anyone predict the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt?

[Patrick Meier]

Hi All,

Curious if you know of any hard evidence of anyone predicting the recent revolutions in North Africa.

Thanks,
Patrick

[Jennifer Leaning]

Dear Patrick,

 

Not that I am aware of.  NYTimes yesterday had an article about Gene Sharp, an old time peace activist and civil disobedience guru, describing his role over the years in teaching people in the Mid East on tactics deployed to good outcome in Egypt most recently.

 

link to Sharp article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17sharp.html

 

Best.

Jennifer

>>>

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[Hans-Günter Brauch]

Dear friends and colleagues,

 

Social scientists failed to predict the change in the Arab World as they failed to foresee the end of the Cold War in 1989

because many are the victims of their own beliefs, projections and of their respective biases. As the editor of the Hexagon

Book Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace I am delighted to note that we had in the first five volumes always

at least one co-editor and many authors from the Middle East and North Africa and that we were able to give them “voice” and “visibility”.

Many of them have been and are very active in this peaceful transformation in their region to regain the pride for their region and

culture. We and especially our governments should have listened more to these independent voices instead of supporting repressive

regimes for decades with billions of US$ and Euros for the military and the internal security forces instead  in education of its young people and in their future  who brought about this peaceful change with non-military means because they lost fear. I am doubtful

whether Western experts who are detached from the region and our governments learn the lessons of their own failure in the past.

The double standards of the past and present calling for democracy and actively supporting the repression of democratic movements are obvious but I am not sure whether the North is ready and willing to learn its lessons.

 

With best regards

yours

Hans Günter Brauch

Editor, Hexagon Book Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace and of the

Global Environmental and Human Security Handbook for the Anthropocene (GEHSHA)

<http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/hexagon_05.htm>

< http://www.springer.com/series/8090>

< 

 

 

 

---

[Helene Lavoix]

Hi Patrick,

Right now I rather have only evidence of everyone failing to foresee it :-(... which is not surprising considering the models used... maybe this will be a good opportunity to see those models and approaches revised, but i am afraid this is really wishful thinking
If anyone had contrary evidence, as Patrick, I would love to know to!
Helene

[David Carment]

in all honesty

who are these people writing these things?


dc

David Carment
Professor of International Affairs,
CDFAI Fellow  and Editor  Canadian Foreign Policy
www.cdfai.org
www.carleton.ca/cifp
www.carleton.ca/cfpj
www.carleton.ca/~dcarment

[Helene Lavoix]

Hello David,

What do you mean? Who are the people writing the mails, or who are the people giving the evidence?

In case you question was about who is writing the mail,

Dr. Helene Lavoix,

Visiting Senior Fellow RSIS and see details here: http://independent.academia.edu/HeleneLavoix

[David Carment]

I mean the people who are claiming that such  predictions do not exist and that existing methodologies are not capable of  making such predictions. I guess that would include you and the two previous posters.

Strikes me these assessment are impressionist, anecdotal and  carry more than just a  whiff of assumption.


dc

[Helene Lavoix]

Dear David,

As long as no precise research is done on the topic those are indeed impressions and pieces of information gathered out of conversations with various people involved, which was, I believe what Patrick was asking... and a serious assessment is only a collection of those pieces of information, but you have to start somewhere. I would not say that looking at the 2011 threat assessment of the US IC is anecdotical, but of course it may be seen this way.

However, regarding methodologies, I have worked enough on them and published on them in an evidenced way to be a bit surprised by your suggestion that it is anecdotical... and by the way you may not remember it but we exchanged emails then, as I took care to include your work. I do not mean that what was done by the scientific community was all wrong (thanks God it is not), but that very often, most often the methodologies that were finally used in various governments when they were not abandoned where not up to the task. And this obviously goes in the same direction as what you pointed out, as you wrote that had you had had more interest and funding, then you could probably have developed the right tool. 

Hence I do not understand this quite personal attack on 3 people, who did not deserve it but just exchanged and shared.

That said, I wish you a very good week end and I hope you will get the funding you need,

Dr. H Lavoix

[David Carment]

I suppose if you had said this clearly in the first place then perhaps there would have been no need to ask for clarification.


 Indeed your original claim was the current methodologies are not capable of making such predictions unless they are revised - whatever that means.

Personally my intention was to not shut down the discussion.

However  I find it tiresome  that observers insist on taking intellectual short cuts in drawing conclusions about what constitutes "state of the art"  in predictive methodologies  - when in fact we have not even begun to plumb the depths of  what so called "first and second generation" ew systems can deliver .

If there is a disconnect it does not lie in the methodologies themselves but in  the slipshod and lazy ways in which governments make use of them . I would go further to suggest that if there was as an award for outstanding achievement in attention deficit disorder in foreign policy it would  easily go  to the academic community who insist on tossing new glossy ideas at our policy people until they are dizzy.


dc

[Helene Lavoix]

Sorry, you are right, I should have been more explicit... I guess, that I might share actually the same aggravation as you, which might have prompted my initial too short email.

On the rest, I definitely agree with you. Furthermore, considering my own research on the topic (there on escalation towards wars and conflict including domestic ones), i truly loved one of the article you wrote some times ago (sorry, but i am in a hurry and cannot look for the excat ref)  underlying among other things the importance to look at processes if we were to achieve proper warning systems - probably because i reached the same conclusion :-) and i just do not understand why they (various agencies) do not see it and do not continue funding good projects... this lack of continuous proper funding stops good models to be designed, tested, modified, improved... and this is disastrous.

On the "sycophant bias" :-) well I can only again support you, sigh.

Maybe one day teh situation will come back to something better, before it is too late?

[David Carment]

sorry helene - nothing i have written is worthy of love - we are social scientists after all
 

it is rather sad to see that much of our "community" has possibly squandered yet another opportunity to make a statement about how effective the systems we have developed  can be because we lost focus somewhere along the line

 significant investments were made post 1994 and had we stayed the course those investments could be paying off with dividends  -

instead we have people touting the next best thing in ew as if the older models though functional  don't work

the last thing I want to see are people claiming that since no one predicted  the current MENA situation (and that is likely untrue in itself)  our models, methodologies and  investments are all for nought and that new models  and methodologies are needed

this will only confuse the policy community even more and provide further justification to not support and invest in our work



dc

[Hans Guenter Brauch]

Dear all,

 

my critique is much more fundamental about the failure of the social sciences to predict turning points in history. “We” are the victims of what “we” see and listen too and much of its comes through the prism of Northern media and experts. Developments in this region were too often reduced to one threat from the prism of the dominating national security perspective. Many of the critical assessments by social scientists from within the region that is now undergoing a fundamental change were ignored.

 

They did not make it into peer-reviewed journals they were not cited and listed in the citation indexes etc. and they are not represented on the boards of our journals. While events can never be predicted structural trends can be projected and we have tried to do it in the volumes I referred to earlier. Thus, from a structural perspective the events are not surprising even though the trigger, a young student in Tunisia without any perspective of a decent future who took his life, can never be predicted.

 

Thus, my critique is that from a national or international security perspective many of the structural causes may not have mattered but from a human, environmental, water, soil, food and health security approach they are crucial. As social scientists we have to assess more deeply why “we as scientists” failed and why our respective governments while preaching democratization invested in stability and repression in this region.

 

My critique is more fundamental and my suggestion is that we should involve also in our debate in this list scholars from the region who have written on the human and environmental insecurities in their region to the extent possible without risking their lives if they should choose to do so. As this transformation is underway with an uncertain outcome the question we have to raise frankly ourselves why have “we failed” so badly as in 1989 and now? What is the worth of our conceptual models in the light of the two recent major turning points of 1989 and 2011 and why did we ignore the voices form the region who predicted change. There is no easy answer. But our failure to predict and to understand is more about us than about them about the shortcomings of our social science models and about our perceptual biases. We as a community and discipline have much rethinking ahead instead of continuing our scientific business as usual adhering to the same models that failed to predict the social change we are observing now.

 

With best regards from Germany

Hans Guenter Brauch,

Free University of Berlin

 

 

 

---

Von: preventin...@googlegroups.com [mailto:preventin...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von David Carment
Gesendet: Samstag, 19. Februar 2011 03:50
An: preventin...@googlegroups.com; preventin...@googlegroups.com
Betreff: Re: anyone predict the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt?

 

sorry helene - nothing i have written is worthy of love - we are social scientists after all

[Jack A. Goldstone]

Dear Colleagues,
In a paper drafted last year for a volume on new approaches to security, which will be published later this year, I had the following section. This draws on the research on population and conflict to predict "chronic and intermittently" acute instability in Muslim countries of MENA based on problems in absorbing large youth cohorts, and especially around succession crises. I should also point out that the Egypt study group of the Carnegie foundation has been issuing reports for a year saying that the Mubarak succession was going to risky and troublesome.
____________________________________________________________________________________
The Arc of Instability: High Population Growth and Youthful Populations in Low- and Middle-Income Countries from Southern Africa to the Middle East and Southern and Southeast Asia

If we look back at Tables 1 and 2, it is striking that most of the fastest growing and large still-growing countries are either Muslim or have large Muslim minorities. This is because, in contrast to the societies of Latin America or East Asia, while Muslim countries have adopted the Western technologies that reduce their mortality, they have been more resistant to cultural changes that reduce birth rates and family size. The result is that deaths have fallen much faster than births, resulting in rapid population growth rates. There are exceptions, as some Muslim countries � such as Indonesia and Iran � have had vigorous government-promoted programs of contraception and their population growth rates have fallen sharply in recent years. However, they still bear substantial demographic momentum from earlier rapid growth, and will continue to grow substantially for at least another one or two decades.

More generally, the regions with fast growing populations also include central and Andean America, and virtually all of Africa, as well as the Middle East, and most of south and southeast Asia. These are all regions where traditional family patterns, with women bearing four to six children in their lives, persist even though better nutrition and medicine have significantly reduced death rates, particularly infant and childhood mortality.

These countries also have exceptionally youthful populations. With large numbers of children still being born and many more than before surviving to adulthood, the population is tilting toward having more and more youth in the total population. The dramatic increase in the number of workers entering the labor force produces a spike in un- and underemployment unless the economy grows extremely rapidly.
Moreover, the older age groups in these societies are also benefiting from reduced mortality � so that older cohorts continue to hold their jobs and positions in the economy longer, blocking the ascent of younger workers.

As shown in Map 1, in the countries with large youth populations the proportion of the population aged 15 or younger is over 30% and in most cases over 40%; that is approximately twice the level found in the more developed countries.

Insert Map 1 about here.

A number of scholars have documented the greater incidence of civil violence and state breakdowns in countries with large youth bulges and several generations of rapid population growth. A rapidly growing and exceptionally youthful population creates strains on systems of schooling and socialization; large unemployed and under-employed youth populations are vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment to criminal and insurgent movements. Growing populations frequently increase competition among elite groups for control of patronage resources, and force populations into encroaching on regions of poorer or already-claimed resources. Growing costs of administration, service provision, education, and security often arise before economic growth provides the resources to governments to meet those needs, leading to ineffective government. Population increase and rising demand can also push up the costs of items from basic foodstuffs and fuels (and increase the costs to governm
ent where such items are subsidized) to housing. Growing populations can also lead to the degradation of natural resources, including forests, grazing lands, fish and game stocks, and water supplies.

While a well-organized and effectively repressive regime can maintain order in such societies, it is a brittle order that can be overturned in the event of an economic crisis or a failure of government leadership (as in a succession crisis). This is not merely a contemporary phenomenon, nor one characteristic of Asia and Africa. European countries also exhibited a much higher incidence of civil strife and state crises during periods of youth bulges and periods of high population increase.
These demographic patterns mean that the instability in such places as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan is not just a result of disparate and specific conditions in those countries. Rather, the threat of chronic and intermittently acute instability will persist as long as there is a disjunction between the pattern of economic absorption of the economy, and the growth rate and age structure of the population.

Jack A. Goldstone

[David Carment]

Dear  Hans, this is precisely the point we have made almost continuously in the  development of our fragility framework which encompasses elements of authority, legitimacy and capacity (and which  is highlighted as an example in the MENA report mentioned previously). The national security paradigm of which you speak and which drives the bulk of the research on ew , state fragility processes and  conflict analysis is but one of several lenses through which we can examine  such things . As we show legitimacy process are fundamental to the  situation in the MENA.
EW systems that focus only national security and conflict are typically going to drive late responses

What we are now trying to determine is the sequence through which a state changes over time  using our A, L and C framework.


you can find more details here:

http://www.carleton.ca/cifp/app/serve.php/1200.pdf

http://www.carleton.ca/cifp/app/serve.php/1320.pdf

http://www.carleton.ca/cifp/app/serve.php/1045.pdf


http://www.carleton.ca/cifp/app/serve.php/1044.pdf

[Hans-Günter Brauch]

Dear colleagues,

many of us have addressed some causal factors that may have contributed to the present events but demographic although vital are not the only ones.

Since the late 1990s I have argued that not power (missiles etc.) is the threat but poverty and lack of perspective of the people and once people loose fear (in 1989 as since December 2010) even repressive regimes are in danger to tumble. I have tried to reduce the causal complexity to six factors of a survival hexagon human-induced demand factors (population change, urbanization, agriculture) and nature-induced supply factors (climate change, water and soil). While we cannot predict triggering events we can project to some extent trends and we can model future nature-human interfaces. The MENA has been a hotspot for decades but both intelligence organizations and the mainstream social sciences with a regional focus have failed to understand the complexity and policy makers were too often interested in short-term stability in the interest of their or our national security.

Thus, my provocative thesis is that we are the victims of our worldviews as the politicians are often the victims of their mindset that often prevent them from seeing the broader picture. Thus my argument was much more fundamental why did we fail totally or partially to understand the complexity that resulted in the present developments we observe. Thus, my argument is not to return to our business as usual sustaining worldviews and mindsets that may prevent us to understand the challenges humankind may face due to the multiple effects of global environmental change with all its societal impacts. There is no simple answer nor do I pretend to have the answer but my argument is that we should reflect the scientific structures under which we operate to give more "voice" and "visibility" to scholars and thinkers from other regions instead of making them a pure object of our
worldviews, mindsets, models, approaches, theories etc.

Thus, to rephrase Patrick's initial question as to who predicted the change (that was not predictable) in my view the key question is why are we as a discipline continuously failing to address the structural conditions that may explode and will explode in different parts of the world whenever a trigger event ignites them in hotspot regions.

A lot you find in the WBGU report: Security Risk Climate Change
For which I wrote in 2006 the MENA expert study (unfortunately for most of you in German) but an updated and further developed version you find in the third volume of the Global Environmental and Human Security Handbook for the Anthropocene (GEHSHA) that has just been published by Springer.

This Global Environmental and Human Security Handbook for the Anthropocene consists of three volumes with 270 anonymously peer-reviewed book chapters edited by 11 scientists from 10 countries that bring together 300 authors from 100 countries:

GEHSHA Vol 1: Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Pal Dunay, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, P.H. Liotta (Eds.): Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21 st Century(Berlin – Heidelberg – New York: Springer-Verlag, 2008); at: <http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/hexagon_03.htm>.

GEHSHA Vol. 2: Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Czeslaw Mesjasz, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou, Heinz Krummenacher (Eds.): Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts (Berlin – Heidelberg – New York: Springer-Verlag, 2009); at: <http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/hexagon_04.htm>.

GEHSHA Vol. 3: Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Béchir Chourou, Pal Dunay, Jörn Birkmann (Eds.): Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks. (Berlin – Heidelberg – New York: Springer-Verlag, 2011); at: <http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/hexagon_05.htm>.

This new volume will be launched on 23 March 2011 at the UN Headquarters by the New York Office of the United Nations University (UNU-ONY). Upon announcement registration is required through the website of UNU-ONY in March 2011.

Please recommend this major new publication to your university or institute’s library. Of the first two volumes of this handbook more than 250 copies were shipped as gifts to 110 university libraries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Please assist us ín finding sponsors that we can get more free books to major university libraries in the global south. The sponsors and recipients of book gifts are at: <http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/hexagon.htm>. Through this link you find the list of contents, biographies of editors and authors as well as past book launch events.

The third volume will reach the bookstores and libraries in North America in March 2011 but the online edition is already available free of charge for faculty members and students of universities that subscribe to SpringerLink.

If you have access to SpringerLink you can already read the arguments of our co-editors from Tunisia, Bechir Chourou, and of our authors from Egypt and Israel,

with best regards
Hans Guenter Brauch

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: preventin...@googlegroups.com [mailto:preventin...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von Jack A. Goldstone
Gesendet: Samstag, 19. Februar 2011 14:14
An: preventin...@googlegroups.com
Cc: preventing-conflict

Betreff: Re: anyone predict the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt?

Dear Colleagues,

Jack A. Goldstone

--

[Hans-Günter Brauch]

Dear Dave,

 

I will be at Carleton on 14 March in the Geography Department and we launch our huge 1872 page book in the evening

in the British High Commission. I hope we have a chance to meet and discuss some of these issues where we are all looking

for and struggling for answers. I do not claim to have the answers but certainly many unanswered questions that will keep us busy for some time.

 

With best regards

Hans Guenter

[Hans-Günter Brauch]

Dear all,

 

a friend from Tunisia has responded to Patrick’s question with excerpts from his own studies in 2001 and 2002.

I have asked him if he would like to join our group. If he should like to do so how can he become a member and share with us his insights.

 If he and colleagues from Egypt would like to join as well my preference would be to discuss with them

instead among ourselves on the developments in this region, As this process is just starting and the outcome is uncertain

there may be constraints on their side. My view is that we all will benefit from not just discussing about them but with them about our conceptual

joint interest in preventing conflict (or a violent escalation that has already occurred) and to reduce misperceptions of the causes and impacts of a process of a fundamental regional transformation,

 

Gaddis wrote an interesting piece in International Security in 1992/1993 why “we” specialists of IR and security failed to foresee the peaceful transformation

that fundamentally contradicted the projections of security specialists during the 1980s on which policy decisions were based.

 

Influenced by Braudel my argument is while events and specific decisions of policymakers cannot be predicted, projections of structural trend can be made. If this should be the case and not a misbelief on my side what does this imply for our work, for our models, theories etc. in focusing on preventing conflicts.

 

With best regards

Hans Guenter

 

---

Von: preventin...@googlegroups.com [mailto:preventin...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von David Carment

Gesendet: Samstag, 19. Februar 2011 14:38
An: preventin...@googlegroups.com

[Helene Lavoix]

Very interesting discussion!  And this is great to get so many informations.

Just incidentally, Gaddis piece was good, but if we had followed the exiting IR theories at the time, then the end of the CW could have been predicted (I did this exercise a long time ago using Waltz and it worked very well). This links with a point that David made earlier in this discussion, let's not try to reinvent everything all the time, but let us build upon and improve what exists in a synthetic effort. Furthermore, if we can manage this synthesis, then this might, hopefully solve problems of conflicts among scholars, as nobody will be left aside.... and this could/should be a universal effort too (indeed science). 

David, is there anyway you could - of course with hindsight - stress test your system?

Also, building upon Patrick's initial question, Hans's point to include everyone, Jack's  and everyone's contributions and part of the initial discussion with David, I believe it would truly be worthwhile trying to move towards aiming at a more systematic review of if the events were foreseen and if not why, by whom, how,  etc.... of course focusing on open sources. I'll post a short blog on academia.edu and just created an open group on facebook for this 2011 Uprisings: Warning failures? Reviewing success and failure. Actually I have never tried such an approach thus it is an experiment , maybe it will not work, but we shall only know by trying.

Best wishes

Dr. Helene Lavoix

[David Carment]

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/942041--which-country-could-fall-next?bn=1

] Im Auftrag von David Carment

David Carment

[David Carment]

Helene  and others

No need to do a post facto stress test - since there are still many countries in the region and beyond that have not yet succumbed. For that matter the processes now underway are indeterminate. As we note in our analysis - there is the entire so called" arc of instability" to consider right up to the "stans".

In that regard I would focus on three countries of interest: Saudi Arabia which ranks among the least "legitimate" nations in the world and yet by virtue of its wealth and other factors may be resilient to domestic pressure. Then there is Yemen which has a host of problems across the entire three baskets  of authority, legitimacy and capacity. Pakistan should also be at the top of the list - its instability has been in place long before the FFP moved it to the top of its failed states index and people there are likely observing what is going on in the MENA and weighing their options. I would also argue that Pakistan's  "military civilianization" or bureaucratic authoritarian system could well portend the future of Egypt should the military in Egypt continue to keep its fingers in many political, social and economic pies.

dc

] Im Auftrag von David Carment

David Carment

[Hans-Günter Brauch]

Dear all,

 

one of my colleagues from Egypt responded sharing with me two pieces he wrote in which he referred to the imminent pending change.

He would like to join our group. A friend from Tunisia also responded sending me his early writings in English of 2000 and 2001.

I will only share the material with our group with their explicit permission as the process of change is underway and the outcome is still quite

uncertain. How can they join our group? Have they just to write to this Email address to participate or has Patrick to approve them as

member to the list. I think we shall all benefit from this debate. My Egyptian colleague who obtained his Ph.D. from Canada would like to join our group.

Apologies for being a bit provocative last weekend but I feel reinforced by the feedback I received from the region from colleagues who got their

PhDs in the USA and Canada.

 

With best regards from Berlin

Hans Guenter Brauch