On Russia, Brazil, guns, policing, Taiwan, infrastructure, college fees, Jay-Z, Turkey, crocodiles and hippos

Russia’s strongman

SIR – “The new world order” (March 22nd) criticised Vladimir Putin for “defying the principle that intervention abroad should be a last resort in the face of genuine suffering”. Yet history has shown that adhering to this rule prolongs human suffering and results in more armed conflict, not less. Look at Nazi Germany, Rwanda and your own example of Kosovo. These genocidal calamities could have been prevented had the world not clung to the quaint notion that action of any sort was a “last resort”, and had the great powers of those days acted together and directly during the early stages of those crises.

True, Mr Putin has clearly stretched, possibly even perverted, the definition of human suffering in justifying his annexation of Crimea. But give him his due and grudgingly accord him some degree of respect for acting boldly and decisively in coming to what he rightly or wrongly perceives to be the requisite defence of his countrymen.

The real tragedy in Crimea is not Mr Putin’s rejection of international law. It is the West’s failure to act. The West may see intervention as a last resort, but Mr Putin apparently sees it as a first choice.

Jay Lewis
York, Pennsylvania

SIR – I do not agree that Mr Putin is a force for instability and strife. If anything, he is a calming influence on Western powers that have inflicted death and misery in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, encouraged a terrorist group to take power in Egypt, and helped the terrorist groups that are trying to take over Syria.

Henry Polti
Brussels

SIR – I deplore your obsessive devotion to splashing Mr Putin’s face, torso, background, personality and cartoon image throughout your newspaper. The Economist has an editorial penchant for showing up third-world strongmen in a way that brings out their ridiculous pretensions and helps us right-thinking folks in developed countries to look on them with suitable scorn.

Mr Putin is different. Seriously different. He is not another Hugo Chávez or Jacob Zuma. He needs to be treated differently, journalistically as well as diplomatically.

Bryan Dunlap
New York

Brazil’s foreign policy

SIR – Bello’s column of March 22nd criticised aspects of Brazilian foreign policy, especially in relation to the situation in Venezuela. One has to ask why it is that “real leadership” has to be associated with interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

The Brazilian government firmly believes in what Bello termed as our “long tradition of multilateralism and non-intervention”, through a democratic, collective approach. It is regrettable that Brazil’s commitment to non-intervention and to promoting dialogue is perceived by The Economist as “ambivalence”.

Roberto Jaguaribe
Ambassador of Brazil
London

Jumping the gun

SIR – You cited a phone survey among your evidence that there are more guns but fewer gun-owners in America (“Locked and loaded”, March 15th). Although the article mentioned some possible sources of sampling error, it ignored by far the greatest problem with the phone survey: respondents who lied.

It is impossible to test how many people don’t tell the truth in a phone poll, but we can get some idea. After reading your article, I carried out an informal poll on a website dedicated to firearms enthusiasts, and asked people how they would respond to a phone survey that wanted to know if they owned a gun. Of the several hundred people who responded to my poll, less than 10% said they would answer truthfully and admit to gun ownership. Over half of the respondents said that they would either refuse to answer and just hang up (which would obviously skew the sampling horribly), and over a third said that they would deliberately lie, and claim not to own guns.

Of course I personally do not own any guns. No sir, none at all.

Claus Langfred
Associate professor of management
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia

Police and the public

SIR – You argued that oversight of the newly elected police and crime commissioners in England and Wales is weak (“Missing a beat”, March 15th). PCCs were introduced to break the kind of crony management that dominated the police service under police authorities. Yes, only 8% of people can name their PCC, but only 22% can name their member of Parliament. How many could name a single member of their police authority? We all accept the election of PCCs in 2012 was a mess, although turnout was not all that different from a by-election held the same day. If you want evidence of change, look at the increase in public engagement by PCCs, lower costs (yes, they are), proper control on senior police pay and lower average police precept rises. That alone might suggest a healthy rebalancing of police accountability.

Through PCCs the public have control. Don’t expect the cosy old committee insiders to like it. You might be surprised that some of the new police leaders do.

Christopher Salmon
Police and crime commissioner for Dyfed-Powys
Llangunnor, Carmarthenshire

Taiwan and China

* SIR – In response to “Manning the trade barriers” and “On the antlers of a dilemma” (both March 29th), we would like to stress that over the six years of Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency, his ambition has been unprecedented on the international stage and in cross-strait relations. The most recent incarnation of this success was the historic Wang-Zhang cross-strait meetings in February, the first high-level official governmental meetings between the two sides. Widely hailed by governments from all corners of the globe and as extraordinarily significant, the talks also enjoyed public support within Taiwan.

To suggest that the president’s strategy is in any way quixotic, or that he is unwilling to accept its flaws, is unfair: it should be judged on the tremendous successes it has brought over the last six years and will continue to bring for the remainder of his term. The ambition of his cross-strait policy is both pragmatic and admirable, yielding strong economic benefits for the Taiwanese people.

The TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement) signed with Mainland China, currently the source of much debate in Taiwan, is but the latest piece in the progress puzzle. It will create an estimated 12,000 new jobs, offer greater stability, and further internationalise Taiwan. The deal is more favourable to Taiwan than to Mainland China – the number of commitments China is making to Taiwan outweighs commitments in the opposite direction by 80 to 64. The goals of implementing this agreement have been abundantly clear from the start: to encourage regional economic integration, make Taiwan a more attractive prospect for regional trade agreements, and to liberalise the economy. This can in no way be described as lacking ambition or vision.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to Michelangelo, there is no shame in aiming high and falling short but still achieving great success; the danger lies in aiming low and reaching your mark.

Kuo-min Chen
Director
Press division
Taipei Representative Office in the UK
London

Infrastructure investment

* SIR - Bold policy action is needed to turn infrastructure investments into a tradable asset class (“A long and winding road”, March 22nd). Europe has taken a step in the right direction with the EU/EIB project bond initiative but for global policy action the World Bank could play a key role. It could work with regional development banks to set project due-diligence standards and develop a bond documentation process.

Secure sustainable funding from private funds should be encouraged by policymakers and politicians for financing infrastructure. An infrastructure asset class would greatly benefit insurance companies which need to match their long-term liabilities with investable and tradable assets of equally long maturities. In today’s low interest rate environment, having other long-term assets with attractive investment characteristics should be a desirable public policy goal.

Guido Fürer
Group chief investment officer
Swiss Re
Zurich

Making college pay

SIR – In the 18th century, ship captains were paid just for taking convicts on board in England, not for their safe arrival in Australia. Around 10% of the prisoners died along the way. So the government switched to paying the captains a bonus for each man that walked off the boat alive, and mortality fell to virtually zero.

Universities are paid on input—for taking students on board—and your article highlighted the perverse effects that this brings (“The price of success”, March 15th). Universities should instead be paid for their output, for helping their graduates get into high-paying careers. As Milton Friedman once suggested, in place of debt-funded tuition fees universities should instead receive a percentage of their graduates’ earnings. This would properly align the interests of the university with the student over the long term.

Peter Ainsworth
London

Here’s the rap

SIR – To suggest that “Perhaps Jay-Z should be offered a guest lectureship at Stanford Business School” is not as odd as you think (“The art of the struggle”, March 15th). He is a successful entrepreneur and investor, partly owning or founding businesses such as the 40/40 Club, Rocawear, Roc-A-Fella Records and Roc Nation Sports. And he made his millions from scratch. The harder thing would be to convince Jay-Z to teach.

Anup Karath Nair
Glasgow

Not wild about mild

SIR – I’m sure I speak for many readers of your newspaper when I commend you on the disappearance of your all-too-frequent mantra that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government in Turkey is “mildly Islamic” (“Anatolia mostly loves Erdogan”, March 8th).

But the void can readily be filled by a substitute: “harshly authoritarian”, perhaps, or “mildly totalitarian”.

Morton Keller
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Just so story

* SIR – Living close by to crocodiles and hippos, I must point out that a real depiction of them as crony capitalists (Cover, March 15th) would have them doing nothing but lying around all day in pools of water, exploiting the sunshine freely given to them. The crocodile is personally abstemious, consuming only once a month; the hippo rips off only grass growing gratis on the shore.

I cannot vouch for the wolf, except to say that he probably fears and avoids the two-legged men mentioned in your article (“Planet Plutocrat”, March 15th).

Margaret Titlestad
Mtunzini, South Africa

* Letter appears online ony