by Charlie Edwards | Feb 1, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
Some of the presentations today have been excellent but have highlighted the desperate need for alternative approaches to some of the problems governments are facing in weak and failing states. But the stomach for taking risks inside of governments has disappeared. We need to bring back the imagination and resourcefulness of the 1970s and early 80s.
It may have become fashionable in policy circles to talk of red teaming, the “structured, iterative process executed by trained, educated and practiced team members that provides commanders an independent capability to continuously challenge plans, operations, concepts, organizations and capabilities in the context of the operational environment and from our partners’ and adversaries’ perspectives.” But we don’t do it.
As Lord Butler noted in his review of intelligence on WMD, ‘well developed imagination at all stages of the intelligence process is required to overcome preconceptions. There is a case for encouraging it by providing for structured challenge, with established methods and procedures, often described as a ‘Devil’s advocate’ or a ‘red teaming’ approach. This may also assist in countering another danger: when problems are many and diverse, on any one of them the number of experts can be dangerously small, and individual, possibly idiosyncratic, views may pass unchallenged..
At times of uncertainty and criticism the response is usually to bunker down, keep information tightly controlled and react react react…. But everything we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere has shown we need to do the opposite. We need individuals who have a license to be awkward, and in doing so help all of us tackle the complex problems of today and tomorrow.
by Alex Evans | Feb 1, 2008 | North America
This is what we are contemplating.
Something new.
Something big.
Something bold.
Something that works.
Something that will prod young and old alike.
To join in a mass push back against the corporate powers that are dictating our future.
No one person can get us there.
But one person is ideally suited to lead this grassroots force – if he chooses to do so and runs as the citizens’ candidate for President in 2008.
And that one person is Ralph Nader.
PS – something that will “prod” old and young alike? Is this some sort of awful attempt to be down with the Facebook generation, or what?
by Richard Gowan | Feb 1, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa, Off topic
Late yesterday, I briefly speculated that the latest upsurge in violence in Chad is being stimulated by the prospect of the forthcoming EU deployment there. Alors, that is now the official position of the French government:
Pour le ministre de la défense, Hervé Morin, les récents événements sont “directement liés” au déploiement au Tchad et en Centrafrique de l’Eufor Tchad-RCA, la force européenne qui doit protéger des centaines de milliers de personnes déplacées ou réfugiées en raison du conflit faisant rage au Darfour, dans l’ouest du Soudan.Même “neutre”, estime M. Morin, l’Eufor Tchad-RCA “va gêner les desseins des rebelles tchadiens”, en limitant leur liberté de mouvement. La France doit contribuer avec environ 2 100 hommes à cette force européenne qui en comptera à terme près de 3 700.
Or will it? Oddly enough, the Irish – who are the supposed to be the next biggest supplier of troops after the French – lack M. Morin’s somewhat sanguine approach to the whole affair:
The deployment of 54 Irish peacekeepers for Chad that was postponed last night appears threatened by further heavy fighting around the capital N’Djamena today with the European Union now monitoring the situation hour by hour.
Which is probably another way of saying that a lot of European planners are getting really cross and wondering what Paris has got them into.
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 1, 2008 | Global system
A common theme that has run throughout all presentations at Wilton Park is the reliance on stats. Presentations have been an orgy of numbers and percentages sprayed liberally on the unsuspecting audience. But the blur of digits comes at a price (literally if you are speaking about world energy demands in 2030). First and foremost we lose all sense of perspective. Faced with a succession of boxes on MTOEs it’s very easy to lose sight of what the real story is. Second, it becomes extremely tempting to use stats to support a set of questionable assumptions on the basis that your stats will trump everyone else’s. I reckon if we had taken a recording of all the presentations over the past couple of days then we would find a host of numerical discrepancies. Finally we dismiss the social and political issues at our peril. In our pursuit of hard facts and proven numbers we often miss the more nuanced conversations that are critical in understanding how the world works. Context in this game is everything.
by Alex Evans | Feb 1, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
In the margins of Wilton Park’s conference on European security in 2020, a timely reminder that for some of the delegates here – who, collectively, represent a clear majority of European states – the concept of ‘European security’ is much more real than for other delegates (like us Brits, who tend to see it as an interesting theoretical exercise in blue sky thinking).
Talking to two eastern European diplomats over lunch today, I asked them how they felt about the argument – made by a western European participant yesterday – that NATO had expanded too fast during the 1990s, and that perhaps some of Russia’s misgivings about the Conventional Forces in Europe agreement were understandable.
Rubbish, they answered immediately, and with surprising intensity. Both cited chapter and verse on when Russia had invaded their respective countries – and how many of their compatriots had been lost. Only when Russia was on the back foot, as it was during the 1990s, did their countries have a chance to make progress in foreign policy. From the point of view of many eastern European foreign ministries, recent Russian behaviour – on energy, on Lugovoi, on the British Council – is a totally predictable reversion to type.
