Tony Curzon Price

Tony Curzon Price is Editor-in-Chief of openDemocracy. He received a PhD in economics from University College London (UCL), and worked as a jobbing economist for more than ten years. He founded a high-tech electronics compancy, Arithmatica, in 1998 and lived in Silicon Valley from 2001 to 2004.

He has lectured on economics and energy policy to postgraduates at Imperial College, London, and at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Recent articles

A part of Fred Halliday's call to understand local agency before jumping the geo-political gun is to know the domestic politics (see his recent article here). War often has deep domestic political repercussions - some anticipated and many not - and Robert Parsons shines a light right into the here and now of Georgian politics. The first surprise -- to Russia, at least -- is that the Geogian institutions have held up and continued to function. There is no immediate call for regime change despite Russia's best attempts to re-open old divisions. The war has, for now, united Georgia. But the end of the war is likely to produce a demand for accounts from within and provides an opportunity for an organsied and compelling Georgian opposition to emerge. This fascinating piece of insider observation points to who we should expect to do what to who else and under what circumstances.

Fred Halliday takes a broad historical sweep at the nationalist delusions of grandeur of small states. Nationalism, more than any other force, has led local leaders to mis-read their strength, their opponents, the supportiveness of their allies and the future. Be it Ireland in 1916, North Vietnam in 1950, Egypt in 1973, Cyprus in 1974, Iraq in 1980 then 1990, local powers, suffering a fetish of "territorial integrity" have refused "to look at reasonable, humane compromises," have misread "international political realities" and have resorted "to destructive and often useless violence." Georgia today is an unhappy addition to that list.

Over and above a denunciation of nationalism, Fred Halliday's piece goes two steps further. First, you need to understand these local elites to understand global conflicts; the short-cut of talking in terms of "clients", "proxies", "agents", "pawns" won't work, because local nationalist delusions are a necessary pre-condition of geo-political clientelism. Second, Fred asks whether these nationalist delusions are not just as prevalent and damaging amongst the large powers as amongst the small. Yes but ... he answers --- the delusions are further from the reality in the case of small nations, and distance from reality in this domain, creates violence and inhumanity. "Smaller peoples pay a higher price. "

"The leaders fail to understand that the fakery casts genuine achievements into doubt, and their clumsy cover-ups bring only greater dishonour," says Li Datong of the control-obsession that Chinese leadership has demonstrated during the Olympics. But when will they regain the maturity to understand that it is a strength, not a weakness, to allow genuine criticism and opposition?

As we see also in Paul Rogers' comments about Russia, and Anthony Barnett's follow-up comments on Iran: a show of strength is a proof of vulnerability. Li Datong reminds us that this wisdom was part of the pre-Tiananmen awareness of the leadership: "The late politicians Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang once openly said "we must get used to governing while the public oppose and demonstrate", and "we must learn to govern despite small or medium-scale disorder." Unfortunately this vision and psychological readiness was brought to an end by the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 and has not yet returned. "

Behind every ritual show of control, look for the unconfidence that it masks. Kerry Brown notices it in the the Olympic pageant. The perfectionism, the mime, point not so much to manipulative control of appearances as to a desire to come out and shine on the stage of nations. Kerry Brown sees a very positive dynamic here. A year of challenges and crises has shown "that the Chinese people, complex and segmented and dispersed as they are, have and want a voice," and the leadership must now see that the next task after a splendid Olympics is to build "a transparent, modern democracy." Look to the October 2008 meeting of the leadership for signs that the leadership has understood the next step on the steep, post-Olympian road.

For the past week at openDemocracy we have focused our war coverage on history, on the particular, on reminding our readers that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not abstractions, but places with history, populated by people with claims and memories. Now, in moving to the bigger canvas, we do not jump into NATO, the USA and geo-politics. Instead, we stay firmly focused on the actors and the reality. In this brlliant piece, Ivan Krastev helps us to understand what Russia is doing, and why it is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Russia must, for its and our good, rediscover soft power.