Daniel Lubetzky

Underscoring the depth of the challenge to freedom as we know it, no less than NYT Editor Bill Keller led the Week In Review with an analysis of China and Russia’s rise:

If it is not yet an age, it is at least a season: Springtime for autocrats, and not just the minor-league monsters of Zimbabwe and the like, but the giant regimes that seemed so surely bound for the ash heap in 1989.

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Mike Edwards questions whether the trendy concept of philantrocapitalism exemplified by Bill Gates is as effective as the uncritical buzz it is generating.  And he raises questions worthy of consideration, including this one in his q&a:

…what are the actual effects of business involvement in activities that are intended to promote social change? Where is business involvement useful, where might it be damaging, and do we have the evidence to separate one from the other? Here’s a list of things that business could usefully do:

• pay your taxes
• don’t produce goods that harm people
• pay decent wages and benefits
• stop subverting politics
• obey regulations in the public interest

The problem is, philanthrocapitalism does none of these things.

Well, business actually has a pivotal role to play beyond the basic code of decency Mike Edwards lists above.  As the primary force in the 21st century, the private sector can make enormous positive contributions into our lives. 

I am a strong advocate of engineering market forces to achieve positive change, marrying the business model to the social mission, as we’ve endeavored to do for the last fifteen years at PeaceWorks. 

And I am similarly an advocate of using entrepreneurial and creative practices commonly found in the private sector to maximize impact in civil society, as we try to do at OneVoice.

But beyond critical appraisal of "philantrocapitalism’s" effectiveness advocated in Mike’s article, what most resonates and troubles me about the unexamined noise with this and the broader concept of "corporate social responsibility" is that often it is used to mask dishonest or noxious behavior from corporations, to create bland appearances about business contributions to society while hiding under the carpet abhorrent behaviors that may be the primary driver of a business. 

Certainly, a company cannot justify or sugarcoat ruthless practices, or an underlying business model that harms people just by affixing the "csr" motto to its ads.  Unlike when people purchased indulgences from the medieval Church to swiftly absolve them for abominable sins, you cannot (or should not be able to) donate your way into brand heaven in the 21st century.

In sharp contrast to Mike’s provocative article, take a look at this piece in TIME Magazine where Bill Gates discovers the field of social entrepreneurship for humanity, dubbing it "creative capitalism."  Gates first announced this discovery in Davos back in January, where he was given 45 minutes to share how he conceived a utilitarian servile version of social responsibility.  It struck me he had just discovered and repackaged a field long in existence, just as he appropriated the netscape browser and apple’s operating system.

Social contributions should have a soul, a sentiment, and a sincerity of purpose.  Corporations are driven by human beings, so hopefully they will be driven to make our world better because this too is their world.  I have yet to meet a business person (or a human being) that does not care about the world.  But the trouble is that sometimes some corporate business models or junctures present people with concentrated profit-maximizing opportunities that cause harm to society overall.  And no amount of "CSR" should exculpate taking the wrong path – whether by lobbying the government to help a specific industry at the expense of the community or the environment, or by undermining competition, or any of the items in Mike’s list.

In the end, consumers will see through corporate efforts to manipulate causes just to make them look hip and responsible.  Alas, along with the unscrupulous corporation so too will fall the credibility of this important space – the sincere intersection between doing well and doing good.

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Interesting:

A new study from the RAND Corporation examined how 648 terror groups around the world ended between 1968 and 2006. It found that by far the most common way for them to disappear was to be absorbed by the political process. The second most common way was to be defeated by police work. In contrast, in only 7 percent of cases did military force destroy the terrorist group.

“There is no battlefield solution to terrorism,” the report declares. “Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended.”

From Nicholas Kristof’s NY Times column, Make Diplomacy, Not War.

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The NYTimes Week In Review had two excellent articles on the situation in Russia today and its conflict with Georgia.

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Richard Stengel summarized Nelson Mandela’s eight leadership lessons – Madiba’s Rules (Mandela’s clan name) in TIME Magazine: 

All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.

No. 1: Courage is not the absence of fear — it’s inspiring others to move beyond it

No. 2 Lead from the front — but don’t leave your base behind

No. 3 Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front

No. 4 Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport

Mandela understood that blacks and Afrikaners had something fundamental in common: Afrikaners believed themselves to be Africans as deeply as blacks did. He knew, too, that Afrikaners had been the victims of prejudice themselves: the British government and the white English settlers looked down on them. Afrikaners suffered from a cultural inferiority complex almost as much as blacks did.

No. 5 Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer

No. 6 Appearances matter — and remember to smile

No. 7 Nothing is black or white

No. 8 Quitting is leading too

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I heard Ron Pundak (the CEO of the Peres Center) most recently attended a meeting of a coalition of NGOs working for peace, and he was struggling because he is fighting a particularly noxious type of cancer, currently going through treatment.

I have always secretly and quietly admired Ron, and have always felt we need more people like him.  In a world filled with well-meaning mediocrity down to cynical manipulation, Ron never succumbs and always applies the highest standards to what he does.  We seldom speak about people we admire with the candor they deserve, unless they are no longer with us, which means we lose the opportunity to do the right thing at the right time.  Hoping that Ron will get stronger as we need him to continue to lead, I want to share why I so deeply am impressed with this man:

• Because he is a Doer – he gets things done;
• Because he works for the mission, not for the institution; if they conflict, in everything I’ve ever seen from Ron, the mission always takes precedence; he eschews jealousies in favor of positive partnerships; he thinks long-term; he doesn’t lose sight of his ultimate purpose;
• Because he is humble and down-to-earth, never seeking praise or the limelight, always just doing the right work;
• Because he is a solid manager and coach;
• Because he is an extraordinary thinker;
• Because he is a mentsch – a real human being – who treats everyone with dignity and respect, Israeli or Palestinian, President or janitor.

Nicholas Kristof considers using schools and education, rather than military force, to combat terrorism.

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– As we gear towards the general election, a word of caution for US Presidential candidates about an important constituency that will not vote for them –

According to conventional wisdom, Presidential candidates can take campaign stances that will curry favor with particular constituencies of voters, only to be forgiven for adjusting campaign positions once they face the realities of the highest office.

The truth is that a campaign defines how the electorate will see their President – and this all the more true when shaping the President’s image in the eyes of the largest constituency that will actually not vote for them: the international community.

While domestically the President may be able to somewhat reshape his/her image through defining moments and actions, this is far less feasible internationally.

Only Americans vote for their President, but foreigners care almost as much – and sometimes more – about who will lead the most powerful nation in the world.

International impressions about a candidate are forged quite early, and they are far harder to change. Longer distances yield local media coverage that tends to be more one-dimensional and absolute, less nuanced, and more sporadic. Foreign coverage will also tend to be defined more narrowly from the prism of a particular nation’s foreign affairs agenda, as opposed to a plethora of domestic issues.

President Bush caused particular suspicion abroad during his 2000 campaign mocking Al Gore, and then again John Kerry in 2004, for their ‘multilateralism.’ He made it a pillar of his campaign to emphasize he would only pursue narrowly-defined American interests. He rejected the Kyoto protocols not only on their substance but on what they implied – that American policy would be harmonized with – or subservient to – global agendas for climate control.

Perhaps this stance helped him win over nativist constituencies. And he had little to fear about alienating foreigners who by definition could not vote. But global karma caught up with him and has as much to do with his Administration’s ultimate ineffectiveness as any other factor.

Foreign Heads of State in rare uniform fashion viewed him apprehensively, and large swaths of people reviled him across the globe. They could not vote him out. But they could vote with their policies and their currencies. Not only did Bush struggle to build his coalition in Iraq, but the ‘America’ brand was tarnished, American goods disfavored, and the dollar weakened.

America’s perceived weakness today is directly connected to displeasure with Bush’s unilateralist policies, whose perceptions were cemented during his campaign pronouncements even more than through his Administration’s work.

Even when Bush did positive international work, his image (and that of his Administration) had been unalterably shaped. He funded the fight against AIDS and pressed against poverty through far greater foreign aid than his predecessors. But he got no credit for it. Once international personas are shaped, it is close to impossible to alter them.

The same is true with foreign leaders from other nations – Putin vs. Gorbachev, Chirac vs. Sarkozy, Sharon vs. Peres – they are a brand unto themselves and will be hard-pressed to change it abroad no matter what different policies they may enact.

Starting with this general election, future candidates for the US presidency will hopefully bear in mind that the world is watching, and their statements will not be forgotten after the dust settles.

Both Obama and McCain seem to be more in tune to the foreign-policy-shaping impact of their campaign statements than President Bush was. Their visions for foreign policy could not be in greater contrast. McCain projects unwavering strength against militant absolutism and nihilism. Obama urges soft power and diplomatic engagement in tandem with military might. Neither perspective can be dismissed as unfounded or demagogic. Not even history will help us judge such a poignant question to such complex and dire circumstances.

But both will do well to remember that their campaign pronouncements will shape their international personas and will thus have almost as much impact on their ability to advance American (and possibly global) interests as the policies they enact thereafter if elected.

Today felt like an incomplete Sunday, without Tim Russert, the giant political anchor of Meet the Press who passed away on Monday.  As a story in the New York Times observed, politicians coveted the "victorious trial by fire" that would come if they survived Russert’s tough but fair questions.  His tenacity was rare.  He will be missed.

Gerald Seib wrote a straightforward, clear, and to-the-point column in the Wall Street Journal on the "would you meet with leaders of rogue states" question haunting Barack Obama – using Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s approach towards Syria as a very good example of how to do things.

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