geopolitics

12 May 2017

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The Economist’s “A growing share of aid is spent by private firms, not charities” is worth reading as it crunches US and UK aid data to put numbers behind this trend: 25% of USAID and 22% of DFID spending went to private firms in 2016, both on the rise. The drivers behind this growth are: a shift from project-delivery to system-shaping requiring technical advice that firms are best equipped to provide; a “doing more with less” aid culture leading to more outsourcing; and private contractors’ ability to quickly match time-bound freelancer teams with complex development problems. Private contracts are also getting bigger leading to the market concentration of contractors and a growing number of consortium where small fish are used as “bid candy” by lead contractors. The Economist documents some of problems associated with these trends including higher delivery costs and risks of frauds, calling for aid agencies to take a close look at their bidding and contract practices.

WFP’s “At the root of exodus” puts numbers on the food/conflict/migration nexus. It models data from 88 countries with negative net migration and 178 countries with outflow of refugees during 1990-2015. It shows that the number of people migrating increases by 1.9% for each percent increase in the number of food-insecure people, and by 0.4% for each additional year of conflict. It also shows that migration can increase food insecurity both for those leaving and those staying behind, and that food insecurity is a significant determinant of the incidence and intensity of armed conflict. The study complements these findings with qualitative data collected through focus group discussions with 231 migrants from 10 countries in Greece, Italy, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, and validated via 570 household phone surveys in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Once on the move, food and economic security are key determinants of whether people keep going or settle. Half of Syrians interviewed in Jordan and Lebanon want to move elsewhere while only a quarter of those in Turkey plan to.

My visual this week is from the Developing Human Connectome Project which just released its first open access data. The EU-funded project aims at creating 3D brain maps of fetuses and newborns to understand how the human brain develops and what triggers certain afflictions like autism. Adult brain maps already exists. So these guys are focusing on the 20-44 weeks post-conception window, and doing MRIs on hundreds of babies in the womb.

My quote this week is from Eurasia Ian Bremmer’s “The wave to come”: “Nationalism is alive and well, partly because the problems that provoked it are still with us. […] Now here’s the really bad news: an even larger crisis is coming. The popular fury convulsing Europe and the U.S. may well spill over into the rest of the world. Just as the financial crisis, which began in the West, produced rumbling aftershocks around the globe, so the nationalist explosion will rattle the politics of countries on every continent.”

5 May 2017

Posted on May 5, 2017 Leave a Comment

The Financial Times Foreign Affairs chief Gideon Rachman published “Easternization: Asia’s rise and America’s decline from Obama to Trump and beyond”. I have not read the book but this interview gives the gist of the argument. It is not new, it strengthens the message around a trend that many have documented. What was interesting to me was Jessica Mathews saying that she was not convinced because (i) global leadership takes more than global economic (and even military) power; (ii) China has to balance between global, regional and national hot issues; and (iii) there are other forces in “the East”, such as the rise of India, that are still looking West. And what was equally interesting was to read, in parallel, Danny Quah’s (Eastern?) perspective. In “Can Asia lead the world?”, Quah agrees that it takes more than a growing economic, military and population footprint to lead globally. He argues that Asia’s leadership strategy should focus on soft power and that its driving values could be different from liberal democracy. Ultimately, he says that Asia will only be able to lead if it has a story. For him, that vision does not exist, yet.

Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson’s “Writing that works” is the book I recommended when a colleague asked me for guidance on improving writing skills. I love that book. It identifies the most common writing weaknesses and gives specific tips that you can use to practice, practice, and practice until you get it right. I don’t, so I go back to it regularly and am never disappointed. They give guidance on how to write memos that get things done, plans that make things happen, proposals that sell ideas, and resumes that get interviews. It is a good way to spend 11 dollars. At one point, I also had Josh Bernoff’s “10 top writing tips and the psychology behind them” pasted on the wall next to my desk so that I could check it from time to time. I should put it back.

My graph of the week is from NYU Center on International Cooperation’s Global Peace Operational Review which, among other things, tracks the new Secretary-General (SG)’s senior appointments (USG and ASG) throughout the system by gender and nationality. 17 male vs 14 female so far in 2017. That’s for his new appointees. Overall, at this level, the situation today is 71% male vs 29% female. Not great. The SG committed to reaching parity at senior level by 2021 and across the system before 2030 and he asked his Gender Parity Task Force to come up with a plan to get there. Let’s watch and see.

My quote this week is from 80-year old Nobel Prize Daniel Kahneman: “There are studies showing that when you present evidence to people they get very polarized even if they are highly educated. They find ways to interpret the evidence in conflicting ways. Our mind is constructed so that in many situations where we have beliefs and we have facts, the beliefs come first. That’s what makes people incapable of being convinced by evidence. So education by itself is not going to change the culture. Changing critical thinking through education is very slow and I’m not very optimistic about it.”

16 July 2015

Posted on July 16, 2015 Leave a Comment

I enjoy a story that gives a different perspective on headline news. Three recent illustrations:

While analysts examine the Iran nuclear deal’s impact on global geopolitics and investments, Schroeder’s “The Iran I saw” describes a local transformation shaped by an expanding cohort of young Iranian entrepreneurs, a growing number of Chinese expatriates fluent in Farsi, and the boom of software-enabled businesses.

Although all eyes are on Greece, the Financial Times’ “Latin lessons: China’s slowdown vs Grexit” claims that two larger forces might have more impact on the world economy in the nearer future: the collapse of commodity prices and the drop in Chinese imports.

The humanitarian crowd was largely absent from this week’s Financing for Development gathering in Addis. Yet Redvers’ “Aid: It’s complicated” argues that funding is the key entry point to bridging the deep-rooted and outmoded development/humanitarian divide.

My graph of the week is from Cham’s PhD Comics.

A useful companion article is Achor’s “Are the people who take vacations the ones who get promoted?” Its key messages: taking all your vacations brings you a higher chance of being promoted than not taking them all; resting your brain increases your creativity and is good for business; and your boss thinks that you are more productive if you are happier thanks to taking your vacations. So there you go: win-win-win!

Most papers and magazines offer summer reading lists. Bill Gates does too. And then there is Quartz staff who got annoyed by the lack of diversity of The New York Times‘ selection and offer alternative lists with African and Indian authors only.

My quote of the week is from Overbye in “Reaching Pluto, the end of an era of planetary exploration”: “None of us alive today will see a new planet up close for the first time again.”

12 June 2015

Posted on June 12, 2015 Leave a Comment

Bremmer’s Superpower: Three choices for America’s role in the world presents 3 options for US foreign policy. His starting point is that there has not been a clear US foreign strategy since the end of the Cold War, and that, to stop being just reactive in our increasingly volatile world, one is needed. He makes strong arguments to defend each option and unpacks their implications for the rest of the world.

In his option 1, Independent America, the US stops engaging with others’ problems and focuses on investing at home to become the ultimate too-big-to-fail country. He argues that it is not an isolationist approach (e.g., trade is promoted).
In his option 2, Moneyball America, the US engages internationally only when/where expected returns on investment for its security and economy are high.
In his option 3, Indispensable America, the US is strongly committed to international leadership and engages abroad to promote its values as a way to strengthen its security and prosperity.

While his heart is with option 3, Bremmer chooses option 1, the most rationale choice in the current geopolitical context. Disappointing, I found. Also scary because he is a big influencer. The 200-page book is a good read. But you can also watch a 3-min teaser or a one-hour discussion with Kevin Rudd to get the gist, and some interesting perspectives on the US-China relationship.

Davenport and Kirby’s Beyond Automation: Strategies for remaining gainfully employed in an era of very smart machines gets the message right: it is not about me or the robot (automation), it is about me and the robot (augmentation). The authors argue that automation is the default mindset in most industries today. Automation threatens: it is about people losing their jobs. And more and more people are concerned: in the 19^th century automation meant machines doing the dirty and dangerous, in the 20^th century machines took away the dull, but machines in the 21^st century take over decisions. “Many of the things knowledge workers do today will be automated soon”. By opposition augmentation is exciting: it starts with what humans do now and looks at ways to expand their work using machines, following different paths. Fascinating stuff.

It is always good to glance at the G7 communique. The big headline this year is the strong signal sent to investors by the G7 countries’ commitment to decarbonize their economies by the end of the century. Other items of interest include a strong push for promoting UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in supply chains (an opening to promote our child rights and business principles); 2 pages on health with a continuous commitment to ending preventable child deaths and improving maternal health; continuous support as well to fighting hunger and malnutrition; and a new push for women’s economic empowerment referring to childcare access. What caught my eye was the support to the World Bank’s Pandemic Emergency Facility – an Ebola-triggered Jim Kim proposal which received modest traction with the G20 in 2014, but that G7 members now ask the G20 to support. More World Bank power for global public health coordination?

My quote of the week is from (departing) Nigeria Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in her Lunch with the FT: “Male colleagues who had left [the World Bank] repeatedly came back to wander the corridors, in search of consulting jobs. Their whole identity and everything tied up with the institution. [Women] move on rapidly. They have other lives. That is the same way I feel. I can move on and I have a life.”