Foreign Policy 2016 11-12

OBSERVATION DECK however, the figure has tumbled. The gaining ground at the Fed and elsewhere: and other measures. Seen through the lens average of annual rates from the five years that America suffers from a multi speed of productivity, however, this is clearly the leading up to 2016—the sort of rolling mea- economy. This theory contends that some wrong approach to expanding the econ- surement statisticians consider to be the companies, such as Silicon Valley power- omy. Politicians ought to be talking about most accurate indication of an underlying houses like Google and forward-thinking, where gains could be made by introducing trend—was a mere 0.4 percent. The matter competitive manufacturers like GE, are technological innovations, streamlining is provoking anxiety at the Federal Reserve, becoming more productive and tend to grab workflows, and cutting bureaucratic fat in where Chair Janet Yellen has described the public attention. All the rest, though, are sluggish sectors, which tend to be those less data as “puzzling” and “disappointing.” dragging down the productivity growth rate. exposed to international trade. This is not just a made-in-America It’s difficult to measure this divergence. Admittedly, these priorities aren’t sexy. phenomenon, however. Productivity rates Researchers at the Bank of England are They don’t generate easy political sound have been falling sharply around the world. parsing micro-level data from companies, bites, nor are they tailor-made for exciting A survey of 30 rich member-states of the collected by the OECD, to see if they can photo-ops or jet-setting trips to negotiate Organisation for Economic Co-operation quantify the trend. Their early, informal esti- international deals. Yet they could stoke a and Development (OECD) found that 29 mates suggest that only around 20 percent revolution. As Yellen has said, “Productivity had recorded slowdowns between 2005 and of all companies have generated most pro- growth is the key determinant of improve- 2014. The decline has been particularly strik- ductivity gains in recent years and that they ments in living standards.” If Trump wants ing in the United Kingdom, which has had tend to be manufacturers. Meanwhile, data barely any measured increase in output per collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statis- worker for almost a decade. As in Washing- tics indicate that American manufacturers’ ton, U.K. economic experts freely admit that productivity rose by 1.8 percent annually they are uncertain about what’s going on. between 2007 and 2015, 40 percent higher Some pundits have suggested that the AROUND 20 PERCENT OF data are just wrong. Charlie Bean, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, ALL COMPANIES HAVE says statisticians could be failing to count GENERATED MOST PRODUCTIVITY all of the productive activity in cyberspace GAINS IN RECENT YEARS. because keeping track of it is so difficult. In a similar vein, they might not be measuring all than the national average. In the previous to leave an indelible mark on the U.S. econ- the output of free services, such as apps. Or decade, the gap was even more stark: Pro- maybe last decade’s credit bubble distorted ductivity in manufacturing rose 4.7 percent omy, unleashing more dynamism and effi- the data: It artificially inflated the value of between 2000 and 2007, and just 2.6 percent financial services, making today’s economy among businesses overall. The takeaway is ciency would be the place to start. Although look smaller by comparison. that responsibility for poor efficiency lies not with widget-makers or technology giants it’s exciting and commendable that GE has Other experts posit that the numbers are but with health care providers, educational correct—companies are just failing to invest institutions, food services, and other sectors. robots manning factory floors and 3-D print- in new technologies or to generate smart ideas. More optimistic sorts, such as econo- If this last explanation is correct—and I ing defining future business strategies, the mists Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson think it almost certainly is—there are huge at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- implications for Trump’s economic priori- economy won’t appreciate the full potential ogy, suggest that there is a time-lag effect. ties. During the campaign, there was exten- Companies are still investing and creating, sive debate about how to enable American of these technologies until they reach class- the argument goes, but it can take years to industry to flourish on the world stage. A bring important innovations to scale. hot topic was whether domestic jobs need rooms, shops, offices, and, yes, government “protection” in the form of trade barriers Another explanation, however, is agencies. Only then will productivity rise to the level where the smartphone generation already imagines it to be. Q GILLIAN TETT (@gilliantett) is U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times and author of The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 99

books & culture by ADAM KIRSCH Farewell to the Writer-in-Chief reputations than in telling uncomfort- Can any leader mend the able truths. Just look at Decision Points by George W. Bush or Hard Choices by Hillary divide between literature and politics? Clinton, both careful to the point of tedium. The reality is that few politicians are natu- Even for those dreading the end of the Obama admin- rally good writers. Even John F. Kennedy’s istration, there is one good reason to look forward Pulitzer-winning Profiles in Courage— to Jan. 20, 2017. On the day Barack Obama leaves the completed years before he took office— Oval Office, he can start thinking about the book was most likely ghostwritten by speech- he was born to write, one that many publishers writer Ted Sorensen. A few accomplished are predicting will become an American classic: presidential books have been produced his presidential memoir. In fact, according to the without professional help; in fact, the Per- New York Times, Obama could earn as much as $30 sonal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is so well million for a multi book contract. ¶ Fat deals like written that many doubted he’d written it these are common for retired politicians. But the himself, but historians now say the words works produced, while often best-sellers, tend to are indisputably his own. be deliberately bland, more interested in defending Obama’s book, too, may be an exception to the rule. As president, he has demon- strated a surprisingly authentic interest in contemporary literature. He regularly rec- ommended new novels: Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland early in his presidency, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad this year. He interviewed the novelist Mar- ilynne Robinson for the New York Review of Books, and this fall he guest-edited an issue of Wired. The president’s literary interests have long been part of his public identity. Even before he became a state senator in Illinois, he earned a reputation as a powerful writer with Dreams From My Father, a coming- of-age memoir about the son of a white American mother and an absent African father. The best-seller established Obama as a sensitive, introspective writer. “When people who don’t know me well, black or white,” he wrote, “discover my background … I see the split-sec- ond adjustments they have to make, the searching of my eyes for some telltale sign. They no longer know who I am. Privately, 100 NOV | DEC 2016 Illustration by EDMON DE HARO

OBSERVATION DECK they guess at my troubled heart, I sup- “Throughout his campaign Obama was It is open to doubt whether a writer is actu- pose—the mixed blood, the divided soul, careful always to say ‘we.’ He was notice- ally well equipped to communicate with the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto ably wary of ‘I.’ By speaking so, he wasn’t the public in the age of Twitter. A media trapped between two worlds.” simply avoiding a singularity he didn’t feel, personality like Trump, who is used to per- he was also drawing us in with him…. Most forming as himself on television, may be Here, Obama does not explore ques- of us have complicated back stories, messy better suited to this environment than an tions of race, family, and community as histories, multiple narratives.” Obama the author like Obama. policy issues, but as lived experiences. writer, Smith said, would help Americans He admits to his own doubts and confu- imagine their way into a more inclusive, sions in a way that is common in literary pluralistic future. writing yet vanishingly rare in memoirs by politicians. Eight years later, this dream is in tatters, to the disappointment of millions both in In turn, authors flocked to Obama’s cam- the United States and around the world. paign in 2008. This wasn’t just a matter of Far from bringing Americans together, professional solidarity. Rather, in those heady, history-making days, many writ- MANY WRITERS BELIEVED ers believed that having a literary mind in the White House would make possible THAT HAVING A LITERARY MIND IN a new era in politics. What if a president THE WHITE HOUSE WOULD MAKE had the empathy and insight of a writer? POSSIBLE A NEW ERA IN POLITICS. Could such a leader unite an increasingly divided country, give voice to the voiceless, the election of the first black president In 2016, novelists and poets rallied and act with a new kind of compassion and sparked a backlash of racism and right- understanding? Underlying this hope was wing extremism. It started in 2009 with together to protest this change. An open a vision of political leadership that can be Joe Wilson, a Republican congressman traced to Plato’s concept of the philoso- from South Carolina, shouting, “You lie!” letter against Trump, signed by hundreds pher-king; the trust was that Obama, as during Obama’s speech to a joint session of writer-president, would be a man of both Congress and culminated in the election of of literary figures, including Stephen King theory and practice whose ideas on the Donald Trump. Meanwhile, during his two page would play out in the world. terms, Obama showed that personal empa- and Amy Tan, tried to revive the idea that thy, one of the qualities that make a writer, The most eloquent statement of this is often hard to translate into effective pol- writers have a particular role to play in optimism was “Speaking in Tongues,” a lec- icy, especially foreign policy—as demon- ture delivered by the British-born novelist strated by the administration’s hands-off democratic politics. But where Smith was Zadie Smith in December 2008, just a few strategy in Syria or its acquiescence in weeks before Obama’s inauguration. Smith, Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen. optimistic eight years ago, this letter was who, like Obama, is biracial, praised the president-elect’s ability to inhabit many Dismayingly, Obama the president has pessimistic: “Because, as writers,” it began, minds and voices. This literary empa- proved to be a much less effective com- thy, she believed, was reflected not just municator than Obama the candidate. His “we are particularly aware of the many in Obama’s language, but in his politics: inwardness has widely been perceived as an aloof superiority by a public more accus- ways that language can be abused in the tomed to the practiced emotion of Bill Clin- ton or the chumminess of George W. Bush. name of power.” Tellingly, this statement had no real effect on political discourse. The election of Trump, who exhibits not a fraction of Obama’s intimacy with writing, suggests that it will be a long time before another president tries to close the breach between literature and politics. Q ADAM KIRSCH is a poet and critic. He is the author, most recently, of The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 101

the fixer interview by GREGG CARLSTROM Hebron, Palestine Maram Salim on where to spot graffiti and taste sheep’s neck. WHERE TO TAKE A HEBRON IS ONE of the world’s oldest continu- WHERE TO SAMPLE CAFFEINE BREAK ously occupied cities—evidence of human LOCAL MEAT outposts dates back to the Bronze Age— FRIENDSHIP PARK is yet it is branded by recent turmoil. In 1968, The best restau- in the middle of the occupying Israeli government autho- rant is ABU MAZEN. the Old City. It’s rized the Palestinian city’s first Jewish You’ll see the full small, maybe 5,400 settlement. Three decades later, in 1997, range of Hebron square feet, and a Hebron was divided into two districts: society there—rich very simple place, H-1, which comprises 80 percent of the people, poor peo- with a playground municipality and is run by the Palestinian ple. We don’t really that children love Authority, and the smaller H-2, which is have places that and a coffee shop. controlled by Israel. Owing to this unusual are exclusively for It’s one of the only urban planning, Israeli settlers and Pales- the wealthy. I rec- green spaces in the tinians live cheek by jowl—often unhap- ommend raqabat Old City. But it’s pily. Baruch Goldstein, an American-born mahshia, which also pretty heavily Jew, killed 29 worshippers at a Hebron is neck meat from militarized. When mosque in 1994. The Palestinian militants sheep served with there are clashes who murdered three Israeli teenagers in rice. It’s very heavy, in Hebron, you 2014, helping to spark the Gaza war, hailed but it’s a delicacy. can see Israeli sol- from the city. According to fixer Maram diers on the roof- Salim, in her hometown, it is possible to NIMRA STREET tops around the see “the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict park, because they in a very small place.” WHERE TO FIND provide a good POLITICAL ART vantage point for With some 200,000 inhabitants, how- the surrounding ever, Hebron is more than a microcosm Our best artwork neighborhoods. of the Middle East’s most enduring strug- is scrawled on city gle. It is also the commercial and cultural walls. One of the OLD CITY hub of the southern West Bank, situated most well-known in the Judean Mountains roughly 20 public artists is Photographs by JONAS OPPERSKALSKI miles from Jerusalem. The Old City, a Yousef Katalo. One square mile of winding alleys, features of his murals is Mamluk-era architecture studded with in Doura, just out- ornamented domes and soaring mina- side of the city; rets. The ancient Ibrahimi Mosque is a it’s about Ghassan major pilgrimage site for Muslims and Kanafani, a Pales- for Jews, who believe it is the burial place tinian activist who of Abraham and other biblical patriarchs. was allegedly killed Scattered around town are small factories by Israeli secu- where laborers make traditional pottery rity forces in 1972. and keffiyehs. There’s another mural in Hebron A radio journalist who has fixed for of the biblical the BBC, Salim recently guided FOREIGN figure Sarah. POLICY through a place vibrating with cre- It’s pretty stark— ative and historical energy. black and white— with Sarah looking over the villages and farms of Pal- estine before the Nakba, or exodus of inhabitants, in 1948. AIN SARAH STREET 102 NOV | DEC 2016

OBSERVATION DECK WHERE TO GET OFF LOGISTICS THE BEATEN PATH LAST CALL The travel minis- try in Palestine is Restaurants and encouraging peo- cafes close at about ple to hike a path 10 p.m. During that goes from Ramadan, they can Jenin, a city all the go until midnight, way in the north, sometimes later. to Hebron. Walk- ing the whole thing RESERVATIONS takes two weeks, but you can go for Not required. one- or two-day hikes on parts of it COST OF A NIGHT OUT as well. Cheap. Though it WHERE TO IMBIBE WHERE TO BUY WHERE TO FEEL depends on which LOCAL BREW NEW THREADS RELIGIOUS HISTORY restaurant you go to, a good meal There’s not much of People from all over The IBRAHIMI MOSQUE and a drink—not a drinking culture Palestine come is the most famous alcohol—cost about in the West Bank, here to shop for place in Hebron. It’s 20 Israeli shekels but we do have TAY clothes. The best divided into two [roughly $5]. BEH. It’s Palestine’s area is BAB AL parts, the Muslim best-known brew- ZAWIYA STREET, just mosque and the LAYERING UP ery, named for the outside of the city Jewish synagogue. village—30 miles center. Nowadays, Some Palestinians, Most of the people outside of Hebron— everyone wants to though, go through here are Muslim, of in which the beer wear fashion that an ordeal just to get course, so women is made. It opened comes from abroad; in. The Israeli sol- should wear long in the 1990s and stores tend to sell diers who guard the skirts or dresses. has a festival every clothes that are mosque search you T-shirts are accept- year, like Oktober- mass-produced in very carefully. Visi- able, but I don’t fest, that attracts China. But you can tors are welcome on recommend them. thousands of peo- opt for some local either side, regard- ple. Taybeh makes products there, too, less of their religion. CHECKPOINTS all kinds of beer, but like colorful shoes it’s best known for and leatherwork. KHALIL AL RAHMAN When out and the “golden” style, about, bring iden- which is a clean BAB AL ZAWIYA STREET tification to get Pilsner. through various STREET security stops. TAYBEH ROAD 1 FP (ISSN 0015-7228) November/December 2016, issue number 221. Published six times each year, in January, March, May, July, September, and November, by The FP Group, a division of Graham Holdings Com- pany, at 11 Dupont Circle NW, Suite 600, Washington, D.C. 20036. Subscriptions: U.S., $59.99 per year; Canada and other countries, $59.99. Periodicals Postage Paid in Washington, D.C., and at addi- tional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send U.S. address changes to: FP, P.O. Box 283, Congers, NY 10920-0283. Return undeliverable Cana- dian addresses to: P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Printed in the USA. FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 103

the final word by MEGAN SMITH When tackling our most complex policy challenges, traditional approaches simply aren’t enough. That’s why the U.S. government has been integrating people with high TQ—like IQ, but for technology— into expert teams, including at the National Security Council and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The result? Bet- ter outcomes. For example, after the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, techies from the Obama administration helped the organization deploy a simple online tool to crowdsource innovations. In two weeks, more than 800 people from 100 countries responded, sharing their solu- tions in progress for eradicating poverty, achieving gender equal- ity, ensuring clean-water access, and more. The ability to rapidly surface what’s working and accelerate progress against society’s most entrenched problems: That’s the power of integrating TQ. MEGAN SMITH U.S. CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER 104 NOV | DEC 2016

ASIAN VIEWS ON AMERICA’S ROLE IN ASIA The Future of the Rebalance STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE INCOMING U.S. PRESIDENT ON FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS ASIA Find out what leading experts are advising the next U.S. administration on free trade and investment, the rise of China, territorial disputes, nuclear proliferation, and America’s presence in Afghanistan. READ IT HERE: asiafoundation.org

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