Have David Cameron and George Osborne ruined Britain?

 business, community, finance, government, politics, prejudice & discrimination, regeneration, schemas & memes, society, Spiral Dynamics  No Responses »
Mar 242013
 

Of course, the rot set in well before David Cameron and Nick Clegg formed the Coalition Government in May 2010. Public Sector BorrowingAs the Public Sector Net Borrowing chart shows, it was during Gordon Brown’s ill-fated premiership that the deficit increased massively. (The Public Sector Deficit is the difference between what the Government spends and what it takes in via taxes to fund that spending - that difference being borrowed.) To give them some credit, as the chart shows, the Coalition did bring the deficit down quite markedly in their first couple of years primarily via swingeing cuts in the public sector.

However, there are significant signs that the rate of decrease in borrowing may be slowing down. In December’s Autumn statement Chancellor George Osborne predicted that borrowing would be £108B this year, and £99B next year and just £31B in 2017-18. In his Budget last week, just 3 months later, Osborne revised those figures to £114B this year, £108B next year and £61B in 2017-18.

Hand in hand with this, Osborne was forced to revise December’s estimate of growth this year from 1.2% to O.6%. While it looks like the UK may just about avoid a triple-dip recession, the outlook for growth in the British economy is poor, with 2014 revised down from 2% to 1.8%. With the ‘Age of Austerity’ now officially extended from 2015 to at least 2018, it’s no wonder Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls shouts repeatedly that austerity isn’t working and that his Labour leader, Ed Milliband yesterday, in a speech in Birmingham, spoke of the Government having resigned itself to a ‘lost decade’ over the economy.

Of course, it isn’t Cameron and Osborne’s fault that the UK’s borrowing requirement spiked so highly in 2008-09 and 2009-2010. Nor, strictly speaking, is it Gordon Brown’s - other than that he and Tony Blair, in their spending review of 2000, moved away from the tight fiscal policy they had adopted from the previous Conservative Government and allowed public spending to increase. The result was that the mild surplus they had created was quickly reversed. Thus, when the world went into financial meltdown in 2008-09, Brown had no recourse other than to go to the markets and borrow heavily to keep the country in the style it had been accustomed to…and more than double the Public Sector Deficit in the process.

By 2010 no leading UK politician, other than Balls, was in any doubt that public sector borrowing had to be reduced. Even outgoing Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling championed cuts. The debate was not about whether to cut but how far and how fast. Labour, with their concern for the impact on the less well-off, advocated a slower reduction than Cameron and Osborne who opted for as fast and as deep as possible. Their concern was Britain’s reputation in the financial markets. Last month the UK lost its Triple A rating with leading credit agency Moody’s Investors Services. Balls was right: austerity isn’t working.

Austerity or growth?
Moody’s cited ‘subdued growth’ as one of the reasons for the downgrading.

A major problem with austerity – and something Cameron and Osborne don’t seem to get - is that you can only cut so far. What happens when there is little or nothing left to cut? This is part of the problem faced by Ireland, Greece, Spain and, to some extent, Italy as they struggle to meet the stringent reductions in debt reduction demanded as a condition of bailout by the German-dominated European Union. Since a large part of the bailouts come from the German taxpayers, it’s not entirely unreasonable that they should attach conditions to them. But how far does it go? Will a number of European governments end up stealing their citizens’ private savings to finance debt, as the Cypriot government proposed doing until its parliament was ringed with angry savers ready to commit violence upon their MPs if they had approved the proposal…?

Some see the Cypriot government proposal as a test for how such a strategy might be received elsewhere in Europe!

Last year new French president François Hollande proved a keen advocate of economic growth, daring to challenge the German mantra of austerity. (Since the Germans tend to prudent spenders anyway and their juggernaut economy is said to be pulling back from a relatively minor slip in growth of 0.6% in the last quarter, the impact of an austerity programme on others is something they might find difficulty in appreciating.)

The problem is Hollande, the socialist, doesn’t really know how to stimulate growth. The French economy remains stalled.

Neither, it seems, does Ed Balls. Since 2010 he has championed such strategies as investment in infrastructure and housebuilding as stimuli for growth. Lately - and perhaps surprisingly! - Confederation of British Industries director John Cridland (2013a) has come to agree with him, calling for an investment of £1.25B to build 50,000 new affordable homes. After the Budget Cridland (2013b) castigated the Government for not doing enough on infrastructure.

The problem is that neither strategy in itself is a wealth generator - and it’s surprising, given his position, that Cridland doesn’t champion wealth-generating measures more vociferously. As he points out, investment in housing is a surefire way to kickstart the economy. It creates jobs, workers and their families are more likely to spend in the consumer society and affordable housing meets a huge social need. And certainly investment infrastructure is necessary if the economy is to grow, enabling people and goods to move around more easily. But neither strategy in itself will create sustainable growth.

Henley modelThe graphic above is adapted from the Henley Centre Model for Regional Competitiveness (2001). It shows clearly the relationship between the institutions of society and wealth generation through an export-driven economy. For sure, it’s a neat and overly-simplistic Functionalist model that addresses none of the social, moral and philosophical issues that a society faces such as distribution of wealth amongst its citizens. But, if a society in a late-Modern Capitalist world, doesn’t create wealth, then it is effectively dysfunctional. Road-building and house-building may create a trickle-down effect of people feeling more confident about spending which can have powerful short-term effect…but, in the long-term, like hairdressers, it is recirculating the same money within a closed economy.

For the institutions of society to be sustainable in the long-term, that society must earn as much as it spends. For it to grow wealthier in a sustainable manner, it must consistently earn more than it spends. In a chain of such economies - as shown in Marxist Critiques of Development - inevitably there are winners and there are losers - the poor and the exploited. But the morality of that is for a discussion on the nature of Capitalism. Until Capitalism is superseded as the dominant economic system in the world, the UK needs to ‘play the game’ which means generating wealth to support its people.

A deficit in thinking
The big problem for the UK in playing that game is the poor quality of its leadership. Cameron and Osborne seem to be dominated by the BLUE vMEME in thinking in that efficiency is the only way to manage the deficit. Growth, for the most part it seems, can be sacrificed on the ‘Altar of Austerity’.

That Moody’s disagree with Cameron and Osborne on the importance of growth clearly hasn’t undermined their determination to stick to Plan A: austerity. Perhaps the reports of a second agency, Fitch Ratings, being about to take away Britain’s AAA on their scoring might give them pause for thought. Though probably not!

The unfortunate thing is that their much-vaunted Tory predecessors understood the importance of growth. While Margaret Thatcher reined in public spending viciously - in the 1979 election campaign she famously said: “You cannot spend what you do not have!” - she also liberated and encouraged business to make money. Indeed, wealth creation might be said to have been her mantra! Thatcher, at least in her public persona, was dominated by ORANGE (with a dash of RED ruthlessness and power-lust). There was, of course, a truly-terrible social cost outside of the South-East to her policies and it may be that she made the UK over-dependent on the financial services sector - and that in itself was a factor in the internal crash of 2008-2009. However, in overall terms, Britain recovered from the near-bankruptcy of 1976 and was on its way to becoming a wealthy country again - policies Tony Blair clearly saw fit to continue initially after being elected in 1997.

Perhaps a better model for Cameron and Osborne would be Thatcher’s sometime-nemesis Michael Heseltine. He clearly agreed with Thatcher that Britain’s old industries were unsustainable in a changing world increasingly influenced by transnational corporations who would site their manufacturing operations in the cheapest labour source – see The New International Division of Labour. But he understood the crux of the Henley Model – that export is king in the world of buying and selling and so championed niche and specialist manufacturing, arguing that British design was amongst the best in the world. While doubt has been since been cast on just how effective some of his strategies (such as the DTI Enterprise Initiative) really were, there can be little doubt that Heseltine’s championing of industry and exporting enabled an element of British manufacturing to change, survive and prosper. If Cameron these days sometimes talk up manufacturing as playing a role in any growth that might occur, he has Heseltine to thank for that. While he may have had some very different beliefs to Thatcher about strategy, Helsetine clearly was driven by ORANGE, innovating against the odds to further British industry.

The paucity of quality thinking amongst the Tory strategists these days is shown clearly in Cameron’s delusion that the private sector would grow so fast it would give jobs to all the public sector employees made redundant in the cuts. According to David Blanchflower in March 2012, in the previous year 44,000 more public sector jobs have been lost than private sector jobs created. In the 3 years of the Coalition Government, little has been done either to increase inward investment (from abroad) or to boost exports.

Cameron and Osborne’s BLUE strategies to cut public spending may be successful to a notable degree so far in cutting the requirement for public borrowing; but, in addition to doubts about how much further it is possible to cut, there is the ‘elephant in the room’ that hardly anybody is talking about and which the Cameron-Osborne tactics are not going to even scratch: the size of the National Debt. Both Moody’s and Fitch have expressed concern about UK debt. National Debt

As seen from the chart left, this was stable but not decreasing under Blair. However, it has grown considerably since Brown’s spike in public sector borrowing 2008-2009 and has continued to increase under Cameron. This, put simply, is because each year of deficit and the interest that goes with it increase the overall size of the debt - estimated in December 2012 to be around 89% of gross domestic product (GDP). Some commentators, such as MoneyWeek magazine, believe the size of the National Debt is simply unsustainable and that Britain going bust sometime in the next decade is inevitable. This is probably unlikely, given that other Western or ‘westernised’ are carrying far higher debt-to-GDP ratios. For example, Japan has a national debt of around 194% of GDP whilst that of Italy is more than 100%. The US national debt reached 100% of GDP in November 2011. In the aftermath of World War II, the British National Debt reached 180% of GDP.

What is clear, though is that, if the National Debt can’t be reduced in the short term, then British GDP has to increase.

The social cost of debt reduction
BLUE cut-back thinking on its own is simply not enough for the economic problems Britain faces. It requires at least ORANGE thinking. So, if Cameron and Osborne can’t manage that, they have to go.

There are certainly signs that a number of Tory MPS are profoundly dissatisfied with Cameron’s leadership. There is even talk of a leadership challenge prior to 2015. There will certainly be one if the Tories are unable to form a majority government the day after the election. While Cameron and Nick Clegg appear to have formed a reasonable working partnership, many Tory backbenchers hate the alliance with the Liberal Democrats. Their natural preference under pressure is to lurch to the right and try to appeal to voters on xenophobic issues such as immigration and the testy relationship with the EU – appeals that hit on PURPLE’s susceptibility to prejudice & discrimination against those not-of-our-tribe.

A slide down the Spiral is not, however, what the UK needs. Such slides on a macro-cultural level tend to lead to extremist groups gaining ground - eg: the rise of the Golden Dawn neo-fascists in Greece. In a country like the UK, where there are large Muslim populations, a slide down the Spiral may also lead to increased fundamentalism amongst such communities.

What the UK needs is at-least ORANGE thinking in economic issues. However, there needs to be thinking more complex than that if a real economic recovery, along the lines, Margaret Thatcher piloted, is not to produce the kind of huge social costs British society is still paying for more than some 30 years after Thatcher first started implementing her policies.

While ORANGE is well-suited to driving economic performance in a Capitalist global system, its workings need to be managed from a 2nd Tier perspective. This meta-thinking can anticipate the effects of economic and fiscal actions on communities and modify them and/or compensate for the unavoidable side effects. 2nd Tier overviewing is also necessary to keep ORANGE on the right tracks and prevent it deviating into the kind of loans and investments which led to the burst bubbles of 2008-2009.

Unfortunately there seems to be little sign of 2nd Tier thinking amongst our political leaders. Without it, regardless of which party is in power, the mess is likely to get worse, not better.

Is the Big Society in BIG trouble?

 celebrity, community, government, heroes and inspirational figures, morality, society, Spiral Dynamics  1 Response »
May 252011
 

So the day after David Cameron effectively relaunches the ‘Big Society’, with a new ‘white paper’, his key figure in charge of implementing the Big Society, Lord Wei of Shoreditch, resigns….

That could hardly be worse timing! Surely Cameron knew Wei was going?!? In which case it would have been much more politically astute to have rescheduled the launch of the white paper. As it is, Wei’s departure is a gift to Labour, with Shadow Cabinet Office minister Theresa Jowell saying, “….yet again”  the Big Society is “descending into farce. Only a day after Cameron told us all to take more responsibility, it appears that there will now be nobody in his government responsible for bringing the Big Society into reality.”

If Cameron didn’t know Wei was going, then it says something about Wei that he could time his resignation to such negative effect or about either Cameron’s judgement in recruiting such a fickle ally or  Cameron’s treatment of Wei that he could undermine his boss in such a damaging way.

Whatever the circumstances of Wei’s depearture, the effect is damaging both to Cameron personally and to the development of the Big Society concept.

Whether you think Cameron is being honest when he says the Big Society is the thing “I’m most passionate about in public life. This is what is in my heart. It’s what fires me up in the morning” - or it really is just an attempt to distract from the damage the cuts are doing to the social fabric of our kingdom, he certainly seems to be sticking with the theme. Even in face of withering criticism such as that of Jowell who said of the latest Big Society relaunch: “Under the indiscriminate impact of accelerated cuts, the essential elements of community life are slowly being starved of sustenance. What we lose in the next two years may become impossible to rebuild in ten.”

The Big Society and the cuts
Part of Cameron’s problem, of course, is that the cuts are doing very real damage - and the damage is going to get a lot worse before it eases off. Plus, that easing off may be some distance in the future if Vince Cable’s weekend statements about the abysmal state of Britain’s economic prospects are anything to go by. Thus, it may be that Cameron’s cuts and the general economic malaise of the country see damage to our social fabric on a par with the devastation of the traditional working classes in the early 1980s under Margaret Thatcher.

It is, of course, the Coalition Government’s mantra that there really is no way out of Britain’s financial mess other than the 25% cuts programme Chancellor George Osborne decreed last October. For all that Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls is said to really still believe Britain should invest and grow its way out of the deficit, Labour leader Ed Milliband is insisting Balls sticks – in public, at least! – with predecessor Alistair Darling’s view that the cuts should be at a slightly lower rate of 20% and over a longer periodof time. So even though Osborne now acknowledges some need for investment and growth, the major players are pretty much agreed on the cuts – it’s only quite how deep and quite how fast on which they disagree.

The conundrum then is this: when people are losing their jobs…and then their houses…and then their relationships crack under the pressure, will they want to donate to charitable and community ventures from what little money they have? It could be argued that all the newly-unemployed will have the time to get engaged in charitable and community ventures…but will they be motivated to? When you’ve done everything right - done your job to the best of your ability, looked after your family and been a good, tax-paying citizen – only to lose much of what’s really important to you through no obvious fault of your own, do you really want to be told to take on unpaid work to help others by the man who ordered the cuts which have cost you so much?

It’s a slap in the face for the BLUE vMEME. Do what’s right…and you lose almost everything. It’s not supposed to be like this! Since the theory is that vMEMES ebb and flow according to the Life Conditions, if the Life Conditions are no longer appropriate to BLUE, then expect something very different. In the students fees protests last November, we saw a lot of angry RED damaging the property of those the demonstrators saw as being unaffected by the cuts - banks, high-end retailers, Conservative Party headquarters…even Charles & Camilla’s car!

My hunch is that we’re going to see an awful lot more of that kind of thing in the next couple of years. In Zygmunt Bauman’s (1988) terms, we’re going to see more and more people no longer able to participate in - be ‘seduced’ into – the consumerist society. Instead, they join the ranks of the ‘Repressed’. What we saw in the student fees protest could also be seen as those who feared they were going to be barred from the ranks of the Seduced - not being able to go to university being perceived as a severe restriction on career prospects.

Of course, the real story is not as simple as that. Students can still go to university and enhance their career prospects - it’s just that the debt incurred works in a different way and may prove more burdensome for many. Unfortunately, the Government is failing it get its message across - even with as formidable a figure as Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes spearheading the campaign to give students the real facts about the new fees structure.

Getting the message across
When it comes to the economy, it seems the Government is not entirely sure just what the message it is failing to get across actually is.

According to Vince Cable at the weekend, Britain’s economic malaise is more than just a return of the old boom-and-bust cycle Gordon Brown supposedly put an end to; it’s also a consequence of an ongoing restructure of the global economy. Eg: “Britain is no longer one of the world’s price setters. We take our prices from international commodity markets driven by China and India.”

This is bad news for Cable’s party boss. Nick Clegg has staked the Lib Dems’ electoral fortunes on the Coalition Government being able to turn the economy around sufficiently by 2015 for there to be a ‘feel good’ factor working for the Coalition partners in that year’s general election. Considering the drubbing the Lib Dems received in this April’s elections, the last thing Clegg wants to hear is Cable saying that Britain will have to get used to being poorer on at least a semi-permanent basis..

In a poorer Britain, of course, people doing it for themselves, rather than relying on a cash-strapped government - the essence of the Big Society meme – might be a highly practical approach. In fact, it may turn out to be the only way some things get done!

The question then comes back to: how do you get people - many of whom will have suffered severely because of the cuts – motivated to give to time and some of the little money they have to charity and community programmes?

That Cameron is not a particularly good communicator - and struggles to get his message beyond his core electorate - is indicated by the failure of the Tories to achieve a majority in the Commons when up against a jaded Labour Government and a prime minister (Brown) perceived by many to be petty and ineffectual. Many Tory campaigners reported they found it difficult to get the Big Society message across to voters on the doorstep – and a number simply dropped it from their list of issues to discuss.

Even now Cameron struggles to define just what the Big Society is, The best he could manage at Monday’s relaunch was: “The Big Society is not some fluffy add-on to more gritty and more important subjects. This is about as gritty and important as it gets – giving everyone the chance to get on in life and making our country a better place to live.”

To underline the Government’s commitment to the Big Society concept, Cameron wants his ministers to undertake a day of voluntary service over the course of the year with a charity or community group.

Yet, how much Cameron fails to understand how messages are received - the heart of Memetics - is demonstrated by his appointing Tory party donor and former ‘non-dom’ tax avoider Lord Ashcroft to head a review of British Army bases in Cyrus. When people are losing jobs and homes and being told by Cameron to give to charity and community projects,  Ashcroft’s appointment (though nominally unpaid) looks like more ‘jobs for the boys’ amongst the wealthy and the elite. No wonder Nick Clegg is said to be furious about the appointment!

A similar insensitivity with regard to how messages are perceived can be found in Cameron’s comments to the Daily Telegraph in April about it being OK to appoint political interns on the basis of personal contacts, rather than the more formal but equal opportunities-oriented basis Clegg was championing. The cynics might point to this and argue from that Cameron is really an old-fashioned Tory who just does as he wishes and only bothers with the ‘little people’ when he needs to exploit them. Certainly at times he seems to run off a RED/BLUE vMEME harmonic of pure arrogance!

Successful communication is about values
Or, more specifically, understanding and appreciating diversity in values.

While RED and BLUE might seem to dominate in his thinking on political appointees, when it comes to the Big Society, David Cameron’s language seems to indicate more that it’s GREEN (look after people on a community basis) and BLUE (because it’s our duty). GREEN thinking is way too complex for most people  – in 1976 James P Shaver & William Strong raised doubts as to whether most people develop beyond what is now termed BLUE..

As for that vMEME, if many people are downscaling from BLUE to RED because of adverse Life Circumstances, then a BLUE call to duty – when they’d done their ‘duty’ and got made redundant as a reward - is not likely to have much influence.

Rather than pitch the Big Society at BLUE and GREEN levels, Cameron would do better to make it ‘cool’ for RED so that helping out in a community project becomes a means of gaining status and respect. A short cut to achieving this would be to get celebrities to volunteer.

The ‘cult of celebrity’ has grown exponentially in tandem with the growth of mass media.  One psychologist interested in our fascination with celebrity is Kate Douglas. Douglas (2003) has suggested that it is evolutionarily adaptive to model successful individuals because, by learning from them, it may shorten our own route to success. So, who better to be seen demonstrating Big Society attitudes, values and activities at a time when many people are struggling to be successful (due to the cuts).

It the people need to learn to do for themselves what the Government can no longer afford to do, then, to maintain our society, the ability of the people to do has to grow at least that little bit faster than the Government’s ability to do decreases. Which means people have to be persuaded to volunteer ahead of the sheer necessity to take it up on themselves.

Which, in turn, means David Cameron has to persuade more than cajole. And persuading means working with what is important to people – their values – more than what’s important to you (your values).

More people in this kingdom think in PURPLE and RED than BLUE, ORANGE and GREEN. Which is why The Sun sells more copies than The Independent and why more people watch Coronation Street than Panorama. Thus, Big Society advocates have got to learn to talk the language of the people they want to communicate to.

So, Dave, maybe give Take That a call…get as many celebs doing Big Society stuff as you can. Make it cool. Make it fun!

…oh, and Dave, if you want to get re-elected in 2015, you’ve got to be seen as more trustworthy than the other lot. No more Ashcroft deals, huh?!

Cameron & Clegg: where’s the vision?

 Afghanistan, business, charity, community, crime, education, government, human rights, mental health, racism, religion, society, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics, substance abuse  48 Responses »
Jul 152010
 

2 months ago, in ‘”Liberal Conservatives”: new politics?’, I wrote about my hopes that the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition might indeed be the start of the ‘new politics’ Nick Clegg says he’s always believed in. I talked about the need for 2nd Tier thinking in Government to take us beyond repeating the same old mistakes, ideological conflicts and embezzlement of the public purse.

A month on I’ve yet to see real signs of 2nd Tier thinking in anything the new Government does.

Yes, as Henry Porter wrote in last Sunday’s Observer (11 July), they’ve made a good start. “…the coalition has moved with degrees of fair mindedness and deliberation that are refreshing. To be sure, there have been blunders, like Michael Gove’s botched announcement on scrapping new schools, but it surely is right to suggest that doctors be put in charge of spending GPs’ £80bn budget, to remove the target culture from the health service and provide 24-hour cover. The withdrawal from Sangin and setting a deadline for ending combat in Afghanistan is welcome, as is the review of defence needs and spending. For once, our relations with the world appear to be conducted by grown-ups without displays of fawning or self-importance…..In two months, the coalition has announced the ending of the wasteful and, as it turns out, dangerously insecure children’s database, ContactPoint, as well as the ID card scheme. Immigration minister Damian Green put an end to the inhumane detention of thousands of children belonging to asylum seekers. Theresa May has agreed to examine the way the police are collecting and storing photographs and data about legitimate protesters, like 85-year-old peace campaigner John Catt who was classified as a “domestic extremist. She has also said that the automatic number plate recognition system that tracks and records 10 million vehicle journey per day will be placed under statutory regulation and scrutinised for the first time. CCTV cameras used to watch Muslims in Birmingham have been disabled. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act terror laws, used by councils to spy on members of the public, are to be reserved for counterterror operations. And in the last week the home secretary suspended section 44 of the Terrorism Act which allowed police to stop and search 250,000 innocent people last year alone, and [David] Cameron announced details of a full judicial inquiry into allegations that British intelligence officers were involved in the torture of terror suspects.”

 As Porter says, the “Coalition is popular” - and that may, in part at least, why there has been so little reaction against the massive cuts the Government is going to make – and is already making – in the public sector. (RMT leader Bob Crow’s call for a general strike is, at this stage at least, a very lone voice.) The Treasury’s demand, ‘leaked’ from the Cabinet meeting of 1 July, for most Cabinet ministers to prepare plans for cutting their budgets by 40% is, as some commentators have suggested, almost certainly scaremongering. That way, the real depth of the coming cuts – predicted to average out at 25% – will seem nothing like so bad.

While, as Henry Porter points out, the new government are already implementing a number of new policies, their ‘big idea’ undoubtedly is cutting the deficit; and it will certainly be the defining policy of the Coalition’s first few years in power.

Though I think the developing policy on Afghanistan is muddled and short-sighted – see ‘Why we must win in Afghanistan’ - much else the Coalition is doing seems headed in the right direction. Even the cuts.

We all knew there would be cuts. We’ve been told since before Christmas that there would have to be cuts; and Labour aren’t denying that they were edging towards the 20% figure for cuts in their own proposals. (Though Labour almost definitely weren’t planning to impose the cuts as hurriedly as Chancellor George Osborne intends.)

So why am I casting doubts on the quality of thinking in the new government?

Essentially, it’s because I’ve yet to see a vision being articulated.

Cameron & Clegg, in their co-written article for the Daily Telegraph (12 July) say they “…want to change our country for the better. We want to see the best schools open to the poorest children, a first-class NHS there for everyone, streets that are safe, families that are stable and communities that are strong.” That’s hardly a vision since it’s pretty much everything every politician tells the voters. Nor is a key strategy - that of slimming down and decentralising government – a vision.

When I say ‘vision’, I mean a view of how society should be.

The need for a vision
Margaret Thatcher, for example, had a clear vision based on the philosophy of meritocracy. It’s all too easy to see Thatcher as being about depriving unprofitable heavy industries of state subsidies or busting the unions or deregulating the money markets. Rather they were key strategies to free up individuals to create and enjoy wealth. ‘Thatcherism’ was such a success that Tony Blair carried many aspects of it over into the early years of his government, with the British being the second richest people on the planet (based on gross national income per head) by 2006 (World Bank, 2007).

However, it was far from being a 2nf Tier philosophy since it left substantial communities in Wales, the Midlands, the North of England and Scotland devastated, with a consequent raft of social problems – including large scale unemployment amongst the indigenous working classes, many house repossessions, spiraling divorce rates, substantial alcohol and drug abuse and an explosion in small-scale crime (drug dealing, prostitution, burglary, car theft and mugging, etc).

In the early days Blair talked from time to time of creating a ‘decent society’ but there was never any real elaboration of what he meant. So Britain drifted on, the majority reaping the rewards of Blair’s neo-Thatcherism while a substantial minority got lost in the sprawling urban sink estates typified so well in the Shameless TV programme.

Now a great many more of us are faced with ‘sinking’. The newly-created Office of Budget Responsibility anticipates 600,000 jobs will be lost in the public sector over the next 6 years. Meanwhile leaked Treasury figures anticipate more than 700,000 private sector jobs will go in the same time period. When confronted by Labour’s acting leader, Harriet Harman, about these figures at Prime Minister’s Questions on 30 June, Cameron stated that employment would rise during the life of the Coalition…but he didn’t say how.

The remarkable Coalition is enjoying a remarkable ‘honeymoon period’ with the voters (in spite of some venomous attempts in certain parts of the media to hurry them towards divorce). Partly that’s because people are ready for something different from the party-centric conflicts of the past. Partly it’s because Dave ‘n’ Nick actually do seem to enjoy a genuine rapport. Indeed much of the Government seems infused with bonhomie – even George Osborne and his Lib Dem Chief Secretary Danny Alexander seem capable of  singing from the proverbial ‘same hymn sheet’!

But bonhomie isn’t going to go very far when people are losing their jobs and their homes and seeing their standard of living plummet - and there seems little or no hope of things getting significantly better. The truly scary thing about Osborne’s ‘cuts budget’ is that there’s almost nothing in it to stimulate economic growth.

On 30 June Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development’s chief economist John Philpott told BBC News: “The government thinks that just by …tackling the deficit, there will be a vent for growth because the prospects for investments and exports will be greater. If you look at both demand in the UK economy and more globally, there is a question mark over that and if that doesn’t pay off then we’re going to have a much weaker employment outlook.”

If the economy fails to grow sufficiently in the short-to-medium term to offset the social sinking caused by the cuts in the immediate-to-short-term, we risk becoming a different kind of Britain.

Thatcher – love her or loathe her! – had a pretty clear vision of the kind of Britain she wanted us to become. So what kind of Britain do Cameron and Clegg want us to become? Do they know? And, if they do, when are they going to tell us?

25%…25%!!!!
You simply cannot take 25% out of the public economy in anything but the very shortest term and not create massive change.

So where do we start? (After all, Clegg has promised widespread consultation over how and where to apply the cuts….)

Maybe you’re OK with having to take your own recycling to the council tip; and having your domestic rubbish collected only every other week would be acceptable…?

Getting the potholes in your road filled in only every other Spring…?

Class sizes of 35-plus and out-of-date textbooks instead of broadband-connected PCs in schools…?

How many police officers are we prepared to lose…? (Former chief constable Tim Brain estimates, for Police Review, that between 11,500 and 60,000 police officer, civilian staff and community support officer posts will be lost by 2015.)

According to Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, speaking on Tuesday evening (13 July) to judges at their annual Mansion House Dinner, the fall in recorded crime during the 1990s may have been precipitated by economic growth, high employment levels and rising living standards rather than imprisoning criminals.

If Clarke is right, then will the reverse prove true when we add another 1.5 million to the unemployed tally, some of whom will be police officers?

Having still not cleaned up fully the ‘human waste’ from Thatcher’s era, are we now going to add massively to the ‘human rubbish tip’?

Just what do you do with 3 million people with no jobs and few prospects, slashed to the bare bones benefits, a still dwindling jobs market and many losing their homes…? Faced with similar crises, Margaret Thatcher, the most unpopular prime minister since the end of World War II, took us into another war – the Falklands – from which she emerged victorious and untouchable for another 8 years, the public behind her so much she was able to batter the miners almost with impunity.

What will Cameron and Clegg do to reverse their fortunes when, as is all but inevitable once people really start to suffer, their popularity dwindles? (Only yesterday a supermarket till assistant told me she wanted “that new prime minister shot because he took away my second baby’s child benefit!”)

What kind of Britain will we become?
The challenges Britain faces as the cuts bite are more than simply coping with lower standards of living, mass unemployment, schools troubled more than ever and a likely substantial rise in small-scale crime – as if they weren’t daunting enough! We actually face a major change at vMEMETIC level in societal values.

Since the late 1960s much of the political agenda in Britain (and in the rest of the Western world) has been driven by the GREEN vMEME. Anti-racism, feminism, health & safety, rights for disabled people, employment rights, anti-ageism, human rights…to some degree or other, they’re all the creation of the GREEN vMEME. In its drive for egalitarianism, GREEN will even use positive discrimination to equal the playing field for those who are disadvantaged.

The problem is that GREEN is expensive. Where now will come the money for ramps for wheelchair access in buildings that weren’t built with the disabled in mind? Community Care is more costly than institutional care – so how long before the old mental asylums are reopened and people with mental health problems requiring supervision are herded back into them? How will the Government be able to justify the Equality & Human Rights Commission when the jobless are marching through central London?

One of the things Tony Blair probably was grasping for in his inarticulation of the ‘decent society’ was that we treat each other as equals and with respect and that we care for the less fortunate.

Treating someone with respect might be hard when they got the only job available and you didn’t - especially if your PURPLE clocks that they’re not of your ethnicity and, therefore, not of your tribe. (Just watch the popularity of the BNP grow among the white working class jobless needing someone to blame! Just watch as more Muslims become more devout in the desire for God to right the wrongs white society does to them!)

Charities can be expected to take on some of the support for the disadvantaged but charities depend on donations and it’s hard to donate when your company can’t pay its suppliers (corporate donations) or you’ve not worked in a year (individual donations).

With little nurturing of ORANGE’s wealth creating tendencies, much of the culture of this country will go down the Spiral, settling in PURPLE and RED. Expect increases in racial tension, crime and religious observance (of all kinds).

To some extent, it’s unavoidable. Whether from Osborne’s head-on dive into austerity measures or Alistair Darling’s slightly more measured approach, the cuts have to happen. However, the transition to a different kind of Britain they will bring can be managed and some of the more severe effects ameliorated – especially if there is understanding and management of shifts in values from 2nd Tier perspectives.

But, for that to happen, Cameron and Clegg have got to develop and then share the vision.

It is, of course, a little unrealistic to expect 2 men who were political opponents 12 weeks ago to get into each other’s heads so much in such a short space of time that they can develop a vision they can sell both to the public at large and their 2 respective parties. But, if we are not to slide unthinkingly into the kind of Britain many of us won’t want, then Cameron and Clegg have to get to work pretty damn fast.

I wrote in ‘Liberal Conservatives’ about dissonance arising from the challenges in holding the Coalition together possibly being the factor to drive them into 2nd Tier thinking. Now, as we face the reality of the cuts, it’s clear that there’s going to be far greater dissonance from far more sources than most people realised. It’s also patently clear that the need for 2nd Tier thinking in our leadership is far more urgent than I realised 2 months ago.

I’m still intrigued and excited by the Cameron-Clegg Coalition and still think it presents potent opportunities for real change in the way we do politics…but, guys, we need real vision very quickly.

What is Democracy?

 government, morality, politics, society, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics  No Responses »
Feb 282010
 

Written by JON TWIGGE 

  

Here is another contribution by Jon Twigge, ardent Spiral Dynamics Integral enthusiast and supporter of the Centre of Human Emergence – UK. Jon wrote the piece for his own blog and has graciously consented to it being published here as well. 

  

Vote for Democracy

Vote for Democracy

 

Most people here in the West seem to think that Democracy is a good thing.  Even those people who don’t think that voting is worth bothering with would probably rather live in a democracy than under a brutal dictatorship. 

 I would say that there are some key aspects of a democracy. 

The first aspect is an emergent behaviour in a society that arises when a significant proportion of the people believe in rights and fairness.  This belief leads to behaviour that supports law and order and moral codes rather than “may the strongest win” or “survival of the fittest”.  Britain holds a long tradition of Democracy, at least at home here in the UK. 

You can’t really create a democracy in a country by simply imposing it if the people in that country don’t yet live by social rules that embed rights and fairness in them.  The values of rights and fairness only really come into their own when a society has been stable for some time and has had the space to allow them to flourish and become embedded in its culture. 

Attempts to create democracy before a country are ready is going to take a very long time and will involve building a long lasting security to give the space for a change of values to occur.  It almost comes down to creating an infrastructure both physically and socially and holding that in place, with physical force as required, until a new generation has grown up with it. 

But that is another story; back to my aspects of Democracy… 

The second aspect of Democracy is that all important feature - choice.  I would argue that it is not really about choice in any detailed sense - everyone knows that we, as individuals, cannot possibly vote on every issue that arises in the country - but rather it is about representation of our general values.  We sort of get choice by accountability: we don’t vote for those politicians that let us down.  Of course, the process is fraught with problems because the number of choices we get are actually quite small and accountability generally only kicks in every 4 or 5 years as we elect new leaders. 

It is worth noting that the only reason that Democracy works at all is that you can group together political opinions into some pretty general themes.  Funnily enough, these themes follow social groupings and class structures in society.  Political parties, therefore, tend to have large elements from members of similar social groups and class. 

Even across national borders you can see commonalities between parties; but the alignment is not always so strong as it is in a single country.  You can see this commonality, but with differences, played out in the European Union blocs of parties that are normally aligned but whose relations are often strained. 

With a values based perspective, drawn from Spiral Dynamics, it is quite clear that different parties and their associated political views are essentially drawn from different vMEMES.  Now, vMEMES are the underlying value strategies that we all hold as our primary way of interacting in the world and we learn these as ways of coping with the world and society.  Three of these value strategies could be summed up as:- 

  •  structure and order
  • motivation and success
  • equality and rights

It is not hard to see how these underlying strategies are played out in our political parties and politicians with different priorities in different cases.  If we remember that these vMEMES are underlying strategies and values, or vMEMES, are based on and evolve to embody them, then we can also see how different parties in different countries develop slightly different policies (values) than their neighbours. 

Politicians’ views and policies are based on their own personal experiences and values.  Political parties therefore employ social strategies that are aligned with their own social class, beliefs and values.  These policies are, therefore, aligned, if the politicians implement their policies well, with people and organisations, in the general population who hold similar values. 

So, now for the problem, and it is quite obvious really.  People who hold different values to whoever is in power at the time don’t tend to like the policies of politicians with different values.  In practice, because of the complexities of society and the way in which politicians try to say the right things all of the time, it is not exactly black and white most of the time and some voters switch between parties depending on the issues of the day and the state of the country. 

In fact, putting things even more strongly, the policies derived from one value system are not even appropriate for people with different value systems a lot of the time.  For a very clear example, only some of the population are inspired by tax policies designed to incentivise entrepreneurial companies.  Other portions of society cannot work out why some people should be well off while others are in poverty and there is a crime epidemic. 

All pulling in the same direction?

All pulling in the same direction?

 

So, we have a problem.  But, what is the answer?  In broad terms, the answer is to provide a mix of policies designed to provide an environment across the country that provides what all of the different value systems need to prosper.  And that is not something that a number of different parties all shouting we are right/you are wrong is ever going to manage, even if they do get to take turns at having a go. 

A values aware political system may well see the end of national democracy in favour of a more collaborative representation system.  But, you cannot impose one of those on a country where there is not a significant proportion of people who have a conscious understanding of the benefits of all of the values systems rather than an unconscious belief in just their own values.

Believing in Britain – Crisis of ‘British’ Identity

 community, government, politics, society, Sociology  1 Response »
Oct 082009
 

Written by RACHEL CASTAGNE

 

I am honoured to publish this  ‘guest post’ by Rachel Castagne,  director and co-founder of the Centre for Human Emergence – UK – the foundation of which I wrote about in ‘Britishness’ at the Regent’s College Summit.

I am reading Ian Bradley’s book on ‘Believing in Britain’. I used to think it was ‘just me’ or that I was in a minority when I didn’t consider myself British (being born in Trinidad gave me the perfect excuse!) or want to, was in fact ‘ashamed’ of being British. Wwhen my daughter came home from school a few months ago and said she was ashamed of being British, I wondered if I had ‘passed on’ the sentiment, like a hereditary gene – although I knew she hadn’t always felt that way, she’s become aware of ‘Britishness’ as a national identity in her adolescence. Turns out, its not ‘cool’ to be Brit – turns out she’s not the only teen that feels that way….

In fact Bradley reports some interesting stats:-

  • 2005 Social Attitudes Survey found 44% of the population said ‘British’ was the ‘best’ or only way of describing their national identity, as against 52% ten years earlier.
    Amongst those in Scotland 14% described themselves as British compared with 70% who described themselves as Scottish
    Wales: 35% and even England only 48% of the population considered themselves British, 15% fewer than in 1992.
  • The 2001 census was the first in which the majority in England marked their nationality as English as opposed to British

Throughout the 1990’s we lost the word ‘British’ from major national institutions thanks to privatisation: British Rail disappeared in ’92; British Steel merged with a Dutch Rival to become Corus; British Telecom became BT; British Gas morphed into BG plc, Transco, Centrica etc; British Leyland and British Road Services have disappeared. Eeven our political parties increasingly adopt a narrower national rather than UK-wide identities  – eg: Scottish Labour, Welsh Lib Dems.

Bradley asked those in his ‘Monarchy, Church and State’ class who were born in the UK how they would describe their national identity: 35% identified themselves as British against 70% who identified as English, Scottish or Northern Irish; only 20% felt that the United Kingdom was the best descriptive term for the country they felt they belonged to and 5% Britain.

In 2002 a general survey of young people by The Face magazine found most subscribed to the view “ We don’t know what British means and we don’t care”, and 65% said they felt ashamed of being British…

Apparently commentators chronicling the disappearance of Britain have made much of the of the erosion of the “four historic pillars of British Identity:  the Empire, the monarchy, Protestantism and the Parliamentary union of England Wales and Scotland”… there are various books written called, ‘The Break up of Britain’, ‘After Britain’ and ‘The Day Britain Died’….

The ‘Dying of Britain’ seems to be accompanied (not surprisingly) by the growth of separatist feeling on the part of the four nations that comprise the UK.  Thanks to the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament, there has been a distinct flowering of Scottish identity and self-confidence, mirrored in economic performance and cultural vitality, and tho less buoyed, Welsh identity is becoming more marked, with an increase of those speaking the Welsh language….

Blair’s rather embarrassing ‘Cool Britannia’ project has been followed by a more historically rooted campaign to define and promote ‘British Identity’ in the interests of social cohesion inspired by social alienation and fragmentation manifested in the riots of 2001 in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley….

The Government introduced compulsory citizenship classes in schools; and those seeking British Nationality now face tests in English Language and British history, institutions and values. Finally, Blair, in an address on Integration in Dec 2006, reflecting on the terrorist attacks in July of that year emphasised the extent to which most Muslims are proud to be British and the need to balance multiculturalism and diversity with integration and key values that “define us as a people and give us the right to call ourselves British”:-

  • the belief in Democracy
  •  the rule of law
  • tolerance
  • equal treatment for all
  • respect for this country and it’s shared heritage

At times Gordon Brown has come close to suggesting that Britishness provides the key to unravelling virtually every contemporary political and social problem:-
“I believe that just about every central question about our national future – from the constitution to our role in Europe,  from citizenship to the challenges of multiculturalism – even the questions of how and why we deliver public services in the manner we do – can only be fully answered if we are clear about what we value about being British and what gives us purpose and direction as a country.

“Our ability to meet and master not just the challenges of a global marketplace but also the international, demographic, constitutional and social challenges ahead – and even the security challenges facing a terrorist threat that has never been more challenging – depends on us rediscovering from our history the shared values that bind us together and on us becoming more explicit about what we stand for as a nation.”

Bradley is exploring the spiritual aspects of Britishness as they have “been imagined and constructed in the past and as they are being re-imagined and reconstructed today”. He draws heavily on the shifting and overlapping spiritual and religious identities, myths, metaphysical and ethical values and religious principles, interpenetrating each other to create a unity through diversity that have gone into making up Britishness…

Any thoughts? Insights?

Rachel

Why we must win in Afghanistan

 Afghanistan, American Foreign Policy, cross-cultural, government, human rights, international conflict, society, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  11 Responses »
Jul 152009
 

The West simply cannot afford to lose its war in Afghanistan. As the soldiers’ bodies come home in ever-increasing numbers, pressure will inevitably grow for a withdrawal. Already an unpopular war in continental Europe, it will become increasingly difficult for the American and British governments to keep their resolve if media and public pressure focus on the costs in terms of lives and money and there is little sign of real progress.

Unfortunately military experts anticipate 2-3 years of hard combat and several more years of Western military presence if the South of the country is to be stabilised. But, if we don’t pay those costs, then the Taliban are likely to take over government again in Kabul. It is thought that, in spite of their apparent significant defeat in the Swat Valley, their eyes are set next on Islamabad and the prize of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Even if Pakistan doesn’t fall, Afghanistan will continue to flood the West with heroin (in spite of the Taliban officially being against opium production!) and it will almost certainly go back to being a training camp for al-Qaeda terrorists.

What do we need – another 9/11 or 7/7 – to remind us what British and American troops are fighting and dying for?

Part of the problem: the nature of the Taliban
When the Americans smashed the Taliban in 2001, they were perceived by many Afghans to be liberators. The Taliban’s 5 year regime had been brutal, repressive (particularly for women and non-Muslims) and economically disastrous.

What should have been the opportunity for the West to be seen as helping the Afghans rebuild their shattered country was fumbled when George W Bush decided to bring down Saddam Hussein. American energy went into first of all justifying an assault and then pursuing a war that turned into a bitter, costly and lengthy occupation. Not only did the reconstruction of Afghanistan go very much on the back burner; but increasingly the war in Iraq was seen as an anti-Muslim war in most Muslim countries – with the result that many young Muslims from relatively moderate backgrounds were radicalised. The mess in Iraq helped breathe new life into the Taliban who began to creep back in force while the Americans were too busy trying to prevent outright civil war in Iraq.

What also helped the Taliban come back was that the government structure the West helped set up and is now trying to sustain is demonstrably corrupt – arguably from Hamid Karzai down. It needs to be remembered that many officials, especially in local government, were once the bandit leaders of the Northern Alliance which the Americans used as their ground troops in 2001. Using the Northern Alliance that way certainly saved thousands of American soldiers’ lives but it also opened the door into legitimate government for those who were ruthless robbers and murderers. In Spiral Dynamics, terms the RED vMEME was given the opportunity to use BLUE structures for its own ends – so all but inevitably it lined its own pockets! In the South of the country locals say they prefer to use Taliban judges rather than their government counterparts because they are more honest.

In the South (and across the border in Pakistan) the Taliban are increasingly becoming indistinguishable from the Pashtun people. The Pashtun tribes are a good home for the Taliban. For the most part, rural, poor and religious, the Pushtans have little in common with the urban elites of Kabul – looking to gain from the Westernisation of their country – or the other tribes from the North. The Pushtans are primarily dominated by PURPLE tribalism, undoubtedly led by leaders with strong RED while the mullahs peddle a RED-BLUE hardline form of Islamic zealotry. The BLUE-ORANGE-GREEN values the West wants to promote of respect for human rights, gender equality, religious moderation and one person/one (secret) vote Democracy simply don’t fit with the Taliban/Pushtan mindset. The values mismatch is huge.

When the Americans smashed the Taliban, they drove out what little BLUE culture there was in Afghanistan. As we know all too well, when BLUE goes, RED steps into the vacuum. No wonder Afghanistan is a violent and corrupt place! When the Taliban started to creep back, they offered some sense of order against the corruption and secularisation emanating from Kabul. If the Americans had hoped ORANGE-driven modernisation would take root in Kabul and spread from that centre, it was a clear lack of understanding that, for healthy ORANGE to grow, there needs to be foundation of strong, healthy BLUE. Although they were very different countries, the collapse of Communism in the USSR and Yugoslavia did not open the door to ORANGE’s MacDonaldisation strategies; instead the loss of that BLUE superstructure let loose RED gangsterism and PURPLE tribal enmities. If anyone in the White House or the Pentagon had thought it through, what has happened with the resurgence of the Taliban was, in fact, predictable.

The problem with the convergence of  ‘Taliban’ and ‘Pushtan’ is that the Pushtans comprise around 40% of Afghanistan’s population and are the largest single ethnic group. That’s an awful lot of people to fight.

Part of the Problem: the West is confused
What do we want in Afghanistan – other than for our soldiers not to be killed and our much-needed money to be haemorrhaging away? (It is estimated that the war will cost Britain £3.4 billion this year alone.) And once our objectives are clear, do we know what we have to do to achieve them?

Beyond ‘winning’ – presumably meaning breaking the Taliban for good? denying al-Qaeda the use of Afghanistan? – and getting out, it’s not entirely clear just what the objectives are. Certainly, as in Iraq, not enough thought has been given to the post-invasion reconstruction – and what thought has been given has been based on erroneous assumptions. Ie: that with a little money and a little effort, we can make them just like us – capitalist consumers. It’s a mistake the West has been making repeatedly ever since Walt Rostow (1960) came up with his 5-stage Modernisation Theory for saving the Third World from Communism.

What Spiral Dynamics shows us is that we have to work with where people are at – and, if the Pashtuns aren’t ready yet for gender equality, then we need to put that on the back burner until they’re ready to grow into it. Offending their values is just going to get them reaching for their AK47s.

Our objectives need to include helping develop an Afghanistan where the tribes can co-exist peacefully, where people can take pride in being Afghan, where there is respect for a universal and fairly-applied legal system. Gender equality and one person/one (secret) vote Democracy can come further down the line. What matters now is that people feel safe, have respect for themselves and others and there is confidence in the government and the law. And, of course, that law needs to be compatible with a form of Islam that emphasises charity, faith and order. Such an Afghanistan would be distinctly unappealing to the Taliban who feed on dissatisfaction.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg recognised some of this when he said NATO should not be over-ambitious “by trying to import overnight a Western-style democracy in a country that has never had a functional government” but instead should aim to stabilise Afghanistan “to provide a space for the state to grow.”

If we are clear on our objectives, then can we implement the strategies to achieve them?

Because it contributed significantly to the relative calming of Iraq, the concept of high visibility patrolling the streets with the overtly-stated aim of protecting the ordinary citizens from the insurgents (Taliban) is being tried now in Afghanistan. High visibility, of course, means easy target – and that’s one of the reasons the British casualties have increased. (Apart from the fact the troops claim to be significantly under-resourced – attributed by many commentators to be result of big cuts in defence spending. (A lack of big picture thinking in BLUE-ORANGE short-sighteness!)

Lord Paddy Ashdown, himself a former royal marine, thinks the protect-the-citizens strategy is an error – saying: “The army’s job in a war is to find and kill the enemy.”

Actually we need both strategies. Protectors of those who are reasonable and want to be safe and proud. Killers of those who are determined to kill us and cannot be reasoned with. But no more robot drones wiping out innocents at wedding parties! Thankfully, all of this – including avoiding civilian deaths – is endorsed by the new NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

We must find ways of removing the dissatisfaction that the Taliban feed off. Strong support in Afghanistan for an Islam that emphasises charity and justice for all. Rebuilding the physical infrastructure. Redeveloping the economy, including crops that are a viable alternative to opium poppies. Creating hope. Building a sense of national identity. Etc. Etc.

As part of building a national identity, we need to find ways to demerge ‘Taliban’ and ‘Pashtun’. As a people the Pashtuns have a proud and ancient heritage, their traditional Pashtunwali code of honour promoting self-respect, independence, justice, hospitality, love, forgiveness and tolerance. It’s a stain on that code that they allow the brutal and repressive ways of the Taliban to influence them to such an extent. Like many peoples in our troubled world, the Pashtuns need to rediscover themselves.

Some of what is needed in Afghanistan, I have mentioned above. But what is needed really is a full MeshWORK analysis, looking through 4Q/8L at the health of all the vMEMES in play and then deciding what needs to be done. Multiple strategies will need to be employed simultaneously so that nothing is missed. And, as much as possible, the decisions and actions need to be undertaken by Afghans – otherwise they are the work of an occupying force. And, if the decision-making isn’t ‘democratic’ but the Afghan way (tribal/feudal), then we westerners need to allow them to be that way.

Yes, it will be hellishly expensive – in both money and lives – but we are in a war and wars are costly. The sooner Britain and the United States – and Europe, for that matter –, accept we are at war, the better. Plus, it is a war we have to win. But it is a war of hearts and minds as well as bullets and bombs.

Bye, bye, Mugabe?!

 Africa, community, human rights, international conflict, Psychology, society, Spiral Dynamics  7 Responses »
Dec 132008
 

Surely the days of Robert Mugabe’s regime in Harare are numbered…? In the last week alone British prime minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, and Condoleeza Rice, the outgoing US Secretary of State, have all called for Mugabe to resign. Two leading Anglican clerics, Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, and South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have called for African nations to come together to use military force if Mugabe refuses to go. Additionally Tutu has stated that Mugabe has committed “gross violations” against Zimbabwe’s people and ruined “a wonderful country” while Sentamu wants Mugabe put on trial at The Hague for crimes against humanity. More worryingly perhaps for Mugabe and his cronies is the call by Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga for African governments to oust Mugabe.

 

There is immense pressure on Zimbabwe’s neighbours to do something. With Zimbabwe’s inflation at 11,000,000% and ongoing violence against members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and other non-Mugabe supporters, there has been a growing trickle of economic and political refugees seeping through the porous borders –  perceived as an economic burden by many of the indigenous peoples. (In South Africa there have been reports of vigilante groups of white farmers rounding them up and sending them back!) Now, of course, some of those refugees will be cholera carriers with the potential to spread the disease throughout southern Africa and beyond. (It is estimated that cholera will have infected a minimum 60,000 Zimbabweans by Christmas.)

 

The PURPLE vMEME, acting as a collective, rejects those-who-are-not-of-our-tribe and will become hostile when economic resources are at stake and/or the outsiders introduce a deadly disease. This can create a tremendous upward pressure on  the leadership to take action to prevent the outsiders coming in – particularly when the thinking of the leaders may not be that much more complex than that found in the mass of the population. Thus, the leaders of Zimbabwe’s neighbours are not pressured for action by GREEN’s concerns for human rights – as so very much in the West – but by much more fundamental concerns as basic resources

 

If Odinga were to get a couple of other neighbouring countries to join the Kenyans and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, long a Mugabe sympathiser, could be persuaded at least not to interfere, then a military intervention could be a possibility.

 

How much resistance ZANU-PF and Zimbabwe’s military might put up to such an invasion is difficult to predict.  According to Gordon Brown, the Zimbabwean state and its apparatus have effectively ceased to function. However, reports that the true number of people hospitalised by malnutrition and/or cholera is being covered up would indicate some sort of state machinery still exists.

 

The following e-mail from Zimbabwean John Winter – received via Alan Tonkin of the Global Values Network – most definitely portrays a functioning state machine, if a malignant and brutal one….

 

I reckon that these are the last days of TKM and ZPF. The darkest hour is always before dawn.

 

We are all terrified at what they are going to destroy next…. I mean, they are actually ploughing down brick and mortar houses and one family with twin boys of 10 had no chance of salvaging anything when 100 riot police came in with AK47′s and bulldozers and demolished their beautiful house – 5 bedrooms and pine ceilings – because it was “too close to the airport”. So we are feeling extremely insecure right now.

 

You know,  I am aware that this does not help you sleep at night – but if you do not know, how can you help? Even if you put us in your own mental ring of light and send your guardian angels to be with us – that is a help – but I feel so cut off from you all, knowing I cannot tell you what’s going on here simply because you will feel uncomfortable. There are no ways we can leave here so that is not an option.

 

I ask that you all pray for us in the way that you know how, and let me know that you are thinking of us and sending out positive vibes…that’s all. You can’t just be in denial and pretend/believe it’s not going on.

 

To be frank with you, it’s genocide in the making and if you do not believe me, read the Genocide Report by Amnesty International which says we are – IN  level 7 – (level 8 is after it’s happened and everyone is in denial).

 

If you don’t want me to tell you these things – how bad it is – then it means you have not dealt with your own fear, but it does not help me to think you are turning your back on our situation. We need you, please, to get  the news OUT that we are all in a fearfully dangerous situation here. Too many people turn their backs and say – oh well, that’s what happens in Africa

 

This Government has GONE MAD and you need to help us publicize our plight – or how can we be rescued? It’s a reality! The petrol queues are a reality, the pall of smoke all around our city is a reality, the thousands of homeless people sleeping outside in 0 Celsius with no food, water, shelter and bedding are a reality. Today a family approached me, brother of the gardener’s wife with two small children. Their home was trashed and they will have to sleep outside. We already support 8 adult people and a child on this property, and electricity is going up next month by 250% as is water.

 

How can I take on another family of 4 – and yet how can I turn them away to sleep out in the open?

 

I am not asking you for money or a ticket out of here – I am asking you to FACE the fact that we are in deep and terrible danger and want you please to pass on our news and pictures. So PLEASE don’t just press the delete button! Help best in the way that you know how.

 

Do face the reality of what is going on here and help us SEND OUT THE WORD. The more people who know about it, the more chance we have of the United Nations coming to our aid. Please don’t ignore or deny what’s happening. Some would like to be protected from the truth BUT then, if we are eliminated, how would you feel? “If only we knew how bad it really was, we could have helped in some way.”

 

(I know we chose to stay here and that some feel we deserve what’s coming to us.)

 

For now, we ourselves have food, shelter, a little fuel and a bit of money for the next meal – but what is going to happen next? Will they start on our houses? All property is going to belong to the State now. I want to send out my Title Deeds to one of you because if they get a hold of those, I can’t fight for my rights.

 

Censorship! – we no longer have short wave radio (which told us everything that was happening) because the Government jammed it out of existence – we don’t have any reporters, and no one is allowed to photograph. If we had reporters here, they would have an absolute field day. Even the pro-Government Herald has written that people are shocked, stunned, bewildered and blown mindless by the wanton destruction of many folks homes, which are supposed to be ‘illegal’ but for which a huge percentage actually do have licenses.

 

Please! – do have some compassion and HELP by sending out the articles and personal reports so that something can/may be done.

 

“I am one. I cannot do everything, —but I can do something.. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.” – Edward Everett Hale

 

Is Mugabe mad, as Winter implies? I doubt it. Some might argue he must have been deluded, thinking he could sustain Zimbabwe’s agriculture-based economy while slicing up white-owned large farms into black-owned smallholdings. Others might argue he is simply in denial as to how bad things really are. Yet others will postulate that Mugabe has a paranoid personality disorder, the way he so readily accuses others of attempting to undermine him personally and his country. (The latest manifestation of this is the Herald’s declaration that the cholera outbreak was a “serious biological chemical war … a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British”.)

 

Yet in the very week there was finally open talk of a military intervention, just yesterday Mugabe at last did a deal with MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai on the structure of the joint power-sharing government they first agreed to back in September. After keeping Tsvangirai dangling for 3 months. And the deal was brokered by Mbeki. Which means he has a credibility investment in it and will want it to work – or, at least, have time for it to work. Which means Mbeki will not allow Odinga or whoever to invade Zimbabwe.

 

As for the leaders in the West, preoccupied with the banking crises and the global turndown and with Britain and the United States still caught in the Iraq and Afghanistan traps, they will be relieved to allow Mugabe and Tsvangarai their chance to work together, thus putting Zimbabwe back on the ‘back burner’, if only for a while.

 

Mugabe psychotic? More likely he’s extremely Psychoticist – totally ruthless, completely self-centred, effectively psychopathic. And the way he’s manipulated Mbeki and Tsvangarai shows his RED vMEME is strong and robust. The only thing, of course, is that someone with a highly Psychoticist temperament and led by the RED vMEME will not think much about either the future or anyone else’s needs. Mugabe’s sole intent is to sustain his power. He has little concern about Zimbabwe’s multiple crises – other than how they affect his position personally – and that means he has even less idea how to sort out the mess. And, if Tsvangarai should actually ever get to sit in Mugabe’s cabinet, then he will make the perfect whipping boy – a scapegoat – as Zimbabwe plunges further into chaos.

 

Because that lock of Psychoticist temperament and RED-led motivation means Mugabe will only change if in danger from a power greater than his. United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and MEP Glenys Kinnock are just two public figures who recently, from personal experience, have talked about how incredibly difficult it is to reason with Mugabe.

 

Sentamu, Tutu and Odinga are right. For Zimbabwe’s sake, Mugabe must go. But he has protected himself again…for a while.

 

So John Winter’s darkest hour can only get darker. And white Winter and the black brother of his gardener’s wife share the same paradigm of terror.

 

Winter’s original e-mail was sent in mid-November. As Christmas approaches, we can only hope Winter and the black brother of his gardener’s wife are still alive, still have a roof over their heads and some food to put into theirs and their families’ bellies.

The Sons of Iraq – a step towards Stratified Democracy?

 American Foreign Policy, international conflict, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  No Responses »
Aug 282008
 

The level of violence in Iraq has decreased to the point where troop withdrawals by both the British and the Americans are once again being discussed seriously. Iraq and the United States have reportedly set a preliminary timetable to start withdrawing American forces from Iraqi cities from next June, according to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari last week after his meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

The Zebari-Rice agreement would link troop reductions to the achievement of certain security milestones. But, given how cautious President George W Bush has been to committing to a timetable for American withdrawal, for his Secretary of State to agree to one at all is an indicator of how much better things have become.

And, of course, a few weeks before, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a statement to Parliament announcing the intention to further reduce British troops in 2009.

Who would have thought it a year ago? Certainly I didn’t when I wrote ‘Iraq – time to stand aside…and let them get on with it?’ for this Blog last June.

So, what’s changed the battleground so much in the past 14 months?

Partly the much vaunted ‘surge’ of American troops in Baghdad, while merely displacing many insurgents to other parts of the country, did create short-term some of the essentials for peace at least in parts of the capitol – short-lived windows of opportunity, some of which do seem to have been used.

Partly it’s the training and arming of the Iraqi military and police who have experienced success in a number of operations against the insurgents. As they have grown in confidence and expertise, so the Coalition forces have dropped back from true joint operations to becoming more background support.

This, of course, has emboldened Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who is celebrating any and every victory of the Iraqi security forces and now pushing for the Americans to leave. (Recent government successes in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul seem to have convinced Maliki’s inner circle – cue groupthink! – that Iraq’s army does not need American help as much as it used to.)

However, a key factor in the calming of Iraq has been the so-called ‘Sons of Iraq’ – men paid $300 a day by the Americans to keep the peace in their area and to inform on anti-American insurgents and al Qaeda personnel. The Americans provide (very) basic training – but no weapons – and they are only allowed to take defensive action for and within their own area. Most of these vigilantes are armed – indeed many are former insurgents changed sides – and there have been reports of offensive actions, brutality and reprisal atrocities. Hardly surprising, given the blood feuds and tribal and religious enmities in Iraq! Yet by and large the Sons have had a positive and calming effect, first helping the Americans and Iraqi combat forces clear out al Qaeda fighters and then keeping them, other insurgents and criminal gangs out of their districts. And in some areas – such as Risala – the Sons have got involved in the infrastructure repair first the Coalition Provisional Authority and then Maliki’s government have often failed to provide, organising rubbish pick-ups, rebuilding schools and installing street power generators.

There are now reported to be over 100,000 Sons of Iraq on American pay. Approximately 80% are Sunni and 20% Shiite. General David H Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, has told Congress that the rise of the Sons has reduced American casualties, increased security and even saved American taxpayers money – “The savings and vehicles not lost because of reduced violence far outweighed the costs of their monthly contracts.”

Yet Senator Joe Biden (installed this week as Barack Obama’s running mate) is just one prominent American politician who has raised concerns that, by facilitating the Sons, the United States is perhaps unwittingly creating an alternate army to the official one and one inherently weighted against Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government.

For Maliki the Sons are a real problem. Not only is his government running slow on the agreement to absorb around 25% of the Sons into the Iraqi security forces but Sons leaders are now being targeted for arrest and the government is working openly on strategies either to disarm the Sons or drive them away. There seems little intention to pick up American projects aimed at developing vocational skills and employment prospects amongst the 75% of the Sons who never had any chance of going into Iraq’s police or official army.

Iraq is a patchwork of PURPLE and RED

As much as the Americans had a plan for Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, it seems to have been little more than to somehow magically impose the one person/one (secret) vote Western model of Democracy.  This was supposed to somehow magically turn Iraqis into a democracy-loving neo-modern people.

 

After several false starts and an awful lot of casualties, the ‘democracy plan’ has given Iraq a government of mainly Shiites, with a Kurdish rump who can barely be bothered to disguise their longer-term intention of creating a separate Kurdistan carved partly from Northern Iraq and partly from Eastern Turkey. All efforts to bring the Sunnis into the government have failed. There have been many more casualties and even the Shiites are split into several different rival factions, with most notably a very tense truce only just holding between Maliki’s government forces and the southern militia of Muqtada al-Sadr.

 

Those who know Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck’s (2002) concept of Stratified Democracy will not be surprised that the ‘democracy plan’ has not worked. The ‘democracy plan’ was very much the product of BLUE thinking – there is one way to create representative government of a people: the one person/one (secret) vote Western model. Stratified Democracy proposes that there are several different ways of creating representative government, each related to the cultural mindset of the people requiring government.

 

Saddam Hussein’s RED vMEME ran Iraq like his personal fiefdom. It is probably the closest recent times have seen to an approximation of a medieval kingdom. Saddam was the king; the generals were his scheming lords; and the lords ‘lorded it’ over the serfs (the ordinary people). And just like in Medieval England, the King’s structure favoured Normans over Saxons, so Saddam’s structure favoured Sunnis over Shiites (and Kurds).

 

And, just like parts of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, when the governing repressive BLUE or, in Saddam’s case, RED-BLUE structure is removed, what emerges is PURPLE tribalism. The mindset of the repressed people’s does not usually jump up the Spiral to BLUE or even ORANGE as one person/one (secret) vote democracy requires but settles down into natural PURPLE with the RED of some individuals driving them to become the new local leaders. They lead the tribe initially in the interests of the tribe – though as their power grows, their RED may well lead them into personal aggrandisement.

 

Thus, Iraq has become a patchwork of tribes led all too often by those with a nose for power.

 

In 4Q/8L terms what we have is a form of government (Lower Right) that matches the mindset of the people (Lower Left) with the thinking of the individuals who become leaders (Upper Left) just far enough ahead in complexity to manipulate that government.

 

The story of the Sons of Iraq illustrates these points rather well.

 

In the 2-3 years following the invasion Sunni tribesmen allied themselves with al-Qaeda in a bid both to drive out the invaders from their land – territory is very important to the PURPLE vMEME – and to prevent the Shiite majority from gaining the upper hand in the government of the country.

 

What has come to be known as Sahwa – the ‘Awakening’ – began in Anbar in late Summer 2006 when the tribal sheikh Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha broke his ties with al-Qaeda and approached the American military with the offer to turn his guns away from the Americans and onto al-Qaeda. (Some accounts have the first breaks with al-Qaeda occurring in late 2005.)

 

Risha’s motivation was not to embrace the Western model of democracy but to drive out al-Qaeda whose extreme religious zealotry and brutality in the pursuit of their war was increasingly alienating and disgusting their more moderate Sunni allies.

 

There were also disputes over who controlled what trade and territory – remember how important the land is to the PURPLE mindset!. But perhaps even more unsettling for Risha and other Sunni leaders was the flagrant disregard of al-Qaeda for their traditions. According to David Kilcullen, a counterterrorism expert and sometime advisor to General Petraeus, a key al-Qaeda strategy for embedding themselves into local communities in Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan was to marry senior operatives to local brides. Among Iraq’s Sunnis it was simply not their tradition to marry their women “to strangers, let alone foreigners”.

 

Although Risha was assassinated by al-Qaeda in September 2007, Sahwa continued to spread throughout Sunni areas, facilitated by the American military. According to Washington Post staff writer Greg Bruno: “In nearly every case, local security forces were created from the ground up, with sheikhs, tribal leaders, and other power brokers entering into security contracts with coalition forces.”

 

While few other than Bush and Maliki have been so brave/foolish as to say al-Qaeda is beaten in Iraq, the turning of so many Sunnis from insurgents into American allies has most definitely led to major successes in Iraq.

 

The question now, for observers and policy-makers alike, is where do the Americans, the Sons of Iraq and Maliki’s government go from here?

 

Avoiding tribal warfare in Iraq

Walt Rostow (1960), founder of Modernisation Theory, saw traditionalism (PURPLE tribalism) as the greatest hindrance to developing Western-style consumer societies (the product of BLUE-ORANGE workings) in Third World Countries. Those who chose to ‘democratise’ Iraq should have taken note of Rostow and other sociologists like Talcott Parsons who saw the need for major shifts in values if traditional societies were to be modernised.

 

Apparently there were those in the Pentagon in 2003 who wished to engage with Iraq at a tribal level. It’s a pity their voices didn’t prevail. Thousands upon thousands of lives might not have been wasted and ruined!

 

An American infantry officer interviewed by the BBC this week conceded that districts under the control of the Sons of Iraq were effectively run as if by mafia-type gangs.

 

The approach of Stratified Democracy is to deal with whatever form of government works best for the mindset of the populace. If the men of the tribe are happy to live and sometimes die by the autocratic orders of their sheiks, then that works for them at this time. In these Life Conditions, as Don Beck might say.

 

Trying to impose Western-style democracy is pointless. All that has done in Iraq is to put in charge of a would-be monolithic structure a tribal leader, Nuri al-Maliki, whose RED looks first and foremost for the interests of those Shia tribes loyal to him. It is unlikely Maliki can bring a peace to Iraq which benefits all its many tribes.

 

The Americans clearly want out of the fighting in Iraq – though they equally clearly they have a strong interest in the oil there; and there is also much speculation that they would like permanent military bases there. (Ready to take on the Iranians, if need be, presumably…?)

 

The danger is that, by the Americans withdrawing as an intercessionary force  and leaving Maliki in power, already starting to pursue overt anti-Sons of Iraq/implicit anti-Sunni strategies, Iraq will be spiral down into large-scale religious and tribal warfare.

 

Those who would bring peace to Iraq need to deal with the tribal leaders as they are – often autocrats – and find the common ground between them. Maliki is, effectively, not a prime minister of a unitary and united country but one of the more powerful tribal leaders and needs to be treated as one – without, if this is possible, him losing too much face. (RED won’t be shamed!)

 

The in-group/out-group functioning of PURPLE is vulnerable to super-identities being created. For example, sparring ‘Yorkshiremen’ and ‘Lancastrians’ will respond to the call to be ‘Englishmen’. ‘English’ and ‘Scottish’ – at least in the past! – have responded to the call to be ‘Britons’. A number of people across Europe now see themselves as ‘Europeans’. The lower-down identities are still there and can be aroused – often with highly-negative consequences – if the suprer-identity breaks down. (Viz: Yugoslavia.) But the successful creation of a suprer-identity can unite lower-down identities – though the supra-identity often requires a substantial amount of maintenance.

 

Iraq, if it is to avoid tribal warfare, needs its super-identity rebuilt (for a uniting PURPLE) while the interests of the RED-driven leaders need to be aligned as far as possible.

 

Interestingly the Sons of Iraq might offer some possibilities here. First, the name refers to the geopolitical entity of Iraq – something all the tribes (at least the Sunni and Shia tribes!) can relate to. Secondly, there are 20,000+ Shiites among their number. How did they get there, sharing an identity and a cause with over 80,000 Sunnis? Granted the Sons of Iraq is actually an umbrella name for a number of diverse and independent groups – but does the concept offer some possibilities for bringing Stratified Democracy to Iraq?

Iraq – time to stand aside…and let them get on with it?

 American Foreign Policy, international conflict, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  1 Response »
May 222007
 
We – the Coalition of the United States and Britain - invaded Iraq in 2003 and thereby triggered the progressive deterioration in intercommunal relations in that country. Against the express wishes of the United Nations and most governments in the world – and (especially in Britain!) the express wishes of large parts of our civilian populations, we invaded a sovereign state (an undeniable act of war!) and overthrew its government. The supposed justification for this unprovoked aggression was ‘intelligence’ that Iraq still had hidden stockpiles of ’weapons of mass destruction’ and was not co-operating with the United Nations weapons inspectors. While the actual intent in these respects of the then-Iraqi government is still a matter of contentious debate, the post-war search for these ‘WMD’ failed completely to find anything remotely resembling a capable ’weapon of mass destruction’. There remains much speculation that the American and British governments manipulated the available ‘intelligence’ to make ‘the case for war’.

So, as we have watched the near-daily slaughter escalate over the past four years, I have felt that, because we triggered the mess – ie: at root, it’s our fault! - our troops should stay and try to contain the deteriorating situation while ‘political solutions’ were sought. Unfortunately those who were doing the trying and imposing of ‘solutions’ seemed to have little idea of what might actually work.

Reluctantly, over the past couple of months, as the much-vaunted American ‘surge’ in Baghdad has succeeded only in displacing insurgents to wreak havoc in areas outside the city (as well as deadly effective bombs inside it), I’ve begun to think that maybe it is time to stand the troops down and let the factions get on with their bloodbaths. That, for the time being at least, Iraq is lost.

In April 2007, 12 British soliders died, 104 American troops and approximately 1,500 Iraqi civilians.

The latest Chatham House Middle East briefing paper is ‘Accepting Realities in Iraq’ by Dr Gareth Stansfield. It notes the following:-
# In the South British troops are fighting Shia militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr; 
# Also in the South there is much in-fighting amongst Shia groups;
# In Baghdad there is effectively a Sunni-Shia mini-civil war;
# In the centre Sunni tribesmen and insurgents are fighting Sunni forces linked to al-Qaeda;
# In the North and the centre the Americans are fighting a Sunni militia;
# In the North Kurds are fighting non-Kurds (Sunnis, Shias and Americans if they get in the way);
# In and amongst this bands of criminals operate across the county with virtual impunity.

There simply appears to be no end – and no possible end – to the killing in sight.  

What are the options?
The United States military is the most awesome force ever conceived this side of a science fiction blockbuster. It does have the technology and the firepower to close and hold down a country even the size of Iraq.

What the US lacks is the willpower. No President wants to preside over bodybags arriving home by the planeload on an hourly basis – and how would he or she stop the media reporting the sheer brutality of the methods used and the hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of Iraqi lives such an endeavour would cost? And how would America square its strategies with both the resultant horror and anger in the Islamic world fuelling new wave after new wave of anti-Western terrorism and the repugnance in much of the rest of the world at such measures?

With no understanding of how to create workable political solutions, American forces could be tied up on such a colossal basis for years, leaving the country vulnerable militarily and drained financially even to the point where it ended up no longer an economic superpower. 

The status quo is not an option because there is no status quo. The US and Britain are losing – both politically and in lives – with Iraq sliding almost daily into greater turmoil. The Coalition needs to throw a lot more lives at the problem before they make any kind of positive difference.

Nor is complete withdrawal any answer – no matter how much certain politicians and sections of the media call for it. And no matter how much significant numbers of the general public want it too.

For one thing the Middle East has massive geopolitical importance – not least because of the massive oil deposits along the Gulf of Arabia. Maintaining influence on – if not outright control of – that oil is a key strand in America’s strategies to maintain its economic lead in the world.

Then there is the cause of the United States’ friend, Israel, surrounded by implicitly-hostile countries like Egypt and explicitly-hostile ones such as Syria. No American President can afford to offend the ultra-powerful Jewish lobby in Washington while Israel tends to champion American interests in the Middle East. The prospect of Iran developing an offensive nuclear weapons capability is something neither Washington nor Tel Aviv will countenance. If the Americans don’t take care of it either diplomatically or through a ’surgical’ military strike, then Israel will. Given the Israelis’ past record on these sorts of things, it would be doubtful if their strike would be anything like as ‘surgical’ as an American one.

Then there is the problem of ‘Kurdistan’. If the Americans abanoned Iraq, that would effectively give the Kurds in the North the green light to break away from Iraq and seek to entice the Kurds in the South-East of Turkey to join them in creating Kurdistan. Such moves would almost certainly bring military intervention from Turkey and could lead to destabilisation of that country, a member of NATO.

If the Coalition withdraw completely, there is every likelihood Iran would intervene actively to support the Shias in Iraq – possibly even to the point of seeing Iranian tanks on Iraqi soil. There is little chace Saudi Arabia would stand by while Iraqi Sunnis were massacred in large numbers by Iranians or the country became a satellite of Tehran. Of course, the Saudis don’t have much in the way of military capability (relatively speaking) but their money and their oil have made them powerful friends, most notably the United States. And here’s where the Americans are caught on the horns of yet another dilemma: if they don’t play the Saudis’ game, that will almost certainly result in the dreaded al-Qaeda increasing their influence in the country.

So, no win for the Americans there. Withdrawing completely is not a feasible option.

That probably leaves the best short-term option as standing by and letting them get on with it – ‘holding the ring’ as it were by keeping the Iranians and other interested parties out while the Iraqis resolve their internal disputes in blood. The Americans have the technology to monitor Iraq’s borders and the resources to mount interventions from carriers in the Gulf and air bases in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Turkey to prevent outside interference. It might be possible to wind Colation troop levels inside Iraq down to near-nominal level while strengthening a sort of ‘ring of steel’ around the country to minimise outside intervention.

Effectively the option I’m (somewhat reluctantly) advocating here is to throw the various Iraqi factions into a secured bear pit and say, “Fight!”

Horrible! Hundreds of thousands – possibly millions! - will die. Many more will be injured and maimed; and most likely tens of millions of people will be displaced. The country would be devastated for the best part of a decade.

But Western military casualties should be relatively light; and it should be possible, for the most part, to keep the Iranians, the Syrians, the Saudis and al-Qaeda out.

In face of such an apolyptic prospect, many Iraqis may blink and step back from the abyss, withdrawing their support for the extremists and isolating them. Hopefully many of them would do that sooner, rather than later.

It may be that media reporting of the unrestrained bloodletting shames many governments in the rest of the world into providing sufficient support to the Americans in troops and logistics that a truly comprehensive and sustainable occupation of Iraq could be implemented.

It could be that, after several years of largescale carnage, enough Iraqis to make a difference tire of the killing and start demanding peace. (Conflict after conflict, from the American withdrawal from Vietnam to the collapse of terrorism in Northern Ireland, has shown so often that when the bulk of the general population grow weary of the bloodshed and withdraw their support from extremist positions, then is the best chance to work for peace.)

How ever Iraq comes to the point where enough of the population want peace for it to be feasible, rather than a fantasy, then those who started this and have enough firepower to enforce a peace at least in the very short term – ie the Americans - must be ready to step in with political and social mechanisms that the Iraqis understand, want and can use.

To find your way around, it helps to have a map
It is now generally acknowledged that, when the Coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, the military planners knew how to win the war – which they did in fairly spectacular style – but few people in the Washington decision-making loops seemed to have much idea how to win the peace.

Beyond expecting Iraqis to greet the incoming troops as ‘liberating’ them from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime – which initially many Iraqis did – little thought seems to have been given to how to rebuild the country with a form of politics the majority of people could subscribe to.

There has been much speculation as to how such sophisticated and advanced thinkers as the analysts and strategists working for the White House, the Pentagon, the Defense Department, the State Department and 10 Downing Street could have got it so badly wrong. Clearly there was a lack of 2nd Tier thinking. But the more limited 1st Tier approaches were reinforced by the phenomenon Irving Janis (1972) named ‘Groupthink’. Key decisions were taken by George W Bush, Donald Rumpsfeld, Tony Blair and small self-contained groups who rerely referenced outside their own immediate circles but instead played back to each other their ever more fantastical conceptions of what is and what should be. It is common knowledge that Blair (who himself was kept out of some of Bush’s decision-making loops) ignored the majority of his Cabinet’s reservations about going to war with Saddam and tended to discuss it almost only with those who reinforced his views.

Thus, the American planners made little attempt to understand the complexities of the very different Iraqi society – societies? - and instead assumed a minimalist force of occupation could set up Western style democratic institutions.

If the planners had used the Spiral Dynamics map of emergent motivational systems to understand Iraqi culture(s), attitudes and behaviours as part of their pre-invasion planning, they would have seen that a quite different politcal set-up was required to the Western democracy model.

John Berry (1969), the acclaimed psychologist specialising in cross-cultural studies, would consider the attempt to impose Western democracy an imposed etic. In other words, we have assumed the values, practices, traditions and other characteristics of our culture are the universal norm and, as such, are applicable to all cultures.

The alternative – at least politically - is the concept of Stratified Democracy put forward by Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck (2002). This proposes that different cultures and sub-cultures will be at differing stages of social development and, therefore, need different forms of representative (ie: democratic) governance, economic distribution, etc. Achieving the most appropriate form of Stratified Democracy for a culture or sub-culture will, in Beck’s view, be an output of a MeshWORK mapping process.

Let’s apply a brief and basic hypthetical MeshWORK analysis approach to Iraq…

# BEIGE
Basic foodstuffs and clean drinking water are in short supply in some areas while electric power is often intermittent at best.

Conditions in the hospitals are primitive by Western standards, with anaesthetics and many medicines in short supply. Emergency wards are frequently overwhelmed in the aftermath of a bombing.

In many parts of the country there is no or little work, making it difficult to get the means to stay alive. As a result many men are driven by economic necssity to join the police. Hence the attraction of lengthy and slow-moving police recruiting lines for bombers.

Personal security is frequently at risk in many parts of the country. Indiscriminate bombings, sectarian killings (often prededed by torturing the victims) and both political and criminal kidnappings are the main hazards.

The Coalition and the Shia-dominated governments they have propped up have been fairly slow and largely ineffectual in establishing the basic necessities of ‘civilised’ life in Iraq. So it’s hardly suprising that life in the worst-hit parts of Iraq is pretty ‘uncivilised’. (The Americans and the British made similar mistakes in the southern part of Aghanistan and are paying for them with a resurgence of the Taliban.) Talk of ‘democracy’, ‘the political process’ and ‘the vote’ tends to be pretty irrelevant to people who are preoccupied with surviving and being safe unless such politics is going to have a fairly immediate impact upon having such vital needs met.

# PURPLE
This vMEME is big in Iraqi culture. Its focus on group identity and its territorial nature mean it defends its turf against outsiders – and the more pressure it is under the more aggressive it becomes. Thus the ever-increasing segregation in Baghdad. Wherever the American and British go, they are resisted as they are always outsiders on someone else’s turf. The ‘liberators’ were very quickly seen as ‘occupiers’ on land that didn’t belong to them.

Tribal culture is still dominant in much of Iraq. What the tribal elder says is relevant and to be honoured; what some American or some ‘Government spokesman’ says on the television is just an ugly noise to be ignored or despised. So, if the tribespeople vote, they vote according to tribal affiliations and how the elders tell them to vote.

‘One man, one vote, think for yourself’ politics is way removed from the daily reality of most of these people. Trying to impose it is a futile and dangerous exercise – not least because it challenges the traditions of the tribe and portrays them as somehow deficient.

# PURPLE / BLUE Harmonic
The BLUE vMEME has brought religious affiliation to PURPLE to create the super-tribal and very dangerous identities of Sunni and Shia. Now, the other lot are not only ‘of a different tribe’ but they are heretics defiling the one true religion. Thus, they are dehumanised and criminalised further, making their death and destruction that much easier.

With the Kurds BLUE has played the nationalism card so that all real Kurds now should aspire to bring the great goal of Kurdistan into existence.

# RED / BLUE Harmonic
As has been seen in the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia and now Iraq, when BLUE structure and order break down, RED’s ‘power pecking order’ tends to come in to replace it.

 
The Iraq of Saddam Hussein was more of a RED Mediaeval kingdom (with Saddam’s generals in the role of the King’s scheming ‘noble lords’) but there was a degree of BLUE social infrastructure. Saddam used this BLUE infrastructure (in tandem with PURPLE tribal loyalties) to control his people in ways not altogether dissimilar – eg: police state apparatus – to those of the Soviet oligarchs. However, the dominant vMEME in Iraq was RED, exemplified in the cult of personality Saddam revelled in and his government promoted.
Just as in Mediaeval kingdoms, the death of the King often created a power vaccuum, so has Saddam’s deposition (and death). Hence, the struggle for power, supported by competing tribal loyalties (PURPLE) and religious denunciations of others (BLUE).

Again, ‘One man, one vote, think for yourself’ democracy is pretty much irrelevant in situations where who has the power is what matters.

 
BLUE (and beyond)
It would seem nodal BLUE, outside of the universities, industry and religion is in short supply. For example, the police – stalwart BLUE in most Western countries - are notoriously corrupt and riddled with PURPLE/RED partisan loyalties.

 

 
There’s not much evidence of ORANGE other than the Western businesspeople out to control Iraq’s oil. And quite possibly GREEN’s only representatives are the brave/foolish aid workers still in the country.
Reconstructing Iraq for the Iraqis
If the option of ‘holding the ring’ while the factions slaughter each other – how ever horrific and unpalatable – appears to be the only viable one in the short/mid-term, then the Americans and the British need to prepare quickly for negotiations to create a new social and political Iraq. It needs to be done quickly as one can only hope a critical mass of Iraqis wanting peace builds rapidly, rather than takes years and years of carnage.
As soon as there is anything like a significant ‘window of opportunity’, the Coalition need to be ready with strategies that will work.

To do this, the Americans and the British need to work with where much of Iraq is at – ie: PURPLE and RED – not where they themselves are at – ie: BLUE, ORANGE and some GREEN. In other words, they need to use Stratified Democracy.

This may mean working with tribal elders and Islamic clerics and accepting that they will tell their unthinking followers what to do. In their context, that is what is more likely to be right for them than exhorting everyone to cast a considered but anonymous vote in a polling booth.

It may be that government in Iraq needs to be restructured in line with tribal identities and territories. It may be that the country needs splitting into 3 or more federated states. It may be that Iraq actually needs to be broken up, with 3 or more autonomous states emerging from the wreckage. It may be that a new supraordinate ‘Iraqi identity’ can be created that all Iraqis can buy into.

How ever it works out, the solution(s) must fit with the values of the vast mass of the Iraqi people and be something that Iraq’s neighbours will respect.

In this sense, as well as working with their client groups on the ground, the Coalition will almost certainly need some form of dialogue with Syria and Iran (as the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report of December 2006 recommended). These are the two major Arab military and political players in the area; both have anti-Western agendas but have reasons to co-operate with the West. (Syria wants help getting the Golan Heights back from Israel; Iran needs to find a non-military resolution to the impasse over its nuclear ambitions.) Both understand the PURPLE-BLUE Islamic loyalties, rivalries and tensions intuitively in a way few Western diplomats could even dream of.

Getting the cooperation of Syria and Iran in presenting new realistic opportunities for Iraq could also be tied in with intiatives to resolve other linked-in problems in the region – not least the status of the Palestinian territories, the ‘Kurdistan issue’ and the role of regional superpower Iran in a realigned Middle East.

So, opportunity is not lost in the longer term. Indeed, there seems every opportunity and everything to play for. But in the short term only death, destruction, injury and misery for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis.

It is abhorrent, not at all a pleasant prospect. But it seems there may be no other real option. Only when the bulk of the Iraqi nation no longer support the extremists and stand up against them will there be a real chance for peace.

Of course, while holding the ring, the United States and Britain must be developing new, realistic initiatives based on real Iraqi values and looking for and recruiting influential Iraqis to their cause. Then, when war weariness starts to set in, they are ready with the right men and the right intiatives to start building a momentum for a genuine and sustainable peace.