Well, are the Arabs ready for Democracy?

 Afghanistan, Africa, cross-cultural, government, heroes and inspirational figures, international relations, meta-programmes, Middle East, morality, NLP, politics, Psychology, racism, religion, society, Sociology, Spiral Dynamics  6 Responses »
Apr 112011
 

On 22 February David Cameron, in an address to the Kuwaiti parliament, hit out at suggestions the Middle East “can’t do democracy”, saying: “For me, that’s a prejudice that borders on racism.”

Even at the time it was blatantly clear that such statements were part of his and French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign to persuade the United Nations to approve military action against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi viciously and bloodily repressing pro-Democracy rebels across Libya.

A little over 6 weeks later, as NATO tries not to apologise for bombing the hell out of the first armoured column the hard-pressed Libyan rebels have been able to assemble in what is now a de facto civil war…as revolutionary Tunisia and revolutionary Egypt wonder what on earth to do next now they’ve gotten rid of their dictators…and Syrian security forces exterminate yet more pro-Democracy protestors on the streets of Deraa, I’d argue it could be construed as racist not to ask the question: “Can the Arabs do Democracy?” After all, thousands of Arabs have died over the past 3 months in the name of Democracy. If we’re not to devalue their lives, we have to ask whether their sacrifice for their cause is justified. We’d certainly ask it if thousands of demonstrators were being killed systematically by the police in cities across Europe!

So, are Arab peoples significantly different in their genetic make-up from the Europeans and North Americans who do do Democracy? Certainly, from the huge amounts of evidence analysed by the likes of Elliott Sober (2000) in the past 20 years, it would appear not. In which case, if there is a difference in the potential for Democracy, it has to lie primarily in cultural factors.

It’s interesting that it’s generally accepted that, while Europe languished in the Dark Ages, the Arabs not only kept Hellenic science alive in mathematics, astronomy, medicine and Philosophy but added to many of the ancient Greeks’ works. It’s even of note that some attribute the first flourishings of European science coming from the Moorish invaders of Spain bringing Arabic science to the continent. From there the European Renaisssance developed and eventually the ‘scientific revolution’ of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Meanwhile, Arabic science – and, with it, Arabic culture largely fossilised. This digression into the development of science is important because, while the link between cultural and scientific development is extremely ‘rough and ready’, there does indeed seem to be an unexplored correlation. Many commentators – eg: Norman Tebbitt in his August 2005 remarks on the 7/7 bombings – attribute the fossilisation of Arabic science and culture in the late Middle Ages to the increasing stranglehold of Islam on Arabic thought. Others attribute it to the political systems in place. Yet others attribute it to the cumulative effect of a plethora of small things such as the Arabic failure to adopt a patenting system as the Europeans did which made science potentially profitable for its exponents.

Whatever, over an 800-year period – arguably starting with the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215 – the Europeans made a slow and tortuous progress to modern Democracy while the Arabs changed little other than for some of their national borders to be imposed upon them (eg: Iraq, Libya) and to accept some of the benefits of Western science and engineering (medicine, transport infrastructure, etc) during the ‘days of empire’.

In terms of political systems, very little has changed. Some countries like Saudi Arabia still have absolute monarchies while others – eg: Egypt, Tunisia, Libya – had their kings replaced with autocratic dictators who were either military leaders or sponsored by the military.

These are, of course, generalisations – Lebanon, for example, stands out as different in many ways – but the post-colonial history of that country is far from being that of a stable, democratic, unified nation.

In terms of cultural vMEMES, Europe could be generalised in the late Middle Ages as being dominated by RED-thinking despots with a power hierarchy of lords and nobles, with the Roman Catholic Church providing some semblance of BLUE structure and PURPLE clan networks largely suppressed and/or dying out in terms of influence. Now Western Europe (and North America) can be generalised as largely dominated by BLUE political structures (democratic systems) exploited by ORANGE-driven political achievers and business corporates – with some sheen of GREEN influencing moral thinking in social matters, particularly in the Scandinavian countries.

In contrast the Arab nations have largely remained ruled by RED despots, with Islam providing a BLUE veneer of conscience and duty. The PURPLE clan (tribal) networks still flourish in many of the Arabic countries but have been quite suppressed in others – eg: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. The army generals in these countries function in a similar way to the Mediaeval European king’s lords.

So where have these intense campaigns for Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa come from and what does Democracy really mean to the protestors?

Complex ideas for simpler worldviews…?
I’ll never forget, in late 2000, during the HemsMESH project, hearing Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck talk about irresponsible, profit-oriented ORANGE beaming television images of high value/high status items into homes where the thinking was largely in PURPLE and RED. The danger in this, as Beck saw it, was that RED would drive many of those people to do anything to get those items. As they lacked BLUE disciplines and ORANGE planning and RED has no concept of time other than NOW, some of those people would deal drugs, commit burglaries, extort others and prostitute themselves to get what they saw as necessary for the ‘good life’ – Zygmunt Bauman’s (1988) concept of the ‘seduced’ criminalised. Those whose thinking was more dominated by PURPLE would most likely feel more alienated than ever from the ‘others’ – those who have the ‘good life’ – effectively Bauman’s ‘repressed’.

Beck was talking about the residents of the South-East Wakefield former mining villages where, until the mines closed, life for a couple of centuries had been little more complicated than going to school to get the basics of reading and writing until you were old enough to go down the pit (males) or get married, have children and look after the household (females). Until the mines closed, their ‘life conditions’ didn’t require thinking more complex than PURPLE and RED. Then, in less than a generation the mines were gone and incomes severely reduced while ORANGE consumerism tempted them endlessly with the ‘good life’ they simply couldn’t have legally without a substantial upgrade in thinking.

Beck’s concerns can be applied in large measure to the peoples in the Arab states whose life conditions, for perhaps centuries, have required little beyond PURPLE and RED. Where more complex thinking has emerged, it has tended be isolated to the universities or repressed or both. It’s no accident that it’s largely been imported workers from the West (management and technology) and places like the Philippines and the Indian subcontinent (more manual labour) who have got the wealth-producing oil out of the ground in those Arab states which have the ‘black gold’.

But especially with the advent of the internet and more especially with the development of social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc), the Arab peoples have been exposed to complex concepts previously rarely experienced by the average Arab in downtown Benghazi or the backstreets of Deraa. Like the former coalminers of South East Wakefield, many Arabs are being exposed to ideas with which they do not yet have the mental and cultural sophistication to fully understand and assimilate.

The result has been the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ – an angry outpouring of long-suppressed dissatisfaction with the authoritarian regimes which have ruled them largely through the shadowy terrors of a police state. They are driven by a RED contagion that flies in the face of the water cannons, the tear gas, the rubber bullets, the baton charges and all too frequently live ammunition. In spite of the appalling injuries and sometimes death inflicted upon their fellow-protestors right by their side, they come back time and time again, more and more determined to get rid of their autocratic rulers.

Apart from the sheer level of violence inflicted by the state upon the protestors - most obviously in Libya but Syria, Bahrain and the Yemen have also seen levels of violence by the state that are totally unacceptable to most North Americans and Western Europeans – there is a problem in understanding what the protestors want and how they might get it. They certainly know what they don’t want – Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Ali Abdullah Saleh, etc – as if a collective move-away-from meta-programme was running their heads…. But do they know what they want beyond some ephemeral idea of ‘Democracy’…?

This is where there seems to be a clear lack of charismatic, ‘big-vision’ leadership. There are no Mahatma Gandhis or Nelson Mandelas - not even a Gerry Adams! – to articulate what the new Tunisia or the new Egypt might look like…what model of Democracy they might actually try to implement. So far the Arab Spring revolutions seem to be composed genuinely of the ‘little people’ who had simply had enough of the ‘bad guys’ terrorising and exploiting them and got some ideas of what to do about it from the internet.

So the problem of the lack of leadership also leads to what might be termed a ‘vision vacuum’.

History shows that, where there is chaos and a lack of leadership and vision vacuum, then the vacuum can be filled very easily by those who offer quite an unsavoury vision as long as it is a vision that offers hope and order from the chaos and is accompanied by strong leadership. Just think of what Adolph Hitler offered bankrupt and depressed Germany in the 1930s. Just think of what the Taliban offered ravaged Afghanistan after the failed governments that followed the Russian invasion and withdrawal.

Fortunately – so far, at least! – the Arab Spring seems to be running a move-away-from fundamentalist Islam meta-programme. But how long can the vision vacuums last before people became desperate for strong leadership and someone or something to give them vision?

The West is right to be concerned that al-Qaeda or their ilk could take advantage of the vision vacuums.

How Democracy works
Using 4Q/8L it’s possible to take a sociopsychological analysis of the way Western Democracy works.

Firstly the structure (Lower Right) is largely BLUE in that the political systems are tightly controlled, very bureaucratic and centred on the principle of one (free adult) person/one (secret) vote. The cultures of the Lower Left are all over the Spiral’s 1st Tier but the vast majority of the population’s thinking is in the PURPLE, RED and BLUE zones. There isn’t that sizeable a proportion of the population thinking in vMEMES beyond BLUE. (In 1983 Anne Colby, Lawrence Kohlberg et al found only marginal evidence – around 5% of his samples – of thinking at Stage 5 – the equivalent of ORANGE – in his Stages of Moral Development.) Thus, the ORANGE thinking of key individuals (Upper Left) is able to manipulate less complex thinking in the Lower Left to vote in elections (Lower Right) to their advantage. A prime example of this was the way Tony Blair fought to get and retain Rupert Murdoch’s support for Labour because he knew The Sun - Britain’s most widely-read newspaper – was one of the most powerful weapons in his election armoury. Gordon Brown lost Murdoch’s support in 2009 and the following year Labour lost the election.

Western Democracy is far from being the fair, just and egalitarian concept the West likes to portray it as. Marxists have no hesitation in pointing out how it largely preserves elites. But it does facilitate some social mobility, it does factor in some capacity for change and most people in the Western democracies find it more or less acceptable – and certainly they see it as better than any form of totalitarian or authoritarian government!

If we apply 4Q/8L to the Arab states, we find the Lower Right structure is BLUE enough for the government’s police systems to work but they run on RED power and coercion. There is little BLUE in the Lower Left – in fact, it’s largely fear-conscious PURPLE-dominated. All of which enables RED-led individuals in the Upper Left to use the Lower Right to dominate the Lower Left…until very recently. Now we have an explosion of angry RED in the Lower Left.

Just how much the protestors are driven by RED (and, to some extent, PURPLE) is illustrated by the Libyan rebels who appear mostly incompetent as would-be soldiers and are far too disorganised to take on Gaddafi’s forces who have a strong dose of BLUE military discipline among them. The only time the rebels seem to have real success is when Gaddafi’s forces are reeling from United Nations/NATO airstrikes.

The above analyses of both the Western democracies and the authoritarian Arab states are, of course, full of generalisations. In reality, there are many, many variations which make those generalisations flawed. Nontheless, as a generalisation it can be said that Arab culture and state structures have some way to go before they are ready for Western-style Democracy.

Democracy is said to require:-

  • People be informed enough to take an interest in how they are governed. This assumes a degree of education and intelligence amongst the electorate. Plus, they must have the time and resources to take the interest.
  • It also assumes media, free from government interference, communicating information on the key issues for people to develop an informed opinion. Communicating on issues to the electorate forms a powerful check on what governments do, putting them under scrutiny by the electorate. (Which is why so many leading politicians cultivate the media magnates to win their support.)
  • People doing things the government can’t control. Much in the lives of British citizens is beyond the direct control of governments. Families, religious organisations, clubs and societies, for example, facilitate discussion and debate about public concerns…yet in the UK it is difficult for government to influence them very much.
  • Little desire for radical alternatives. In the UK there is not that much difference between the parties. Those supporting losing parties usually don’t need to fear that their lives will be ‘turned upside down’ as a consequence of their favoured party losing.
    Eg: in the wake of the 2010 general election in the UK, while the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government proposed an average cut of 25% in public sector costs, the losing Labour Party conceded that they intended cuts of around 20% – though at a slower pace of implementation.
    Because there is a maximum term a government can serve in a democracy before another election – 5 years in the UK – the losing party have little incentive not to accept defeat. They will get their chance again at the next election.

Clearly there are a large percentage of Arab populations who are poorly educated, with many illiterate. They are not used to having a free media – though much is being made of the ‘free’ rebel radio stations in Benghazi! Plus, there is a minority – hopefully still rather small – who would like to see the revolutionary states dominated by Islamic fundamentalism.

For Democracy to be sustainable, it also has to be embedded as a cultural norm. And there the strong PURPLE tribalism running throughout much of the Middle East and North Africa presents a real problem. A central concept in Democracy is that, after all the attempts to influence and buy influence, the voter should make up their own mind. In PURPLE tribal cultures, there is effectively no secret vote. You vote how your tribal elder tells you to vote.

It would be wrong to say Arab cultures and structures couldn’t very quickly become democratic…but the seriously-flawed experiment in Democracy in Iraq should serve as a warning that change is unlikely to occur quickly, smoothly or painlessly.

Even more the election of Hamas in Gaza in 2006 is a cautionary tale on how Democracy can go badly wrong if the ground is not properly prepared. The campaign was marred by tribal and gang political violence but the election itself was judged fair by the UN.

And let’s never forget Hitler and the Nazis were democratically elected in 1933!

What now?
It’s a pity the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring have tried to drive out all politicians associated with the old regimes and have refused to accept gradual transfers of power and interim arrangements.

Given the brutal, exploitative and deceptive natures of the old regimes, the mistrust of anyone associated with them is understandable. In light of this, the proposals being put forward today by Jacob Zuma’s African Union delegation to the Libyan rebels are clearly inadequate. The government remains in power, their military entrenched around Ajdabiya and Misrata and able to regroup, and NATO airstrikes are halted. In return for which, the rebels are invited to talk to Gaddafi’s government about a transition to Democracy. No wonder Gaddafi endorses the proposals! Given his past record on broken ceasefires and ruthless repression of opponents, the rebels would be crazy to accept.

However, transitional arrangements, if firm, transparent and monitored by, say, the United Nations, could give the Arab states the breathing time they need to put in at least some of the educational and cultural development programmes they need to create the groundwork for Democracy to begin to work.

Don Beck’s (2000) concept of Stratified Democracy - see Stratified Democracy vs Modernisation Theory – posits that the form of government (Lower Right in 4Q/8L) has to be in line with the cultural level of thinking (Lower Left). Thus, Western Democracy (BLUE with an ORANGE leading edge) is a step too far for peoples whose thinking has mushroomed suddenly from cowed PURPLE to furious RED. What is needed is an interim form of government which rules with some semblance of the old, familiar iron fist but is sympathetic to the concept of Democracy and has committed to a clear and transparent process of transition. But that process may take time – bearing in mind that Walt Rostow (1960) reckoned it could take a century to develop a largely tribal African nation into a Western-style consumerist society – and the process will need to be managed and monitored very carefully indeed.

In this sense, the Egyptians may actually be on their way to getting it right. The interim military government seems committed to turning Egypt into a modern democracy; but, rather than rushing at it, they seem determined to take the time to develop a system that is right for Egypt and sustainable in the long term. Of course, the military government also appear to be using some of the old regime’s secret-police-and-torture repression methods and the violence against demonstrators in Tahrir Square this past Friday night (8 April) does not bode well for the future. But the calls of the demonstrators illustrate just how difficult the transition process may prove. The demonstrators were not telling the government what they wanted for the future of their country - a visionary move-towards. Rather they were telling the government more of what they didn’t want – a nihilistic RED move-away from - getting rid of more old regime members of the government and stopping Hosni Mubarak hanging onto the wealth he amassed from exploiting Egypt.

In  thinking about how the Arab states progress towards Democracy, it may  be salutary to consider the former totalitarian communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Many of them. such as Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states, have successfully morphed into liberal, capitalist democracies over a 20-year period – though not without much turmoil. They also had, under Communism, much stronger BLUE in the systems and structures of the Lower Right, giving them a more advanced starting position when their totalitarian regimes collapsed.

Nonetheless, many of the challenges the post-totalitarian Eastern European states faced will be similar to those the post-autocracy Arab states will confront in the coming months and years.

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 Critical Link between Failed States and Values

 Africa, international conflict, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  6 Responses »
Jul 042008
 

Written by ALAN TONKINI

 

 I am honoured once again to publish AlanTonkin’s work as a ‘guest blog’. Alan wrote this piece for the Global Values Network web site he runs but also thought it would be appropriate to publish it here. GVN is one of the most advanced projects in the world at using Spiral Dynamics to monitor shifts in societies and assess impacts at national, international and even global levels.

As the world seems to become an ever-more dangerous place, Alan offers this consideration as to why so many ‘Third World’ states fail to develop in positive and healthy ways for the benefit of their own peoples and the international community.

 

The latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine for July/August 2008, in conjunction with The Fund for Peace, has just published their latest rankings of Failed States with Africa occupying seven of the top ten positions. These include Somalia (1), Sudan (2), Zimbabwe (3), Chad (4), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (6), the Ivory Coast – no 8 - and the Central African Republic (10).

 

The non–African countries are Iraq (5), Afghanistan (7) and Pakistan (9) which are in the Middle Eastern region (see map below – copyright © 2008 The Fund for Peace).  A further eleven African countries are included in the critical Alert list of 32 countries.  This is a total of 18 or 56% of the total and raises the question of why is this the case? The balance of 34 fall into Warning and only South Africa currently falls into Moderate.

 

Failed States Index 2008

In order to more fully understand this situation it is necessary to fully appreciate the direct link between  Failed States and Values and why the two issues are so closely intertwined. 

 

Dr Don Beck, in his ground breaking work on ‘values’ in ‘Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership & Change’ (co-authored with Christopher Cowan and first published in 1996) explains this link.  The book is based on the original work by Professor Clare Graves at Union College in New York in the 1950s and shows how different values require different levels and approaches to leadership. 

 

Beck also visited South Africa over sixty times in a fifteen year period extending from the early 80’s to the mid – 90’s during a period of rapid political change and transition. These visits generally were on average a minimum of 15 days in length giving him an in depth exposure to South Africa covering a total period of over two and a half years.  

 

During his visits Beck interacted with a wide variety of organisations and individual leaders including top politicians from both the leading ANC and National parties as well as other political parties and groupings. He also had wide exposure to leaders in both business organisations and NGO’s.

 

How Different Values Influence Democracy and Leadership.

Beck has produced an interesting graphic to illustrate his approach and we will use this to show how different values produce different leadership.  It is also important to note that different ‘values mixes’ exist in both developing and developed countries.  This helps explain why bodies such as the United Nations are often unable to agree on how to facilitate and resolve global problems due to widely differing worldviews.

Stratified Democracy

South Africa has a dual profile with both a developing and developed component.  This scenario is often described by commentators as the 1st and 3rd World components of the South African economy.   However, even South Africa as the largest and most developed economy on the African continent still has a majority of its citizens who exhibit the Tribal PURPLE and RED Power values. 

 

In looking at Sub -Saharan Africa it becomes clear that the reason why many African states behave as they do is due to the values systems present.  In considering the African countries represented in the top ten Failed States they all without exception exhibit high levels of tribalism and the influence of ‘warlords’.  Until this changes with increased stability democratic values are simply not possible. 

 

The Zimbabwe Issue

The current problem of Zimbabwe lies in the values struggle between ZANU–PF and Robert Mugabe filling the Tribal PURPLE and RED Power space with the MDC being more centred on BLUE Stability and ORANGE Growth.  The shift from Tribal Order and Warlords took place in Europe over two centuries ago.  However, until a larger number of Africa’s leaders and people make the shift into BLUE Order and ORANGE Enterprise the continent will continue to remain a serious global concern. 

 

This is best illustrated in the graphic shown below illustrating the influence of values in The Competitive Impact of Values updated in 2002 from the World Competitiveness Report of 1992.  This shows how countries move from collective

individual values over extended periods of time going back centuries.

 

.  

It is important to note that Africa is still moving into BLUE Order and ORANGE Enterprise and helps to explain the reasons for the dictatorships and corruption still prevalent on the continent.  At this stage much of Africa broadly compares to Europe during the 18th and early 19th Century.

 

Some Conclusions

The countries of the developed world need to more fully understand the reasons why African countries and leaders behave as they do.  They need to encourage positive change by demanding positive action on democracy and its institutions in return.  The days of not setting achievable outcomes on both aid and project financing should change to positive outcomes being rewarded by the developed economies. 

 

At the same time, the new younger generation of emerging African leadership who were not part of the transition from colonial to nationalist politics must take responsibility for the required values shifts in Africa.  This includes providing the correct messages for the population of their countries and encouraging hard work and responsibility as has occurred in countries such as Singapore and China. 

 

At this stage many African politicians avoid criticising irresponsible RED Power language within their own countries in order to avoid confrontation with rogue elements.  Until there is a significant change in the values of the leadership in these countries this essential challenge is unlikely to happen.  In addition, there is a real risk that existing democratic institutions such as the courts may be threatened if there is no support for a set of more ‘developed values’.  This equally applies to African leaders who support advanced values criticising those who are in denial of these.

 

The new South African Constitution is an example of an ideal being ahead of the values of the broad population.  It is generally accepted that the Constitution is one of the most advanced in the world.  However, the thrust of the South African Constitution is on the BLUE Order, ORANGE Enterprise and GREEN values set.  At the same time the bulk of the population are in the Tribal PURPLE and RED Power range and this is why it is critical that the emerging ‘black middle class’ continues to grow and move into the values range as set out in the Constitution.  

 

What is also required in South Africa is a visionary leader who can integrate the wide spread of values present and move the values spread of the whole country forward.  This will involve an understanding of the Tribal PURPLE and RED Power values while at the same time moving the majority of the population into BLUE Order and ORANGE Enterprise.  A young version of Nelson Mandela is urgently required who can mobilise all the differing levels and build a shared vision of the future.  This type of leader is the one who operates at the Integral YELLOW level.    

 

If Africa is to move forward as a continent its leaders have to take more responsibility for their actions. They also need to avoid falling back into the habits of the past by accusing the developed world of not understanding its positions. We all operate in a global economy and common standards are being applied on an equal basis.  However, equally there needs to be a better understanding of the developing world by those holding economic power in order to move the development process forward.  

 

It should also be realised that this is a journey, not an event and that values change over time due to the existing life conditions.  This includes the fact that we often  only change as individuals and countries only when it is too uncomfortable to stay where we  are. This is where positive pressure and encouragement from the developed world can move developing countries forward on the values continuum.  This is also a key step in the ongoing movement against global terrorism and other threats.  

 

This process can significantly accelerate change in developing countries which can results in the shifts that have taken centuries in some regions being compressed into a shorter time frame. This is the key opportunity in the 21st Century for both the developed world as well as in those countries and their citizens currently occupying the areas of most concern on the ‘Failed States’ league table. See also Failed States Index on www.foreignpolicy.com

 

Iran: jaw, jaw or war, war?

 American Foreign Policy, international conflict, Spiral Dynamics, terrorism  5 Responses »
Jul 012008
 

Early in June the Israeli airforce carried out an exercise – sending 100 F15s and F16s out over the Eastern Mediterranean and Greece – supported by aerial tankers for in-flight refuelling. It was an impressive logistical feat and is being portrayed in the media as a dry run for bombing the Iranians’ principal nuclear facility at Bushehr. Interestingly it was not the Israelis or any of the other Middle Eastern states which ‘leaked’ the story but the Americans – with the spin that the Israelis were demonstrating to Tehran that they do have the capability of getting as far as Bushehr.

As the news leaked (June 20), the Israeli government stepped up the war of words with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (struggling to regain domestic credibility after more corruption allegations) saying “Iran will not be nuclear.” Even more ominously Deputy Prime Minster Shaul Mofaz told journalists a strike on Iran was now “unavoidable”.

Arch neocon John Bolton, one-time US ambassador to the United Nations, has gone on record as saying he believes Israeli will strike in between the presidential election in November and the inauguration of the new President. A strike before the election might influence it unduly; if Barack Obama were to be elected, the strike would need to take place before he took office and implented his ‘jaw, jaw before war, war’ policy.

Around the same time as the Israelis carried out their remarkable air exercise, Washington revealed that it had presented Tehran with a further batch of irrefutable evidence of large-scale shipments of explosives and other weaponry to be used against American and British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it’s open news that Congress has approved $400M for covert action in Iran to destabilise the country, using mainly Iranian dissidents. However, it’s almost certainly true that US special forces in Iraq have already been operating under cover across the Iranian border.

One of the effects of this war talk is to escalate the price of oil just as there were tentative signs of a slight reduction – Iran is the world’s fourth biggest provider of oil. In the event of an Israeli attack, Tehran has said one of its first actions would be to close the Strait of Hormuz – through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes. Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff of the US Fifth Fleet, stationed in Bahrain, has stated that the Strait is international waters and the Navy will keep it open.

Practical Difficulties

Despite the Israeli airforce’s impressive performance in early June, there are still tremendous practical difficulties to be overcome by any strike force.

 

Firstly Israel (theoretically) would have to get the permission of either Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Jordan to cross that country’s airspace – or risk their planes being attacked way before they reached their targets. While it is unlikely any one of those countries alone could take out a sizeable Israeli force, they might inflict sufficient damage to cause the mission to abort. Given the anti-Israeli sentiments held by large numbers of their populations, none of those governments could risk giving permission for Israeli planes to cross their territory to carry out what would be technically an unprovoked attack. The most likely scenario is the Turkish, Saudi or Jordanian planes stay grounded but the fragile diplomatic links between Israel and those countries are seriously damaged.

Once the Israeli planes are over Iran, they will have to attack a number of scattered targets if they really want to inflict major damage on the Iranian nuclear effort. The dispersal of the task force would make them much more vulnerable to counter-attack than if they were attacking a single target – as they did with the 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor (to which the potential attack on Iran is being compared somewhat erroneously).

Then there is simply the fact that the facilities at Bushehr and some of the other nuclear facility sites are buried deep underground berneath tons of concrete. To get through, the Israelis would have to use the type of ‘bunker buster’ bombs the Americans used so effectively when destroying the mountain strongholds of the Taliban in late 2001. The problem is these bombs are so powerful they will shred any vestige of life caught in their explosion – remember how the Americans had to use DNA from small flaps of skin and flesh as the only way to identify which Taliban leaders they had killed? There are an estimated 300 Russian technical advisers in Bushehr – and Moscow can hardly be expected to take kindly to their annihilation.

Then there are the consequences of an Israeli assault.

If Iran reacted overtly, it has medium-range intercontinetal balistic missiles which could reach Israel and just about all the American bases in Turkey and the Middle East. The Americans allege (with some credible evidence) that the Iranians have stockpiles of chemical weapons that they could deliver with these icbms. However, the Americans have also made it clear that any use of chemical weapons against its forces would result in the use of at least battlefield nuclear weapons.

Iran would perhaps more likely play the ‘Muslim brotherhood’ card of taking the moral high ground of being the victim of an unprovoked assault and calling upon Muslims all over the world to join them in attacking Israel and the ‘Great Satan’ of America in whatever way possible. Since Muslims (like Christians) are theoretically a brotherhood (Sura 21:9) and have the duty to defend their brothers against oppression from unbelievers (Sura 2: 191, 193), we would be likely to see a substantial increase in the kind of attacks taking place almost daily in Iraq and Afghanistan and more occasionally in other parts of the world.

Plus, it’s worth noting, since a number of learned commentators compare an attack on Bushehr with Osirak, that the Israeli assault then was nothing more than a relatively minor set-back to the Iraqi nuclear effort and only increased Saddam Hussein’s determination to have nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

There are a number of factors that don’t fit the attack scenario. George W Bush, for one, almost certainly would prefer a solution to the Iranian issue that didn’t involve an outright war. Secondly, when Israel has achieved at least passable relations with Egypt and Jordan and is in on-again negotiatons for a comprehensive settlement with Syria, an attack on Iran would have to be condemned by these countries and Syria at least would be very vulnerable to being sucked into a war scenario. How ever much they might fear and despise Iran – Sunnis in the region view an Iranian-supported hegemony with real trepidation – they cannot continue to have any kind of positive relations with Jews when their Muslim brothers have been attacked. The thousands of radicalised mullahs in those countries would see to that.

So the question is:-

Are the Americans and Israelis creating a story to put pressure on Tehran…?

Or

Are the Americans and Israelis preparing their populations for military conflict with the Iranians…?

Or

Is the warmongering talk a sign of the pressure the Americans are under, with events threatening to slip from their control…?

Iranian Radicalism and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – the Problem #1

Since the 1979 ‘Islamic Revolution’, Iran has provided the West with real difficulties in its espousal of spreading Shia Islam and its criticisms of Israel in its treatment of the Palestinians particularly and Western decadence and neo-imperialism generally. Hence, not altogether unsurprisingly Western support, covert and overt, for Iraq in its war eight-year war with Iran.

Iranian governments since 1979 have been distinguished primarily by just how radical the key players were – but current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have outdone his competitors quite handsomely.

Whether he actually meant Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’ literally in his speech at the 2005 World without Zionism Conference is open to debate – there is no equivalent to ‘wipe off the map’ in the Persian language. There have been apologist explanations attempting to say Ahmadinejad was misunderstood and really meant the Jewish regime of the land currently called ‘Israel’ should be destroyed. Ahmadinejad himself has said he has nothing against Jews or Christians per se. However, he has never distanced himself from the ‘wipe off the map’ interpretation.

Add to that his description of the Holocaust as a ‘myth’ and the allegations of anti-Semitic programmes being broadcast unhindered on Iranian tv and you can understand why the Israelis view this man having access to nuclear weapons with sheer dread and/or determination to stop him.

It would seem that Ahmadinejad is driven primarily by a harmonic of the RED and BLUE vMEMES – or, as Don Beck (2003) might describe him, he is a ‘zealot’. He wants the world to live by the rules as he personally sees it. His take on things is the only way things can be – any differing view is simply wrong and needs to be eradicated.

Of course, in a country where one’s political influence is often marked by how radical your public statements are, Ahmadinejad is far from being the only one to allude to the destruction of Israel. For example, back in 2001 then-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani postulated that, if Muslim states had nuclear weapons, they might use them against Israel. But Rafsanjani, for all his rhetoric, was a pragmatist, his ORANGE able to anticipate the swings and shifts in the very dangerous political arenas of Iran. He made extreme statements at times for domestic consumption; yet at the same time showed a pragmatic willingness to do at least a limited amount of business with the West.

Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, seems oblivious to many of the realities of international relations. There appears to be something Psychoticist in his impulsive, compulsive and remorseless behaviour. Indeed, it might even be at times he moves beyond being merely Psychoticist into actually being psychotic; certainly he shows signs of being both delusional and paranoid.

Was his idea that he and George W Bush could actually face off in a grand debate at the United Nations General Assembly merely a stunt – or was he actually deluded enough to think he could make it happen?

Certainly not an easy man to countenance doing business with!

American Foreign Policy and George W Bush – Root Problem #2

Since the inception of the state of Israel in 1948 the United States, under the influence of the powerful ‘Jewish lobby’, has dealt consistently unfairly with the Middle East.

 

Certainly the modern state of Israel has needed overt American support for much of its existence, surrounded as it is by neighbours of varying degrees of hostility.

 

That support has all too often been given blindly. The Israelis have been allowed to treat the Palestinians in ways which at times were not altogether dissimilar from some of the treatment meted out to European Jews in the 1930s and early 1940s. That inevitably offends the PURPLE/BLUE harmonic running throughout much of the Arab world, – PURPLE loyalty to the Arab peoples and fellow Muslims and BLUE strictures of Islam demanding that those fellow Muslims be rescued from oppression by the unbelievers.

 

The United States has tended to favour one or two power brokers among the Middle East states – eg: pre-revolution Iran, pre-Kuwait invasion Iraq, Saudi Arabia – to maintain its regional interests (primarily oil and keeping them from uniting too strongly against Israel.)

 

That lack of fairness and clear self-interest has played straight into the hands of the Islamic extremists and fed an increasing hatred of all things Western and decadent. Moreover, the fact that the United States has been so transparent in its uneven dealings and ruthless self-interest has made it hard for moderate Muslims to get a hearing.

 

If Iranian extremism has reached its apogee in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then American self-interest and short-sightedness has reached its equivalent in George W Bush and in particular the disastrous invasion of Iraq.

 

Just exactly what the reasoning of Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumpsfelt, Paul Wolfowitz and their clique (sometimes including Tony Blair) was – we’ll have to wait for the memoirs and declassified documents to find out – but it certainly wasn’t the 2nd Tier thinking some apologists have described it as. (Leave Aghanistan to fester in post-Taliban squalor while invading Iraq on a false pretext without a plan for post-war government – and 5 years later we’re not winning ongoing wars in either Afghanistan or Iraq!)

 

In fact, it’s probably the best example of groupthink since Irving Janis (1972) popularised the concept from studying how the Kennedy White House got itself into the Bay of Pigs fiasco back in 1961!

 

Bush, in his thinking, is not entirely unlike Ahmadinejad – again it seems a RED/BLUE (I’m right – I know how it should be!) mode of thinking dominates. Only Bush lacks Ahmadinejad’s eloquence!

 

His unthinking crusade against a War on Terror that is a much a war-on-anything-that-opposes-his-version-of-America’s-interests and can take on any vendetta his RED fancies has driven outraged and disaffected young Muslims into the arms of al-Qaeda and their like right around the world – from the streets of Leeds to the slums of Gaza. They could hardly have asked for a better recruiting sergeant than George W!!

 

The mess we’re in…

The irony is that technically Iran currently seems to be working within the remit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – as the Russians are quick to point out. (Notably Israel is not a signatory!) Under that treaty Iran has the right to develop nuclear capability for its energy needs.

 

The problem comes from the fact that in 2003 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) exposed an 18-year secret uranium-enrichment programme in Iran – hardly in keeping with the development of nuclear energy for purely peaceful purposes! These activities were ostensibly terminated – but Iran continued to work on uranium enrichment for domestic energy purposes and succeeded in achieving nuclear function status in 2006.

 

Despite the Americans’ own 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to the contrary, since 2003 Iran has never even come close to satisfying the international community as a whole that it does not intend to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Limited and inconsistent cooperation with the IAEA have only served to heighten suspicion and the United Nations has demanded Iran ceases uranium enrichment. Even the Russians and the Chinese have agreed to limited sanctions against the Iranians.

 

Various offers have been put to the Iranians over the past few years – initially to persuade them to give up attempts to enrich uranium. More recently IAEA supremo Mohamed ElBaradei has suggested the Iranians be allowed to enrich uranium but under strict IAEA supervision to ensure no fissile materials are diverted for military purposes. The Americans have proposed effectively normalising relations with Iran – effectively broken off in 1979 – lifting trade embargoes and unfreezing frozen financial assets if the Iranians will cooperate.

 

So far the Iranians will agree only to a temporary 2-year suspension of uranium enrichment.

 

While the 2007 NIE stated that the Iranians seemed far less interested in developing nuclear weapons capability, it did acknowledge it was possible (though unlikely) they could have an atomic bomb by the end of 2009.

 

It is this nightmare possibility that is driving Israel. For Israelis, this is BEIGE survival.

 

And Israel’s concerns impact upon the United States. Even Europe, tentatively playing the international elder statesman, is involved. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has warned that war is possible if Iran does develop nuclear weapons capability: “We will not accept that such a bomb is made. We must prepare ourselves for the worst.”

 

Through the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, the Twin Towers, Bali, Madrid, London and and a host of other terrorist incidents, al-Qaeda has succeeded in making Islamic extremism one of the key issues of the early 21st Century. The thought of a state led by Islamic militants, already associated strongly with anti-Western activities and anti-Israeli rhetoric, having access to nuclear weapons is something to concern most Westerners, let alone most Israelis!

 

So what to do?

For some time I have thought that, if the Americans don’t take care of Iran, Israel will.

 

So here we are with the open threat of an Israeli strike that may buy some time. 2012 might be the timeline for an Iranian bomb, rather than 2009. But the cost of that time at best would be an escalation of Islamic jihad around the world and at worst the eruption of full-scale war in the Middle East, with the possible use of chemical and battlefield nuclear weapons.

 

But the Israelis cannot afford to sit back and do nothing. (Visit ‘The Unthinkable Consequences of an Iran-Israel Nuclear Exchange’ for a possible scenario of what might just happen if Iran did get the bomb…)

 

And that puts incredible pressure on the international community – but especially the Americans.

 

George W does appear to have escaped groupthink to some extent, as wiser voices have prevailed against direct military action in the short term – after all, the US is already failing to win 2 wars without going into a third! (Having said, that perhaps the US is already fighting Iran via its proxy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?…and some might argue the way to win those wars is to take on Iran directly?)

 

However, the public announcement of $400M to interfere in the affairs of another sovereign state smacks of all the familiar arrogance of the Rumsfelt-Wolfowitz era.

 

Quite how George W intends using that money is a mystery. Certainly there are Iranian dissidents, both in and out of the country, who will eagerly take some of that money to make mischief for the regime. But the Iranians are a proud people – direct descendants of the Persians who dominated the Middle East in ancient times. A combination of PURPLE/BLUE loyalty to the nation and BLUE righteousness make it unlikely the vast majority of Iranians would support any kind of insurrection if it was thought to be in any way sponsored via the Great Satan.

 

One thing that is most clearly needed is a strategy that clearly separates Islam from terrorism – that way moderate Muslims can have their voice and any actions taken against Iran and al-Qaeda are against terrorists, not Muslims. The work of people like Dr Akbar Ahmed, former High Commissioner of Pakistan to the UK who spoke at Don Beck’s ‘SDi Confab’ this year, is critical for both Muslims and non-Muslims wanting to understand how Islam doesn’t have to be in outright confrontation with the forces of globalisation. Instead, as Ahmed points out, Islam can interact positively – and, in so many places, already is – with non-Muslim communities. Ahmed’s site is definitely recommended for those wishing to explore this issue.

 

Another thing essential is the accordance of respect to Iran. It wants to be a regional superpower. It can be that without directly threatening Israel. (In fact, it would most likely be the Syrians who would have their noses put out of joint by the Americans and the Europeans courting Iran as a partner in the region.)

 

For all his stage charisma and popular support, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not an absolute tyrant. He does have the support of many leading mullahs, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i. However, if Iran as a country and Islam as a religion, were shown respect by the West and seen as partners rather than opponents) in the emerging global structure, that would take away the reasons for supporting a zealot like Ahmadinejad and would give political pragamatists like Rafsanjani more chance of exerting influence.

 

Then, as the so-called ‘oil era’ starts to approach end-game, there is every reason for the West and Iran to collaborate on managing the remaining oil and meanwhile working on new energy sources – including nuclear. It is to the economic benefit of both Iran and the United States to reach a level of normality in trade relations. One of the unfortunate by-products of the trade embargoes on Iran is that they helped freeze Iranian Islam in a particularly vicious and extremist mode. While many Islamic states have problems with extremists, many are also developing into something that might be thought of as a hybrid between traditional culture and Western consumerism – and that is, in part at least, due to regular exposure to ideas beyond traditional culture.

 

Of course, in all this, the United States has to become fair in its treatment of Israel and the Arabs. For sure, Israel will need American guarantees – but that doesn’t mean Bush’s successor shouldn’t take a very dim view of what Israel’s doing in Gaza. And, if human rights continue to be violated by the Israeli military, as they so often are, can’t the United States threaten sanctions in areas that don’t undermine Israeli security? As for the West Bank, exactly as Don Beck and Elza Maalouf have postulated: with help the West Bank can be grown into a nation-state partner for Israel. Where then would that leave the hapless extremists of Hamas in impoverished Gaza?

 

And then the unthinkable…if Israel and Syria can edge closer to a deal, it surely can’t be beyond the bounds of possibility that one day Israel and Iran could do a deal?

 

So, extremists can be undermined and isolated; and diversity understood, valued and connected.

 

But time is important here. The world can’t afford a nuclear Iran led by Ahmadinejad – and the Israelis certainly can’t!

 

The events of June have shown we may just be on a timetable to disaster. There is still time for jaw, jaw but the diplomats and the trade negotiators and the inspectors must move quickly. If not, we may just find ourselves in the middle of a war, war!

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. 

Africa: the KEY Question (Debt Relief, Development & Values)

 Africa, American Foreign Policy, human rights, Spiral Dynamics  No Responses »
Jun 302005
 

Written by ALAN TONKIN

 

 

With the impetus of the ‘Make Poverty History’  campaign growing stronger and stronger day by day as we approach the Gleneagles summit, I’m delighted Alan Tonkin has allowed me to reproduce this new feature from his Global Values Network www.globalvaluesnetwork.com web site. (GVN is one of the most advanced in the world at using Spiral Dynamics to monitor shifts in societies and assess impacts at both national, international and even global levels.)

 

Alan’s piece is a thoughtful but impassioned piece for the G8 leaders to adopt a multi-vMEME approach to the many different problems facing Africa.

 

 

 

In considering the current debate around the forthcoming G8 Meeting to be held at Gleneagles in the UK and the position of a number of the G8 countries on debt relief, there is little doubt that there are high expectations that the developed nations will go some way to resolving the debt burdens of the poorer countries, particularly in Africa.

Africa is the only continent where living standards have declined over the last 20 years. To some extent this is due to the debt burden many countries carry and their repayment commitments but in many cases this is also the result of dictatorships, poor governance and general mismanagement of their economies.

In looking at the likely approach from countries such as the US and UK there is little doubt that debt relief will need to be matched by improving governance and democratic systems in those nations benefiting from the relief. This is currently being highlighted by the situation in Zimbabwe with hundreds of thousands of black urban dwellers being made homeless by the regime of Robert Mugabe, while at the same time neighbouring countries seem helpless and do little to stop this taking place.

NEPAD and Good Governance in Africa
The New Program for African Development has now been running for a number of years. Included in the program is a Peer Review mechanism as well as other checks and balances. However, at this stage only a handful of countries have signed up for peer review and even for those who have, these have been progressing at a slow pace.

President Thabo Mbeki has been one of the driving forces in this process and yet has been either unsuccessful or unwilling to put pressure on Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe. The United Nations have sent a Commissioner to Harare to collect information on the latest move by the Mugabe Regime to relocate political opponents back to the rural areas and to destroy their power base in the cities.

However, simultaneously there are encouraging signs within South Africa where the President removed the Deputy President due to a possible corrupt relationship with his financial advisor who has now been convicted of fraud and corruption. This move was seen as a brave move by President Mbeki to stamp out corruption at all levels of society by taking action against the man holding the second highest political position in the land. This has also resulted in criticism of the President by many of the supporters of the Deputy President who share similar values in the RED/BLUE range.

The View of the Developed Nations
What is likely to be the response at the G8 Meeting of the inability of Africa’s leaders to react speedily and decisively to the issue of good governance? It is said that the European Union leaders are more open to making contributions to Africa than President George W Bush but overall there have been more promises than funds delivered.

Africa is a mix of values systems ranging from RED/PURPLE/BEIGE to BLUE/ORANGE with some GREEN. Africa’s democracy needs to be tailored to the needs of the predominant values systems in a particular society. For example what is required in Zimbabwe is a move from Tribal/Warlords (PURPLE/RED) to strong clear but fair rules and regulations in order to move that society into BLUE/ORANGE.

The DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) also requires a similar approach but will need to remain in BLUE for longer as the systems are even less established in that country with its history over the last 30 years. There are many other examples of countries which still need much attention including Somalia (RED Warlords), Burundi (PURPLE/RED with BLUE emerging), Sierra Leone (Tribal PURPLE/RED Warlords), the Ivory Coast and others. On the other hand not all is bad as African democracy is progressing apace in parts of the continent including South Africa, Botswana, Kenya and others.

South Africa has an economy typical of emerging developing nations such as Brazil and India. The first economy spans BLUE (rules), ORANGE (business) and GREEN (environmental) values. The second emerging economy on the other hand covers PURPLE (tribal), RED (warlords) and BLUE (rules). In this situation literally millions have made the transition from the second to first economy over the last 15 years and an increasing number will do so in the next 15 years. China of course is another country that can be considered, even though the growth level here is in excess of those above and it is a unique case of a country modernising.

Perversely in Zimbabwe, by destroying the homes and livelihood of the urban poor, the Mugabe Regime are setting back the economic transformation of the country by years if not decades. What is required from the developed economies of the G8 is a firm but fair approach based on playing the game by the global rules. This demands transparency, the rule of law and a free press, among others.

A Possible Approach Using Values
In order to resolve the issues of Africa there should be increasing levels of debt relief and other assistance for countries genuinely trying to democratize. At the same time those countries with corrupt regimes should get no assistance other than basic food aid, but again strictly on the basis it is managed and distributed by neutral international agencies. Too often regimes such as the one in Zimbabwe use food and housing as a way of controlling the urban poor and rural peasantry.

It is important to note how far Zimbabwe has gone down the Spiral with the Mugabe Regime recently inviting a host of African and other leaders to attend Robert Mugabe’s 10th Wedding Anniversary. At the same time the poor were being evicted from their homes in the townships around the major cities and towns with no shelter to go to in mid-Winter where the nights are bitterly cold, particularly for children and the aged.

The UN also needs to be more efficient regarding the assistance programs it controls. The Oil for Food Scandal in Iraq shows how programs with admirable intent can be used by corrupt dictators to further their own agenda’s. As part of the reform of the UN it will be necessary to ensure that the organization is able to become more innovative in the way it operates. In values terms it needs to adopt an integral approach to problem solving using different approaches to fit the circumstances.

For those who understand the Values Technology there is a clear way ahead. However, it is a process not an event which in some cases will take African nations many years if not decades to achieve. The more positive side of this is that new and emerging technologies will encourage the move to a more mature type of multi-party democracy within a relatively short time for those countries who have the leadership and who are prepared to take up the challenge.

Conclusion
In concluding this brief it is important to note that progress will often be slow and uneven. In many cases African nations are in a time warp where their stage of development from a values and development perspective is still in the 19th Century. This requires an understanding from those in the developed world on how to manage these societies in a positive way to assist in bringing them into the 21st Century.

At Gleneagles this will require innovative integral thinking from World Leaders of the G8 and other organizations who will need to ensure that successes are rewarded in order to encourage those who follow. The challenge is not only for Africa but for all of us to rise to that challenge, if we as a global community are to prosper and move forward in our constant search for improving the lives of the less fortunate global citizens who make up more than 50% of the global population.

First Kosovo, then Northern Ireland?

 international conflict, Spiral Dynamics  No Responses »
Mar 232004
 

So Kosovo’s back in the news. 31 people dead. The return of tribal bloodletting and ethnic cleansing. Only this time it appears to be the Serbs that have been getting the worst of it.

Seemingly triggered by the stupidity of Serb youths hounding (literally, with a dog!) a couple of young Albanian children to their deaths in a river, what increasingly looks to be a well-coordinated campaign by Albanians to drive Serbs out of their homes suddenly materialised from nowhere. And now the dream of an Albanian Muslim Kosovo, independent of Serbia, is equally suddenly back openly at the top of certain extremist groups’ agendas.

The speed with which the situation in Kosovo deteriorated clearly caught the NATO troops and the United Nations mandated administration off guard. As I write, several thousand addtional NATO troops have entered Kosovo and a relative calm seems to be returning to the Serbian province.

Yet the sheer ferocity of this sudden outbreak of ethnic violence raises questions about the viability of the UN strategy for it not only exposed the fragility of the NATO-imposed peace but also its shallowness.

On the face of it things had been going reasonably well in Kosovo for the UN. There had been no signifcant ethnic violence since NATO entered the province in 1999. Kosovo’s Albanian-dominated devolved government and the Serbian government in Belgrade had been making progress in discussions on issues such as energy. Kosovo’s top Serb and Albanian politicians had reached agreement on how the ethnically-divided city of Mitrovica should be run. Gracious, Serbs and Albanians had even begun talking to each other in the streets again!

Now, nobody other than the extremists seems to know what to do next. On Radio 4′s ‘Today’ programme late last week, I heard one fellow from the UN say the multi-ethnicity of pre-1991 Kosovo had to be restored. (1991 saw the start of the breakup of Yugoslavia with the secession of Slovenia.) Did this guy think Kosovo had once been some model of ethnic cohabitation? Didn’t he know that the visit of Slobodan Milosevic to Kosovo in April 1987 was one of his key stepping stones to power? When Milosevic heard the complaints of the downtrodden minority Serbs and made a rousing speech promising action against their Albanian ‘oppressors’, it was a call to Serb nationalism.

Two tribes go to war!
Kosovo had been a running sore on the body of the Yugoslav Federation for years. There were many reasons for this; but a key factor was quite simply that the Albanian Kosovars were not Slavs. ‘Yugoslavia’ was a bold attempt in the aftermath of the First World War to create an overarching identity for the Slavic states and thus bring stability to the Balkans.

The Balkan tribes cohabiting peacefully under an umbrella identity was a fragile condition, as demonstrated only too horrifically by the Croats’ murderous persecution (under German auspices) of the Serbs during the Second World War. To knit Yugoslavia together again after that needed something way beyond tribalism – and that ‘something’ came in the form of the Communist state and its overlord, Marshall Tito.

In Spiral Dynamics terms, tribalism is a manifestation of the PURPLE vMEME. Since PURPLE seeks safety in belonging, by default it delineates between those who are of-our-tribe and those who are not-of-our-tribe. However, it is possible to build super-tribal identities.

For example, in England Liverpool and Manchester might be rival centres of trade, industry and power – and fans from the two cities’ football teams might clash violently. However, they are all Lancashire people and the historical prejudice against Yorkshire, which still surfaces from time to time, is something many from both cities will subscribe to. Lancashire and Yorkshire people both tend to see themselves as ‘Northerners’ and will all too often disparage ‘Southerners’. Englishmen from across the country will – and have in the past! – united against the Scots. Both Scots and English will fight together under the umbrella of ‘Britons’ – as they have done in the 300 years since the Act of Union.

The taller the hierarchy of tribal identities, the more BLUE structure it needs to hold it together and to suppress tribal rivalries lower down the hierarchy.

In the Communist state Tito established a BLUE system which did exactly that while promoting the concept of Yugoslavia – ‘All the Slavs’. It also helped that Tito had high RED which made him both charasmatic and ruthlessly controlling.

Thus, Slovenians, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and Montenegrans could all be ‘Slavs’ equally in Tito’s land. The Albanian Kosovars, of course, weren’t Slavs but claimed descent from the Illyrians, supposedly the original settlers of the Kosovan lands. It is perhaps a credit to Tito’s genius that he more or less managed the ethnic tension in Kosovo – moving from suppression of the Albanians to partial liberalisation – but Kosovo remained a problem throughout his time as leader of Yugoslavia.

After Tito’s death in 1980 and coinciding with the slow but sure collapse of Communism across Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia equally slowly but surely began to unravel until the early 1990s saw Slav slaughtering Slav in the Serb-Croat wars. With the BLUE structure of Communism gone and RED demagogic leaders like Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman unleashing the PURPLE-BLUE beasts of nationalism, the identity of ‘Slav’ was replaced by the lower tribal identities – Croat, Serb, Bosnian, etc – and in PURPLE it’s okay to kill those who are not-of-our-tribe if they are seen to threaten our tribe.

Of course, the rigid BLUE Procedures of organised religion can add mightily to tribal tensions. Thus, Othodox Serb Christians can kill Catholic Croatian Christians (and vice versa) for not worshipping in the same way and following the same rituals. There are relatively few differences between Catholic and Orthodox Christians in the grand scheme of things. Create a super identity of ‘Christians’ – subscribed to by both Catholic and Orthodox – and BLUE will legitimise the wholesale slaughter of Muslims who don’t just not worship correctly but actually worship the ‘wrong’ manifestation of God and a ‘false prophet’. (Equally BLUE Islam will legitimise the slaughter of Christians – just ask al-Qaeda!)

It’s notable that, after all the turbulence of the 1990s, the two remaining real hotspots in the Balkans are Bosnia and Kosovo. In both instances PURPLE tribalism and BLUE religious hatreds are at the centre of the divides. In both instances a BLUE structure of order is imposed by a Western military force.

GREEN thinking predominating in much of Western thought on resolving the Balkan conflicts talks of restoring multi-ethnic harmony as though the people there will be naturally tolerant and respectful of their neighbours’ different tribal origins and religious beliefs. Its assumption that all should think similarly is flawed…fatally flawed! What is not needed, when dealing with PURPLE tribalism and BLUE dogma, is GREEN liberalism. What is needed is the kind of BLUE structure, capable of repression, that Tito built. For sure, GREEN informing that BLUE structure so that all can function to some degree under it is helpful; but control, not freedom, needs to be the main priority.

However, GREEN wouldn’t tolerate the human rights abuses that tend to go with such regimes and the capitalist thinking of the ORANGE vMEME in the West couldn’t stomach actually facilitating state control on that level. So a Tito-type solution is unlikely to come from the West.

Writing in this weekend’s ‘Observer’, Tim Judah, author of ‘Kosovo: War & Revenge’, recognises the strength of the ethnic divide and, somewhat tentatively, proposes partition as perhaps the only way out. That, as he ruefully acknowledges, more or less legitimises the ethnic cleansing necessary to create partitionable geography.

Partition seems to be working after a fashion in Cyprus. It’s highly debatable if it can be said to have worked in Ireland.

Lacking a Super Identity
Mulling over the explosion of violence in Kosovo, tangentally I began to think of Northern Ireland. It suddenly came home to me just how fragile that peace is.  

As with the Muslim Albanians and the Christian Serbs in Kosovo, there is no Super Identity the Republican Catholics and the Unionist Protestants can buy into. The Republicans see themselves as Irish; the Unionists see themselves as British. On the religious front, Rome and Canterbury might be carrying on periodic flirtations but there are still huge barriers (not least the ordination of women and then the whole issue of homosexuality) to be overcome before there can be any meaningful reconciliation. In any case the Church of England is virtually papist to the likes of Ian Paiseley – and there are a lot like him in the more Protestant Protestant churches in Northern Ireland.

Like Kosovo, quiet for over four years, the PURPLE tribalism and the BLUE divides of national allegiance and religious bigotry are there just below the surface in Northern Ireland.

There are some key differences, though between, Ireland and Kosovo. For one thing, after 25 years of ‘The Troubles’ failing to achieve anything, a lot of people in the province were worn out with it all. For all their efforts, the terrorists (or, freedom fighters, according to preference) couldn’t beat either the BLUE machine of the British Army or the BLUE resolve of the British political establishement.

But perhaps more importantly, a lot of people in the South lost interest.

Following the 1922 partition, Eire enshrined (BLUE) in its constitution its (PURPLE) claim to the 6 counties it had failed to recover from the British. PURPLE’s affiliation to the physical geography cannot be understated – though it is frequently ignored! Thus, as so often has been said, it became the duty of every Irishman to get the 6 counties back – and thus the ambivalence of many Irish governments towards IRA-type operations in the North.

However, the remarkable transformation of the Irish economy in the mid-1990s (helped by bucketfuls of European Union money) changed the perspectives of a lot of people. Whether the success of the economy led to the emergence of the ORANGE vMEME at a major cultural level or whether it was ORANGE which made such a success from the EU handouts is a bit of a chicken-and-egg question. What we do know is that, for many people in the South, bettering themselves became more important than championing historical causes. When the Good Friday Agreement was voted on in 1998 – with its requirement that Eire drop its constitutional claim to the 6 counties – it breezed through in the South. In the economically-depressed North, where BLUE polarisation dominated, the Agreement barely got through.

A number of the key decision-makers in both governments and both communities recognise that economic prosperity is one of the keys to Northern Ireland not slipping back into violence. If ORANGE, in its wealth-making mode, can undermine the polarisation of BLUE but use BLUE order to suppress those, for whom BLUE dogma and PURPLE tribalism is what it’s about, then Northern Ireland might have a good chance.

Moving back to Kosovo, even though around 90% of the population are Albanian, the Serbian national psyche has a deep emotional root in the province – ‘Old Serbia’ as it is known to Serbs, being the heart of mediaeval Serbia – a mediaeval Serbia which was broken in defence of Western Christianity at the Battle of Kosovo Polje, trying to hold back the Muslim hordes from the Ottoman Empire of the Turks.

ORANGE-ification
Letting go of Kosovo is for the Serbs the equivalent of Eire abandoning the 6 counties. However, for the Serbian economy, still recovering from wars and sanctions but tempted by the carrot of EU membership, an Eire-type ORANGE-ification is not beyond the realms of possiblilty.

It is exactly this kind of strategy for the Palestinians that Spiral Dynamics co-developers Don Beck & Chris Cowan discussed with the US State Department during Bill Clinton’s first term. Using Eire as the blueprint, the idea was to pump money into the Palestinian economy in the hope of stimulating a cultural emergence of ORANGE. The hope was that Palestinians would become more interested in bettering themselves than killing Israelis – and that would then remove the Israeli justification for continued occupation of the Palestinian areas. (For various reasons the talks with the State Department stalled but Beck has since discussed variations on that theme with foreign policy interest groups at the European Parliament and the European Commission.)

Perhaps some kind of partition of Kosovo along the lines suggested by Tim Judah will provide a partial and at least temporary solution. But, as the Irish Catholics proved, partition borders don’t tend to hold people back for very long when there are few jobs one side of the border and a shortage of labour on the other. And then the pre-partition probems are re-engaged.

As most MeshWORKERS know, there are rarely final fixed solutions when managing vMEMES. A constant vigilance for changing scenarios and the capability to respond to those changes are necessary to anticipate and resolve problems.

In Kosovo – just as in Ireland – the PURPLE tribalism will never go away but it can be superceded by a ‘greater PURPLE’ identity – eg: ‘Yugoslavia’ – and held in check by powerful and efficient BLUE. The propagation of GREEN humanism to undermine some of the BLUE religious dogma will also help. In the right conditions, contained tribalism can even be rendered irrelevant by the emergence of ORANGE at a cultural level.

The key then to managing conflict is understanding and manipulating vMEMES. PURPLE tribalism can be managed and controlled but its power to re-emerge as a powerful and potentially destructive force should never be underestimated.