Banning the Burqa Would be an Affront to our Heritage

January 26th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Burqa_EnglandA six month-long French Parliamentary report concluded that Muslim dress should be banned schools, hospitals, public transport and government offices.

From the Jakarta Globe:

“The wearing of the full veil is a challenge to our republic. This is unacceptable,” the report said. “We must condemn this excess.” The commission however stopped short of proposing broader legislation to outlaw the burqa in the streets, shopping centres and other public venues after raising doubts about its constitutionality.

…the commission called on parliament to adopt a resolution stating that the burqa was “contrary to the values of the republic” and proclaiming that “all of France is saying ‘no’ to the full veil.” The National Assembly resolution paves the way for legislation making it illegal for anyone to appear with their face covered at state-run institutions and in public transport for reasons of security.

[...]

Women who turn up at the post office or any government building wearing the full veil should be denied services such as a work visa, residency papers or French citizenship, the report recommended. Critics of the “burqa debate” have warned the measures risk stigmatising France’s six million Muslims who are already bristling at the government’s launching of a national identity debate that has exposed fears about Islam.

The Parallax Brief may not know enough about the “values of the Republic” to argue whether the burqa is contrary to them or not, but he does know that the authors of the report have produced a conclusion that is contrary to the values of western-style liberal democracy.

Western democracies are founded on a tiny clutch of magnificently simple and irreducible values, perhaps the primary of which is that a private individual has the right to do just about whatever he pleases as long as he is not infringing on the rights of others. Obviously, that’s something that is permitted to differing levels in different democracies, and which can have a variety of interpretations, but it is a belief which is integral to our way of life.

This belief even extends to activities which we view as damaging or immoral. Having unprotected sex with a great many partners is both dangerous and, many would argue, immoral, but we don’t pass a law to make illegal the activities of the nation’s lotharios.

An example more pertinent to France’s burqa debate is that we allow fascist parties to exist, despite the fact they stand against much of what we believe, and, if they ever gained power, would likely abrogate many of our freedoms: They may stand against our liberal beliefs, but our liberal beliefs lead us to conclude that we must tolerate their existence.

Similarly, in Britain, we believe that people are free to wear what they want, and free to practice their religion, and just because the burqa is a physical manifestation of a culture that is neither western nor liberal, doesn’t mean that we should ban it. Indeed, despite the fact that the Parallax Brief sides with the standard feminist view that forcing the burqa on women — or bringing up girls so they ‘want’ to wear such a thing, whichever way you want to phrase it — is absolutely against western liberal values, he also knows that our western liberal values demand we permit it. There’s no right not to be offended by clothing. A woman has the right to wear what she wants, whether that be a tiny miniskirt and top which covers barely more flesh than a bikini, or a burqa at the other end of the spectrum.

Our culture is not defined by a specific set of clothes, but by the freedom to wear virtually whichever clothes one wants. Within this context, wearing the burqa in a land with a Judeo-Christian heritage is as much a part of Western culture as kids dressed like Sid Vicious.

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Is Iraq on the Verge of Collapse?

January 21st, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Now Britain is out of Iraq, we tend to forget that there is still a bloody, desperate effort underway by the United States and the Iraq government, as it is, to stabilise the country. Just because it seems to have quietened of late, doesn’t mean the problem has gone away.

Tom Ricks, the pulitzer prize winning military correspondent and author, has written on his Foreign Policy magazine blog that he recently received an email from “A friend who doesn’t scare easily”:

“I’m afraid things are coming to a tipping point here. If the Chalibi-Iranian faction succeeds in keeping those 15 pro-Alawi Sunni parties off the ballot all bets are off. I can see a Shiia-on-Shiia civil war (with the Sunnis backing the Alawi faction) or a military coup as real possibilities. At this point, the best thing to happen would be to postpone the election. If they go ahead toward March the way they are heading, all bets are off. I don’t think Washington is fully engaged with Haiti and Afghan distracting them. A lot of bad vibes here.”

A civil war is a frightening prospect, and the idea of Iraq ending up with Chalibi running a pro-Iranian, anti-western fundamentalist dictatorship would be a sickening blow: what would all the treasure and blood spent in Iraq have been for if that was the end game?

It’s also a reminder that the big winner from George and Dick’s Mesopotamian Adventure was Iran. A powerful, stable Iraq is a bulwark to Iranian power in the region, and by weakening its neighbour, and leaving it prostrate so that Iran is free to meddle and manipulate, America has vastly improved Irans strategic position. (Not to mention that the US is now so impoverished and war weary that Iran is much less likely to have to face military interference with its nuclear weapons program.) And really, time is on Iran’s side. It would like a friendly dictatorship next door, but it can just keep meddling, keep the Iraqis killing eachother, keep the brutality simmering, and still be a strategic winner.

But what does the august Mr. Ricks think the architects of Iraq would make of this?

“What will the Doug Feiths and Richard Perles of the world say if he winds up running Iraq as an anti-American, anti-democratic, pro-Iranian leader? I’m sure they’ll find some glib, bullshitty way of blaming it on President Obama.”

It’s funny, because it’s true.

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After the Troop Surge, A Virtual Surge for Afghanistan?`

January 20th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

The Parallax Brief is skeptical about the West’s ability to win a counter-insurgency war of any kind, and that includes the current one being waged in Afghanistan. But the key understanding of COIN warfare is that winning hearts and minds is as important as winning gun battles, and that national development and wealth generation is crucial if the flow of Taliban recruits is to be stemmed and the country is ever to get off its knees.

Wired.com’s the Danger Room suggests an innovative solution:

“…according to Ashraf Ghani, the country’s former finance minister and a onetime presidential contender, Afghanistan doesn’t need an army of consultants and contractors. It needs you, and your laptop.

Ghani is promoting the idea of a “virtual surge” as a development alternative in Afghanistan. The idea is (more…)

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Thank God for the British Electorate

January 20th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

The big political news overnight from Stateside was that Republican candidate Scott Brown defeated his Democrat competitor Martha Coakley in the traditionally left wing state of Massachusetts to take the late Ted Kennedy’s old seat in the US Senate. The result is a devastating blow to the Democrat party: psychologically, the best British analogy might be if a Labour candidate had taken Kensington and Chelsea ahead of Michael Portillo after the death of Alan Clarke, and legislatively it means the Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which will allow the GOP to block healthcare legislation.

The Parallax Brief has wondered for a while how the Republican Party has gotten away with the manner in which has conducted itself in the aftermath of its crushing election defeat to Barack Obama in 2008. The lies, perfidy, demagoguery, scaremongering, and hypocrisy from the right wing media, and the congressional party itself, has been breathtaking. Worse, the electorate is obviously falling for it.

Andrew Sullivan, the libertarian-conservative commentator is not, and he explains on his blog for the Atlantic (more…)

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Foreign Policy and Opposition

January 16th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Bagehot, the Economist’s British politics columnist, believes that it is largely futile to build a foreign policy in opposition:

FOREIGN policy is a strange challenge for an opposition leader. It’s very important that he (in this case) shows that he is informed, sober in judgment and reasonably well-connected. The “3 am” question is an inevitable one, especially for a politician with no real executive experience. And yet, at the same time, there is only a limited point in having a highly evolved foreign-policy philosophy in opposition. Many of the most important diplomatic decisions that a prime minister takes in government arise in circumstances that it is almost impossible to pre-judge. Temperament and judgment matter, but “-isms” may not help much.

That’s a compelling argument. Afterall, it’s practicably  impossible to predict accurately beyond the very short term the course of global events. And it’s probably no coincidence that the many of the more celebrated ‘intellects’ in political history have been those politicians who have specialised in foreign affairs (Cardinal Richelieu, Lord Salisbury, Otto von Bismarck, Henry Kissinger, et al): it’s an infinitely complex, ephemeral and subtle game. Bagehot is therefore correct to argue that it is useless for an opposition to put in place a detailed foreign policy in the same way it might an economic policy.

However, the Parallax Brief believes that is only half the story. The foreign policy a nation pursues is often dictated by the framework that nation’s leaders use to make it’s key foreign policy decisions. In very simple terms, three of the aforementioned statesmen, Bismarck, Salisbury, and Kissinger, all attempted to achieve a global balance of power in which no Great Power would be able to achieve an ascendency that could threaten all the others. Decisions weren’t made based on right and wrong, but on national self interest, which led to spheres of influence. Woodrow Wilson, the US President, believed that international relations should be based on the rule of law, and sought the creation of international law and institutions which would enforce it and arbitrate disputes. The neo-conservatives believed that the free world would be safer, and the world better, if the strong liberal democracies used their military power to topple dictators and spread liberal democracy, and that the international institutions which Wilson had set in motion had become wholly ineffective in dealing with international disputes and the furthering of democratic ideals.

While it may be impossible to pre-judge circumstances, it’s is absolutely possible to build a framework of understanding upon which foreign policy decisions will be made once in power.

And it would be instructive to know more about where David Cameron and William Hague stand.

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The Persian Dilemma

January 14th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Sooner rather than later the international community is going to find itself faced with an agonising decision. Iran is developing nuclear weapons. None of us should want to live in a world where the fundamentalist religious autocracy in Iran has nuclear weapons. Even ignoring the horrifying thought that it might use them, or worse, pass them on to one of the terrorist orginasaitons it funds and controls, the geopolitical and strategic consequences are awful. And beyond this, Iran going nuclear would basically spell the end of the non-proliferation treaty as a credible, binding, legal commitment. The number of nuclear-capable countries would multiply in the following decades.

Indeed, dreadful as the consequences of attacking Iran may be, they would surely be the lesser of two evils.

But herein lies the dilemma: The Green movement in Iran is currently fighting heroically against the despotic regime which wants to get these terrible weapons. But the Green movement’s leaders have said clearly that they would be against any US or Israeli air attacks, and such attacks would likely spell the end of the Green movement’s chances of seizing power.

Pulitzer prize winning defence expert Tom Ricks writes in his Foreign Policy magazine blog that these and other Iran-related matters were discussed by some of America’s leading Iran-watchers on Tuesday at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy. Those who take an interest in foreign policy really ought to read the full report, but below is an extract which encapsulates the dilemma we face when dealing with Iran.

“Iran remains a divided society and government, dangerously deadlocked between hardliners who wish to use the security forces to oppress the democratic opposition, and the Green movement which expanded after the contested June election and has refused to wither despite facing immense coercion. In this explosive domestic environment, there is no room to consider the question of engagement with the United States — save as a political football. Indeed, some experts view any overt intervention to support the Green movement would only feed the Supreme Leader’s paranoia that the movement is externally driven. The diminishing inner circle is ready to call for additional measures of oppression. Meanwhile, the Iranian Revolution Guard Corps, which originally developed around a perceived just cause, is increasingly caught up in perpetuating an ever more illegitimate government.

[…]

Iran’s present regime wants to buy time and divide the international community, keeping the nuclear file out of becoming referred to the United Nations Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. In the medium term, Iran’s leaders may wish mostly to bust out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, with a long-term aim of being treated like India-a major power with a nuclear program.”

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Google, Commodities Giants See Red on China Relations

January 13th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

According to the Guardian, Google will no longer censor its search results for China:

Google, the world’s leading search engine, has thrown down the gauntlet to China by saying it is no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service. The internet giant said the decision followed a cyber attack it believes was aimed at gathering information on Chinese human rights activists.

The move follows a clampdown on the internet in China over the last year, which has seen sites and social networking services hosted overseas blocked – including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – and the closure of many sites at home. Chinese authorities criticised Google for supplying “vulgar” content in results.

The internet behemoth also implied that the Chinese government was behind a “highly sophisticated and targeted” cyber attack in May which was apparently intended to hack the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents and human rights activists.

Given that Google had to agree — controversially — to censor its search results to gain access to the highly lucrative Chinese market, which has the largest internet population in the world, it is likely that its decision to withdraw from its agreement with Beijing will result, absent of any compromise, in its withdrawal from China.

The Chinese market itself isn’t particularly significant for Google, which has only managed to gain a 36% share since entering four years ago; however, the principle that it would censor was always hugely controversial and the move represents a seismic symbolic shift: Companies are usually so seduced by the phenomenal potential of the Chinese market that they are willing to make enormous concessions, as Google did, to gain access.

The Financial Times Tech Blog suggests that the specific wording of the Google statement does not necessarily mean that it is finished in China, and that the timing of the announcement was too close to the onset of the next US-China trade talks to be coincidence.

What is certain, however, is that the symbolism of Google’s decision to take on the Chinese government is huge.

Equal, indeed, to the decision of mining giants, Vale of Brazil, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, the largest three iron ore miners in Australia, to negotiate their benchmark iron ore rate with Japanese customers  before presenting it to Beijing on a “take it or leave it” basis, rather than direct with Beijing itself, as had been done in previous years.

There are several potential reasons behind the announcement, including a dispute between steelmakers and the industry association in China, as well as the arrest of  Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu for industrial espionage at last year’s round of negotiations.

However, given that China buys 50% of the world’s iron ore, the decision to exclude the emerging superpower from negotiations is perhaps as momentous, and pointed, as Google’s decision to stare down the Beijing over censorship and privacy.

Traditionally, governments have taken the lead in taking China to task for its poor record on human rights, intellectual property protection and labour laws, as well as it’s mercantilist monetary policy which holds it’s own currency artificially low to increase the competitiveness of its manufacturing sector, while allowing it to amass huge foreign currency reserves.

The Parallax Brief wonders if corporations will succeed where governments have thus far failed?

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Top American General Claims Surge is Working — Time for a Reality Check?

January 12th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

The Telegraph reports today that the senior NATO officer in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, believes that the tide in the country is starting to turn against the Taliban.

““We’ve been at this for about seven months now and I believe we’ve made progress,” Gen Stanley McChrystal said in an interview with ABC television.

[...]

The general recounted a recent meeting in the Helmand river valley in the country’s south – a former Taliban stronghold – as an example of progress underway.

“When I sit in an area that the Taliban controlled only seven months ago and now you meet with a shura of elders and they describe with considerable optimism the future, you sense the tide is turning,” he said.

Gen McChrystal issued a dire warning to Mr Obama in September, saying the Afghan mission could fail without more troops. Early in his presidency Mr Obama sent an additional 21,000 troops. It is these that have already begun to make a difference.

Only 8,000 to 9,000 of the second tranche of 30,000 have begun to arrive in Helmand.

Asked if Nato-led forces were shifting the momentum against Taliban insurgents, the general said: “I believe we’re doing it right now.”"

The Parallax Brief wishes he could believe such an upbeat report, and certainly hopes that NATO troops can defeat the Taliban; however, truth be told, he can’t. Indeed, he doesn’t think it’s possible for large, western democracies to win counter-insurgency wars at all.

Of course, we could, if we were willing to jettison our morality and return to the cold hearted brutality of days gone by; and if we could stomach hundreds of our boys coming home in body bags after fighting a war of dubious virtue. But we are willing to do neither, so how is it possible to combat a brutal enemy that is willing to lose 25 of his men for one of ours because he knows that if he can just hang in there long enough, time — or at least demographics, as Israel will soon discover — is on his side.

But, even looking at Afghanistan specifically, it seems strange that such an upbeat outlook has come hot on the heels of perhaps the gloomiest official prognosis yet, delivered on December 23rd during a briefing by Major General Michael Flynn, the top U.S. intelligence officer in the country, a slide from which is pictured below, and curiously unreported by the Telegraph.

According to Wired.com’s Danger Room blog, Gen. Flynn stated during his presentation that:

The Taliban not only has the “momentum” after the most successful year in its campaign against the United States and the Kabul government. “The Afghan insurgency can sustain itself indefinitely,” and, “The Taliban retains [the] required partnerships to sustain support, fuel legitimacy and bolster capacity.”

And if that isn’t enough, Flynn also warns that “time is running out” for the American-led International Security Assistance Force. “Regional instability is rapidly increasing and getting worse,” the report says.

The “loosely organized” Taliban is “growing more cohesive” and “increasingly effective.” The insurgents now have their own “governors” installed in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. And the “strength and ability of [that] shadow governance increasing,” according to the presentation. The Taliban’s “organizational capabilities and operational reach are qualitatively and geographically expanding.”

Of course, it could be that the situation has changed dramatically since Gen. Flynn gave his briefing. You decide.

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Ten Predictions For 2010

January 2nd, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

The Parallax Brief noticed that certain contributors to the UK political blogosphere have written self congratulatory posts about the predictions they made for 2009 back in the closing days of 2008. Never one to miss out on an opportunity to smugly boast about his soothsaying ability, the Parallax Brief has decided to present his own 2010 predictions.

1. The Conservative Party will win the general election with a majority of at least 80. Despite what the Labour optimists, and some recent opinion polls, say, the Parallax Brief believes it is unimaginable that a government embroiled in a bloody meatgrinder of a counter-insurgency war, with a leader as unpopular as Gordon Brown, in an economy as bad as ours, and with unemployment likely to be near its high watermark come election time, will not be voted out emphatically by an electorate which has had a Labour government for over a decade and has the expenses scandal fresh in its mind.

2. The Liberal Democrats will lose seats at this election. Not many; they’ll end up on somewhere close to their current number of seats, but this is the kind of election where the public is desperate enough for change to vote tactically to get rid of a Labour incumbent, and as the third party in more seats than they’re the second, it may be the year they lose out — especially as they still seem to be struggling a touch at this late stage to find an image and headline policy to differentiate them from the other two parties.

3. There will be a referendum on Scottish Independence in 2010, and the SNP will lose. When the Conservative Party win the election, they will likely have no representation North of the border, increasing pressure on parties in Holyrood to pass a referendum bill of some kind. But the SNP will be beaten at the ballot box and the Union will be maintained.

4. Esther Rantzen will become MP for Luton South. It is notoriously difficult for independents to win seats in modern day elections. However, with the sleaze of expenses fresh in the memory, Ms. Rantzen may just have a chance. Her centrist, “floating voter” political views mean that she will not be relying on picking off voters from just one party, and her wholly unsullied, impossible-to-dislike public image give her, in the Parallax Brief’s view, an outside chance.

5. Gold will not pass USD1,350, and inflation in the UK and US will not pass 3.5% and 3% respectively. Libertarian and right wing economic pundits have for some time been calling the end of the dollar and pound (and any currency issued by a central bank engaged in quantitative easing). “Hyperinflation is on the way,” they say. “Buy gold”. It won’t happen: gold will not smash through all time highs, and inflation will not spiral out of control.

6. At least five of the G7’s main stock indexes will close 2010 below their December 31st 2009 levels; oil will not pass USD100. The Parallax Brief believes that a good part of the reason inflation will not rise too high is that Britain, the US and most other developed, western countries will experience turgid, painfully slow recoveries (although the US is likely to see higher growth than the UK this year). The debt burdened G7 will struggle in the next year, and given that the 2009 stock market recoveries were often liquidity driven — that is, driven by low interest rates and QE which will likely come to an end at around the same time fiscal stimulus programs run out –the Parallax Brief sees a tough year for equity investors in the developed world. These factors will also hold oil around USD70 or 80 per barrel (For Brent and WTI blends).

7. Bellweather South East Asian ex-Japan equity markets will finish up on the year. If 2009 was finally the year when it became clear that the pendulum of economic power had swung decisively toward Asia, 2010 will see this action manifest. Korea, Singapore, India, China, Indonesia, and Taiwan will all see much faster growth than the G7 (although all may be outshone by Brazil), and terrific capital inflows over the next year. Their markets will reap the rewards of this growth by December 2010.

8. China will revalue its currency by at least 15% against the dollar. However, this economic swing toward the East will make China’s current dollar peg untenable. Usually, when a country earns more than it consumes, its currency increases in value, reducing the competitiveness of its manufactured goods on the international market, and brining into balance its current account. China, however, runs a mercantilist policy through which it keeps its currency artificially low, effectively stealing jobs from the rest of the world. Pressure from the US to increase the value of its currency has been steadily ratcheting up, and now its seems the EU is becoming more vocal, too. China may bristle at such suggestions; however, with the US likely to be running a super-loose monetary policy until at least the second half of this year, China will effectively be importing inflation if it doesn’t do something soon. It simply can’t sterilize all those dollars out of its system. The Parallax Brief is betting that internal and external pressure will force it to do so, perhaps even brining its monthly bilateral current account with the US into deficit during some parts of the year.

9. The main financial scare of the year will come from Greece. Greece is likely to come — at the very least — nailbitingly close to defaulting on its sovereign debt this year. It’s budget deficit is currently huge, piling ever more debt onto a national pile which is way, way beyond EU limits and already tottering on the brink of collapse. Worse, it looks increasingly as if the socialist government simply doesn’t have the political capital to muscle through the savage cuts needed: there have been riots on the streets of Athens and terrorist attacks against even the minor cuts and pay freezes proposed. The Parallax Brief believes that while Ireland, Spain, Britain and Italy will ultimately emerge from the crisis relatively unscathed, Greece, and perhaps Portugal, will put the EU in a position of either going against pre-decided policy and undertaking at least one massive sovereign bail out (and in doing so putting in place the foundations of an EU debt union), or letting them go to the wall, and risk seeing contagion and panic spread. The Parallax Brief believes the former, but Greece could well be 2010’s Lehman Brothers.

10. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will not be president of Iran at the end of 2010. The Parallax Brief believes that the good will out and that the heroes of the Green Revolution will be successful in removing this baleful, indecorous little man this year.

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Thoughts of Freedom and Revolution at Christmas

December 29th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Several days ago, over a Christmas drink in Moscow, the Parallax Brief was talking to a Russian friend about corruption in the Moscow’s mayor’s office. “But, really,” asked my Russian friend. “What can I do? Protest? They’ll just use the OMAN [special, paramilitary police] to break it up and I’ll maybe get arrested. And getting in touch with local politicians and writing letters won’t work at all. They’ll just not listen.”

This is likely true enough, and it made the Parallax Brief realize that real political change comes only when people are willing to take big risks. Yet doing anything, let alone risking arrest, is beyond most people. How many of you have grumbled but not written to a politician out of sheer laziness? How many of you have felt strongly in the past about a specific issue but have in the end not protested or even joined activist groups?

The Parallax Brief knows he falls into this category.

If this is the case in a liberal democracy like ours, think of the incredible bravery it must take to stand up to a brutal and cold-hearted regime like that in Iran. Young Iranians are currently risking everything for freedom and the right to hold to account those who rule their country. For this, they are being beaten, arrested, tortured, and killed. And still they will not be silenced.

These Iranian freedom fighters are heroes, and we should remember this as news from Iran develops over the holiday period.

Yet, the nascent Green Revolution should also have taught us in the west an important lesson.

The Parallax Brief thinks it’s fair to say than when John McCain danced onto stage singing “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys hit Barbara Allen, most sensible people would have felt a combination of juddering horror at the depth of geopolitical aggression in some quarters in the US and mirth at the senile, slobbering old warmonger.

That may be, but there was then, and there is now, a growing chorus of US foreign policy hawks arguing that — at the very least — tactical bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities is now, or in the very near future will be, necessary to deal with the threat that Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions.

The Iran protesters are making apparent just what folly that thinking is. If US or Israel had dropped bombs on Iran, those young man would be currently venting their not insignificant frustrations at the west, rather than their own, disgusting government — and worse, their government would have a rallying call to unify the country.

Meantime, Iran isn’t the only place in which revolution may be formenting. That most oppressive regime of all — the one which was seemingly named with a nod to George Orwell — the “People’s Democratic Republic” of Korea, is also in trouble. For those who haven’t heard, Kim and his cronies have decided to devalue the currency. First, this serves the useful purpose of lopping a few zeros off the Won, but more important, it will flatten the entrepreneurs who have set up black markets in a variety of goods — taking away their savings and cutting the incentives to enter into free-marketeering. But North Koreans with access to the markets often relied on them as the only reliable source of certain essentials, such as food and clothing, and are therefore unhappy with the devaluation.

Blaine Harden of the Washington Post explains:

Grass-roots anger and a reported riot in an eastern coastal city pressured the government to amend its confiscatory policy. Exchange limits have been eased, allowing individuals to possess more cash.

The currency episode reveals new constraints on Kim’s power and may signal a fundamental change in the operation of what is often called the world’s most repressive state. The change is driven by private markets that now feed and employ half the country’s 23.5 million people, and appear to have grown too big and too important to be crushed, even by a leader who loathes them….

The currency episode seems far from over, and there have been indications that Kim still has the stomach for using deadly force.

There have been public executions and reinforcements have been dispatched to the Chinese border to stop possible mass defections, according to reports in Seoul-based newspapers and aid groups with informants in the North.

Still, analysts say there has also been evidence of unexpected shifts in the limits of Kim’s authority.

“The private markets have created a new power elite,” said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “They pay bribes to bureaucrats in Kim’s government, and they are a threat that is not going away.”

Orwell may have proven in his crushing masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four that there is nothing logically finite about dictatorships, but experience tells us that they all fall eventually.

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