Contact Information

Editor: srihani@globalcomplexity.org

[This website was launched on 24 June 2001. It has proved to be popular with those interested in the international political economy, development, and complexity. By late September 2008 the website had attracted about 313,000 visits from over 114,000 Internet addresses.]

Website's Aim

The website is dedicated to the dissemination of ideas that seek to promote a better understanding of the factors that shape social, political and economic events. 

More specifically, its mission is to accelerate the growing shift away from mechanistic perceptions in these fields to a viewpoint that recognises them as uncertain evolving outcomes arising from complex interactions between local actors. For technical information please see Complexity. 

The viewpoint advocated in the website values variety and asserts the right, and in fact the need, for nations to pursue their own diverse concerns peacefully and without internal or external coercion.

Visit Site Map for access to all pages and Archives for older articles.

Good reads presents an assortment of books and websites covering a range of topics.

Recent articles are available in General Articles, Iraq, and Palestine.

The following are only samples of articles published in the website:

Iraq: A Way Forward (published 21 July 2008)

Lessons from War (published 1 May 2007)

Iraq: Mission in Their Madness (published 12 February 2007)

Neoliberalism (published November 2006)

America's Suez (published November 2006)

Iraq: RIP (published August 2006)

Israel's worst enemy (published July 2006)

Plight of Iraqi Academics (published May 2006)

Time to Divorce God from Religion (published February 2006)

Cost versus value (published June 2005)

Arab Human Development Reports (published June 2005).

Iraq's Holocaust (published 30 August 2004).

America's Turbulent Decline (published April 2004).

Autumn 2008: economic turmoil

The media were kept busy in late-summer 2008 with the 'financial crisis' that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The politicians, and their economic advisors, were surprised by the ferocity of events. It would seem lessons are never learnt. Two features have not troubled commentators. First, the economy is an adaptive complex system. It obeys the second law of thermodynamics which, put simply, means there is no free lunch. Systems drift towards disorder; total entropy; a measure of disorder, always increases. With effort; an input of energy, parts of the system might be able to increase their order (make more money, become wealthy, enjoy better amenities, or whatever) but that only happens by the export of disorder to other parts of the systems. A few people might become extremely wealthy but that must be at the cost of impoverishing others. A country might manage to gain an advantage, but others will have to pay a price. The nonsense peddled by some fundamentalist believers in economic liberalism that trickle down will mean everyone is ultimately a winner is moonshine. Readers interested in exploring the entropy theme might wish to read Eric Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth.

Some well placed individuals have made a killing in the last few decades. The price for their good fortune will be paid by the rest of society at home and further afield. Globalisation means in effect that disorder or entropy will be exported far and wide. America will continue to print increasingly worthless dollars but this is not a endless process. Sooner or later, an even bigger crunch, this time political and economic, will hit the USA unless radically different policies are adopted.

Second, commentators and politicians alike have been careful to keep an expanse of clear water between economics and politics. This is nonsense as well. Politics cannot be divorced from economics. The end of past empires and hegemonic powers witnessed economic crises of the form seen today. The demise of the United Kingdom as a hegemonic power took several decades and one could not separate the events that accompanied that decline from the fortunes of the Pound Sterling and its linking and delinking to and from gold parity. There are people still living who remember the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s, but there was also a significant 'Great Depression' in the early-1870s at the time of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

The USA has followed an identical path to the UK. The decline started in the early-1970s (some put it even earlier) and the downward spiral has continued ever since. Decline is also accompanied by belligerence and aggressive ventures at home and abroad and again the parallel between the UK and USA is unmistakeable. The financial turmoil in the American market, just like the 'war on terror' and the invasion of Iraq, are little more than symptoms of an ongoing process of neo-realist global adjustment prompted by a waning hegemonic power. Needless to say politicians are loathe to admit this and hence the charade of speeches and actions will continue until the new reality comes about in a decade or two. This topic has been discussed in a number of articles on this website (Neoliberalism, 2006, America's Turbulent Decline, 2004, for example).         

Update on Iraq's tragic circumstances

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the so-called coalition forces, and revelations about death, torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners and civilians, have done little to calm things in the Middle East. These events caused a great deal of harm to America's reputation and that of its close allies. The Iraqis have been relieved of Saddam Hussein and his cohorts. They discovered, however, a most unlikely truth: conditions could be even worse than what they endured before. 'Freedom and democracy' have never been so unattractive! Oil was undeniably a factor but events have shown that the USA did not succeed in that aim.

The eventual cost of the war is now put at between $1.2 and $3.0 trillion (yes trillion!). Iraq was of course not the recipient of this largess. Iraqi and American funds are being looted through corruption and mismanagement on a scale unseen before in Iraq or elsewhere. Numerous reports have been produced on the subject but the pillage goes on. Taxpayers on both sides of the conflict will pay a heavy price for many years to come. As usual in war, a number of individuals became seriously wealthy as a result of the war. By contrast, catastrophes continue to assail the vast majority of people in Iraq, both as groups and as individuals. Some 600,000 to one million civilians have lost their life since Spring 2003. Over two million Iraqis left their country. Ethnic and religious cleansing was and is clearly in evidence: many have suggested that this was actively encouraged by the occupying powers. The damage done by the war and occupation came after thirteen years of gruelling sanctions that turned out to be in effect just short of UN inflicted genocide. It is not easy for Iraq and its citizens to go back to anything resembling normality. And most important, Iraq will never go back to what it was in the past. A new, hopefully peaceful, reality will emerge but it is not possible to predict what that reality might turn out to be. Iraq is an adaptive complex system and that is how such systems evolve and move on. One thing is absolutely certain: whatever happens will not accord with US original intentions. Complexity's law of unexpected consequences rules supreme.

Ordinary people in the USA, and the UK, also paid a high price for the war and will continue to do so for decades. Ironically, more people from the USA were killed in the Iraq war than those who lost their lives in the atrocities of 9/11. Tens of thousands have been badly injured and the agony continues.

The major players, such as Bush and Blair, will ultimately depart the scene for good. However, they played an odd role while they were in power. They helped to underline the decline of the USA as a hegemonic power. Eden did the same in 1956 during the Suez war (see America's Suez, 2006).

Ultimately, the solution to Iraq's problems lies in the hand of Iraqis (see Iraq: A Way Forward ). However, the powers working against the country are formidable and totally without compunction (see for instance Plight of Iraqi Academics).

Oddly enough, the venture in Iraq turned round and bit the perpetrators. The political and economic crises that abounded in the summer and autumn of 2008 cannot all be attributed to what was done in Iraq but the costs of that war and lengthy occupation have had obvious negative impact on the economies of both the USA and the United Kingdom.  

Update: the 'Middle East problem'

What is happening in Iraq could not be divorced from what is happening in the rest of the Middle East. 

Publication by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of four excellent Arab Human Development Reports (the latest was launched in November 2006) was a significant event in many ways. See AHDRs. They are worth reading.

Muddling and meddling in Iraq increased instability in the Middle East, as seen in the Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. And it certainly did not reduce the price of oil (the price in June 2008 jumped to $130 but later came back to about $80) or diminish OPEC's power. The opposite is nearer the mark. The awful loss of life caused by terrorist explosions in London in July 2005 simply brought home the message that aggressive foreign policies do not bring peace to either party. Again, the opposite is the more likely outcome. The effects of Complexity are plain to see. 

The release by the US National Security Archive of papers relating to Rumsfeld's mission in the 1980s as American special envoy to Saddam during Reagan's presidency has heightened observers' appetite (see The New York Times of 23 December 2003 and www.nsarchive.org ). Sadly, effort is made to convince the public at large that conspiracies only happen in the dim and distant past. In reality they are an integral part of work of all states.

Israel provides good examples. Its extremist governments continue to wage war on the Palestinians in the name of peace. The 'Israel Wall' is a rising monument to years of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. The situation was summed up well by the Palestinian thinker Hanan Ashrawi in a speech at the Hyatt Regency in Garden Grove on 23 August 2003:

"We are the only people on Earth asked to guarantee the security of our occupier ..while Israel is the only country that calls for defense from its victims .."

While on the subject of penetrating comments, I though the following quote from Haaretz concisely illustrated the twisted logic of Sharon's government when he was in power: 

"Following the liquidation of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin this week,... The defense minister explained that the "wave of hits" was intended to meet the "wave of escalation in terrorist attacks that will follow in its wake."

A political twist came in late January 2006 when Hamas candidates won the majority in free elections in Palestine. Once again, freedom and democracy did not deliver a government acceptable to the 'world community'; with the USA and Israel in the lead. The situation deteriorated further since then. At the moment Israel is busy energetically making new enemies. Its involvement in Georgia in summer 2008 is one case in point. As usual, these ventures, actively encouraged by the USA, will lead nowhere. Meetings held in late-2007 to restart the so-called peace process led nowhere either. This fruitless process continued in 2008. There is a promise of talks but in the meantime Israel began new aggressive operations in Gaza and new settlements in the occupied territories just in case. For a possible explanation please read Israel's worst enemy on this website. Following a long established tradition, when pressure is put on Israel to reach a settlement the political establishment engineer a power struggle that delays the evil day further. That happened once again in September 2008. Negotiations are suspended for the duration which will extend beyond the arrival of new faces at the White House. After that who knows? The two contenders have already sworn allegiance to the cause of Israel. The Palestinians, I hope, are not holding their breath.

Update on the Economic Liberal model

The world has been in the grip of an extreme neoliberal economic model which has been promoted, and in many cases imposed, in all four corners of the world. What is happening in the Middle East could not be divorced from this model. The concept is simple: the economy is the most important aspect of life on earth, people should be free to pursue their economic self-interest, in doing so everyone benefits, and the whole process should proceed without interference from governments (see Neoliberalism).

The myth put forward by advocates is that the economy will go through peaks and troughs but left to its own devises the economy will swing into action to bring itself back to a state of equilibrium (through the operation of Adam Smith's fabled invisible hand). Advocates also maintain that economic liberalism (not to be confused with the broader concept of liberalism as envisaged by the French revolution) is value free. Some people will become hugely rich but that is acceptable because all members of society will be better off (through the equally fabled trickle down effect). 

Things did not go according to plan in the 1920s and 1930s. The invisible hand was found wanting and government action was deemed most necessary: Keynes macroeconomics became fashionable. Once the catastrophic events of the inter-war years were forgotten supporters of rampant economic liberalism resurfaced and the whole process of enriching the few at the expense of the many began in earnest. Vast inequalities within and between nations appeared and went almost unchallenged, and essentially unreported by the media until recent times. 

The World Bank published its Global Economic Prospects 2007 ( www.worldbank.org/gep2007 ) which provided an illuminating view of the serious problems facing the leading economies both through internal problems (such as a challenging dependency ratio of retirees in relation to those in work) and through external challenge posed by emerging economies (China, India,...) who now find globalisation to their liking. 

Another revealing report, based on the Economic Mobility Project, was published in November 2007. The report was interesting because it brought together think tanks from the left and right of the political economic spectrum. Shortcomings of economic liberalism were presented in painful detail. The report was not against economic liberalism it must be said. It simply demonstrated that promises and reality are not the same.

The problems that rocked the financial markets in the latter part of 2008 are simply a symptom of the larger problem facing Western economies. Interestingly, government central banks quickly swung into action to rescue banks and building societies (as in the case of Northern Rock in the UK where the bank was finally nationalised; a dirty word until then). Lobbyists for unrestrained economic liberalism who were vocal in resisting 'government interference' seem to have lost their voice altogether. It would seem that political interference in economics is acceptable after all.

In complex systems, expect the unexpected. Put another way, don't believe what politicians and economists tell you. Prediction of events in politics as well as economics is difficult if not impossible. Political economic theories come and go. Presently (late October 2008) the few countries able to do please themselves in choice of policy are following a perplexing mix of liberal, realist, and socialist theories! The lesson yet to be learnt is quite obvious: no political economic theory is worth dying for.