Supporters of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) who often use the term “New Turkey” believe that the 12-year rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has opened a new phase in Turkish history.

They are partially right. Even those who resent Erdoğan's autocratic discourse need to recognize that the country has come a long way in the last decade in areas such as health-care, infrastructure, fiscal discipline, inflation, municipal services and civil-military relations. The big question that continues to polarize Turkish politics, however, is whether the new Turkey is more democratic than the old one.

Again, the supporters of the AKP answer this question with a resounding “yes.” In their eyes, the AKP represents the will of the people and, for the first time in modern Turkish history, the military is unable to exert real influence behind the scenes. The critics of the AKP, however, strongly differ. They believe Erdoğan's understanding of democracy is based on a simplistic and populist notion of winning elections. To them, this is a majoritarian and electoral understanding that comes at the expense of pluralism and liberalism. Such electoral autocracy does not pay attention to freedom of speech, the rule of law and the separation of powers and, thus, condemns Turkey to a second-class category among democracies. For them, this is exactly why the new Turkey of Erdoğan resembles the old one, where the military used to call the shots. In other words, the old type of authoritarianism has been replaced by a new one.

It is important to note that the West -- mainly the United States and the European Union -- tend to agree with the critics of Erdoğan. In the wake of recent local elections, it was hard to find a single editorial in Western media praising the "new" Turkey's democratic standards. Instead, the focus was on corruption scandals and the bans imposed on social media like Twitter and YouTube. There is now a general consensus among Westerners that Erdoğan's growing authoritarian style has eroded the positive image of the Turkish model that was praised only a few years ago. Under such circumstances, the question that most Westerners ask is simple: Why is an increasingly authoritarian Erdoğan still winning elections? The answer to this question is equally as simple: “It's the economy, stupid!”

The AKP voters come from the largest segments of Turkish society: the urban-rural poor as well as the lower-middle classes aspiring to upper-middle class status. These masses amount to probably 60 to 70 percent of Turkish society. In their eyes, bread and butter problems take precedence over the Twitter ban, political freedoms, the independence of the media, crony capitalism or separation of powers. What really matters for most of these AKP voters are economic services and living standards. The fact that they come from conservative and nationalist backgrounds and share the patriarchal culture of the prime minister is the icing on the cake.

As a result, it should not be surprising that Erdoğan will keep winning elections as long as the economy performs reasonably well and adequate socioeconomic services are provided to these large segments of society. This is also why the real paradox of the new Turkey is to be found beyond the economy and elections.

The real paradox of the new Turkey is the following: If Erdoğan is indeed becoming increasingly authoritarian, why is he the only hope of Turkey for solving the Kurdish problem? This paradox is even more puzzling, since solving the Kurdish problem requires the opposite of what Erdoğan seems to provide: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, separation of powers, liberalism, decentralization of decision-making and less patriarchal governing structures.

Can Erdoğan provide all these attributes with his more authoritarian style? If the answer is “no,” why do the Kurds seem ready to support him? To answer this paradox, we need to analyze the pragmatic and Machiavellian side of Erdoğan. We will do so next week.

This piece was originally published in Today's Zaman.

As I tried to explain in this column last week, there is a glaring paradox about the so-called “new Turkey.” I will remind readers and clarify what the concept of “new” means exactly, but one needs to have some basic familiarity with how the Justice and Development (AKP) and its supporters define the “old” Turkey.

The old Turkey, in their eyes, was a place where the economy was in shambles -- with high inflation, chronic public deficits, poor municipal services and systemic corruption. Most importantly, the military, the guardians of the system, called the shots by toppling or pressuring civilian governments. And as far as foreign policy was concerned, they believed Turkey used to punch below its weight and had almost no regional soft power in the Middle East as a model of Muslim democracy.

Those who don't buy the rosy picture of today rightly point out that the current state of Turkish democracy in this so-called new Turkey leaves a lot to be desired. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's understanding of democracy is indeed based on a simplistic and populist notion of winning elections. His majoritarian and electoral understanding comes at the expense of individual rights and liberties, an independent media and the freedoms of expression and association. The absence of rule of law as well as problems with the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers still condemns Turkey to a second-class category among democracies. This is why, under the populist and hegemonic style of Erdoğan, the old type of Turkish authoritarianism (dominated by the military) has been replaced by a “new” one based on the tyranny of the majority and the hegemony of Erdoğan.

What about the economic achievements of the new Turkey? Although it is hard to argue against the fact that the country is a more prosperous place compared to the 1990s, the latest corruption scandals clearly revealed that political networks of tender-fixing, influence-peddling, patronage and cronyism still plagues the Turkish system. Corruption is indeed still systemic in the new Turkey. It is also important to remember that the structural reforms that changed the “old” Turkey, dominated by state-owned enterprises under import substitution, came not with the AKP but thanks to the visionary leadership of Turgut Özal in the second half of the 1980s.

However, those who don't buy the rosy picture of the new Turkey face an important dilemma. Why is an autocratic Erdoğan still the only hope for solving the Kurdish problem? Everyone agrees that the Kurdish problem is the most daunting challenge facing Turkish democracy. As argued last week, solving the Kurdish problem requires the opposite of what Erdoğan seems to provide: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, separation of powers, liberalism, decentralization of decision making and less patriarchal governing structures. The fact that Erdoğan is the best hope of fulfilling such a promise -- by negotiating a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- is indeed a glaring paradox that requires explanation.

Some argue that the peace process with the Kurds is cosmetic, tactical and hollow. They believe Erdoğan calculated in a Machiavellian way that he needs the support of Kurds to get elected to the presidency and to change the system into a presidential one after the AKP wins the next parliamentary elections. But this is a highly risky strategy since winning the Kurdish vote also means losing a significant amount of support from Turkish nationalists -- an important segment of the AKP base. Another way to analyze the paradox is to actually believe that Erdoğan is genuine in his willingness to solve the Kurdish problem by adopting a more Ottoman system of multiculturalism and decentralization, where the sultan delegates power to regions.

One should also not underestimate the fact that Erdoğan manages to identify with the victim narrative of the Kurds. He, after all, has a similar narrative of victimhood based on being a pious Muslim under secular Kemalist hegemony. What we may be witnessing in the new Turkey is a coalition of pious Muslims and Kurds taking their revenge on Kemalism. In that sense, the best way to analyze the new Turkey is to remain skeptical of the rosy picture and focus on what post-Kemalism will bring to the country in terms of solving the Kurdish question. The "newness" of Turkey can only be confirmed when a more democratic and multicultural Turkey does emerge and peacefully solves the Kurdish problem in a post-Kemalist context.

This piece was originally published in Today's Zaman.

You were probably just thinking to yourself that the civil war in Syria isn’t complicated enough, that there aren’t enough warring parties, and that the constantly shifting sides have become predictable and tired. Well, don’t despair, there are now rumors emerging out of Turkey that may introduce enough new dimensions to the conflict to keep you confused well into the next decade.

The Turkish press is reporting that the Turkish government may be about to invade Syria along a 70-mile stretch of Turkey’s border with Syria to create a 20-mile deep safe zone. This issue is currently the subject of heated speculation and controversy in Ankara, making it quite difficult to figure out what is really happening.

But beyond the fevered speculation, why would Turkey want to invade Syria anyway?

Syria has long been a threatening mess, but neither Turkey nor anyone else has exactly been lining up to send their national armies into Syria. Sure, foreign fighters are plentiful in Syria and all of the regional powers, as well as the United States and Russia, have supported proxies there. But even after more than four years of bloody, destabilizing warfare, national armies have avoided it like the plague. The reason is quite simple: The complicated Syrian civil war has quagmire written all over it. As hard as it is to send a foreign army into Syria, it would be harder still to get it out.

In Turkey, particularly, the idea of military intervention into Syria remains very unpopular among the populace. The possibility that intervention might backfire and unleash Islamic State (or ISIS) terrorism within Turkey, or even reignite the bloody Kurdish insurgency in Turkey’s southeast, remains an ever-present fear.

Now, however, the theory goes that Syrian Kurdish advances against ISIS have caused such concern in Turkey that the Kurds will create some sort of state or autonomous region along Turkey’s southern border. To prevent that outcome, the Turkish government, we are told, is finally willing to intervene in Syria.

Well, maybe. But, in our view, the reason that Turkey might now finally be contemplating such a step says more about changes in the domestic and international standing of the Turkish government than about the course of events in Syria.

Domestically, the outcome of the Turkish election of June 7 has seriously scrambled Turkish politics. After nearly 13 years in power, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its absolute majority in parliament. The AKP, which still holds a plurality of seats in parliament, has 45 days to form a government with at least one of the minority parties. But it seems clear that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has very little interest in coalition government. The leaders of the two main opposition parties, the nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the center-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP), have both demanded the re-opening of corruption cases against the AKP. Erdoğan may fear that those corruption cases may eventually touch even his family.

Erdoğan would undoubtedly prefer an early election to subjecting his party or even his family to the indignities of prying prosecutors. But to achieve a better outcome than the AKP managed in June, he needs to demonstrate to the population the pitfalls of weak, coalition governments. As the possibility of intervention in Syria increases, as the markets spooks on the prospects of war, and even if a few bombs were to go off in the Kurdish areas, the growing sense of national insecurity would only serve to make Erdoğan’s case that the country needs the firm hand of one-party leadership. With a big enough victory, it might even serve to bring back prospects of constitutional change to increase the powers of the presidency. At that point, an early election would be worth having.

Insecurity works

Internationally, Turkey may be driven by the sense the White House now prefers their Kurdish partners in Syria to Turkey. The Turkish government is extremely angry about the emerging alliance between the United States and the Syrian Kurds, especially the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian affiliate of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). They attribute Kurdish success against ISIS to the American willingness to support Syrian Kurdish forces with air power and supplies. In the Turkish view, the PYD is simply a branch of the PKK, which both Turkey and the United States have branded a terrorist group. Allowing the PYD to unite the Kurdish areas of Syria would therefore represent an existential threat to Turkey.  

By threatening to intervene in Syria, the Turkish government seeks to change a U.S. policy that it finds potentially very damaging to Turkish interests. As Erdoğan no doubt reminded Vice President Biden when they talked the other day, Turkey has the ability to have a far greater impact on the fight against ISIS than the Kurds do. (The Turkish government might tell their domestic audiences that a prospective intervention in Syria is to stop the Kurds, but they will tell international audiences that it is to fight ISIS.)

Interestingly, to achieve both these international and domestic advantages, it is not necessary or even wise to actually go through with the intervention. Domestically, all that is necessary is to convince the population that the situation is sufficiently insecure to require firm, one-party leadership. Internationally, it just requires using the prospect of intervention to gain U.S. attention and convince the U.S. government to reduce its support of the PYD. At the current moment, the prospect of intervention is very useful for the Turkish government. Actual intervention, with all of the attendant risks of quagmire, is significantly less appealing.

So that means that it is probably not strictly necessary to spend your time trying to understand how the myriad factions within Syria will respond to the presence of the Turkish military on Syrian soil. On the bright side, you now have some really good reasons to enter into the nearly as confusing realm of Turkish domestic politics. Maybe start with our Turkish election series.

For another take on this issue, see the post from Kemal Kirisci and Sinan Ekim. 

This weekend’s election results in Turkey were a surprise to the vast majority of Turkish pollsters and pundits, myself included. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won nearly 50 percent of the popular vote. The party can now form a single-party government, even if it doesn’t have the supermajority necessary to remake the Turkish constitution. What happened?

As with much in life, the result does make sense in hindsight. Prior to the June 7 election, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP leadership had supported a Kurdish peace process, in part in the hope of gaining Kurdish votes. In that election, however, not only did the AKP fail to win new Kurdish votes, but support for the Nationalist Action Party (MHP)—a far-right Turkish nationalist party—swelled, apparently out of frustration among nationalist Turks with the AKP-led peace process with the Kurds. In other words, the AKP had the worst of both worlds.

Erdoğan and the AKP leadership, recognizing the political problem this posed for them, allowed the peace process to collapse amid mounting instability driven by the Syrian civil war. This, combined with disillusionment with the MHP leadership due to their perceived unwillingness to form a coalition government, drove about two million MHP voters to the AKP this weekend. The exodus shows, in a sense, what close substitutes the two parties can be among a more nationalist voting bloc.

The controlled chaos that resulted from the collapse of the peace process—combined with the escalating refugee crisis, the fear of ISIS attacks, and the struggling economy—helped the government politically. Voters evidently recalled that it had been the AKP that brought the country out of the very tough times of the 1990s.  

In contrast, the opposition parties seem to lack leadership and appear to promise only internal squabbles and indecisiveness. Craving security and stability, voters have now turned to the one party that appears to have the strength to provide it. In that sense, Erdoğan’s nationalist gambit—which was actually a well-conceived series of political maneuvers—worked. Even some one million conservative Kurdish voters returned to the AKP.

These voters perhaps did not notice the irony that the government had also engineered the instability they feared. In part, this success derives from government’s control over the media. These elections may have been free, in the sense that Turkish voters can cast a ballot for the candidates they want. But they were not fair. The state maintained tight control over traditional and social media alike. Freedom House and the Committee to Protect Journalists, among others, have cast doubt on Turkey’s press freedom credentials. Real opposition voices are difficult for media publish or voters to see on television. Thus, for example, Selahattin Demirtaş, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and the most charismatic opposition politician in Turkey, had essentially no air time during the campaign.

There are some important upsides to the election results. For one, HDP again passed the 10 percent threshold to remain in parliament. That will help mitigate—though hardly erase—the polarization that grips the country, and will hopefully make government reconsider its abandonment of the Kurdish peace process.

More significantly, the AKP does not have what it needs to convert Turkey’s government structure into a presidential system, which would be a bad move for the country. The election results will undoubtedly revitalize Erdoğan’s push for a presidential regime in Turkey. But that requires changing the constitution, and the AKP did not achieve the supermajority that it would need to do that on its own.

Critically, changing to a presidential system will require some support from the opposition and even more importantly popular support via a referendum. As political strategists around the world have learned, people tend not to vote on the actual referendum item, per se, but based on more general opinions of their leadership. So to win a referendum on the presidential system, Erdoğan and his AKP colleagues would need to show improvements in the economy, in the security situation, on the Kurdish issue, on Syrian refugees, and on national stability more generally. Instability in Turkey, particularly the renewal of violence in the Kurdish region, will deter investment and deepen the economic slump throughout the country.

With its new majority, AKP leaders are now in a position of strength to negotiate with the HDP over Kurdish issues. The refugee crisis also means the government also has more leverage with the EU. If it chooses to use its strength to reach positive agreements on those fronts, the outcomes could be very good for the Turkish people.

To actually win a referendum on the presidential system, Erdoğan would have to work to depolarize his country. While the presidential system itself would not be good for Turkey, the process of getting there might be.

International development debates of the last four decades have ascribed ever greater importance to intellectual property rights (IPRs). There has also been a significant effort on the part of the U.S. to encourage its trade partners to introduce and enforce patent law modeled after American intellectual property law. Aside from a discussion on the impact of patents on innovation, there are some important consequences of international harmonization regarding the obduracy of the terms of trade agreements.

The position of the State Department on patents when negotiating trade agreements has consistently been one of defending stronger patent protection. However, the high-tech sector is under reorganization, and the most innovative industries today have strong disagreements about the value of patents for innovation. This situation begs the question as to why the national posture on patent law is so consistent in favor of industries such as pharmaceuticals or biotech to the detriment of software developers and Internet-based companies.

The State Department defends this posture, arguing that the U.S. has a comparative advantage in sectors dependent on patent protection. Therefore, to promote exports, our national trade policy should place incentives for partners to come in line with national patent law. This posture will become problematic when America’s competitive advantage shifts to sectors that find patents to be a hindrance to innovation, because too much effort will have already been invested in twisting the arm of our trade partners. It will be hard to undo those chapters in trade agreements particularly after our trade partners have taken pains in passing laws aligned to American law.

Related to the previous concern, the policy inertia effect and inflexibility applies to domestic policy as much as it does to trade agreements. When other nations adopt policy regimes following the American model, advocates of stronger patent protection will use international adoption as an argument in favor of keeping the domestic policy status quo. The pressure we place on our trade partners to strengthen patent protection (via trade agreements and other mechanisms like the Special 301 Report) will be forgotten. Advocates will present those trade partners as having adopted the enlightened laws of the U.S., and ask why American lawmakers would wish to change law that inspires international emulation. Innovation scholar Timothy Simcoe has correctly suggested that harmonization creates inflexibility in domestic policy. Indeed, in a not-too-distant future the rapid transformation of the economy, new big market players, and emerging business models may give policymakers the feeling that we are stuck in a patent policy rut whose usefulness has expired.

In addition, there are indirect economic effects from projecting national patent law onto trade agreements. If we assume that a club of economies (such as OECD) generate most of the innovation worldwide while the rest of countries simply adopt new technologies, the innovation club would have control over the global supply of high value-added goods and services and be able to preserve a terms-of-trade advantage. In this scenario, stronger patent protection may be in the interest of the innovation club to the extent that their competitive advantage remains in industries dependent of patent protection. But should the world economic order change and the innovation club become specialized in digital services while the rest of the world takes on larger segments of manufactures, the advantage may shift outside the innovation club. This is not a far-fetched scenario. Emerging economies have increased their service economy in addition to their manufacturing capacity; overall they are better integrated in global supply chains. What is more, these emerging economies are growing consumption markets that will become increasingly more relevant globally as they continue to grow faster than rich economies.

What is more, the innovation club will not likely retain a monopoly on global innovation for too long. Within emerging economies, another club of economies is placing great investments in developing innovative capacity. In particular, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa (and possibly Russia) have strengthened their innovation systems by expanding public investments in R&D and introducing institutional reforms to foster entrepreneurship. The innovation of this second club may, in a world of harmonized patent law, increase their competitive advantage by securing monopolistic control of key high-tech markets. As industries less reliant on patents flourish and the digital economy transforms US markets, an inflexibly patent policy regime may actually be detrimental to American terms of trade.

I should stress that these kind of political and economic effects of America’s posture on IPRs in trade policy are not merely speculative. Just as manufactures displaced the once dominant agricultural sector, and services in turn took over as the largest sector of the economy, we can fully expect that the digital economy—with its preference for limited use of patents—will become not only more economic relevant, but also more politically influential. The tensions observed in international trade and especially the aforementioned considerations merit revisiting the rationale for America’s posture on intellectual property policy in trade negotiations.

Elsie Bjarnason contributed to this post.

After a recent talk about my ISIS book, one of the audience members asked, “What can I read to help me not hate Islam?” I don’t think it’s a scholar’s job to persuade others to love or hate any culture. But the question was sincere, so I suggested some books that have helped me better understand Islam. I also put the question to Twitter. Below is some of what I and others came up with.

Two cautions before we dive in: First, the list is obviously not exhaustive and I’ve left out overly apologetic books—in my experience, they only increase the skeptical reader’s suspicion that she’s being suckered. Second, people on Twitter gave me great suggestions but I’ve only included those I’ve read and can vouch for:

Muhammad and the Quran: Two of the best books you’ll ever read about Muhammad and the Quran are also the shortest: The Koran: A Very Short Introduction and Muhammad, both by Michael Cook. He writes with great wit and deep scholarship.

Other scriptures: Most non-Muslims are unaware that Islamic scripture is more than the Quran. It includes a vast collection of words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by later authors. These scriptures are sort of like the Gospels, and Muslim scholars fight over their authenticity like Christian scholars debate about the accuracy of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These extra Islamic scriptures contain most of the teachings that make modern people (Muslims included) uncomfortable about Islam. One of the world’s experts on these scriptures, Jonathan Brown, has written a terrific book about them, Misquoting Muhammad.

Rumi: The medieval mystic’s poems about life and death are beautiful and moving, no matter your belief system. I loved his poems so much as an undergrad that I went on to study Middle Eastern languages just so I could read his work in the original. I’m glad I first viewed Islam through the eyes of Rumi and not a group like ISIS. Neither is solely representative of Islam but both draw heavily on its scriptures and reach such different conclusions.

The Bible: Many people recommended reading the Bible to decrease hate of Islam. The nerd in me leapt to the least obvious conclusion, “Ah, good idea! Reading some of the rough stuff in the Hebrew Bible is a good way to put a kindred ancient religion like Islam in perspective.” But they meant something a little less complicated:

@will_mccants @jenanmoussa Read the bible and learn to love and not to hate. :-)

— Dirk Lont (@Denkkracht1) December 12, 2015

It’s a worthy perspective today no matter your faith.

Event Information

The Center for 21st Century Security Intelligence seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium

On March 1, the seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium featured the independent research produced by members of the military services and federal agencies who are currently serving at think-tanks and universities across the nation. Organized by the fellows themselves, the symposium provides a platform for building greater awareness of the cutting-edge work that America’s military and governmental leaders are producing on key national security policy issues.

With presidential primary season well underway, it’s clear that whoever emerges in November 2016 as the next commander-in-chief will have their hands full with a number of foreign policy and national security choices. This year’s panels explored these developing issues and their prospects for resolution after the final votes have been counted. During their keynote conversation, the Honorable Michèle Flournoy discussed her assessment of the strategic threat environment with General John Allen, USMC (Ret.), who also provided opening remarks on strategic leadership and the importance of military and other federal fellowship experiences.

Video

• Opening remarks and The future of the All-Volunteer Force
• The next generation of terrorism
• Harnessing technology in the future force
• Keynote discussion: Assessing the strategic environment
• To intervene, or not to intervene?

Audio

• Beyond 2016: Security challenges and opportunities for the next administration

Last night, retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn addressed the Republican convention as a headline speaker on the subject of national security. One of Donald Trump’s closest advisors—so much so that he was considered for vice president—Flynn repeated many of the themes found in his new book, The Field of Fight, How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, which he coauthored with Michael Ledeen. (The book is published by St. Martin’s, which also published mine.)

Written in Flynn’s voice, the book advances two related arguments: First, the U.S. government does not know enough about its enemies because it does not collect enough intelligence, and it refuses to take ideological motivations seriously. Second, our enemies are collaborating in an “international alliance of evil countries and movements that is working to destroy” the United States despite their ideological differences.

Readers will immediately notice a tension between the two ideas. “On the surface,” Flynn admits, “it seems incoherent.” He asks: 

“How can a Communist regime like North Korea embrace a radical Islamist regime like Iran? What about Russia’s Vladimir Putin? He is certainly no jihadi; indeed, Russia has a good deal to fear from radical Islamist groups.” 

Flynn spends much of the book resolving the contradiction and proving that America’s enemies—North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and ISIS—are in fact working in concert.

No one who has read classified intelligence or studied international relations will balk at the idea that unlikely friendships are formed against a common enemy. As Flynn observes, the revolutionary Shiite government in Tehran cooperates with nationalist Russia and communist North Korea; it has also turned a blind eye (at the very least) to al-Qaida’s Sunni operatives in Iran and used them bargaining chips when negotiating with Osama bin Laden and the United States. 

Flynn argues that this is more than “an alliance of convenience.” Rather, the United States’ enemies share “a contempt for democracy and an agreement—by all the members of the enemy alliance—that dictatorship is a superior way to run a country, an empire, or a caliphate.” Their shared goals of maximizing dictatorship and minimizing U.S. interference override their substantial ideological differences. Consequently, the U.S. government must work to destroy the alliance by “removing the sickening chokehold of tyranny, dictatorships, and Radical Islamist regimes.” Its failure to do so over the past decades gravely imperils the United States, he contends.

The book thus offers two very different views of how to exercise American power abroad: spread democracies or stand with friendly strongmen...[P]erhaps it mirrors the confusion in the Republican establishment over the direction of conservative foreign policy.

Some of Flynn’s evidence for the alliance diverts into the conspiratorial—I’ve seen nothing credible to back up his assertion that the Iranians were behind the 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Sunni apocalypticists. And there’s an important difference between the territorially-bounded ambitions of Iran, Russia, and North Korea, on the one hand, and ISIS’s desire to conquer the world on the other; the former makes alliances of convenience easier than the latter. Still, Flynn would basically be a neocon if he stuck with his core argument: tyrannies of all stripes are arrayed against the United States so the United States should destroy them.

But some tyrannies are less worthy of destruction than others. In fact, Flynn argues there’s a category of despot that should be excluded from his principle, the “friendly tyrants” like President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi in Egypt and former president Zine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Saddam Hussein should not have been toppled, Flynn argues, and even Russia could become an “ideal partner for fighting Radical Islam” if only it would come to its senses about the threat of “Radical Islam.” Taken alone, these arguments would make Flynn realist, not a neocon. 

The book thus offers two very different views of how to exercise American power abroad: spread democracies or stand with friendly strongmen. Neither is a sure path to security. Spreading democracy through the wrong means can bring to power regimes that are even more hostile and authoritarian; standing with strongmen risks the same. Absent some principle higher than just democracy or security for their own sakes, the reader is unable to decide between Flynn’s contradictory perspectives and judge when their benefits are worth the risks. 

It’s strange to find a book about strategy so at odds with itself. Perhaps the dissonance is due to the co-authors’ divergent views (Ledeen is a neocon and Flynn is comfortable dining with Putin.) Or perhaps it mirrors the confusion in the Republican establishment over the direction of conservative foreign policy. Whatever the case, the muddled argument offered in The Field of Fight demonstrates how hard it is to overcome ideological differences to ally against a common foe, regardless of whether that alliance is one of convenience or conviction. 

Editors’ Note: One week after this post was originally published, President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines said that the United States must take action in the South China Sea if China takes steps towards reclaiming the Scarborough Shoal. Michael O’Hanlon updated this post on May 23 with a brief response, below. The original post appears in full after the break.

Predictably, some experts—as well as now the Philippines' leader, President Benigno Aquino—are arguing that the United States should militarily prevent China from seizing the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed but basically worthless land formation in the open waters between the Philippines and China. The formation is admittedly three times closer to the Philippines than to China, but it is not important—and it is definitely not worth fighting China over. Loose talk of red lines and of the supposed need for the United States to "take military action" makes the problem sound far too antiseptic and easily manageable. In fact, any direct use of military power that resulted in the deaths of Chinese (or American) military personnel would raise serious dangers of escalation. 

The United States does need to ensure access to the sea lanes of the South China Sea. And it should help protect the populated areas of any allied country, including the Philippines. It should not recognize Chinese territorial or economic claims to areas surrounding disputed (or reclaimed) land formations, even if China occupies some of these islets and other features. And it should consider proportionate responses in the economic realm to any Chinese aggression over the Scarborough Shoal, as well as the possibility of expanded and permanent U.S. military presence in the area. But it should not shoot at Chinese ships, planes, or troops over this issue. It's just not worth it, and we have more appropriate and measured options for response if needed.

[Original post, from May 12]

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, known for his Trump-like rhetoric and supra-legal methods of reducing crime while mayor of Davao City on the island of Mindanao, is already causing consternation in many parts of the world. His previous tolerance for vigilantes as a crime-fighting tool, for example, is cause for concern.

But in other cases, we should relax and keep an open mind. For example, while The Washington Post editorial page has lamented that he appears willing to do a deal with Beijing—accepting Chinese investment in the Philippines while allowing China to enforce its claims to the uninhabited Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea—that particular outcome may actually be good for the United States. 

Provocateurs in Beijing

Let’s situate the Scarborough Shoal issue in broader context. In recent days, the United States sailed a major Navy vessel, the William P. Lawrence, within 12 miles of the Fiery Cross Reef, a land formation in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea that China has transformed into a 700-acre artificial island. China objected strenuously. Meanwhile, everyone awaits the ruling of an international arbitration panel, expected later this spring, on whether China or the Philippines (or neither) is the rightful claimant to the Scarborough Shoal.

To be sure, the broad problem starts in Beijing; The Washington Post is not wrong on that basic point. Incredulously, invoking fishing histories from many centuries ago, China claims not only most of the shoals and sand bars and small islands of the South China Sea, and not only the surrounding fisheries and seabed resources, but the water itself. Its so-called nine-dash line, which encompasses almost all of the South China Sea—including areas much closer to the Philippines and Indonesia and other key countries than to China’s own territory—can be interpreted as a claim to sovereign ownership. Fears that it will declare an associated air defense identification zone further complicate the picture.

Map of the South China Sea locating China's nine-dash line claim on the South China Sea, and the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Note: The Spratleys, Parcels, and other islands in the South China Sea are disputed to various degrees by different parties. Photo credit: Reuters.

America’s aims are far less disruptive to the status quo. But of course, for America, the region is also much further away. In Chinese eyes, we already have our Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico—not to mention our extensive east and west seacoasts and other maritime domains. By contrast, China is largely hemmed in by land on three sides and Japan together with the U.S. Navy on the fourth. For Washington to deny China even a modest version of its own special waters strikes many in Beijing as haughty and hegemonic. 

America’s aims are far less disruptive to the status quo.

Choosing our historical analogies wisely

Of course, the United States is making no claims of its own in the region. Nor is Washington trying to dictate outcomes on all disputes. Washington does not take a position on who owns the land features of the South China Sea. Nor does it oppose any plan for joint exploitation of the area’s resources that regional states can agree on. Nor can the United States, or any other country, be expected to let China restrict naval and commercial shipping maneuvers through this region, through which at least one-third of the world’s commerce traverses. Nor should Washington abandon treaty allies—most notably in this case, the Philippines—if they come under fire from Chinese warships (as has happened before). And in fairness to Filipinos, the Scarborough Shoal is much closer to their country than to China, by a distance factor of more than three to one.

Yet there is a problem in Washington’s thinking, too. Given the way rising powers have behaved throughout history, it is unrealistic to think that China wouldn’t seek to translate its greater economic and military strength into some type of strategic benefit. Yet Washington expects China to stop building artificial islands, to abstain from deploying military assets to the region, and to accept adjudication of disputes over territory by an international panel.

... it is unrealistic to think that China wouldn’t seek to translate its greater economic and military strength into some type of strategic benefit.

Many Americans would view any bending of the rules in Beijing’s favor as appeasement and thus an invitation to further imperialistic behavior by China. We have learned the lessons of World War II and the Cold War very well. 

But it is also important to bear in mind the lessons of World War I, when great powers competed over relatively minor issues and wound up in a terrible conflict. Just as Germany had been largely shut out of the colonialism competition prior to 1914, making its leaders anxious to right what they saw as historical wrongs in advancing their own interests once they had the capacity, it is possible that China will refuse to accept the status quo going forward. By this alternative reading of history, our job should be to persuade China to be content with very minor adjustments to the existing global order—and to remind Chinese that they have benefited greatly from that order—rather than to oppose each and every small act of Chinese assertiveness as if it portended the first of many dominoes to fall. The good news in this case is that China is not challenging existing state borders, threatening established population centers, or using lethal force as a default instrument of state power. Its behavior is worrying, to be sure—but not particularly surprising, and by the standards of history, relatively benign to date.

Walk the line

With this perspective in mind, the United States should continue to insist on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and sail its ships wherever it wants, including within 12 miles of reclaimed islands. It should punish China for any future, limited use of military violence against a country like the Philippines by shoring up alliances, increasing forward U.S. military deployments, and imposing economic sanctions in concert with allies. But it should not itself use lethal force to directly respond to most small possible Chinese provocations or to evict People’s Liberation Army forces from disputed islands and shoals. It should tolerate some modest degree of expanded Chinese military presence in the area. And it should encourage regional friends to accept deals on joint economic exploitation of the region’s resources in which China would in effect be first among equals—though of course the exact meaning of that phrase would require careful delineation. 

Its behavior is worrying, to be sure—but not particularly surprising, and by the standards of history, relatively benign to date.

Duterte’s willingness to do a deal with China would seem to fit with these criteria, without surrounding any substantial claims to Beijing, and without suggesting any weakening in its ties to the United States either. The Philippines shouldn’t concede meaningful economic resources in the waters and seabeds surrounding the Scarborough Shoal. But ownership and control of the land features themselves are a minor matter about which Manila might well usefully compromise.

The United States and China are likely to be jostling for position in the South China Sea for years. That is probably inevitable. It is also tolerable, if we keep our cool while also maintaining our resolve—and if we patiently look for an ultimate compromise on the issues that currently divide America and its regional friends from Beijing. Ironically, the strongman from Mindanao may help us along with this process.

The challenge of rural poverty and food insecurity in the developing world remains daunting. Recent estimates show that “there are still about 1.2 billion extremely poor people in the world. In addition, about 870 million people are undernourished, and about 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiency. About 70 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and many have some dependency on agriculture,” (Cleaver 2012). Addressing this challenge by assisting rural small-holder farmers in developing countries is the mandate of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an international financial institution based in Rome.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development is a relatively small donor in the global aid architecture, accounting for approximately one-half of 1 percent of all aid paid directly to developing countries in 2010. Although more significant in its core area of agricultural and rural development, IFAD still accounts for less than 5 percent of total official development assistance in that sector.1 Confronted with the gap between its small size and the large scale of the problem it has been mandated to address, IFAD seeks ways to increase its impact for every dollar it invests in agriculture and rural development on behalf of its member states. One indicator of this intention to scale up is that it has set a goal to reach 90 million rural poor between 2012 and 2015 and lift 80 million out of poverty during that time. These numbers are roughly three times the number of poor IFAD has reached previously during a similar time span. More generally, IFAD has declared that scaling up is “mission critical,” and this scaling-up objective is now firmly embedded in its corporate strategy and planning statements. Also, increasingly, IFAD’s operational practices are geared towards helping its clients achieve scaling up on the ground with the support of its loans and grants.

This was not always the case. For many years, IFAD stressed innovation as the key to success, giving little attention to systematically replicating and building on successful innovations. In this regard, IFAD was not alone. In fact, few aid agencies have systematically pursued the scaling up of successful projects. However, in 2009, IFAD management decided to explore how it could increase its focus on scaling up. It gave a grant to the Brookings Institution to review IFAD’s experience with scaling up and to assess its operational strategies, policies and processes with a view to strengthening its approach to scaling up. Based on an extensive review of IFAD documentation, two country case studies and intensive interactions with IFAD staff and managers, the Brookings team prepared a report that it submitted to IFAD management in June 2010 and published as a Brookings Global Working Paper in early 2011 (Linn et al. 2011).

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It certainly seems that way, judging by recent developments. Capital increases for the World Bank, for the Asian Development Bank (AsDB), for the African Development Bank (AsDB), and for the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) are nowhere in sight, despite their constrained lending capacities. Replenishments of their soft-loan windows have been anemic. They face divisive debates about what role emerging economies should play in their governance and how their leaders should be selected. Competitors are nipping at their heels, with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) only the most recent example. News of drastic financial restructuring of the AsDB and of protracted reorganization in the World Bank add to the questions about where the traditional Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) are headed.

So let’s unpack what are the key challenges – and the main opportunities – that the traditional MDBs face. Based on the discussion at a recent roundtable of MDB representatives organized by International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome, I see seven principal challenges:

• Progress in reducing extreme poverty and the in graduation of many low-income countries to middle-income status has reduced the rationale for aid and the apparent need for MDBs.
• The rapid growth of development finance channels means increasing competition in a crowded field of financial actors (private and non-governmental financial flows, new development finance institutions and vertical funds, and non-traditional donors).
• Traditional donors face increasing domestic pressure to channel aid resources through their bilateral aid organizations, and they show a growing preference to earmark their funding, rather than support general core financing for MDBs. 
• MDBs face a dramatic growth of competing knowledge providers (international and national consulting firms, universities and think tanks).
• Inflexible governance structures limit the attractiveness of MDBs to their borrowers and to new donors. With traditional donors unwilling to give up control over vote, voice, leadership selection and lending practices, borrowers see the MDBs as unresponsive, risk averse, burdensome and costly. Emerging economy donors find MDBs unable or unwilling to absorb increased contributions with associated shifts in votes, voice and control. And since non-governmental actors cannot participate in the MDB governance structures, they do not contribute to MDB funding.
• The revival of Cold War/East-West confrontation risks politicizing the institutions’ lending practices – the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) stopped lending to Russia in the wake of the sanctions imposed by the West – and reinforces incentives for setting up new institutions.
• Most MDBs find it difficult to engage directly with the private and social enterprise sectors. Due to constraints in their statutes, policies and staff capacity MDBs have not been able to provide much direct financing for private investments.

But there are also opportunities that the MDBs can capitalize on:

• Despite the challenges that MDBs face in borrowing and donor countries, overall they remain trusted partners, due to a unique combination of strengths: their traditional political neutrality, freedom from special interests and corruption, technical professionalism, long-term development perspective and hands-on program design and finance engagement. Overdue reform of MDB governance and processes and effective resistance to political pressures can increase the trust all members put in them.
• As we face increased risks of geo-political fragmentation, regionalization, and confrontation, the world will need the truly multilateral MDBs more rather than less, since they offer globally inclusive forums and instruments to help address pressing global and regional issues.
• Despite remarkable progress, poverty reduction remains a huge task. Elimination of extreme poverty ($1.25pd) by 2030 is a valid goal; but its achievement will not eliminate poverty. The billions of people living below $5pd are poor. Poverty reduction will remain a valid goal for MDBs long beyond 2030.
• The Post-2015 and climate change agendas provide a window of opportunity for MDBs to demonstrate their continued, and indeed enhanced, relevance to the global sustainable development agenda in low-income and middle-income countries. The huge role of European Investment Bank in the European Union is one demonstration of the important role MDBs can play even for the advanced countries.
• The MDBs’ unique package of services provides better value than the services offered by many competitors. Their combination of strong project preparation, supervision and finance, their attention to indebtedness constraints and sustainability requirements, their focus on policy and institutional capacity and their ability to forge multi-stakeholder partnerships provide strong and effective support. MDBs provide a steady compass in helping shift countries’ national priorities from short-term expediency to sound long-term policies and programs for sustained impact at scale.
• MDBs have shown that they play a key role in responding to economic crises, natural disasters and conflict, as demonstrated for example by their response to the global financial and economic crisis of 2008/9.
• MDBs can increase the leverage of their financial resources, as demonstrated by the recent restructuring of the AsDB, and broaden their engagement with the private sector, building on the successful experience of the International Finance Corporation and EBRD.

In sum, the creation of many copycat development banks demonstrates the remarkable strength and durability of the basic MDB model. As long as the traditional MDBs squarely face the challenges and opportunities, there’s plenty of life left in their old bones.

So we’ve almost reached the end of the year 2015, which could go down in the history of global sustainable development efforts as one of the more significant years, with the trifecta of the approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the agreement on the Addis Agenda on Financing for Development (FfD) and the (shortly to be completed) Paris COP21 Climate Summit. Yet, all will depend on how the agreements with their ambitious targets are implemented on the ground.

Effective implementation will require a theory of change—a way to think about how we are to get from “here” in 2015 to “there” in 2030. The key problem is what has very appropriately been called by some “the missing middle,” i.e., the gap between the top-down global targets on the one hand and the bottom-up development initiatives, projects, and programs that are supported by governments, aid agencies, foundations, and social entrepreneurs.

One way to begin to close this gap is to aim for scaled-up global efforts in specific areas, as is pledged in the Addis Agenda, including efforts to fight global hunger and malnutrition, international tax cooperation and international cooperation to strengthen capacities of municipalities and other local authorities, investments and international coopera­tion to allow all children to complete free, equitable, inclusive and quality early childhood, primary and secondary education, and concessional and non-concessional financing.

Another way is to develop country-specific national targets and plans consistent with the SDG, Addis, and COP21 targets, as is currently being done with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program’s MAPS program. This can provide broad guidance on policy priorities and resource mobilization strategies to be pursued at the national level and can help national and international actors to prioritize their interventions in areas where a country’s needs are greatest.

However, calling for expanded global efforts in particular priority areas and defining national targets and plans is not enough. Individual development actors have to link their specific projects and programs with the national SDG, Addis, and COP21 targets. They systematically have to pursue a scaling-up strategy in their areas of engagement, i.e., to develop and pursue pathways from individual time-bound interventions to impact at a scale in a way that will help achieve the global and national targets. A recent paper I co-authored with Larry Cooley summarizes two complementary approaches of how one might design and implement such scaling-up pathways. The main point, however, is that only the pursuit of such scaling-up pathways constitutes a meaningful theory of change that offers hope for effective implementation of the new global sustainable development targets.

Fortunately, over the last decade, development analysts and agencies have increasingly focused on the question of how to scale up impact of successful development interventions. Leading the charge, the World Bank in 2004, under its president Jim Wolfensohn, organized a high-level international conference in Shanghai in cooperation with the Chinese authorities on the topic of scaling up development impact and published the associated analytical work. However, with changes in the leadership at the World Bank, the initiative passed to others in the mid-2000s, including the Brookings Institution, ExpandNet (a group of academics working with the World Health Organization), Management Systems International (MSI), and Stanford University. They developed analytical frameworks for systematically assessing scalability of development initiatives and innovations, analyzed the experience with more or less successful scaling-up initiatives, including in fragile and conflict-affected states, and established networks that bring together development experts and practitioners to share knowledge.

By now, many international development agencies (including GIZ, JICA, USAID, African Development Bank, IFAD and UNDP), foundations (including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation) and leading development NGOs (including Heifer International, Save the Children and the World Resources Institute), among others, have focused on how best to scale up development impact, while the OECD recently introduced a prize for the most successful scaling-up development initiatives. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is perhaps the most advanced among the agencies, having developed a systematic operational approach to the innovation-learning-scaling-up cycle. In a collaborative effort with the Brookings Institution, IFAD reviewed its operational practices and experience and then prepared operational design and evaluation guidelines, which can serve as a good example for other development agencies. The World Bank, while yet to develop a systematic institution-wide approach to the scaling-up agenda, is exploring in specific areas how best to pursue scaled-up impact, such as in the areas of mother and child health, social enterprise innovation, and the “science of delivery.”

Now that the international community has agreed on the SDGs and the Addis Agenda, and is closing in on an agreement in Paris on how to respond to climate change, it is the right time to bridge the “missing middle” by linking the sustainable development and climate targets with effective scaling-up methodologies and practices among the development actors. In practical terms, this requires the following steps:

• Developing shared definitions, analytical frameworks, and operational approaches to scaling up among development experts;
• Developing sectoral and sub-sectoral strategies at country level that link short- and medium-term programs and interventions through scaling-up pathways with the longer-term SDG and climate targets;
• Introducing effective operational policies and practices in the development agencies in country strategies, project design, and monitoring and evaluation;
• Developing multi-stakeholder partnerships around key development interventions with the shared goal of pursuing well-identified scaling-up pathways focused on the achievement of the SDGs and climate targets;
• Developing incentive schemes based on the growing experience with “challenge funds” that focus not only on innovation, but also on scaling up, such as the recently established Global Innovation Fund; and
• Further building up expert and institutional networks to share experience and approaches, such as the Community of Practice on Scaling Up, recently set up by MSI and the Results for Development Institute.