The story of Shin Dong-hyuk: hope springs from North Korea’s gulag

Nik Darlington 2.22pm

“Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.” Alexander Pope.

How many people will have to die, needlessly and sadistically, in North Korea before hope is fulfilled?

Few stories permeate the confines of the grotesquely named Democratic People’s Republic, and few that do are as powerful as that of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person to have escaped to the West from a North Korean concentration camp.

Shin’s story, Escape from Camp 14, has been described as a harrowing and extraordinary account of the grim semi-existence endured in the country’s gulags.

And a wonderful interview of Shin is out today on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, by books editor David Blackburn, which I wholeheartedly urge you to read in full. Here is but a short extract:

Shin is nearly 30. He is short, maybe 5 and a half feet tall. He is immaculate in a well cut suit and sharp black shoes. His hair is neat and he carries himself with dignity. He is slim but there is evident strength in the line of his shoulders and the set of his hips. This is not the protein-shake variety of physique, the kind that takes up too much space on the Tube and develops diabetes. It is the lean, wiry type that can withstand 10 degrees below zero without a coat.

There is something about Shin, probably the knowledge of his past, that, I am ashamed to admit, makes me shift uncomfortably in my very comfortable seat. There is nothing quite like being confronted by one’s own indifference.

China can still learn from the West

Alexander Pannett 11.50pm

This week has seen the visit of Xi Jinping, the Vice-President of China, to the US.

It has been heralded as an important moment for the man widely expected to become China’s next president.

If this is so, Xi Jinping will be the leader of China at the moment that China has been forecast to eclipse the US as the largest economy in the world (in 2023).  To underline the importance of this fact, this will be the first time that a non-Western nation will have been the largest economy in the world for 500 years and the first non-democracy in almost 200 years.

The visit has again raised debate over the huge economic achievement of China compared with a soporific West that seems to lurch from one debilitating crisis to another. Commentators have insisted that it is now the West who should take political and economic lessons from China regarding the “China Model” of state capitalism rather than the alleged languidness and instability of the Western democratic model.

Impressive and sustained Chinese growth has been the defining feature of geo-strategic politics over the last 20 years cannot be denied. It appears that the rise of Islamic terrorism was a minor detour against the real historical changes affecting the world; the continuing transfer of wealth and power from West to East.

 Chinese advocates point to their government’s long-terms solidity, being able to implement projects that bring economic growth regardless of public opinion. The one party state can extend its will throughout China as no Western democratic government can. This allows for extensively ambitious construction works that have forged an infrastructure that has driven China to its current economic paean.

While the East has grown in importance, the West has descended into paralysis due to internal disputes. In the US, politics has never been more partisan, which has resulted in repeated failure to reach an agreement in lowering the titanic debt that is undermining America’s stature in the world, symbolic as the Chinese are the main creditors of this debt. In Europe, a sovereign debt crisis that has no end in sight threatens the very survival of the European Union.

America’s war on terrorism has shattered the Western unity that existed during the Cold War. Worse still, the Western intellectual genealogy that stemmed from a shared Enlightenment inheritance appears to be fraying as an increasingly secular and liberal Europe drifts further apart from an increasingly religious and conservative America. As America looks to the Pacific, Europe is becoming more pacific.

However, while there are undoubted merits to China’s economic growth, it still has much to learn from the West. Fractious as Western politics may be, democracies benefit from an attribute that all the economic growth in the world cannot bring: accountability.

Ruling through the acquiescence of the people ensures that Western governments must justify why grand endeavours are of benefit to their people. This checks the more hubristic ambitions of politicians. It also brings a modicum of transparency to the corridors of power that can too easily be swayed by vested interests, even corruption.

 A society that permits free expression will produce more innovative thinkers than a state that rejects views that differ from its priorities. It is telling that China has caught up with the technology of the West not from creating rival products or ideas through native research and development but from widespread piracy of Western intellectual property.

Though its economic growth has been herculean, China’s environmental record has been consequently sisyphean. Development has led to huge water shortages, with more than two-thirds of cities reporting an inadequate water supply and two-thirds of Chinese lakes have chemical deficiencies caused by pollution according to government estimates. Huge dust storms now envelop Beijing due to increasing desertification from over-farming. In 2005 China’s worsening air pollution cost the country $112 billion in lost economic productivity.

This is to say nothing of the social costs that have resulted from human rights abuses and a growing economic under-class. Despite its prosperity, most of China’s population earn too little to reach the threshold for income taxation. Only 24 million people make the $545 monthly threshold for taxation, according to the Ministry of Finance.

 This is the dark underside of a political system that is not accountable for its actions. The former USSR provides plenty of horrendous examples of wide-reaching government ambitions having ill-thought out and disastrous consequences. The Aral Sea is now an environmental wasteland and half its original size, due to extensive Soviet irrigation that attempted to turn Kazakhstan into a giant rice and cotton production centre. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster is another example.

 The Western model of democracy is not the only model of governance or without its own faults. Western governments have often been guilty of grand strategies that have brought more pain and suffering than any lasting achievement. It should also be recognised that the current Chinese one party model originates from political ideologies that were cultivated in the West.

 However, before China grows too confident in its own manifest destiny, it should be aware of the severe dangers of a government that rules without accountability. While China’s economic achievements currently dwarf those of the West, China still has much to learn from Western democracy.

Let us hope that the coming century will be a beacon of mutual erudition between East and West. A Confucian century of social harmony, rather than a Machiavellian century of rivalry.

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Western decline is not inevitable as long as we learn from our mistakes

Aaron Ellis 12.13pm

The West has had a tough time these last few years, flying from one crisis to another as if in a pinball machine and some of the levers seemingly controlled by the Chinese.

Some believe that the ongoing sovereign debt crisis is not only a crisis of globalisation but also one of Western identity. Given the alarm with which many in Europe reacted to the possibility of Beijing coming to their financial rescue late last year, they might be onto something.

Yet it is not the rise of countries like China that is dispiriting. Rather it is the self-pity that their rise has engendered in the West. Our public discourse has a melancholic tone, often combined with morbid humour: such as the gag that Chinese leaders only visit the United States to collect the rent. This kind of talk about Western decline is exaggerated and I reckon that we can reverse our relative decline by learning from some of the mistakes of the last decade.

First, we need to take a step back from the West’s day-to-day crises and look at the bigger picture. Professor Julian Lindley-French, an associate fellow at Chatham House, has done this, and in the passage below he displays typical common sense:

Whilst it is certainly the case that the emergence of China, India and others on the world stage is leading to a new balance of power, neither the West nor Britain are in terminal decline.

However, unless the despond of defeatism that seems to affect and afflict much of Europe is overcome decline could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy…[T]he zero sum game and with it the idea that if power rises on one part of the planet it must by definition decline elsewhere, is a compelling and neat academic treatise. Unfortunately, it is wrong.

There is no automatic reason why an increase in the power of China, India et al should automatically lead to a loss of Western power. Power and its wielding are subject to many factors.

In the context of American decline vis-à-vis China, an interesting article has pointed out that…

… Many studies note that the growth rates of China’s per capita income, value added in high technology industries, and military spending exceed those of the United States and then conclude that China is catching up. This focus on growth rates, however, obscures China’s decline relative to the United States in all of these categories. China’s growth rates are high because its starting point was low. China is rising, but it is not catching up.

There are things we can do in the West to overcome the challenges we face in the 21st century. For example, there needs to be a fundamental change in the way the United States leads the Western Alliance.

American hegemony is a Good Thing, in my view, but it has also had two harmful effects on Western cohesion. The almost universal power of the US military is a disincentive for the British and Europeans to spend money on defence with their security more or less guaranteed by others. Dan Trombly explained this point in more depth some months ago.

Because of the US hegemony, Washington also excludes NATO governments from its policy-making; the US decides on a policy – after bitter bureaucratic struggles – and informs its allies of the decision after it has been taken. This process wastes NATO governments’ expertise, leads to miscoordination and prevents British and European co-ownership of US policies.

President Obama has begun to remedy the first problem with his decision to “lead from behind” in Libya, but Afghanistan and the New START negotiations are perfect examples of the second one. A more inclusive policy making process will help the West overcome the challenges ahead.

There also must be clearly defined national interests separate from Western ones.

Western malaise is partly caused by an acute sense of overstretch, which was partly caused in turn by what I have called on these pages the “internationalisation of the national interest”.

This is the belief that the world is so globalised and interconnected that every crisis is a threat to our security and it is vital we are involved in sorting out the problem. Try having a coherent foreign policy with this belief as your framework!

If the Western Alliance is to be strong and united on the issues that matter to all its members then we also must appreciate there are issues where our interests are not at stake and cooperation must be more flexible. Germany’s position on Libya and, to a lesser extent America’s, is a perfect example of this.

It has been said that self-pity destroys everything except itself. The self-pity of many in the West about our supposed decline is destroying our chances of being relevant in the multipolar world of the 21st century.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Transport problems: Heathrow is the solution that dare not rear its head

Stuart Baldock 9.38am

The Government has put itself in a difficult spot with regards to solving the South East’s airport capacity problem - or more accurately the capacity issue at Heathrow.

Prior to the election, the Conservative party - it could be said foolishly - ruled out building a third runway at Heathrow. The Liberal Democrats - perhaps even more foolishly - have ruled out any capacity increase in the South East, including a new airport or additional runways at Stansted or Gatwick. Both policies are enshrined in the Coalition Agreement. Both Parties should reconsider.

Airports are as important to the modern UK economy as maritime ports were between the 18th and 20th centuries. At a time when growth in the economy is desperately needed, ignoring this fact is misguided at best, or reckless and incompetent at worst.

Success in this globalised world depends on one’s links to current and potential markets.

No matter how good teleconferencing has become, business is still done in person. Indeed, a report by Frontier Economics, an economic consultancy, found that UK businesses trade by as much as twenty times more with economies that have direct daily flights to the UK compared with those that have fewer or no services.

Lack of capacity is already estimated to cost the UK economy £1.2 billion each year. Heathrow is operating at nearly 100 per cent capacity.

The UK is far behind competitors when it comes to direct flights China. As shown below, the UK has significantly less flights to the main Chinese cities than Frankfurt and Paris. In the case of Guangzhou, the leading manufacturing region in China, there are no direct flights from Heathrow.

BEIJING:

Frankfurt – 1032 

Paris – 964

Heathrow – 698

SHANGHAI:

Frankfurt – 1110

Paris – 1323

Heathrow – 621

GUANGZHOU:

Frankfurt – 211

Paris – 290

Heathrow – 0

There have been a number of solutions put forward to rectify London’s airport capacity problem:

• Build extra runways at Gatwick and/or Stansted. Both schemes would be relatively cheap – at around £2.5 billion. But Stanstead is unlikely to attract a significant number of airlines due to its distance from London. The Stansted Express train connection could be up-graded but at significant cost. Also linking it with HS2 would be prohibitively expensive due to its distance from the intended high-speed route. The main issue with expanding Gatwick is a planning agreement with West Sussex County Council prohibits the building of a second runway until after 2019. Not ideal when the Heathrow is already operating at capacity.

• Build a ‘Thames Estuary Airport’ – Lord Foster’s Isle of Grain scheme, the so called ‘Boris Island’, or an airport at Cliffe in Kent. The main issue with these schemes is the cost. The cheapest proposal is Cliffe at £14 billion. The other schemes are estimated in excess of £20 billion just for the airports, while another £30 billion may be necessary for associated transport infrastructure. There are also environmental and safety issues to consider: birds and airliners are not compatible. A 2003 report found that the risk of losing an aircraft to bird strike around a ‘Thames Estuary’ was between one in 100 or 300 years – significantly more than any other UK airport.

Heathrow is the best option from a point of view of speed, cost, and environmental sustainability.

An additional runway could be built relatively quickly and could cost around £9 billion - a substantial investment, but not as much as other schemes.

The question has to be asked, is it really ‘sustainable’ to close one airport in a suburb (which is what it would take to make many airlines leave Heathrow) and move it to ecologically important marshland? No.

Heathrow can - as indeed is planned - be easily linked with HS2 so that the benefits of a world class airport can be shared with the rest of the UK, not just the South East. A third runway may not be the most staightforward option politically, but it is the best option.

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In foreign policy, common values do not mean common interests

Aaron Ellis 11.03am

One of the popular misconceptions in international relations is that countries which share common values automatically possess common interests.

This attitude is historically flawed and a dangerous influence on contemporary policy, pace the attempt to create a European foreign policy. Twenty-five nations with different customs, histories, cultures and economic priorities cannot share a single foreign policy. A series of crises over the last decade from Iraq to the Eurozone are evidence of this fact.

But particularly dangerous is the notion that democracies do not share common interests with autocracies. An example of this kind of thinking is the “league of democracies” idea, advocated by neoconservatives like former US presidential candidate John McCain and the historian Robert Kagan.

Their presumption is that autocracies like China and Russia pose a challenge to western democracies.

“In a world increasingly divided along democratic and autocratic lines, the world’s democrats will have to stick together”, wrote Robert Kagan in The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

This new league would “complement” institutions like the UN, which is to say do things that they can’t do because they can’t get past the Security Council. And it is necessary to do this because, if we don’t, the power of the democratic nations individually will decline and their collective interests will be undermined by stronger, autocratic powers. “History has returned, and the democracies must come together to shape it, or others will shape it for them.”

If their ideas are to be taken seriously, neoconservatives need people to accept that Russia and China pose an existential threat comparable to the Soviet Union and even the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

“The world’s democracies need to begin thinking about how they can protect their interests and defend their principles in a world in which these are once again powerfully challenged.” Robert Kagan’s implicit comparison is wide of the mark, and its dubiousness is reinforced by him and other neocons lumping together the eastern autocracies with Iran and nuclear proliferation and Islamist terrorism and any other evil they see fit to mention.

They also assume that common political values mean common geopolitical interests, which ignores geopolitical realities.

China has as much money invested in the United States as it does in Africa, and Germany has close economic ties with Russia, prompting her to argue against the EU taking an anti-Russian stance. Robert Kagan and others seem to ignore this.

The thinking behind the ‘league’ and similarly grand schemes is that democracies do not go to war with one another, which is taken seriously only by people who don’t know any history.

Both the American War of Independence and the War of 1812 were waged between a republic and a constitutional monarchy with representative institutions. Finland also declared war on Britain during the Second World War after the German invasion of the Soviet Union brought the Russians on to the Allied side.

As a proposition, the “democratic peace theory” also ignores the many times democracies have almost gone to war. Throughout the later 19th century there were numerous occasions when conflict could have broken out between either Britain and the United States or Britain and France. It wasn’t the pacifist will of the people that prevented fighting, rather it was the secret diplomacy of national elites.

Those people who believe that different political systems cannot be comfortable allies also ignore the many instances when they have been. The Allies in the Second World War are often cited, but there are other less-well-known examples like the strong relationship between France and Tsarist Russia and the Anglo-Japanese alliance at the turn of the 20th century.

Lord Palmerston’s line about ‘no permanent friends, only permanent interests’ is hackneyed but nonetheless true. There is no reason why democracies cannot share strategic interests with autocracies, either historically or today.

Neoconservatives pose a threat to world peace by insisting this can’t be the case.

“Great disasters,” wrote the historian A. J. P. Taylor, “are caused by trying to learn from history and correct past mistakes…it is probably best to think about the present, not about the past.”

China and Russia today are not Nazi Germany nor the Soviet Union. To treat them as such would be perilous. Why make unnecessary enemies?

We choose our allies and our enemies according to our interests. To think differently is to go against many of the basics of good statecraft and risks committing us to unnecessary wars.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Iraq was a failure of the neo-conservative world view

Aaron Ellis 9.17am

Iraq is the centre of the world and crucial to the United States’ wider foreign policy. President Obama is a failure and President Bush is as wise and as farsighted a statesman as General Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan.

This is the context in which we must understand the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, says Tim Montgomerie.

Last week, Mr Montgomerie attacked President Obama’s withdrawal from the country. He contrasts it with President Bush’s decision in 2007 to ‘surge’ American troops in order to regain momentum against the insurgency. Typically, Mr Montgomerie presents the reader with black-or-white choices: Bush is good, Obama is bad; and if you support the withdrawal, you “hate freedom”.

Neo-conservatives possess a dated worldview – and it shows. They are stuck in the early 2000s and the language of the War on Terror. They show no appreciation of grand strategy in his article or the coming of the ‘Pacific Century’. This is in stark contrast to President Obama, which is why Iraq should be added to the list of foreign policy failures by neo-conservatives and not the President’s.

The two decisions of Presidents Bush and Obama that we should contrast are the former’s decision to invade Iraq and the latter’s announcement last month of a new American military base in Australia.

For no good reason at all, President Bush burdened the United States with a disastrous war in a country of only marginal importance; he handed “a massive gift” to Tehran as a result, and distracted Washington from a real challenge to its power: China.

With his own announcement, however, President Obama sent a signal to Beijing that the U.S. was no longer distracted. The new base, the President said, was “a deliberate and strategic decision – as a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping the region and its future, by upholding core principles and in close partnership with allies and friends.”

The great scholar Walter Russell Mead has described President Obama’s announcement, and other diplomatic coups the U.S. achieved in Asia last month, as the “coming of age of the Obama administration and it was conceived and executed about as flawlessly as these things ever can be.”

If we understand the Iraq withdrawal in this context then it is obvious which of the two presidents can claim to be a wise and farsighted statesman. “Regardless of whether the twenty-first century will be another ‘American century’, it is certain that it will be an Asian and Pacific century”, Richard Haass, President of the Council of Foreign Relations, has written. “It is both natural and sensible that the US be central to whatever evolves from that fact.”

This undermines many of the neo-conservatives’ other beliefs. Tim Montgomerie is disappointed that the U.S. will not have a “foothold” in Iraq but he does not explain why such a foothold is important to the U.S. He has tweeted praise for a Mitt Romney line about whether a government scheme is so crucial that it is worth borrowing money from China to pay for it, but he hasn’t yet answered whether the same test can be applied to Iraq.

The fact that the interests of the United States are in Asia-Pacific also undermines the examples of post-war Germany and Japan as templates for American policy vis-à-vis Iraq. Those two countries mattered to U.S. security after 1945, justifying the time and money spent on developing them. You cannot make the same argument with regard to Iraq.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Does Compassionate Conservatism still have a place in a poorer Britain?

Alexander Pannett 6.45am

The worsening economic forecasts have suggested that the age of austerity could be a much longer period than first envisaged.  The UK economy has grown by only 0.1 per cent in the second quarter and unemployment has risen to its highest level in 17 years.

Outside the UK, the erratic movement of unfettered global capital continues, as no state appears to be safe from the jitters of speculation.  Even China, up to now the main hope of global economic revival, has seen its CDS spreads widen to an unprecedented amount.

With this economic gloom acting as the backdrop to the recent Conservative party conference in Manchester, David Cameron was at pains to remind his party and the country at large of his original project to “de-toxify” the Tory brand by emphasising the Conservative party’s compassionate side.

But with such little money at its disposal and the severest public expenditure cuts since 1945, can the Tories truly convince the electorate that it is no longer the ‘nasty party’?

The reality is that the terms that have defined Compassionate Conservatism must change to fit the needs of the people it attempts to help.  Right now, people do not want concern for their plight.  They want the security of employment.  Minor policy initiatives that might put a little extra money in people’s pocket are admirable but they are no substitute for the salvation that a job brings.  Mr Cameron should demonstrate his compassion by doing all he can to bring jobs to deprived areas. The Government’s Enterprise Zones initiative in economically disadvantaged areas is a strong step in the right direction.

David Cameron must not make the economist’s mistake of seeing GDP growth rates as indicative of increased employment or of a rejuvenated society.  This recession has exacerbated the widening gap between rich and poor.  Mr Cameron should take no comfort in strong economic growth in already affluent regions of the UK, which acts as a mirage of economic and social wellbeing.  For him truly to govern as a Compassionate Conservative he must bring opportunity to those areas that are economically and socially disadvantaged.

The Government should invest in infrastructure in those areas in order to inject direct capital expenditure, which will lead to jobs.  In a recession this is an effective way of supporting a region, while Enterprise Zones encourage private companies to invest locally.  The Government could spin-off parts of Lloyds and RBS into a national bank that lends directly to small and medium sized companies and encourage growth in disadvantaged areas.

The Government should cut regulation that dissuades companies from setting up in disadvantaged areas.  Ministers should also do more to move civil servants from economically buoyant regions such as the South East to more deprived regions, such as the North East.  Planning laws in disadvantaged areas should be made as flexible as possible, without taking unnecessary risks with the environment, to prevent hindrances to economic development.

Lastly, the Government could do more to reverse the ‘brain drain’ out of deprived areas towards the South East of England.  As well as using Enterprise Zones to offer tax incentives to companies, it should also consider lowering income taxes for individuals in regions with long-term unemployment. Or even income tax holidays.

Compassion must bring real opportunity to those in socio-economically disadvantaged areas.  Empathy without action will not fill stomachs nor will it fill hearts with hope of a better tomorrow.

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Begin Muse, when the two first broke and clashed

Alexander Pannett 8.23am

The world appears to be in the grip of a tumultuous period.  A crescendo of failures, misfortune and myopic strategy seems to be dragging the global economy towards a double dip recession.  The Euro, once lauded as the irresistible replacement to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, is itself facing possible collapse.  The American economy is slowing and inflation in China has been growing to worrying levels. 

In the Middle East, the Arab Spring has removed the oppressive fist of decades of autocratic regimes, but no-one can foresee who will fill the political vacuum or whether the successors will be more progressive and benevolent for the Arab people.  In East Africa, famine is spreading, which, it has been estimated, will cost the lives of up to 750,000 people.  In Latin America, drug wars are destabilising political and social security, leaving a growing list of macabre fatalities.  

Worse, it seems as if leaders are running out of ideas for tackling the many pressing problems that the world faces.  European leaders have been unable to either provide or agree to any credible solution to saving the euro, whilst the bond markets and rating agencies have mercilessly punished this intransigence.  In America, politicians seem more prepared to fight for narrow, partisan interests rather than place the holistic needs of their nation at the forefront of their concerns.  In both Russia and China, there have been no serious attempts to tackle the devastating environmental costs of un-fettered industrialisation, nor address the social concerns of a growing underclass. 

Amidst all these chaotic misgivings, the hubristic faith in un-mitigated progress must lie in the same tattered heap that other ideologies of utopia have found themselves.  History has not ended.  The business cycle was not broken.  Humans have not tamed nature.  Increasingly, age-old ethnic and tribal rivalries are dominating human concerns as the world moves towards a multiplicity of values.  There is now no unifying vision to guide humanity to its future.  We have realised that we simply do not know what tomorrow will bring.  This should be welcomed.  

The return of mystery to the realities of our existence is vitally important in re-adjusting government policy to accommodate our erratic behaviour, rather than directing it.  A government must protect the traditions that stem from the various cultures it represents, not impose its own idealised vision of human nature.  Politics is not a tool for engineering a particular view of the world but a servant that caters for an ever-changing reality. 

We should be less concerned with the opaqueness of economic statistics and more with the immediate concerns of social and environmental harmony.  What benefits does rapid economic growth bring if it merely entrenches the opportunities of a privileged minority and widens the gap between the affluent and dispossessed?  As the world fluctuates between unstable and unforeseen circumstances, we must recognise the limits of our grand designs and instead concentrate on policies that accommodate human needs.

A fairer and more stable society reaches out for answers, it does not impose them.

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