Who pulls the strings behind world unrest?

Globe, December 16, 2007

The sinister visage of Karl Rove* gazes out from the cover of the current issue of Globe, Xinhua News Agency’s biweekly magazine of international politics.

The cover feature for final issue of 2007 is a doozy: “Investigation: America’s Fake Think Tanks – the dark hand behind non-violent regime change.” Here’s the introduction to one article:

American planning and participation in “color revolutions” takes place through a series of NGOs disguised as think tanks and foundations. Most of these “fake think tanks” are funded by the US government, and though they claim to be think tanks, they are actually nothing more than tools used to carry out government-ordered coups.

These agencies are not rare in the US. They are numerous and have complicated relationships with each other. Several fairly prominent ones are the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundation led by financier George Soros, Freedom House, and the Albert Einstein Institution.

The article mixes cursory summaries of the makeup and goals of those four organizations (basically what you’ll find in those Wikipedia links) with examples of their activities:

1. NED’s anti-Chavez activity in Venezuela;
2. Funding by Soros organizations for regime change in Eastern Europe, particularly the Orange Revolution in Ukraine;
3. The oppostion newspaper funded by Freedom House (and the US State Department) in Kyrgyzstan that “in a single month utterly overthrew the political foundation that Akayev had painstakingly run for fifteen years”;
4. The Albert Einstein Institution’s involvement in Burma since the mid-1980s, particularly Gene Sharp and Robert Helvey’s strategic training in non-violence.

Unfortunately, the article does not go into much detail about any of these situations, and the most intriguing point mentioned—that “fake think tanks” whipped up the recent protests in Burma—is mentioned only in a caption to a photo of a street jam-packed with crimson-robed monks.

The article concludes:

These “fake think tanks” are notorious on the international stage, and they have generated considerable opposition in the US itself. Republican candidate Ron Paul criticised the actions of the NED four years ago: it promotes the designs of a minority of US interest groups in the name of advancing democracy, it is ill-managed, corrupt, and wastes American taxpayer money while making enemies abroad.* He called for Congress to eliminate the organization.

Some liberal American academics, lawyers, and activists have formed the International Endowment for Democracy to oppose the NED. They point out “the tragic and rapidly deteriorating state of democracy in the United States, and the government’s efforts (aided and abetted by such institutions as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)), to engage in what it calls ‘democratic nation building’ and ‘democracy promotion’.” By contrast, they urge the people of the world to promote and support America’s own democracy.*

A second article gives additional information on Gene Sharp and his role in shaping the theory of non-violent regime change. After suggesting that the reader do a web search for Mr. Sharp to learn about his involvement with Aung San Suu Kyi, the article offers this depiction of his influence on the Burma protests:

In the Burma crisis, what was different from past worker and students protests was that the monks were substantially more in control of their actions. Things were thoroughly planned out beforehand, all political slogans were completely banned, no direct conflict occured with the police sent out by the authorities, and they voluntarily dispersed before sundown. These were key in putting the Burmese military junta into a difficult situation. Such careful strategies were described in detail by Gene Sharp in From Dictatorship to Democracy, the “bible of the color revolutions.”

The article goes on to describe the geo-political interests that are driving Burmese regime change, and then paints a picture of how new, non-violent “soft regime change” may work in the future. Like the first article, it only scratches the surface of what there is to say about the subject. Karl Rove, incidentally, doesn’t show up anywhere in the feature.

Also in this issue:

• A feature on the Middle-East that examines four powder-kegs that have the potential to destabilize the region: Palestinian statehood, the Kurds, Turkey’s role in the Middle East, and war in Iran;
• The latest installment in the “Global Cutting-Edge Fashion Cities”: Tokyo. Includes an interview with one of the directors of Kodansha, Japan’s largest publisher;
• An interview with Zhang Zilin, this year’s Miss World;
• The rush to train interpreters for the 2008 Olympics.

Note 0: Perhaps this is a photo of Michael Hayden, head of the CIA. See comments below.

Note 1: Those criticisms were actually made by Barbara Conry; Ron Paul merely quoted her in his article.

Note 2: This quotation is adapted from the English-language text of the IEFD’s Statement of Purpose. Interestingly, it calls its founders “progressive,” which is translated in the Chinese version as “具有进步思想的”; the Globe article calls them 自由派, “liberal.”

Note 3: Globe is distinct from Global People (环球人物), People’s Daily’s magazine of global affairs. Last December, Danwei reported on a Global People feature about the major boosters of the China Threat concept.