January 2008

LONDON – After the surge are we losing the fight? – the fight for democracy that is. For fifteen years I have watched, fascinated, curious, and exulted, as the New York-based organization, Freedom House, has chronicled each year the rise and spread of democracy. Even when the Cold War was still our principal preoccupation democracy and freedom were on the up. At the onset of World War 2 there were but five fully fledged electoral democracies in the world. By the time the Berlin Wall came down they were heading for nearly 100. Today it is 121 out of 193 sovereign countries. 64% of the world’s population live in countries that are either “free” or partly “free”. If we take out China only 18% of the world’s people live in countries that are “not free”, ruled by a dictator with the press and the courts under his thumb. But then...

LONDON – Why in the end do we perennial American critics (I purposely don’t say anti-Americans) so respect America? At times it has been hard to – when its electorate re-elected George W. Bush or, going back, when it allowed the defeat of George McGovern with his “Come Home America”. It is because America has a soul. Its religious beliefs may get wonky, whether it be the Mormon cult of Mick Romney or the anti Darwinism of the Huckabee southerners. But Americans are more sincere than most of us. They do want to do what is right. Indeed they read avidly more “how to” books than the rest of us put together. It is just a pity that so few of them don’t read more deeply, either history or literature and that their leaders can be as often as shallow as the masses they lead. (But, of course, you can...

Jonathan Power LONDON – Richard Haas, the former high State department official in Republican governments observes in his recent book, “The Opportunity”, that the time has never been better for an organization of great powers to bring peace and stability to the world. For the first time in several hundred years the major nations are not engaged in a struggle for dominance. “It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of this development”, he writes. This could also have been written at the end of the tenure of President G.W. Bush and the onset of the presidency of Bill Clinton. But Clinton lacked initiative and let the ball drop. George W. Bush, who had even less experience, picked the ball up but kicked it all over the field. Now fortune perhaps smiles for second time. A Barack Obama presidency could do what should have been done seventeen years ago at the...

) need to resort to violence in defense of their positions on the Sharia issue since God, whom they both claim to worship, is quite capable of upholding his own causes,” he said in a broadcast. Similarly, tribal tensions have ebbed, partly because the rapid advance in agriculture has brought rising incomes to the countryside and the small rural market towns. Oil income has started to be used better, if not well enough. Even the threat of multiple air crashes appears to have diminished as Obasanjo pushed fly-by-the-pants airlines to consolidate and retire clapped out panes. In Lagos the streets are noticeably cleaner- and no longer are there dead bodies at the roadside, waiting to be removed. Lagos itself is becoming a different place from the days when it was an out-of-control, mass of teaming humanity. As Ben Okri, the Nigerian novelist, wrote a few years ago, “The air vibrating...