Fixing the UK’s Foreign Policy Apparatus: A Memo to Gordon Brown
Note by Alex Evans and David Steven about how to restructure the UK’s foreign policy system in order to manage trans-boundary global risks better (April 2007).
A bit more on van Creveld’s lessons
People involved with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – particularly Brits – tend to get a bit anxious when one compares it with Northern Ireland. Having read Alex’s post on van Creveld’s lessons from Northern Ireland (especially points four, five and six), however, I can’t ignore comments made today by the Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi said that if Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel continue, Israel will have to “take action”, and that a major ground operation in the Gaza Strip would be necessary to halt rocket fire.
This is all quite familiar. Last summer, Israel conducted a major ground and air offensive on Gaza following the abduction by Palestinian militants of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The operation, which lasted several months, was intended to secure the release of Shalit and end Palestinian rocket attacks. Using jets and helicopter gunships, the IDF bombed the Gaza power station, roads, bridges, ministries and other infrastructure. Israeli artillery units fired thousands of shells across Gaza’s borders. The navy shelled Gaza from the sea. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed, including many children.
Today, Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets, and Shalit is still being held in Gaza. Obviously the Government of Israel cannot tolerate continued rocket firing into Israel. But in light of recent experience and van Creveld’s lessons, it seems unlikely that another IDF ground operation will really help.
Van Creveld’s lessons of Northern Ireland
Martin van Creveld, author of the outstanding The Transformation of War, has a new book out. Below, William Lind extracts from it van Creveld’s key lessons on what the Brits did right in Northern Ireland.
Before that, while we’re on the subject of new books, be sure to check out Global Guerrillas author John Robb’s new book Brave New War – which, if his blog is anything to go by, is certain to be one of the most cogent expositions of fourth generation warfare out there.
You couldn’t make it up
Heard the one about the World Bank President who launched a personal crusade against corruption in developing countries, only for the world to learn that he instructed the Bank to pay his girlfriend way over the odds for her job in the same institution?
Oh, you have? Well, how about this, then: Heard the one about the head of the US Agency for International Development who predicated USAID’s HIV strategy on sexual abstinence, only for the world to learn that he was a customer of an escort service?
No, it’s not April 1st: read the full story over at Obsidian Wings. US Deputy Secretary of State and head of USAID, Randall Tobias, has resigned following the revelations. All this would be hilarious if it weren’t so damaging to two of the world’s more significant aid donors. The FT observed just a couple of days ago how the Wolfowitz saga is already denting the Bank’s credibility on the ground:
Two bank officials told the FT that a bank staffer in Aceh, Indonesia, was mocked when he raised concerns about the use of tsunami relief money. In another, two officials said, a staffer was asked by a policeman in the Democratic Republic of Congo whether reports about the president’s girlfriend’s pay were true.
Shall we just nominate Dick Cheney to be the next UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and have done with it?
Palestinian democracy
Condoleezza Rice, in an interview with the Financial Times this week, was invited to reflect on the dilemmas of promoting democracy in the Middle East. Would the Bush administration continue to push for democratic elections, Rice was asked, even though it was now having to deal with elected militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine? Rice was unequivocal: every time, she said, she would choose “elections and democracy, even if it brings to power people that we don’t like.” She has been consistent on this point: in September 2005, Rice was asked about Hamas’s participation in the forthcoming Palestinian elections. She argued then that while “you cannot have an armed option within the democratic process”, it was also important to recognise that the Palestinian political process was “in transition”: “we have to give the Palestinians some room for the evolution of their political process”.
Since Hamas won, the US has taken a number of measures to influence the Palestinian political situation and to change the government’s policies. The US and its partners in the Quartet issued a statement that in the Quartet’s view, “all members of a future Palestinian government must be committed to non-violence, recogition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Road Map.” US officials immediately ceased contact with all Palestinian government officials, and terminated funding to all PA government-administered projects. The US Treasury imposed restrictions on private banks dealing with the PA. At the same time, funding and support to the office of President Mahmoud Abbas, to the security services that report to him, and to his Fatah party, continued or increased. (more…)