit, providing policy makers, commentators, the
legal community and civil society with critical information
needed to participate in negotiating their future within or
outside Europe.
Published April 2018.
CIGI Press books are distributed by McGill-Queen’s University Press (mqup.ca) and can be found in better bookstores and through online book retailers.
more than 750 million people—mostly

Gene Editing
rural farm families in sub-Saharan

Africa and South Asia—still live in
for Good extreme poverty, according to World
Bank estimates. The women and girls
among them, in particular, are denied
How CRISPR Could economic opportunity.
Transform Global Some of the remaining suffering
Development can be eased by continuing to fund
the development assistance programs
and multilateral partnerships that are
Bill Gates known to work. These efforts can help
T
oday, more people are living sustain progress, especially as the
healthy, productive lives than world gets better at using data to help
ever before. This good news may guide the allocation of resources. But
come as a surprise, but there is plenty ultimately, eliminating the most persis-
of evidence for it. Since the early 1990s, tent diseases and causes of poverty
global child mortality has been cut in half. will require scientific discovery and
There have been massive reductions in technological innovations.
cases of tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/ That includes CRISPR and other
AIDS. The incidence of polio has decreased technologies for targeted gene editing.
by 99 percent, bringing the world to the Over the next decade, gene editing
verge of eradicating a major infectious could help humanity overcome some
disease, a feat humanity has accom- of the biggest and most persistent
plished only once before, with smallpox. challenges in global health and devel-
The proportion of the world’s popula- opment. The technology is making it
tion in extreme poverty, defined by much easier for scientists to discover
the World Bank as living on less than better diagnostics, treatments, and
$1.90 per day, has fallen from 35 percent other tools to fight diseases that still
to about 11 percent. kill and disable millions of people
Continued progress is not inevitable, every year, primarily the poor. It is
however, and a great deal of unnecessary also accelerating research that could
suffering and inequity remains. By the help end extreme poverty by enabling
end of this year, five million children millions of farmers in the developing
under the age of five will have died— world to grow crops and raise livestock
mostly in poor countries and mostly that are more productive, more nutri-
from preventable causes. Hundreds of tious, and hardier. New technologies
millions of other children will continue are often met with skepticism. But if
to suffer needlessly from diseases and the world is to continue the remark-
malnutrition that can cause lifelong able progress of the past few decades,
cognitive and physical disabilities. And it is vital that scientists, subject to
safety and ethics guidelines, be encour-
BILL GATES is Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda aged to continue taking advantage of
Gates Foundation. such promising tools as CRISPR.
Gene Editing for Good
Lend me your ears: genetically modified corn in Beijing, February 2016
FEEDING THE WORLD traits that make Holsteins so productive,

Earlier this year, I traveled to Scotland, potentially boosting the tropical breeds’
where I met with some extraordinary milk and protein production by as much
scientists associated with the Centre for as 50 percent. Conversely, scientists are
Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health also considering editing the genes of
at the University of Edinburgh. I learned Holsteins to produce a sub-breed with a
about advanced genomic research to help short, sleek coat of hair, which would allow
farmers in Africa breed more productive the cattle to tolerate heat.
chickens and cows. As the scientists This sort of research is vital, be-
explained, the breeds of dairy cows that cause a cow or a few chickens, goats, or
can survive in hot, tropical environments sheep can make a big difference in the
tend to produce far less milk than do lives of the world’s poorest people,
Holsteins—which fare poorly in hot three-quarters of whom get their food
places but are extremely productive in and income by farming small plots of
more moderate climates, thanks in part land. Farmers with livestock can sell
to naturally occurring mutations that eggs or milk to pay for day-to-day
KIM KYUNG-HOON / REUTERS
breeders have selected for generations. expenses. Chickens, in particular, tend

The scientists in Scotland are collabo- to be raised by women, who are more
rating with counterparts in Ethiopia, likely than men to use the proceeds to
Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and the United buy household necessities. Livestock
States. They are studying ways to edit help farmers’ families get the nutrition
the genes of tropical breeds of cattle to they need, setting children up for healthy
give them the same favorable genetic growth and success in school.
May/June 2018 167

Bill Gates
Similarly, improving the productiv- tools, the Oxford scientists were able to
ity of crops is fundamental to ending rearrange the cellular structures in rice
extreme poverty. Sixty percent of people plant leaves, making C4 rice a remarkable
in sub-Saharan Africa earn their living 20 percent more efficient at photosyn-
by working the land. But given the region’s thesis, the process by which plants convert
generally low agricultural productivity— sunlight into food. The result is a crop
yields of basic cereals are five times that not only produces higher yields but
higher in North America—Africa remains also needs less water. That’s good for food
a net importer of food. This gap between security, farmers’ livelihoods, and the
supply and demand will only grow as environment, and it will also help small-
the number of mouths to feed increases. holder farmers adapt to climate change.
Africa’s population is expected to more Such alterations of the genomes of
than double by 2050, reaching 2.5 billion, plants and even animals are not new.
and its food production will need to Humans have been doing this for thou-
match that growth to feed everyone on sands of years through selective breed-
the continent. The challenge will become ing. Scientists began recombining DNA
even more difficult as climate change molecules in the early 1970s, and today,
threatens the livelihoods of smallholder genetic engineering is widely used in
farmers in Africa and South Asia. agriculture and in medicine, the latter to
Gene editing to make crops more mass-produce human insulin, hormones,
abundant and resilient could be a lifesaver vaccines, and many drugs. Gene editing
on a massive scale. The technology is is different in that it does not produce
already beginning to show results, attract- transgenic plants or animals—meaning it
ing public and private investment, and does not involve combining DNA from
for good reason. Scientists are developing different organisms. With CRISPR, en-
crops with traits that enhance their zymes are used to target and delete a
growth, reduce the need for fertilizers section of DNA or alter it in other ways
and pesticides, boost their nutritional that result in favorable or useful traits.
value, and make the plants hardier during Most important, it makes the discovery
droughts and hot spells. Already, many and development of innovations much
crops that have been improved by gene faster and more precise.
editing are being developed and tested
in the field, including mushrooms with ENDING MALARIA
longer shelf lives, potatoes low in acryl- In global health, one of the most prom-
amide (a potential carcinogen), and ising near-term uses of gene editing
soybeans that produce healthier oil. involves research on malaria. Although
For a decade, the Bill & Melinda insecticide-treated bed nets and more
Gates Foundation has been backing effective drugs have cut malaria deaths
research into the use of gene editing in dramatically in recent decades, the
agriculture. In one of the first projects parasitic disease still takes a terrible toll.
we funded, scientists from the Univer- Every year, about 200 million cases of
sity of Oxford are developing improved malaria are recorded, and some 450,000
varieties of rice, including one called people die from it, about 70 percent of
C4 rice. Using gene editing and other them children under five. Children who
Gene Editing for Good
survive often suffer lasting mental and wide, but just a handful of them are any
physical impairments. In adults, the good at transmitting malaria parasites
high fever, chills, and anemia caused by between people. Only female mosquitoes
malaria can keep people from working can spread malaria, and so researchers
and trap families in a cycle of illness and have used CRISPR to successfully create
poverty. Beyond the human suffering, gene drives—making inheritable edits
the economic costs are staggering. In to their genes—that cause females to
sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to become sterile or skew them toward
90 percent of all malaria cases, the producing mostly male offspring. Scien-
direct and indirect costs associated with tists are also exploring other ways to use
the disease add up to an estimated 1.3 CRISPR to inhibit mosquitoes’ ability to
percent of GDP—a significant drag on transmit malaria—for example, by intro-
countries working to lift themselves ducing genes that could eliminate the
out of poverty. parasites as they pass through a mos-
With sufficient funding and smart quito’s gut on their way to its salivary
interventions using existing approaches, glands, the main path through which
malaria is largely preventable and infections are transmitted to humans.
treatable—but not completely. Current In comparable ways, the tool also holds
tools for prevention, such as spraying promise for fighting other diseases
for insects and their larvae, have only a carried by mosquitoes, such as dengue
temporary effect. The standard treatment fever and the Zika virus.
for malaria today—medicine derived It will be several years, however,
from artemisinin, a compound isolated before any genetically edited mosquitoes
from an herb used in traditional Chinese are released into the wild for field trials.
medicine—may relieve symptoms, but Although many questions about safety
it may also leave behind in the human and efficacy will have to be answered first,
body a form of the malaria parasite that there is reason to be optimistic that
can still be spread by mosquitoes. To creating gene drives in malaria-spreading
make matters worse, the malaria parasite mosquitoes will not do much, if any, harm
has begun to develop resistance to drugs, to the environment. That’s because the
and mosquitoes are developing resistance edits would target only the few species
to insecticides. that tend to transmit the disease. And
Efforts against malaria must con- although natural selection will eventually
tinue to make use of existing tools, but produce mosquitoes that are resistant
moving toward eradication will require to any gene drives released into the
scientific and technological advances in wild, part of the value of CRISPR is that
multiple areas. For instance, sophisti- it expedites the development of new
cated geospatial surveillance systems, approaches—meaning that scientists
combined with computational modeling can stay one step ahead.
and simulation, will make it possible
to tailor antimalarial efforts to unique THE PATH FORWARD
local conditions. Gene editing can play Like other new and potentially power-
a big role, too. There are more than ful technologies, gene editing raises
3,500 known mosquito species world- legitimate questions and understandable
May/June 2018 169

Bill Gates
concerns about possible risks and misuse. practices in different countries may
How, then, should the technology be differ widely. A more harmonized policy
regulated? Rules developed decades ago environment would prove more efficient,
for other forms of genetic engineering do and it would probably also raise overall
not necessarily fit. Noting that gene- standards. International organizations,
edited organisms are not transgenic, the especially of scientists, could help estab-
U.S. Department of Agriculture has lish global norms. Meanwhile, funders
reasonably concluded that genetically of gene-editing research must ensure
edited plants are like plants with natu- that it is conducted in compliance with
rally occurring mutations and thus are standards such as those advanced by
not subject to special regulations and the WHO and the National Academy of
raise no special safety concerns. Sciences, no matter where the research
Gene editing in animals or even takes place.
humans raises more complicated questions When it comes to gene-editing
of safety and ethics. In 2014, the World research on malaria, the Gates Founda-
Health Organization issued guidelines tion has joined with others to help univer-
for testing genetically modified mosqui- sities and other institutions in the regions
toes, including standards for efficacy, affected by the disease to conduct risk
biosafety, bioethics, and public partici- assessments and advise regional bodies
pation. In 2016, the National Academy on experiments and future field tests.
of Sciences built on the WHO’s guidelines The goal is to empower affected coun-
with recommendations for responsible tries and communities to take the lead
conduct in gene-drive research on animals. in the research, evaluate its costs and
(The Gates Foundation co-funded this benefits, and make informed decisions
work with the Defense Advanced Research about whether and when to apply the
Projects Agency, or DARPA, the U.S. resulting technology.
Defense Department organization that Finally, it’s important to recognize
supports high-tech research related to the costs and risks of failing to explore
national security.) These recommenda- the use of new tools such as CRISPR for
tions emphasized the need for thorough global health and development. The
research in the lab, including interim benefits of emerging technologies should
evaluations at set points, before scientists not be reserved only for people in devel-
move to field trials. They also urged oped countries. Nor should decisions
scientists to assess any ecological risks about whether to take advantage of
and to actively involve the public, espe- them. Used responsibly, gene editing
cially in the communities and countries holds the potential to save millions of
directly affected by the research. Wher- lives and empower millions of people to
ever gene-editing research takes place, it lift themselves out of poverty. It would
should involve all the key stakeholders— be a tragedy to pass up the opportunity.∂
scientists, civil society, government
leaders, and local communities—from
wherever it is likely to be deployed.
Part of the challenge in regulating
gene editing is that the rules and
somatic cells) or in the germline, the

Keep CRISPR Safe

cells that pass genes down to offspring.
The advances made possible by CRISPR
could bring vast benefits to society, but
Regulating a Genetic the technology also poses risks. An out-of-
Revolution control gene drive could drastically alter
or even threaten a species. And editing
Amy Gutmann and the human genome raises risks both for
individuals and for society as a whole.
Jonathan D. Moreno To head off those dangers, governments
and scientific institutions will have to
respond by establishing standards that
T
he possibility of rewriting the both enable promising research to go
genome of an organism, or even forward and reassure the public that the
of an entire species, has long been work is being conducted responsibly.
the stuff of science fiction. But with the Yet especially when the science is at
development of CRISPR (which stands for such an early stage, there is a risk that
“clustered regularly interspaced short governments will do too much rather
palindromic repeats”), a method for editing than too little. To avoid that problem,
DNA far more precisely and efficiently the global scientific and biological ethics
than was possible with older technolo- communities must take the lead, designing
gies, fiction has edged closer to reality. standards and procedures that reduce the
CRISPR exploits an ancient system that dangers of these powerful new tech-
allows bacteria to acquire immunity nologies without forgoing the benefits.
from viruses. It uses an enzyme called
Cas9 to cut strands of DNA at precisely PLAYING GOD
targeted locations, allowing researchers to The goal of a gene drive is to spread or
insert new genetic material into the gap. suppress certain genes in a wild popula-
CRISPR promises to revolutionize gene tion of organisms. It works by exploiting
editing, which comprises two distinct a quirk of nature. In sexually reproducing
but related fields. The first involves a species, most genes have a 50 percent
technique to modify inherited genes in chance of being passed from parent to
nonhuman organisms in order to spread child, as offspring receive half their
a trait throughout a population, using a genes from each parent. As a result,
process known as a gene drive. The other genetic mutations normally spread only
involves editing the human genome, if they make an organism more likely to
either in normal body cells (known as survive or breed. But some genes have
AMY GUTMANN is President of the University
evolved mechanisms that give them better
of Pennsylvania and Christopher H. Browne than 50 percent odds of being passed
Distinguished Professor of Political Science and on. That allows changes in those genes
Professor of Communication.
to proliferate quickly even if they have
JONATHAN D. MORENO is David and Lyn no effect on evolutionary fitness. Scien-
Silfen University Professor of Ethics at the
University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of tists can exploit this tendency by using
Medicine and School of Arts and Sciences. CRISPR to insert genetic material into
May/June 2018 171

the “selfish” part of an organism’s genome, least at first. If a genetically modified

ensuring that the new trait will be animal or plant escaped, however, then
passed on to most offspring, eventually the gene drive could spread uncontrol-
spreading through large populations. lably. And if a modified organism mated
This process could be exploited both with a member of another species, it could
to improve public health and to promote transmit the changes to new populations.
economic development. Scientists could Entire species could be wiped out and
use gene drives to break disease trans- ecosystems upended.
mission chains, eliminating the need These risks are dramatic, but they are
to use costly and harmful insecticides. also far off. In part because the research is
For example, researchers are looking at such an early stage, scientists disagree
at using the technology to inhibit the about how much and what kind of regula-
transmission of Lyme bacteria from tion and guidance will be required. So
mice to ticks, a move that could wipe governments should follow the principle
out Lyme disease among humans, since of regulatory parsimony, which dictates
humans can catch the disease only from that they should impose only those
tick bites. In agriculture, gene drives restrictions necessary to maintain ethical
could immunize plants against many standards and public safety. Doing so
kinds of pathogens and curb or elimi- will maximize the scope of free scientific
nate populations of invasive animals, discovery in a way that is consistent with
such as mice, that destroy crops. Re- serving the public good. In the countries
searchers are working to develop a where much of the research is taking place,
house mouse that can give birth only before imposing new restrictions, govern-
to male offspring. If the altered mice ments should rationalize the current
were released into the wild, female mice system of regulation. In the United States,
would gradually disappear and the species for example, the Department of Agricul-
would die off within the area in which ture, the Food and Drug Administration,
the altered mice were introduced. and the Environmental Protection Agency
Gene drives could also reverse some all share responsibility for different aspects
worrying environmental trends. Many of field trials and commercial products.
amphibian species, such as frogs, toads, They should harmonize their biological
and newts, have suffered catastrophic safety guidelines for gene-drive studies.
declines over the last few decades. If On the international stage, the Cartagena
scientists introduced engineered genes Protocol on Biosafety, an agreement
that rendered amphibians immune among most of the world’s countries that
to common pathogens, many species came into force in 2003, regulates geneti-
could recover. cally modified organisms, but the United
But alongside these benefits come States has not signed it.
serious risks. A gene drive gone wrong In lieu of formal regulations on gene
could leave a species extinct or intro- drives, scientists could agree to build
duce dramatic and unintended effects. safety measures into gene-drive systems,
Most gene drives would likely be limited such as alterations that would cancel
to a single place, such as an island or an out previous drives or gene modifica-
isolated and containable area of land, at tions designed to grow less frequent
over time, so that successive generations

would express the gene less and less
New in
once the original problem has been
A Council on Foreign Relations Book
sufficiently ameliorated. Researchers
will also need to be transparent about Series
their work and consult local communi-
ties to gain consent before introducing
gene drives into the wild.
HUMANS 2.0
Just as challenging for the global
scientific community will be the issues
raised by human genome editing. A
wide range of diseases have been identi-
fied as potential targets for treatments
that modify genes in a patient’s somatic
cells, including certain cancers, cystic “Far from disengaging America from the world,
fibrosis, hemophilia, HIV/AIDS, Hunting- Stares rightly advocates greater but smarter
ton’s disease, muscular dystrophy, some engagement . . . a compelling argument that
neurodegenerative diseases, and sickle strength and wisdom must be flip sides of the
cell anemia. Developing therapies for same foreign policy coin.”
these conditions will not be straightfor- —Tony Blinken, former Deputy Secretary of State
ward. Preliminary laboratory research

suggests that the human immune system
may resist the version of the enzyme
Cas9 currently used in CRISPR. If that
result holds up, either Cas9 will have
to be modified or replacement enzymes
will have to be developed. Yet this does
not appear to be a major setback, as
scientists are already using other enzymes
for techniques associated with CRISPR.
Whatever form it takes, research
involving human gene editing will have
“Scott Snyder, perhaps America’s premier
to meet the already rigorous regulatory Korean watcher, has written an indispensable
standards governing medical research. book about how to chart a course for America
In the United States, all applications for and South Korea in the complex period ahead.”
clinical experiments must be approved —Kurt M. Campbell, chairman and CEO,
by the Food and Drug Administration the Asia Group
and reviewed by the National Institutes
of Health. The FDA advises researchers
to follow up with participants in gene
therapy trials for as long as 15 years after CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU
the end of the trial to discover and deal
173
with any delayed ill effects. And once Reengineering the human genome
the FDA approves a gene therapy product raises risks not only for individual patients
for public sale, it requires companies but also for humanity as a whole. Unlike
to monitor its use, report any adverse the generations of rapidly propagating
events, and give public warnings as species, such as mosquitoes, human
appropriate. This regulatory regime generations span many years, so any
will be sufficient when it comes to using harmful change in a human germline
CRISPR to edit somatic cell genes given could take decades or even centuries to
that the process, although different become pronounced. But that does not
from other techniques for modifying mean that the risks should be ignored.
cells, does not raise new safety or Adjusting one part of complex human
ethical issues. societies could well have serious conse-
The same cannot be said for inter- quences for public health, economic
ventions that modify an individual’s growth, and social cohesion.
germline, which carries genes that are In 2017, the U.S. National Academies
inherited. Such interventions raise both of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
the prospect of vast benefits and thorny recommended that researchers exercise
questions of safety and ethics. Gene caution when it comes to efforts to prevent
editing could, in theory, prevent the disease transmission through gene editing
transmission of genes that increase the but said that such work should be allowed
risks of life-threatening diseases, such as to go forward, albeit under “stringent
breast cancer or cystic fibrosis. Families oversight.” The NAS did not extend this
with histories of breast cancer associated recommendation to experiments designed
with certain mutations in the BRCA1 to enhance future generations, which it
and BRCA2 genes (which help prevent said should not be allowed “at this time.”
tumors), for example, may wish to As the report noted, the risks of enhance-
protect their descendants by editing ment experiments are similar to those
their genes. of therapeutic ones, but as long as their
More speculative are germline overall benefits are smaller, they are not
modifications intended to make future worth scarce research dollars.
children stronger, better looking, or These sorts of guidelines will shape
smarter. The prospect of such genetic the work of reputable scientists, but they
engineering raises the specter of disas- are not designed to stop rogue actors.
trous twentieth-century experiments At some point, governments may have
in eugenics, although today most of the to pass laws to prevent unscrupulous
demand would likely come from indi- researchers from abusing gene editing.
viduals rather than states. To the extent For now, however, the science is no-
that state projects did attempt to en- where near advanced enough for policy-
hance national populations, they would makers to know what kinds of measures
be ill advised and socially disruptive. would work.
What is more, because of the enormous
complexity of traits such as intelligence, THE LIGHT AND THE DARK
the results of those projects would Experiments in both human genome
certainly disappoint their proponents. editing and gene drives are generally
Keep CRISPR Safe
Frankenfish: genetically engineered fish in Taipei, July 2013
classified as “dual use”—research whose physical contact, could be genetically

results may be used for good or evil. modified to allow it to move from birds to
Since the mid-1970s, when scientists ferrets—and, by extension, to humans—
developed recombinant DNA technology, through the air.
which allows DNA from different organ- Although gene drives cannot be used
isms to be combined to create new to create new viruses or bacteria—neither
genetic sequences that can give organ- type of pathogen reproduces sexually—
isms new traits, researchers have been they could be used to create other kinds of
concerned about the possibility of weapons. For example, mosquitoes could
bioengineered pathogens, created either be modified to produce toxins or such
deliberately or accidentally. In 2000, that they can expand their natural habitat
researchers in Australia discovered a and so spread malaria, dengue fever, or
technique for modifying mousepox that other diseases outside tropical areas.
made it more dangerous; this technique Indeed, virtually all biological
could also be applied to smallpox. In research could plausibly be described as
2002, a lab in New York replicated the dual use. It is hard to think of a major
polio virus using publicly available DNA biological breakthrough that could not
P I C H I C H UA N G / R E U T E R S
ordered from a biotechnology company. be exploited for harmful ends. This is

And in 2012, just as CRISPR was emerg- one reason why all of those who value
ing, researchers in the Netherlands and the lifesaving breakthroughs that biologi-
the United Kingdom showed that the cal research has made possible should
wild form of avian flu, which spreads reject the idea of regulating biological
from birds to mammals only through research primarily because it is dual use.
May/June 2018 175

Certainly, if a technology has no conceiv- when public safety and confidence are
able malign application, then regulation at stake. The standards developed by
should be off the table. But what is equally recognized authorities are encouraging:
certain, the mere fact that something for example, in the first decade of this
can be used to do harm must not suffice century, in response to new laboratory
to trigger regulation. practices involving the use of human
At the moment, different countries stem cells in nonhuman animals, national
take widely varying approaches to regulat- science academies came up with a set of
ing dual-use research. The United States guidelines. The guidelines are voluntary,
tends to focus only on select biological but they delineate in a well-informed way
agents that threaten public health. The what is and what is not ethically accept-
European Union, by contrast, takes able, and they have been widely embraced
a more precautionary approach that by scientists, the editors of prominent
requires a risk assessment for any organ- scientific journals, and regulators.
ism that could pose a threat. Regulatory The most effective standards for
parsimony and a bias toward scientific gene-editing research will come from
freedom favor the more focused policy, the scientific community itself, through
whereas greater risk aversion favors the international summits of science acad-
precautionary approach. emies and a continual process of intellec-
tual exchange. Those are the forums that
SELF-GOVERNMENT can respond best to often unpredictable
For all its unprecedented power, CRISPR developments in the science and react
is of a piece with other research break- sensitively to public opinion. Prudent
throughs in synthetic biology. It has self-governance among scientists may
both enormous potential to transform not produce headlines, but it is the
societies for the better and possible process most likely to enable CRISPR and
malign uses. Dealing with the latter will the next generation of research break-
require crafting highly specific rules so throughs to reach their full potential.∂
that regulators don’t end up sweeping
all CRISPR research into a costly new
regulatory net with little or no benefit
to society. And even the best-designed
regulation cannot eliminate the possi-
bility that researchers will accidentally
discover a dangerous new application
of a new technology. Before regulators
consider additional rules, CRISPR research-
ers will have to comply with existing
scientific norms and regulations, perhaps
the field’s biggest short-term challenge.
The modern scientific community is
both cooperative and competitive. Even
so, scientific establishments have shown
themselves capable of self-governance
the use of new gene-editing techniques

The New Killer
to fix deadly genetic mutations, create

disease-resistant crops, and treat cancer.
Pathogens Top scientists at Harvard are pursuing
medical applications once thought to be
out of reach, such as age reversal and
Countering the Coming transplanting pig organs into humans.
Bioweapons Threat But it’s not hard to imagine how gene-
editing technologies could be misused.
Kate Charlet Some fear that terrorists with even
moderate capabilities could develop
M
ilitary and political leaders deadlier pathogens. And laboratories,
have worried about large- appealing to parents’ instincts to offer
scale biological warfare for advantages to their children, could
more than a century. “Blight to destroy modify embryos in ways that cross
crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, ethical boundaries.
Plague to poison not armies only but One of the most worrisome questions
whole districts—such are the lines along today is whether advances in biotech-
which military science is remorselessly nology could tempt states to revive their
advancing,” Winston Churchill lamented old biological weapons programs or start
in 1925. But despite the deadly potential new ones. Such an outcome would drasti-
of biological weapons, their actual use cally undermine the progress of the last
remains rare and (mostly) small scale. several decades. A revitalization of state
Over the last several decades, most biological weapons programs could trigger
states have given up their programs. new conflicts or rekindle old arms races,
Today, no country is openly pursuing destabilizing the international order.
biological weapons. Faced with extremes of promise and
Recent breakthroughs in gene editing peril, policymakers must proceed with
have generated massive excitement, but a sense of perspective. Fear-mongering
they have also reenergized fears about or overregulation could undercut the
weaponized pathogens. Using gene-editing almost unimaginable benefits of the
tools, including a system known as CRISPR, biotechnology revolution. But failing
scientists are now able to modify an to anticipate and manage the signifi-
organism’s DNA more efficiently, flexibly, cant risks, including the resurgence of
and accurately than ever before. The state biological weapons programs,
full range of potential applications is would be equally problematic.
hard to predict, but CRISPR makes it
much easier for scientists to produce BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS IN HISTORY
changes in how organisms operate. Understanding the risks that biological
These technologies offer vast potential weapons pose today requires a closer look
for global good. Researchers are studying at how states have historically weighed
their benefits and drawbacks. Since
KATE CHARLET is Director of the Technology
and International Affairs Program at the 1945, only six countries have publicly
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. admitted developing biological weapons,
The New Killer Pathogens
Be prepared: first responders during an emergency exercise, Saint-Étienne, France, April 2016
although sufficient evidence exists to relatively cheap. Many pathogens, such
suspect a dozen or more. As the biological as the one that causes anthrax, don’t
warfare expert W. Seth Carus has pointed need to be developed in a lab; they can
out, states have pursued these weapons be found in nature. And states pursuing
for a number of different reasons. biological weapons can readily obtain
Between 1942 and 1969, the United the necessary equipment, which is the
States developed a highly advanced same as what is needed for medical or
biological weapons program, which was defense research. Biological weapons
capable of large-scale lethality. Initially, also offer deniability: attacks can look
this program was designed as a deterrent, like natural outbreaks, and they are
but American researchers also came to difficult to attribute.
value the flexibility of biological weap- But in practice, biological weapons
ons, which could temporarily sicken or also pose tactical and technical chal-
disable people rather than kill them. lenges, which led many decision-makers
During the Cold War, the Soviets also to question their overall value. From a
conceived of a range of strategic and tactical perspective, the time lag between
operational uses for biological weapons. exposure and symptoms has limited the
In addition to lethal uses, for example, utility of biological weapons on a battle-
they explored targeting agriculture to field. And target populations can protect
RO B E RT P R AT TA / R E U T E R S
damage an enemy’s food stocks, econ- themselves with vaccines and other
omy, and morale. Stalin even considered countermeasures. Launching a success-
using the organism that causes plague ful large-scale attack is also difficult.
to assassinate Marshal Tito, then the Unpredictable winds, changing terrain,
president of Yugoslavia. or incorrect dosage could all lead to
The materials needed to develop bio- failure. According to Carus, the United
logical weapons are easy to access and States and the Soviet Union are the
May/June 2018 179

Kate Charlet
only two countries believed to have if it contributed to national security.

overcome such challenges enough to The question today is whether new
be capable of using aerosol releases to biotechnological applications might
reliably disseminate biological weapons loosen those constraints.
over a large area.
Indeed, a significant problem with A NEW CALCULUS?
biological weapons has been the pros- Gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR
pect that the agent could blow back on could make biological weapons more
the users, infecting the attacking coun- deadly. Nations could develop novel or
try’s own soldiers and citizens as well as modified pathogens that would spread
the enemy’s. In the late 1930s and early more quickly, infect more people, cause
1940s, Japan undertook the largest-scale more severe sickness, or resist treat-
use of biological weapons in modern ment more fully. Equipment needed for
times, conducting both small attacks wide-area dispersal may become less
and larger campaigns in China. During necessary, for example, if a pathogen
one campaign, the Japanese dropped can be engineered to spread faster on its
plague-infected fleas from aircraft onto own. Whether that potential is tanta-
Chinese targets and spread organisms lizing enough to convince countries to
responsible for other diseases in water revitalize or initiate biological weapons
and rice fields. Estimates of the Chinese programs is uncertain. These kinds of
death toll from the Japanese biological modifications have long been possible,
weapons attacks are debated and un- just harder, using traditional genetic
verifiable, but they range from tens of engineering techniques. But there are
thousands to several hundred thousand. worrying signs that some leaders sense
In the process, however, it is thought a new opportunity. In 2012, for example,
that these attacks also killed well over Russian President Vladimir Putin inti-
a thousand Japanese. mated to his defense minister that he
These tactical and technical hurdles should plan to develop weapons based
are not insurmountable, of course. But on new principles, including genetics.
they have contributed to the lack of any Another concern is that gene
known state use of biological weapons editing may make it easier to carry out
for the last several decades and to a targeted assassinations. Conceivably, a
broader trend of states voluntarily government might edit the genes of a
ending their programs. For example, deadly virus so that it would affect
disappointing test results and disen- only a single target based on his or her
chantment with the deterrent power genetic code. This capability does not
of biological weapons contributed to yet exist, but it might become possible
the decision by the British to depriori- with time and effort. Nonetheless, as
tize their program and stop developing the biosecurity expert Gigi Gronvall
offensive capabilities in the late 1950s. has noted, given the prevalence of far
Although the U.S. program was more easier methods of assassination, states
sophisticated than the British one, U.S. may decide that developing and testing
President Richard Nixon still terminated such a weapon is not worth the time,
it in 1969, in part because he was unsure effort, and cost.
A related fear is that advances in

gene editing could allow scientists to
develop biological weapons capable of Not all readers
discriminating among target populations
based on ethnic, racial, or other geneti- are leaders,
cally defined characteristics. According
to Gronvall, these so-called ethnic weap- but all leaders
ons would be tricky to design and test,
and any target population would likely are readers.
have considerable overlap with nontarget - Harry S. Truman
populations. Still, the world is only in the
early stages of the biotechnology revo-
lution, and biological weapons have been
used in ethnic and racial conflicts before. SIGN UP for the
In the 1970s, for example, Rhodesia’s Foreign Affairs
intelligence agency introduced cholera Books & Reviews
newsletter
into wells in areas held by black nation-
alist guerillas. And in 1981, the apartheid
government of South Africa launched
Project Coast, which is believed to have
looked into biological means to assassinate
opponents. According to some accounts,
researchers with Project Coast also
discussed plans to selectively administer
an antifertility vaccine to black women.
These examples give reason to monitor
the threat of targeted biological weapons.
Some observers argue that gene
editing could make it easier to develop
or use biological weapons clandestinely,
thus reducing the risk of international
disapprobation. But maintaining a secret
biological weapons program has never
been particularly difficult. The equip-
ment and agents required also have
legitimate uses, and the challenges of
international oversight mean that the
odds of getting caught are low. It is
unlikely that new technologies would
change this in any fundamental way.
Concerns that gene editing will
make biological weapons so cheap that
countries reassess their strategic value ForeignAffairs.com/newsletters
are also overstated. CRISPR does make
181
Kate Charlet
gene editing less expensive; in 2014, a The vast majority of states—180 of

scientist at Vanderbilt University noted them—are parties to the 1972 Biological
that an activity that used to take 18 months
Weapons Convention, which bans the
and cost about $20,000 took only three development, stockpiling, acquisition,
weeks and cost about $3,000. The expense retention, and production of biological
can only have fallen in the years since this
agents for nonpeaceful purposes. Although
estimate was made. But biological weap- the treaty is often criticized for its lack
ons are already cheaper than alternatives of a meaningful enforcement mecha-
such as nuclear weapons. And although nism, it has helped establish a global
gene editing lowers the cost of developing norm that using biological weapons is
a deadly pathogen, it does little to reduceimmoral and unacceptable. Although
the price tag on the many other steps such norms may not constrain the worst
involved, such as weaponization, manu- actors’ behavior, they do provide the
facturing, and delivery. rationale and motivation for the rest of
Considering all of this, one particular the world to punish violators.
concern emerges. The combined factors Today, any state that used biological
of lower cost, easier access, and greater weapons, genetically edited or otherwise,
effectiveness might not be enough to sway would meet severe reprisal from other
major powers, but they may incentivize states seeking to defend the norm of
rogue and small states to reconsider the nonuse. Breaking the status quo, even on
marginal utility of investing in biologi- a small scale, would turn any country into
cal weapons. As a result, any strategy a pariah. Few would be willing to take
to address the risk of genetically edited that risk, and those most likely to do so,
biological weapons must take into account such as North Korea or Syria, already
a broad range of state types, not just face sanctions and military containment.
the major powers. Still, it’s important Were either of these states to use biologi-
to put the threat in perspective: gene- cal weapons, the United States and its
editing advancements need not change allies would almost certainly respond
the basic calculus to the extent that with force.
some fear. Becoming a “first misuser” of a geneti-
cally edited biological weapon could also
THE NORMS MATTER prevent a state from enjoying the positive
Major disincentives to the use of biologi- applications of the new technologies.
cal weapons already exist, and they can Researchers, businesses, and governments
be strengthened to prevent countries worldwide hope to take advantage of
from revitalizing or starting biological advanced biotechnologies in medicine,
weapons programs. This is not an excuse agriculture, and manufacturing. Countries
for complacency; countries will need to discovered to be misusing such technolo-
reinforce and update the existing protec- gies could end up undermining their
tions in light of new capabilities. Still, own businesses and research institutions
the norms and incentives against the use and cutting their citizens off from the
of traditional biological weapons should benefits discovered by others. Of course,
buy time and space for the international if a country were to find that it profits
community to put new measures in place. little from the new technologies, then
The New Killer Pathogens
this disincentive would be lessened— and decrease the perceived benefits of

one reason why the purveyors of new genetically edited ones.
biotechnological applications should First, countries must strengthen the
strive to make them affordable and Biological Weapons Convention. Since
widely available. 1986, state parties to the convention have
Ultimately, the power of these affirmed that the treaty’s prohibitions
disincentives hinges on the ability to apply to new scientific and technological
determine that an attack has occurred developments. The prohibitions likewise
and to identify its source. For now, apply regardless of the origin or method
investigators looking at a pathogen in of production of a biological agent. In
the aftermath of an attack would not December 2017, state parties agreed to
necessarily be able to tell if gene-editing initiate a series of discussions on the risks
techniques had been used. Although of new technologies. These are important
plausible deniability could lower a state’s foundations, but more steps are required.
inhibitions, it probably would not elimi- The five permanent members of the
nate them altogether. The perpetrator UN Security Council should invite other
of an attack might still be uncovered states to join them in making a strong
through other means, such as espionage. statement that emphasizes the enormous
Of course, individual terrorists and positive potential of synthetic biology
groups such as the Islamic State, or ISIS, techniques, including gene editing, and
do not feel bound by international reiterates their firm commitment to use
norms. Indeed, gene-editing advance- such techniques for nonhostile purposes
ments do increase the risk that such only. Reinforcing the positive potential of
actors could use biological weapons. these new technologies could strengthen
But strong international norms are still current norms by broadening awareness
useful, because they motivate the rest of what might be lost if a violation occurs.
of the world to prevent and punish Above all, countries must strengthen
violations. The possible revitalization of their ability to detect and respond to
state programs requires explicit attention biological attacks. If gene editing can
because it is a more multidimensional help create pathogens that spread more
threat. Not only could state programs widely and quickly, then nations must
produce deadly weapons, but the exis- detect outbreaks sooner, wherever they
tence or use of the resulting weapons originate. If gene editing enables novel
could trigger conflict, escalation, arms pathogens, then nations need the capabil-
races, and other destabilizing events. ity to rapidly create novel countermea-
sures. If gene editing allows for more
KEEP THE DISINCENTIVES STRONG clandestine uses of biological weapons,
The current system does not eliminate then nations require better techniques for
the risk that a state could see new value determining their origin. Such improved
in biological weapons, but it is enough capabilities would act as a deterrent by
to give any country pause. That means denying perpetrators the devastation they
that the international community still might hope to achieve. Fortunately, they
has time to reinforce the current norms are exactly what is needed to safeguard
against all types of biological weapons global health more generally.
May/June 2018 183

Kate Charlet
Yet governments are not moving in ship to promote and implement them.
the right direction. A February report The United States can be a leader in
by the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on these efforts, given its broad influence
Biodefense warned that U.S. spending and technical know-how. None of these
remains out of sync with actual threats. proposals would require new regulations
Outbreak response—such as the $5.4 that would stifle American business or
billion spent on Ebola in 2014—is innovation. Nor would they prevent
essential, but resources should also be militaries from conducting lawful
spent on programs that might prevent operations. Some steps would cost
outbreaks in the first place. The latest money, but the price tag would pale in
White House budget cuts funding for comparison to the damage caused by a
the Centers for Disease Control and well-executed biological attack or even a
Prevention’s preparedness and response large, naturally occurring outbreak. If
programs by $20 million and its pro- the United States is not willing to lead,
grams for emerging infectious diseases China has increased its investment in
by $60 million. Instead, Washington global health over the last decade and
and other governments should be might step into the void.
protecting and coordinating their In seeking to prevent the use of
biological defense, prevention, and biological weapons, governments,
preparedness budgets for maximum businesses, and scientists must arm
effectiveness. Strategically applied themselves with equal parts fear and
resources and strong leadership would confidence, urgency and pragmatism.
save lives by enabling quick responses Given recent technological advance-
to outbreaks, thus limiting the impact ments, the consequences of a return to
of disease—even if no one ever con- an era of states with biological weapons
ducted a purposeful attack. programs would be devastating. But a
To make the most of limited resources, sound strategy to keep the disincentives
governments and biosecurity experts strong can keep that possibility in the
should improve their coordination by realm of fiction.∂
developing an international biological
security strategy. Such a strategy would
mobilize national and international bodies
to detect harmful new diseases or health
anomalies in human populations, agricul-
ture, and the environment and to share
information about them. It would also
marshal financial and institutional
resources to quickly utilize gene editing
and other new techniques to produce
countermeasures against harmful, and
potentially novel, pathogens. The
elements of such a strategy are not new.
As in so many other fields, what is
needed is sustained, high-level leader-
REVIEWS & RESPONSES

It is easy to succumb to a
sense of despair about the laws
and institutions designed to
protect human rights.
—Caroline Bettinger-López
J O NAT HA N E R N ST / R E U T E R S
The Long Arc of Human Rights Recent Books 191

Caroline Bettinger-López 186
all of the time.” Subsequent empirical

The Long Arc of studies, primarily in the fields of inter-
national trade and international environ-
Human Rights mental law, have confirmed Henkin’s
qualified optimism. But in the field of
international human rights, empirical
A Case for Optimism studies have sometimes led to more pes-
simistic conclusions. In a 2002 article in
Caroline Bettinger-López The Yale Law Journal, for instance, the
legal scholar Oona Hathaway concluded
that “although the practices of countries
Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights that have ratified human rights treaties are
Work in the 21st Century generally better than those of countries
BY KATHRYN SIKKINK. Princeton that have not, noncompliance with treaty
University Press, 2017, 336 pp. obligations appears common.”
Hathaway and others who have ana-
D
oes fighting for human rights lyzed international human rights regimes
actually make a difference? have generally focused on the efficacy of
Scholars, policymakers, lawyers, specific laws, institutions, or methodolo-
and activists have asked that question gies: for example, the number of human
ever since the contemporary human rights rights treaties that a given country has
movement emerged after World War II. ratified, the existence of domestic legis-
At any given moment, headlines supply lation that reflects international norms,
plenty of reasons for skepticism. Today, or the presence of national human rights
the news is full of reports of Rohingya institutions. But few have stepped back
refugees fleeing a campaign of murder, and considered the overall impact of the
rape, and dispossession in Myanmar; drug broader international human rights
users dealing with brutal, state-sponsored movement. In her new book, Evidence
vigilantism in the Philippines; and immi- for Hope, the political scientist Kathryn
grants and minorities facing the wrath of Sikkink fills that gap—and the news,
extreme right-wing and populist move- she reports, is better than one might
ments in European countries and the fear. Drawing on decades of research
United States. It is easy to succumb to a into transnational civil society networks
sense of despair about the laws and insti- and international institutions, Sikkink
tutions designed to protect human rights. counters skeptics from the left and the
In 1968, the legal scholar Louis Henkin right who have argued that the persis-
wrote that “almost all nations observe tence of grave human rights violations
almost all principles of international law throughout the world is evidence that
and almost all of their obligations almost the international movement has failed
and should be abandoned altogether.
CAROLINE BETTINGER-LÓPEZ is Professor On the contrary, she concludes, the
of Clinical Legal Education and Director of the struggle for human rights has indeed
Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami
School of Law and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at made a difference: “Overall there is
the Council on Foreign Relations. less violence and fewer human rights
The Long Arc of Human Rights
violations in the world than there were the successful efforts of Latin American
in the past.” jurists and diplomats to include seven
Sikkink contends that skeptics have references to human rights in the 1945
relied on the wrong metrics to measure UN Charter, including one that describes
progress and have failed to see shifts in the promotion of human rights as one of
the human rights movement that have the basic purposes of the organization, in
made it more durable. She is even spite of resistance from the great powers.
relatively bullish about the prospects for This history, she contends, contradicts
continued progress in the Trump era. In common critiques of human rights law
this way, she distinguishes herself from as a tool of Western imperialism.
the many activists and scholars who fear Sikkink’s main goal, however, is to
that the populist nationalism that helped identify and quantify the improvements
put Donald Trump in the White House that she argues have come about as a
could reverse hard-fought human rights result of the human rights regime: a
gains of the past few decades, both in decline in genocide and “politicide”
the United States and abroad. (which Sikkink defines as politically
motivated murder by a government),
HIDDEN PROGRESS fewer international and civil wars, a
Among Sikkink’s aims is to defend the reduction in battle deaths and civilians
institutions and movements that have killed in war, less frequent use of the
supported the concept of human rights, death penalty, and dramatic gains in
which together are often described as women’s rights. Some of her arguments
“the human rights regime.” Sikkink takes are more convincing than others. In one
issue with scholars and activists who fault of the book’s most compelling passages,
the human rights regime for failing to she charts the undeniable correlation
produce a “maximum ideal of justice” but between the campaign that Amnesty
who do not offer alternative approaches International launched against the death
that are “within the realm of the possible.” penalty in the late 1970s and the global
The human rights movement should be trend toward the abolition of capital
praised, she contends, for “widening the punishment. In 1977, only 16 countries
limits of the possible,” thereby changing had abolished the death penalty; today,
what is probable. In an earlier book, that number has increased to 140—nearly
The Justice Cascade, Sikkink showed how two-thirds of the countries in the world.
that process can work by tracking how However, she does not explicitly connect
the idea of individual accountability for the dots between Amnesty International’s
human rights violations gained a foot- campaign and the abolitionist trend,
hold and led to an increase in criminal leaving the reader wondering whether
prosecutions for such wrongdoing. In the move away from capital punishment
her new work, she traces the diverse may have stemmed from other sources—
origins of the modern human rights for instance, the effect of DNA science in
movement and the pivotal contributions exposing wrongful convictions.
of people and organizations from the Sikkink’s attribution of worldwide
developing world, especially Latin declines in genocide, politicide, and other
America. For instance, she describes acts of violence to the human rights
May/June 2018 187

regime at times feels even more forced. negative than positive information.
Although she acknowledges that “expla- Activists capitalize on that tendency—
nations for improvements in core human understandably, Sikkink concedes—by
rights issues like genocide are complex,” “naming and shaming” bad actors far
she suggests that human rights ideologies more frequently than they praise
and criminal prosecutions—rather than, governments or highlight progress.
say, improvements in medicine or more “Perhaps,” she suggests, “human
targeted weaponry—best explain the rights activists should rely less on
worldwide decline in war crimes. More information politics, less on so-called
plausibly, she cites research that suggests ‘naming and shaming,’ and more on
“that the rise in improved military what we might call ‘effectiveness poli-
medicine is in itself an aspect of the tics’—identifying techniques and
humanitarian ideals that some authors campaigns that have been effective at
argue have contributed to the decline improving human rights.” In other
in war.” Indeed, states have arguably words, organizations might have a
developed more targeted weapons in greater impact by putting together a
order to avoid civilian casualties—a letter-writing campaign, staging a
concern that derives, in part, from the concert, or piggybacking on existing
rise of the human rights movement. legislative initiatives, rather than releas-
Part of what distinguishes Evidence for ing yet another report or press release.
Hope is Sikkink’s thoughtful examination
of the role that data and quantitative THE BOOMERANG EFFECT
research play in debates about progress Another mark of progress on human
on human rights. In the information rights is the way in which the move-
age, people know and care more than ment has expanded beyond its tradi-
ever before about human rights—but, tional boundaries to address a growing
she contends, that does not necessarily number of abusive and criminal behav-
lead to a better understanding of the iors that infringe on basic liberties and
state of freedom in the world. Activists, freedoms. Take domestic violence, a
by disseminating information about seemingly intractable problem that,
human rights abuses, often inadver- until relatively recently, few recognized
tently create the impression that things as a human rights issue. That has
are getting worse. Owing to the greater changed in the past decade as activists
availability of information, it is easier and lawyers, including me, have used
than ever to conclude that the world human rights advocacy to improve how
faces graver human rights problems law enforcement authorities respond to
today than in the past. But the fact that domestic violence. My principal avenue
people can now see more easily when, for doing this work has been through
where, and how human rights have been representing a Colorado woman named
violated does not mean there is more Jessica Lenahan (formerly Gonzales),
suffering today, Sikkink contends. Draw- whose tragic story has become a land-
ing from political psychology, she also mark human rights case. In 1999,
argues that certain cognitive biases make Lenahan’s three young daughters were
humans prone to pay more attention to abducted by her abusive estranged
The Long Arc of Human Rights
husband (and the girls’ father), Simon source of international obligations for the
Gonzales, in violation of the terms of a 35 members of the OAS (including the
judicial restraining order that severely United States). Lenahan’s was the first
limited his access to them. Although international human rights case brought
Lenahan repeatedly called the police, by a victim of domestic violence against
telling them she feared for her daugh- the United States.
ters’ safety and at one point identifying In many respects, the Lenahan story
their location, the police ignored her. fits what Sikkink, in Activists Beyond
The dispatcher who took her call even Borders (an earlier book she co-wrote with
chided her for being “a little ridiculous,” Margaret Keck), dubbed “the boomerang
a sentiment subsequently echoed by the effect” of human rights advocacy, which
town’s police chief in an interview with holds that when civil society groups and
60 Minutes. Nearly ten hours after the activists fail to persuade their government
abduction, Gonzales, armed with a to take action or change its policy, they
semiautomatic handgun, drove his truck often find international allies who can
to the police department and opened exert external pressure and contribute
fire. The police shot him dead and to at least a partial victory. In Jessica
subsequently discovered the deceased Lenahan (Gonzales) v. United States of
bodies of the three girls inside his truck. America, the IACHR found that the local
But local authorities did not conduct a authorities were “not duly organized,
proper investigation into the children’s coordinated, and ready to protect these
deaths, resulting in uncertainty about victims from domestic violence by
when, where, and how they died. adequately and effectively implementing
Lenahan filed a lawsuit against the the restraining order,” which the com-
town of Castle Rock, Colorado, in federal mission declared was a violation of the
court, claiming that the police violated American Declaration of the Rights and
her constitutional due process rights Duties of Man. The commission went
when they failed to meaningfully respond on to recommend that the United States
to her calls for help. The case eventually investigate the systemic failures that took
landed at the Supreme Court, which place, adopt legislation at the federal and
ruled in 2005 that she had no constitu- state level to protect women and children
tional right to have her restraining order from imminent acts of violence, and
enforced by the police. Having ex- continue to adopt public policies aimed
hausted her domestic remedies, Lenahan at shattering stereotypes of domestic
filed a petition later that year with the violence victims.
Inter-American Commission on Human In the years since, the Lenahan case
Rights (IACHR), an organ of the Organi- has been cited in international and domes-
zation of American States. She alleged tic case law and legislation throughout the
that the United States, whose criminal world. And although the U.S. govern-
justice system had failed to protect her ment, which has not ratified most major
and her daughters from acts of domestic international human rights treaties,
violence, had violated her human rights officially rejected the IACHR’s decision
under the American Declaration of the on technical and jurisdictional grounds, the
Rights and Duties of Man, which is a decision has had an undeniable effect on
May/June 2018 189

U.S. federal policy and law enforcement. has taken on a new dimension as devel-
Beginning in 2011, the U.S. Department oping countries have joined the fray in
of Justice began stepping up its investiga- ways that do not depend on Washington.
tions into discriminatory law enforcement “Human rights work in the coming years
responses to domestic violence and sexual of the twenty-first century may look very
assault in several cities—the exact type of much like the Cold War period,” she
government action that the IACHR had writes, when “the major powers were
called for—without ever explicitly con- mainly in opposition to the international
necting this work with the Lenahan case. protection of human rights and where
Then, in 2015, U.S. Attorney General momentum and progress depended on
Loretta Lynch released official guidance the actions of smaller countries, with
to law enforcement agencies on how to support from emerging NGOs and civil
prevent gender bias in their response to society.” But she also notes an important
such crimes—a step originally proposed distinction between the two time periods:
by advocates who supported Lenahan’s today, “these small countries and activists
lawsuit. A year later, the Department of have far more institutional resources at
Justice established a nearly $10 million their disposal—the human rights law,
grant program to implement the guid- institutions, and movements that earlier
ance nationwide. The boomerang that activists created in the mid- to late
Lenahan had tossed had returned to the twentieth century.”
United States, even if the government Everyone should hope that Sikkink is
did not explicitly acknowledge it. right. Human rights organizations based
in the developing world have evolved
HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL significantly over the past few decades,
For the most part, Sikkink does not and Sikkink cites a study showing that
sugarcoat the challenges facing the human they are increasingly trusted by citizens
rights movement. Trump’s nativist agenda, and are not perceived as the “handmaid-
hateful rhetoric, and professed enthusi- ens” of powerful donor countries. Such
asm for torture techniques “a hell of a lot groups could become highly effective in
worse than waterboarding” have rightly mobilizing support for human rights in
alarmed U.S. human rights advocates, an era of populist nationalism and rising
provoking fears of backsliding at home authoritarianism. But they and their
and emboldening bad actors around counterparts in the developed world will
the world. Last December, the UN’s top need to craft customized solutions that do
human rights official, Zeid Ra’ad not rely solely on established practices.
al-Hussein, who had expressed concerns The kind of “boomerang” that has worked
about the Trump administration and in the past may not always be the right
other potential sources of harm to the tool—especially if powerful figures in
human rights regime, announced his Washington are not interested in
unusual decision to not seek a second listening to world opinion.∂
term, saying it “might involve bending a
knee in supplication.”
But Sikkink remains optimistic. She
argues that the fight for human rights
Recent Books Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to

Liberal Democracy
BY WILLIAM A. GALSTON . Yale
Political and Legal University Press, 2018, 176 pp.
G. John Ikenberry In this thoughtful collection of essays,

Galston surveys the problems facing the
liberal democratic world. The triumphal-
ism that flourished after the Cold War
Why Liberalism Failed was misplaced, but so, too, in Galston’s
BY PATRICK J. DENEEN . Yale view, is today’s pessimism. The populism
University Press, 2018, 248 pp. and polarized politics unsettling Western
democracies reflect deep shifts in modern
W
estern democracies are in industrial society, including growing
trouble, grappling with rising divisions between urban and rural popu-
inequality, lost confidence in lations, failed policies on immigration,
government, fraying social fabrics, and and stagnant middle-class incomes. But
intense political divides. What has brought Galston argues that these problems can be
on this crisis? In this provocative book, addressed through an enlightened reform
Deneen argues that modernity itself has agenda oriented toward shared prosperity:
failed. Today’s predicament is the inevi- worker education, progressive tax reform,
table result of flawed ideas laid down the expansion of social insurance, and
by thinkers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, investment in infrastructure. Liberal
Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, René democracy, he points out, requires balanc-
Descartes, and John Locke, who together ing competing principles—the market
inspired the Enlightenment and modern and democracy, freedom and equality,
liberal democracy. These theorists, Deneen action and constraint—and so it is doomed
argues, rejected classical and Christian to disappoint many citizens. And because
efforts to foster virtue and instead pre- modernity constantly generates new
mised their secular visions of politics challenges, liberal democracy will always
on a less lofty view of the individual as struggle to keep up. But Galston provides
motivated by pride, selfishness, greed, and a reminder that the system’s great virtue,
the quest for glory. On this basis, Western compared with its authoritarian, theocratic,
liberal democracies have grown powerful and socialist rivals, is its ability for self-
and wealthy but have also experienced reflection and correction. Galston is betting
the corrosive effects of untrammeled that the democratic spirit is still alive.
self-interest. Social bonds and traditional
values have disappeared, and citizens feel The Peacemakers: Leadership Lessons From
threatened by the growing power of a Twentieth-Century Statesmanship
distant state. Deneen argues for a retreat BY BRUCE W. JENTLESON . Norton,
into smaller units: family, church, and local 2018, 400 pp.
communities. Yet it is precisely this world
of private life and civil society that liberal- “Great man” accounts of history have
ism has sought to protect. long been out of favor with scholars of
May/June 2018 191

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international relations. But Jentleson dislocations, and rising inequality fueled

reminds readers that leaders do matter. backlash politics. Yet not all periods of
He looks across the twentieth century economic hardship generate populist
to identify 15 “transformational” people revolts, and not all populist revolts suc-
who bent the flow of politics in the ceed. Eichengreen shows that populism
direction of peace and reconciliation. tends to thrive most when economic
They include the U.S. diplomat Henry insecurity exposes the divergent interests
Kissinger and the Chinese leader Zhou of the people and the elites. Societies
Enlai (for their roles in the United States’ become particularly ripe for populist
opening to China), U.S. Presidents backlashes in the wake of financial crises
Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt that lead to bailouts for plutocrats. But
(for their work building international governments can push back against the
institutions), and Mahatma Gandhi, populist tide. In the 1880s, German
Lech Walesa, and Aung San Suu Kyi Chancellor Otto von Bismarck undercut
(for their efforts to advance freedom populist worker revolts by establishing
and protect human rights). Jentleson social welfare programs, and U.S. Presi-
observes that there is no single recipe dent Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal
for good political leadership, but many promoted economic security and shared
of the figures had some common traits, prosperity after the Great Depression.
including “personal capital” (derived Yet in the United States, the government’s
from strong bonds with a community ability to respond to populist grievances
and a reputation for personal courage by strengthening the social safety net and
or moral conviction), an abundance of reducing income inequality has been
political skill, and the ability to use the undermined by the antipathy to govern-
right combination of carrots and sticks ment enshrined in the country’s political
to enlarge the space for compromise. DNA—a phenomenon clearly visible in
None of the leaders he profiles was the nascent Trump era.
without flaws, but each found a mo-
ment when his or her charisma, wit, or The BRICS and Collective Financial
rugged determination helped move Statecraft
history forward. BY CYNTHIA ROBERTS, LESLIE
ARMIJO, AND SAORI KATADA .
The Populist Temptation: Economic Oxford University Press, 2017, 288 pp.
Grievance and Political Reaction in the
Modern Era Over a decade ago, Brazil, Russia, India,
BY BARRY EICHENGREEN . Oxford China, and South Africa began working
University Press, 2018, 260 pp. together to strengthen their roles in global
governance. This well-researched and
In this survey of two centuries of populist insightful book represents the best effort
movements and political revolts in West- yet to assess the impact of the BRICS, as
ern democracies, Eichengreen argues that the group of countries is known. For
from the Luddites in early-nineteenth- those who saw the BRICS as a new bloc
century England to the upheavals of the that would take on the Western liberal
interwar period, economic insecurity, labor order, the results have been disappointing.
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Several of the countries have fallen on have been settled: ever since then, every
hard economic times, and their interests U.S. president has publicly supported
have often failed to align. But the authors trade liberalization and negotiated trade
argue that, despite these problems, the agreements. According to Irwin, this
grouping is not just an exercise in symbol- policy has served the U.S. economy and
ism. Through trial and error, the BRICS the average American household ex-
have found a way to cooperate in what tremely well. His book will serve as an
the book calls “financial statecraft” to authoritative reference on U.S. trade
achieve larger foreign policy goals. They policy and its effects on trade patterns
have built new institutions, such as the for years to come, and it usefully corrects
New Development Bank and the Chinese- several common misconceptions, such as
led Asian Infrastructure Investment the idea that Alexander Hamilton was a
Bank, and they have successfully pushed protectionist and that the Smoot-Hawley
for reforms to the old Bretton Woods tariffs imposed in 1930 caused the Great
system and amplified their own voices Depression. The Trump administration’s
within it. What unites these countries, the controversial new tariffs on steel and
authors conclude, is less a common vision aluminum, which rely on a little-used
of a new world order than a “common national security justification, even though
aversion” to Western hegemony. they will hit U.S. allies the hardest, were
announced after the book was published.
Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness

Economic, Social, and Solar Energy and Power the Planet
Environmental BY VARUN SIVARAM . MIT Press,
2018, 392 pp.
Richard N. Cooper Ultimately, human civilization will have
to be powered mainly by solar energy.
Luckily, the sun provides more energy
Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US to the earth in an hour than humanity
Trade Policy currently consumes in a year. But how
BY DOUGLAS A. IRWIN . University of long will it take to develop the technol-
Chicago Press, 2017, 832 pp. ogy and systems needed to truly har-
ness solar power, and how much will
A
t a time when Washington’s doing so cost? Sivaram’s enlightening
approach to trade seems poised and candid book describes both the
to undergo a significant shift, enormous progress that has already
this magisterial book surveys the entire been made in exploiting solar energy in
history of U.S. trade policy since the its two major forms—photovoltaic and
Colonial era, using congressional debates concentrated solar power—and the
and actions to show how conflicting major obstacles to further progress. The
domestic economic interests have led author worries that existing silicone-
Americans to clash repeatedly over trade. based photovoltaic solar panels will
By the 1930s, the basic debate seemed to “lock out” those made with newer,
May/June 2018 193

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cheaper, and more effective materials, Winning Together: The Natural Resource
such as perovskite. Sivaram, a scientist Negotiation Playbook
with practical experience advising city BY BRUNO VERDINI TREJO . MIT
governments on energy policy, argues Press, 2017, 336 pp.
that solar power cannot realize its full
potential without significant innova- For decades, a history of mutual suspicion
tions in power generation, power and recrimination between Mexico and
storage, grid management, financing, the United States stymied cooperation on
and regulation. All of these are achiev- three resources that cross national land and
able with sufficient imagination and sea boundaries: the water of the Colorado
money, so he pleads for more R & D River and the oil and gas buried beneath
funding and fewer subsidies for existing the Gulf of Mexico. In 2012, after several
solar installations. years of negotiations, the two countries
finally reached breakthrough agreements
The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, on both issues, which Verdini treats as case
and the Well-Being of Nations studies in successful international deal-
BY DAVID PILLING . Tim Duggan making on environmental issues and
Books, 2018, 277 pp. national resources. His book generalizes
from the agreements to draw broader
Pilling charts an unpleasant voyage of lessons about how to switch international
discovery. After spending years writing bargaining from a zero-sum framework
about trends in countries’ GDP growth to one of cooperation for mutual gain.
as a journalist, the author has discov- In both these cases, that shift was made
ered what GDP actually means and how possible partly by crises (a Mexican
it is measured. His research has left him earthquake, a drought in the western
appalled that he and others—journal- United States and Mexico, and the 2010
ists, commentators, and politicians— Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf),
have been extolling GDP growth for so but even more by poor national manage-
long. It is not that growth itself is a ment of common resources, which showed
delusion: after all, it has been associated both countries that they could benefit
with increases in living standards and from working together. Verdini fills the
reductions in poverty in many countries book with applied wisdom about interna-
over the past half century. But growth tional negotiation, but it is unclear to what
often becomes a fetish for politicians extent the lessons of bilateral negotiations
and policymakers, who have given it can be extrapolated to multilateral ones.
priority over many other aspects of
national well-being. This informative Bioinformation
and sometimes humorous book serves BY BRONWYN PARRY AND BETH
as a useful antidote to that myopia. GREENOUGH . Polity, 2017, 208 pp.
When it comes to the economy, Pilling
argues, officials and leaders should pay a Who owns an individual’s personal
little more attention to quality and a medical information? In the past, the
little less to quantity. privilege of accessing that sensitive data
belonged solely to patients, their doctors,
Recent Books
and, perhaps, laboratories. Today, such influence in the country and encouraged
information is often made much more Diem to do more to earn the respect of
widely available for scientific research his people. Lansdale was wary of the use
and even for commercial use by pharma- of brute force, and his early career in
ceutical firms, particularly in the form advertising had given him an interest in
of “big data” for studies that seek to find the psychology of warfare. His efforts in
previously unknown patterns—a trend South Vietnam gained him a reputation
that is only likely to increase. This slim as a man who did his best to understand
but informative book describes the the countries in which he operated and
sources of what the authors call “bio- who looked for innovative ways to under-
information” and the current and possible mine insurgencies. He urged the United
future beneficial uses of such data, such States to support Diem, and when Diem
as identifying patients whose genes make was assassinated, in 1963, he considered it
them particularly susceptible to certain a disaster. After Diem’s death, Lansdale
adverse medical conditions. Parry and despaired over the persistent corruption
Greenough also explore the ethical impli- of the new South Vietnamese leaders
cations of using and sharing the data, whom he was attempting to build up. In
including the possibility of privacy viola- this sympathetic and revealing biography,
tions and other abuses, such as using Boot draws on his past work on guerrilla
health information to stigmatize groups warfare to argue that adopting Lansdale’s
of people. They close with a discussion “hearts and minds” approach might have
of possible legal and institutional frame- caused less pain. But Boot is properly
works that would maximize the benefits cautious, declining to firmly conclude that
and minimize the harms of large-scale such a strategy would have resulted in a
medical data collection. different overall outcome.
The Saboteur: The Aristocrat Who Became

Military, Scientific, and France’s Most Daring Anti-Nazi
Technological Commando
BY PAUL KIX . Harper, 2017, 304 pp.
Lawrence D. Freedman This gripping account of the French resis-

tance to the Nazi occupation is told
through the remarkable experiences of
The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale Robert de La Rochefoucauld, a French-
and the American Tragedy in Vietnam man from an aristocratic family who
BY MAX BOOT . Liveright, 2018, 768 pp. was a teenager at the time of the German
invasion. After escaping to London via
D
uring the mid-1950s, the U.S. Spain, he was recruited by the Special
Air Force officer Edward Operations Executive, the British espio-
Lansdale served as the CIA’s nage and irregular warfare service,
liaison to South Vietnamese President and returned to France to sabotage the
Ngo Dinh Diem. Lansdale ran a range German war effort and gather intelli-
of covert operations to weaken communist gence. His expertise in plastic explosives
May/June 2018 195

Recent Books
led to a number of early successes. But cold precision.” New technologies are
as his network of agents expanded, some most likely to reduce the harm caused by
betrayed him; others cracked under war if they incorporate the principles of
torture. Eventually, La Rochefoucauld proportionality and discrimination, which
himself was captured and brutally inter- are already central to the established laws
rogated. Having failed to extract any of armed conflict.
information from him, the Germans
sentenced him to death. The book’s most The Last Battle: Victory, Defeat, and the
dramatic sequences describe his escape End of World War I
from the truck that was taking him to BY PETER HART . Oxford University
his execution and his subsequent journey Press, 2018, 464 pp.
back to London. He returned to France
again just before D-Day, was caught Hart’s history of the final year of World
again, and escaped yet again to carry out War I opens just after the major German
even more sabotage behind German lines. offensive of 1918 had ground to a halt
and as the Allies geared up for their own
Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and campaign. After years of grueling trench
the Future of War warfare had caused many to doubt that
BY PAUL SCHARRE . Norton, 2018, the conflict would ever end, the rapid
448 pp. success of the Allied offensive came as a
surprise to those who led and fought in
Scharre, a former U.S. Army Ranger, has it. Hart enlivens his lucid account of this
thought more than most about the impli- final battle with quotes from memoirs,
cations of autonomous weapons. He has letters, and diaries. He shows how
spent time not only among their designers increased professionalism and better
and operators but also with those so tactics allowed British and French troops,
alarmed by the prospect of machines fortified by the arrival of the U.S. Army,
making life-and-death decisions that they to push back the German forces. He
wish to ban them—or, at the very least, also opens a window into the minds of
impose strict limits on their use. In this individual soldiers, relating how they
comprehensive analysis, Scharre moves accepted the possibility of death and
beyond the clichés of “killer robots” to their relief at the eventual armistice. As
explore the complexity of human-machine one wrote: “Do you realise that we shall
interactions, distinguishing systems that probably live to be old men!”
still partly rely on humans from those that
are completely autonomous and highlight- The West Point History of the American
ing the importance not only of machines’ Revolution
capabilities but also of human fallibilities. EDITED BY CLIF FORD J. ROGERS,
Scharre recognizes the advantages of TY SEIDULE, AND SAMUEL J.
remote-control systems and doubts WATSON . Simon & Schuster, 2017,
whether it would be possible to craft and 320 pp.
enforce a ban. But he also warns against
being “seduced by the allure of machines— The essays in this authoritative collec-
their speed, their seeming perfection, their tion illuminate the origins and conduct
Recent Books
of the American War of Independence, breadth. Most anti-Trump literature

with a particular focus on the transfor- acknowledges the economic concerns
mation of the Continental army under of Trump’s supporters and suggests
George Washington into a professional that establishment politicians need to
and disciplined fighting force—a crucial address them. Frum goes significantly
achievement, even though Washington further. He shows awareness of, and
lost many of the battles he fought. After even sympathy for, their cultural griev-
weighing all the factors that contributed ances and their sense of dislocation.
to the revolutionaries’ eventual vic- The book would be even better, and
tory, including Great Britain’s long perhaps less alarmist, if Frum had
supply lines, Stephen Conway con- looked more closely at the history of
cludes that the foreign interventions populism in the United States. Although
by France, the Netherlands, and Spain quack economics and racism frequently
mattered most. In one of his contribu- accompany populist uprisings, populism
tions, Watson examines the wider social has sometimes served as a useful correc-
and political contexts of the Revolution, tive to out-of-touch elites. The Trump
as well as the role played by develop- phenomenon should drive political
ments in weaponry and the art of war. observers on both sides of the aisle to
The special value of this book lies in its deepen their understanding of popu-
splendid presentation: it features excel- lism, not to pander or surrender to it
lent illustrations, maps, timelines, and but to think intelligently about how to
charts, as well as reproductions of key channel populist energy toward con-
documents and letters. structive reform.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: America’s Grand

Strategist
The United States BY JUSTIN VAÏSSE. TRANSLATED
BY CATHERINE PORTER . Harvard
Walter Russell Mead University Press, 2018, 544 pp.
Vaïsse’s biography of U.S. President

Jimmy Carter’s national security ad-
Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the viser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, reminds
American Republic readers just what an extraordinary
BY DAVID F RUM . HarperCollins, phenomenon this Polish outsider was.
2018, 320 pp. By the late 1970s, when Brzezinski rose
to prominence, the old well-heeled and
F
rum thinks that Donald Trump is well-bred WASP foreign policy establish-
a bad man and a worse president ment had imploded under the strain of
and that his presidency endangers the Vietnam War and yielded to a new
the American republic. Those opinions elite from more diverse backgrounds.
aren’t particularly original or particularly Both Brzezinski, whose father was a
rare, but this book distinguishes itself Polish diplomat stranded in Canada by
by its literary quality and its intellectual the Nazi conquest of Poland and then
May/June 2018 197

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the Soviet-backed communist takeover and progressive one. His powerful

of 1945, and his friend and rival Henry articulation of a bipartisan approach to
Kissinger, whose family fled Nazi foreign affairs, summed up in his 1947
persecution in Germany, possessed a injunction to his fellow senators to
gift for strategic vision that few of their “stop partisan politics at the water’s
American-born contemporaries could edge,” sounds quaint today, but few
match. Into a foreign policy community doubt that a return to even a limited
increasingly composed of technocrats, bipartisan foreign policy consensus
political scientists, and area specialists, would strengthen the United States’
Brzezinski and Kissinger brought a more voice in world affairs.
generalist and historical perspective. Of
the two, Kissinger has always been the New World, Inc.: The Making of America
better known and the more controversial. by England’s Merchant Adventurers
Vaïsse’s evenhanded appraisal of Brzezin- BY JOHN BUTMAN AND SIMON
ski’s contributions to U.S. foreign policy TARGET T . Little, Brown, 2018,
will help redress the balance and will 432 pp.
introduce a new generation of readers
to a great American strategist. Americans, claim Butman and Targett
in this brisk and fascinating book,
Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the spend too much time thinking about
Middle of the American Century the Pilgrims and not enough time
BY HENDRIK MEIJER . University of thinking about the hardheaded busi-
Chicago Press, 2017, 448 pp. nessmen who did much more to found
the main English-speaking settlements
Until now, Republican Senator Arthur in what is now the United States. They
Vandenberg of Michigan has been best have a point. “I am not so simple to
known to students of U.S. foreign policy think,” wrote Jamestown’s Captain
through former Secretary of State Dean John Smith about England’s North
Acheson’s elegant, if acerbic, portrait of American possessions, that “any other
him as an isolationist blowhard seduced motive than wealth will ever erect
into supporting international engage- there a commonweal.” The settlers
ment after World War II by Acheson’s who founded Plymouth Colony were
flattery. Meijer’s biography punctures much less important than their legend
this caricature. Vandenberg, who had suggests. The more commercially
his full share of both the vices and the oriented settlements of Boston and
virtues of Midwestern Republicanism Massachusetts Bay soon eclipsed the
in the middle of the twentieth century, struggling Pilgrim community. By
will not be remembered as a great figure overemphasizing the idealists and
in U.S. history. But his evolution from ignoring the pragmatists and oppor-
a prewar isolationist to a committed tunists in American history, patriotic
Cold Warrior reflected the dramatic historians often mislead their audi-
changes in American thought that ences. But that isn’t the whole story;
enabled the United States to make the in the seventeenth century, as now,
post–World War II era such a peaceful people’s motives were often mixed.
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The Pilgrims were less otherworldly,

and adventurous merchants were less Western Hemisphere
cynical, than superficial observers
might conclude. Richard Feinberg
God’s Country: Christian Zionism in
America
BY SAMUEL GOLDMAN . University Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino
of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, 248 pp. Immigrant in the Trump Era
BY JORGE RAMOS . Vintage Books,
As the American Jewish community 2018, 224 pp.
grows increasingly divided over U.S.
policy toward Israel, much of the aca- Latinos in the United States: What
demic and policy focus has shifted to Everyone Needs to Know
the far larger number of American BY ILAN STAVANS . Oxford University
Christians who want the United States Press, 2018, 226 pp.
to pursue pro-Israel policies in the
R
Middle East. This study of the history amos, a Mexican immigrant and
of pro- and anti-Israel ideas among news anchor at Univision, writes
American Christians from the Colonial that the role of a journalist is to
period to the present day challenges the challenge the powerful and speak for
stereotypes that often distort discussions those without a voice. Thus, it was
of Christian Zionism and offers useful very much in character when, during
observations about one of the most the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, he
important political forces in American confronted the Republican candidate
life. It is not, Goldman points out, only Donald Trump over his anti-immigrant
fundamentalist and dispensationalist posture, before Trump had one of his
Christians who support Israel. Nor is security guards expel Ramos from the
Christian support for Israel solely the room. Ramos’ book pulls no punches,
product of a set of beliefs about Israel’s denouncing Trump for stirring up racism
role in the approach of Armageddon. to gain political power and for causing
Pro-Zionist positions are widely shared undocumented immigrants and their
across different strains of American families to live in constant fear. (Ramos
Christianity. Mormons, who most funda- also criticizes President Barack Obama
mentalists and dispensationalists dismiss for failing to advance immigration reform.)
as misguided heretics, are among Israel’s Despite the rise of Trump, Ramos remains
staunchest backers. And many of Israel’s an optimist, proud to live in a country
most prominent Christian supporters, of freedom and opportunity and confi-
including Martin Luther King, Jr., and dent that the coming demographic
the Protestant theologian Reinhold transformation—by 2044, Latinos will
Niebuhr, were neither fundamentalist make up a quarter of the U.S. popula-
nor conservative. tion—will push aside xenophobia in
favor of tolerance. Ramos fills out the
book with his ruminations on the
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immigrant experience: the challenges pursue the three interconnected goals

of reconciling multiple identities and of combating narcotics trafficking,
recalling fading memories. eliminating official corruption, and
In contrast to Ramos and his journal- reducing drug-related violence all at
istic activism, Stavans, a Jewish Mexican the same time. The conclusion he draws
immigrant, strives for an evenhanded, from his three detailed case studies, of
but still sympathetic, presentation of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, is that
the Latino experience. This breezy governments that launch all-out mili-
introduction to the topic, which takes tary campaigns provoke drug cartels to
the form of a series of questions and respond with their own brutal, escala-
answers, is stronger on cultural and tory attacks against the state, catching
linguistic matters than on socioeco- innocent bystanders in the crossfire.
nomic ones, and too often its language Such indiscriminate official crackdowns
is imprecise and its facts incorrect. (The are misconceived because, as Lessing
Mexican businessman Carlos Slim is points out, the cartels do not aim to
rich, but not the richest person in the usurp state power—they are not political
world, at least not anymore. The Cuban insurgents. They instead seek to dissuade
dictator Fulgencio Batista did not lose the state from using overwhelming
an election in 1952; he canceled it.) force to destroy them. A more rational
Nevertheless, Stavans provides a timely approach for governments, he argues, is
corrective to the degrading myths about to adopt policies, such as offering lower
Latinos peddled by many U.S. politicians, prison sentences and imposing more
Trump chief among them. Departing calculated levels of repression, that
from the neutral Q&A format in a give cartels incentives to behave more
passionate afterword, Stavans argues peacefully, even if that means tolerating
against the threatened deportation of drug trafficking and official corruption.
so-called Dreamers (young people
illegally brought to the United States Resisting War: How Communities Protect
as children). But he seems to disagree Themselves
with those advocates who would shield BY OLIVER KAPLAN . Cambridge
students from dissonant ideas for fear University Press, 2017, 376 pp.
of making them uncomfortable; rather,
he argues, teachers should broaden Caught in the crossfire between mili-
students’ perspectives on cultures other tant insurgents and government forces,
than their own and help them build unarmed civilians are often portrayed
their own defenses. as helpless. Kaplan rejects this idea and
finds that under certain circumstances,
Making Peace in Drug Wars: Crackdowns local communities can protect their
and Cartels in Latin America members from civil strife. He bases
BY BENJAMIN LESSING . Cambridge his hopeful conclusion primarily on his
University Press, 2017, 354 pp. extensive field research in rural Colom-
bia; using secondary sources, he also
In this ambitious study, Lessing argues finds local islands of peaceful civilian
that governments cannot successfully autonomy within conflict zones in
Recent Books
Afghanistan, the Philippines, and economy in 1999 and then forced the
Syria—suggesting that even in extreme oligarchs to pay taxes, saved the wind-
circumstances, civilians can organize to fall from soaring oil profits (and later
keep themselves safe. Successful strate- used it to weather successive financial
gies include building early warning crises), paid off Russia’s debts, tamed
systems to allow people to escape the inflation, and presided over rapid growth
fighting, opening dialogues with armed (fueled not only by oil profits but also
groups, and threatening to publicize by increased productivity). Russia, Miller
acts of extreme violence. To discourage argues, has a dual economy: one portion
retaliation, communities must avoid dominated by corrupt and inefficient
openly sympathizing with one side or state-owned enterprises, the other driven
the other. So Kaplan warns U.S. policy- by a widening range of efficient and
makers against counterinsurgency or innovative private companies. He
democracy-promotion strategies that sketches a “hierarchy of Putinomics”:
could put the intended beneficiaries at “first, political control; second, social
risk by undermining their claims to stability; third, efficiency and profit.”
neutrality. The first two objectives are within
reach, but the system’s inability to
properly fund the country’s health-care
and educational systems, fight corrup-
Eastern Europe and Former tion, or establish the rule of law threat-
Soviet Republics ens to sacrifice the third.
Peacemakers: American Leadership and the

Robert Legvold End of Genocide in the Balkans
BY JAMES W. PARDEW . University
Press of Kentucky, 2017, 424 pp.
Putinomics: Power and Money in
Resurgent Russia Pardew was at the center of the U.S.
BY CHRIS MILLER . University of diplomatic intervention in the former
North Carolina Press, 2018, 240 pp. Yugoslavia from the time of the 1995
Dayton peace accords, which ended the
M
iller challenges the popular Bosnian war and the accompanying
notion that Russian Presi- genocide, to Kosovo’s independence, in
dent Vladimir Putin’s entire 2008. As a diplomat, he played a key
talent lies in using corruption to sustain role in rebuilding the Bosnian military
a kleptocratic authoritarian regime. Putin after the war; in negotiating the Ohrid
and his loyalists certainly are corrupt, but Agreement in 2001, which averted a civil
he and the liberal technocratic economic war in Macedonia; and in the failed effort
team on which he relies have also skill- to avoid the 1998–99 Kosovo war. He
fully managed Russia’s economic for- provides a compelling, detailed account
tunes. As Miller recounts in this short of the diplomatic give-and-take with
and admirably clear book, Putin took wily Balkan leaders (none more so than
over a debt-ridden, revenue-starved Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic),
May/June 2018 201

Recent Books
debates among Western negotiators, and ending with the final Soviet offensive
the crosscutting pressures from Brussels of 1944–45. His account of this last
and Washington. His portrait of Richard nightmare is specific and personal.
Holbrooke, the controversial but skilled There are moments of humanity in the
American diplomat, at work during the story, but they appear only as bright
Dayton negotiations is particularly specks in a very dark stone.
powerful. Pardew puts the reader in the
room during his encounters with several My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret
major actors, including Milosevic, both in Police File
Holbrooke’s company and, later, alone. He BY KATHERINE VERDERY . Duke
acknowledges some of the shortcomings University Press, 2018, 344 pp.
of Washington’s policies in the Balkans,
but he makes a strong case that U.S. From 1973 to 1988, Verdery, an anthro-
diplomacy ended the Bosnian genocide pologist, spent a total of nearly four years
and prevented further bloodshed. conducting field research in Nicolae
Ceausescu’s Romania. Over that time,
Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Romania’s security service amassed an
Death of a Town Called Buczacz impressive file on her, totaling 2,781
BY OMER BARTOV . Simon & pages in eight volumes. She got ahold
Schuster, 2018, 416 pp. of it in 2008 and has spent much of the
time since then dealing with its impact
In this wrenching but beautiful history, on her. The resulting book is an extraor-
Bartov follows the Jews of Buczacz, an dinary exploration of her research,
eastern Galician town in what is now reexperienced through the eyes of those
Ukraine, from the sixteenth century to who surveilled her. Believing her to be
World War II. The Jews were welcomed a spy, the security services built up a
when they arrived in the area and pros- wildly distorted picture of her, which
pered for many years. But they suffered she terms her “doppelgänger.” Rather
their first mass slaughter during a Cossack than reflexively dismiss this double, she
and peasant uprising in 1648. The next agonizes over its reality, its challenge to
massacre took place three decades later, her identity, and its implications for her
at the hands of Ottoman forces. Despite profession. The most dramatic portion
these atrocities, the Jews remained a of the book centers on her struggle to
dominant group within the town’s elite. understand those who informed on her,
Partly for that reason, they were almost particularly those she counted as close
never free from the resentment and friends, a few of whom she has confronted
enmity of their Polish and Ukrainian face to face. Coming from such a distin-
neighbors. At the heart of the book are guished academic, Verdery’s brutally
the tragic events of the twentieth century. honest description of herself, including
Bartov recounts the fate of the Jews as as a naive and careless young scholar, is
German and Russian troops marauded stunning. Few books reflect so frankly
through their town in World War I and so powerfully on the nature and
and during the successive German and complications of an academic career.
Soviet invasions of World War II,
Recent Books
Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes From on Russia’s relations with four areas of
the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine southeastern Europe: the post-Yugoslav
BY LYNNE VIOLA . Oxford University republics, Bulgaria and Romania,
Press, 2017, 304 pp. Greece and Cyprus, and Turkey. Russia’s
engagement with those countries has
The story of Stalin’s terror is well little to do with Slavic identity or a desire
known, except for one dimension: the to fulfill imperialist dreams. Instead,
fate of those among the tormentors who its approach is highly pragmatic and
were themselves swept into the meat focused on dealmaking, particularly on
grinder. This “purge of the purgers,” as energy. The other countries are playing
Viola terms it, came after Stalin called the same game. Moscow is eager to
off the Great Terror in 1938. Those who increase its influence and, especially
had carried out the two mass operations at the moment, to damage that of the
in 1937–38 against former “kulaks” (sup- West, but in the end, the Kremlin is
posedly well-off peasants), foreigners, and mindful that these countries are in
“anti-Soviet” and “socially dangerous” Europe’s backyard, not its own. The
elements—sending almost 1.5 million concluding portion of the book focuses
people to either the gulag or execution— on three critical dimensions of Russia’s
were themselves put on trial. In 1939, approach to the region: security rela-
nearly a thousand of them were arrested; tions, particularly with NATO members;
many were subjected to torture—the the ups and downs of energy projects;
very crime for which a lot of them were and the nature and use of its soft power.
being tried. After elaborate trials, they
were either sentenced to death or the
gulag or sent to the front during World Middle East
War II. Viola draws from Ukraine’s secret
police archives—which, unlike Russia’s, John Waterbury
are open—to detail how the accused
defended themselves, the testimony
against them, and the outcomes. As well
as lifting the cover from this less well- We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled:
known part of the story, Viola explains in Voices From Syria
great detail the interaction between what BY WENDY PEARLMAN . Custom
was commanded from above and what House, 2017, 352 pp.
flowed from forces at the ground level.
T
his collection of hundreds of
Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe excerpts from interviews of
BY DIMITAR BECHEV . Yale refugees who have fled the
University Press, 2017, 320 pp. violence that has gripped Syria since
2011 makes for sickening, although
Bechev introduces a sophisticated and unsurprising, reading. The brutality,
cool-headed corrective to the crude greed, and cynicism of the leading actors
image of Russian foreign policy favored led one refugee to say, “I’ve reached a
by much of the Western press. He focuses point in my life where I hate everything.
May/June 2018 203

Recent Books
I am disgusted by humanity.” Another, the transition easier. So can governments,

contemplating the rise of al Qaeda and by improving Internet access for women,
the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), promoting education, providing more
explained, “You are in dire need for a public transport, reforming workplace
narrative that can justify the futility.” rules, and more.
The excerpts follow the major stages
of the violence as experienced by the Iraq and the Politics of Oil: An Insider’s
refugees: the peaceful revolution, the Perspective
government’s violent response, the meat BY GARY VOGLER . University Press
grinder of aerial assault and prison torture, of Kansas, 2017, 318 pp.
the flight abroad, and the process of
starting anew. The observations of Assad Vogler, a former ExxonMobil executive,
supporters, religious extremists, and recounts the seven years he spent on
members of foreign proxies, such as and off in Iraq between 2003 and 2015
Hezbollah, are missing. But that is working to rebuild the oil sector. Most
unsurprising: refugees are not likely of the book deals with his on-the-ground
to be loyalists. experiences, offering considerable detail
about the main Iraqi and foreign actors,
Fifty Million Rising: The New Generation but it ends on a more provocative note.
of Working Women Transforming the By 2014, Vogler had become convinced
Muslim World that the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was
BY SAADIA ZAHIDI . Nation Books, driven in large part by a plan worked up
2018, 288 pp. by Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi
National Congress, and a cluster of
Between 2000 and 2015, 50 million neoconservative policymakers in the Bush
Muslim women joined the global work administration. The aim of the plan was
force, raising the total to 150 million, with to reopen a pipeline from Kirkuk, in Iraq,
a combined income of $1 trillion. Zahidi, to Haifa, in Israel, that had been closed
a member of the Executive Committee since Israel’s founding in 1948 and which
of the World Economic Forum, is one would provide Israel with a major source
of them. In this lucid presentation, she of oil and substantial transit fees. Ulti-
draws on 200 interviews to depict an mately, this quixotic scheme never saw
inexorable march forward for Muslim the light of day. The most likely explana-
women, who are set to make up over 30 tion is that the White House viewed it as
percent of the global Muslim work force a possible dividend of the invasion, but
by 2030. Zahidi feels no need to mount not as a major impetus for going to war.
an Islamic defense of women’s right to
work and argues that for now, Muslim The Muslim Brotherhood and the West: A
women should avoid directly confront- History of Enmity and Engagement
ing the patriarchy. For a time, they will BY MARTYN F RAMP TON . Belknap
have to do it all: absorb most of the Press, 2018, 672 pp.
domestic work and master the job market.
The Internet, the gig economy, and the Frampton exhaustively chronicles the
traditional extended family can all make history of the Muslim Brotherhood
Recent Books
from its founding in 1928 to the Arab was completed in 1980, when, after
Spring of 2011. Before the 1970s, the decades of gradually increasing its
West viewed Islam as a spent force, influence over the company, the
but then in the middle of that decade, government acquired the entire firm.
militant jihadists became active in In the resulting arrangement, Aramco
Egypt, and in 1979, the Islamic Repub- owned the expertise, but the kingdom
lic of Iran was born. Subsequently, owned the oil it produced. Throughout
Western governments saw Islam as an Aramco’s history, Saudi Arabia has
integral part of politics, but they never always found a way to make money
solved the riddle of how to embrace it, selling oil, shape world petroleum
and the United States never broke with prices, and avoid lasting confrontation
any of its more secular authoritarian with the United States. Even the 1973
allies. As Frampton demonstrates, the embargo of oil exports to the United
United Kingdom and the United States States, imposed by the Arab members
never treated the Brotherhood as more of OPEC in retaliation for U.S. support
than a possible tactical ally in the strug- of Israel during the Yom Kippur War,
gle against communism or as a bulwark did not do long-term damage to the
against more extreme forms of Islam. U.S.-Saudi alliance.
There were exceptions, such as the
British historian H. A. R. Gibb, who
preferred the Brotherhood to military Asia and Pacific
dictators in Egypt, but they were few
and far between. Despite what many Andrew J. Nathan
Egyptians believe, there is little evidence
that the United States has actively sought
to bring the Brotherhood to power.
Authoritarian Advance: Responding to
Saudi, Inc.: The Arabian Kingdom’s China’s Growing Political Influence in Europe
Pursuit of Profit and Power BY THORSTEN BENNER, JAN
BY ELLEN R. WALD . Pegasus Books, GASPERS, MAREIKE OHLBERG,
2018, 448 pp. LUCREZIA POGGET TI, AND
KRISTIN SHI-KUPF ER. Global Public
Wald has written a competent history Policy Institute and Mercator Institute
of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company for China Studies, 2018, 53 pp.
(Saudi Aramco) and of how the House
T
of Saud came to dominate the Arabian his pathbreaking report investi-
Peninsula in the 1920s. The book is gates the ways in which China
built on interviews, U.S. government seeks to shape politics and
records, and the work of other histori- public opinion in Europe. The Chinese
ans, but not Saudi Aramco’s archives. Communist Party uses governmental
Its most original parts deal with the and ostensibly private wealth in overt
Saudi government’s “long game” to gain and covert ways to influence political
full control of Aramco while avoiding and economic elites, the media and
outright nationalization. That project public opinion, and civil society and
May/June 2018 205

Recent Books
academia. Some European states have argues that today’s bipolar system differs
begun to adopt a stance of “preemptive from that of the Cold War because of
obedience” to Chinese interests on geographic differences between Europe
issues such as human rights. The authors and Asia. Chinese and U.S. forces do
name some of China’s “willing enablers,” not face each other on land, the way
including former British Prime Minister that Soviet and U.S. forces did, so
David Cameron, who took a post with Tunsjo considers a direct superpower
a Chinese-sponsored infrastructure confrontation less likely than it was
investment fund after leaving office, during the Cold War. Proxy wars are
and former French Prime Minister also less likely, because China’s security
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who accepted a concerns are primarily regional rather
role in a Chinese cultural-exchange than global. But he sees a high risk of
foundation. To protect the integrity of conflict in maritime East Asia, where
Western systems without violating their today’s superpowers both have vital
character as liberal democracies, the interests. His views provide valuable
report recommends screening Chinese nuance for the growing number of
investments, banning foreign support analysts who are worried about the
for political parties, providing help to strategic implications of China’s rise.
poorer EU members that are vulnerable
to Chinese financial pressure, and pro- Making Money: How Taiwanese
moting transparency for universities, Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy
media organizations, and politicians BY GARY G. HAMILTON AND
that accept Chinese support. The report CHENG-SHU KAO . Stanford
also covers similar patterns in Australia University Press, 2017, 320 pp.
and New Zealand, where Chinese influ-
ence efforts are even more advanced, One crucial element of Taiwan’s eco-
and in the United States, where they nomic success, which began in the
are expanding rapidly. 1960s—and equally of its economic
slowdown, which started in the 1990s—
The Return of Bipolarity in World was the agility of its small and medium-
Politics: China, the United States, and sized “contract manufacturers,” firms that
Geostructural Realism produce consumer products for U.S.
BY OYSTEIN TUNSJO. Columbia brands such as Apple and Timberland
University Press, 2018, 288 pp. but have no brand names of their own.
By studying the Taiwanese entrepreneurs
Tunsjo challenges the prevailing view who built these firms, Hamilton and Kao
of U.S.-Chinese relations, arguing that shed light on the relationship between
even though China is not the military globalization and the Asian economic
or economic equal of the United States, miracle. These entrepreneurs sprang
it is powerful enough to serve as what out of the countryside in response to
theorists call a second “pole” in the inter- the needs of the growing U.S. consumer
national system. That makes today’s market. They drew on family and social
international system not multipolar, as networks for capital, labor, and parts
most analysts believe, but bipolar. But he suppliers and to help organize production.
Whether making cell phones or footwear,

the best of these firms have adjusted to
changing market conditions, repeatedly
innovating their product lines and produc-
tion methods. This was a boon for Taiwan.
But as the island developed, the costs
of labor and parts went up, and many
Taiwanese entrepreneurs moved their
production to China. (Some firms are The Internship
now leaving China for Southeast Asia Program
and even, in some cases, the United
States.) As these companies departed, The Council on Foreign Relations is seek-
ing talented individuals who are consider-
the Taiwanese economy slowed. Never- ing a career in international relations.
theless, Taiwanese-owned firms remain
Interns are recruited year-round on a semester
among the top contract manufacturers basis to work in both the New York City and
in the world. Washington, D.C., offices. An intern’s duties
generally consist of administrative work,
India Turns East: International editing and writing, and event coordination.
Engagement and US-China Rivalry The Council considers both undergraduate
and graduate students with majors in Interna-
BY F RÉDÉRIC GRARE . Oxford
tional Relations, Political Science, Economics,
University Press, 2017, 280 pp. or a related field for its internship program.
A regional specialization and language skills
Since the early 1990s, most Indian strate- may also be required for some positions. In
gists have viewed China as their coun- addition to meeting the intellectual require-
try’s main security threat. One result ments, applicants should have excellent
skills in administration, writing, and re-
has been New Delhi’s cooperation with search, and a command of word processing,
Washington—halting and ambivalent spreadsheet applications, and the Internet.
though it is. Less well known is India’s To apply for an internship, please send a
Look East Policy, formally adopted in résumé and cover letter including the se-
1992, by which New Delhi has sought mester, days, and times available to work
to increase its economic, diplomatic, to the Internship Coordinator in the Hu-
man Resources Office at the address listed
and security ties with countries and below. Please refer to the Council’s Web
institutions in East Asia and Southeast site for specific opportunities. The Coun-
Asia. This useful survey finds that the cil is an equal opportunity employer.
policy has generated a number of joint
declarations but only modest programs of
defense cooperation, intelligence sharing,
and arms sales with partners such as
Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam. India
signed a free-trade agreement with the Council on Foreign Relations
Human Resources Office
Association of Southeast Asian Nations 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065
and pivoted from suspicion of to engage- tel: 212.434 . 9400 fax: 212.434 . 9893
ment with ASEAN’s associated institutions. humanresources@cfr.org http://www.cfr.org
But India’s attempts to strengthen ties
207
Recent Books
with Australia and Myanmar have been

hampered by both countries’ reluctance End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian
to antagonize China. Indeed, India itself Revival Is Undermining Its Rise
does not want to confront China. Grare BY CARL MINZNER . Oxford
cautions that the Look East Policy does University Press, 2018, 296 pp.
not offer the congruence with U.S.
strategies that some Washington policy- As Xi Jinping embarks on his second
makers like to imagine. five-year term as China’s top leader,
Minzner delivers a withering assess-
ment of his first one, in a well-informed
China’s Eurasian Century? Political contribution to the flourishing declinist
and Strategic Implications of the Belt and school of China analysis. Over the last
Road Initiative five years, Xi has intensified his retreat
BY NADÈG E ROLLAND . National from reform. A reversal of economic
Bureau of Asian Research, 2017, 208 pp. liberalization has led to widening income
inequality, calcifying class lines, and an
Billions of dollars are flowing out of economic slowdown. Instead of advancing
China, as part of the country’s Belt and fairness in the legal system and transpar-
Road Initiative, to build ports, railways, ency in media, Xi has tightened social
roads, pipelines, and telecommunications control so that grievances intensify without
facilities across the Eurasian land mass finding outlets other than Internet rants,
(the “belt”) and along the coast of the mob violence, and illegal protests. State
Indian Ocean (the “road”). The physical control of religion drives many believers
infrastructure undergirds growing trade, into underground sects. By concentrating
financial, academic, and political networks. an unprecedented amount of power in
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rhetoric himself, Xi is destroying hard-won rules
about a wealthy China giving back to of the political game that contributed
the world and win-win cooperation is to regime stability. All this repression
not without foundation, as hungry govern- breeds resistance, and resistance breeds
ments, not just in the developing world further repression, in a cycle that
but also in Europe, gratefully soak up Minzner predicts will end badly.
Chinese investments. But Rolland’s helpful
survey reveals the initiative’s strategic China as a Polar Great Power
motives, which include providing outlets BY ANNE-MARIE BRADY . Cambridge
for China’s excess production capacity and University Press, 2017, 290 pp.
generating a Eurasian center of gravity
as a counterweight to U.S. influence in In this study of China’s efforts to become
maritime Asia. Rolland speculates that the only nation other than the United
Xi’s long-term vision is to create a world States capable of operating comprehen-
order in which Western-style rule of law sively in both the Arctic and Antarctica,
and democracy promotion are replaced Brady opens up a new frontier of insight
by deference to Chinese interests and the into an area of international relations
international application of Chinese all but ignored by Western scholarship.
“stability maintenance” techniques. She draws on a wide range of Chinese
sources to offer eye-opening revelations

about China’s burgeoning polar activi-
ties. Beijing regards the polar regions as
vital domains for fishing and shipping
and hopes to exploit their rich reserves
of energy and minerals. It also plans to DIRECTORY
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ties. Yet as a component of an ambitious
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provides the best place to start for under-
standing the genesis, motivations, and Advertise in Foreign Affairs
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Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica
www.fal.itam.mx
Congo’s Violent Peace: Conflict and E-MAIL: fal@itam.mx
Struggle Since the Great African War
BY KRIS BERWOUTS . University of Rossia v Globalnoi Politike
Chicago Press, 2017, 256 pp. (Russian)
www.globalaffairs.ru
B
E-MAIL: globalaffairs@mtu-net.ru
erwouts’ savvy history explores
how the Democratic Republic of Foreign Affairs Report (Japanese)
the Congo has changed since the www.foreignaffairsj.co.jp
official end of the war that devastated E-MAIL: general@foreignaffairsj.co.jp
the country from the late 1990s to the
early years of this century. Recent analyses
of Congo have tended to discuss either
the political dynamics in the capital or
209
Recent Books
the persistent outbreaks of ethnic specific officers or policies. Dwyer

violence and human rights abuses in suggests that two factors have increased
the country’s east, with its complex and the frequency of mutinies in recent years.
ever-changing array of armed groups. First, the democratization of several
Berwouts shows how the two are linked. countries in the region has spurred all
Local ethnic conflicts over land and Africans to voice public grievances, and
resources have been exacerbated by a soldiers are no exception. Second, she
combination of neglect and short-term finds that mutinies are more likely in
political manipulation by the Congolese armies that are involved in international
state. Other countries in the region, peacekeeping operations, because the
mostly notably Rwanda, have also stirred extra pay they entail generates greater
up trouble. The predatory, although inequality between ranks and because
largely incompetent, regime of Presi- they present substantially more risk to
dent Joseph Kabila has survived for 17 individual soldiers, which makes them
years but failed to build a state capable more likely to question the military
of promoting development or stabilizing hierarchy.
the eastern provinces. Berwouts ends with
a pessimistic review of recent popular The Next Factory of the World: How
protests over Kabila’s attempts to grant Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa
himself a third term without holding BY IRENE YUAN SUN . Harvard
elections. Today, Berwouts believes, Business Review Press, 2017, 224 pp.
Congo is once again facing a descent
into violence. This book is short on hard data and long
on generalizations, but it is nonetheless
Soldiers in Revolt: Army Mutinies in Africa worth reading because it expresses a
BY MAGGIE DWYER . Oxford popular argument: that China’s growing
University Press, 2018, 256 pp. commercial interest in Africa is funda-
mentally altering the continent’s business
Most of the literature on African climate and creating the possibility of a
militaries focuses either on the officers manufacturing revolution there. Sun is
or on the relationship between the brass not concerned with the substantial deals
and civilian politicians. Dwyer’s compel- that the Chinese state has brokered with
ling study of mutinies in West Africa, the governments of oil-rich countries, such
which are growing increasingly common, as Angola. Instead, she focuses on the
is welcome because it concentrates on many Chinese entrepreneurs who are
the rank and file and noncommissioned undertaking smaller ventures in Ethiopia,
officers, the groups that are most likely Kenya, Lesotho, and Nigeria. She argues
to rebel. She shows that insurrections that independent Chinese investors are
follow a different logic from coups, as spearheading the current rapid economic
mutinies are not typically motivated by growth in those countries thanks to a
a desire for regime change. Instead, willingness to take risks that Western
soldiers start them to make demands businesses will not. Yet although she tells
about their material conditions and revealing anecdotes about individual firms,
communicate their unhappiness with she never provides the kind of systematic
Recent Books
data that would make her case convincing. of slavery. There are more readable
The book is also frustratingly silent on introductions to the region’s history, but
what Chinese investors have done to none that is better informed.
overcome high labor costs and poor
infrastructure, the main constraints on the Building a Capable State: Service Delivery
competitiveness of African manufacturing. in Post-Apartheid South Africa
BY IAN PALMER, SUSAN PARNELL,
African Dominion: A New History of AND NISHENDRA MOODLEY .
Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa University of Chicago Press, 2017,
BY MICHAEL A. GOMEZ . Princeton 320 pp.
University Press, 2018, 520 pp.
During apartheid, South Africa built
For a long time, Western historians local administrations that delivered social
downplayed the influence that West services at First World levels to the small
Africa’s precolonial political traditions white minority, even as they ignored the
have had on the region’s modern culture, large black majority. The challenge after
economics, and politics. Even today, apartheid ended, in 1994, was to extend
scholars’ understanding of the great the same quality and quantity of services
West African medieval states remains to the entire population. This lucid and
hampered by weak and sometimes detailed review of local administrations
contradictory evidence, essentially since then argues that they have made a
limited to a small number of Arab great deal of progress in housing, public
sources, some complementary Portu- transportation, and sanitation. (Local
guese and Spanish material, and what’s governments are not responsible for
left of an important oral tradition. The education and health, so the authors pay
earliest and most powerful of the king- little attention to those areas.) The book
doms that emerged in West Africa, based depicts an impressive level of pragma-
on trading networks along the Niger and tism, dedication, and vision among
Senegal Rivers, were the Ghana, Mali, the decision-makers who achieved this
and Songhai empires, which dominated progress. But, the authors argue, officials
the region in succession from the eighth have not done enough to address major
century to the sixteenth century. Gomez’s problems of racial and geographic
ambitious new study uses the available inequality. And the authors’ overall
evidence to construct a remarkably optimism is tempered by their worries
detailed understanding of the rise and fall about the corruption of President Jacob
of these empires. His book is particularly Zuma’s administration; completing this
cogent on the cultural, political, and unfinished agenda is now up to Zuma’s
administrative lineages that linked them; successor, Cyril Ramaphosa.∂
the growth of Islam; and the institution
Foreign Affairs (ISSN 00157120), May/June 2018, Volume 97, Number 3. Published six times annually (January, March, May, July,
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May/June 2018 211

Has Democracy Lost Its Appeal?

Foreign Affairs Brain Trust
We asked dozens of experts whether they agreed or disagreed that democracy has lost its global appeal.
The results from those who responded are below:
15
10
STRONGLY DISAGREE NEUTRAL AGREE STRONGLY

DISAGREE AGREE
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 7 AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Steven Levitsky Julianne Smith

Professor of Government, Senior Fellow, Center for a New
Harvard University American Security
“Democracy never had quite the global appeal “People in multiple democratic systems around
that many believed it to have in the 1990s, and the the world are losing faith in their governments’
decline is not as steep as many now claim. The ability to deliver both economically and
West has lost some appeal, and liberalism has lost politically, which is fueling populism.”
some appeal, but competitive electoral politics still
appeal to many citizens across much of the globe.”
See the full responses at ForeignAffairs.com/DemocracyLosingAppeal

Master of Arts in
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
at Chapman University educates global citizens who value their
interconnectedness to all peoples in the world. Our program
prepares students to respond to the multifaceted challenges of
globalization and pursue the prevention and resolution of conflict.
The International Studies program is interdisciplinary, rooted in the
liberal arts, and emphasizes knowledge under-girded by values.
Master of Arts in
WAR AND SOCIETY
at Chapman University is the nation’s newest, and most
unique, premier graduate-level program for studying the global
interrelationships between war and societies in the modern era.
Our program combines traditional graduate-level education
with career enhancement opportunities for educators,
professionals, and policy specialists. At Chapman, you will
establish an intellectual foundation for interpreting the problems
of war like nowhere else in the nation.
One University Drive, Orange, California 92866 chapman.edu/ForeignAffairs


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What are some of the challenges facing democracies discussed in the document?

What are some of the challenges facing democracies discussed in the document?

РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.

BILL GATES: THE GENE-EDITING REVOLUTION

Volume 97, Number 3

The Age of Insecurity 20

The End of the Democratic Century 29

Autocracy With Chinese Characteristics 39

Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution 49

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The Right Way to Coerce North Korea 87

Perception and Misperception on the Korean Peninsula 103

Opioids of the Masses 118

Globalization Is Not in Retreat 130

Where Myanmar Went Wrong 141

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THE GENE-EDITING REVOLUTION

Gene Editing for Good 166

Keep CRISPR Safe 171

The New Killer Pathogens 178

REVIEWS & RESPONSES

Recent Books 191

May/June 2018 · Volume 97, Number 3

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