Africa is separated from other clusters, with minimal representation, suggesting it is largely ignored by the media or discussed in isolation, not in connection to non- African news. By contrast, Canada’s close ties to the United States are reflected in its larger size, though it is connected to the U.S. cluster through just a few key leaders. MANMOHAN ENGLISH SINGH CRICKET INDIA INDIAN AND PAKISTANI CRICKET Sports stars occupy the lowest-right cluster and are largely isolated from the rest of the network, while movie stars form a long flowing green cluster. Stars from movies and TV shows covering political issues, such as Saturday Night Live, are closer to the central core, while stars of less politically charged films and shows are farther away. 99FOREIGN POLICY
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS INNOVATORS KALEV LEETARU of information,” Leetaru said. which then can be altered, from A to Z. FOR BUILDING A “If you look below the surface, adjusted, and scaled before The solution? Manufacture PETTIS: LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES FOR CONDE NAST; ANDERSON: FREDERICK M. BROWN/GETTY IMAGES TOOL THAT COULD there’s a whole world of latent being printed. The projects PREDICT THE FUTURE. information that we’re just that MakerBot’s products and sell low-cost drones to beginning to try to under- make possible seem limitless, the masses. And that’s exactly LEAD CREATOR, GDELT | WASHINGTON stand.” spanning from the silly (3-D what Anderson is doing. “We toys or shells for hermit crabs) created the community, then » Kalev Leetaru has a BRE PETTIS to the serious (prosthetic limbs the product,” Anderson told mind for the 21st cen- or even guns). the Verge in September, a tury, but the soul of an ancient FOR REVOLUTIONIZING THE day after announcing a $30 prophet. A master of “big data,” WAY WE MAKE THINGS. Futurists envision a world in million financing round for Leetaru uses high-powered al- which 3-D printers are as ubiq- 3D Robotics, which is building gorithms to analyze vast quan- » INVENTOR | NEW YORK uitous as microwave ovens. unmanned airplanes and heli- tities of news reports and other Bre Pettis has done That day may be a long way copters. With his new money, publicly available intelligence, many things: He has off, but by making fabrication many observers say, Anderson enabling him to see previously been a schoolteacher, a puppe- affordable and accessible, Pet- could really break open the hidden patterns in economic teer, and a media producer for tis and his MakerBots have be- market for mainstream uavs. and political developments. Etsy.com and Make magazine. gun democratizing the process In 2012, Anderson’s company But as he put it to npr in Au- of design and construction. sold over $5 million worth of In 2013, he established the gust, there has “been a thread drones—and this year, sales Global Database of Events, through my whole life: the CHRIS ANDERSON are projected to double. Language, and Tone (gdelt), idea of creating infrastructure an enormously ambitious proj- for people to be creative.” FOR KICK-STARTING THE Anderson envisions a day ect that could become the go- CONSUMER DRONE TREND. when mass-market drones to information trove for social That thread led him and make everyone’s lives a little scientists of all stripes. The a group of friends at nyc CEO, 3D ROBOTICS | BERKELEY, CALIF. bit easier—a prospect that database, which has generated Resistor, the Brooklyn-based would bolster his company’s a frenzy of excitement among hacker collective he started in » Entrepreneurs need bottom line. That goes for journalists and tech geeks, 2008, to build an affordable lots of data about their farmers who could use uavs among others, is a catalog of 3-D printer. Five years later, desired customers before they to monitor crops or cattle, as more than 200 million social the company spawned by their build a product. Chris Ander- well as emergency respond- and political events going first prototype has become son, ceo of 3D Robotics and ers who could use them on back all the way to 1800— MakerBot and sold more than progenitor of the modern “do rescue missions. To get there, everything from speeches 15,000 desktop units. it yourself” (diy) drone trend, Anderson plans to continue to epidemics to wars. And understood this well: Before his step-by-step approach gdelt adds between 30,000 The printers’ strength founding his drone company, to entrepreneurial success. and 100,000 events each day, is their affordability and Anderson went about figuring “What comes next is the based on contemporary news versatility. You can find them out exactly what the world platform,” Anderson, former coverage. (For more on gdelt everywhere, from the garage wanted. editor in chief of Wired, told see the spread on p. 98.) workshops of hobbyists and the Verge, “the software that small-scale entrepreneurs to Anderson created diy- makes drones useful to people The database can be used to the fabrication lab at nasa’s drones.com, a forum where in the real world.” map the connections among Langley Research Center. amateur tinkerers and events, people, and ideas. Anyone with access to the engineers trade tips on how to THEODORE BERGER Indeed, Leetaru envisions his right software can design make all kinds of unmanned project as a powerful way of models to be printed, and aerial vehicles (uavs). The FOR MAKING MEMORIES. understanding how and why MakerBot’s latest offering is forum has been an ideal focus LITERALLY. things happen, which, in turn, an affordable 3-D scanner (the group, and what has become could help us plan better for Digitizer), introduced at the clear is that, while normal BIOMEDICAL ENGINEER | LOS ANGELES the future. Leetaru imagines South by Southwest festival in people are obsessed with a world in which big data has March. The scanner makes a flying robots, they don’t want » It’s an idea straight revolutionized every field— digital blueprint of an object, to invest in building them from science fiction: from medicine, where we a microchip implanted in could track disease outbreaks the brain that controls, even in real time, to peace-building, enhances, human memory. where we could predict pat- But thanks to the work of The- terns of violence. That future odore Berger, this fiction may may not be far off: By ana- soon become reality. lyzing news reports from the weeks leading up to the event, Berger, a biomedical Leetaru found that the world engineer at the University just might have predicted the of Southern California, has 2011 Egyptian revolution. developed a chip that, when placed inside the hippocam- “People talk about oceans 100 DECEMBER 2013
ZHENG: STANFORD UNIVERSITY PHOTO; OLI SCARFF/GETTY IMAGES pus, replicates “codes” that A 3-D printer creates a small human figure at an exhibition in London in October. Among the more than 600 objects printed at the neurons send out when re- event were human organ replacements, aircraft parts, and a handgun. LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS INNOVATORStrieving memories. In success- ful tests Berger has conducted, It’s a small cell that allows ‘smart’ clothing to new set of plastic gears. The gears rats with disabled hippocampi solar power to be generated aerospace systems—might be spin an electric motor, pow- have remembered how to ac- on virtually any surface. The possible by combining both ering a small, bright led that cess water when the implants cell is flexible, about 1 square thin-film electronics and thin- stays on for about half an sent out a particular code; centimeter, and one-tenth film solar cells,” she said in hour. When the bag reaches monkeys with the chips that as thick as plastic wrap, and an interview with Stanford’s the ground, you just lift it are given memory-hindering when attached to an adhesive School of Engineering. “We back up and start over again. cocaine have shown improved it functions like a sticker. may be just at the beginning skills at a picture-matching Critically, it converts the same of this technology.” Once Reeves and Riddi- game. Berger began human amount of energy as its rigid, ford, who work at a Lon- testing of the chip this year. heavier counterparts, but JIM REEVES, don-based design firm, because it bends, it can stick MARTIN RIDDIFORD developed the GravityLight Artificially replicating to anything from cell phones prototype, they had no the process of capturing to helmets to skylights to FOR USING GRAVITY TO problem securing funding. memories probes the very clothing. And it’s cheaper to LIGHT THE WORLD. In one month this year, they definitions of consciousness make. raised more than $400,000 and identity. And with his » DESIGNERS | BRITAIN on the website Indiegogo, dramatic advance, Berger may The Stanford University More than 1.3 billion well beyond their goal of also have unlocked some- professor has said she was people around the $55,000. They plan to use the thing of a Pandora’s box of inspired by her father’s world lack access to electric money to initially manufac- ethical questions: What are suggestion to put solar panels light. Many rely on costly, ture 1,000 lights that will go the dangers when memories on building walls and by her hazardous kerosene lamps. to Africa for field-testing, can be manipulated? What young daughter’s love of Designers Jim Reeves and in addition to 6,000 lights determines who gets access stickers. These unassuming Martin Riddiford have that will go to their financial to these new brain-enhancing origins, however, belie the a novel solution to this backers. chips? solar sticker’s potential to conundrum: a low-cost led help transform the global light that powers itself using The invention, which Berger says that with people commercial landscape of nothing but gravity. Bill Gates has described living longer and more cases solar technology. as “pretty cool,” will cost of brain diseases such as Alz- The mechanics of the about $5, an investment that heimer’s emerging, innovation As a pioneering product, GravityLight are deceptively should be returned with- is critical. “Having a strategy the solar sticker has posi- simple: A pineapple-sized in three months through where we think about which tioned its creator among the lantern is attached to a kerosene savings. For poor brain parts can be replaced … world’s top young innovators. 25-pound bag. The bag falls households, then, Reeves is just a wise thing to do,” he And Zheng argues that the about 6 feet at a slow pace, and Riddiford’s product is says. “We’re just talking about flexible adhesive revolution is tugging a belt that turns a both pretty cool and pretty facing reality.” only just starting. “Obviously, cheap—a combination that is a lot of new products—from nothing short of exciting. XIAOLIN ZHENG FOR GIVING US SOLAR POWER ANYWHERE, ANYTIME. »ENGINEER | PALO ALTO, CALIF. Xiaolin Zheng has developed what sounds like a toy but is really a groundbreaking engineer- ing feat: the “solar sticker.” FOREIGN POLICY 101
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS INNOVATORS THE ROCKETEER FORGET TESLA. FORGET THE HYPERLOOP. ELON MUSK IS ALL ABOUT SPACE. BY MICHAEL BELFIORE ILLUSTRATION BY TADAOMI SHIBUYA » EVERY GENERATION OR SO, A VISIONARY comes along and completely Army. “Suppressing black people just the imagination. didn’t seem like a really good way to Most people who’ve heard of Musk revolutionizes an industry, even an entire spend time,” he told me in an interview a probably think of him in connection with Tesla Motors, of which he’s the ceo and economy. Henry Ford and Thomas Edi- few years ago. A better way, he decided, chief product architect. Tesla, according to Consumer Reports (and recent troubles son are two who come to mind. To a lesser was to design and build products that with battery packs notwithstanding), makes the best car in the world. The extent, so does Steve Jobs. might change lives. magazine gave Tesla’s Model S, a sleek luxury sedan, its highest-ever rating for a To this group I would add Elon Musk. Since then, Musk has become one car (99 out of 100) in May 2013. The Model S, which is all-electric, was also Motor The South African-born 42-year-old of the world’s great innovators. He has immigrated to North America in his youth leveraged the millions he made through with a dream and little else to his name. the sale of PayPal, which he co-founded, The move coincided with his imminent into billions—and used that money to compulsory service in the South African give life to ideas that once existed only in 102 DECEMBER 2013
Trend’s 2013 Car of the Year. In short, and as with Ford’s River Rouge complex, NASA HASN’T LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS INNOVATORS Musk isn’t just making great cars—he’s the company takes in raw materials and SHOWN THIS KIND upending the automotive industry by spits out completed products: About 70 OF BOLDNESS making an electric car superior to every percent of the components in SpaceX’s AND WILLINGNESS gas guzzler on the road. creations are built in-house, and most TO TAKE CALCULATED are designed to work together, no matter RISKS IN ITS The modern world’s love affair with the vehicle. The already-successful cargo MANNED PROGRAM cars ensures that Tesla gets attention, ship will require only a few modifications SINCE THE DAYS OF and Musk also made headlines in 2013 for to enable it to fly crews. And three of the PROJECT APOLLO. proposing the Hyperloop, a radical form Falcon 9 rocket’s engine cores will com- of ground transport that would whisk bine to form the Falcon Heavy, envisioned All this adds up to the linchpin of passengers between Los Angeles and San as the most powerful booster since the an industry in the making, which will Francisco through partially evacuated Saturn V moon rocket. encompass not just the odd government tubes in just over half an hour. What gets contract or high-end satellite launch, less notice, but is no less deserving of it, is Another way of making things af- but also many other activities that Musk Musk’s work in the rocket business. fordable—admittedly in the context of hopes will follow the advent of affordable launches that currently cost, at mini- launch vehicles. SpaceX’s technology Thinking it would be pretty cool to land mum, tens of millions of dollars—is to could be important for industries de- a plant-growth experiment on Mars but reuse rockets, which usually fall to a fiery pendent on accurate and timely weather finding the cost prohibitively high, Musk doom after delivering payloads. If com- forecasting (such as agriculture), afford- started his own rocket company to bring mercial aviation operated this way, trans- able logistics and supply-chain tracking, the price down. In 2010, Space Explora- atlantic flights could easily top $1 million remote sensing, and more. tion Technologies, or SpaceX, of which a seat because the ticket price would have Musk is ceo and chief designer, became to include the cost of a new aircraft. Beyond that, there’s the wealth of the the first company to send a privately solar system just waiting to be claimed. owned and operated vehicle into orbit In September, virtually unnoticed amid Space is home to an abundance of natural and back. Then, in May 2012, an un- congressional squabbling that would soon resources, from solar power unfiltered by manned SpaceX Dragon capsule berthed shut down the U.S. government, a SpaceX clouds and the day-night cycle to mineral with the International Space Station (iss), Falcon 9 that had just dropped off several wealth in near-Earth asteroids. In the last becoming the first private vehicle to ren- satellites in orbit made history: It relit year alone, two credible private ventures dezvous with an orbital destination. three of its engines and re-entered the have sprung up to harvest natural re- atmosphere at hypersonic speed without sources based on the promise of afford- Musk’s competitors are still playing burning up. It then relit its center engine able launch technology like that which catch-up. The nasa-designed Space one final time to cushion its water land- SpaceX is developing. Launch System (sls), slated to take over ing. Unfortunately, the rocket was spin- the now-retired shuttle’s job as America’s ning too rapidly to stabilize, and it broke And Musk’s initial idea of landing a spaceship, is derisively known as the up on impact with the Pacific Ocean. small scientific payload on Mars? That has “Senate Launch System” because, though morphed into a new dream of enabling overpriced and technically challenged, Speaking on a conference call with re- settlers to colonize the Red Planet. it’s kept alive by congressional mandate. porters a few hours later, however, Musk On the private side, in September, Orbital was anything but disappointed. “It was a When I first met Musk, before SpaceX Sciences Corp. became the second com- really great day,” he said, adding that all had flown a single successful mission, he pany to send cargo to the iss, but its vehi- the booster needed in order to stabilize told me he wanted to have a significant, cle costs more than SpaceX’s model and it was landing legs, which had already been positive impact on the world. His story is can’t return cargo to Earth. In fact, Musk’s used in tests at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, still being written, but he’s already revolu- Dragon is the only vehicle in existence proving ground. In the matter-of-fact tionizing two modes of transportation— capable of returning cargo from the iss. tones he uses when speaking of outra- one firmly planted on the ground and the geous ideas—thus making them sound other heading for the stars. Musk, who comes across as soft-spoken, eminently doable—Musk revealed plans levelheaded, and unassuming, is looking to try the feat again following SpaceX’s What’s next? to shake up the rocket industry even more next cargo delivery to the iss, slated for by following a fellow visionary’s example. February. Michael Belfiore is the author of “Henry Ford didn’t invent the internal Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of combustion engine,” Musk told me while nasa hasn’t shown this kind of bold- Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots I was writing a book on commercial ness and willingness to take calculated Is Boldly Privatizing Space. spaceflight back in 2004. “But he found risks in its manned program since the out how to make one at low cost, and days of Project Apollo. that’s the appropriate analogy here.” Since that interview, SpaceX has taken over a At a published price of $56.5 million Boeing 747 fuselage assembly plant in per launch, Falcon 9 rockets are already Hawthorne, California, where it’s working the cheapest in the industry. Reusable to make launch vehicles and spaceships Falcon 9s could drop the price by an order more affordable by mass-producing them. of magnitude, sparking more space-based enterprise, which in turn would drop SpaceX has almost a million square the cost of access to space still further feet of development and assembly space, through economies of scale. FOREIGN POLICY 103
THE ADVOCATES From corruption to sexual violence, homophobia to crimes against humanity, the Global Thinkers in this category have tackled some of the world’s most pressing and intransigent problems. They have used speeches, protests, lawsuits, and more to thrust their ideas into the public spotlight and demand change. Some have defended international law or challenged foreign powers; others have battled wrongdoing in their own countries. Some have succeeded in changing policy and been feted for their accomplishments; others have been stigmatized or even imprisoned. But all of them have pushed boundaries in the name of progress. 104 DECEMBER 2013
REUTERS/ALEXANDER DEMIANCHUK; PU: ED JONES/AFP/GETTY IMAGES ALEXEY DAVYDOV, Police detain an activist during a gay pride event in St. Petersburg. Russia passed a law this year banning “gay propaganda.” IGOR KOCHETKOV LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ADVOCATES he says will only increase as embraced by the regime. In house arrest or in detention. FOR FIGHTING RUSSIA’S STATE- a result of the law. “With this 2003, he was elected to the In a video released from an SPONSORED HOMOPHOBIA. legislation,” Kochetkov told Haidian District People’s Con- the Guardian, “the govern- gress, a local branch of China’s undisclosed detention center » ACTIVISTS | RUSSIA ment said that, yes, gays and rubber-stamp legislature. before his official arrest, Xu In June, the Russian lesbians are not valued as a But Xu, then a lecturer at the said, “I’m very proud to put parliament passed a social group.” Beijing University of Posts and the word ‘citizen’ before my law banning “gay propagan- Telecommunications, began name, and I hope everyone da” that effectively outlaws XU ZHIYONG making a name for himself does the same.” The more peo- public discussion of lesbian, by taking on the cases of ple who agree with him, the gay, bisexual, and transgender FOR PROMOTING PEOPLE those trampled by the justice more the bottom-up approach (lgbt) issues. The law, which POWER AS AN ANTIDOTE system, including death-row to tackling corruption will sparked international outrage, inmates and families affected challenge Xi’s vision of how to also galvanized Russian lgbt TO CORRUPTION. by tainted baby formula. create a cleaner China. activists, including Alexey Davydov and Igor Kochetkov. »LEGAL SCHOLAR, ACTIVIST | CHINA More recently, Xu helped PU ZHIQIANG There are two ways to found the New Citizens’ Move- Davydov, one of the fight corruption: top ment, a network of human FOR DARING TO TAKE ON founders of Moscow Pride down or bottom up. Chinese rights campaigners that ad- CHINA’S J. EDGAR HOOVER. and a democracy activist President Xi Jinping, who has dresses Chinese legal, social, with the group Solidarnost, instituted a much-discussed and political issues. One of LAWYER | CHINA purposefully violated the law campaign to weed out “tigers the movement’s demands is at a July protest by carrying and flies” (that is, corrupt that Chinese officials disclose » During disgraced a sign that read, “Being gay is high- and low-ranking offi- their wealth—seemingly Chongqing Com- normal.” After being arrested, cials, respectively) seems to echoing elements of Xi’s own munist Party Secretary Bo he became the first person think the first approach works anti-corruption campaign, but charged with breaking the better. Xu Zhiyong, however, upsetting authorities nonethe- propaganda law. Davydov begs to differ. less. Reportedly for his in- staged another protest in Sep- volvement in the movement, tember outside the Duma, the The quiet, cautious activist Xu was formally arrested this Russian parliament’s lower has fought for citizen involve- August on charges of “as- house, where, dressed as a ment in government decisions sembling a crowd to disrupt doctor, he called for manda- for the last decade. Like many order in a public place”—even tory psychiatric treatment for Chinese dissidents, including though he had spent several Russian deputies who support artist Ai Weiwei, Xu was once months prior under informal anti-lgbt legislation. Davy- dov, a diabetic, died of kidney failure just a few weeks later at age 36. (Supporters say that police hastened his death by breaking his arm and jeopar- dizing his already frail health during a 2011 protest.) “He was the creative force behind lgbta direct action,” Russian journalist and activist Masha Gessen told the New Republic after Davydov’s death. Igor Kochetkov is the chair- man of the Russian lgbt Net- work. He was one of several human rights activists whom Barack Obama met with when the U.S. president attended the G-20 summit in St. Pe- tersburg this fall. Kochetkov’s organization has spoken out about the bigotry of Russia’s government. And he has worked to document violence against lgbt people, which FOREIGN POLICY 105
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ADVOCATES Xilai’s spectacular 18-month FAREA AL-MUSLIMI MALALA YOUSAFZAI downfall, some Chinese MUSLIMI: AP PHOTO/CLIFF OWEN; YOUSAFZAI: ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGEShuman rights lawyers pub- FOR APPEALING TO THE BETTER FOR WIELDING UNCOMMON COURAGE AND WISDOM. licly criticized him and his ANGELS OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY. policies. But few have dared ACTIVIST | PAKISTAN, BRITAIN to speak out against officials ACTIVIST, WRITER | YEMEN more powerful than Bo— In the year following a near-deadly assault on her life, namely, current or previous » Farea Al-Muslimi has 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai spoke at the United Nations members of the Politburo seen two sides of the and the World Bank, received a human rights award from the Standing Committee, which United States. There is the European Parliament, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, sits atop the Communist America that expanded his left Jon Stewart speechless on The Daily Show, and met with U.S. Party’s hierarchy. horizons beyond the poor President Barack Obama. Yemeni village where he was True to her age, she also admitted to liking Justin Bieber and the One of the exceptions is born, providing him with Twilight series in her best-selling new memoir, I Am Malala. Pu Zhiqiang, a longtime money to study at a Cali- Malala became a vocal activist for girls’ education at an early civil rights lawyer who has fornia high school and then age, prompting a Taliban gunman to shoot her in the head at represented, among others, the American University of point-blank range as she rode home from school in October 2012. dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Beirut. But there is also the Already a hero for standing up to terrorists and advocating for girls’ On Feb. 6, Pu criticized America that uses drones to rights, Malala has acquired nothing short of international superstar Zhou Yongkang, who ran drop bombs on the men status since her shooting and miraculously quick recovery. And China’s feared internal and women with whom he she has put that status to good use: When she met with Obama, security system during grew up. she confronted the president on the issue of drone strikes in her his 2007-2012 term on the native Pakistan, and this past spring, she launched an initiative Standing Committee. Using In 2013, Muslimi emerged in cooperation with actress Angelina Jolie called the Malala Fund, unusually strident language, as one of the most eloquent designed to bolster education for girls in the developing world. Pu claimed Zhou “wrecked critics of U.S. drone strikes Just days before the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, a country and ruined the in Yemen, which he thinks which many assumed Malala would win, Shahidullah Shahid, a people.” He posted the same are boosting support for Taliban spokesman, issued a new threat on the teenager’s life. message on China’s three al Qaeda by creating a But Malala remains fearless: Her ambition now, she has said, is to major microblogging sites, one-dimensional view of the become prime minister of Pakistan. and his posts were widely United States. “If Ameri- circulated. ca is providing economic, if America doesn’t halt the to achieve in my village,” social, and humanitarian attacks, Yemenis will never Muslimi said in the commit- Although not the first assistance to Yemen, the know the good side of the tee hearing, “one drone strike Chinese person to criticize vast majority of the Yemeni country, the side that he accomplished in an instant: Zhou—last year, some Com- people know nothing about knew first. And that could There is now an intense munist Party veterans from it,” he testified before a U.S. create lasting enemies. “What anger and growing hatred of Yunnan province published Senate committee this year. radicals had previously failed America.” an open letter stating that Zhou was “of the same ilk” The victims of U.S. drones as Bo—Pu’s move was a bold are not mere statistics for one. He’s already monitored Muslimi. He has trekked by Chinese security services around the country to meet for his human rights work, with those injured in strikes and he has been detained in and to speak with family the past. members of those killed. But he has also talked to It’s unclear what reprisal, people much closer to home: if any, Pu has received for Muslimi’s own friends and his comments about Zhou, neighbors reacted with fear though he was temporarily and anger after a drone strike banned from microblogging hit his village. shortly after his posts. But in the months since, there Muslimi is concerned that have been more and more signs that Zhou might be in trouble, including investi- gations of several people who worked for him. Pu’s comments, to paraphrase a Chinese expression, just might turn out to be one of the sparks that started a wildfire. 106 DECEMBER 2013
ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES GULALAI AND HOSSAM BAHGAT, NAVI PILLAY THE SABA ISMAIL HEBA MORAYEF GHOUTA LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ADVOCATES FOR REFUSING TO LET THE ATTACK FOR EMPOWERING FOR HOLDING FAST TO WORLD FORGET THE HUMAN PAKISTANI GIRLS. THE PROMISE OF EGYPT’S In the early morning TOLL OF SYRIA’S CRISIS. hours of Aug. 21, 2013, » ACTIVISTS | PAKISTAN REVOLUTION. Syrian troops fired rockets Before Malala U.N. HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN laden with sarin gas into Yousafzai, there were »HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS | EGYPT the Ghouta suburb of Gulalai and Saba Ismail. The Since Egypt’s 2011 » RIGHTS | SWITZERLAND Damascus. The details of Pakistani sisters grew up revolution, national In 1995, soon after the the attack quickly faded in the conservative Khyber politics have devolved into a Rwandan genocide left from media coverage as Pakhtunkhwa province, near choice between the Egyptian an estimated 800,000 dead, attention turned to the the border with Afghani- Army and the Muslim Brother- Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, Syrian chemical weapons stan. At the ages of 16 and hood. But pioneering activists from her perch on the Inter- deal brokered by the United 15, respectively, Gulalai and like Hossam Bahgat and Heba national Criminal Tribunal for States and Russia—but their Saba founded Aware Girls to Morayef haven’t stopped Rwanda, bluntly demanded horror can’t be ignored. empower young women. reminding Egyptians that that African countries do their uprising was supposed more to bring the fleeing 1,429 Initially, the organiza- to be about so much more: the architects of the slaughter to tion taught girls about their protection of civil liberties and justice. “Judges must raise People killed in the attack. rights and gave them strat- social and economic justice. their voices,” Pillay said. egies for negotiating with 426 their families over issues Morayef, the Egypt director It’s a philosophy that the like education. Malala was of Human Rights Watch, 72-year-old Pillay, a former Children killed. among Aware Girls’ many has made enemies in both defense lawyer for anti-apart- mentees. The organization President Mohamed Morsy’s heid activists and the first 300% has since branched out administration and the mili- woman of color to serve on explicitly into politics. In tary-backed government that the South African High Court, The increase in artillery and 2013, Aware Girls formed the followed it—and for all the has applied vigorously in nav- rocket fire at Ghouta in the first all-female observation right reasons. She had hoped igating the Syrian crisis as the 24 hours after the attack— team to monitor women’s her struggle to end torture United Nations’ top human an apparent efort by the polling stations in Pakistan’s and military trials would find rights official. Time and again, Syrian regime to destroy spring election. And the a new partner in the Muslim she has demanded that the evidence of sarin use. sisters themselves have also Brotherhood, whose members world refocus its attention, broadened their own mission suffered the most in President which has often wandered 2IN 5 to include encouraging all Hosni Mubarak’s jails, but over the course of the bloody Pakistani young people, not she was sorely disappoint- civil war, on the conflict’s trag- The proportion of just women, to become more ed when the group instead ic human dimensions. Pillay survivors interviewed active citizens. replicated the old tactics. has issued updates on the by the U.N. who were “Morsy betrayed the trust that war’s staggering death toll and still disoriented a week For her efforts, Gulalai, pro-reform Egyptians placed has repeatedly condemned later because of sarin now 26, was a recipient of in him,” she said recently. Syrian rebels, the government, exposure. the 2013 Democracy Award and President Bashar al-Assad from the Washington-based But that doesn’t mean Mo- personally for orchestrating FOR SOURCING, PLEASE VISIT National Endowment for rayef and Bahgat, the founder massacres. She has also come FOREIGNPOLICY.COM Democracy and earned a and director of the Egyptian out forcefully against the Twitter shout-out from the Initiative for Personal Rights, West intervening militarily FOREIGN POLICY 107 U.S. ambassador to the Unit- have any love for the Egyptian in Syria or arming rebels, ed Nations, Samantha Power. Army. Bahgat’s organization because either might ignite Today, the Ismails’ group is condemned the Army’s Aug. further violence. She’s instead expanding into Baluchistan 14 assault on two pro-Broth- advocating a political solution province and Afghanistan. erhood sit-ins in Cairo, which to the crisis (while keeping a killed over 500 people, as “an confidential list of suspected As the world learned with utter failure to apply the rule war criminals to be tried once Malala, empowering girls of law and respect citizens’ hostilities end). can be extremely dangerous rights.” work. Aware Girls has had to relocate its office after re- Morayef and Bahgat know ceiving threats. But in Mala- they’ve made themselves la and other young women targets for both sides of the whom their organization has political divide. But their influenced, the Ismail sisters activism may just be the can see that their work has antidote to what appears to been worth every risk. be Egypt’s slide back toward dictatorship.
In September, Pillay said the prosecutions of Kenya’s there are “no easy exits, no president and deputy president obvious pathways out of this for their alleged involvement in nightmare” in Syria. She’s their country’s 2007-2008 elec- determined, however, to tion violence. (She withstood make sure that victims of the opposing pressures when she conflict have a constant voice tossed out a related Kenya case on the world stage. in March, citing the loss of a LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ADVOCATES critical witness, and when the icc allowed Libya to try former PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; CASTELLANOS: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES; BENSOUDA: ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi at home.) Bensouda is juggling a docket of some of the world’s worst crimes with protecting the icc’s inchoate role as arbi- ter of international justice. So far, she has managed to keep all the balls in the air. URVASHI BUTALIA, KAVITA KRISHNAN FATOU BENSOUDA JULIETA CASTELLANOS FOR FIGHTING THE SYSTEM FOR EXPOSING THE ROOTS OF INDIA’S RAMPANT SEXUAL VIOLENCE. FOR PROSECUTING THE THAT KILLED HER SON. WORLD’S WORST CRIMINALS. RECTOR, NATIONAL AUTONOMOUS ACTIVISTS | INDIA CHIEF PROSECUTOR, INTERNATIONAL »UNIVERSITY OF HONDURAS | HONDURAS The brutal gang rape, beating, and death of a 23-year-old One night in 2011, Ra- woman in New Delhi in December 2012 sparked widespread »CRIMINAL COURT | NETHERLANDS fael Alejandro Vargas protests and debate about sexual violence in India. While many Fatou Bensouda’s ten- Castellanos, 22, and his friend demonstrations crystallized around a desire to see rapists punished ure as chief prosecutor Carlos Pineda were kidnapped harshly, a group of women’s rights activists has been calling for the International Criminal by Honduran police as they for outrage to be channeled into progressive discussions of the Court (icc) hasn’t been easy. left a birthday party. While paternalism, sexism, and social inequality that undergird the Bensouda, who took on the the circumstances surround- country’s rape crisis. Among these activists are Urvashi Butalia and role in mid-2012, inherited ing their abduction remain Kavita Krishnan. criticism of the icc’s focus on murky, one thing is clear: The Krishnan, a leftist activist and secretary of the All India Africa. (All its indictees to date two were later killed—Alejan- Progressive Women’s Association, gave a fiery speech soon after are from the continent.) In dro with a bullet in his back. the gang rape, demanding government action. She later criticized 2013, Kenya upped the stakes authorities for not working closely enough with women’s groups in by voting to leave the icc For Julieta Castellanos, Ale- changing the country’s sexual violence laws. This September, when while two of its leaders are un- jandro’s mother and a sociol- the gang rape’s perpetrators were sentenced to death, Krishnan der indictment; soon after, the ogist who heads Honduras’s said it would change little. “Surety of punishment in every case of African Union met to reassess main university, the killing violence against women, not severity of punishment in a handful of its members’ relationship with was a tragic confirmation of cases, would be a real deterrent,” she wrote in an op-ed, pointing to the court. her life’s work. Castellanos the low conviction rate in sexual violence cases. had founded a center for crime Butalia, the founder of India’s first feminist publishing house and Some critics believed statistics, and her son became a longtime women’s rights activist, also criticized calls for capital that Bensouda, who is from another name on the long list punishment at the expense of much-needed social discussions Gambia, would cave, at least of killings in Honduras, which about where sexual violence occurs. She wrote in an op-ed, alluding in part, to charges that the has the world’s highest murder to violence in intimate settings, “[D]o we mean therefore that we icc singles out Africans. But rate. The violence is largely a should kill large numbers of uncles, fathers, brothers, husbands, instead, she has only reiterat- function of warring drug gangs neighbours?” In addition, Butalia has criticized the government for ed that the court is staying its failing to fulfill promises to fund new crisis centers, help lines, and course. “We should not take other resources for women. what [the] icc is doing to turn Butalia and Krishnan aren’t just thoughtful activists: They are it on its head,” Bensouda said formidable, front-line opponents in the battle against India’s scourge in May, calling censures from of sexual violence. African leaders “an insult to the victims” of the criminals whom the icc prosecutes. Despite being criticized for pandering to the West, Bensou- da has pressed forward with 108 DECEMBER 2013
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES; MYINT-U: COURTESY PHOTO and is exacerbated by the graft Women stand in formation after completing an exercise in combat training at Marine Corps boot camp in South Carolina. In early and brutality of the country’s 2013, the Pentagon lifted its ban on women serving in combat. LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ADVOCATESsecurity forces. raising rents. Already, many MARY JENNINGS HEGAR, had been fighting and dying Alejandro’s death pro- working-class families have ZOE BEDELL, beside their brothers in arms pelled Castellanos to act. She been forced out of the city’s for years, particularly in Iraq launched a movement against downtown. COLLEEN FARRELL, and Afghanistan. Yet a female corruption in Honduras’s po- JENNIFER HUNT soldier sent to engage with lice force and the widespread Historian Thant Myint-U— local Afghan women, for ex- impunity in the judicial the grandson of former U.N. FOR SHATTERING ample, who found herself shot system. In response, President Secretary-General U Thant— THE BRASS CEILING. at, returning fire, and even Porfirio Lobo has taken steps has been heading efforts to wounded was still considered to improve law enforcement, preserve Yangon’s cultural SERVICE MEMBERS | ROUND ROCK, as having served in a noncom- with some initial success: heritage, pushing the govern- TEXAS; WASHINGTON; bat role. This would leave her Castellanos’s crime center ment to pass laws protecting ineligible for promotions and reported in June that the buildings, religious sites, and »NEW YORK; PHILADELPHIA career paths that depend on homicide rate is expected to the people who live and work in The U.S. Defense battlefield experience. decline 6 percent this year. the city’s busy neighborhoods. Department made His organization, the Yangon news in early 2013 when it an- Women fighting on The problems facing Heritage Trust, has brought nounced that women would the front lines was some- Honduras remain immense, together architects, historians, be allowed to serve in combat thing of a last taboo in the and Castellanos, who won business leaders, and govern- roles, opening up roughly United States; until 2013, an International Women of ment officials to forge a com- 238,000 jobs previously the country fell behind the Courage Award in March, faces prehensive urban development closed to them. Although likes of Canada, France, and enormous hurdles in the fight plan. This year, Thant Myint-U then-Defense Secretary Leon Israel, which already allowed to save her country. But as she met with President Thein Panetta made the announce- women to serve in com- has said, “I couldn’t have my Sein—on whose National ment, he’d received a swift bat. Within a few months son killed and stay silent in Economic and Social Advisory kick in the pants from four of Hegar, Bedell, Farrell, fear.... I had to fight, and I will Council he sits—to discuss the women. and Hunt’s filing suit, the fight.” trust’s goals for conservation, Pentagon announced plans green spaces, walkability, and Mary Jennings Hegar, Zoe to lift combat restrictions THANT MYINT-U cultural diversity. Bedell, Colleen Farrell, and completely. As a result, it’s FOR SHAPING Jennifer Hunt, who all served now ensured that, regardless YANGON’S FUTURE BY “I think one thing is to pro- tours of duty in combat zones of gender, the most qualified PRESERVING ITS PAST. tect the old architecture, one (two of them were awarded people will be able to hold thing is to make this city work Purple Hearts), filed suit the military positions they FOUNDER, YANGON HERITAGE for business,” Thant Myint-U against the Pentagon in deserve, making the world’s told the Irrawaddy in October, November 2012 to end what most powerful defense appa- » TRUST | MYANMAR “but it also has to work for they called an outdated rule ratus even stronger. Myanmar is experienc- ordinary people.” that didn’t “match the reality ing growing pains. As of modern warfare.” Women new investment pours into the country’s commercial capital of Yangon, development pres- sures and a lack of government regulation pose grave threats to the city’s historic sites. New skyscrapers are replacing old buildings constructed during and after the colonial era, changing the character of whole neighborhoods and FOREIGN POLICY 109
THECHRONICLERS In an age when “search” is a browser function that can call up more information in an instant than an ancient scholar could accumulate in a lifetime, it is easy to mistake data for knowledge. The Global Thinkers in this category put that hubris in perspective, showing us novel ways of understanding the world and our place in it. They have traveled to jungles and deserts, near-Earth orbit and the Martian surface. With reporting that moved us, photography that shook our view of conflict, and research that exposed the very fabric of physical existence, they have helped us understand what it means to be human. DAMIAN EVANS an aircraft to the ground, even Indiana Jones-style terms. FRANÇOIS ENGLERT, through dense tree canopy. By They stress that lidar map- PETER HIGGS, ARCHAEOLOGIST | AUSTRALIA measuring the time it takes ping, beyond finding ruins, for beams to bounce back, can provide crucial insights FABIOLA GIANOTTI BILL BENENSON, scientists can create detailed into how civilizations live and FOR UNRAVELING THE STEVE ELKINS maps of what’s below. die. In Cambodia, for instance, MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE. lidar has dramatically illus- FILMMAKERS | SANTA MONICA, CALIF. In May, Benenson and trated how the collapse of the PHYSICISTS | BELGIUM, BRITAIN, Elkins released new lidar- classical Angkor civilization FOR USING LASERS TO DISCOVER generated images taken was likely tied to environmen- » SWITZERLAND AND MAP ANCIENT CITIES. over Honduras that show tal damage created by urban In the last two years, foundations, canals, and water-management systems. François Englert and » People have been roads of what could be La In other words, the people of Peter Higgs have finally gotten looking for “lost cities” Ciudad Blanca, a city that Angkor probably sowed some to see proof of predictions they for centuries. But what’s really explorers have sought since of the seeds of their own de- made in 1964 about the funda- the best way to find one, and the era of conquistador struction. (For more on lidar, mental nature of the universe what can we learn from a Hernándo Cortés. (The men see Douglas Preston’s article and the beginning of humani- once-thriving metropolis? had announced the initial on p. 112.) ty’s story. discovery of the overall site These are questions that in mid-2012.) Then, in June, With urban populations ex- Englert and Higgs, now 81 Damian Evans, Bill Benenson, scientists in Cambodia led by ploding, inequality mounting, and 84, deduced the existence and Steve Elkins have begun Evans announced that they and climate change intensi- of a sort of force field across the to answer. The three men, had uncovered a massive city fying, lidar’s ability to reveal universe that instills elementa- along with teams of scientists, complex rivaling Phnom Penh what happened to long-gone ry particles with mass as they are using a technology called in size. civilizations doesn’t just revo- pass through it. This, in turn, lidar, short for “light detection lutionize the work of archaeol- allows there to be stars, planets, and ranging,” to find the ruins Some researchers who use ogists—it offers warnings for and people. Their theory set of ancient civilizations. Lidar lidar are loath to describe what us all. off a long search for the Higgs works by bouncing billions of they do in adventure-seeking, boson, or “God particle,” neces- laser shots from the bottom of 110 DECEMBER 2013
however, knows its next step: It is already working on a new rover, set to launch in 2020. NASA PHOTO While living on the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield became a viral sensation for tweets, pictures, and videos he posted CHRIS HADFIELD LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS CHRONICLERSonline. Here, he performs a version of David Bowie’s song “Space Oddity.” FOR MAKING MANNED sary for that force field to exist. long list of questions,” Gianotti didn’t sing, but vibrated at a SPACE FLIGHT COOL AGAIN. After announcing in July 2012 told Symmetry magazine in range of frequencies; strung that they might have found the April, citing the quest to under- together, these sounded like ASTRONAUT | CANADA particle, researchers with the stand the mystery of so-called the song.) Large Hadron Collider (lhc) at dark matter. “I think the best » Chris Hadfield, the the cern particle-physics labo- reward will be to find some- It took 7,000 people five Canadian commander ratory near Geneva confirmed thing totally unexpected.” years to make the rover. Today, of the International Space this year that data analysis dozens of nasa engineers and Station (iss) in the first half of “strongly indicates that it is a THE MARS ROVER TEAM scientists continue to monitor 2013, was the best ambassador Higgs boson.” In October, En- FOR SHOWING US Curiosity from the Jet Propul- for outer space since Buzz glert and Higgs were awarded ANOTHER WORLD. sion Laboratory in Pasadena, Aldrin. The mustachioed the Nobel Prize in physics. Calif.—tending to its me- Hadfield—a fighter pilot »NASA SCIENTISTS | PASADENA, CALIF. chanical health, analyzing its turned astronaut turned so- While the romance of the Landing the rover discoveries, and planning its cial media mastermind—took God particle will always be Curiosity on Mars in daily activities, from tests to up residence in orbit in De- associated with Englert and 2012 was a big deal for nasa. treks. For the first few months cember 2012 and immediately Higgs, credit for the grinding But the one mile the rover after Curiosity landed, team took to Twitter, Facebook, study of quadrillions of high- traveled in its first year on the members even adjusted their and other networks with speed particle collisions that Red Planet’s surface was far schedules so they could work messages, videos, and photos could reveal its existence goes more interesting than the 352 on “Mars time.” of his experience. He became to Fabiola Gianotti and her million miles it traveled from a sensation: When he arrived team. For four years, she was Earth. This year, the rover Curiosity’s mission has less on the station, he had around the coordinator and spokesper- discovered water, shared more than one more Earth year to 20,000 Twitter followers, but son for cern’s colossal work. than 70,000 images, accrued go, during which it will travel not long after he returned Or, as the New York Times put it 1.4 million Twitter followers, to the base of Mars’s Mount to Earth in May, he hit the 1 in March, she was “the nominal and sang “Happy Birthday” on Sharp and begin a slow ascent million mark. herder of 3,000 putative Ein- the anniversary of its land- in search of discoveries. What steins,” handling everything ing in August—the first time happens after the mission is Hadfield had something from strategy to operations to music was played on another less certain. The rover has no for everyone and conveyed it budgeting. planet. (Technically, Curiosity way to return to Earth, but all with boyish glee: stunning it has enough fuel to last a photos of Earth (he was a cern’s research will con- decade. particular fan of Australia tinue. “The lhc has been con- and the Bahamas), awesome ceived and built to address a The remarkable team sup- science experiments (what porting Curiosity back home, happens when you wring out a washcloth in space?), and personal details about life in space (how astronauts sleep, brush their teeth, even make sandwiches). And of course, there was his cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”—in Hadfield’s version, Major Tom survives—shot on the iss and uploaded to YouTube just before Hadfield came home. It has garnered more than 18 million views. By painting a charming, intimate portrait of his work and our planet, Hadfield reawakened the awe humanity felt about space exploration a half-century ago. #notbad, @Cmdr_Hadfield. FOREIGN POLICY 111
THE DESIGN This lidar AND FALL OF map shows CIVILIZATIONS elevations in part of Honduras’s Mosquitia rain- forest region. LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS CHRONICLERS THE TECHNOLOGY UNCOVERING The Chases declared lidar the greatest vey known sites.) And in May 2012, they IMAGES COURTESY UTL SCIENTIFICHUMANITY’S PAST—AND archaeological advance since carbon-14 spent a number of days flying over the PERHAPS ITS FUTURE. dating, which won its discoverer a Nobel Mosquitia mountains, logging a little more Prize and transformed the science of than eight hours of actual mapping time. BY DOUGLAS PRESTON archaeology. It’s true that archaeology is on the verge of another revolution because I accompanied Benenson, Elkins, and » ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVERED THE of lidar. The technology will soon strip their team to Honduras as a journal- Maya city of Caracol, hidden in the away the world’s jungles to reveal their lost ist—a trip I later wrote about for the New jungles of Belize, in the 1930s. In the 1980s, civilizations and hidden treasures, a pros- YorkerÑeven though I believed their the husband-and-wife team of Arlen and pect recently demonstrated in dramatic chances of finding something were small. Diane Chase began the daunting project fashion by Bill Benenson and Steve Elkins. Nothing much happened in the first few of mapping Caracol and its environs. With days, as the plane gathered raw data. But teams of assistants and students, they A few years ago, the two filmmakers had on the morning of the fourth day, the chief tramped through the rain forest, record- the crazy idea of mapping a large swath mapping engineer had crunched enough ing and measuring every archaeological of unknown rain forest in the rugged data to create maps of an isolated valley feature they could find. By 2009, after 25 interior mountains of Mosquitia, a region in the targeted area. Previously a skeptic, years of labor, they had some of the most in Honduras. These mountains have the he burst out of his bungalow, running like detailed maps ever made of a Maya city. distinction of being among the last archae- a madman, waving his arms and yelling, ologically unexplored regions on Earth, “There’s something in the valley!” Then they tried a new mapping tool: cut off by dense jungles, malarial swamps, “light detection and ranging” technology, roaring torrents, steep ravines, deadly When we crowded into his room, we or lidar. Although lidar had been used snakes, and the even more formidable could see that the maps were covered with for years to survey large-scale features Honduran bureaucracy. blurry, unnatural features that even to for projects such as urban planning and our inexpert eyes looked like ruins. Later planetary exploration, only recently had Benenson and Elkins were looking for analysis by archaeologists specializing it gained the resolution necessary for a legendary lost city, known as La Ciudad in Mesoamerica revealed two, possibly archaeological mapping. The Chases Blanca (the White City), long rumored to three, unknown cities in those images, joined forces with nasa and the National be hidden in the area. They persuaded the encompassing pyramids, plazas, roads, Center for Airborne Laser Mapping at the National Center for Airborne Laser Map- canals, terracing, rectangular mounds, University of Houston, which supplied a ping to undertake the speculative project, and walls. This wasn’t just a solitary city; it plane retrofitted to carry a million-dollar the first to use lidar for pure exploration. was a society. The prehistoric inhabitants lidar machine that flew five missions over (Previously, it had only been used to sur- of the Mosquitia rain forest—they do not Caracol and its environs, mapping the ground with lasers. When the images came back, the Chases were stunned. The lidar maps showed that in the quarter-century they had spent roaming the rain-forest floor, they had found only about 10 percent of what was actually there. The new maps revealed tens of thousands of previously unknown features, large and small—structures, houses, roads, reservoirs, terracing, sinkholes, caves (some with burials and ar- tifacts), and even open and looted tombs. In a little more than nine hours, the lidar mission had revealed that Caracol was a far larger area than previously imagined, an urban landscape covering 200 square kilometers. 112 DECEMBER 2013
ARCHAEOLOGY LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS CHRONICLERS IS ON THE VERGE OF ANOTHER REVOLUTION BECAUSE OF LIDAR. THE TECHNOLOGY WILL SOON STRIP AWAY THE WORLD’S JUNGLES TO REVEAL THEIR LOST CIVILIZATIONS AND HIDDEN TREASURES. The circled locations of the Americas were wrong. These jungles to map Penobscot Indian sites in Maine. I on this lidar map, are not virgin: Prior to European contact, asked her what she thought of it as a tool. they were heavily cleared and the terrain “Oh my God,” she said, “lidar is crack.” another version of the one extensively altered. Nor were these on the left page, indicate what areas populated with scattered hunt- Why does this all matter to the rest of er-gatherer tribes, as we see today, but us? Understanding how ancient civili- archaeologists say are with advanced, sophisticated farming zations organized themselves and why man-made structures civilizations. The old idea that rain-for- they collapsed is crucial to understanding previously hidden beneath est soils are nutrient-poor and unable many of the challenges we face today. The the dense tree canopy. to support large-scale farming is now inhabitants of Mosquitia experienced a known to be false. decline around the 13th century, a few have a name yet—had cleared the vege- hundred years after their more famous tation to create open areas, monumental Given that, outside of Caracol and neighbor—the Maya—utterly collapsed, architecture, roads, canals, dense housing Mosquitia, the rain forests of Central never to rise again. Long a mystery, the settlements, and intensive agriculture. In and South America are untouched by Maya collapse now appears to have been a few hours, lidar had mapped an area that lidar, I would expect surprising, if not caused by environmental degradation and would have taken perhaps a century or mind-blowing, discoveries as other ar- the growth of a wealthy class that hogged more to survey using traditional methods, chaeologists begin their own swoops over an ever-larger share of a dwindling pool and in far greater detail. the jungle canopy. of resources. Does this sound familiar? The story of archaeology is thick with Lidar doesn’t just do faster and better And this won’t just happen in the Amer- cautionary tales that speak directly to the what traditional archaeology can. By icas. The very first archaeological use of 21st century: from the demise of the Ro- mapping hundreds of square kilometers lidar in the Asian tropics led to the discov- man Empire (corruption, tax evasion, and in one fell swoop—impossible in a ground ery of an ancient Khmer city hidden in the military overspending) to the 12th-century survey—it reveals how ancient civilizations Cambodian jungle and revealed canals, fall of the Anasazi in the U.S. Southwest organized themselves on the largest scales, roads, dikes, a score of unknown temples, (clear-cutting, overfarming, and over- how the hinterlands were connected to a cave full of ancient carvings, and hun- reaching by the priestly class). the cities, how the cities were connected to dreds of mysterious mounds that may be each other, and how people farmed, traded, ancient tombs. Not long ago, I met a young Civilizations change; problems endure. and engaged in religious activity. All with- anthropologist at the School for Advanced Our foreign-policy establishment would out turning over a spade of earth. Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who do well to heed the sometimes chilling mentioned that she had started using lidar lessons of the ancients. The use of lidar as an archaeological tool comes at a crucial time for the field. Over Douglas Preston is the author of many the past two decades, archaeologists have books, including Cities of Gold: A Journey realized that most of their ideas about Across the American Southwest. prehistoric settlement in the rain forests FOREIGN POLICY 113
Anwar Congo receives a medal from a grateful victim in a surreal re-enactment ofLEADING GLOBAL THINKERS CHRONICLERS PAUL SALOPEK BASSEM YOUSSEF the Indonesian genocide in The Act of Killing (top). Former Indonesian paramilitary FOR TELLING THE members—including Anwar, in the center—ride in a car in the film (bottom). SALOPEK: RICK SCIBELLI/GETTY IMAGES; YOUSSEF: KARIM SAHIB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; MOVIE STILLS COURTESY DRAFTHOUSE FILMS STORY OF HUMANITY BY FOR DEMONSTRATING THE RETRACING ITS FOOTSTEPS. POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER » WRITER | TRAVELING SATIRE. FOR DOCUMENTING A FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE. Sixty-thousand years ago, the first humans »TV HOST, COLUMNIST | EGYPT FILMMAKER | DENMARK began a long walk, migrat- El-Bernameg (The ing from Africa across the Program), Egyptian When filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer first met Anwar Congo— globe. Today, Paul Salopek is comedian Bassem Youssef’s who became the central figure of Oppenheimer’s widely praised following in their footsteps on satirical faux news show, went 2013 documentary The Act of Killing—the former Indonesian death- a seven-year, 21,000-mile trip. on hiatus during the July squad leader danced the cha-cha at the site of his crimes. While most He’s going from Ethiopia across coup that ousted President of his surviving victims were too frightened to share their memories on Arab deserts, into the moun- Mohamed Morsy, an event camera, Anwar, like many other perpetrators Oppenheimer interviewed, tains and plateaus of Asia, over Youssef called “no laughing eagerly recounted his complicity. the Bering Strait, down into the matter.” For the next several The Act of Killing chronicles the 1965-1966 genocide of some Americas, and finally to the tip months, Youssef was off the 500,000 suspected communists and leftists in the aftermath of the of Chile, where our ancestors, air—but not quiet. failed coup that foreshadowed the fall of Sukarno, Indonesia’s first as Salopek puts it, “ran out of president. The story is told through the eyes and imaginations of those horizon.” And for the benefit With a nightly audience responsible: Oppenheimer documents Anwar and other gang leaders as of his audience, Salopek is of as many as 30 million, they re-enact the atrocities they committed decades ago. immortalizing his experiences Youssef had probably been Alongside its unconventional aesthetic, the film unveils a collective in prose, photography, and Morsy’s most well-known trauma that has been repressed for nearly a half-century. The even audio. critic. Arrested in March on Indonesian government still paints the murderous campaign as a charges of insulting Islam and triumph over communism, and there have never been prosecutions in Salopek’s “Out of Eden” the president, he appeared in connection with the genocide. project is an experiment in court in a goofily oversized While Oppenheimer features activists demanding the acknowledgment what the Pulitzer Prize winner copy of a hat Morsy had worn of historical truths, his project—a pioneering work in documentary calls “slow journalism,” or to receive an honorary degree filmmaking—is really a series of personal confrontations. The film ends reporting at “a human pace of in Pakistan. Just after Morsy’s with an emotional Anwar dry-heaving after he watches himself play a 3 miles an hour.” He started ouster, Youssef’s column victim in one of his own re-enactments. The executioner, like so many in in early 2013 (at which point for the Egyptian paper al- Indonesia, may finally be ready to address the past. he wrote about his journey Shorouk justified the military for Foreign Policy), and by coup as preventing a severe October, Salopek had made it crackdown by the Muslim out of Ethiopia, across the Red Brotherhood. Sea in an “anti-ark” boat of animals meant for slaughter, But the targets of his and into Saudi Arabia. Along criticism quickly changed: the way, he has gotten to know “My dear anti-Brotherhood farmers, herders, butchers, fel- liberal,” he wrote in al- low travelers, and many others, Shorouk the following week, and he has told their stories “allow me to remind you that in regular dispatches posted just a few weeks ago you were on his website and a National desperately complaining Geographic blog. about how grim the future looked, but now that you have We know where the next six been ‘relieved’ of [the Brother- years will take Salopek. But hood], you have become a what he’ll discover and share carbon copy of their fascism along the way—those are the and discrimination.” Youssef reasons to stay tuned. stated that political moder- ates were “voices fading in the midst of the roaring cries for 114 DECEMBER 2013
vengeance and murder.” LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS CHRONICLERS Youssef’s broadcaster suspended his show on Nov. 1 after its first episode back from hiatus—an episode that sharply criticized the Egyp- tian military. But as Youssef has said before, setbacks won’t deter his campaign for moderation. “If I choose today to shut up today,” Youssef told his American counterpart, Jon Stewart, in April, “tomor- row, me and you and all of us will be forced to.” RICHARD MOSSE Richard Mosse’s image Suspicious Minds was part of his installation The Enclave, shot in the Democratic Republic of the Congo FOR SEEING WAR and featured at the 2013 Venice Biennale. THROUGH A NEW LENS. the goal of his groundbreak- lgbt (lesbian, gay, bisexual, 61% PHOTOGRAPHER | NEW YORK ing work is to bring “two and transgender) communi- counterworlds into collision: ty, whose rights are legally REALITY » Richard Mosse’s art’s potential to represent protected but routinely vio- CHECK conceptual photos narratives so painful that lated. So-called “corrective” of the Democratic Repub- they exist beyond language, rape, for instance, meant to In legal terms, South Africa lic of the Congo’s war-torn and photography’s capacity “cure” lesbians of their desire is the most progressive east are allowing viewers to to document specific trage- for other women, is perva- see conflict in a way they dies and communicate them sive. African country on matters never imagined they could. to the world.” Mosse has of lesbian, gay, bisexual, Straddling the line between certainly done that, catching Muholi’s arresting images and transgender (lgbt) art and journalism, Mosse the eyes and perhaps the have appeared everywhere has photographed the region consciences of viewers. from the New Yorker to the rights. Its 1996 constitution with an obsolete infrared film New York Times, and she beat made discrimination on the that renders shades of green ZANELE MUHOLI out elite company, including basis of sexual orientation into vibrant pinks, roses, and Russian punk-rock protest magentas. The film, Kodak FOR PHOTOGRAPHING band Pussy Riot and Saudi illegal, and in 2006, it Aerochrome, was designed by HIDDEN LIVES. director Haifaa Al Mansour, became the fifth country the U.S. military decades ago to win Index on Censorship’s in the world to legalize to detect camouflage. PHOTOGRAPHER | SOUTH AFRICA 2013 Freedom of Expression same-sex marriage. But Award for arts, which cele- Mosse stole the show at » “It’s one thing to brates courage in the pursuit the law has outpaced the 2013 Venice Biennale art theorize about lgbt of free speech. Muholi’s body public sentiment. A 2013 exhibition with The Enclave, rights,” Zanele Muholi told of work ranges from intimate Pew Research Center poll a video installation filmed in the Huffington Post this glimpses of daily life to a the DRC with 16 mm Aeroch- spring; it’s another to “vi- series of portraits—some found that 61 percent rome. To gather his material, sualize the people that you defiant, some tragic—that of South Africans do he took a cinematographer are talking about.” Muholi, a feature her participants (she not think society should and composer and embed- photographer, has dedicated won’t call them subjects) accept homosexuality, ded with armed fighters. The her life to helping her audi- staring straight through the and violence and police resulting images are striking. ences do the latter, docu- camera at the viewer. The harassment targeting lgbt They include rebels wearing menting South Africa’s black portraits were exhibited in people are common. bubblegum-tinted fatigues New York this year, marking amid dreamy, psychedelic landscapes. “The idea was to use this medium to see into the unseen, to reveal the hidden and make visible the invisible of this forgotten conflict,” Mosse told cnn. The photographer, who has also worked in Iraq, says FOREIGN POLICY 115
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS CHRONICLERSher solo debut in the United States. GERARD JULIEN/AFP/GETTYIMAGES; PACKER: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES FOR MEET THE PRESS; FRIEDMAN: NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES A devastating incident in 2012, in which thieves broke into Muholi’s Cape Town apartment and stole five years’ worth of her work—but touched nothing else—has been widely attributed to homophobia. But Muholi, herself a black lesbian, hasn’t let it slow her down. “It’s our time and our struggle,” she says. “It needs to be done with our own voices.” Zanele Muholi’s photographs depict life among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in southern Africa. GEORGE PACKER command as much wealth as THOMAS FRIEDMAN Dream,” in which Friedman the bottom 30 percent of the FOR POPULARIZING THE urged the country to adopt FOR UNMASKING THE UGLINESS entire U.S. population. “CHINESE DREAM.” a vision of the future that OF AMERICAN INEQUALITY. “marries people’s expectations Of all the books published » WRITER | WASHINGTON of prosperity with a more sus- » JOURNALIST | NEW YORK since the 2008 financial Thomas Friedman tainable China.” George Packer’s 2013 crisis, The Unwinding is the comes in for a fair book, The Unwinding: one that has most obviously amount of criticism from his Sinophiles have noted that An Inner History of the New triggered a national conver- fellow American journalists, Xi had used the phrase before, America, tells a huge, shock- sation about U.S. inequality but the ideas he gathers from and Friedman told Foreign ing tale about the failure of and economic decline. And his capital-hopping, which Policy that he only deserves dreams, the collapse of in- that, presumably, is because he distills for millions of New “part credit” for popularizing stitutions, and the widening it gives names and faces to a York Times readers, are hugely the concept of the Chinese holes in the social fabric of crisis so pervasive that most influential—not least in China. Dream—he attributes it to a country that once prided commentators tend to frame friend Peggy Liu, founder itself on its ability to spread it in terms of policies and Most notably, Friedman of the ngo Joint U.S.-China the grace of opportunity programs. Packer—already appears to have given Chinese Collaboration on Clean Energy, farther and wider than any known for his tireless re- President Xi Jinping his and said he just “took it to other before it. porting at the New Yorker— favorite rhetorical device: the a higher level.” Regardless, shows that it’s the carefully “Chinese Dream,” which Xi has post-Friedman, it has spread With his sharply detailed tracked intricacies of an defined as “the great revival to hundreds of millions of Chi- portraits of those who repre- individual’s fate that really of the Chinese nation.” In nese. The slogan now appears sent the increasingly contra- fix our attention, even when May, the Economist traced the across China—on billboards dictory extremes of Ameri- we may want to turn away. phrase back to a column Fried- and in books and newspapers. can society, Packer jolts his man published just before A song-and-dance troupe run readers into an unavoidable For all his crusading Xi was selected as president, by China’s nuclear-missile awareness of unpleasant zeal, it’s worth noting that titled “China Needs Its Own corps even had a hit ballad truths. There’s the Hartzell Packer remains suspect called “Chinese Dream.” family, for instance, precari- among many members of ously balanced on the brink the American left because As further proof of just how of ruin, as unemployment, he originally approved of the big Friedman is in China, his intermittent homelessness, war against Iraq’s Saddam book The World Is Flat was in- and medical catastrophes eat Hussein. But there can be no cluded on an official 2013 list of away at their livelihoods— dispute about his ability to what the country’s top leaders and there’s Sam Walton, the reveal the shadow sides of are reading. (For more on the entrepreneur whose heirs the world’s sole remaining reading list, see Isaac Stone superpower. Fish’s article on p. 139.) 116 DECEMBER 2013
THEHEALERS More than 1 billion people live in poverty—that is, on less than $1.25 per day. The death toll in Syria’s civil war has risen to over 100,000. About 3.3 billion people are at risk for contracting malaria, and over 16 million people with HIV cannot access the drugs that combat the virus. In short, much is broken in the world. From developing a global anti-poverty agenda to ensuring access to medicines to explaining how nonviolence really can foster change, the Global Thinkers in this category—doctors, lawyers, researchers, entrepreneurs—are working to heal the wounds that afict so many. HANNAH GAY, case became heroes. patients were in sustained invent this idea. When they KATHERINE LUZURIAGA, It remains early to speak remission and didn’t need founded their organization, DEBORAH PERSAUD drug therapy.) GiveDirectly, governments of a “cure,” which is still from Brazil to Uganda had FOR BRINGING US CLOSER elusive despite the strides that hiv was once a death sen- already begun experimenting TO A CURE FOR HIV. medicine has made in treating tence. Now, because of people with cash transfer programs. hiv. Other researchers have like Gay, Luzuriaga, and Per- But the four economists have PEDIATRICIAN | JACKSON, MISS. warned against raising expec- saud, the virus is looking more brought the controversial IMMUNOLOGIST | WORCESTER, MASS. tations; it’s possible that elimi- vulnerable than ever. idea to the nonprofit side of nating the virus completely development, which has long VIROLOGIST | BALTIMORE, MD. was easier with such a young MICHAEL FAYE, subscribed to a “teach a man patient, as the hiv may not PAUL NIEHAUS, to fish” ethos. » Born prematurely in have had a chance to establish JEREMY SHAPIRO, rural Mississippi to a itself fully in the girl’s body. ROHIT WANCHOO GiveDirectly, which oper- mother who didn’t know she ates in Kenya, works in three was hiv-positive until a test Still, the work of Hannah FOR TRUSTING THE POOR TO simple steps: People donate during labor, the baby girl Gay, the pediatrician who SPEND THEIR MONEY WISELY. money online, the organiza- seemed destined to join the administered the treatment, tion identifies poor house- more than 3 million children and Katherine Luzuriaga and FOUNDERS, GIVEDIRECTLY | NEW YORK holds, and donations are then around the world who have Deborah Persaud, two re- transferred to those house- the virus that causes aids. searchers who worked on the » It’s a simple idea: Give holds via cell-phone banking. case, has laid the groundwork poor people money Already, it has recruited major Instead, thanks to an for further research investigat- with no strings attached, supporters like Google and aggressive early course of ing rapid, aggressive treat- because they know best what Facebook co-founder Chris treatment—three potent drugs ment, even in adults. (Another they need. Hughes. In 2013, it got a boost, given to her starting when she study released shortly after in both legitimacy and public was just 30 hours old—she Gay, Luzuriaga, and Persaud’s Michael Faye, Paul attention, from academic became the first newborn announcement reported that Niehaus, Jeremy Shapiro, papers showing the benefits effectively cured of hiv. And 14 adults who’d received early and Rohit Wanchoo didn’t of cash transfers. Throughout when they broke this news in treatment had been func- the year, GiveDirectly was March, the three women who tionally cured, meaning the treated and documented her FOREIGN POLICY 117
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS HEALERS PATENTLY featured everywhere from man movement and, in turn, to health, won a landmark case DIFFERENT npr to the New York Times, the epidemiology of disease. in India against the Swiss com- JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES and it was No. 2 on GiveWell’s pany Novartis, which sought India is one of the world’s annual list of top charities. Buckee, who has pub- to patent its cancer drug Glivec leading producers of cheap, lished research on the subject in the country. The victory has In a study analyzing the throughout 2013, has already major implications for public generic drugs that treat effectiveness of its transfers, used data sets from some 15 health in India and many everything from hiv to GiveDirectly found that million cell phones to suggest countries to which it exports recipients are not spending public health efforts in malaria- drugs: A generic version of cancer to pain. Just how the money on cigarettes and ridden western Kenya. Data Glivec is 92 percent less expen- much less expensive are alcohol; most seem to invest from one cell tower near the sive than the original, offering generics, which Anand Grover wisely—in livestock, housing, town of Kericho, for instance, poor patients who need the has fought to protect, than or education. What’s less cer- revealed that migrant workers drug—an effective treatment brand-name meds in India? tain is the long-term impact were likely bringing malaria for leukemia—a more afford- of cash transfers in countries from nearby Lake Victoria. able option. The case also BRAND-NAME where poverty’s causes are Public health workers could set a new legal precedent for GENERIC systemic. use such information to target determining when a company the sources of outbreaks in India can obtain a patent. GLIVEC, USED TO Still, GiveDirectly’s found- and potentially prevent FIGHT LEUKEMIA ers are shaking up the chari- future ones. Cell-phone It wasn’t the first time table landscape in a big way users could also receive text Grover, founder of the Mum- $1,920/mo. by insisting that donors trust alerts instructing them to use bai-based Lawyers Collective, $160/mo. the poor. As Wanchoo said in mosquito nets and take other an ngo that handles human February, “We want to make precautions when they enter rights and health-related NEXAVAR, USED TO cash transfers the benchmark malarial zones. litigation, had gone to the mat TREAT KIDNEY AND against which all poverty- with Big Pharma. In 2008, he alleviation interventions are Buckee’s research, in other successfully argued against LIVER CANCER measured.” words, is helping put the pos- patenting the drug nevirapine sibility of better health right hemihydrate, used to treat hiv. $5,234/mo. CAROLINE BUCKEE at people’s fingertips. And he’s continuing the fight: $128/mo. FOR USING METADATA This May, in his U.N. capac- TO FIGHT DISEASE. ANAND GROVER ity, Grover released a report DICLOFENAC, A COMMON FOR GOING TO THE analyzing the international PAINKILLER »EPIDEMIOLOGIST | CAMBRIDGE, MASS. MAT WITH BIG PHARMA. barriers to guaranteeing access Sometimes, love can to medicines. $0.83/10 tablets lead to all sorts of U.N. SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON $0.05/10 tablets connections. Grover was drawn to public »THE RIGHT TO HEALTH | INDIA advocacy after completing a ONE-PILL-A-DAY In 2006, Caroline Buckee Many developing biochemistry degree in Britain. HIV TREATMENT was in Kenya with her hus- countries rely on “I loved the lab,” he told the (KNOWN GENERICALLY band, cell-phone technology India’s generic-drug industry Lancet medical journal, AS TDF/FTC/EFV) executive and researcher for cheap medicines to treat “but I was looking for things to Nathan Eagle, when she real- life-threatening diseases like change in the world.” $1,033/year ized his work might fill gaps hiv/aids and cancer. Anand $158/year in her own research, which Grover hopes to keep it that MARK DYBUL focuses on the mechanisms way by challenging pharma- FOR SOURCING, PLEASE VISIT that shape the evolution and ceutical giants whose patents FOR REVITALIZING THE WORLD’S FOREIGNPOLICY.COM transmission of malaria and threaten the poor’s access to WAR ON INFECTIOUS DISEASE. other diseases. medicine. 118 DECEMBER 2013 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GLOBAL While traditional sources In April, Grover, a human FUND TO FIGHT AIDS, TUBERCULOSIS of information on migration rights lawyer and the U.N. are not always reliable or special rapporteur on the right »AND MALARIA | SWITZERLAND extensive, cell phones provide In January, Mark a virtual map of their owners’ Dybul, the former activities: where they travel, head of the U.S. President’s how long they stay there, and Emergency Plan for aids Re- even what they might be do- lief, established by George W. ing. With the number of cell Bush, began a four-year term phones ballooning in develop- as the executive director of the ing countries, Buckee realized Global Fund to Fight aids, Tu- that mobile data could be berculosis and Malaria. Creat- used to better understand hu- ed by the G-8, the Global Fund accounts for about one-fourth
MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES: KHARAS: DEBORAH CAMPOS/WORLD BANK also be incentivized to create national targets in response to LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS HEALERS minimum standards set at the international level. The panel’s report will even- tually morph into the post-mdg agenda, which Kharas insists must be bold. Ending poverty, he has written, “can only be achieved if we learn from our past mistakes; business-as-usu- al will not get us there.” This pharmacy in Bangalore, India, sells medicines at less than 50 percent of their maximum retail prices. Anand Grover has been SANJAY BASU, fighting to protect the country’s generic-drug industry to ensure that poor people in need of medicines can aford them. DAVID STUCKLER of international financing in “We are at a critical moment … the lead author and executive FOR WARNING THAT the fight against hiv/aids and and every dollar, and pound, secretary for a panel devel- AUSTERITY CAN BE DEADLY. even more in the fights against now counts,” he has written. oping a successor regime to tb and malaria. the Millennium Develop- EPIDEMIOLOGIST | STANFORD, CALIF. Dybul is trying to save the ment Goals (mdgs), a set of Dybul arrived at a difficult Global Fund so that it can save benchmarks in education, »SOCIOLOGIST, EPIDEMIOLOGIST | BRITAIN time. The Global Fund’s last lives. He has three years to health, and other areas that With the U.S. Centers director stepped down after finish what he’s started. were endorsed by the U.N. in for Disease Control and reports that the organization 2000 and that are set to expire Prevention unable to monitor had lost millions as a result HOMI KHARAS in 2015. (The panel’s co-chairs flu outbreaks, the National of mismanagement and are heads of state, and its Institutes of Health shuttering corruption. Donations fell off FOR CHARTING A PATH membership includes govern- some drug testing, and the dramatically, leading the Bill TO THE END OF POVERTY. ment officials and develop- Food and Drug Administration & Melinda Gates Foundation ment experts.) The panel’s suspending inspections of food to pledge $750 million to the ECONOMIST | WASHINGTON first big report, published in facilities, the 2013 U.S. govern- Global Fund to restore public May, throws down the gaunt- ment shutdown showed how confidence. Fiscal crises in » What comes after the let of “eradicating extreme limited national budgets can Europe and the United States “most successful global poverty from the face of the affect the institutions tasked have also cut into the Global anti-poverty push in history,” to earth by 2030.” But it shifts with ensuring human health. Fund’s donor base. “Unfortu- quote U.N. Secretary-General emphasis away from what’s Sanjay Basu and David Stuck- nately,” Dybul told reporters Ban Ki-moon, which nearly found in the mdgs, based on ler, however, were studying this this year, “infectious diseases halved the percentage of people what has been learned about issue well before the shutdown, don’t pay much attention to living on less than $1.25 a day? the complexities of battling and their findings show that, budget cycles.” That’s the question facing privation. too often, fiscal policy can have Homi Kharas, a development deadly consequences. Dybul has hit the ground expert at the Brookings Insti- Kharas, a former World running. In March, he oversaw tution. Bank economist, argues that Basu, an epidemiologist and the implementation of a new environmental sustainability, physician at Stanford Univer- funding model that enhances Kharas, tapped by Ban, is inclusive economic growth, sity, and Stuckler, a political communication and flexibility and good governance must be economist and epidemiologist in the process through which at the center, not the periphery, at Oxford University, gathered countries apply for Global of any future development and analyzed huge sets of data Fund grants. He also secured plan and that data indicat- on the effects that economic $1 billion from Britain, as well ing whether goals are being stringency has had on public as a White House request for met must be crowdsourced, health in recent history. They $1.65 billion from the U.S. Con- disaggregated, and widely published their findings in gress, for the Global Fund’s accessible. To cultivate a “race their 2013 book The Body Eco- 2014-2016 donation coffers, to the top,” countries should nomic: Why Austerity Kills. which need to hit $15 billion. If you think the book’s title is a tad dramatic, think again. Looking at cases such as Eu- ropean Union-backed budget cuts in Greece and the Great Recession in the United States, Basu and Stuckler conclude, as they wrote in a New York Times FOREIGN POLICY 119
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS HEALERS GREEK op-ed, that “austerity—severe, ERICA CHENOWETH TRAGEDY immediate, indiscriminate cuts WAYNE ARMSTRONG/UNIVERSITY OF DENVER to social and health spend- FOR PROVING GANDHI RIGHT. No country in Europe has come ing—is not only self-defeat- to represent the good and ing, but fatal.” For instance, POLITICAL SCIENTIST | DENVER cutting public health budgets, bad sides of economic austerity as Greece did, can increase Erica Chenoweth wants to show the world that civil resistance more than Greece. Firmly suicide rates, hiv infections, is an efective change agent. When she published Why Civil situated in the bad column, and infant mortality. Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict with Maria Stephan in 2011, nato was pummeling Muammar al-Qaddafi’s forces in according to Sanjay Basu and Basu and Stuckler argue that, support of Libya’s warring rebels while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s David Stuckler, is the impact in hard times, investments in government was shooting peaceful protesters in the streets of Hama. of budget cuts on health. The public health should be expand- Comparing the rebels and protesters, Chenoweth wrote in Foreign Policy, statistics they cite are, in a ed, not slashed. Every $1 spent “Arguing in favor of the Syrians’ tactics, and against the Libyans’, would on public health, they assess, seem counterintuitive—but for the evidence.” word, dismal. can lead to as much as $3 in eco- To showcase this evidence, Chenoweth released the Nonviolent and nomic growth. What’s more, as Violent Campaigns and Outcomes 2.0 dataset, which chronicles 250 40% Basu and Stuckler wrote in the “regime change, anti-occupation, and secession” movements, both violent Times, “It is far more expensive and nonviolent, from 1945 to 2006. The data set, according to the University The amount the national to control an epidemic than to of Denver, is “the first of its kind to systematically explore the sequencing of health budget has been cut prevent one.” tactics and their efects on the strategic outcomes of … campaigns.” since 2008—and the amount Chenoweth, who in addition to writing scholarly articles co-runs a blog infant mortality rose between SENDHIL called Political Violence @ a Glance, uses her data to show that nonviolent MULLAINATHAN, campaigns over the last century were twice as likely to succeed as violent 2008 and 2010. ELDAR SHAFIR ones. She also uses them to make arguments about current events: for instance, why U.S. strikes on Syria aren’t wise and why Egypt’s pro- 35,000 FOR SHOWING HOW SCARCITY government sit-ins over the summer were unlikely to work. “Efective civil CHANGES THE WAY YOU THINK resistance involves a number of skillfully sequenced moves that increase The number of doctors, broad-based, diverse participation, allow participants to avoid repression, nurses, and other health ABOUT EVERYTHING. and lead regime loyalists to defect,” she wrote in Foreign Afairs in August. workers who have lost their Where her research goes from here depends on where people rise up next. jobs as a result of austerity ECONOMIST | CAMBRIDGE, MASS. But Chenoweth has numbers on her side, and she’s ready to wield them. PSYCHOLOGIST | PRINCETON, N.J. Nonviolently, of course. measures. » Why do the poor their approach is compassion- fretting about insufficient time 25% stay poor? Harvard ate: They have acknowledged before a deadline and a person University economist Sendhil that they hope their book, short on cash fretting about The rise in hospital Mullainathan and Princeton one of the most-talked-about insufficient funds to pay rent,” admissions in 2009. University psychologist Eldar nonfiction reads of 2013, will they write. Shafir blame what they call help readers empathize with 200% the “scarcity trap.” They argue the poor. To that end, Mullain- The intended effect is a that scarcity—simply not athan and Shafir broaden their better grasp on the lives of the The increase in hiv infections having enough of something discussion of scarcity beyond oft-forgotten. “This allows you since 2011. essential—can profoundly poverty—detailing the ways in to almost project yourself more affect the mind. It diminishes which a lack of time, energy, into people’s shoes,” Mullaina- FOR SOURCING, PLEASE VISIT intelligence, compels people to even companionship can trap than told the Washington Post, FOREIGNPOLICY.COM behave irrationally, and causes people in a self-destructive “and therefore to gain a richer them to focus obsessively on cycle. “[We] draw a connection understanding of a world which 120 DECEMBER 2013 immediate concerns rather between the busy manager many of us don’t otherwise than long-term consequences. have access to.” “[I]t affects … ultimately what we decide and how we behave,” they write in their 2013 book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Mullainathan is a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient who uses behavioral economics to address public policy issues. Shafir’s expertise centers on the psychology of decision-making. Their findings are novel and
THEARTISTS There is a place for artistic creation purely in the name of beauty: Ars gratia artis, the saying goes—art for the sake of art. But as the Global Thinkers in this category show, art also has the power to make a striking political statement or reflect, even define, a moment in history. These artists have used brush strokes, words, images, and more to shock the senses and, in some cases, the sensibilities. They have defied the rules of artistic forms, as well as social norms of gender, race, and class. From China to Saudi Arabia, Britain to Azerbaijan, they have shown that art doesn’t just matter—it is vital. LOÏC VENANCE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES HAIFAA AL MANSOUR a society where women’s film’s title character would be our times fearlessly before freedom is famously limited, pleased by the recent easing of us.” But probably the highest FOR QUIETLY BREAKING THE yet she won the government’s restrictions on women riding praise the review offered was, KINGDOM’S GENDER BARRIERS. permission to do her work and bikes. As advocates, artists, and “It never feels false.” made the House of Saud proud: others push for further reform, »FILM DIRECTOR | BAHRAIN The government recently there could be lessons in Adichie, one of the world’s As a film website put submitted Wadjda, which Mansour’s restrained touch. “It most acclaimed young novel- it this fall, a study of was released to American is a hard, tough time now in the ists, has grappled frequently Saudi cinema “would essential- audiences in 2013, for an Oscar Middle East, and it is up to peo- with notions of authenticity. ly begin and end with Haifaa nomination. ple to change things,” Mansour She grew up at the University Al Mansour.” As the director told npr this fall. “Not only by of Nigeria, the daughter of a of the 2005 documentary Mansour has succeeded, in changing regimes and political professor, in a house that once Women Without Shadows and part, due to her intentionally stuff, but also by believing in belonged to the writer Chinua the recent, critically acclaimed subtle style. She accommodated women.” Achebe. Despite her upbring- Wadjda—the first feature film Saudi customs while filming ing, an American college shot entirely in Saudi Arabia— Wadjda by directing from inside CHIMAMANDA professor once told Adichie Mansour is more or less the a van while dressed in an abaya. NGOZI ADICHIE that characters in her first only person bringing movies And the film, while making novel “were not authentically made in the closed-off king- a political statement, is not FOR DEFYING STEREOTYPES African,” because they “drove dom to the outside world. directly confrontational: Rather ON TWO CONTINENTS. cars” and “were not starving.” than an angry screed, Mansour She is also a woman in produced a gently moving AUTHOR | NIGERIA; Americanah, her third portrait of one girl’s quest to buy novel, is the semi-autobi- a bicycle in a country where she » COLUMBIA, MD. ographical story of Ifemelu, isn’t allowed to ride one. The New York Times a Nigerian woman who called Chimamanda struggles with being black in Conditions for Saudi women Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 Amer- America and returns to a Nige- seem to be sluggishly improv- icanah “a novel that holds ria that is too proud to fully ing. Women will be able to the discomfiting realities of accept her. (“Americanah” is a vote and run in local elections gently mocking Nigerian word beginning in 2015, and the for people who have returned FOREIGN POLICY 121
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ARTISTS FIRST LINES from the United States with States only to run up against And in 2013, as a New York Western affectations.) a sordid consumerism that Times reviewer put it, he HAMID: DANIEL ZUCHNIK/GETTY IMAGES; BULAWAYO: LEON NEAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES From We Need New Names offers little relief from the “gestures to a new direction by NoViolet Bulawayo Adichie has also challenged challenges of her childhood. for the novel”—big praise for “We are on our way to notions of “authentic” gender The novel, for which Bula- any writer. Budapest: Bastard and roles. In a popular ted talk wayo became the first black delivered in early 2013, she African woman shortlisted Hamid’s How to Get Chipo and Godknows and stressed that girls are still be- for the Man Booker Prize, Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is Sbho and Stina and me. ing socialized into subservient aims to speak for a generation a rags-to-riches story, but We are going even though identities and that “feminist” of Zimbabweans who, like without the clear uplift that we are not allowed to cross remains a dirty word in many many other young Africans, such tales usually provide. Mzilikazi Road, even though circles. grew up in the topsy-turvy It is rife with the tensions Bastard is supposed to be world of post-colonial society, and pathologies awakened watching his little sister Prejudices are powerful where poverty, violence, and by rapid development that Fraction, even though preconceptions of what makes disorganization often reigned offers some people a way out Mother would kill me dead if someone black or white, supreme and the desire to of poverty, while leaving a she found out; we are just African or American, male leave one’s home was both great many behind. Structur- going. There are guavas to or female. The more Adichie inevitable and fraught. ally, the novel pokes fun at steal in Budapest, and right writes and speaks, the more the business self-help books her audience questions what Although We Need New and get-rich-quick schemes now I’d rather die is real, what is false, and what Names never mentions that have proliferated in Asia. for guavas. We didn’t is culturally imagined. Mugabe, he hovers in the Written in the second person eat this morning and background. And with the and set in what is unmistak- my stomach feels like NOVIOLET BULAWAYO 89-year-old dictator winning ably Hamid’s native Pakistan, somebody just took a shovel FOR GIVING VOICE TO THE yet another term as president the novel chronicles 70-plus and dug everything out.” “BORN-FREE” GENERATION. in August, Bulawayo’s novel years in the life of “you,” an poses an important question: appropriately unnamed male From How To Get Filthy NOVELIST | PALO ALTO, CALIF. How can the “born-free” protagonist who travels to the Rich in Rising Asia generation move beyond city in search of a better life. by Mohsin Hamid » A member of what’s Mugabe and other African The character cycles through known as the “born- strongmen? “We need new many exploits, from falling “Look, unless you’re writing free” generation, NoViolet ways of living, new ways of in love with a glamorous but one, a self-help book is Bulawayo never knew the imagining ourselves, new impulsive model, to starting a an oxymoron. You read a yoke of colonial rule. Instead, ways of leadership,” Bulawayo business selling falsely labeled she grew up under the con- said in September, “starting bottled water, to turning to self-help book so someone stant gaze of Zimbabwean from the self to the larger crime in order to make money. who isn’t yourself can help President Robert Mugabe. The communal.” Through it all, he runs up you, that someone being generational moniker serves against the stark and often the author. This is true of as a bittersweet reminder of MOHSIN HAMID ironic contrasts that so often the whole self-help genre. all that Zimbabwe’s struggles mark developing countries: It’s true of how-to books, never achieved for its people. FOR PAINTING A DISQUIETING the coexistence of piety and for example. And it’s true And Bulawayo, whose real PICTURE OF ASIA’S RISE. corruption, fabulous displays of personal improvement name is Elizabeth Tshele, is a of wealth amid unimaginable novelist whose work wrestles » NOVELIST | PAKISTAN squalor, and the unshakeable books too. Some might with that frustrating reality. Mohsin Hamid is a urge—exemplified most clear- even say it’s true of religion master critic of the ly in the novel by the explosion Her 2013 novel, We Need modern global condition, of gated communities—to live books. But some others New Names, has established using humanization, wit, above it all. might say that those who Bulawayo, born in 1981, as a parody, and other devices to say that should be pinned writer to watch. It follows a examine how the fast pace of Best known for his 2007 to the ground and bled dry young Zimbabwean who has social and economic change novel, The Reluctant Funda- left her home country for has affected the individual. mentalist, Hamid has gained with the slow slice of a the prosperity of the United further affection among read- blade across their throats. ers with How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. And in tackling So it’s wisest simply to the subject of development so note a divergence of views trenchantly, he has garnered on that subcategory and praise for breaking a genre barrier: As American academic move swiftly on.” Tyler Cowen put it, Hamid’s book is “a landmark in the 122 DECEMBER 2013 integration of economics and fiction.”
ZAHA HADIDHADID: LEON NEAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; JIA: LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGESit’s important to build a civic facility for the JIA ZHANGKE population,” Hadid told the Guardian. When asked FOR BELIEVING EVERY COUNTRY LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ARTISTSwhether she would design a prison in Syria, HadidFOR USING ART TO SHOW HOW DESERVES BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS. said no—but added that she’d be willing to take on INEQUALITY BREEDS VIOLENCE. another project in the war-torn country. “I’m an ARCHITECT | BRITAIN Arab,” she said, “and if it helps people, if it’s an » FILMMAKER | CHINA opera house or a parliament building, something Jia Zhangke is angry. She refuses to be constrained by right for the masses, I would do it.” He’s angry that his angles or to accept that a building must fellow Chinese filmmakers have four corners—and Zaha Hadid also does not The first female winner of architecture’s most often ignore their country’s discriminate when it comes to subject or client. At prestigious prize, the Pritzker, in 2004, Hadid worsening social problems, least, not much. has a signature style that includes flowing lines including rising inequality and This year, Hadid, an acclaimed Iraqi-born, and oblong shapes, inspired by the landscapes of corruption. So he made a very British-raised architect, is completing the the Middle East. Her designs deeply divide critics different kind of movie, one Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. The in the architectural world. And some derisively that exposes the roots of the 619,000-square-foot structure, dominated refer to Hadid as a “starchitect” because of the ills he sees plaguing China and by its undulating white roof, is named after celebrity profile she has cultivated and the work the “hidden, disturbed emo- the country’s late autocratic leader and was she does for questionable patrons. tions,” as he told the Guardian, commissioned by his son, both of whom have that are increasingly bubbling committed a litany of human rights abuses. As a But Hadid, who this year also announced to the surface of everyday life. result, Hadid’s involvement with the project has that she’s designing a new genocide museum drawn criticism. in Cambodia, stands behind her work and the Jia’s movie, A Touch of Hadid has responded by saying she believes impact she thinks it can have. “As an architect,” Sin, is unblinkingly violent. that beautiful architecture has a place in she told cnn, “if you can in any way alleviate an Inspired by news headlines, it all societies. “Irrespective of the regime, oppressive situation or elevate a culture, then I portrays a country consumed think that you should.” by its demons: A worker at the iPhone supplier Foxconn commits suicide. A coal miner murders a government official and a mine owner who have cheated local villagers. A businessman tries to coerce a receptionist at a massage par- lor into having sex with him by beating her with wads of cash, and she stabs him to death. New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis once called Jia a “modern master of post- modern discontent.” A Touch of Sin, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival in April to rave reviews, is arguably Jia’s darkest work yet, as well as his most political. “[In China,] people feel if you talk about sad or tragic things it will have even more of a neg- ative impact on society,” Jia told the Guardian. “It’s really strange logic. If you can’t even face it in a film, how can you face it in reality?” FOREIGN POLICY 123
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ARTISTS 124 DECEMBER 2013
IMAGES COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND THE RUYA FOUNDATION WELCOME TO IRAQ LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ARTISTS » Iraq’s pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale featured 11 artists selected by Global Thinkers Tamara Chalabi and Jonathan Watkins. “The art world in Iraq is very isolated, decimated, and couldn’t be a further cry from the opulence of Venice,” Watkins told Art in America. Among the works displayed were Jamal Penjweny’s series of photographs Saddam Is Here (opposite page); Kadhim Nwir’s Untitled (below), made of acrylic and mixed media on canvas; and Untitled (near left) by WAMI (Yaseen Wami and Hashim Taeeh), part of an installation of furnishings and decorations made of cardboard. FOREIGN POLICY 125
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS ARTISTS LYNETTE Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s 2013 painting, titled Complication, was part of her exhibition Extracts & Verses, which earned her YIADOM-BOAKYE a nomination for the Turner Prize. STUART C. WILSON/GETTY IMAGES FOR VICTOR PINCHUK FOUNDATION; © LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK AND CORVI-MORA, LONDON FOR SUBVERTING THE reinterpretations of Western the images and installations Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, TRADITIONS OF WESTERN ART. traditions include swapping that were presented in Iraq’s England, to curate the exhi- out Napoleon for the rap artist pavilion at the 2013 Venice bition. Together, Watkins and » ARTIST | BRITAIN Ice-T, she says she’s not trying Biennale, one of the world’s Chalabi had to crisscross Iraq The people in Lynette to make a social statement premier art events. Previous- to find new talents. “There are Yiadom-Boakye’s with her work. Painting black ly, artists living and working no curators to ring up … and paintings may not be real, but people just comes more nat- in Iraq—as opposed to ones say, ‘Please tell me how the they are familiar. She paints urally to her. But in a realm in exile—had not participated scene is in Basra,’” Watkins portraits of mysterious, time- where white faces still domi- in the Biennale for more than told Britain’s Channel 4. Cha- less figures pulled from her nate, her challenge to the art 30 years. This year’s land- labi and Watkins eventually imagination—in the artist’s world is no less significant for mark pavilion was influenced settled on 11 artists. own words, “revolutionaries, its subtlety. by the country’s decades of fanatics, anthropologists tyranny and war: The image For Chalabi, Welcome and missionaries … savages TAMARA CHALABI, of the butcher, for instance, is to Iraq (the name of the … radicals and the generally JONATHAN WATKINS one in a series titled Saddam exhibition) seeks to answer a angry, amongst others.” These Is Here that illustrates how difficult question, which she figures are also mainly black, FOR DISPLAYING IRAQ’S “SOUL the dictator’s “shadow is articulated in an interview with African features, but AND GRACE” TO THE WORLD. still following Iraqi society with artBahrain: “How do they are depicted in the most everywhere,” according to the you survive with soul and European of mediums: oil CHAIRWOMAN, RUYA FOUNDATION FOR artist. grace in this nightmare of a paint. CONTEMPORARY CULTURE IN IRAQ | IRAQ country?” Iraq has sustained The pavilion was com- a vibrant but quiet artistic Portraiture may have been »DIRECTOR, IKON GALLERY | BRITAIN missioned by the Ruya culture even under the most “marginalised” in contem- A butcher holds a pic- Foundation for Contempo- harrowing circumstances. porary painting, explains the ture of Saddam Hus- rary Culture in Iraq. Ruya’s And though that culture may Turner Prize jury, which put sein over his face; a cardboard chairwoman, Tamara Chalabi still be finding its footing, Yiadom-Boakye on the short- bed, bookshelf, and table (daughter of Ahmad Chalabi, the Biennale pavilion, which list for its prestigious award furnish a room; two women the controversial Iraqi exile garnered positive reviews and in 2013 (results are due out draped in abayas walk along a who spent decades advocat- significant media attention, in December). But Yiadom- palm-lined path. ing for an American over- helped it take a major step Boakye has put a quietly sub- throw of Saddam), chose Jon- forward by introducing it to versive twist on the age-old These are just some of athan Watkins, director of the the world. practice. Her works refer- ence venerable masters like Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, but their paintings typ- ically feature people of color as either exotics or servants. To see these figures front and center, as in Yiadom-Boakye’s portraits, is jarring and makes viewers question why, exactly, they don’t consider it normal for Western art to focus on black subjects. Yiadom-Boakye is of Gha- naian descent, and unlike, say, fellow black painter Ke- hinde Wiley, whose aggressive 126 DECEMBER 2013
THE MOGULS What should one do with several million dollars? What about several billion? The Global Thinkers in this category have many diferent answers: assemble a media empire, build a new Hollywood an ocean away from California, take on repressive regimes, help tech start-ups get on their feet, bring the Internet to every corner of the globe. Together, they show that the benefit of great wealth and status is the ability to define one’s mission and reinvent it again and again. JOE KLAMAR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES JEFF BEZOS in August, the 49-year-old en- digital offerings in a “daily nese property tycoon who, in trepreneur positioned himself ritual bundle.” September, announced plans FOR BETTING ON OLD MEDIA. at the forefront of the debate to build the world’s largest film over whether—in the face of Many media observers still studio in Qingdao. »INTERNET ENTREPRENEUR | SEATTLE plummeting ad revenue, de- doubt that Bezos can breathe Jeff Bezos is known for clining circulation, and a rush new life into old media. But in Scheduled to open in 2017, a lot of things: trans- of readers to the web—the first his new role, Bezos may have the 108,000-square-foot studio forming Amazon.com from a draft of history will continue the power—and the entrepre- will be accompanied by “19 disruptive online bookseller to be printed on paper. neurial bona fides—to turn smaller facilities, one of which to a titan of e-commerce, up- innovations at the Post into will be underwater,” the Wall ending the publishing world As recently as 2012, Bezos industry-wide solutions. Street Journal reported. A sign with the launch of the Kindle, was predicting that news- reading “Qingdao Oriental shelling out $42 million for papers would cease to exist WANG JIANLIN Movie Metropolis” will grace a a clock designed to tick for within two decades, but by this nearby mountain, overlooking 10,000 years deep inside a September, the newly minted FOR DREAMING OF A a complex that will include mountain. But in 2013, he cut media baron had softened CHINESE HOLLYWOOD. resort hotels and a 3,000-seat an unlikely figure as the savior his stance: “I think printed movie theater. of the printed word. newspapers on actual paper CHAIRMAN, DALIAN may be a luxury item. It’s sort WANDA GROUP | CHINA Wang is China’s richest man, With his $250 million pur- of like, you know, people still with a net worth of $14.1 billion, chase of the Washington Post have horses, but it’s not their » Since 1923, the Holly- according to Forbes. His prop- primary way of commuting wood sign has symbol- erty firm, the Dalian Wanda to the office.” The Post’s ized the glamour and promise Group, owns hotels, shopping 136-year-old print edition, of Los Angeles as the world’s centers, and apartment build- Bezos argues, is “an elegant filmmaking capital. Nine ings across China. Movies have product that has evolved over decades later, the center of eco- come into Wang’s business decades.” And in his vision for nomic gravity is moving east to mix only recently, but in a his latest venture, it is one that China, and the biggest threat to huge way: In May 2012, Wanda “can be optimized for the local Hollywood’s global dominance announced its purchase of amc audience” and paired with could be Wang Jianlin, a Chi- Entertainment for $2.6 billion, making Wang the second- FOREIGN POLICY 127
largest owner of cinemas in North America. In September, Wang hosted a glitzy gala with the likes of Nicole Kidman and Leonardo DiCaprio to kick off Qingdao’s development. If Wang has his way, movie stars will eventually be working in his studio more often than in Los Angeles. LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS MOGULS THE MUPPETS TAKE NOURA AL KAABI Wang Jianlin plans to build a new Hollywood in the Chinese city of Qingdao. MOHSENI: PATRICK MCMULLAN/PATRICKMCMULLAN.COM; KAABI AND SESAME STREET: COURTESY TWOFOUR54; ABOVE: COURTESY QINDAO ORIENTAL MOVIE METROPOLIS FOR BUILDING In September, he hosted a ceremony to introduce the project. ABU DHABI AN ARABIC-LANGUAGE It has also partnered with SAAD MOHSENI Sesame Street introduced MEDIA EMPIRE. other media companies, like an Arabic-language version Cartoon Network, with which FOR BELIEVING THAT CEO, TWOFOUR54 | UNITED it runs an animation-training ENTERTAINMENT CAN CHANGE in 1979. Iftah Ya Simsim academy. Since Kaabi took the A COUNTRY FOR THE BETTER. (“Open Sesame”) was » ARAB EMIRATES helm in 2012, the company Arabic is one of the has expanded its work in video CHAIRMAN, MOBY GROUP | AFGHANISTAN, produced in Kuwait and world’s 10 most spoken game development and has starred Numan, a plump languages, but it’s used in a introduced a literary award for » UNITED ARAB EMIRATES camel character standing very small percentage of global Emirati novelists. This year, the When Afghans gather over 6 feet tall. The show media content—for instance, company established several to cheer on their came to an abrupt end in only 3 percent of what’s on- partnerships, with everything teams in the soccer league 1990 during the Gulf War. line. Noura Al Kaabi wants to from Arabic news stations to that he created; when they Iraqi troops took tapes of narrow that gap. Hollywood production com- tune in to see singers com- the show and the Numan panies, and began developing pete to be the next “Voice of costume, which reportedly Kaabi is ceo of twofour54 Iftah Ya Simsim, an Arabic Afghanistan” on a channel has never been recovered. (a reference to Abu Dhabi’s version of Sesame Street. he founded; when they listen In 2011, the Arab Bureau geographical coordinates), an to the chatter of disc jockeys of Education for the Gulf Emirati-funded company that Kaabi, who fell in love bantering on one of his radio States announced that it offers education and training with movies after watching stations, Saad Mohseni sees wanted to relaunch Iftah to a new generation of media The Goonies as a child, was his work as providing more Ya Simsim. And this July, producers, while providing included on Forbes’s 2013 list than a way for his fellow cit- it settled on twofour54, studios for filming movies, of the 30 most influential Arab izens to spend a few escapist the Emirati-based media television, and news. It also women in government, as well hours. He sees it as bringing hub led by Noura Al Kaabi, works as a talent incubator. Its as on the Hollywood Reporter’s normalcy to his country: as the place to host the goal is “to enable the devel- list of the 25 most powerful show. Starting next year, opment of world class Arabic women in global tv. “I want children around the Persian media and entertainment people to believe in being part Gulf region will get to know content, by Arabs for Arabs”— of building their culture,” Kaa- Bader (Bert), Anees (Ernie), while positioning Abu Dhabi as bi told the National in August. Kaaki (Cookie Monster), and a hub for that development. “Abu Dhabi won’t have a rich other beloved characters. culture without those creative No word yet on whether Twofour54 is thinking people working.” outside the box. It is seeking Numan will make to reform the Arab world’s a triumphant return. tv production model, for in- stance, by producing webisode 128 DECEMBER 2013 pilots to first gauge public interest instead of trying to sell fully pre-made tv series.
Mohseni believes pop cultureIMAGE COURTESY VOICE OF AFGHANISTAN Moby Group is a money- cluded, typically push for big- WANG GONGQUAN can weaken the Taliban’s making venture, to be sure. ger, flashier sites, Zuckerberg FOR DEFYING THE persistent influence in Af- LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS MOGULSThe New York Times reported is proposing a simplified web UNWRITTEN RULES OF ghanistan. in July that Mohseni’s empire that emphasizes low-data ap- CHINA’S BUSINESS ELITE. had expected fiscal year rev- proaches like text-based sites. When he returned from enues of about $60 million. This would require minimal INVESTOR | CHINA exile to his home country But for Mohseni, media in bandwidth and improve the following the Taliban’s fall, the new Afghanistan is about efficiency of delivering data » It sounded like Mohseni bought his first more than profits: It’s about to places previously off the your basic Faustian property, an fm radio station, the country’s future. grid. Zuckerberg imagines a bargain. In 2000, China’s with the help of the U.S. world in which rural farmers then-president, Jiang Zemin, Agency for International MARK ZUCKERBERG can obtain information about allowed businesspeople to Development. From that, FOR ENVISIONING A planting conditions and peo- join the Communist Party, he has created Moby Group, STRIPPED-DOWN INTERNET. ple in even the most underde- ending decades of official which now includes three tv veloped areas can read about discrimination against the channels, two radio stations, CEO, FACEBOOK; FOUNDER, medicine and nutrition. capitalist class. Business- an advertising agency, and INTERNET.ORG | SAN FRANCISCO people would be permitted a music label, among other As some critics have point- to accrue massive fortunes properties. » Mark Zuckerberg be- ed out, Zuckerberg’s motives and have wide leeway to lieves that “the story aren’t purely altruistic. The travel, work, and speak their Moby Group exposes of the next century is the two-thirds of the world not minds—providing they kept young Afghans to modernity. transition from an industrial, yet online represents an their criticisms of the ruling His networks broadcast Indi- resource-based economy untapped market. Moreover, party in check. an and Latin American soap to a knowledge economy.” Zuckerberg isn’t the first operas, but also homegrown In 2013, he showed that he person to try to bring the Wang Gongquan, it seems, programming, including an wants to write that story. Internet to the unconnected was never quite comfortable Afghan version of The Office, masses. Google, for instance, with that bargain. A former set in a fictional Ministry The real challenge to cre- has Project Loon, which propaganda official, Wang of Garbage. And by placing ating a knowledge economy, involves a network of relay was detained for six months women on the same tv sets the Facebook ceo says, isn’t antennas floating on weather for his involvement in the and radio stations as men, just enabling online access, balloons 20 kilometers above 1989 protests that culminat- Mohseni hopes to inspire but lowering the cost of data the ground. What sets Zuck- ed in the Tiananmen Square people to realize that “wom- plans. Either the technol- erberg’s approach apart is the massacre. He later co-found- en have views.” ogy industry finds a more emphasis on data instead of ed the property firm Vantone efficient, less expensive way infrastructure, as well as the and made a small fortune; he to bring data to the masses or big-business supporters he also founded an investment “the industry cannot sustain- has already won over: Erics- company, cdh Venture, that ably serve everyone.” son, Nokia, and Samsung, for by 2011 had more than $900 example. million in assets under man- Zuckerberg’s plan, artic- agement. ulated in his Internet.org ven- “I believe connectivity is ture, is to streamline the web. a human right,” Zuckerberg But all the while, Wang While tech developers, the writes in his Internet.org nourished a political masterminds at Facebook in- proposal. 2.7 billion people consciousness. In 2005, he down, 4.4 billion to go. joined activist Xu Zhiyong’s Open Constitution Initiative, Saad Mohseni’s media empire includes the popular televised singing competition an organization that advocat- The Voice of Afghanistan. ed for a thriving civil society in China. He spoke out for the rights of migrant workers and against “black jails,” ille- gal detention centers where Chinese petitioners are kept. It’s unknown exactly which of his actions Chinese officials considered a breach of the Faustian contract. But in early September 2013, Beijing police detained Wang on the trumped-up charge of “assembling a crowd to dis- rupt order in a public place.” He was formally arrested in October, which means it’s FOREIGN POLICY 129
LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS MOGULSNaval Ravikant co-founded AngelList, which connects start-ups with investors, because he wanted to “force transparency into the company Blackstone, an- system” for financing new tech ventures. nounced he was founding a KRIS KRUG/CREATIVE COMMONS $300 million scholarship in more likely than ever that he Rolodex have often found companies to solicit capital his name. It is modeled on will be brought to trial and themselves on the outside from “unaccredited” inves- the Rhodes program, which that he may receive a prison looking in. tors, permitting individuals sends foreign students to sentence. who make under $200,000 Oxford University. But if you Babak Nivi and Naval to invest in a start-up in get a Schwarzman scholar- As prominent human Ravikant, fed up with the re- exchange for a stake in the ship, you won’t be “reading” rights lawyer Teng Biao strictions of start-up culture, business. AngelList has been literature in the halls of a tweeted in mid-September, are rapidly making the tech quick to adapt to the new nearly millennium-old Brit- Wang “participates in citi- industry less of an insiders’ rules: Investors on the site ish school. You’ll be studying zens’ activities and promotes game. In 2010, they founded committed over $1 million to business at Tsinghua Univer- the rule of law. These are very AngelList, an online platform companies on the first day of sity in Beijing and living in courageous choices.” that connects investors with public solicitations. a pod-style dorm room in a start-ups seeking funding. state-of-the-art building. BABAK NIVI, Wildly successful, it has been “All investments used to NAVAL RAVIKANT compared to a matchmaking happen as a black art behind The Schwarzman schol- service and hailed for level- closed doors,” Ravikant told arship, which will launch FOR THROWING OPEN THE ing the entrepreneurial play- PandoDaily in October. “We in 2016 with 200 students GATES TO VENTURE CAPITAL. ing field. The site has helped had to force transparency principally from the United roughly 1,300 start-ups raise into the system.” States and China, aims to CO-FOUNDERS, over $200 million. enhance the world’s under- STEPHEN standing of China and vice »ANGELLIST | SAN FRANCISCO Ravikant has also led SCHWARZMAN versa. Schwarzman, who was For tech entrepre- efforts to loosen U.S. regu- once rejected by the Rhodes, neurs, well-connect- lations on crowdfunding. In FOR CREATING THE SCHOLARSHIP has donated $100 million ed and wealthy individual September 2013, the Securi- FOR THE CHINESE CENTURY. of his own fortune to the investors—or “angels” in ties and Exchange Commis- scholarship and is raising Silicon Valley parlance— sion (sec) lifted the ban on CEO, BLACKSTONE | NEW YORK the rest. Underscoring the have long been gatekeepers general solicitation, allowing program’s business focus, to start-up capital. And in start-ups to announce fund- » In April, Stephen most of the donors thus far— an industry that trades on raising publicly—think Kick- Schwarzman, ceo of the Boeing, Bank of America personal connections, entre- starter for equity. One month private capital management Merrill Lynch, and Credit preneurs without the right later, the sec proposed rules Suisse, among others—have that would allow private financial stakes in China. The honorary advisory board, meanwhile, includes Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair, and Yo-Yo Ma. Schwarzman is the epit- ome of a Wall Street man, with a fondness for seeing his name on things. In 2008, he funded the renovation of the main branch of the New York Public Library, now called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. But in founding his scholarship, Schwarzman is doing more than cement- ing his legacy; he’s looking toward the global future of higher education and busi- ness. In October, while break- ing ground for the building that will house the scholar- ship program, Schwarzman called China “a core curric- ulum for … any person who wants to be the global leader of their field.” 130 DECEMBER 2013
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IN OTHER WORDS Most Favored Narrations The 10 best books, according to China’s ruling elite. By Isaac Stone Fish and Helen Gao ON SEPT. 5, 2011, ROBERT environment, addressing inequality, and Chinese professor of international reducing reliance on foreign markets. relations, the book argues that China O Zoellick, then president of China needed to “complete its transition should not follow the Western path of the World Bank, met in to a market economy,” and the World development, characterized by a free Beijing with Xi Jinping, Bank, Zoellick wrote, was willing to help. market economy and democracy. then China’s vice presi- Instead, it should stick to its existing dent. The previous week, Zoellick had Xi, just 14 months away from ascend- formula—that is, state capitalism published an op-ed in the Financial ing to the top of the Communist Party, combined with one-party rule—which Times titled “The Big Questions China had an answer to Zoellick’s concerns. He had launched three decades of break- Still Has to Answer.” In it, he noted that allowed that the World Bank had played neck growth. China’s economic growth was slowing a fruitful role in China, but instead of and that the country faced myriad embracing Zoellick’s suggestions, Xi It’s unlikely that Xi’s recommendation structural challenges: It needed to boost recommended that the bank president was an ofand comment—or if it was, it demand, lower savings, and increase read The China Wave: Rise of a Civiliza- now seems to symbolize something consumption—all while protecting the tional State. Written by Zhang Weiwei, a more. This year, the Communist Party’s FOREIGN POLICY 139
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IN OTHER WORDS Central Committee took the unprece- deepened in the 1990s, President Jiang The country’s dented step of issuing a list of the 10 Zemin professed a fondness for Western leaders have long books most popular among the Chinese classics—everything from Dante to used books to send leadership. Officials chose them from a Shakespeare to Mark Twain. (The messages about collection of 111 books that a government Chinese media has reported that Jiang their thinking, their think tank had said they—and, by could recite, albeit in heavily Chinese-ac- intellectual depth, implication, the country’s 1.4 billion cented English, Hamlet’s “To Be, or Not and their sense people—should read. The China Wave to Be” soliloquy.) of history. was No. 9. The top 10 list is a proclamation from and misgivings within the Chinese China’s Communist Party had never the Central Committee, which is by leadership about China’s current mode issued a top 10 list before, but much like definition an exercise in ideological of development, many of which are also U.S. presidents who get photographed correctness. The interesting question is, shared by Westerners. I didn’t dodge any carrying a particular volume up the steps at a moment when China is wrestling of these questions.” Xie Chuntao, the of Air Force One, the country’s leaders with the challenges posed by growth and author of The Track of History (No. 10), have long used books to send messages global power status, what exactly do which explores how the party has about their thinking, their intellectual China’s ruling elite consider ideological- maintained its vitality over its 64 years depth, and their sense of history. Mao ly correct? For those concerned about the in power, explained, “My book is Zedong peppered his speeches with degree of intellectual openness and refreshing because it is not just a flat allusions to classic literary characters liberalism within the Chinese leadership, and recommended that party cadres read the answer that the list gives is worrying. classic novels rich with tips on strategy and warfare, like the 14th-century At first blush, the list seems surpris- Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Deng ingly provocative: The books all explicit- Xiaoping signaled a departure from his ly or implicitly pose tough questions predecessor with his love of the about the Communist Party’s ability and 20th-century martial arts novelist Jin right to rule—arguably the most Yong, sort of a Chinese Zane Grey. And as sensitive issue in China today. Zhang, the Chinese ties with the rest of the world author of The China Wave, said in an interview, “There are a lot of questions The MIT Press Making in aMerica The Syria diLeMMa Wu JingLian From Innovation to Market edited by nader hashemi Voice of Reform in China Suzanne Berger and danny Postel edited, with introductions, with the MIT Task Force on Production “Here is all the material that readers by Barry naughton in the Innovation Economy will need to join the argument about Writings by Wu Jinglian map not intervention in Syria—which is turning only China’s path to economic reform “Making in America is a must-read out to be one of the most important but also the intellectual evolution for business leaders, government political arguments of our time.” of China’s most influential economist. officials, entrepreneurs, and citizens — Michael Walzer, Institute for who want to see a revitalization Advanced Study, Princeton, author 352 pp., $29.95 cloth of US manufacturing…” of Just and Unjust Wars and Arguing — David H. Petraeus, General, U.S. About War The aTLaS of econoMic Army (Retired) coMPLexiTy A Boston Review Book • 272 pp., $14.95 cloth Mapping Paths to Prosperity 256 pp., $24.95 cloth ricardo hausmann, dynaMicS aMong naTionS césar hidalgo et al. LoneLy ideaS The Evolution of Legitimacy and Maps capture data expressing the Can Russia Compete? Development in Modern States economic complexity of countries Loren graham hilton L. root from Albania to Zimbabwe, offering An innovative view of the changing both an economic measure and a “An outstanding contribution to the geopolitical landscape that draws guide to achieving prosperity. economics of technical progress and on the science of complex adaptive to the understanding of Russian his- systems to understand changes in 368 pp., $50 paper tory from Peter the Great to Putin. It global interaction. explains why Russian modernization efforts have repeatedly failed, whereas 320 pp., $29.95 cloth Silicon Valley has flourished, and what would need to be done to make The MIT Press mitpress.mit.edu the modernization of the Russian economy a reality.” — Michael Ellman, Emeritus Professor, Amsterdam University 224 pp., 7 color illus., 12 b&w illus., $27.95 cloth FOREIGN POLICY 141
IN OTHER WORDS Many of the books China’s development are assuaged by his ship with Chinese characteristics. The are forced to conclusion that “our model might be Track of History notes with shocking abandon intellectual flawed, but other models do not work understatement that the effect of the honesty for better than ours.” And, in an interview, Great Leap Forward—a three-year what you might Hao Zhensheng—the head of the think campaign that killed tens of millions of call scholarship tank that compiled the 111-book list and people—was “not satisfactory, even with Chinese surveyed party leaders for the top 10— negative.” Xie doesn’t mention the death characteristics. said that, to be selected, a book had to toll, and he even manages to find a bright “match the macro-agenda of the party side to one of history’s greatest tragedies: chronological account.” Instead, he and the nation,” eliding the possibility “Newly added steelmaking capacity argues, it poses “bold and interesting that there might be a distinction between during these three years accounted for questions like ‘Why didn’t the Commu- the two. 36.2 percent of that from the founding of nist Party collapse like it did in the Soviet the country in 1949 to 1979.” The same Union’ and ‘Why does the Communist Professor Wu Xiaobo, author of The advances, he notes, were achieved in Party still have the support of the people Historic 30 Years (No. 2), about China’s mining and cotton production. after making so many grave mistakes?’” economic reform from 1978 to 2008, insists that the country’s leaders Other authors abandon the pretense of Unfortunately, almost all the books “appreciate the independent angle” and critical thinking altogether. Jin Yinan, start from the assumption that the party that his book “is not written on anyone’s who wrote the No. 1 book on the list, Pain knows best, making serious analysis and behalf, and it has no agenda.” But it and Glory, told the state-run newspaper originality impossible. In Zhang’s book, would probably not have been chosen if Liberation Daily in August 2010 that the for example, any misgivings about its emphasis on the vital role the goal of his book was to “strengthen government played in leading China’s people’s faith in the Communist economic reform did not please party Party”—an aspiration the country’s top leaders. officials clearly share. “There has been a stress among party leaders on the To accept the party’s wisdom and nation’s need to strengthen its belief in beneficence, many of the books, which communist faith and ideals,” said Hao, can all be broadly defined as histories, when explaining why he thought several are forced to abandon intellectual “red histories” made the list. honesty for what you might call scholar- The books seem intended not only to PROBLEM buck up domestic readers but also to SOLUTION demonstrate the validity of Chinese ideas to international audiences. In a The world is full of problems. go.miis.edu/solution phone interview, Xie emphasized several our students deliver solutions. times that his book was well received abroad. (An English edition had sold Environmental Policy | Development Practice & Policy 8,000 copies as of April.) And Zhang says The China Wave, which “reassures” Chinese leaders of the strength of the Chinese model, “can stand up to” all kinds of questioning from foreigners. Only two books on the list were written by people born outside mainland China—and both are more honest, if still supportive. Demystifying the Chinese Economy (No. 6), by former World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin, explains China’s decline from being the world’s largest economy in the 18th century, its “efforts to reverse that decline, and reforms necessary for China to complete the transition to a well-functioning market economy.” One of the few Taiwanese to defect to China, Lin said he wrote the book because Western economic theory often doesn’t work for developing countries. Lin’s book is a sanctioned account by a respected voice on what China needs to do to recognize its historical destiny. The other surprising example of 142 DECEMBER 2013
IN OTHER WORDS COLUMN There is a global crisis of trust that raises real questions about who can and will act on our behalf. The China Wave by Zhang Weiwei << CONTINUED FROM PAGE 144 some 7 billion today—that has knitted the world together in unprecedented ways. Of course, the information revolution, of “correct” Communist Party orientation is which that expansion is a part, is why our first cluster of Global Thinkers this New York Times columnist Thomas Fried- year addresses the emergence of the surveillance state (an anomalous and man’s mega-bestseller The World Is Flat (No. disconcerting example of American competence). Some readers may loathe a 7). Although it calls for more political reform few of the individuals in this group, but the broad division over the question of in China, the 2005 book crowns the country who deserves condemnation and who deserves praise shows the urgency of the the winner of globalization and touts the debate that has been triggered. competitiveness of its manufacturing-based economic model. The point is that a world facing extraordinary challenges—from a vastly more complex and interconnected economy to growing inequality, from global Indeed, the books were all written after warming to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, from resource China had clearly become one of the world’s scarcity to massive demographic shifts, from spreading extremism to the preeminent powers, with the exception of emergence of the surveillance state—is saddled with governments that are not Zeng Guofan (No. 3), a 1992 biography of the rising to the moment. Indeed, there is a global crisis of trust that raises real 19th-century general. Hao said that the book questions about who can and will act on our behalf. is popular among today’s party officials because Zeng was a master at managing rela- Of course, this is not the first time that the world has been cursed with bad tionships. But it was also probably selected leaders, corrupt systems, inefficient bureaucracies, or mendacious and because Zeng tried to preserve the old weak-minded politicians. Indeed, many of the darkest eras in the story of imperial system instead of advocating civilization have featured such characteristics and characters. But today is a radical change to transform China into a moment of special challenges in this regard. It is hard to think of a period in modern state. Zeng is known for putting the past half-century when the great powers and the great emerging powers down the disastrous Taiping Rebellion in the faced such challenges so broadly. 1860s—his “rejuvenation” of China. This is the same word President Xi has used to In the past, when the world has struggled with political delinquency, other define his vision of a “Chinese Dream.” voices have emerged with ideas that were capable of producing the changes that were needed. Some were scientists or academics. Some were writers or This acknowledgment of a need for commentators. Some were military or religious leaders. Some were business- rejuvenation is candid. But it’s not intellec- people. The search for such people is precisely what fp’s list of Global Thinkers tually honest to ask how to rejuvenate China is all about. if there can only be one answer. On the same day he met with Zoellick, Xi gave a speech to The list could not hope to be comprehensive. And to be honest about the Chinese officials: “Learning through reading biggest ideas swirling around the world today, not everyone on our list is is a crucial way for the Communist Party to advocating notions that are actually for the better. But most people on this list maintain vitality,” he said. “Only by reading are not only trying to find a better way, solve a critical problem, or present a history can one understand that only the vital question in a new light, but they are actually doing it—and producing Communist Party can save China.” results. Isaac Stone Fish is an associate editor at Given the widespread misfires we are seeing from some of the institutions Foreign Policy. Helen Gao is a freelance we have created to be the engines of ideas and to translate ideas into action, we writer based in Beijing. hope you will find a look at our list at least somewhat comforting. Or better yet, that you will find your own inspiration from those among our Global Thinkers who are the most inspired themselves. David Rothkopf is ceo and editor at large of Foreign Policy. FOREIGN POLICY (ISSN 0015-7228) December 2013, issue number 203. Published six times each year, in January, March, May, July, September, and December, by The FP Group, a division of The Washington Post Company, 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 additional mailing ofces. POSTMASTER: Send U.S. address changes to: FOREIGN POLICY, P.O. Box 283, Congers, NY 10920- 0283. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Printed in the USA. FOREIGN POLICY 143
COLUMN Dysfunction Junction By David Rothkopf If you were to ask a typical American voter for a list of creative, intellectually gifted public officials, he or she would probably look at you as though you had just asked for the names of the world’s most eloquent giraffes—and with good reason. The 113th Congress is on pace to produce less legislation than any since World War ii, and President Barack Obama has watched his signature health-care initiative founder, thanks to mismanagement and woeful execution. A distemper is in the air, and given the recent performance of the U.S. government on matters domestic and not only have many eu governments failed the most basic tests SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES international, its origins are understandable. of fiscal management (and political courage), but that the entire continent is knit together by a half-baked system presided over What might surprise many disgruntled Americans is the by a quasi-government apparatus that was designed to be weak degree to which their counterparts in Europe, China, India, the and has lived up to that goal to a dangerous degree. Of course, if Middle East, Africa, and Latin America are dissatisfied with you lived in Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or much of Africa—to their governments. In fact, few things unite the world today like the belief that public officials say nothing of Syria—you are failing to rise to the would be looking enviously challenges of our time—too to the bureaucracy in crooked, too fractious, or too Brussels, whose sclerosis is self-interested to attend to the far more desirable than the needs of those they are fractious coalitions of thugs, supposed to serve. leavened by small coteries of the well-meaning, that just As Wang Qishan, one of the barely control their capitals. Global Thinkers profiled in this issue, is demonstrating, This widespread dysfunc- corruption is so deeply tion is just one of the reasons embedded in the way China that this year’s list of leading works that it is not merely a Global Thinkers ventures threat to the system—it is the farther outside the political system. India’s federal sphere than in the past. government, always unwieldy Another is that we have tried and difficult to manage, has to focus on individuals really spluttered of late, and whose ideas have been pending elections suggest that translated into actions that, the country may be on the in turn, have impacted brink of greater ethnic tension, millions of people across deeper internal divisions, and borders. And even though more dangerous confronta- we are a publication whose tions with its neighbors. The last name is “policy,” it country’s state governments, doesn’t take much scrutiny meanwhile, are so corrupt that they can’t pick up the slack left to recognize that the majority of big ideas that are changing the in the line by New Delhi. (In an interesting twist, India seems to world are not coming from government officials. have switched places with Japan, which five years ago was For example, the most transformational development of the utterly paralyzed but today is surging forward, to the credit of past quarter-century is likely not the fall of the Soviet Union or another of our Global Thinkers, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.) the attacks of 9/11, but rather the remarkable proliferation of cell phones—from a mere 12 million in 1990 to CONTINUED ON PAGE 143 >> In the European Union, the financial crisis has revealed that 144 DECEMBER 2013
Behind the most efective international initiatives there are well-informed, globally engaged professionals. M.S. in Global Afairs Today’s globalized environment demands knowledgeable professionals, capable of identifying solutions for the unique challenges of a world defined by socioeconomic transformation, the rise of new and emerging world powers, and changing cultural paradigms. The M.S. in Global Afairs, ofered by the Center for Global Afairs at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies, provides a multidisciplinary approach, equipping you with the knowledge and the skills to navigate varying sectors of the international arena, whether working with individuals, policymakers, private organizations, or the public sector. Learn from, and network with, top practitioners and scholars. Learn more about our NEW Graduate Certificates in: Global Energy This 15-credit Graduate Certificate in Global Energy prepares students to compete and to thrive in this challenging sector, taking advantage of the many emerging opportunities occurring throughout all areas of energy, from exploration and production, to project finance and analysis, energy efficiency and sustainability, and electricity networks. Transnational Security Students who complete the 15-credit Graduate Certificate in Transnational Security will emerge with critical and professionally applicable skills in: contemporary international affairs; the full spectrum of security concerns; and briefing, writing, and research skills. They will have the opportunity to delve into specialized areas, from military affairs to conflict resolution. Peacebuilding All students who successfully complete the 15-credit Graduate Certificate in Peacebuilding will emerge with strengthened skills in: critical thinking about peace and conflict, conflict assessment and analysis, peace and conflict research, mediation, and peacebuilding program development and management. To learn more about our programs visit: scps.nyu.edu/cga/programs1e or call 212-998-7100 To request information and to apply: scps.nyu.edu/gradinfo12a New York University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity institution. ©2013 New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
What’s at stake in Asia? As the presidential election and 2014 national security transition approaches, what do Afghan citizens think of critical issues in the country? Annually The Asia Foundation conducts the broadest public opinion poll in Afghanistan, covering all 34 provinces. This year, face-to-face interviews with over 9,000 Afghan citizens reveal their opinions on security, political participation, the economy, women’s rights, and development. Read it and find out what’s at stake in Asia. AFGHANISTAN IN 2013 READ IT HERE A SURVEY OF THE AFGHAN PEOPLE ASIAFOUNDATION.ORG
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