The Mikocheni Report has a spot-on post on the terrible traffic in Dar es Salaam. The city is seriously out of control: massive population growth + no new roads = traffic nightmare. Where I disagree is that the traffic situation in Dar is idiosyncratic. The traffic in Dar reminds me a lot of traffic in Nairobi a decade ago, or in Accra and Cairo today. Rather than being special, Dar es Salaam today is an excellent example of growth without government.

I do not believe that the Israeli military intended to shoot the people on the Mavi Marmara. Nevertheless, the government is going to have to accept the consequences. The most obvious is that its actions have legitimized Hamas and its fight against the Israeli government.

The other cost is that Israel is forcing its allies to make a choice. For Egypt and Turkey, its closest ones in the region, siding against Israel is a no-brainer because of public opinion in their own countries. Its also likely to force the US to make a choice. Peace between Israel and Palestine is only one of Obama’s three main priorities in the Middle East. Stopping Iran’s nuclear program and improving the image of the US in the region are the other two. If the Obama administration sides with Israel on the flotilla killings, not only will it make settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more difficult (by reinforcing a perceived US bias in favor of Israel), it also complicates Obama’s other two priorities. Israelis have long sensed that Obama is hostile to Israel. It’s tragic that their government’s actions may make this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rules are relevant because they shape incentives. Spiegel Online and Foreign Policy have excellent articles today that make this point through exploring the logic of unintended consequences. Spiegel Online focuses on how the crack down on child labor in soccer ball manufacturing in Pakistan has forced children into the much more dangerous jobs, such as constructing bricks. Foreign policy reports on how Israel’s closure of its border with Gaza has led to a proliferation of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. The tunnels are now Gaza’s main trade routes and it seems that business is booming. One of the most interesting points the article makes is that because prices in Egypt are lower than in Israel, many consumers are benefitting from the blockade.

These articles share one common theme: unintended consequences. Soccer ball consumers in developed countries feel bad about using soccer balls that children manufacture, so manufacturers refuse to use child labor. Yet, that does nothing to solve the source of the problem, poverty. The children are still poor when they lose their jobs making soccer balls, so they find somewhere else to work. Cracking down on child labor manufacturing soccer balls doesn’t solve the problem of child labor, it just moves it around a bit. The clear conscience on the part of the soccer ball consumer derives only from ignorance about this. Similarly, Israel’s attempt to bring down Hamas through isolating Gaza isn’t working because the Israelis didn’t consider that people in Gaza might find a way around Israel’s blockade. That many in Gaza now realize Egypt is a cheaper supplier for many imports makes the sting of this unintended consequence even greater for Israel.

I often say that policy makers need imagination as much as analysis. Unintended consequences are the primary reason.

My posts on this blog tend to address three themes. One, topical stories that don’t always make the front page, such as my recent posts on Honduras and Switzerland. Two, Afghanistan because of its importance to US foreign policy and because better governance is integral to ending the war.  Three, criticizing the Obama administration for its apparent preference for stability over democratization.  Sometimes a post from the third category has been a bit of a rant, so I want to explain myself. Read the rest of this entry…

The (UK) Independent’s Adrian Hamilton, slams the Obama administration’s foreign policy of prioritizing diplomacy over political reform in places like Burma, Iran, North Korea,

We are back, in other words, to the old world of propping up discredited and oppressive regimes because stability has once again become more important than values…

…the problem of the doctrine of spreading democracy and humanitarian intervention was not that the aims were necessarily wrong, but they were used as cover for a Western assertion of power that was entirely contradictory to them…

You have only to travel almost anywhere abroad to understand just how much damage the charge of hypocrisy has done to “our cause” as we talk of “democracy” and “freedom” while all the while interfering to the opposite effect.

…we should stand here saying to those who want freedom abroad: “Yes, we are on your side, we won’t keep quiet as to your plight and if you want a safe haven, our doors are open here.”

I agree fully.  The lesson the Obama administration seemed to have learned from the Bush administration was that pushing for democracy has no place in US foreign policy.  Yet, as Hamilton notes, the administration’s efforts to advance democracy were typically insincere.  Moreover, the world didn’t turn against the US because the Bush administration advocated for democracy, but because it started wars.  The Obama administration sees diplomacy as a policy.  It’s not.  It’s a means to a policy.  And if the Obama administration values diplomacy over democracy in countries like Egypt and Iran where the people want change, the image of the US will not improve.

MA in Democracy and Governance co-director, Dan Brumberg, writes about the growing disillusionment of Egypt’s democracy advocates with the Obama administration in the Washington Post’s On Faith blog:

During my recent visit to Cairo, I heard some of these young people during a conference on “Emerging Leaders for Democracy.” Listening to them, I realized just how many had been inspired by President Barack Obama’s election. Indeed, most looked to his June 4 Cairo University speech as a harbinger of a new U.S. policy, one that they hoped would be based, at least in part, on a frank dialogue about human rights and democracy in Egypt.

Five months later, not a few of these aspiring leaders are now asking whether the President’s fine words will be matched by fine actions. Certainly, they know that they must look first and foremost to themselves for answers. But they still wonder if their dreams matter to an administration that is focused on the security challenges emanating from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Israel/Palestine. So far, they can be forgiven for thinking that U.S. policymakers do not seem troubled by the growing chasm between a fragmenting state and a fractious society, many of whose young people yearn to be heard both at home and abroad.

As readers of this blog know, I am growing frustrated with Obama’s diplomacy policy.  It is important to recall that diplomacy is a means to a policy objective, not a policy objective.  The administration believes that diplomacy can help repair the US’s image abroad.  That is a fine hypothesis.  They would be wise to recognize, however, that if people living in repressive countries perceive the US as indifferent to their desires for political reform, the image of the US will suffer as well.

OK, so I am a day late.  I wrote a very favorable post about the TV show recently.  If you want to get a feel for how much of a difference it can make, I highly recommend the clip “I wanna be mania” at Alam Simsim, the Egyptian version of Sesame Street.  I have shown it to lots of people.  The typical reaction before people see it is “yeah, right.”  The typical reaction after seeing it is “wow.”