A Changing Labor Landscape in the Developing World: Part 2

Bangladesh: Battleground for Labor Organization

As Dr. Jeffrey Sachs wrote in his book “The End of Poverty”, while a country such as Bangladesh may be on the bottom rungs of the global economic ladder, the fact that material goods exports continue to rise, and employment numbers continue to rise, is a very hopeful indicator of future economic prosperity. It has been seven years since Dr. Sachs published “The End of Poverty”, but that image of Bangladesh is even more profound today. Bangladesh is currently the second largest exporter of apparel, behind only China, and if the pattern continues Bangladesh may very well see itself becoming significantly more prosperous in the coming decades.

Dr. Sachs is not the only one cognizant of this increased economic success however. Inevitably, the rise in production and increasing employment numbers has seen a parallel increase in the desire for organized labor. Tensions between the employers and the roughly 3.6 million low-skilled workers continue to flare as abysmal wages, poor working conditions and non-existent support regarding company benefits are gradually being seen by workers as unacceptable.

Mr. Islam

 In April, the tension reached culmination when the body of a prominent labor activist had been found days after he had been reported missing. Aminul Islam, a long-time advocate for higher wages and improved working conditions, was found having been tortured to death, presumably by those he had protested against for so long. As a leader and main organizer of the labor group Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, the death of Mr. Islam was a major blow dealt to the labor movement and worse, a grim reminder of what can happen to those fighting against factory owners producing for companies such as Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and others.

It is not just the factory owners that are the problem though. The Bangladeshi government has for years walked the tightrope between offering sympathy for the workers, many of whom simply cannot live off the wages they bring home, and offering support for the factory owners, whose operations brought in $18 billion in export sales in 2011 alone. After raising the minimum wage in 2010, a defining step in the right direction for improved labor conditions, the Bangladeshi government made a statement saying they expected labor protests to stop for good, effectively destroying any good will the minimum wage increase may have been perceived as.

One thing stands out as fundamentally lacking in this scenario: constructive dialogue between the government and factory owners, and the workers themselves. On one hand, organized protest can be a powerful and oftentimes effective method for changing policy or influencing decision-making. Regarding labor relations, it is important to protest unfair wages or poor conditions and can be the most aggressive and successful way of changing that quickly. However, protesting is like many other aggressive tactics, and if the Bangladeshi workers continue to protest despite the wage increase instead of trying a more diplomatic approach to continued change, they will get nowhere with a government that will not respond to pressure and does not want to hurt the apparel industry with more wage increases. The two sides need to approach the disagreement peacefully and with respect for the other side’s opinions, engaging one another in dialogue that produces better compromises both can be happy with – until then, violence will only escalate, workers will remain at risk for tragedies such as what occurred recently in Pakistan, and the government will bear the burdens of a massive disgruntled workforce.

How China and the U.S. Can Avoid a Thucydides Trap

Thirty years ago, no one would have expected the Chinese economy to take off as it has in recent years. Abandoning state-centric economic policies for market-led ones, coupled with export-led growth, has transformed the world’s most populous country into an economic powerhouse. Now as the second largest economy in the world (surpassing Japan in 2011), China has entered the big leagues with the full intention of amassing greater wealth and prosperity for its people. What comes with greater power, however, is greater responsibility…and competition from other global players ready to reassert their economic interests amidst financial chaos across Europe and a slowly recovering American economy. From a realist's perspective, the rise of China's economy is a direct threat to American economic interests, and by extension, to the United States herself. But subscribing to this belief will inevitably lead to a Thucydides Trap, or the tensions that arise from a rising power rivaling the hegemonic one. It is very important that Americans do not take this view, and in order to avoid this it's necessary to look at China realistically...and to look in the mirror.

Source: http://www.morningwhistle.com/html/2012/Macro_0504/212106.html 

Avoiding a Thucydides trap will be difficult given both the real and perceived economic tensions between China and the United States. And it will be even harder in an election year. As pointed out in a recent article in The New York Times, the Obama administration sent a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) about China's trade practices, specifically its subsidizing of its car industry as this is viewed as giving the Chinese car manufacturing industry an unfair advantage. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has called on Obama to exert more pressure on our largest trading partner, claiming that a complaint to the WTO is not aggressive enough. While aggressive trade policies are a necessary reaction to the trade deficit in the U.S., adding additional pressure beyond WTO negotiations would most likely prove to be detrimental to U.S.-China relations as it would lead to unnecessary political tension. And during a time of rising Chinese economic and political prowess, and the country's growing importance to international trade, further provocation may not be the answer.

Reflection will also be a key ingredient in lessening the chances the United States falls into a Thucydides Trap. Just last week, Special Representative for African Affairs for the People's Republic of China, Ambassador Zhong Jianhua, spoke at Boston University on the importance of reflection, and I believe he offered some good advice. In addressing concerns that China is only interested in Africa's oil and gas resources because of rising domestic demand, Ambassador Jianhua responded with great poise given the invasive questions. The Ambassador reminded us that while China is looking to expand it's markets to Africa and acquire some of its resources, China is being falsely framed as a greedy superpower willing to do anything to satisfy demand for oil and gas. He pointed to the fact that the United States and European Union control or have access to around 66% of Africa's oil reserves, whereas China's stake in the pie stands at a mere 18%. Perhaps the Western world is correct in asserting that China needs oil and gas from Africa to satisfy domestic demand, but they're painting an incomplete picture. Judging ourselves before we judge others, Amb. Jianhua asserts, holds the key to greater understanding. And for the United States, and especially for politicians like Mitt Romney, reflection is lacking, and that deficit could prove costly in that it can and will distort perceptions of good and evil, right and wrong.

One essential question arises: instead of China being an economic competitor, why not a partner that uses trade to the same ends as everyone else? 

A Changing Labor Landscape in the Developing World: Part One

For several years now, the bedlam of the economic and political environment in both Europe and the United States has enraptured most, if not all, of the developed world. Stock market crashes, the devaluation of the euro, and the assault against the financial industry are defining points of the past decade, and played pivotal roles in determining the global economic climate of today. And in a sense, these events are very accurate reflections of the post-industrialized state that much of the developed world now enjoys and, to some degree, takes for granted much of the time. These events would not have occurred a century ago, when the industrialization of the United States and Europe was in full swing, especially when taking into consideration the two world wars that destabilized the entire world for several decades. It is possible that these challenges – currency devaluation, banking collapses, volatile stock markets, and disillusion at the widening income gap - are the challenges we will now face going ahead in the future. And because the markets of Europe and the United States are so important to the global markets, the challenges that we will now face going ahead in the future is the only thing many people have noticed for quite some time now. However, much of the rest of the world is involved in a colossal and monumental change, something so profound that it will begin the shift from developing countries into developed, potentially altering the international pecking order decades from now: as globalization allows for greater exports from the developing countries, and in turn their economies grow and their production increases, workers are beginning to demand organization. The wars that were waged between worker and boss in the United States over a century ago are now beginning to be waged in less developed countries all over the world. Sure, the economy of the United States may affect the world and is important to keep an eye on, but if the developed world does not become more aware of what else is going on in the world, we may turn around a decade from now and realize we have missed a revolution that has forever changed our position in the industrialized world created centuries ago.

Pakistan’s Very Own Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

On September 12, less than two weeks ago, a fire started in a clothing factory in Karachi that resulted in almost 300 workers being killed. Many of the exits were locked, or potential exits blocked by unmovable machinery and other objects. Those who were desperate enough leapt from upper-floor windows, some surviving with bad injuries and others being killed by the fall. The rest were trapped inside to suffer unimaginably horrific demises. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which took place in 1911 and was considered the worst worker-related disaster in history, now pales in comparison, as nearly twice as many were killed in this month’s blaze in Pakistan. In a country that has for years mass-produced goods which are exported and consumed in the developing world, the fire is seen as a grave embarrassment and a national tragedy.

This type of event is frightening in itself; what is even more frightening, however, is that just a few weeks before the fire erupted, the factory was deemed safe for work and passed all inspections by an industry-financed private factory-monitoring group. The incompetence present in this situation is alarming; either these monitors are terrible at their jobs, or they simply do not value the lives of the lower-class workers these factories employ. Whichever the case, this is a larger issue that must be addressed. The lessons the Triangle disaster taught the United States in 1911 were hard to digest, but paramount in our evolution as an industrial power. Setting aside the day-to-day working conditions these laborers face at their jobs, the bare minimum a company should offer to its employees is the security that they can to go work every day without the risk of being trapped and burned alive in their workplace.

This type of incompetence will certainly not be tolerated forever. As industrialization evolves, Pakistani’s will demand more worker’s rights and safer work environments. As horrible as this fire was, Pakistan needs to see it as a lesson learned the hard way, and begin to get ahead of the curve on these issues. Because if for some reason this ever happens again in Pakistan, there will be significantly more outrage from the lower class, the result of which could be devastating to the country as riots, strikes and other unrest could break out. As for other developing countries around the world: take note. The loss of lives of this magnitude is not something to be taken lightly, and until factory infrastructure is improved, emergency procedures established and continuously rehearsed, and better measures put in place to safeguard against accidents, millions of workers around the world are in danger.

Public Diplomacy: How the West can Win

I don’t think that it’s a secret that the “West,” especially the U.S., is viewed unfavorably pretty much the world over. Even citizens who live in countries allied with the U.S. (ahem, Europeans) really do not like the United States. A recent joint effort by the Carnegie Endowment and Pew Research Center (thanks, Zach) showed that most Americans are aware that the rest of the world doesn’t like us. The response of many of my fellow citizens is withdrawal from world events. The “we gave them democracy, we gave them aid, now this is how they treat us?!” incredulity has only grown since the Muslim world rose up against U.S. and other Western embassies in recent weeks. It seems easier to throw in the towel and let the people of the developing world figure out their own problems and see how they like it when the aid gravy train quits running.

Anti-American grafitti in Tehran. Photo by Bertil Videt.

Withdrawal or isolationism, however, is not the answer. There are so many reasons for this it is impossible to list them all, but foremost would be that our security would be severely compromised, our economy would be weaker than it already is, anti-American groups would not diminish but increase, and millions of people who benefit from U.S. aid would suffer for others’ mistakes. The U.S. does need a serious about-face in policy that would ameliorate our image abroad, diminish security threats, and raise the chance that valid, transparent democracies can take root throughout the world. If we continue on our current path, we are only going to exacerbate our problems and give people more reasons to blame us every time something goes wrong in the world and we either do too much, too little, or nothing at all.

The image crisis America faces is in large part due to the excess of “hard diplomacy” we employ. We have intervened militarily in so many places and the result is that the rest of the world views us as a bully that acts unilaterally without regard for international law or state sovereignty. Unfortunately, this is largely true regarding international law. But I don’t think that America’s people want our country to be seen that way. Much of what we do is positive: our intervention in Libya and aid to developing countries throughout the world are positive things, not the actions of a bully; our invasion of Iraq, not so much. It is easy for the world to point its finger at the U.S. whenever a problem arises because we have stuck our nose in so many issues, manipulated so many governments, propped up so many dictators, ignored human rights abuses and committed so many of our own, that we are an easy scapegoat.

We put ourselves in this position, but we can also get ourselves out. During the Cold War, we mastered “public diplomacy,” and I believe that it was that tactic, not our military capabilities, that defeated the Soviet Union. We tried the military intervention route in Vietnam and saw the results (hint: not good). However, our clandestine aid, promotion of our own democracy, and exportation of our still very popular pop culture led the citizens of the Soviet world to look around them and think, “Hey, this kind of blows.” Ok, maybe a bit more sophisticated and dramatic than that, but you get the gist. The result? The internal dynamics of the U.S.S.R weakened to the point that the entire system crumbled around the Kremlin.

Public diplomacy, much like public relations, involves investing in projects and businesses rather than missiles and dictators, and then making sure people know about it. Every single project should have a “sponsored by the people of the United States of America” sign stamped all over it, since our government isn’t very popular but our country’s people sure as hell can be. We did it in Japan as we helped them reconstruct after winning the shit out of WWII, and it was extremely successful despite the fact that we were militarily occupying them and the small issue of the atomic bombs we dropped. We did it in Europe with the Marshall plan, which, while controversial, ended up also being very successful at keeping countries away from the Commies. More aid directed at obvious goals that we already give some support such as education (schools, books, etc.) and medicine (clinics, training, supplies, vaccine drives, etc.) can help bolster economies and raise living standards for the average citizen of the developing world.

Sign that reads "Berlin Emergency Program: With Marshall Plan Help."

Infrastructure projects (which we also desperately need in the U.S.) such as road networks, railways, and ports, would go a long way to ensuring that goods can reach the market. To make those goods we need to encourage investment in companies in these countries and the people that run them. Scholarships for foreign students are a good starting point, but on the ground training and certification programs for professionals will reach so many more people and be a concrete symbol of U.S. goodwill abroad. Our defense budget is so bloated because we fear threats from countries that we’ve pissed off; if we cut that budget and used just a fraction of it on public diplomacy, those threats will dissipate in the long run and we will find that we don’t need to spend so much protecting ourselves anymore. We might even be, dare I say it, kind of well-liked. 

Instead of giving so much money to authoritarian leaders and corrupt officials to buy bombs, we should be investing in the people they currently rule over. A more educated, prosperous population is the key to creating a more open, transparent society and political realm in almost every developing country in the world. I know that this all sounds idealistic and naïve, but believe it or not it might also actually work. We can’t “give” people democracy; look at the results of our attempts in Iraq in Afghanistan. We can, however, give them the tools, the means, and the belief that a better life is possible by investing in their economies, investing in their children, and making it clear that we want them to have the best possible future, but that it will be them that determines it.

Taking the Middle East as an example given the current high tide of anti-American sentiment there, this strategy could be particularly successful. The riots are much more complex than a simple rising up against symbols of American power. They are a combination of religious outrage (the simplest form to vent as political outrage is usually stifled in the region) and maneuvering by extremist and anti-American groups. They are also expressions of economic and social frustrations that have not been diminished by regime changes. The region’s youth are largely unemployed, young men and women have to delay marriage (which, hello, means delaying any kind of sex; anyone in their 20s understands how much pent up energy those poor young people must have), and people, quite frankly, have nothing to lose. The Arab Awakening did not put in place perfect governments that could fix all the problems the people thought they could: the economies are still weak, corruption is still high, and the elite puppet masters are still holding the strings.

America, as morbid as it sounds, has the ability to give these people that “something to lose” that they are lacking. We have the ability to stop bolstering corrupt regimes, put our foot down and say “no progress, no military aid.” We have the ability to invest instead in economic and social projects and let everybody know it was us that did it. Public diplomacy is the most effective weapon in our arsenal, drones be damned. I hope that the country isn’t too chickenshit to start using it, or we might find ourselves with a lot more than protests on our already overburdened hands.

The Nexus of Modern Terrorist Organizations and the Internet

Terrorist organizations have evolved tremendously since the advent of modern technology and, most importantly, the Internet. A threat once restricted to local and national police authorities, terrorist organizations now utilize inexpensive means of communication and organization, most notably the Internet, to become global in scope. For modern terrorists and terrorist organizations, the Internet has not only allowed them to project their ideologies to a global audience, it also improves the efficiency of propaganda campaigns, data sharing, recruitment and mobilization, networking, and the coordination of terrorist activities. The exploitation of the Internet as a theater for terrorist activity, the success of such exploitation, and the organizations' ability to adapt to online counter-terrorism measures all converge to pose a serious threat to the global community, both on- and off-line.

Use of the Internet has done much to shape the organizational structure and capacity of modern terrorist organizations including how they conduct propaganda campaigns to how they network. Transnational terrorist groups have relied more and more on information technology to carry out their objectives and to organize. Consequently, the trend toward increased use of the Internet and information technology should not be overlooked, and we can appropriately assume a few hypotheses from these trends.

Above all, modern terrorist networks are predicted to use the Internet for more and more of their operations, and that they are likely to excel in how they achieve their goals at a growing rate. We can predict that these organizations will continue to evolve on the Internet, complicating the future of data sharing and organizational structures of terrorist groups. It is also possible that new tech-savvy terrorist groups will emerge in the near future as a result of the growing reliance of modern terrorist organizations on the Internet and information technology.

It is also important that governments and journalists not focus so much on and exaggerate the threat posed by cyberterrorism, although a few terrorist groups use the Internet for this reason. Exaggerating cyberterrorism tends to not only shift focus away from the networks of online terrorist groups that provoke cyberterrorism but also to sensationalize issues that pressure legislators to overreact. Level-headedness and having a clear focus on the underlying online terrorist networks that cause other significant problems are crucial paradigms that policy makers should keep in mind.

As the trend of Internet usage by modern terrorism groups emerges to provide several possible scenarios for the future, many policy implications arise. It is important to note that when brainstorming or drafting policies to combat modern terrorist organizations, one should view these groups as networks that draw money, support, information, propaganda and intelligence from all corners of the world. Keeping this in mind, it follows logically that such dynamic forces need to be met by multidimensional counter-measures.

Firstly, it will be extremely important to educate to and familiarize the public with online terrorist activities. Accidentally contributing to phony charities and falling victim to cyberattacks can be avoided if the appropriate resources are provided to the masses. Governments, both national and local, should take the lead in distributing literature and providing caution to as many Internet users in their jurisdiction in order to minimize connections between terrorist organizations using the Internet and ordinary Web users. This will serve to strengthen the infrastructure of the Internet and the safety of its friendly users.

Secondly, intelligence agencies should examine more closely the changes in technology/approaches to the Internet that terrorist organizations employ to function. If any possible predictions can be made concerning the next mode of technology or the newest dimension of the Internet terrorists are exploiting to achieve their interests, the international community can be one step ahead, instead of one step behind, in the fight against this nexus.

Governments and intelligence agencies should also train their staffs to be more technologically inclined. They will be better prepared to anticipate terrorists’ online developments and possibly be better prepared to thwart an online attack. Government staffs and intelligence agencies should also learn to differentiate between offensive and organizational capabilities, which will help the crackdown of cyberterrorist activities and hinder terrorists’ use of the Internet.

Finally, and probably the most imperative policy implication drawn from the aforementioned arguments, is that governments, states and intelligence agencies need to adapt to the surfacing online terror networks by creating a global intelligence initiative bent on cooperation. International policing agency INTERPOL is a prime example of the kind of cooperative intelligence needed to hinder terrorist activity online, embodied in its 2005 resolution stating the importance of data sharing between governments.[1] If all or even some of these measures are considered, we may hope to see an online environment devoid of terrorist activity, which will serve to severely deter modern terrorist organizations’ abilities to target audiences, wage psychological warfare, spread propaganda, fundraise, recruit and mobilize, network, share data and coordinate attacks.

Conclusions?

Terrorism is more than just a transnational agenda. It’s resourceful, adaptive and compartmentally structured, both to avoid international surveillance and to pursue its interests. The implications of the nexus of modern terrorist organizations and the Internet are worth more than just examining; they're worth responding to. In addressing the links between terrorist groups and the Web, trends should be established in order to better understand the multidimensional threats posed by this nexus. Only then can policy makers draw logical conclusions that illustrate the growing complexity of information systems exploited by terrorist organizations. It is from this standpoint that international intelligence policing, education on online terrorist activity, and capability and technological anticipation of terrorist attacks become viable policy options for current and future international actors.

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[1] Berlin, Germany. INTERPOL. General Assembly. AG-2005-RES-10: Addressing Internet Activities Supporting Terrorism. 22 September 2005. Print.