Continuity and change during the K Era in Argentina

By Guy Burton

The death of former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner (2003-07) provides an opportunity to reflect on Argentina’s domestic politics, economy and foreign policy. The past decade has been a significant one for the country, with a considerable amount of change. Ten years ago, few international observers would have even known who Nestor Kirchner was. Today, his presidency and that of his successor and widow, Cristina Kirchner (2007-11), may be seen as a break with the past.

The K Era – as the Kirchners’ presidencies have come to be known – certainly feels substantially different from what preceded it. Following the return to democracy in the 1980s and during the 1990s the country was subject to a strong dose of neoliberalism and structural adjustment, prompted by international financial institutions like the IMF and overseen by a right-wing Peronist president, Carlos Menem (1989-99). It was a time of economic liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation ethos, which was underpinned by a fixed exchange rate between the peso and the US dollar in 1991. The fixed exchange rate provided a model for the region, being followed in Brazil in 1994 before being taken to a more extreme lengths with the dollarization of the Ecuadoran and El Salvadoran economies in 2000 and 2001 respectively. Argentina's fixed exchange rate helped keep inflation and down and prices stable, while at the same time encouraging greater imports. External spending not only meant the loss of domestic capital, but funds that could both be invested in the local economy and repay Argentina’s debts.

In 2001-02 the economic good times came to a juddering halt. A declining economy and a financial crisis led to a run on the banks and chaos. The centre-left president, Fernando de la Rua, resigned and Argentina entered a period of political and economic instability, which only came to an end with Kirchner’s presidential election ‘victory’, following Menem’s decision to withdraw from the second round run-off in 2003.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding Kirchner, he soon became one of the leading lights of the various left-wing governments that emerged in Latin America during the past decade. First, he was willing to turn his back on the financial model that had dominated Argentina since the 1980s by announcing a default on Argentine debt. But whereas this would have made the country a pariah during the neoliberal heyday, paradoxically it gave him greater leverage with the IMF to negotiate and reschedule the debt payments. This was partly to do with Argentina’s image as a poster boy for the IMF in the past, having introduced many of the neoliberal measures that it had demanded.

Second, Kirchner’s leftward turn was apparent through his and his presidential peers’ greater commitment towards greater regional integration. Early in his term he played host to Brazil’s President Lula, where both agreed what came known as the Buenos Aires Consensus. This included a shift away from the US-inspired Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) in favour of more institutionalisation at the regional level, including in Mercosur (the trading bloc which includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela as its members). The name of the initiative also presented a more progressive alternative to the neoliberal Washington Consensus which dominated much of the discourse of the 1980s and 1990s. Other proposals supported by Kirchner included the formation of the South American states’ organisation, UNASUR (for which he was appointed secretary-general in May) and the proposal between him and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to build a cross-continent pipeline, along with the establishment of a Bank of the South to provide funds within the region.

However, the K Era has never been as transformative as it appeared. This was largely due to structural factors. Domestically, although associated with the Left, Kirchner never broke the power of the Argentine Right. Economically, he was not as radical as was sometimes portrayed, neither declaring himself against the market nor seeking to create a version of 21st century socialism in Argentina, as Chavez claimed to be doing in Venezuela. Beyond his restructuring of Argentine debt, his solution to the economic crisis was to encourage economic growth. But rather than do this through a greater role for the state, it was the peso’s devaluation that enabled large landowners (and especially soybean producers) to take the lead. The agro-business sector's power was evident when it conducted a four-month strike against a proposed tax on the soybean exports early on in Cristina's presidency. Politically, his attempt to build a stronger base between the leftist elements of the Peronist party and society floundered by the midpoint of his own presidency. An attempt to rescue declining political support for his wife led to the 2009 legislative elections being held earlier, in July. Although the Kirchners succeeded in remaining the largest party, they lost their absolute majority in Congress and lost in Buenos Aires, both the largest province and a significant Peronist stronghold.

Externally, beyond the leverage provided by the financial crisis at the start of the decade, Argentina has not been able to impose itself either regionally or globally. In particular the Kirchners’ foreign policy has been constrained by the dominant regional power, Brazil. Although both Brazilian and Argentine presidents shared a common vision for greater integration, the content and vested interests differ. For example, Brazil’s influence in terms of exports and markets far outweighs those of its partners in Mercosur. Similarly, Kirchner’s Bank of the South initiative with Chavez was watered down in order to gain Brazilian involvement. At the same time, while both Argentina and Brazil want a greater regional presence on international bodies, Argentine foreign policy has been opposed to Brazil’s goal of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Although Brasilia’s objective has not yet happened, Brazil's vision arguably receives greater public awareness than Argentine proposals to increase the number of non-permanent members and allow their re-election. However, even when Argentine foreign policy is in line with Brazil (as was the case on the need for greater financial regulation and reform in the G20 London summit), I would suggest that it is to Brasilia rather than Buenos Aires that global leaders look for Latin American leadership.

With Nestor Kirchner’s death, it is now uncertain whether the K Era will continue after the end of next year. Before he began having health complications earlier in the year there had been some suggestions that Nestor Kirchner would run in next year’s presidential election; his popularity was such that he was able to transfer his own popularity to Cristina during her campaign in 2007. However, since then Cristina's polls have declined, the 2009 election results confirming this.  As a result, it is debatable whether Nestor Kirchner’s popularity could have been sustained for next year.

Moreover, his popularity was based on his actions earlier in the past decade and his willingness to stand up to the international financial community. It did not involve the creation of a strong political base or the revitalisation of Argentina’s relatively weak and still impoverished civil society following the banking crisis and unemployment. At the same time he never curbed the power of dominant elites in the country. In the absence of these measures, it was not necessarily the case that he would have won next year’s election – or that a candidate put forward by himself and Cristina will do so.

Guy Burton is a research associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the LSE Ideas Centre.

The New Machiavelli: How to wield power in the modern world

In his new book, Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff for thirteen years, takes Machiavelli’s lessons on how to take power and hold on to it and explores if they still apply to modern politics and leadership.

Machiavelli empirically derives his maxims in ‘The Prince’ and ‘The Discourses’ from his experience of fifteenth century government and diplomacy. In my book, I try to do the same drawing on my diaries from 1997-2007 and the experience of the Blair government and the Clinton and Bush administrations. There are plenty of books on the theory of British government but almost none on the practice. This book endeavours to be a handbook to how to wield power.


Machiavelli is misunderstood and ‘Machiavellian’ has been an insult since the sixteenth century. But Machiavelli was not in fact ‘Machiavellian’. He neither advocated evil nor brutality for its own sake. What he did do was break through the idealised universe of St Augustine which had dominated thinking up to that point. It is his stark realism that makes him the first modern. He argued that if rulers try to live by myths they are ‘more likely to destroy than to save’ themselves. 


I argue that British politics is riddled with dangerous myths. The idea of Cabinet government in Britain is a misleading notion peddled by retired mandarins. If it ever existed, it died when Mrs Thatcher became prime minister and will never be resuscitated because a gathering of twenty five people, many of whom know nothing about the subject under discussion, will never be the right place to make decisions about complex policy issues. Criticism of ‘sofa government’ is misplaced and falls into the traditional trap of the British civil service of mistaking form for substance.


The book describes coming into office in 1997 and the illusory nature of power. Far from power being over centralised in No 10 in fact the levers of government were not connected to anything. Tony Blair describes the machinery of government as a shiny Rolls Royce parked outside Downing Street that he is not allowed to drive. President Clinton says he hopes when he dies he can come back as someone with real power, like a member of a focus group in Macomb County Michigan.


Machiavelli views courage and intelligence as the crucial attributes of a great leader. By comparing the contrasting leadership styles of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown I've sought to illustrate the possibilities and pitfalls, and to emphasise the need for a leader to be both a chairman, setting a vision, and a CEO, capable of conducting government competently. I look at the court that surrounds leader, the wisdom of Machiavelli’s rule that ‘flatterers should be shunned’ and describe how the position of chief of staff was created in Britain.
The central relationship in any government is that between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, the one controlling the jobs and the other the money. I argue that constructive tension between the two incumbents can be a good thing, but that the Blair government had much too much of a good thing from 1997 to 2007. The tense relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had real consequences for the conduct of government.


The book takes up Machiavelli’s maxim that it is better to be feared than to be loved and looks at politics from 1997 to 2007 in this context, from the perils of reshuffles to the desperate attempts to avoid banning fox hunting. It is important to be strategic if leaders are to avoid being driven by events, as reflected the lessons that New Labour over-learnt on spin and handling media moguls and the threat that scandals and inquiries pose for governments.


In the book I look at the lessons on Europe and the transatlantic relationship from Blair’s experiences, including the failure to join the euro and the five wars fought while Blair was Prime Minister. The book concludes that all governments are brought down by hubris in the end and describes the final days of the Blair government. There are very few great prime ministers over the last hundred years, but I believe that Blair was one measured by Machiavelli’s rule on the importance of enjoying ‘fortuna’ and having the instinct to take advantage of the opportunities that luck throws up. Whilst it is probably an impossible task to try to rehabilitate Machiavelli or get an honest reassessment of Blair at this stage, I would urge those in power to study Machiavelli and understand that there is such a thing as the art of government and it is not the same as the theory that dominates our text books.

Jonathan Powell served as Tony Blair's Chief of Staff throughout the former Prime Minister's tenure, and is a member of the LSE IDEAS Advisory Board.

Migrant Workers and Human Rights In Southeast Asia

Amnesty International has focused on migrant rights in Malaysia and Thailand, two main receiving countries of migrant workers in Southeast Asia.  The vast majority of migrant workers in Thailand are from Myanmar, some of whom are also potentially refugees fleeing from persecution. Thailand also receives a significant number of migrant workers from Cambodia and Laos. Malaysia hosts migrants from many countries, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Myanmar. Many of the latter are also potential refugees. Migrant workers suffer from a wide range of abuses in receiving countries, from their employers, recruiting agents, and the security forces.

In Thailand, it is estimated that more than 2 million registered migrant workers make up somewhere between 5 -10 percent of the workforce. Corresponding figures for Malaysia indicate an estimated 2.2 million documented migrant workers, or about 20 percent of the workforce. While impossible to verify, the number of undocumented workers is estimated to be about the same. There are also an estimated 90,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia, many of them also migrant workers. In Thailand, many who work as migrant labourers, particularly the Shan, may also have a valid fear of persecution in Myanmar. Neither Thailand, nor Malaysia, has ratified the Migrant Worker Convention or the Refugee Convention. While the UNHCR issues “persons of concern” documents, these are rarely honoured by security forces and thus offer scant protection from arrest.

One difference between Thailand and Malaysia is that the latter brings workers in from farther afield, and relies more upon agents and outsourcing for the recruitment of foreign workers. For example, agents from Nepal, India, and Bangladesh recruit migrants in their home country, sometimes promising jobs that never materialize in Malaysia. Migrants typically pay at least $1,000 to these agents, often putting them in debt.  When they arrive in Malaysia, their employers almost always hold their passports and other documentation.

In both Thailand and Malaysia, migrants work and live in poor conditions and work long hours, including on farms, in factories, and as domestic workers.  Domestic workers are at particular risk of abuse because they are more isolated from migrant communities and because they are living in employer’s homes, thus leaving them and their work out of the public eye.  The widely reported cases of abuse of Indonesian female domestic workers at the hands of their Malaysian employers have become a familiar flashpoint in the relations between the two countries.

Migrant workers are at risk of shakedowns by the police in both Thailand and Malaysia. In addition, migrant workers in Malaysia also face the largely untrained volunteer defense corps known as RELA, which is responsible for some of the worst abuses. These agents can stop anyone on the street and detain them without a warrant. Penalties for undocumented workers are severe, including fines, imprisonment, deportation and up to six strokes of the cane. Conditions in detention centres remain very poor, with reports of extreme overcrowding and lack of regular access to clean water, medical care and sufficient food.

Non citizens as well as citizens are protected by international human rights law.  Migrant workers in both Thailand and Malaysia are protected by the international human rights treaties those states have ratified – in the case of Malaysia, very few, but Thailand has ratified most of the major human rights treaties. At the regional level, ASEAN has taken some tentative steps forward on human rights issues, notably the ASEAN Charter (2008), and the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission of Human Rights (2009). And in January 2007 the Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant workers was agreed by ASEAN member states, which have also established a Committee tasked with drafting an ASEAN instrument on migrant workers – this could be a binding treaty.  With a drafting committee comprised of representatives of sending states (Philippines and Indonesia) and receiving states (Singapore and Malaysia), negotiations remain stuck around several issues.

On 14th October 2010, Donna Guest, Deputy-Director for the Asia-Pacific Program of Amnesty International, spoke at IDEAS to present the issues and research behind AI’s advocacy and campaigning for migrant labour and human rights in Southeast Asia. Chair and commentator: IDEAS Research Fellow Dr Eva-Lotta Hedman.

Afghanistan: more echoes of the Soviet experience

Over at Slate, Frank Kaplan writes that NATO forces in Afghanistan are starting to shift their focus from the state-building aspects of COIN to more traditional military operations. Not that the state building effort is dead, writes Kaplan, but “U.S. and NATO officers, intelligence analysts, and other officials and advisers now believe that our objectives in the Afghanistan war can no longer be accomplished in sufficiently short time through COIN alone or even through a COIN-dominant strategy.”

For those who believe the US is better off withdrawing most of its troops as soon as possible, this might be good news. A focus on state-building suggests a longer-term commitment; a shift away from state-building and back towards more traditional military operations reflects a desire to strike some blows and convince the Taliban that they’re better off working with Karzai than fighting NATO.

Not to sound like a broken record, but the shift did remind me of the Soviet’s decision to pull out most of their non-military and intelligence advisers in 1986. As I’ve written about here, the Soviet counter-insurgency in Afghanistan was accompanied by massive state-building operations, involving party advisers, technical specialists, and experts from almost every area of the Soviet government (and Warsaw Pact allies). The hope was that by building the capacity of the regime in Kabul they could help it win over the population and rob the insurgency of support.

By 1986, however, Soviet decision makers had lost faith in what their advisors could achieve. The war had been dragging on for six long years, and all the presence of advisors seemed to be doing was encouraging complacency within the Afghan leadership. As Gorbachev and his advisers plotted a new approach to the Afghan problem, one of their first moves was to recall the advisors. (This was around the same time that they were effecting a change of leadership, replacing the ineffectual Babrak Karmal with Mohammed Najibullah.) The Soviet army and intelligence services would continue to fight and train their counterparts for several years, but the broader “state-building” was more or less finished.

What effect did this have? Soviet officials certainly felt that their Afghan counterparts became more independent and decisive once the advisors were gone. Indirectly, the departure of party advisors may have even helped Najibullah gain legitimacy as an independent ruler (and not a Soviet puppet) and thus survive the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989. But the departure of technical specialists was harmful for the Afghan economy. Soviet specialists had helped operate the gas fields in the north of the country, for example, keeping the Afghan government solvent through most of the 1980s. Once they departed, the gas works stopped working, and the government struggled to maintain any source of revenue, eventually becoming unable to pay the various militias that had helped it keep the mujahedeen at bay.

Of course, nothing quite as dramatic is underway in the shift currently taking place. For the US and NATO, this is a shift of emphasis rather than of overall strategy. And besides, the overall state-building effort involves dozens of NGOs and international institutions as well as non-military government agencies.

Elsewhere, it has been reported that NATO forces and US diplomats are helping to facilitate talks between the Karzai government and the Taliban. Facilitating talks with the major insurgent groups also became a big part of Soviet plans after 1986, as diplomats and officers sought a way to bring Soviet troops home without leaving complete chaos in their wake. For a number of reasons (among them internal Soviet disagreements about which opposition leaders it was best to work with – Ahmad Shah Massoud or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar) these efforts failed.

I won’t pretend to know what happens next. I am concerned, though, that when the time comes (and it’s coming very soon) to make some hard decisions about the future course of US efforts in Afghanistan, Obama is going to find it very hard to maneuver. Gorbachev still had most of his political capital when he announced the Soviet withdrawal in 1988; he also had the support of his military and most of the Politburo. Obama, by contrast, seems to be oozing political capital, and may be in a position closer to that of Gorbachev’s in early 1991 (in terms of political room, not his country tearing apart at the seams) after November 2.

Dr Artemy Kalinovsky is Assistant Professor in Eastern European history in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam and an Associate of the Cold War Studies Programme.

Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa

On the eve of the crisis in Zimbabwe, one that was to inexorably pull its neighbours into a regional reconsideration of the politics of land, a workshop was held in November 1999 in Windhoek, Namibia. The delegates, all members of the regional non-governmental network, Mwelekeo wa NGO or Mwengo, had come together to assess the regrettable inaction surrounding the land situation in their respective countries. In his opening remarks Uhuru Dempers pointed out that the liberation struggle in all the countries in Southern Africa had been inspired by the colonial dispossession of land. Despite this, he went on to say, land reform remained an area of struggle for all the countries. He hoped that the legacy of a common history and on-going initiatives in the area of land reform and redistribution would inspire Southern African NGOs to review their local circumstances and collaborate in future on land policy across the region.

Within three months of the meeting, the regional quietude that so disturbed participants had been expelled by events in Zimbabwe. A ‘fast track’ land reform programme characterised by violent occupation of white commercial farm land by purported ‘war veterans’, overturned the unequal distribution of agricultural holdings that had been a part of the country’s political economy for ninety years. NGO land activists in Namibia and South Africa, though disturbed by the violence that accompanied reform, generally welcomed developments in Zimbabwe as providing fresh impetus to their own local campaigns. Moreover, Robert Mugabe’s revival of anti-imperialist rhetoric not heard since the era of liberation struggles shook the complacency of elite accumulation and seemed to promise a return to the revolutionary politics of the past. It was only as the Zimbabwean situation lurched from political controversy to economic free fall that the certainties that were expressed at the workshop began to fracture into a variety of regional responses.

For a very different corner of the region, white commercial farmers living in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa watched events unfold in Zimbabwe with growing trepidation and public disquiet. From having once held a position of privilege under minority rule, these farming communities had endured uncertainties of the transition to a black government and had largely accommodated themselves to the new circumstances, even learning to prosper under a government dominated by their once implacable foes. Responded the rising crescendo of racial rhetoric and violence in Zimbabwe over land, the white commercial farmers’ associations in all three ex-settler states issued an unprecedented joint statement in June 2000.

Due to the political past of most of the southern Africa countries, land restitution and land redistribution are imperatives for political, social and economic stability…Unfortunately, the result of failure with land reform cannot be ring-fenced to the country concerned, but its effects will be felt in the region.

(Cited in Ben Cousins, ‘The Zimbabwe Crisis in its Wider Context: the politics of land, democracy and development in Southern Africa’, in Amanda Hammar et al, eds., Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: rethinking land, state and nation in the context of crisis (Harare: Weaver Press 2003), p. 263)

The former liberation movements who governed Namibia and South Africa, caught off-guard by the farm occupations and electoral violence in Zimbabwe, struggled to come up with a response to the Zimbabwean crisis that did not compromise their established political interests in office. Recognising their own vulnerability on agrarian reform, which they had promoted as a key tenet in their liberation struggle but largely neglected once in power, and worried the land issue could inspire disgruntled trade unionists and opposition parties, these governments found themselves embracing contrary policies: simultaneously defending property rights enshrined in their constitutions, acknowledging the imperatives of land reform across the region, placating international opinion, all the while honouring the regional principle of solidarity in their interactions with Zimbabwe. Within Namibia and South Africa’s leading political parties, trade unions and amongst local NGOs, divisions began to appear which pitted democracy and human rights advocates against those arguing for a more thorough-going commitment to land reform by the government. For traditional leaders and their communities, the raising of the land issue brought with it the possibility of relief from their dire political and economic circumstances. By way of contrast, neighbouring Botswana and Mozambique – seemingly immune to the pressures being experienced by the two ex-settler states – reacted more forthrightly to the Zimbabwean crisis with authorities in Gaborone openly critical Mugabe while those in Maputo inviting white farmers to settle in their territory. And, from outside the region, the international community looked to the self-appointed beacon of democracy in the region, South Africa, to take a lead in criticising events in Zimbabwe and found to its surprise that it was tepid critic of the Zimbabwean government and its policies at best.

What happened to Zimbabwe, the model for Namibia and South Africa land reform programmes and a shining example of democratically inspired reconciliation between black and white? How did the land issue and its reform, which had once seemed if not resolved, certainly manageable with careful planning and sufficient good will, spill over into a blood bath of racial epithets and political violence? What effect did it have on shaping the dimensions of the land question in neighbouring states and, at the same time, fomenting solidarity with the Zimbabwe regime across Southern Africa? And what accounts for the differing responses by other states in the region, namely Botswana and Mozambique, with close economic ties to the neighbouring ex-settler states?

This book is an attempt to understand the origins of a crisis which started in Zimbabwe and why it has had such a profound impact on land and democratic politics in the Southern African region. It provides a framework for understanding the volatility inherent in the politics of land and, with that, the political structure of post-independent states in the Southern African region. The intimate links between the established political economy of settler colonialism, transition to democracy and the concurrent fashioning of a liberal constitutional regime, all of which held tremendously important implications for attempts to embark on agrarian reform, are part of the reason that the Zimbabwean crisis impacted so fundamentally on regional politics. The power of narratives in Southern Africa – drawn from the settler state era, the liberation struggle itself and implicit in neo-liberal policies pursue after independence – to shape preferences and perspectives amongst elites, social groups and the wider population is the other compelling source for the unexpected impact of the Zimbabwean crisis.

In order to meet the demands of such a study, the authors have embraced a comparative methodology which takes as its unit of analysis the Southern African regional political economy and its three dominant former settler states. It uses primary and secondary sources culled from Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia in order to understand the individual dynamics at work within each country as well as the cross-border engagement and effects these produced to weave together a comprehensive portrayal of the impact of the Zimbabwe crisis. As such, the responses of ‘non-settler’ and ‘former settler’ states, e.g. Mozambique and Botswana, were also analysed and serve as ‘controls’ regarding the formation and implementation of domestic policies on land and foreign policies in reaction to the Zimbabwean crisis. This assumption that a comparative approach rooted simultaneously in the particulars of each ex-settler state but framed within a broader region context is the correct basis for interpreting the actions and reactions at both the highest levels of policy as well as the responses of individuals and communities at ground level has guided the research throughout. Adopting this approach has underscored the centrality of narratives as a crucial conceptual device for explaining the conduct of political actors in relation to societies and the constraints (albeit at times self-imposed) experienced by them in addressing the problems of land within the liberal-constitutional states which they inherited in the transition to democracy.

Chris Alden is Lecturer in International Relations at the LSE

Ward Anseeuw is a research fellow at the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), University of Pretoria, South Africa

Brazil's 2010 election: personality-based institutionalisation

By Guy Burton

On the surface the result in Brazil’s presidential election was relatively predictable. Both the principal parties’ candidates, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democratic Party’s (PSDB) José Serra made it through to the second round. This is the fifth time in a row (out of six direct presidential elections since the return of democracy in the 1980s) that these two parties have taken the top two positions. Moreover, that the PT took first place in the poll highlights the shadow of the outgoing president, Lula da Silva, whose continuing high popularity after eight years in office was transferred to his own chosen successor, Rousseff.

There was also arguably little to choose between the two candidates. Both have broadly similar programmes. Although the two parties may have emerged from the south and São Paulo in particular from different constituencies (the PT in the industrial and working class areas and the PSDB among the middle class and business people), the past decade has seen both broadly committed to the same set of policies designed to increase economic growth and more redistributive social policies. If there is any significant difference it is more to do with style rather the content, the PSDB being slightly more committed to the market than the PT.

Such factors all appear to point to a sense of growing political stability in Brazil. Whoever wins the second round that will take place at the end of October will be confident that they will enjoy a constitutional transfer of power from President Lula to him or herself on 1 January. By contrast, the same cannot be said for other parts of the continent where social tension has manifested itself in political unrest and action in the recent past. This includes an aborted coup attempt in Bolivia in 2008, the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in June 2009 and last week’s political troubles in Ecuador against President Rafael Correa.

If the Brazilian election result exudes a sense of business as usual, there are political undercurrents which deserve closer scrutiny. First, Rousseff won around 59% of the vote in the Northeast, her highest share of the vote in the poorest part of the country. Meanwhile in the South she and her Serra were almost neck and neck, with around 42% to 44% respectively. This difference in support demonstrates the continuation of a shift in regional voting that occurred in 2006. Until then the bulk of the PT’s vote had been based in the south of the country. Lula’s re-election in 2006 was significant in that much of his support came from the north. What accounted for the change was the introduction of the bolsa familia (family grant), through which the government provided cash conditional transfers to households to support nutrition, children in school and basic utilities. The measure was targeted at the poorest families in Brazil, the majority of them located in the north. The electoral advantage that it gave to the PT was not lost on the PSDB, which committed itself to continuing the programme were it to be elected.

Second, Marina Silva’s 19% for the Green Party was the highest for any third placed candidate since the return of direct presidential elections in 1989. Her result – as well as her presence in the election – was significant for several reasons. At one level, her journey from being an illiterate 16 year old daughter of rubber tappers in Acre state to becoming minister of the environment in Lula’s government echoes the same rise as her former boss and his humble origins from a shoeshine boy and former factory worker, before becoming a trade union leader. For the PT to win her support is important, since it would enable it to claim the mantle of continuity (through her own participation in government) and historical commitment to the poor (through her own life story and association with the party). However, her close association with the environmental movement and politics was increasingly marginalised during Lula’s second term as the Accelerated Growth Programme (PAC) with its various state-funded infrastructure and construction projects began to bite, ultimately resulting in her criticism of the government’s unsustainable development and resignation in 2008. For this reason it is just as important for the PSDB to win Silva over, especially as her strong support in the south (including a quarter of the vote in the Southeast) could help counter the high degree of support for Rousseff (through Lula) in the north.

These features suggest that the coming campaign for the second round will be similar to that from the first round. Already the PT has announced that it will use the next few weeks to emphasise the differences between Lula’s government and that of his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of the PSDB, who left office eight years ago. It will emphasise Lula as the father of the poor in the form of the bolsa familia. At the same time it will continue to link Rousseff with Lula while courting Silva publically, including emphasising her background and association with Lula, the social movements and party and the government.

By pursuing this course, the 2010 campaign appears to be leading to a paradoxical political outcome. On one hand the emphasis on candidates’ personalities echoes the populist period, when particular focus was placed on an individual rather than political institutions and parties. This was also a period when historically Latin America was politically unstable, many of the populists succumbing to coups and military rule. On the other hand though, the persistence of the same two parties and their candidates along with the use of now historic figures – i.e. Lula and Cardoso, neither of whom are standing for election – points to an increasing institutionalisation of the Brazilian political system. Could it be then, that the 2010 election may be pointing to a new synthesis where past and present political forms may co-exist, indeed even flourish?

Guy Burton is a research associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the LSE Ideas Centre.

Power, Profit and Prestige: A History of American Imperial Expansion (Pluto Press, 2010)

On 5th October 2010, Philip S Golub spoke at IDEAS to launch his new book, 'Power, Profit and Prestige: A History of American Expansionism'. Here he sets out the core rationale behind his argument for the emergence of an 'imperial cosmology' among American leaders.

In the 1990s, after decades of hand wringing over American “decline”, influential parts of the US power elite began dreaming of a new “American Century” and an expanded “American peace”. This was a broad ideational trend, encompassing nationalist and internationalist segments of the foreign policy and security establishment who, notwithstanding varying prescriptions regarding world order, interpreted the end of the Cold War as an historic opportunity to reassert and expand US power and authority. By the end of the decade the main strands of elite opinion, casually comparing the US to Rome at its height, were celebrating the US’ “unparalleled ascendancy around the globe...unrivalled by even the greatest empires of the past” (Henry Kissinger). 

Imperial imaginings were particularly pronounced in the national security complex and the neo-conservative right, which harboured extravagant visions of “global empire” and lasting strategic monopoly. At the turn of the century, imperial outlooks pervaded a new administration that sought, in Condoleezza Rice’s words, to “capitalize on [the opportunities offered] by the shifting of the tectonic plates in international politics” and establish a new world order under exclusive US authority. Striving for unbounded autonomy, the Bush administration launched a methodical assault on the UN system, abandoned international law, and initiated a new phase of military mobilization and imperial expansion in Central Asia and the Gulf. The unintended but predictable result of this effort to curb pluralism was a severe erosion of US political legitimacy and an accentuation of the systemic movement towards polycentrism that it was intended to inhibit.

Power, Profit and Prestige aims to make sense of this turbulent phase of world politics and assess its consequences by situating contemporary change in historic and comparative perspective. Rejecting lazy explanations that dismiss US monopoly-seeking behaviour as an aberration or a “mistake”, and contesting structural realist assumptions that it was simply induced by the power maximising mechanics of international anarchy, the book argues in favour of a historical sociological approach that studies state formation and collective identity construction in the longue durée.

Excavating an imperial past that never passed, it weaves together the material and ideational dimensions of the long US expansionary experience and shows how the post-Cold War imperial urge, the conditions of possibility of which were created by the new power asymmetry, can be traced back to a causa remota: a pervasive culture of expansion and force, rooted in deep currents of late-modern transatlantic imperial history. The book thus highlights the remarkable kinship between the worldviews of late nineteenth century expansionists and those of their successors who presided over the post-1945 American Pax. It argues that this continuity reflects an underlying imperial cosmology, which US elites shared with their European counterparts, that emerged in the late modern period about the ordering of the world, cultural hierarchy, and the destiny of the West to be at the centre and the apex.

Like late nineteenth century expansionists who imagined American world-empire as destiny, since the 1940s US leaders have conceived of Pax Americana as the natural and necessary outcome of a historical process of imperial selection and succession. Notwithstanding changing international and domestic circumstances, foundational assumptions regarding the US’ world historical role and international hierarchy have varied only slightly from one period and one administration to another. With very few exceptions, leaders have perceived the US as the necessary centre of the cosmos, with other nations and societies in orbit around it. 

New leaders, however liberal and democratic in outlook are constrained by the US’ logic of world power and its structures of reproduction. Even if he so wished, Barack Obama cannot erase the past or simply decide to liquidate the imperial system that he has inherited and will briefly preside over. Like many of his predecessors, he is caught in the same bind as reformist British Liberal and Labour leaders in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries who found, once in power, in Elisabeth Monroe’s words, that “a worldwide empire...cannot change direction overnight”. Looking to the future, Power, Profit and Prestige argues that the US will nonetheless have to come to terms with the fact that globalisation has shifted the world’s tectonic plates in unforeseen ways and that the western era of dominance is now slowly coming to an end. 

Philip S. Golub is a widely published author and Contributing Editor of Le Monde Diplomatique. He teaches International Relations and International Political Economy at the Institut d'etudes europeennes, Universite Paris 8 and at the American University of Paris (AUP).

Conflict without negotiation: reflections on Colombia

The killing of Jorge Briceño (Mono Jojoy), one of the FARC’s senior military commanders and an historic figure has been greeted with jubilation by some in the Colombian establishment. President Santos believes this is the beginning of the end for the FARC, and articles predicting their demise have proliferated, arguing that such military blows will lead to internal fracture and possibly eventual disintegration.

Whilst Santos has understandable political reasons for his opinion, others appear to have misunderstood the nature of the Colombian conflict and of the FARC. The core of this misunderstanding is viewing the guerrillas as a purely military organisation. The reality is that the FARC is both a military organisation and a political movement. The FARC does not exist because its leaders and guerrillas enjoy their lives of extreme hardship and risk in the mountains and jungles of Colombia. Rather it is the product of Colombian history and of socio-economic conditions that force thousands of Colombian citizens to take up arms against the State. This makes the collapse of the FARC unlikely despite the blow to morale that will follow the death of one of their emblematic leaders.

The origins of the FARC lie in the growth of the Colombian Communist Party in rural areas during the 1930s and 1940s. This politicised sections of the rural population faced with exploitation and violence from right-wing groups linked to the Conservative Party. These peasants set up the self-defence groups which developed elements of an alternative society (See James J. Brittain, “Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia” London: 2010). Their political vision formed the basis of the ideology the FARC articulates today. Their military option was the result of the capture of the State machinery by a narrow elite that refused to share power with them (see Forrest Hylton, “Evil Hour in Colombia” London: 2006). Ever since, the Colombian State, managed largely by members of the urban and rural elite, has been at war with the FARC and other guerrillas.

Cutting through the smoke and mirrors of a highly politicised situation it is possible to discern some desperation in the Colombian government’s victory claims. A recent report from the respected New Arco Iris Foundation NGO states that, despite government (and US) efforts, the FARC continues to operate in 45% of Colombia (countering the recent figure of 20% given in an article on the BBC website). It has changed tactics and shifted to small ambushes and the use of IED’s in order to counter the Colombian army’s increasing use of air power in conjunction with US satellite and communications intelligence. These tactics will not bring spectacular military victories, but they will likely produce a steady stream of casualties similar to that being suffered by NATO forces in Afghanistan that will sap the morale of the Colombian army and police, as well as the Colombian exchequer. Meanwhile, despite casualties and high-profile blows it seems the FARC is well able to replace its losses. One recent article states that “In the period 2002-2007 according to official figures 50,464 guerrillas were either killed, captured or demobilised - but the guerrilla was reduced by only 8,101 troops, going from 20,600 troops to 12,499. That is to say, it was able to recruit double its initial numbers.” Despite the doubtful accuracy of the figures, if the trend holds true the war is unlikely to end any time soon.

The war is extremely expensive and consumes an ever-greater proportion of Colombian GDP. Military expenditure was historically about 1.8% of GDP, but in 2007 reached 6.32% of GDP. In his recent budget President Santos allocated 78.2 billion dollars, or 14% of the budget to the military, meaning that Colombia will now, for the first time, be spending more on the war than on education. This, in a country with high levels of poverty, unemployment, and inequality (according to ECLAC 45.4% of the population live in poverty, but in rural areas this increases to 50.5%). The figures are much higher if we look at specific classes or regions of the country. The question is how long is such an effort sustainable? How long can an under-developed country suffering massive inequality and serious economic problems sustain an army of nearly half a million troops?

As in so many past conflicts around the world, the Colombian government says that it will negotiate with the guerrillas when they have been defeated and come crawling to the negotiating table. This approach usually fails as it ignores the causes of guerrilla wars, which are political. And yet the Colombian State continues to attempt to win the war, without paying much attention to the underlying socio-economic problems or trying to develop a political dialogue with the guerrillas. Santos’ declarations on the importance of tackling poverty and unemployment tacitly acknowledge that these are the real causes of the conflict, and yet he too refuses to open any avenue for political negotiations.

In the meantime the war has become an industry that distorts the Colombian economy and provides an extra incentive for those involved in the drugs trade. The half million troops, and the tens of thousands of para-militaries, funded by the State and by narco-traffickers, are employers of the urban and rural poor, and mean that many hundreds of thousands of Colombians depend upon them. The network of state informants, which numbers over 2 million people, bolstered by paramilitary informants, also operates for some as a warped form of unemployment benefit as well as intimidating the political opposition. Entwined with this war industry is the drugs industry that continues the significant contribution that the black market has made to the Colombian economy since the 1970s (see Carlos A. Lozano, “Guerra o paz en Colombia?” Bogota: 2006). The penetration of the State by the drugs trade can be seen in the para-politics scandal which has seen over 90 members of Congress and the Senate undergo trials for links to the para-military groups that admit to controlling most of the drugs trade.

This illuminates the nature of the Colombian State today. This is not a normal democracy with properly functioning institutions. It is a warped, heavily militarised form of plutarchy, which Ramiro Bejarano, a former head of the DAS state security service characterised as becoming a “mafia state”. Consider the reality in areas the government controls. On a visit to La Macarena in December 2009, we were shown an empty hospital, a school with unpainted and poorly furnished classrooms, and were told that no public works had been carried out since the army took the town in 2003. Informants lurked outside meetings, and heavily armed troops waited nearby. Just outside the town lay a large, well-maintained military base with helicopter gunships and watchtowers that overlooked the site of a mass grave. The putrefaction from the bodies leached into the local river, polluting it. The base itself was built on land stolen from local landowners, who have yet to receive compensation. Shortly afterwards we received news that one of the peasants who had attended the meeting was killed, shot in the back outside his home. In such a heavily militarised area, the army is the main suspect. Life is somewhat better in urban areas, but here too insecurity reigns and the vast numbers of unemployed feed paramilitary gangs and help keep wages low.

Government rhetoric is usually high-flown, but the reality is of an export-oriented economic model sustaining a political system characterised by corruption, paramilitary infiltration of government and State, and the violent repression of the political opposition and organised labour. Whether violence is carried out by State officials or paramilitaries makes little difference when the two are so often interlinked. The same paramilitaries that one day shoot a trade unionist can easily force indigenous people from their lands the next. The result is a system that is careless of the environment, does not value human life and that depends upon the repression of the political opposition to survive.

Ironically this political and economic model sustains the guerrillas, whose recruitment partly depends upon the maintenance of severe social inequality and political repression. However, the reason the guerrillas continue to be able to recruit is not just because they represent an outlet for frustration, it is also because they articulate and attempt to develop an appealing alternative in areas they control (see James J. Brittain). In a country with serious problems in its economic and political structures, the appearance of a powerfully articulated, attractive alternative would probably lead to changes that would affect the position of the Colombian elite.

Therefore, since 2002 the Colombian government has refused to negotiate with the FARC - despite the guerrilla’s consistent declarations that they seek a negotiated end to the conflict. The latest of these was made in a letter to UNASUR, asking to be allowed to present their view of the conflict and its possible solutions. Despite their refusal to allow this, it is clear that most Latin American governments support a negotiated end to the conflict. In this their position chimes with that of the Colombian political opposition, which has also consistently called for a political solution.

It is here that we at last arrive at the real reason for the desperation behind the Colombian government’s victory declarations. Over the last 8 years it has made an extraordinary effort to defeat the guerrillas, but has signally failed to do so. This level of military effort is not sustainable. Victory for State forces can only be achieved by the total destruction of the FARC and the removal of the socio-economic phenomena that feed it. The government has failed to do the former, and cannot do the latter because it is not equipped with the ideology to carry through the necessary reforms, while the Colombian elite is unprepared to share wealth and real political power with the majority of the population.

The tragedy of the conflict is that while the war continues poor Colombians will continue to kill each other. History has shown that the only way to resolve such conflicts is for the sides to talk to each other, as the peace processes in Northern Ireland and Central America demonstrate. The only hope for the resolution of Latin America’s longest running civil war is for negotiations to begin. Only then will sufficient trust develop to hold out the prospect of a peaceful future for all Colombians. Bogota’s continued refusal to talk to the FARC is a relic of the Bush years and the War on Terror. With the US engaging in behind-the-scenes talks with the Taliban through the Afghan government, surely it is time Santos did the same with the FARC.

Victor Figueroa-Clark is a PhD candidate in the International History department at the LSE