Category: Blog

As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, debate over the pandemic’s effects on the world order have started to take shape. Will the spread of the pandemic deal a deathblow to the liberal world order by undermining support for globalization? How is the virus affecting states’ sources of material power? Does the states’ ability to respond and contain the virus complicate our understandings of state capacity? Are donations of aid a successful strategy for a soft power blitz? Find out in the full RPI Policy Alert here.

As the number of confirmed coronavirus COVID-19 cases worldwide surges past the one million mark, containing the pandemic has overshadowed most other issues in both national and international politics. Emergency teleconferences of leaders of the Group of 7 (G7) and the Group of 20 (G20) have attempted to coordinate their efforts to combat the pandemic and salvage the world economy from a virtual shutdown in the wake of widespread social distancing and quarantine policies, but to little avail. In this RPI Policy Alert, we review how the Rising Powers are responding to the pandemic. Read it here.

In my previous blogpost, I explained what is development-envy and its role in inspiring Acehnese to engage in a separatist conflict. Here, I demonstrate how current developmental efforts at peacebuilding can end up exacerbating the same development-envy.

Given how development-envy motivates conflict, how do economic development programs encourage or discourage the use of violence?  Development programs can be counterproductive for peace because they can inspire development-envy. This has implications for programs designed to prevent, end, or rehabilitate conflict. For example, the demobilization and reintegration program in Aceh has provided funds (Badan Rehabilitasi Aceh, or BRA) for ex-combatants as a means of increasing the opportunity cost of returning to conflict. While there is some evidence that this has worked, the patronage system of armed groups means that some ex-combatants would get more access to the proverbial pot than others. Moreover, victims of the conflict who were not combatants had to rely on a more general fund. As a result, there has been at least one attempt to revive armed struggle, which was led by an ex-combatant who has not received as much assistance post-conflict.

The biggest flaw of this policy is that it presumes that increasing the economic opportunities during peacetime will disincentivize conflict. As I discussed in an earlier post, many combatants were perfectly happy to give up their comfortable and secure lives in the pursuit of historical justice in Aceh. The irony is that by legitimizing economic development as the marker of status, paying ex-combatants to not fight (and other development programs) only reifies development-envy in Aceh. Therefore, when I asked ex-combatants if Aceh has peace today, many would lament that Aceh still does not have justice because Aceh remains poor. One former combatant recounted how he had visited Jakarta on holiday, and only felt anger because he knew that all of Jakarta’s roads and buildings were being funded by Acehnese natural resources. For many Acehnese, Jakarta’s colonization has not yet ended: in their narrative, Aceh’s special autonomy status from the Helsinki peace agreement in 2005 was supposed to be de facto independence within an Indonesian federation. However, because Jakarta has not honored its side of the deal, Aceh remains underdeveloped. Former combatants would tell me they would be willing to fight again if they had the chance. Children orphaned by the conflict, in particular, were keen to take the mantle as a new generation of combatants, and many revere Hasan di Tiro (the founder of GAM) as Aceh’s lost father figure. For these respondents, the struggle for Aceh is not yet over.

If development-envy inspires conflict, what can be done about it? Development programs may do some good, but they are ultimately insufficient. For lasting peace to occur, Aceh needs a new narrative of what it stands for. Aceh is not simply a historically great economic power that has fallen behind. Several of my interviewees pointed to various aspects of Aceh’s history that should inspire Acehnese to be proud of. I hope their voices are heard.

By Amoz JY Hor, Sigur Center Summer 2019 Field Research Grant Fellow. Amoz is a Political Science Ph.D. student at George Washington University. He researches on the emotional practices of violence and humanitarianism in Indonesia. Read Part I and Part II of Amoz’s blog series.

In my previous blogpost, I explained why it is not true that economic development can prevent conflict. In this blogpost, I show how development-envy can, in fact, inspire conflict.

Development-envy refers to the feeling of status-inferiority with respect to symbols of development, such as lacking “roads” and “tall buildings,” especially in contrast to large Indonesian cities like Jakarta or Medan, or even in nearby countries. Numerous respondents would tell me that Singapore was seen as a poster-child of what Aceh could be like if it were independent. Thus, it is not the case that the combatants were motivated by the fact that Acehnese were disproportionately poor. They were not.

Where does development-envy come from? There are two elements of development-envy: political entrepreneurship and everyday experiences. First, development-envy is partly constructed through political entrepreneurship. Grievances concerning development are not objective realities, but are themselves political constructions. As Aspinall argues, Aceh was constructed as a historically great nation – a trading empire – that has suffered injustices committed against it by Jakarta. Aspinall argues that, far from being natural, the idea of the historically great Acehnese nation was constructed from semi-true aspects of history by GAM (particularly Hassan di Tiro, GAM’s founder). It is not just that GAM’s version of history politicized everyday dissatisfactions by helping Acehnese make sense of a range of existing inchoate and everyday grievances with a political tone, but this history also produced the very grievances in itself. Many Acehnese may not have cared that they lacked roads or tall buildings. However, the disparities of development between Aceh and other places became treated as evidence of injustice that Aceh suffered. Suddenly, Acehnese would notice that they had things to be aggrieved about. Hence, when my respondents bemoaned the lack of roads and buildings in Aceh, they were not simply ashamed of Aceh’s underdevelopment. Rather, they were aggrieved that Aceh was underdeveloped despite its great history.

At the same time, GAM could not simply create a completely fictionalized story of Acehnese underdevelopment. This is the second element of development-envy: development-envy also has to resonate with everyday experiences. Several ex-combatants – particularly from elite backgrounds – would describe to me how “Acehnese” would be stereotyped as backward when they moved (merantau) to other cities in Indonesia or Malaysia. One respondent even told me that he was so ashamed to be Acehnese when he was living in Medan that he would try to hide his Acehnese-ness. Aspinall notes that these stereotypes were also held by the technocratic elite governing Aceh (who were elected under Indonesia’s authoritarian New Order) also held these stereotypes that characterized Acehnese as fanatical, backward, and closed-minded. To this end, a series of hard development and soft “economic empowerment” projects were implemented in Aceh in the 1970s (the same period that GAM was born), including the facilities to extract Aceh’s natural gas – what would become a symbol of extraction of Aceh’s natural resource wealth by the Javanese colonizers. What is key here is not that economic inequality was real. Rather, it was the everyday experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions that made the symbols of inequality feel real.

But it is not just everyday experiences of discrimination that validated the narrative of unjust underdevelopment that GAM was propagating. After all, stereotypes can be reversed. For example, one Acehnese respondent told me that Aceh’s supposed underdevelopment was something to be proud of. For him, Aceh was superior to the nearby city of Medan because costs of living are more reasonable, they aren’t being made to work all day long, they don’t suffer from vices of city-life (such as drugs, crime, or prostitution), and they have great coffee. Nevertheless, one reason that development-envy resonated with Acehnese is that development-envy is not only projected forward onto “developed” places like Jakarta or Singapore. An additional everyday experience that validated GAM’s narrative includes how development-envy also gets projected backwards onto places that become understood as “underdeveloped.” Curiously enough, several Gayonese respondents told me how they too would be stereotyped as backward by Acehnese when they went to school in Acehnese-majority areas on the coasts. Gayo is an ethnic minority in Aceh which generally are concentrated in Aceh’s central highlands. I can recall having heard several Acehnese stereotype the Gayonese in this way. The stereotype is an odd one, given that Acehnese are particular proud of the coffee grown in the region, and most of the coffee growers are Gayonese. Moreover, the stereotypes were strikingly similar with how Indonesians stereotyped Acehnese: the Gayonese were likewise considered backward, uneducated, and lacked roads and buildings. The uncanniness suggests that Acehnese may be afraid of being looked-down upon by Jakarta just as how they look down upon the Gayonese. Perhaps, the personal experience of stereotyping the Gayonese allowed Acehnese to imagine how Jakarta thinks of Aceh, and made the resentment against Jakarta all the more personal. Furthermore, imagining the Gayonese as underdeveloped partly allows some Acehnese to imagine themselves as being as developed like Singapore or Jakarta, and would be more so, only if Jakarta was not limiting Aceh’s full potential, like the good old days.

Thus, constructing Aceh as a historically great trading and economically developed empire that today suffers underdevelopment at the hands of Javanese colonization disposes those who buy such a narrative towards the use of different means to securing economic justice for the historically great Acehnese nation – violent or otherwise.

What then is to be done?

Read Part III here.

By Amoz JY Hor, Sigur Center Summer 2019 Field Research Grant Fellow. Amoz is a Political Science Ph.D. student at George Washington University. He researches on the emotional practices of violence and humanitarianism in Indonesia. Read Part I and Part III.

 

 

In response to reduced demand for oil due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) proposed capping production among member states to stabilize crude oil prices. OPEC called on Russia, which is in a three-year agreement with the organization to coordinate global oil supply that expires at the end of March 2020, to abide by the new caps. Russia refused, and OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, retaliated by increasing production. By flooding the market with oil, prices for crude oil plummeted to an eighteen-year low of $20.06 per barrel on March 18th. To protect oil producers in the United States from this price shock, President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Energy to purchase 77 million barrels of US-produced oil for the US Strategic Reserve. 

Although a drop in crude oil prices would ordinarily be a godsend for economic growth, the uncertainty of how long the dispute between Russia and OPEC will last, the substantial disruption in planning for smaller oil-producing countries and those in the process of shifting to renewable energy sources, and the mounting economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic are widely believed to negate any economic benefits. For many countries, a long stand-off could not come at a worse time. In this RPI Policy Alert, we review the Rising Powers’ responses to the crisis. Read the full Policy Alert here.

In the post-Cold War era, there has been a plethora of liberal interventions to ameliorate rising civil conflict, including peacekeeping, regime change, human rights shaming, humanitarian aid, and development aid. This three-part series of blog posts questions the alluring idea that civil conflict would go away in some of the poorest regions in the world if only there were more economic development. Indeed, the World Bank has advocated development programs in places such as Rakhine state and Indonesian Papua as part of its policy solutions for reducing conflict. Such policy prescriptions can be misguided, however. Based on my early fieldwork in Aceh, there is evidence that these programs can be counterproductive: when armed separatist movements are inspired by development-envy, outsider harping on underdevelopment only validates movements’ justification to use violence to achieve economic justice. Ironically, by naming conflict areas as underdeveloped, development programs can generate self-fulfilling prophecies when they inspire groups to use violence to compensate for the shame of the lack of development.

It is a commonly held idea that development can ameliorate conflict. Such analyses focus on the opportunity cost for armed rebellion. The argument in brief is that groups that have better economic prospects would be less likely to jeopardize that to risk their lives in a civil conflict; conversely, groups with low economic prospects have relatively less to lose in giving up their lives to fight. While this argument may seem intuitive, a closer look at which individuals decide to join a rebellion reveals a different story. In Aceh, for example, many of the early and high-ranking combatants did not fit this profile. These combatants were highly educated and came from well to do families that were rich enough to afford an education outside of Aceh, and even outside of Indonesia. Even if economic opportunity costs may incentivize or disincentivize individuals from participating in armed resistance, it seems that there was no shortage of individuals willing to give up their economic comfort and risk their lives in the name of Acehnese freedom.

Why then would Acehnese choose to risk their well-being and even their lives by participating in the armed struggle of Gerakan Aceh Mederka (GAM or Free Aceh Movement)? To answer this question, we need to understand more than the economic costs and opportunities for armed resistance, and focus on what specifically motivates combatants. Through approximately 90 interviews in Aceh, I sought to understand why combatants chose to fight with violence on their own terms.

Many combatants I interviewed claimed they were motivated by grievances, including economic grievances. Yet, these grievances were not necessarily objective: many came from well-to-do families, had high status, and were typically well educated. Moreover, many had never experienced violence by the Indonesian military prior to joining the armed separatist movement. Rather than employing some individualistic cost-benefit calculus of joining a rebellion, ex-combatants were motivated, even inspired, by something larger than themselves. Tellingly, the vast majority of my interviewees told me that “peace” was not just the absence of conflict. Rather, “peace” also must entail justice. However, that raised the question of justice for whom? The grievances and injustices that ex-combatants described to me were not their own, nor of other individual Acehnese, but of the nation of Aceh. When I asked my interviewees why they decided to join GAM and pick up arms despite never experiencing violence themselves, they would tell me directly, “history,” (sejarah) and abstractly describe the injustice of how Aceh has declined since its glory days. For these combatants, fighting for Aceh was a way of making Aceh great again. But great in what way? An oft-recurring trope throughout my interviews was development-envy.

Read Part II here.

By Amoz JY Hor, Sigur Center Summer 2019 Field Research Grant Fellow. Amoz is a Political Science Ph.D. student at George Washington University. He researches on the emotional practices of violence and humanitarianism in Indonesia. Read Part II and Part III.

With the 2020 presidential election cycle in the United States underway, even the media in the Rising Powers cannot ignore the pageantry of the Democratic Party’s primary elections. Following former Vice President Joe Biden’s sweeping success on Super Tuesday, analyses began to churn out that attempted to explain the candidate’s appeal vis-a-vis contender Senator Bernie Sanders and what the emergence of such polar opposite candidates in the Democratic Party mean for the state of American politics. In this RPI Policy Alert, we share the buzz around the primary in the Rising Powers. Read it here.

On February 24-25th, US President Donald Trump made his first visit to India, where he was welcomed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and an estimated 100,000 attendees at a “Namaste Trump” rally held in his home province of Gujarat. While the two-day visit did not conclude with an agreement to end an ongoing trade tiff that began in 2018, the leaders announced India’s plans to buy US military equipment, including Apache and MH-60 Romeo helicopters, in a deal valued at $3 billion. While President Trump and Prime Minister Modi exchanged compliments, they remained silent on a wave of violence that broke out in Delhi as Hindu nationalists attacked a group of Muslim activists who were protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that was passed in December. Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval surveyed the situation in Delhi in the late evening of the 25th, but Prime Minister Modi didn’t acknowledge the violence until after Trump’s departure, and did so through a pair of tweets. Read the full Policy Alert here.

An outbreak of novel coronavirus, now classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as COVID-19, began in Hubei Province in China late last year and is shaking the global community as it spreads across borders. In this RPI Policy Alert, we review how the Rising Powers are responding to the political dimensions of the outbreak. Read it here.

Tsai Ing-wen’s return to power last month means that her flagship New Southbound Policy (NSP) is here to stay. President Tsai’s long-term vision to integrate Taiwan with the most dynamic countries in Asia, extending all the way to South Asia, and her comeback, offers a renewed opportunity to boost Indo-Taiwan relations. Her previous stint showed the potential of cooperation especially in economics, which India should now pursue with greater vigor. With India’s recent disappointing economic growth news, the country stands to gain even more from a deeper relationship with Taiwan’s economy since the two economies hold important complementarities.

China is commonly identified as presenting a hurdle that looms large for India. However, Tsai’s NSP arguably provides a pragmatic pathway for India to circumvent the China obstacle. The NSP’s emphasis on economic, educational and cultural relations makes it harder to argue against since the ostensible goal is to promote development across the region. Presumably, the Tsai administration will pump more money into NSP and continue to devote attention to it. In this era of shrinking economic resources and rising protectionism globally, Tsai’s gambit stands out as an exception. While Indo-Taiwan relations have been on the upswing over the last several years, the gap between reality and possibility is still large.

Economics as Leading Edge

India and Taiwan are Asia’s third and tenth largest economies respectively. But Taiwan holds a special allure for India which is struggling to increase its manufacturing with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” promise sputtering. Taiwan boasts 47 “corporate giants” (India has 58), many of which are concentrated in areas that India desperately needs investment in such as information and communications technologies, electronics, healthcare, advanced food processing and solar power. Taiwan is also a leader in 21^st century smart cities design which India has also announced as a priority. In 2018, top industries officials from the vibrant Indian state of Tamil Nadu visited Taiwan and subsequently are charting out a plan to replicate the model of the successful Hsinchu Science Park. Tamil Nadu wants to woo information and communication technology companies (for manufacturing and research) and expects Taiwanese companies to invest in a range of products in next generation electronics and hardware.

Taiwan’s global giants like Foxconn and Wistron are already involved in India but more can be done to ensure their presence and increased investment. Just last month Foxconn had to deny a report that it was cancelling a new factory for consumer electronic production in India over a dispute with Apple, a report that the Indian Industries Minister had apparently prematurely announced. Taiwanese companies of course came much later to India than their Japanese and Korean counterparts and do not have the same level of experience in dealing with India’s still daunting regulatory regimes, markets, distribution networks (and politics for that matter).  Latecomer Taiwan may get some new advantages though. The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index shows a marked improvement for India: in 2016 India ranked 130 out 190 countries, then jumped to 100 in 2017 and in 2019 rose to 63. But being a newcomer, Brand Taiwan does not enjoy the same exposure as Japanese and South Korean brands. This is beginning to change thanks to some bold and non-traditional thinking on the part of Taiwan’s government.

Changing the Game

In 2017, Taiwan Excellence, run by the Taiwan Bureau of Foreign Trade became a sponsor of Mumbai Indians, one of the most popular cricket teams in the Indian Premier League. It is owned by Mukesh Ambani, the richest Indian. Brand sponsorship in cricket is huge business and is awarded to the highest bidders. In the world of cricket business, India is a superpower. Taiwan Excellence represents the image of Taiwan’s most competitive and innovative industries and the tie up with Mumbai Indians franchise is a way to create greater popular awareness of Taiwan in India. Michael Lin, Director of the Taipei World Trade Centre Liaison Office in Mumbai declared that “Just as the Mumbai Indians are hot favorites and one of the best teams in the IPL, Taiwan Excellence too is one of the most celebrated technology producers in the world. This partnership means an amalgamation of two of the greatest teams in the business.”

Several top Indian cricketers from the Mumbai Indians were even brought to Taiwan for a high-profile visit in 2018 to try out Taiwan made virtual reality games. The Indian cricket stars were cheered on by a large crowd as they played a virtual reality cricket game. Taiwan Excellence’s linking up of cricket-crazy India and baseball-crazy Taiwan just represents one way to bring economic and cultural soft power together in a winning strategy for both sides.

Beginning in 2018, Brand Taiwan is also gaining recognition through the Taiwan Expos being conducted in important target countries under the NSP like India. Last year, the high visible event brought about 150 exhibitors to New Delhi, with green products, smart living solutions, tourism, medical equipment and bubble tea comprising some of the most popular pavilions. In just the first two days, the Expo attracted nearly 40,000 visitors.

Looking ahead, the biggest challenge to stimulating Indo-Taiwan ties, economic or otherwise, may prove to be the domestic turmoil the Indian government is mired in after its passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act in December 2019. Prime Minister Modi needs to steer the country back to a more stable and inclusive internal environment. Otherwise, his own second term could be lost in domestic controversy at the cost of international opportunities, including those to be gained from Tsai’s second term.

By Deepa M. Ollapally, Director, Rising Powers Initiative and Research Professor of International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University

Officials from governments around the world, business leaders, environmental activists, and social media influencers converged in Davos, Switzerland for the 2020 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting January 21st to 24th under the theme “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World.” While influencers like Priyanka Chopra Jonas and activists such as Bollywood superstar Deepika Padukone made waves at the forum, the Rising Powers were largely absent as they tended to domestic affairs. Read the full RPI Policy Alert here.

The New Year began with an attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad on New Year’s Eve by protestors opposing US airstrikes against an Iranian-backed militia operating in Iraq and Syria, which was quickly followed by a US drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Major General Qasem Soleimani. The assassination of the Iranian general resulted in the Iraqi Parliament passing a resolution to expel the US military from the country as well as Iranian missile attacks on US bases in Iraq. The tension has spilled into the civilian sphere, as well: the US denied a visa for Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to attend a meeting of the United Nations Security Council regarding the conflict, and a Ukrainian Airlines flight from Tehran was mistakenly shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in its anticipation of reprisal from the US. The Iranian government further announced its plans to “discard” the component of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (also referred to as the Iran Deal) which places limits on the number of centrifuges it uses in the production of nuclear power, to the ire of the remaining supporters of the deal following the US’s abrupt and unilateral exit in May 2018. Amidst the sudden escalation of the situation between Iran and the US, China and Russia boldly vetoed a resolution condemning the attack on the US embassy in the wake of the US’s airstrike. Read the full Policy Alert here.

The year 2019 was a tumultuous one for the Rising Powers. China and the United States waged a war of words and economics as trade negotiations dragged on until December, India faced an unprecedented flare up in tensions with neighboring Pakistan early in the year from which relations have still to recover, and Japan’s attempts to normalize its relations with Russia over disputed island territories proved unsuccessful. They collectively faced major US foreign policy changes, such as its escalation in antagonizing Iran and withdrawal from Syria. In the last few weeks, China and India have been rattled with major political protests which have complicated their foreign relations, while Japan and Russia again handled another snag in their territorial dispute. On the other hand, China and Japan have managed to finalize their trade agreements with the US, and Russia has just put its first hypersonic missile regiment into service. In this RPI Policy Alert, we review how the Rising Powers stand as they head into 2020. Read it here.

November 13-14, 2019, heads of state from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa gathered in Brasilia for the Eleventh BRICS Summit and the close of the bloc’s first ten years of formal, high-level meetings. Originally coined as potential investment markets by Goldman Sachs analyst Jim O’Neil in 2001 (with South Africa added in 2003), lackluster economic growth in Brazil, Russia, and South Africa, as well as tense bilateral relations between member states has raised questions about the bloc’s relevance. India recently opted out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership due to concerns about opening its market to Chinese goods, and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited territory claimed by both China and India during the summit. As the summit opened, there was speculation about how much the bloc could agree on economic matters, given that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who served as chair for this year’s summit, has been an outspoken critic of multilateralism as well as Brazil’s economic relationship with China. China, India, and Russia are at odds with Brazil regarding the ongoing political unrest in Venezuela. The summit successfully concluded with the signing of the Brasilia Declaration, which emphasized the members’ commitment to multilateralism, but also to “the principle of sovereignty.” Read the full RPI Policy Alert here.

On November 4, 2019, at the 35th ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, representatives from the ten members of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) as well as Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea met for final negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which has been in the works since 2012. Fifteen of the sixteen states announced that they “have concluded text-based negotiations for all 20 chapters and essentially all their market access issues; and tasked legal scrubbing by them to commence for signing in 2020.” India, however, opted out of the agreement due to “significant outstanding issues,” chiefly, its concern that Chinese imports through the deal will increase its trade deficit and harm its national economy. In this RPI Policy Alert, we review the Rising Powers’ responses to the finalization of RCEP and India’s decision to stay on the sidelines. Read the fully Policy Alert here.