[NON BLOG] Six Things You Should Read

[rfmcdonald]

From Brian's Study Breaks, a note on an American scholar's perspective on Morocco and foreign languages there:

What I found bizarre, however, was Satloff's call at the end for the promotion of English education so as to combat Islamist elements in the "war of ideas." It is true very few people spoke English. Knowledge of French, however, was everywhere - it used to be one of the country's official languages. And despite this lack of English, Morocco is easily one of if not the most liberal countries in the Arab world. On the other hand, the Middle East, where knowledge of English is widespread, is where people show an ever higher level of anti-Americanism. (An amusing side note: Morocco's English-language university - al-Akhawayn - is funded by Saudi Arabia.)

Now maybe Satloff does have something to stand on here. It was my impression that French has made deeper inroads into Morocco than English has in Jordan, and while a friend from Oman tells me that English is almost the preferred language in the Gulf, the huge guest worker populations are a complicating factor in assessing cultural influences and I won't feel truly comfortable assessing it all until I've been there. So maybe Satloff feels that the deep French influence has contributed to making Morocco what it is today, and is simply calling for English promotion since the United States is English-speaking and not French speaking. If so, however, it seems odd to leave out a key piece of evidence supporting what he has to say.

From the Los Angeles Times, a pessimistic article about East Germany's prospects, particularly for women:

The [e]migration of women is part of an unsettling demographic trend. For every 100 men in east Germany ages 18 to 29, there are 89 women. That ratio drops to 76 per 100 in one eastern enclave. Fewer women mean fewer children — Germany already has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. The scenario is particularly troubling for the east, where villages are dying and, in 15 years, 36% of the population in some areas will be 60 and older.

"How can you boost the economy of the east when you have so many people over the age of 50?" asked Steffen Kroehnert, a researcher with the Berlin Institute, a foundation that studies global population trends. "No business will open a factory if there's no young people around. This is a big problem."

For thousands of women, the bigger problem by the late 1990s was staying in a region that offered little more than nostalgia. The scant work available went mostly to men. And many of the men couldn't adapt to the new era, even though the slogans of a socialist utopia and a workers' paradise dried up long ago. Young professional men did migrate, but hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers, unskilled and cradled for decades by obsolete communist companies, were reluctant to look west.

"East German women are more adaptable than their men. Men are more of the mentality that Klaus won't leave unless Olaf goes too," said Volker Jennerjahn, who runs a website that tries to persuade those who left the east to return. "Women know it doesn't make much sense to marry an east German, and in many east German towns a man has almost no statistical chance of finding a wife. The women are gone."

That fact echoes through Tilo Koch's life. "You can tell there's a women shortage when you go to parties," said the 37-year-old car dealer from the eastern town of Falkenberg. "Relationships are shaky because, with so few women, men are chatting up all the women they can get a hold of, including those already in relationships. Most young women left in the east are in need of money. It's hard to find someone."

On top of this, this year's expansion of the European Union to the less expensive and more flexible countries to the east of Germany--particularly Poland--has undercut a potential East German niche as a low-cost provider of services and goods to the wider German economy:

At the same time, the expansion of the European Union is expected to put even more pressure on the east as workers, companies and goods from Poland, which joined the EU in May, flow more easily across the border to undercut German wages and prices.

"Poles have always done seasonal work in east Germany, but there will be more coming, and they'll work for half the price," said Mantzsch, the young woman who left Grimmen after being laid off. "East Germans are shopping in Poland more now. It's putting our people out of work. This is all killing the last remnants of our economy."

The Asia Times' article "Of aging societies, lost women, lost consumers" ends with an interesting comparison of the two Asian demographic giants' future prospects:

[A]n aging population would also have implications for investors in India and China. Demographers say that if one were to go only by population and its composition, India might have an edge over China. This is not because India is not aging - instead it is because it is aging differently. "In general, India is in a better demographic position than China. Both countries are aging rapidly, but India is currently a much younger country, and will remain so through mid-century at least," said Longman. This is because between 2000 and 2050, India's median age would rise by 16.5 years to 37.9 years. By that measure, India would be aging faster than China, which would see its median age rise by "only" 14 years. "India is no exception to the Asian trend. Its southern provinces are already at below-replacement-rate fertility. The difference is that India, for the next 50 years, will be aging into middle age, while China, Japan, Korea will be aging into old age. The only real exceptions are Indonesia and the Philippines, both of which still have fertility rates well above replacement levels," said Longman.

He pointed out that part of the reason labor costs are cheap in China is that society is not providing for the real cost of labor, which includes the cost of workers imposed on society when they grow old. "China's social-security system, which covers only a fraction of the population, is riddled with debt. Thanks to its banking system, its capital is misdirected, and individuals have little means to save on their own for old age. The same is true, to a lesser extent, in India," said Longman.

The Economist, in the meantime, examines the question of what will be the European Union's common language in "After Babel, a new common tongue":

Most central European countries have just joined, or are waiting to join, the European Union, and their accession is already reinforcing the dominance of English as a language for the EU as a whole. In central Europe, as in much of the world, knowledge of English has become a basic skill of modern life comparable with the ability to drive a car or use a personal computer.

What has happened to the other main languages? A majority of central Europeans have eschewed Russian as firmly as they have rejected the communist ideology which was once articulated in that tongue. Russian remains the second-most-studied foreign language in the Baltic countries, where there are large minorities of native Russian speakers and a thriving Russophone culture with them. But in Poland and Slovakia it has fallen to third place, and in Hungarian and Czech schools it is scarcely studied at all. That said, Russian still serves as a common language among older central Europeans schooled in communist times—including, ironically, the politicians whose generation helped drive out communism. Their arrival in the European Parliament has brought the sound of Russian small-talk into its corridors and tea-rooms.

The limited enthusiasm for German in central Europe has been much more surprising. Even in the communist era, it was taught at least as widely as English, being the language of a “fraternal” country, East Germany. In the post-communist era, Germany has been central Europe's biggest export market, and a huge investor in the region. Yet only in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia does the proportion of secondary-school pupils studying German come anywhere close to the proportion studying English; and nowhere in the region is German the top choice.

German has languished partly because Germany has been shy about promoting its language and culture in a region ravaged by Hitler's war. No such shyness has affected France. Its cultural diplomacy in the region has been vigorous and generous. Handsome French cultural centres ornament the capitals of the region: the newest of them will open in Riga, the Latvian capital, in October. But admiration for France's culture does not translate into widespread use of its language. Only in Romania—whose own vernacular is of Latin origin—does it exceed English in popularity.

[. . .]

If there is one German sector which begs to differ, it may be the entertainment industry, whose exports are limited by the international preference for English-language products. About 200m music CDs are sold each year within Germany, for example; but the country's most successful international act, Rammstein, a heavy-metal group, has sold only 6m CDs outside Germany in its ten-year history. “We are being left behind,” complains Bjِrn Akstinat, director of the German Music Export Office, an industry association. He believes central Europe could be a growth market for German culture, and that the German government should try harder in its cultural diplomacy. Even now some non-Teutonic bands sing in German, says Mr Akstinat, pointing to Ich Troje, which represented Poland in last year's Eurovision song contest.

Over at the Head Heeb, Jonathan Edelstein writes about the ways in which non-sovereign entities in the Pacific, like French Polynesia and New Caledonia, are tentatively emerging onto the international stage:

The Pacific and the Caribbean are the two areas of the world where colonialism is still a major force. The United States, France, Britain and New Zealand all have Pacific possessions with varying levels of self-government, and the Caribbean contains British, French, Dutch and American territories. Most of these have no immediate prospect of independence, nor do most of them want independence given the economic benefits that flow from association with a developed country. Independence movements do exist in almost all these possessions, but with the exception of New Caledonia, they exist largely on the fringes. For the foreseeable future, a substantial number of Pacific and Caribbean countries will be affiliated with foreign powers. Lack of independence, however, doesn't necessarily preclude decolonization, and the trend toward greater self-determination for affiliated territories has brought their capacity for regional relations to the forefront.

Ordinarily, countries without the status of nation-states are not considered competent to conduct their own foreign affairs. Colonial possessions, however, often have interests and concerns peculiar to the regions in which they are located and which do not receive attention from the nations to which they are associated. Issues regarding Pacific climate change and travel infrastructure, for instance, are likely to be more of interest to Guam or American Samoa than to the United States, where they might be lost among a myriad of other concerns involving regions closer to the center. Such territories often have the location, the expertise and the interest to participate in regional affairs to a much greater extent than their patrons.

The result has been twofold: regional associations have become more willing to accept non-independent territories, and the territories themselves have been delegated more autonomy to develop relations with their neighbors. Even France, the bastion of the unitary state, recently devolved regional diplomatic authority to French Polynesia and New Caledonia when it upgraded their status to "overseas countries." This devolution has limits - the authority granted to the New Caledonian and Polynesian governments is restricted to the Pacific and cannot directly contradict French foreign policy - but it amounts to a recognition that the French Pacific possessions are part of the Pacific as well as France.

Finally, Radio Free Europe tells us what it would be like if Tom Clancy's books closely emulated America domestic policy by analogy to Russia:

Maksim Kalashnikov, author of "The Broken Sword Of Empire" (1998) and "Battle For The Heavens" (2000) -- books that glorified Soviet militarism and earned him the moniker "Russia's Tom Clancy" -- gave new impetus to the revanchist movement with the 2003 publication of "Forward To The USSR-2," a book that is subtitled "The National Idea Or The Direction Of The Main Offensive." Kalashnikov's real name is Vladimir Kucherenko, and he is a former deputy editor of the online magazine Stringer and a journalist for "Rossiiskaya gazeta." "Forward To The USSR-2" has gone through several editions over the last 18 months and its popularity has become widespread.

Kalashnikov's vision of USSR-2 is a version of an unrealized scenario for the reform of the Soviet Union that dates back to the early 1980s and that is attributed to then KGB Director Yurii Andropov. It was later popularized by the nationalist ideologue Aleksandr Prokhanov. "In 1980, the United States had a nightmare in which it saw the transformation of the USSR, a country with a clumsy socialist economy, into the smart, aggressive, and strong-willed super corporation Red Star," reads the cover blurb to "Forward To The USSR-2." "It might have emerged as a creature never before seen in history, combining the most advanced Soviet defense technologies with billions of gas dollars and the incredible might of the Soviet secret services. The United States did everything in its power to make sure this scenario never materialized, but can we realize it now?

[. . .]

The only way for Russia to thrive is through the dream of USSR-2, Kalashnikov argues, urging the country to adopt several innovative development strategies that he calls "miracles."

Kalashnikov's first miracle is financial. He argues that it is stupid to use oil revenues to create a stabilization fund to repay the debts wracked up by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Instead, Russia should sue the West to demand the return of gold deposited in Western banks by the tsarist government during World War I. Kalashnikov argues that Russia must make such cases before the years 2014-17 or the government's claims will expire.

Next, Kalashnikov calls for an ideological miracle. He says the state must put forward an ideology that will be broadly attractive and which will help the country avoid "suicidal clashes" with China and Islam. Such an ideology must help the country develop previously unthinkable alliances, such as with Saudi Arabia, he writes.

The next step, Kalashnikov argues, is an "ethnopsychological" miracle. He writes that the new state cannot be created with the current mentality of the Russian people, who he says are "ignorant not only of national ideals, but even of their own self-interests." "Therefore, it is necessary to create a new nation from the remnants of the Russian people, a new race that possesses the novel psychological quality of seeing itself as 'a nation of super-creators and geniuses,'" Kalashnikov writes, echoing classic Nazi-style rhetoric.

The centerpiece of Kalashnikov's project is the "organizational" wonder. He proposes creating a clandestine state behind the facade of the Russian Federation, a country which he sees as "incurably ill and destined to perish." He describes the clandestine state as "a network that combines the features of a party, an army, a secret service, the mafia, a church, and a business community." "This kind of networked brotherhood should exist alongside the official Russian state, never openly warring with it," Kalashnikov writes. "The brotherhood should form a strategic union with the Russian president."

Kalashnikov argues that such a parallel state will be able to act where the official state cannot. Utilizing its covert status, it will be able to operate wherever there are Russian communities -- in Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and even Europe and the United States. One of the first tasks of this secret state will be to regain control over financial resources controlled by the oligarchs and, more broadly, by the entire class of "new Russians." "Using psychological and other special methods, we will turn them into zombies, obedient to the will of the secret state and investing their money where the state tells them to," Kalashnikov writes in the foreword to "Forward To The USSR-2."

"Superficially, nothing will change and the current business community, with its assets in Russia and abroad, will continue to operate," Kalashnikov writes, "but in reality, control over financial flows will be recaptured by the secret state. In this way, we will avoid accusations of violating civil and property rights and other such nonsense. There will be no mass arrests, no demonstrative transfers of confiscated money into state funds." He writes that it is sufficient to apply pressure successfully to one or two oligarchs in order to bring all of them into submission.