Avuncular American

From Insecurity To Interdependence

"... from insecurity, to interdependence."

So ends the brief but eloquent "Declaration of Interdependence," written by Dr. David Suzuki and colleagues for the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

In the lead up to the 2009 Copenhagen summit, scientists, political leaders, and pundits are feverishly trying to set the stage, respectively issuing dire warnings of climactic disaster, or "managing expectations," shorthand for lowering hopes for definitive action.  Exhibit One: this weekend's APEC Summit.

Like the United States' own "Founding Fathers" seminal document, the Declaration of Independence, Suzuki's declaration tries to distill self-evident truths into language that Everyman and Everywoman can grasp - "This We Know" ("we are interconnected -- using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life").  Or, looking at the glass half full, abusing, polluting, expropriating, and wasting the fundamental elements of life.

Thankfully, the eminent Canadian scientist labors from the optimistic premise of "a new politics of hope."  Remember, he wrote the Declaration of Interdependence in 1992, when even a President like George H.W. Bush could utter these words when signing the Framework Convention on Climate Change: " to sustain development, we must protect the environment; and to protect the environment, we must sustain development."

A decade after father Bush worried about leaving a legacy for his children, son George W. was castigated by environmental groups for not only ignoring Rio's 10th anniversary, but for actively siding with the polluters.  Bush Jr. is back in Texas, where his air conditioner is presumably turned down to an Arctic low, shutting out all evidence of rapidly rising temperatures.  Once in a bubble, always in a bubble.  Until it bursts.

Independence and Interdependence need not be mutually exclusive options.  When I see a country like Denmark, in the wake of the '70s oil crises, make a concerted effort toward energy independence through use of wind, solar, and other alternative resources, I see it as helping the rest of us.  One less EU country that has to face a cold sweat as Russia threatens another natural gas valve malfunction and plunges parts of Europe into a winter deep freeze.

And if countries as different as Nigeria and Vietnam can adopt sound agricultural practices that lead to greater food security, then the rest of the world also reaps the benefit.

The US Declaration of Independence referred to "the Laws of Nature" in its preamble, though we had to wait more than two centuries before Dr. David Suzuki enumerated how those same Laws militated for our global Interdependence.  The bubble that we live in, that little crust surrounded by a vulnerable atmosphere, is our shared environment.  If you live by zero sum arithmetic, then you might look at the drought-stricken starving East Africans and say "there but for the grace of God...".

But today's starving nomads are tomorrow's boat people refugees, or next year's terrorists.  Interdependence is not idealistic gibberish: at its very root is self-interest, where the self-interest is mutual.  John Dunne said it best:

No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

If that was a self-evident truth in the 17th century, when most people never traveled beyond their village, how much truer is that in our interconnected world of today?

America Viewed: Our Own Private Beltways

Re-expatriated after my temporary repatriation, my lofty goal of testing the pulse of my countrymen was limited by my circles of friends and family.  In Washington, though I stayed "inside the Beltway," no one should get the impression that "la crise," as they call it here in the francophone world, has not touched the District of Columbia.  Meeting a university professor friend for lunch near a Metro stop, he pointed out the proliferation of "for rent" signs on storefronts, and said that landlords would like nothing more than to sell out to developers who apparently have never tired of putting up ever more condominiums.

The prof also said that his students are increasingly facing dim employment prospects as they approach the end of what for many are upwards of two decades of education.  Down in Florida and thanks to my gregarious host Dick, I met the likes of Gloria and Charlie, respectively 60-something barmaids and checkout ladies, who hold down multiple minimum-wage jobs, but who remain friendly and stoically persevering.  What else can they do?  Go out on the streets?

On the other side of Florida, I see that the people of MoveOn.org (photo) have organized a little protest for later today (for those who can make it, it's at the Unitarian church of Boca Raton at 12:00 PM).  I guess this answers my question as to why there hasn't been a massive pro-health care reform rally in Washington: the people of Move On and other activists and Democratic party strategists want to garner support locally, where they can put constituent pressure on Blue Dog Democrats, Know-Nothing Republicans, and other species of politician who live in a world where everything is fine as it is.

That ideal world may only exist within the confines of the Senators' own circle, where they and other Federal employees (and retirees, including yours truly) enjoy a kind of "public option" health insurance already.  It's employer subsidized, though we all do pay monthly premiums.

For those politicians whose wives develop breast cancer or whose husbands contract prostate cancer, there's no question of their being dropped from the rolls for the sin of having a pre-existing condition, that chilling term which strikes fear into the hearts of normal Americans.  And, once a Congressman, always a Congressman: even if Representative Smith (R - Podunk USA) fails in his re-election bid and gets sent back home, he (and his family) take their nice Federal health insurance system with them, as opposed to the Glorias and the Charlies of the world, who sometimes take on second and third jobs if they carry with them the precious entree into employer-provided health insurance.

Comparing notes with my sister, a nurse who trains trainers in the use of specialized hospital equipment and travels the length and breadth of the country, I learn of innovative health care practices, like performing "outpatient" surgery that goes way beyond removing that pesky mole on your face.  How about outpatient spinal surgery, where a disk operation that releases you back home after 23 hours or less is now commonplace?  I knew of the practice in the US - already dating back years - where childbirth (even cesarean sections) gets mothers and their newborns booted out after a day or so.  But spinal surgery?  What's next, outpatient brain surgery?  Apparently yes.

Now that I'm back in Europe, where health care, if not a human right, is viewed as a hard-won achievement of a civilized society, it will be a challenge to explain what Bob Herbert called the "frightening passivity" of Americans in the face of the health care sub prime unemployment crises.

Maybe Americans have their own private Beltways, where they can zip by neighborhoods blighted by "for sale" signs on the way to their favorite shopping center.  As long as they don't take the exit, they are spared the inconvenience of seeing the devastation in person.  But the United States is Too Big To Fail, that overused expression that justified handouts to the very capitalist institutions that decry helping hardscrabble individuals like Charlie or Gloria.  Their "pre-existing condition" is being born into the American working class.

But if that working class ceases to find work, the effects will be felt in the factories of China too.  Someone used the term "symbiotic" to describe the US-China relationship.  Maybe the Chinese should pull aside a couple of recalcitrant Senators and explain to them why they should want to vote to allow Americans to get health insurance, one sure way of helping the country get back on its feet.  It's in the Chinese interest.

Travels Through the Green Heart of Florida

Back roads in central Florida are a nice alternative to risking life and limb on the Interstate.  You can drive almost as fast, but the two opposing lanes impose a certain discipline, and there's no comparison in traffic congestion.  After a family reunion on the margins of Disney World, I headed back to the Gulf coast through the orange groves of "Frostfree" and other colorfully-named places.  Passing over Troublesome Creek, I wasn't far from Soggy Bottom.  Had the Coen brothers (of O Brother, Where Art Thou? fame) been inspired or was this an echo of the 2000 hit comedy?  In any case, a road works sign informed me that "State Prisoners at Work" were up ahead, but I detected no chain gangs.

My genial host in Sarasota marveled at my wanting to drive through what he called "cracker country," but it's all part of my "cultural learnings," as Borat would say.  At least this rather pretty swath of the state has a real economy - though apparently based on a citrus monoculture - compared to the Florida coastline, where the part of the population not earning its living from tourism sells life's necessities (and a lot of dross too) to the other part that is dependent on the "snowbirds," that quaint expression describing the Northerners (American and Canadian) who migrate south for the winter.  There were even rolling hills and lakes that didn't appear to be glorified swamps.

As with other parts of rural - especially Southern - states, there are lots of churches, some part of larger denominations like the First Baptists, others of various pentecostal evangelical fundamental persuasions.  The percentage of "manufactured homes" (mobile homes to you and me) is very high, and the contrast with the faux-Spanish stuccoed condominiums and villas of urban Florida couldn't be more striking.

Borrowed CDs and NPR (for non-US readers, National Public Radio, the news, music, and culture network) provided aural diversion from the monotony of the orange groves, and no Deliverance moments were had, though I did see a few ramshackle dwellings with anti-social warnings about dogs.  Urban or rural, Florida abounds in gun shops, and American flags.  To the foreign visitor: the largest American flags fluttering in the breeze are not indicative of a government installation, but show you the way to a car dealership.  You can still buy a little plastic gizmo to attach a flag to your rear passenger window, though there are far fewer of these than after the post-9/11 patriotic fervor.

My rambles have gone on long enough.  Next: political learnings on things like the health care situation.

Huntsville, Order Indian Food for 2010 G-20

It's nice when something you wrote...

"Can We Can the G8 Now? Please?" in April and

"Eight Is Not Enough: Turn the G8 Into G20" in July...

... comes to pass in September.  Or almost, if this "Snap Analysis" from Reuters is accurate:

Adopting the G20 as the new economic steering committee raises questions over the whether or not the Group of Eight, which makes up the world's industrial countries, will eventually be faded out. Diplomats said the G8 would continue to function but would focus on non-economic issues.

Of course, I'd rather they just declare victory and bury the G8 altogether, if for no better reason than to save lots of travel money.  Huntsville, Ontario, site of the 2010 gathering, will just have to add an extra 12 spaces at the table.  No point in continuing what had become a "rich (mostly white) man's club" when the rich men had to admit that they didn't have a clue on how to organize the world's economy.

Now, if Huntsville will just expand its menu to include some Indian restaurants, Brazilian coffee houses, South African rooibos tea rooms...  Oops, just checked.  Looks like they have a long way to go.

(Logo, Town of Huntsville Summit Site)

Journée Sans Voitures - No Car Day In Brussels

This is an experiment, attempting to do a post by email. I am cheating, because to insert this nice "No Car" sticker from the Boston bloggers "Choosing No Car," I had to log on to my Typepad account.

Okay, enough geeky detail. The important thing is this: for the nth time in recent years, Brussels, seat of the European Union, is turning itself into a carless capital. "La Journée Sans Voitures" is a joy for anyone who values fresher air, walking IN the streets, and peace and quiet.

Not that our leafy neighborhood is noisy, but this morning, going out for fresh bread, it was like the final scene (minus the scary post apocalyptic music) of the end of the world in "On The Beach." No sound, empty streets. That will have changed when we take the tram a little later; last year our tram could barely move for all the cyclists and pedestrians clogging the city's many cultural and historic venues.

Brussels, a city of only about a million people, can go carless thanks to its wonderful integrated public transport system, where one simple ticket gets you on to trams, buses, metros, and trains. We almost never go into city center by car. So, looking for inspiration for a post-Detroit future? Come to Brussels next September and savor what it's like to spend a day without The Car.

Industrial Infrastructure - Not Just For the Museum

Throughout August and September, Europe’s cities, regions, and nations have been marking various “heritage,” “open house,” or “patrimoine” days. This weekend it is Brussels’ turn, but we also intend to take in some sites in northern France. Value for money doesn’t get much better: most of the sites are free, and some only open for this event.

Last weekend it was the turn of Belgium’s two largest regions, Flanders and Wallonia. We checked out several places in Wallonie, concentrating on the rich industrial heritage of what is now a region known for its depressed economy. In the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, it was quite the opposite.

As you can see from the photo of the stupendous canal elevator at Strépy-Thieu, Wallonie and Belgium have seen fit to create marvels of the 21st century, just a few kilometers from the UNESCO world heritage site of its 19th century predecessors. Strépy-Thieu and its attendant infrastructure show how investment in transport alternatives for trucks clogging motorways exist, and can be made to thrive again.

For those who still know what a factory is, and who know that “industrial zone" doesn’t only refer to prefab warehouses to store Chinese goods destined for our shelves, check out the “European Route of Industrial Heritage” (ERIH), which has a store of information on its website.

One of Belgium’s most interesting ERIH stops is the Ecomusée (eco as in economic) du Bois-du-Luc, in the former coal belt of La Louvière south of Brussels. The road signs still tend to say “musée des mines,” but once you find the place, there’s no missing its purpose. It’s a veritable company town, built when capitalists had a paternal hold over their workers, even providing housing, shopping, and medical care on site. Quite an innovation for the 19th century.

But the paternalism only went so far. That impressive entrance you see in the photo, separating the courtyard of the mining site from the “cité ouvrière,” separates more than residential from industrial. That heavy steel gate between the brick towers is called, rather ominously, a “porte guillotine,” and though it may not have chopped any heads off, the message was clear to striking workers: do not try anything stupid. A far cry from today’s impunity with industrial property, when strikers in France kidnap management or strap homemade explosives to the machine tools.

But I digress. Much as I laud the work of these institutions which safeguard the industrial past in all its forms, I want future generations to admire what should be our industrial present. And that means retaining an industrial base, no matter how “yuppie” or gentrified our cities might become.

Recently I read in Belgium’s Le Soir (”Industries SDF à Bruxelles?“) that space for industry in Europe’s capital is disappearing at the rate of some 8,600 square meters per month, which, says journalist François Robert, “means there won’t be anything left, if this rate is maintained, in less than a year.” Sorry, folks, that just won’t do. Brussels, or Belgium, or any country for that matter, cannot live by bureaucrats and university students alone. And as much as tourists like to admire Brussels’ impressive sites like the Grand Place and the Atomium, I have yet to see a country achieve 1st world status (or retain it) via package tours.

So admire these wonders of the industrial world that have been preserved for posterity, but avoid crying “not in my back yard” when some entrepreneur wants to set up a little workshop down the street. Your future economic health may depend on it.

Republican SDD - Selective Deficit Disorder

Sufferers of ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder (see BeatADD.com for some funny and compassionate material on the modern malady; thanks for the poster) - please forgive my confusing your situation with that of the US Republican party.  Whatever the cause of ADD, it appears to be completely involuntary, whereas what is ailing the GOP is entirely of its own doing.

Take the outburst of Republican Congressman Joe Wilson (from South Carolina) last night during President Obama's address to the joint session of Congress.  Blurting out "You lie!!" (see WaPo's Dana Milbank's article and video) to the President was not only a historic breach of etiquette and protocol, it was also, like his colleagues' brandishing anti-health care reform signs, entirely premeditated.

Republicans came to the Rotunda ready to diss the Prez, who was not displaying sufficient "humility," as Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said on the eve of the address.  Coming as he does from a state where people of the President's complexion were addressed as "boy" not so long ago, Chambliss' racial reference was understood by all with a memory of the coded language.

"The practitioners of the "Big Lie" (and they have the audacity to label Obama a "fascist") have assimilated the lesson of the people who invented fascism: lie early, lie often, and lie big."

The practitioners of the "Big Lie" (and they have the audacity to label Obama a "fascist") have assimilated the lesson of the people who invented fascism: lie early, lie often, and lie big.  Like their professed concern about adding to the federal deficit, nicely trashed today by the ever watchful (and always funny) Gail Collins in the NYT:

These guys are really, really, really concerned about balancing the budget. And that seems only fair since they were basically the ones who unbalanced it in the first place when they worked in splendid bipartisan concert in 2001 to pass George W. Bush’s first $1.6 trillion in tax cuts.

"These guys" include Senators Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley, respectively Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who hold the future of health care reform in their SDD-trembling hands.  But Bush's deficits - his trillion dollar tax cuts wiped out the Clinton surplus - willfully committed while he was leading the country to a war of choice in Iraq on the national credit card, are conveniently forgotten by the GOP.  Just like the huge deficits of the Reagan/Bush I era, which Clinton had to erase before he created the surplus, which was wiped out by Bush II...

Selectivity over deficits is just politics, you might say.  Perhaps. But it might also be a sign of a breakdown.  Consider what the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has to say about ADHD, then substitute "GOP" for "child" (particularly after last night's behavior):

• Impulsiveness: a child who acts quickly without thinking first.
• Hyperactivity: a child who can't sit still, walks, runs, or climbs around when others are seated, talks when others are talking.
• Inattention: a child who daydreams or seems to be in another world, is sidetracked by what is going on around him or her.

As Bob Herbert said the other day, maybe "It's Time to Get Help."

 

Ben Hopkins' The Market: Bazaar Trade 101

Pazar - Bir ticaret masali, the latest film (shot in Turkish) by English director Ben Hopkins, has been given the title of The Market: A Tale of Trade (official site) for its international release.  This is trade at its most basic, a bazaar of barter, seen through the adventures of hero Mihram ("Saint Mihram," as he's called by cynics who doubt his ability to stay relatively honest, is admirably incarnated by Tayanç Ayaydin, a 30 year old Turkish actor who, by the way, can do a great bearded Jack Nicholson impersonation).

There is muted humor in The Market, as befits a director whose work includes a title like 37 Uses For a Dead Sheep - Ben Hopkins' 2006 documentary on nomads who populate another corner of eastern Turkey.   The locations are suitably bleak, appropriate for a setting along the border of what used to be the fault line between the Soviet Union and NATO's easternmost member.

Though the story of a smalltime trader on the make is timeless, Hopkins adds an extra layer of authenticity by situating it in the early 90s.  The USSR has recently broken up, neighboring Azerbaijan is dismantling (read pillaging) its Soviet infrastructure and dabbling in "the market" (read mafia) and Turkey is beginning to install a mobile phone network.  The US dollar (cash) is the preferred financial instrument.  Opportunity beckons for Mihram.

The Market: A Tale of Trade offers choice illustrations of many "capitalist" sub themes:

• Everything Has Its Price
• Business Is Business
• Information Is Power

Mihram is both an advocate for and a victim of all of the above.  If your pickup truck is your office, and if items on either side of the border have different "supply and demand" curves, you probably need a good business plan.

If your business plan's major elements are prayer (including a shaky vow to lay off the liquor) and gambling, or is too complicated to explain to your wife, then its chances of succeeding are, shall we say, aleatory.  Luck is a helpful element in any business, but when your multiple commitments, based on the same wad of cash, start to unravel, you have to be luckier than Mihram's track record would indicate.

You can enjoy The Market on many levels: excellent acting by unknown (in the West, anyway) new faces; a feel for life in those indeterminate border zones where rules are something for the books; an allegory for how all of our lives are influenced by "market forces."  Ben Hopkins' "Director's Statement" is definitely worth reading, as it traces how he came to write the screenplay "that dealt with my conflicting feelings about capitalism - my admiration for its creativity and innovation, and my cynicism that it can ever deliver its benefits without inequality and exploitation."

After months of Madoff and banks, bailouts, and bonuses, it's refreshing that Ben Hopkins provides a look at trade, one of the very basics of society's economic relations.  But who other than Hopkins would have thought to stage a timely and timeless capitalist drama on the dusty steppes of Central Asia?

US Health Care: What's So Difficult?

Anyone passing through Brussels and interested in the history of medicine would do well to visit Notre Dame à la Rose in Lessines (photo, left), a town to the west of the city.  Given over to historical tourism since the 1980s, as a "hôtel Dieu" it served to heal the poor for hundreds of years.  You'll be forgiven if you think you're in a cloistered monastery: nuns dispensed treatment for body and soul in a self sufficient complex, replete with its own river and mill, vegetable garden, and farm.

You'll never complain about your doctor again once you've seen the wax image of his 17th century forebear (photo below, right).  Just take a look at his instruments (those were the days of bleeding and trepanation) and count your lucky stars that you only have to say "aahh" on a dry popsicle stick tongue-depressor.

Basic as the care was, it was the best that was on offer at the time, and the nuns, doctors, and other personnel knew that if they didn't care for the sick poor, no one would.  Not only would they care for body and maybe save souls, but they would have the personal satisfaction of salvation, and of doing the right thing.

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Okay, fast forward to the US Congress this week, where Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, said this of President Obama's efforts to make health care available to all Americans:

You will have to call a bureaucrat and hope to God his calculator is more compassionate and smarter than your doctor. (NY Times)

Obviously Rogers hasn't checked with his doctor, who may be one of the 450,000 clamoring for health care reform.  Nor has the good Congressman had to deal with an insurance company "gatekeeper" whose job it is to find every conceivable excuse to disallow treatment of patients.  Give me a government bureaucrat any day.

Here's what I can't understand: all the statistics show that the US spends way more than other advanced countries on health care, but gets results that are sub-prime, to say the least.  The same Republicans who decry "government" intervention passed a massive giveaway to private insurers via Medicare during the Bush years.  Their defense of health care appears to exclude dispensing it to anyone save the insurance industry lobbyists who finance their campaigns.

Do they just want to send people to the Poorhouse, that other institution from a bygone era that has gone the way of the hôtel Dieu?

Come on, people, it's not so difficult.  Other countries spend far less, with better results, and it's just not an issue in politics.  It's a human right.  Something that the good nuns and doctors of the hôtel Dieu understood centuries ago.

Global Economic Crisis: Uzbekistan Engages Constructively

A prosperous and democratic Uzbekistan could be an extremely important bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds.

AbduMannob Polat, former chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, writing for the Jamestown Foundation

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Last week I participated in a conference in Tashkent, the capital of post-Soviet Central Asia's most populous country, Uzbekistan.  Hosts were the Uzbekistan Institute for the Study of Civil Society (ISCS), who provided the photos in this post.  Full disclosure: the Brussels-based European Institute of International Relations (IERI, for which I do pro-bono work) was a co-sponsor, as were the OSCE and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), organizations with strong democracy-building and rule of law credentials.

The round table was primarily focused on how Uzbekistan has coped with the international financial crisis.  Rather well, it would appear: the IMF (whose Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn visited Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states last month) forecast 7% GDP growth for the country in 2009, down only slightly from 2008's 9% figure.

Some of Uzbekistan's success in weathering the financial storm is down to its isolation; "double land-locked" among other land-locked Central Asian neighbors, it had already survived the wrenching transition from Soviet central planning after the breakup of the USSR in the '90s.  As one Uzbek banker said, the country's mere 6% of mortgage exposure meant there was "no bubble to burst."  It has also helped that the country's President, Islam Karimov, is an economist by training, and has recently penned a book on the crisis.

Though economic in thrust, the conference's sub theme of political reforms was ever-present.  That picture of me on the right is of a very jet lagged neophyte's first hours in Tashkent, trying to answer the local press' insistent questioning about my opinion on Uzbekistan's upcoming (December) parliamentary and local elections.  "Langue de bois" or diplospeak comes in handy at times, but I was honestly able to plead ignorance based on my almost total lack of information on the question.

Other participants were more forthright, with probably the best line from the NDI director: "democracy is the best defense against extremism."  The extremism is Islamic, and was a reference to Uzbekistan's darkest hour in 2005, when long-simmering tensions came to a head in the city of Andijan.  A bloody confrontation between government forces and opposition elements - over which the jury is still out, though a 2007 Jamestown Foundation report provides dispassionate analysis - resulted in Uzbekistan's sidelining by Western governments and NGOs, which is only now starting to be relaxed.

Part of the thaw is plain power politics: Uzbekistan lies astride a critical supply route leading to Afghanistan, and can be a much-appreciated island of stability in a turbulent region.  As AbduMannob Polat, former chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (and author of the Jamestown study), writes: "A prosperous and democratic Uzbekistan could be an extremely important bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds."  A truism, to be sure.  The conditional tense is crucial: we aren't there yet.  But Uzbek bodies like the Civil Society Institute, with crucial assistance from institutions like the OSCE and NDI (also from the European Union and the Council of Europe), are engaging with the outside world.

As longtime campaigners for the rule of law in Uzbekistan know, the transition from centuries of Czarist then Communist rule does not come overnight.  There are ups, and there are downs.  Dialogue helps, and "constructive engagement" - though dismissed by purists as providing cover and abetting repression - can also be a way of maintaining a positive influence, and has born fruit.  Uzbekistan has an active ombudsman in the person of a respected parliamentary deputy, and the country banned capital punishment in 2008.

I have no illusions that the ways of Uzbek politics are every bit as labyrinthine as those of the Middle East, of which I know enough to know what I don't know, to paraphrase an ex-US Secretary of Defense.  But there is a window opening up, as much for Uzbekistan as for the West.  And it's not just the West: Uzbekistan still must deal gingerly with overtures from its former overlords in Moscow, and President Karimov currently chairs the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

"Great Game" aficionados will put this down to East-West jockeying for influence in a resource-rich, strategically located country, and that cannot be denied.  But that will happen anyway.  Uzbekistan, despite what a NY Times correspondent intimated recently, is not Chechnya.  The question is: are ordinary Uzbek citizens better off with - or without - the presence of Western institutions pressing for rule of law and human rights?  How "righteous" is it to leave them on their own?  Engagement, however problematic and trying on the nerves, can bring results.