The European Council on Foreign Relations

A tangled web

Date: 20th January 2011 | Author: Fran Yeoman,

Categories: Rule of law, democracy and human rights,

The homepage for Stanford University’s Program on Liberation Technology, itself a revealing name, says that it “seeks to understand how information technology can be used to defend human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, promote economic development, and pursue a variety of other social goods.” High hopes indeed for the role that widespread mobile phones, cheap tablet computers and the web can play in making the 21^st Century world a more democratic, equitable place. Those hopes and expectations are shared by many others, not least by some who have dubbed current events in Tunisia the "first WikiLeaks revolution."

This is a dubious moniker, but whatever limited role the whistle-blowing website’s revelations might have played in provoking Tunisians to unseat their dictatorial President, recent events in Belarus offer a different side to the story. According to reports,

Germany in Europe: Germany 2.0? The calm before the storm

Date: 20th January 2011 | Author: Ulrike Guérot, Mark Leonard,

Categories: Germany in Europe,

Spring has come early to Berlin. The mountains of snow that covered the city during its fairytale style ‘White Christmas’ setting have melted. The streets are grey and awaiting the cleansing of spring showers. And the city is abuzz with speculation that the German government will abandon its hesitant and reactive stance on Europe – and make a big leap forward on the euro.

In 2010, the German authorities were in denial about their power. An aide to the chancellor told us in the middle of last year that “we don’t want to lead Europe: we just want the others to obey the rules”. But after months of shunning leadership, Berlin is visibly preparing for a big step forward: to give unlimited backing for the Euro-debt, in combination with tough measures on common economic governance and strengthening fiscal control in EU member states. Anyone who walks into the ministries and

Tunisia and Kyrgyzstan: The Surprise Revolutions

Date: 19th January 2011 | Author: Ben Judah,

Categories: Europe and the world,

We expected revolutions in the Muslim world, but feared a certain kind – led by Islamists, hostile to the West and sympathetic to the latter-day assassins. The specter of radical Islamist takeovers in strategic Muslim countries such as Egypt, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia has haunted Washington and Brussels since 9/11. The nightmare of policy planners is that an iconic or populous country would fall into the hands of these clandestine “Bolsheviks” and an Islamist “USSR” would emerge.

“The fear is that a revolution in a huge Muslim country would be the 1917 of the 21st Century,” a senior European diplomat working in Central Asia told me last spring in Dushanbe.

The recession started to hit the Muslim street in early 2009 and has so far thrown up two revolutions. Yet both have taken us by surprise and been led by quite unexpected revolutionaries. Arab Tunisia and Muslim-majority

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A wake-up call from Tunisia

Date: 18th January 2011 | Author: Susi Dennison ,

Categories: Rule of law, democracy and human rights,

As democracy promotion experts are always quick to remind themselves, foreign policy towards a regime plays only a very small part in any political opening. The people who really count are those inside the country. Nowhere is this more true right now than in Tunisia, where things are changing hour by hour. As President Ben Ali fled the country on Friday; then a government of national unity was proposed by Prime Minister Ghannouchi, with members leaving before it even formed, the international community has hardly been able to keep up with events, let alone respond to them in an effective way.

Suddenly the seemingly endless debates within the EU about long term strategy towards Tunisia – where does it fit into the European Neighbourhood Policy? Would advanced status move forward or hold back reform? – are all out of the window. Even ex-colonial power France has practically had to

Shanghai View: Mr Wang’s Children

Date: 18th January 2011 | Author: Raffaello Pantucci,

Categories: China,

Shanghai View has been on the road for much of the last month, hence the protracted silence. However, during my travels I had the good fortune of travelling through Italy and in particular of going through the Tuscan region near Florence and Pisa. While the slow pace and clear sky is about as far away from China as you can get, Beijing came back to me as I sat on a train from Empoli to Florence and Mr Wang came and sat down next to me.

Mr Wang was originally from a village just outside Xiamen in Southern China. He had moved to Italy almost 10 years ago and though still unable to speak much Italian, he had nevertheless set up shop with a wife and two children and worked in a leather factory near Prato. His son was apparently bilingual, but wanted to move to England to study, while his daughter now lived in China where she was fiercely proud of being Chinese (his characterisation)

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