Week: Expert Opinion

Posts from our partners at Project Syndicate and guest writers

Egypt’s Innocent Murderers

Tahrir Square at night.
Tahrir Square, 3 June 2012. Photo: Jonathan Rashad/flickr.

CAIRO – “Bashar should abandon power and retire safely in Egypt. The general-prosecutor is murder-friendly,” a friend, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told me as we watched former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s trial in the Police Academy’s criminal court. Although Mubarak and his interior (security) minister, Habib al-Adly, were handed life sentences at the conclusion of their trials, the generals who ran Egypt’s apparatus of repression as deputy interior ministers were acquitted.

Hasan Abd al-Rahman, head of the notorious, Stasi-like State Security Investigations (SSI); Ahmad Ramzi, head of the Central Security Forces (CSF); Adly Fayyid, the head of Public Security; Ismail al-Shaer, who led the Cairo Security Directorate (CSD); Osama Youssef, the head of the Giza Security Directorate; and Omar Faramawy, who oversaw of the 6th of October Security Directorate, were all cleared of any wrongdoing. Lawyers for Mubarak and al-Adly will appeal their life-sentences, and many Egyptians believe that they will receive lighter sentences.

Continue reading “Egypt’s Innocent Murderers”

Green from the Grassroots

Aerial view of the Amazon Rainforest
Aerial view of the Amazon Rainforest. Photo: CIFOR/flickr.

BLOOMINGTON – Much is riding on the United Nations Rio+20 summit. Many are billing it as Plan A for Planet Earth and want leaders bound to a single international agreement to protect our life-support system and prevent a global humanitarian crisis.

Inaction in Rio would be disastrous, but a single international agreement would be a grave mistake. We cannot rely on singular global policies to solve the problem of managing our common resources: the oceans, atmosphere, forests, waterways, and rich diversity of life that combine to create the right conditions for life, including seven billion humans, to thrive.

We have never had to deal with problems of the scale facing today’s globally interconnected society. No one knows for sure what will work, so it is important to build a system that can evolve and adapt rapidly.

Decades of research demonstrate that a variety of overlapping policies at city, subnational, national, and international levels is more likely to succeed than are single, overarching binding agreements. Such an evolutionary approach to policy provides essential safety nets should one or more policies fail.

Continue reading “Green from the Grassroots”

When Democracies Collide

Foto oficial de la Cumbre de Líderes del G-20
The G-20 leaders at Cannes, France, in November 2011. Photo: Gobierno Federal/flickr.

BERLIN – The multipolar nature of today’s international system will again be on display at the upcoming G-20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. Global problems are no longer solved, crises managed, or global rules defined, let alone implemented, the old-fashioned way, by a few, mostly Western, powers. Incipient great and middle powers, such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and South Africa, also demand their say.

Some of these powers are still emerging economies. Politically, however, most of them have crossed the threshold that has long limited their access to the kitchen of international decision-making. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the “P-5”) still defend their right to veto resolutions, and their military power is unmatched. But they can no longer dispose of sufficient resources, competence, and legitimacy to cope with global challenges or crises on their own.

Continue reading “When Democracies Collide”

The Triumph of Politics in Europe

A European flag and a Greek flag
Will Europe's politicians save the Euro? Photo: YoungJ523/flickr

MADRID – Economics, particularly economic theories, always yield in the end to political imperatives. That is why Europe’s fast-changing political landscape, reshaped by electoral insurrections in France and Greece against German-backed fiscal austerity, is bound to affect Europe’s economic policies as well.

Such an imperative has been at work throughout Europe’s postwar history. Indeed, Europe’s shift from the modest customs union of the European Economic Community to the single market and common currency of today’s European Monetary Union was itself a fundamentally political move, one with strategic implications, of course. France wanted to tame German power by harnessing it to the European project, and Germany was prepared to sacrifice the Deutsche Mark for the sake of France’s acceptance of a united Germany, the nightmare of Europe’s recent past.

An economically robust Germany is, without doubt, vital to the European project, if only because history has shown how dangerous an unhappy Germany can be. Indeed, it was thanks to the euro – and the captive European market that goes with it – that Germany today is the world’s second-leading exporter (China surpassed it in 2009).

Continue reading “The Triumph of Politics in Europe”

Argentina’s Energy Dilemma

The Repsol-YPF Tower in Argentina
The Repsol-YPF Tower in Argentina. Image by Wikimedia Commons.

BUENOS AIRES – The expropriation of nearly all of the Spanish company Repsol’s stake in Argentina’s energy producer YPF, announced in a vehement speech by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has raised legal alarms worldwide. In fact, the move will not resolve the country’s energy problems in the absence of enormous inflows of investment to the sector.

Repsol acquired complete control of YPF in 1999; in February 2008, it transferred part of its shares to the Petersen Group, which today holds 25%. Repsol currently holds 57%, with the rest owned by stock-market investors. The Argentine government intends to expropriate 51%, leaving Repsol with a 6% stake.

In the 2008 sale of shares, the two majority stockholders agreed to distribute at least 90% of future profits in cash. That decision was intended to allow the Petersen Group to service the debts to banks, and to Repsol itself, that it incurred with its share purchase, for which it made no initial payment.

Continue reading “Argentina’s Energy Dilemma”