Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Nick Clegg at a meeting in London. Photo by Cabinet Office via Flickr.

At a dinner in London, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and former UK Home and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw delivered two speeches with a common theme: Turkey is a rising regional, and maybe even global, power. Over the last decade it has undergone numerous political and economic reforms.  In 2010, extensive constitutional changes shifted power away from the military and towards the civilian judicial and executive branches of the government. Turkey’s emerging market is also striving with relatively stable growth figures. It is, according to the International Monetary Fund, the 16th biggest economy in the world.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is regarded by many as a leader empowered with the three Weberian forms of authority, namely traditional, rational-legal and charismatic. While some critics both within and outside Turkey question his stance on the role of religion in democracy, he savours much popularity particularly in the Middle East and North Africa region as well as in Turkey. His AK Party won 49.8% of the vote in the national elections in June 2011, establishing it as the majority party for a third time in a row. If and when Erdoğan becomes President in the next election, the current Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, very well could be his successor for Prime Minister, continuing along the path of increased global influence. Originally an academic, Davutoğlu is known for striving to put his academic foreign policy theory of “Zero-Problems” with Turkey’s neighbours into practice.

Yet Turkey still faces many challenges. Not only is it affected by the economic difficulties in Greece and Europe and unrest in Syria and the wider Middle East, but it also has to deal with various internal struggles. The Judiciary Branch is under strong criticism, for example, for long detention until trials commence. GDP forecasts project lower growth figures in 2012. While some decline is almost inevitable after the very high growth figures experienced in recent years, Turkey needs growth to employ its remarkably young population as they enter into the labour pool. Moreover, Turkey is still undergoing the very significant process of discovering its own identity, both internally with regard to its own history and externally vis-à-vis its neighbours, trying to get out of the oft-used cliché employed by press and guidebooks alike of being a place “between East and West”.

This means that there is quite a lot on Erdogan’s to-do list. Yet, Turkey faces a unique role as a bridge-builder in the middle of the political and economic crisis in Europe, the uprising in the Middle East and North Africa region and the increasing global power of Asia.

Fall and Rise

At the dinner, former Foreign Secretary Straw said that Turkey is now recognized as an equal, which ipso facto implies it was not before. European Realpolitik will have to take this into consideration. Turkey applied for associate membership in the European Economic Community for the first time in 1959.  As of yet it is still not a member. At the December 2011 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Turkey, very few participants were from the European Union, despite the fact that over 45% of Turkish exports go to the EU. Since this summit was the follow-up to the one initiated by President Obama in 2010, it is somewhat understandable but not necessarily justifiable, for Europe and for Turkey.

Turkey is increasingly taking on a global responsibility, reaching the Turkish diaspora and beyond. It has built various cultural, social and economic institutions around the world, such as the Yunus Emre Vakfı, which may be regarded as the Turkish equivalent of the British Council. This network organises trips to Turkey and events like the migration symposium held in Berlin last November to celebrate 50 years since the beginning of the guestworker agreement with Germany.

The changes in Turkey’s influence and importance are due not only to its recent politico-economic progress, but also to a simple stock market-like calculation. A company may be valued by the sum of its discounted future cash flow. A rising Turkey will become more influential in the future and by that very fact becomes increasingly influential in the present. In 2023, the country will celebrate its 100th-year anniversary of being founded as a republic. Until then, Turkey still has many choices to make about which roads to travel.

Mamun received treatment for diarrhoea through a health insurance scheme run by a local NGO. Photo by Jemima Peppel-Srebrny.

A big fly, buzzing and circling around her head, settles in the corner of her eye. Another, right next to her mouth. No one seems to care, or have the energy to shoo them away. Mita is seven years old, has been unable to go to the toilet for five days, and has been camping in the hallway of a public hospital in Mymensingh, Bangladesh, with her parents for the last three. She was responsive yesterday, but today, spread across her mother’s lap, her eyes are half-closed and she does not seem to be aware of the group of people that has gathered around her to hear her mother tell her story.

The Mymensingh hospital has twice as many patients than beds, plus seemingly at least three “attendants” per patient, family members who eat, sleep and live on and around the bed or mat or floor space of the ill. The hot air is reeking; the floor is covered in dirt, blood and vomit; excrement is running down the building’s outside walls and forming pools in the courtyard. To get treatment, you have to come to the hospital to register, and then stay there to wait for your turn to receive treatment or surgery. Depending on your willingness and ability to pay, this can take hours, or weeks, regardless of the urgency of your situation.

Mita’s parents cannot afford to pay to skip the queue, having spent their savings on transportation to get their daughter to the hospital and getting themselves deeper and deeper into trouble with every day they stay not earning money. They do not know when their daughter will receive treatment. The hospitals’ doctors are absent or work a fraction of the time they should, and spend their afternoons working in profitable private clinics instead. To make matters worse, demand for drugs outstrips supply by as much as five times in some instances, and many more days of hospitalisation than would normally be needed are required due to reinfection and the spread of infections. “Ami kushi, ami dead” – “I am happy, then I am dead” is our driver’s opinion about hospitals, which he declares in his characteristic Banglish as we return to the car.

“Frustration, hopelessness and anger are outsiders’ usual reactions to seeing facilities like this”, a microfinance and insurance expert from a local NGO says. Gut-wrenching sadness and outrage are two to add to the list. Mita’s slow and unnecessary death on the hospital floor exposes the continuing lamentable shortfalls of governmental and non-governmental development efforts.

Poor healthcare is, predominantly, a problem for the poor in Bangladesh. There are persistent, gaping inequities in healthcare provision across social groups and geographic regions. Coverage of crucial healthcare services such as skilled birth attendance remains very limited. The better off can usually afford to go to private clinics; serene, hygienic castles of dreams in white for many of those stuck at the overcrowded public hospitals. The poor tend to, if at all, receive low-quality health services, and are overall of worse health than the better off. Among street dwellers, for example, limited access to clean water and sanitation, bad nutrition, exposure to sexual violence and police brutality together with social ostracisation mean that they suffer from numerous untreated health problems, including vitamin deficiencies, infections, sexually transmitted diseases, fractures and damage to internal organs; similar holds true for rickshaw drivers and their families. All of this is in spite of the fact that the Bangladeshi constitution promises each of its citizens the right to free primary health care.

Over the past decades, various NGOs have stepped in to attempt to fill the gap created by the combined failure of government and markets. Through micro health insurance schemes, they have been trying to improve the poor’s access to affordable healthcare services and protect them from the financial implications of catastrophic health shocks. Initially hailed as the “next big thing” in microfinance, such insurance schemes have, however, rarely done well, most marred by structural shortfalls of income from premium collection over costs for benefit provision when government and donor subsidies run out. They have further been hampered by their small scale, which limits their ability to achieve risk diversification and hence exposes them to large fluctuations in their expenses. Moreover, a somewhat self-defeating exclusive focus on the poor – who have lower ability to pay for health insurance and tend to be of worse health – frequently undermines these schemes’ cost recovery and also prohibits the subsidisation of poorer people’s health costs by the richer, which is fundamental to most insurance schemes in mature economies.

Fortunately, however, there is some good news. For one thing, Bangladesh has made astonishing progress in bringing down child mortality, by nearly two thirds over the past 20 years to 48 per 1,000 live births, beating India by far. It has also achieved nearly complete immunization against DPT (95%) and measles (94%) of its 12- to 23-month olds, with India (72%/74%) again far behind. Bangladesh’s progress has prompted Amartya Sen to laud Bangladesh for achieving “so much so quickly” in terms of human development and for doing much better than India despite its substantially lower per capita income. At the same time, the academic and development communities are increasingly  coming to realise the huge implications that falling ill can carry for the poor, in keeping them poor or pushing them further into poverty, and are dedicating time and resources towards improving access, affordability and quality of healthcare, in Bangladesh and elsewhere.

Lastly, charities in Bangladesh are thinking again about micro health insurance, and are coming up with novel approaches to tackling the many challenges involved in setting up and running such schemes. One interesting idea has been to link the insurance scheme to a catastrophe fund that gives out long-term loans at low interest rates to members facing catastrophic healthcare expenditures. To ensure effective risk protection, what “catastrophic” means can be defined relative to the income of the affected household. The fund can be financed through an endowment, the return on which could make up for some of the shortfall in loan recovery, through other NGO activity, or through government and donor subsidies. At the same time, commercial reinsurance could help the insurer stabilise its expenses and avoid insolvency in “bad” years. Broadening the insurance pool to include formal, better off individuals as well as informal sector workers could also help to diversify risk and achieve scale and financial sustainability.

Realistically, NGO-driven micro health insurance is unlikely to be a panacea or cure-all. For achieving universal health coverage in Bangladesh, a concerted effort and the commitment of the government are indispensable. Nonetheless, government and development organisations’ efforts to improve health, a creeping realisation of the importance of health for all other pieces of the puzzle of development and NGO’s renewed efforts in devising sustainable, effective health insurance schemes mean that there is reason for hope – hope, at least, that what happened to Mita will happen less often in the future.

Rick Santorum, like Ed Miliband, won't appeal to mainstream voters. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

A humiliating defeat for the Labour Party under Gordon Brown seemed inevitable in the run-up to the 2010 election. After a seemingly unending wave of negative press, culminating in Brown’s infamous encounter with an angry old-age pensioner in the weeks before the election (‘that bigoted woman’), it seemed Labour’s third consecutive term in power would result in a defeat that would leave them without a chance of regaining power for generations to come. As luck would have it, Labour’s defeat was not of the catastrophic proportions that had been envisaged only a year before. A once commanding 12-point lead had dropped to just 7 percentage points by the election in May 2010 and the Conservatives, confident for so long of an outright majority, were forced to concede to something Britain hadn’t experienced for some time: a hung parliament. Two years later, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are locked in a coalition government that is much more harmful to the smaller of the two parties. The Labour Party, post-Blair however, has had a period of extended introversion. A lengthy leadership battle, dominated by the Miliband brothers (David and Ed), represented not only a familial battle but a battle between the Blairite and Brownite factions that had dominated New Labour for all too long. Against the odds, and the polls, Ed, the less politically adept but more union-friendly of the two, triumphed and Labour has made clear its stance for the future: rather than seeking an immediate return to power, the party has sought to re-evaluate a brand which seemed to have lost its way post-2007 and Tony Blair’s third election triumph.  While this bout of political self-harm may have been seen by many at the grassroots level as merited, the ultimate reality is that not only has Ed Miliband been found lacking as a leader, but the attempt to return to a rose-tinted pre-Blairite/pre-Brownite party ignores one glaring reality: before this New Labour flourish, the party was never able to mount sustained governance as they were from 1997-2010. David Miliband’s sidelining is all the more glaring as he was the candidate with the most first-preference votes in the leadership election, ultimately defeated on transfers that helped pip his brother over the finish line. While David represented a national leader ready to challenge the Conservatives from the off, Ed is very much a Labour leader: his, and his party’s, inability to engage with the political centre and gain traction with the electorate at the Coalition’s most glaring weakness- the economy- is testament to a party that is not only losing ground, but striving for a purity that is no longer relevant in the modern era.

Mirroring this bout of political self-harm for a sense of core values is another party attempting to re-imagine itself following a bruising 5 years. Following the terminal decline which the latter years of George W. Bush’s presidency became, in the 2008 election the Republican Party opted for a candidate with a sense of independence they hoped would appeal to the moderate centre on the American political spectrum. While the election campaign would ultimately chip away at Senator John McCain’s ‘maverick’ credentials as he increasingly veered towards the right and made current Tea Party favourite Sarah Palin his Vice-Presidential nominee, the tactic from the offset was politically sound: in an election where the Bush name was toxic, the only possible chance for the Republicans to regain power was an independent line that emphasised distance with a highly tarnished, post-Iraq/Katrina brand. Yet, while Obama inherited a failing economy in 2008 and the Republicans soon set about disrupting his seemingly liberal agenda, the lessons of the ’08 election have been lost on Republican party strategists. The failure of the McCain camp was not due to a failure to adhere to some vague, conservative principles but rather an attempt to appeal to a conservative, Christian base that was not the group most up for grabs in the election race. Given the drubbing Bush was continually receiving in opinion polls, McCain’s 46% of the vote represented a small triumph for the Republicans. A more moderate choice of Vice-Presidential nominee, such as former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, might have alienated the conservative right, but would ultimately have made independent Republican thinking the cornerstone of the campaign. Instead, the McCain camp succumbed to the lowest common denominator. In the 2012 campaign, the Republican party is set on making the same mistakes again yet even sooner than before. It is for this reason that the recent ‘Santorum Surge’ against Mitt Romney is so pointed. As for Newt Gingrinch before him, Rick Santorum represents not only a conservative alternative to a flip-flopping Mitt Romney, but an attempt by the Republican right to contest the election on their terms, no matter what the potential results. Poll after poll shows Gingrinch and Santorum being handsomely beaten by President Obama while Romney, once a rather effective governor of liberal Massachusetts, is the candidate most capable of challenging Obama, although he is still trailing in the polls in most projections. In a bout of supreme irony, Romney’s wealth and business acumen has now been consistently used against him by his opponents as emblematic of his distance from ordinary workers and the cutthroat nature of private equity management.

The Republican Party leaders are engaging in the same process as the Labour Party in the UK, but in a much more vocal, protracted and chaotic way. While the Labour Party are seen as chameleon-like in their current financial plans for an austerity-driven Britain, the Republican party of Santorum and Gingrich represents a return to the ‘Culture War’ politics of the early noughties that brought Bush short-term conservative gain, but ultimately hampered any chance of long-term innovation in the White House, partisan or otherwise. Both parties are engaging in elements of political self-harm, drifting further and further from the political centre they desperately need if they want to regain power in the near future.

The UN derives its power from the support of its member nations. Photo by Radar Communication via Flickr.

On February 5th, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) failed to pass a resolution condemning the Syrian government’s continued use of violence against dissenters. Despite the overwhelming support of the majority of the UNSC, opposition from Russia and China resulted in a double veto that prevented the draft resolution from being passed. In light of widespread criticism of the nay voters and a rising death toll in Syria, some governments have begun to question whether the Security Council is relevant at all. Already, the US is gathering support for a coalition of the willing outside the UN to impose sanctions and bring diplomatic pressure against Syria. To do so would be a mistake.

Despite the failings of the UN, and in particular the Security Council, the legitimacy of its work depends on its members’ continued faith in its institutions. By working outside the UN, the US and its allies are undermining the only organisation in which countries have committed to maintaining a permanent diplomatic presence— an extraordinary feat, considering the extremely diverse interests of the 193 member states. Forming a coalition outside of the Security Council, the only body with universal jurisdiction over international law, would set a precedent that multinational sanctions may be pursued without the approval of the UNSC. The system of international governance, set up to bring order to an otherwise chaotic international state of affairs, loses all credibility when its proponents stop playing by its rules.

It is indisputable that the people of Syria require help; last week, the death toll reached 6000. It is not so clear that the Syrian people’s interests are best served by circumnavigating Russia and China, two of Syria’s closest allies. The Assad regime can only continue to repress its people with the support of its allies, which even now is waning as they find themselves on the losing end of international opinion. Continued diplomatic pressure through the channels of the UN is the only way to sway Russia and China. Though action independent of the UN through a US-led coalition may bring more pressure in the short-term, Assad’s regime will have a better chance of survival if Syria continues to be supported otherwise.

Nonetheless, the ongoing regime changes in the Middle East highlight the inadequacies of the UN and its inability to respond to rapid change. The divide between nations on how to deal with these kinds of crises is one cause of the inefficacy of the UN’s actions. However, it is precisely this divide, the fact that disagreement exists and interests diverge, that means we require more, not less, of the United Nations.

Sports inspire passion that can lead to violence. Photo by PanARMENIAN_Photo via Flickr.

Coming from private school, I was taught that rugby is a sport for hooligans played by gentlemen, whereas football is a sport for gentlemen played by hooligans.  In the defence of posh boys everywhere, there is a solid international case for this, most recently seen in the riots after the football at Port Said in Egypt last Wednesday, where 74 people were killed in an event allegedly masterminded by the winning side Al-Masry’s extremists, the Ultras. In 2001 there were 127 fatalities at a football stadium riot in Ghana, and overcrowding at a 1996 football match in Guatemala caused at least 83 deaths.

Additionally, if you take to heart everything you read in the papers, as well as everything you’re not allowed to say because of super injunctions, you could well be led to believe that football players are in fact as un-gentlemanly as the above saying suggests – perhaps particularly in France.  But what is it about football (and if we’re not going to be accused of being elitist, sport in general) that inspires men to behave in this un-gentlemanly way?

I say men because it is often men who play sport, watch sport, and get passionately excited about league tables.  I’ve seen arguments between (male) Welsh and English rugby fans that involved not one but two sets of statistics going to as many as four decimal places.  Sure, there are plenty of women who are crazy about sport too, but it’s not a defining character of femininity or female group bonding like it can be for men.  It’s also often individual sports such as tennis or athletics where women have the highest sporting profiles.

In contrast, it’s often team sports such as football that are linked to the highest levels of hooliganism – with darts being the obvious exception.  With regard to gender equality in sport, there’s a school of thought that believes that there shouldn’t be male/female division at all – rather than the men’s 100m and the women’s 100m, just have the 100m, with the fastest people over 100m regardless of gender.  Seems fair, but as it currently stands, this would just turn the men’s 100m into the 100m.

This is because men are faster than women.  Obviously, Jessica Ennis would beat Mike McShane over any distance, but the fastest men in the world are faster than the fastest women in the world.  It’s just a biological fact.  Sporting women recognise this too; to return to tennis, at one time the male player ranked 1000th in the world offered to play Serena Williams, ranked number one at the time, and she refused, apparently due to the fear that she would lose.

Perhaps, then, men’s biological capacity for sport is linked to a biological capacity for hooliganism.  Anyone who has ever watched or played in a particularly vicious game of hockey will know that the line between sport and violence is in places a little thin, and it’s traditionally male-dominated sports such as boxing and rugby where it’s thinnest of all.  Those watching a football match are caught up in the adrenaline involved in the playing, but don’t have a way of releasing it in a stadium seat.  Perhaps the fact that men the world over are designed to bond over physical activity is what causes such violent outbursts after fixtures – the spectators have been involved mentally, but lack a way of engaging with “the other side” physically…at least until after the match.

Sailors from USS Vella Gulf arrest suspected pirates. Photo by AN HONORABLE GERMAN via Flickr.

The Chandlers, a retired British couple who were held hostage by Somali pirates for over a year, captured the attention of the public and drew widespread criticism of the Foreign Office and government who appeared powerless to intervene, or at least make any public moves. This high-profile case thrust the growth in piracy in the Indian Ocean into the consciousness of the British public. However, it is merely one among many such cases, not all with such happy endings. The threat of piracy in the Gulf of Aden continues to be a problem despite the efforts of a coalition of international naval forces who are attempting to police this vast expanse of ocean. A major problem for anti-piracy efforts is that these ‘pirates’ are hijacking boats using low-tech small boats that are almost impossible to track across huge expanses of ocean. Somalia, a ‘failed state’ provides the perfect base from which these pirates are able to operate and enables them to continue to elude capture, and prevents the international community from solving the problem once and for all. The capture of a handful of these so-called pirates does not solve the underlying economic imperative which underpins the phenomenon, for every individual captured another merely takes his place.

The source of income for these pirates is not, as in the fantasy image, plunder, treasures and booty carried off from vessels. Rather, these pirates capture ships and ransom the lives of the crew from the companies they work for, whose insurance policies increasingly bear the burden of such ransoms.  The problem for the Chandlers was that they did not work for an international shipping company. They were not transporting oil across the Gulf of Aden, but merely travelling as part of their retirement—and as a result they did not have the financial backers to pay the ransom demanded. So began their long ordeal, transmitted across the globe through videos of the couple begging for release.

The Chandler case is certainly the one that received the most coverage in the UK, but the Royal Navy and its partners are constantly operating in the Indian Ocean; their latest success was the capture of twelve Somali pirates on January 14th. As part of a NATO-led force, the RFA Fort Victoria and a US Navy Vessel intercepted the pirate’s boat, as Royal Marines boarded the vessel. This is one of many such operations that the Royal Navy and Royal Marines are engaged in as part of the counter-piracy operation.

Defence Secretary Hammond explained at a press conference after the successful operation that this action was part of the remit of British forces whereby “The Royal Navy and Royal Marines are playing a crucial role in securing and protecting international sea lanes that are vital to global trade.” He added: “This operation off the coast of Somalia is a clear demonstration of Britain’s ability to tackle piracy that threatens our interests.”

The short-term successes of operations such as these, are, however, overshadowed by the continuation of the underlying causes. The problem will persist while there remains no stable government in Somali and until a clear legal process and court of jurisdiction is established. Currently the only recourse to prosecution lies with other states in the region being willing and able to prosecute the pirates. Kenya and the Seychelles have taken cases in the past and do prosecute, but it is difficult to deter piracy when the chances of profit are high and the risks of indictment are low.

Last year, David Cameron announced a conference on the piracy problem to be held in London in February 2012 with the aim of bringing together the international community to devise strategies to protect ships from pirates. This came on the back of his announcement that ships bearing Union Jacks would be entitled to carry weapons for self-defence.

Giles Heimman, chairman of the international anti-piracy campaign SOS (Save Our Seafarers), expressed his delight at the Prime Minister’s focus on Somali piracy and the extraordinary human and economic cost that it was causing in the Gulf of Aden.

The solution will not be a simple one; it depends not just on the ability to secure freedom of passage in such vital shipping routes but also on a stable political settlement and massive investment in the state of Somalia. A short-term solution is fine—capture the pirates and free the hostages, even work to establish a functional internationally recognised system for prosecution—but ultimately, the instability and lack of economic options for the people of the region will persist without a counter-piracy policy that emphasises not just the protection of shipping lanes, but also the rebuilding of Somalia.

Republican contender Ron Paul. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s libertarian platform, centred primarily on cutting taxes, drastically limiting the federal government’s size and role and protecting individual constitutional rights, is radically different from that of the other Republican hopefuls. Although entering the contest for the nomination as an underdog, Texas Congressman Paul is currently enjoying an increasing electoral success, while his fundraising campaign is also gaining momentum. In the Iowa caucuses, Ron Paul placed in third place, while in the New Hampshire primary elections, he came in second after Mitt Romney, winning around 17% of the votes. Congressman Paul is also in the top three candidates regarding fundraising results.

His success is all the more unexpected since he has been systematically neglected by the media, even during some of the debates.  In October 2011, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released the results of a survey which revealed that the Texas Congressmen had received the least media attention of all presidential candidates and that, in fact, between May 2nd and October 9th 2011, Paul appeared as the “primary newsmaker in only 2% of all election stories.” Both liberal and conservative media’s lack of coverage of the Congressman’s campaign and ideas seem to stem primarily from their apparent disbelief that, given his political ideas, he could obtain the Republican Party nomination and that he could represent a viable candidate for the Republican Party. Certain journalists, such as CNN reporter Dana Bash, have even expressed concerns that Ron Paul could continue his campaign into the spring and summer of 2012, jeopardising the chances of the future nominee– who, according to her, could never be Paul. Statements like hers seem to suggest that the media is not only strategically avoiding Congressman Paul, but actively trying to discredit him as a potential candidate. In several debates, Ron Paul has been silenced by the moderators, who have addressed far less questions to him than to all other candidates.

Although mainstream media seems to purposefully ignore or oppose Ron Paul, some parts of the Republican electorate are clearly heading in a different direction by supporting him. But why are Paul’s libertarian ideas gaining momentum now, given that the Texas Congressman made highly unsuccessful bids for the presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008? Well, mostly because times have changed.

Paul’s current placing on the electoral podium sends an important message about the American presidential elections: U.S. voters are disillusioned with the same old promises that both Republican and Democratic candidates have to offer and are willing to support alternative and even radical new political solutions. But Ron Paul offers more than simply an alternative. He is also one of the few congressmen whose platform has remained consistent and who has had the courage to oppose proposals that contradict his beliefs, even when he was the only one taking a different stance. During the debates, if and whenever he is given the opportunity to respond, Congressman Paul not only offers sharp, consistent and honest responses, but he refuses to engage in the political attacks and chicaneries that the other candidates have initiated against one another. Paul may not be a great public speaker, but it seems that, as more and more American citizens become disenchanted with purebred politicians delivering recycled political lines, he just might be the relatable and straightforward character Americans are looking for.

It is ultimately unlikely that Mr. Paul will be elected as the Republican candidate. However, his electoral success in Iowa and New Hampshire, in spite of the media’s refusal to cover him, sends an important message about American voters: a significant number are willing to endorse alternative political ideas, even radical ones such as Paul’s. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties should not simply brush off this popular tendency, but strive to respond to the people’s discontent. Otherwise, this disenchantment with mainstream politicians could facilitate the rise of various alternative political actors and of new political entities more capable of meeting Americans’ demands.

Oslo in Mourning

Many Norwegians see their country as so quaint as to be almost harmless. This fantasy was ripped apart on July 22nd, when a lone attacker used a fertiliser bomb to blow up the main government offices in Oslo, killing eight and wrecking several buildings. He then drove to Utøya, an island 90 minutes from Oslo and the scene of the Labour Youth’s summer camp. Dressed as a police officer he proceeded to kill 69 people in the space of two hours, the majority of whom had not yet turned 19. The attacker, Anders Behring Breivik, then surrendered to the police without resistance. A press-package he had prepared and sent to 1003 recipients before the attack described his motivations: antipathy towards Muslim immigration to Europe and outrage at a European left complicit in the ”Muslim takeover”. Should Behring Breivik be seen as symptomatic of a broad far-right movement in Europe, or is his an ideology of one?

In the presence of the press for the first time during an incarceration meeting on November 14th, Breivik presented himself as “a military commander in the Norwegian resistance movement and a Knights Justitiar in Knights Templar Norway and Knights Templar Europe.” A Justitiar was a Templar who dispensed corporal punishment to his comrades. Breivik claims that he got the idea for the attack on his own, and carried it out without any assistance, yet he sees himself as part of an organization, as a leader being carried along by a movement. His Knights Templars, however, do not seem like much more than a construct. In his “manifesto,” Breivik claimed to have co-founded the group in 2002 with “Richard Lionheart”. The Associated Press called up a likely candidate for this alias, Paul Ree, formerly of the English Defence League and now an extremist blogger known as “Lionheart”. Ree denied ever meeting Breivik and claimed the Knights Templars exist only as “an idea” and not as an organization. Furthermore, he expressed disgust at Breivik’s actions and sympathy with the Norwegian people.

Breivik’s actions can only be understood, as far as they can be understood at all, in the context of European far-right thought rather than far-right people. The Norwegian police have almost conclusively proven that Breivik carried out the attacks without any assistance. He communicated with sympathetic minds via online messaging boards, but these messaging boards were devoted to reinforcing the ideas of the participants rather than organising violent political acts. Moreover, these ideas are based on vague and obscure justifications. Breivik claimed that his actions were “gruesome but necessary” to defend Norwegian culture, but never clearly explained what he meant by “culture”, let alone “Norwegian culture”.

That Breivik acted individually and on such hazy justifications is troubling for those looking to prevent similar attacks in the future. Just as Breivik’s justifications are unclear, so too are his inspirations. Because we cannot pinpoint exactly when he shifted from sympathising with the far-right to perceiving himself as a Knight Justitiar, we cannot use his example to prevent others from following the same path. The Norwegian far-right blogger Fjordmann wrote several opinion pieces in the mainstream press during August and September, defending the right of political expression and freedom of conscience for those on far-right messaging boards. The Norwegian government agreed with his arguments in form and, so far, in practice.

Twenty-first century Western individuals have a historically unprecedented potential for destruction. Individual technological and financial capabilities allowed Breivik to unleash the firing power of a pre-Napoleonic army by maxing out his credit cards. Technological empowerment has made the communication of ideas increasingly rapid and uncontrollable. People use online message boards to seek confirmation that their own beliefs are relevant, not just to convince others that their ideas are valid. Instead of the forum coming together as a whole to formulate a single ideology, each screen name can develop his own individual ideology in a like-minded environment. The coupling of such technological empowerment with political hatred can have terrible consequences.

Breivik’s actions are symptomatic of far-right ideology in Europe – but this ideology need no longer proceed as a classical “movement”. Instead of an organised structure, there is an exchange of ideas. This exchange cannot—and should not— be legally prevented. Breivik acted alone and needed no network to accomplish his destructive goals. This, along with Paul Ree’s distancing from Breivik, leads to the more troubling conclusion that Breivik acted from an ideology of one, and that these days an ideology needs only one adherent to have a devastating impact on a country and its people.

Graffiti against secularism in Tunisia. Photo by European Parliament via Flickr.

On October 23rd 2011, roughly ten months after a distraught fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire and ignited the wave of revolutions known as the Arab Spring, Tunisia held its first post-revolutionary elections, in which the moderate Islamist party Ennahda (meaning Renaissance) won a plurality of the votes and 89 of the 217 seats in the Constitutional Assembly. The party’s victory has stirred a debate both within Tunisia and outside about the relationship between Islam and democracy.

Ennahda’s history prior to the revolution has been one of repression. Under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Ennahda was labelled a terrorist group and its members were imprisoned and tortured or forced into exile. Furthermore, Islamic practices such as wearing head scarves or growing beards were highly frowned upon and mosque attendance was viewed by the highly secular state with suspicion, despite the fact that 98% of the population identifies as Muslim. Ennahda’s popularity can therefore be viewed as a manifestation of some of this previously suppressed Islamic sentiment.

Despite the party’s Islamic identity, Ennahda’s leadership, and particularly Hamadi Jebali, the party’s Secretary General and the probable future Prime Minister, have made it very clear that they do not wish to impose Islam on the population, whether through dress codes or mosque attendance. Moreover, they claim to fully support the progressive elements of Tunisia’s secular society, such as the 1956 Code of Personal Status, a piece of legislation that ensures equality for women on issues relating to marriage and divorce. In an interview with Realités, a Tunisian magazine, Jebali insisted that the party will not be dogmatic, dictatorial, or totalitarian.

Yet some inside Tunisia fear the rise of an Islamist party such as Ennahda. Such fearmongering was the primary argument used by the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) prior to the elections. In addition, several days after the election, in the town of Sidi Bouzid, the hometown of Bouazizi and the birthplace of the Arab Spring, protestors dissatisfied with the election results ransacked the local offices of Ennahda and burned down a government building.

These anti-Islamic and highly secular sentiments, however, represent a minority opinion, says Michael Willis, Director of the Middle Eastern Centre at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford and a specialist on Tunisia.

“There is a certain section of the elite in Tunisia,” he says, “that is in favour of the French model where religion is completely banished from public life. They are a small minority of the population. If you look at the election results, the parties that advocated for secularism just got a handful of the percentage of the vote and they weren’t supported, whereas Ennahda got 40% of the seats.”

This analysis is confirmed by the case of the PDP, a staunchly secular party that consistently attacked Ennahda’s Islamist identity which, despite being perceived as relatively influential among voters, received only six seats in the assembly.

Willis emphasises, however, that Ennahda does not wish to impose Islam on the population, but rather protect the right for people to practice it, a right that did not fully exist under Ben Ali nor under his predecessor Habib Bourgiba.

“They [Ennahda] say they understand the secularization of Tunisian society and they don’t want to change a lot of the fundaments. They just want to be able to allow a space for religion.”

The fear of Ennahda outside of Tunisia may be linked to the potential affect Ennahda’s victory could have on other Arab Spring countries, particularly Egypt where the revolution has empowered the Muslim Brotherhood, to whom Ennahda has been historically linked. Predictably, anti-Islamic commentator Daniel Pipes raises fears that Ennahda will support Islamic terrorists groups and views them as a blight, and even goes so far as to suggest that Ben Ali would be a better alternative. Willis however cautions against such fearmongering, emphasising that Ennahda has always been one of the more liberal of the Islamist movements.

“Most other Islamist movements in the 80s and 90s were critical of it and thought that it was far too moderate,” says Willis.

He adds that of all the Islamist parties in the Muslim world, it is not the Muslim Brotherhood but rather the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, known as the AKP party, that Ennahda has most closely associated itself with publicly. Willis says that like the AKP, Ennahda wants to create a society that is Islamic, but at the same time democratic, with a strong emphasis on economic growth, and with good relations with the West. These goals, particularly the last one, belie the fears raised by Pipes.

Ultimately, Ennahda’s victory may have a much more positive effect than Pipes is willing to admit. The party is now poised to demonstrate that Islam and democracy are compatible and that Islamism does not have to be represented by extremists such as Osama bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda.

“They [Ennahda] say that we have a real chance of showing that you can be an Islamist and you can be democratic and you can work with people in a pluralist society and it won’t create the sort of problems people think it does,” says Willis. “They say that you can bury the idea that Islam and the West aren’t compatible.”

Rick Perry’s latest gaffe represents the culmination of a string of poor performances in Republican debates this year. Political commentators from both sides of the aisle fiercely criticised, among others, Perry’s performance in a debate in Orlando, Florida in September. The Perry team had likely hoped that their candidate would emerge unscathed from the early debates to perform well in town-hall meetings and meet-and-greets that dominate the later months of the nomination race.

Damage Control

Embarking on a new strategy, in the two days following the debate, Rick Perry abandoned his campaign schedule to capture as much media attention as possible to counterweight his poor debate performance. On Thursday, he appeared on eight television programs, and presented the “Top Ten” on The Late Show with David Letterman. His efforts to persuade voters that the incident was only a minor setback, and his inability to remember the department an improper barometer for measuring his suitability for leadership, were gallant. However, the spectacle of a confused candidate seeking the role of commander-in-chief, unable to recall the details of one of his key talking points under pressure, will be difficult to drown-out with interviews and guest-appearances alone. Perry’s embarrassing moment, broadcast live across the nation, will have a devastating effect on his presidential bid, and potentially mark the end of his campaign.