IS TURKEY IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

This is the Notes from this class, Week 1: HOW DID THE ‘MIDDLE EAST’ GET NAMED? It's a relatively modern term, popularized by Alfred Mahan in early 1900s, an American imperialist. It is a political term, and does not denote a geographical region. “Writing for London's National Review [in 1902], Mahan used the new term in calling for the British to strengthen their naval power in the Persian Gulf. 'As scholar Roderic Davison explains, Mahan’s Middle East "was an indeterminate area guarding a part of the sea route from Suez to Singapore.’ The new coinage played off the terms Near East and Far East,"already in use. “ Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, http://www.unc.edu/mideast/where/mahan-1902.shtml Additional thoughts: Today, the “Middle East” is still an indeterminate political region. There is no consensus internationally, as to what countries should be included. One could equally include Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan or Georgia. In the 19th Century, Turkey was the 'Near East,' and India, China, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia were the 'Far East.’ TURKEY It is believed that 40% of the Turkish population have European origins. Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952, considered itself a part of Greater Europe and joined various European institutions. The question becomes, does the government and state of Turkey, today consider itself to be part of the Middle East? This question has economic ramifications, and that is why it’s so sensitive. The Turkish state believes it has fulfilled the criteria to join the European Union. It is therefore not making official claims to be part of the Middle East. See this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/06/turkey-eu-membership The Turks themselves consider this question of whether Turkey is part of the Middle East, to be highly controversial. There are various thoughts. Some want Turkey to be seen as straddled between Europe and the Middle East, but not always facing the West or identified as a “Middle Eastern” country. Some want more of a cultural identification with the Middle East. The question also revolves around Turkish attitudes towards Israel. Recent events (the killing of a Turkish humanitarian activist by Israeli forces) have precipitated a shift against the UK/US/Israeli alliance, and towards Arab and Iranian anti-Zionist sentiments. What is clear is that Turkey is a pivotal 'swing vote' in the region. Given the controversy, I was faced with a hard choice, and decided to simply leave Turkey out of the list of assigned "Middle Eastern" countries in this class! However, it can be part of a topic for your final paper, for example, on Turkish-Syrian relations.

STUDENT INFOBYTES: WORLD BANK, IMF, MALAYSIA, US COTTON SUBSIDIES ETC

I continue to be amazed by students' final papers in my INTL 5400 International Political Economy class. Here are some recent extracts. Jose wrote in my INTL 5400 2010 class about corruption and the World Bank: Today, the World Bank has lost focus of its primary mission and has developed into an ineffective bureaucracy. Of the 66 less developed countries receiving money from the World Bank for more than 25 years, 37 are no better off today than they were when they received such loans. Of these 37 countries, most (20 in all) are poorer today than they were before receiving aid from the Bank...The underlying corruption of the World Bank is evident in its encouragement of the activities of corrupt government officials across the globe. Reference: Johnson, Bryan. The Heritage Foundation. 16 May 2006. Michael wrote in my 2011 Spring class about US subsidies: To shed light on a wider analytic frame concerning US cotton subsidies and protectionism, it is important to have a short look at the country’s history of agricultural subsidies as well agricultural facts: There are an estimated group of 400 crops, which are grown in the US for agricultural usage. While this represents a good biodiversity range, Kwan point outs that from these 400 food and cash crops grown in the US, the minority of five crops receives the vast majority of all US agricultural subsidies. These commodity crops are corn, cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat. She notes that “ALTHOUGH THE UNITED STATES PAID $164.7 BILLION IN FARM SUBSIDIES FROM 1995 TO 2005, OVER SEVENTY PERCENT—APPROXIMATELY $115.5 BILLION—WAS SPENT ON JUST THOSE FIVE CROPS”(Kwan,575). From these five crops, cotton and cotton farmers receive the biggest share. Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, calculates that “THE UNITED STATES SPENDS $34 BILLION A YEAR SUBSIDISING COTTON: MUCH OF THE COTTON IS GROWN IN AREAS WHERE THEY SHOULD NOT BE GROWING COTTON[…] SO IT IS NOT ONLY BAD FOR OUR ECONOMY, BUT IS ALSO ACTUALLY BAD FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT.” (Stiglitz,6). References: Kwan, Charlene C. "Fixing the Farm Bill: Using the "Permanent Provisions" in Agricultural Law to Achieve Wto Compliance." Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 36.2 (2009): 571-606. Stiglitz, Joseph E. Fair Trade for All. How Trade Can Promote Development. Brooks World Poverty Institute Inaugural Lecture., Manchester, UK. Clovis Ouangraoua, in the same class, wrote about Malaysia's bid for independence from World Bank: In fact, MALAYSIA IS THE ONLY EXCEPTION, WHERE EXTRAORDINARILY LARGE FDI INFLOWS (6.6 percent of GDP) WERE LARGER THAN BANK AND PRIVATE SECTOR BORROWING (3.6 percent of GDP). (Steven Radelet, Jeffrey D. Sachs “The Onset of the East Asian Financial Crisis” in Currency Crises, , University of Chicago Press, January 2000, P. 122, http://www.nber.org/chapters/c86 91, accessed 03/07/2012). This exceptional result, the country owes it to a competitive realism strategy that allowed it to shelter its financial markets against foreign markets’ intervention. By rejecting IMF’s policies, Malaysia stood out. The IMF would later be forced to admit that the strategy did pay off despite initial claims of the contrary.

NO COOKIE CUTTER FOREIGN POLICY FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS

An Iranian American friend wrote to me "As you know, Islamic feminism is currently enjoying mainstream acceptance in the West to a great extent. Personally, I suspect that this is because they support the status quo in an international political context and only advocate small reforms rather than revolutionary changes."

But there is no blanket approach by the West to support a conservative status quo. In Syria and Libya, the West supports an opposition that includes Al Quaeda and other fundamentalist elements. Same in Egypt, after the Arab Spring of 2011. In Iraq US military forces ousted the secular Sunni and brought the conservative Shia to power in 2003. But in Afghanistan the US is fighting the Taliban and in Yemen and Somalia, the US is engaged in overthrowing fundamentalist groups. As the former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once said, there is no cookie cutter when it comes to foreign policy. Each case is decided on its own 'merits' (if it fulfills a high stake dash to secure access to the world's oil reserves.) For example:



"Britain is involved in a secret high-stakes dash for oil in Somalia, with the government offering humanitarian aid and security assistance in the hope of a stake in the beleaguered country's future energy industry.
Riven by two decades of conflict that have seen the emergence of a dangerous Islamic insurgency, Somalia is routinely described as the world's most comprehensively "failed" state, as well as one of its poorest. Its coastline has become a haven for pirates preying on international shipping in the Indian Ocean."


• Mark Townsend and Tariq Abdinasir
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 25 February 2012 21.04 GMT
•

Media analyst Eduardo Cohen responds:

"People in the West are told that Somalia has been a failed and violent state for over 20 years.

It's simply not reported that in 2006-7 there were two years of peace when a group known as the Islamic Courts took control of Mogadishu and most of the country. They were Muslim fundamentalists but not nearly as hard core as the Taliban or even the government of Iran. There were members who were sympathetic with Al Quaeda but the organization had no ties to Al Quaeda, though the US government claimed they did.

They implemented law and enforcement and for the first time in over a decade and a half women and families could safely walk the streets. They outlawed Khat, the amphetamine like drug that helped fuel more violence.

There was peace. For two years. The US couldn't tolerate that, so they worked with the Ethiopian government to organize, finance and support an invasion by Ethiopia to drive out those who had brought peace. The press act as if that didn't even happen. The Islamic Courts, who also seriously reduced Somalian piracy, were dislodged years ago by the Ethiopians working with the support of US covert (CIA) and special forces (military) and US aerial support (US air and naval forces).

Their removal led to the rise of Al-Shabab who ARE ultra conservative fundamentalists and who ARE connected with Al-Queda.

That, and the current military/covert campaign against Al-Shabab, also led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Somalis who are now refugees."

What is the West' interest in Somalia? As well as Somalian oil, the Bab El Mandeb chokepoint is a highly strategic waterway, through which hundreds of millions of oil barrels pass by Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia, 30 miles across from Yemen.

THE US FEDERAL RESERVE - NOT ON THE SIDE OF SMALL BUSINESSES

The Federal Reserve creates and regulates the flow of money into the economy of the United States. We can use the word ‘regulate’ or the word ‘manipulate’. It’s a form of subsidy. When a lot of money flows, businesses take out loans and hire new employees. This can cause overproduction as well as inflation of the money supply. When the boom collapses, workers are laid off and unemployment soars. It’s the job of the Fed to achieve some kind of balance between boom and bust.
Some would question whether the boom/bust cycle is healthy, and ask, who benefits from it?
Everyone can gain during the boom cycle, but in the bust cycle, businesses are purchased and consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. So we can say that only the very wealthy benefit from the up and down nature of the economy.
So that should lead you to ask…who are the Federal Reserve and how is it placed in the context of this cycle? It’s not a government agency. It is composed of 12 private banks in the US. If I were very cynical, I would venture to guess that these 12 banks are not going to suffer during the bust cycle. Meanwhile, smaller high street banks are likely to be gobbled up by the bigger banks. Corporations have ‘rights’, but the smaller corporations are likely to be swallowed up too, by the bigger sharks in the sea. And labor gets misallocated.

Let’s look at this from the point of view of jobs and labor. What and who, actually creates jobs in the US? The biggest corporations are not job creators in the US, which is why President Obama is urging corporations to bring jobs back from overseas. Small businesses (under 500 employees) are the major job creators (65 percent of the jobs between 1993 and 2009, according to the US Small Business Administration.) But as I’ve explained above, these smaller businesses are the most likely to go under during a bust cycle. Additionally, the biggest corporations receive the most tax subsidies, while the smaller ones often endure tax increases and a reduction in loans.
An analyst wrote in December 2011:
“New federal data show that the number of small bank loans to business has fallen to the lowest point in more than a decade, cutting the flow of money to a sector that's usually a job-creation powerhouse.”

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/15/9470807-bank-loans-to-small-business-fall-to-12-year-low

CONSENT AND LEGITIMACY

My POS 201 Introduction to Politics class (at Northern Arizona University) is in large part an enquiry into the legitimacy of government. The 18th century Enlightenment writer John Locke wrote that government is only legitimate and democratic if it is derived from the consent of the people. Government that is imposed on the people, without their consent, is unpopular and bound to fail. Government must be seen to adhere to popular norms, values and beliefs. Government actions must be seen as appropriate. Legitimacy is derived from the Latin word for law (lex), but does not necessarily mean that all governmental actions have to adhere to domestic and international law. This explains how pre-emptive wars (for example, the US occupation of Iraq in 2003) are largely accepted by the governed, despite being illegal under the laws of war (humanitarian law).

The government must be perceived as sharing the same values as the governed. This implies trust and confidence.

I ask students whether for example, the US government is based on the values of ‘the people’. Students are asked to research various groups that are excluded from high levels of power: the poor, women, ethnic groups etc. For example, 40 percent of the US Congress are millionaires. Can the haves truly reflect the interests of the have nots?

Noam Chomsky, a US political writer, deconstructs the notion of legitimacy in Western government. He examines the methods by which governments gain trust, and thus, legitimacy.

Building from Locke’s idea that government must be consented to freely, Chomsky developed the concept of “the manufacture of consent” (Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media 1988, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky).

As the title suggests, Chomsky and Herman posit that the mass media, because it is owned by ruling elites, distort information and create misinformation to benefit corporate power and the interests of the very wealthy. I think at some level, the public believes it is being manipulated, but feels powerless to stop it. This is evidenced by the fact that only half the population bother to vote, feeling there is little difference between Democrats and Republicans. But that is speculation. More research should be done to find out why and how governments in Western style democracies lose the confidence of the people, and what can be done to restore it.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF VIOLENCE

Gerald Lloyd Beeson in my POS 201 Spring 2012 class, describes the research of Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman. Here is an excerpt from Gerald's essay. The prompt asked students to consider whether humans are by nature predominantly aggressive.

" Grossman, in his book “On Killing”, documents various research in military history that shows that men do not want to kill and that it was only by modified training received after World War 2 and the Vietnam War that they managed to increase military killing rates. Grossman cites the battle of Gettysburg, in which 90 percent of the 27,574 rifles found on the field of battle were found loaded and not fired, which means that the soldiers dropped them but did not fire them."

According to Grossman, video games replicate the army's 'train to kill' conditioning techniques, and is responsible for the rising rate of murder among the young.


Gerald Beeson adds ".... Alexia Eastwood points out that “EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE" from studies of psychology actually suggests that “OUR INCLINATION TO SHARE AND COOPERATE ARE HARDWIRED INTO OUR GENETIC CODE” (Eastwood, 1). Eastwood refutes the modern day assumption of economic modeling which is based on Homo Economicus. This theory is all based on the presumption that actions of all men are, essentially, self-serving (Eastwood, Man 1). Eastwood points out that the “ NOTIONS OF POVERTY AND WEALTH” are “SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS” and are not “UNIVERSAL”. She indicates that other societies demonstrate or represent wealth by redistribution or gift giving (Eastwood, 2)...

As you can see, there is clearly evidence that refutes the ideology that man is essentially a ego-maniacal, self-centered, violent and nu-controllable personage that needs to be monitored by a complex political structure. Society is the way that it is because of social constructions and the political systems."



Works Cited:

Eastwood, Alexia. “Revisiting Economic Man.” Share the World’s Resources. (2010 April 16): Web. 22 Jan 2012.

Grossman, Lt. Col. Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. New York. E-rights/E-reads, 2009. Kindle edition.

CLAIMS ABOUT GLOBAL INCOME GAPS SUBJECT TO CONTROVERSY

Claims about the morality of globalization, tend to revolve around the global income gap. To make your case, students should provide data (see my Guidelines).

Carolyn Cannafax wrote

'For globalization to succeed as an integrative rather than a divisive force, it cannot be formulated as a zero-sum game, or ultimately there will be no winners. Failure to instigate the necessary transformation throughout the international political economy will reformulate its governmental and corporate leaders as victims of their own malfeasance. All are subject to the same environmental degradation, social chaos and economic attrition, regardless of their economic, societal, or political positions.'

Her evidence of the zero sum game is the widening gap between rich and poor.

This 'gap' is subject to controversy. Anti globalists tend to assume there is a widening gap, whereas pro globalists want to believe the gap is narrowing.

It is not controversial that the US is experiencing a widening gap. Bloomberg.com reports the following:

"A widening gap between rich and poor is reshaping the U.S. economy, leaving it more vulnerable to recurring financial crises and less likely to generate enduring expansions.

Left unchecked, the decades-long trend toward increasing inequality may condemn Wall Street to a generation of unimpressive returns and even shake social stability, economists and financial-industry executives say. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-13/growing-income-divide-may-increase-u-s-vulnerability-to-financial-crises.html

China, India and other Asian countries, as well as Sub Sahara Africa have seen a widening gap. Whereas, it has been argued that the gap appears to be narrowing in other parts of the world. But as we see in Week 1, INTL 5400, units of measurement of national wealth are controversial.

Here is an interesting article focusing on the debate about income inequality:

http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/income/debate.html

Key quotes from the article:

"The September 2004 issue of the prestigious American Journal of Sociology carries an article entitled ‘Accounting for the Recent Decline in Global Income Inequality’ (Firebaugh and Goesling 2004) arguing that global income inequality has declined in recent decades as a result of economic globalization. Firebaugh and Goesling’s main arguments revolve around rapid industrialization in the densely populated regions of China and India.

Robert Wade of the London School of Economics, a notable contributor to debates about global inequality (Wade 2004, 2001) shows that Firebaugh and Goesling’s conclusion of falling inequality is sensitive to a series of choices about measures (how incomes are compared, populations weighted, inequality measured) and data (based on national income accounts or household surveys). When alternative choices are made, global income inequality may increase rather than decline."

Probably sealing the deal, is the discovery that the World Bank got its figures wrong in 2008.

"Contradicting the Bank's celebrated decline in extreme poverty figures last year to less than a billion for the first time, the new measurements revealed a far less optimistic outlook - a total of 1.4 billion poor people in 2005,[1] revised from 986 million in 2004.[2]  A margin of error, in other words, of 42 percent, defining a quarter of the developing world as living without sufficient means for human
survival. " http://www.stwr.org/globalization/world-bank-poverty-figures-what-do-they-mean.html