Fareed Zakaria On Afghanistan, China’s Middle East Plans, and Turkey’s Fight With Iran for Influence

A year ago, the Middle East was shaken by the Arab Spring and the subsequent fall of three of its most enduring autocrats. Then in the midst of the upheaval came news about the death of elusive terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden. But these endings have not yet brought about new beginnings; instead they have brought new challenges, says prominent foreign policy commentator Fareed Zakaria.

Though Afghanistan will see most of its foreign troop presence dwindle, Zakaria says there will have to be a continuation of foreign aid to the nation to keep it from falling into chaos again.

China has been aggressive in pursuing natural resources in the region, he notes, “but they seem unwilling to take on a larger, more political role, [or articulate a] political vision of what that means in terms of the politics of the Middle East.”

There is meanwhile a battle for regional political influence between Turkey and Iran, he adds, a battle that Turkey is winning. “When I was in Cairo, the people I talked to all looked to Turkey as a model, because they viewed it as democratic, powerful economic model, capitalist, a great trading country, able to deal with the west and the east, confident, assertive,” he says.

Zakaria is host of CNN’s flagship international affairs program,Fareed Zakaria GPS, is also editor-at-large of TIME magazine, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a New York Times-bestselling author.

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Wharton Continues Expanding Educational Opportunities Worldwide

The Wharton School‘s latest global venture, an Accelerated Development Program in India, commenced early in October with plans to be fully functioning by January 2012. This innovative business certificate program was created to serve the “current needs of high-potential business leaders in India,” but the business school plans to literally broaden the program’s horizons.

“We will learn from our delivery of this program [in India] how we can do it in China … and in other locations,” said Wharton Vice Dean Jason Wingard. He went on to say that the target countries are those with emerging markets, for example, Brazil.

However, lacking definitive plans, further expansion of the program will have to be based on the school’s historical relations with China and the alumni based there.

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Increased power demand in the Gulf brings market changes, and new competition

GDF Suez came to the Gulf region as its countries were just celebrating their independence. Now, it is the major electricity producer in the Gulf marketplace. Guy Richelle, GDF Suez Energy CEO and president for the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, spoke with Arabic Knowledge@Wharton in Oman to talk about his first experiences in the country, his company’s latest double project there, and doing business in the energy sector in the Gulf.

“There has been an evolution in doing business in the Gulf,” Richelle says. “Before, the local sponsor was inevitable. Then, free zones came up here and there. Now, the ownership share changes from one kind of project to another.”

There is new competition in the market from Asia, Richelle adds. “We work a lot with Korean companies. We were the first to work with them in this sector. The Chinese have begun to get into the market. They won a project in Salalah (Oman), and another in Rabigh (Saudi Arabia). But they need to prove themselves in this sector.”

Power demand has increased across the Gulf, Richelle notes. “In Saudi Arabia, during the next five years, this annual growth will be 8%. It is essentially as if a new power plant should be built every year. For the GCC, the current capacity is 75 gigawatts (GW) and the additional need will reach 60 GW by 2020.”

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M.S. Krishnan: Too early to tell which social media platform will succeed

LinkedIn‘s recent initial public offering was a bigger success than even its employees thought it would be. But will it last? That’s the question being asked by M.S. Krishnan, professor of information systems and innovation at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. ”There are multiple platforms, some of them may gain millions of dollars, and some of them will fail,” he says. “The platforms that intelligibly partner with businesses to create an experience, whether it’s through advertising, and can get useful information to individual customers, I think they will succeed.”

Touching upon the Middle East, Krishnan tells Arabic Knowledge@Wharton the ‘Arab Spring’ has demonstrated social media’s ability to bring new freedoms to people, but hasn’t provided a model for good governance. Additionally, he noted that emerging markets will provide future growth, and as a result will elevate Asian products and services to a global level. U.S. companies can compete in the emerging global market, he says, but will have to abandon the legacy mindset to do so.

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Chinese Control of Rare Earths Sparks Resource Race

Niobium, a rare earth metal

With exotic-sounding names such as terbium, europium, dysprosium and lutetium, rare earth metals have become invaluable because of their application in modern electronics. Some estimates show that global demand for the minerals may more than double by 2020 from 125,000 metric tons last year. But furthering the scramble to locate and mine rare earth metals is the virtual monopoly China currently has over global supply. Its recent export curbs have raised fears that rare earth will become the world’s new oil — an essential resource whose price is determined by politics as much as demand.

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Saudi Oil to China: A New Age in the History of Energy?

As unrest sweeps across the Middle East and North Africa, the entire region is on the cusp of change in ways that will affect the geopolitics of oil. The Chinese need Saudi Arabia as a stable, established oil producer. The Saudis need China’s burgeoning demand for oil in light of flat, or even decreasing, demand among consumers in developed markets. ”It is a major turning point,” says Tim Niblock, professor of Arab Gulf studies at the University of Exeter in the U.K. “Inevitably, that will have foreign policy effects.”

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Getting the Message: Decoding Issues in the BlackBerry Backlash

Wharton professors and other scholars say recent confrontations between Ontario, Canada-based Research In Motion and different foreign governments wanting to monitor the services of its popular Blackberry device raise a number of issues, from leadership and company response in a crisis, to questions regarding the control and jurisdiction of data flowing across international borders, and the obligations global communication companies have in protecting their customers from unreasonable searches by governments.

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