by Charlie Edwards | Jun 18, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia
While the national football team’s loss to Italy last night heralded the end of an era for French football and possibly Raymond Domenech tenure as coach, a new era in French national security and defence policy was being ushered in by President Sarkozy.
In a sentence: The new French white paper is a radical departure from traditional French defence policy and recommends a plethora of new policies that seek to transform internal structures of government regarding intelligence and crisis management while simultaneously articulating a shift in approach to international affairs.
It’s good, far better than the US National security’s strategy and better in some areas than the recent UK strategy. Terrorism ranks as France’s primary threat (pourquoi?).
The two key takeaways are the wholesale transformation of France’s crisis management structures and the five strategic functions of national security strategy.
The strategy offers a well worn narrative beginning with the end of the post-Cold War world and the effects of globalisation. There are some clear parallels with work done in the UK, US, Singapore and elsewhere but some notable differences. Like the UK NSS the French white paper takes an all-hazards approach, dealing with active, deliberate threats but also with the security implications of major disasters and catastrophes of a non-intentional nature.
Unlike the UK NSS which was primarily the creation of a small group of policy makers inside the Cabinet Office the French Government have put a huge amount of effort into their new strategy. The composition of the Commission included government agencies, the armed forces, parliamentarians, academia, think-tanks, independent experts and industry. And in a striking similarity with the Conservative Party’s approach, the Commission took evidence from individuals from 14 countries on 5 continents with televised and on-line hearings. Furthermore there were more than twenty in-depth field visits in defence and national security units and facilities.
For a more indepth analysis…
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by Alex Evans | Jun 18, 2008 | Influence and networks
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pucdJHjZaqs]
If you do nothing else this week, watch this – JK Rowling’s superb commencement address to Harvard’s class of 2008, made a couple of weeks ago. Some excerpts, culled from the speech by Kevin Kelly:
The fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure….
I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
,…Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way….Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned….
by Richard Gowan | Jun 18, 2008 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system
The sense of chaos surrounding the EU Force in Chad grows by the day. After rebel groups praised an Irish contingent’s refusal to get involved in fighting and the government condemned their passivity, Javier Solana intervened yesterday to say that the peacekeepers are doing a “fantastic job” and can’t be blamed for anything. Right on cue, the spokesperson for the UN Refugees agency (UNHCR) in Chad blamed the EU Force (Eufor) for failing to protect its staff – which coincides with the government version of events. Here’s the UNHCR account of what happened:
Irish troops were fired at on Saturday while observing clashes between the Chadian army and 800 heavily-armed rebels just outside the eastern Chad town of Goz Beida, about three miles from where 430 Irish troops are based. The Irish fired warning shots. They then took up a defensive position around the refugee camps and internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps they are responsible for protecting.
The rebels advanced into Goz Beida and looted a UNHCR compound and house. Items were stolen including satellite telephones and fuel. Some of the staff were threatened at gunpoint and shots were discharged, destroying computers. UNHCR spokesperson Annette Rehrl said the UNHCR staff were left traumatised.
“The Irish troops in Goz Beida were not able to protect [UN staff] or prevent the looting because they simply were not there. They are here to protect us but they didn’t protect anything. There was shooting going on and they did not appear. Their mandate is to protect refugees, displaced persons and humanitarian staff, including the UN.” The UNHCR has now suspended its activities in eastern Chad due to the deteriorating security situation.
Well, that was yesterday. But here’s news just in from Irish broadcaster RTE:
Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland, Irish Defence Minister Willie O’Dea said the Defence Forces had acted when they were informed of the incident and moved more than 200 humanitarian staff to their base, Camp Ciara. He said he had received thanks from UN staff on the ground and, this morning, also received an apology for the criticism that had been levelled at the Defence Forces from the UNHCR spokeswoman.
So that’s all good, although Mr. O’Dea has had to cancel a tour of the refugee camps due to the security situation. Whatever the truth of this episode, it demonstrates the gaps that still exist between peacekeepers and humanitarians in crisis-spots – gaps that the UN has tried to address through its “integrated missions” concept, but are bound to be exacerbated when you add other organizations like the EU to the mix. But as trenchant Africa expert Alex de Waal points out to the BBC, this isn’t a situation that can be resolved through better doctrine. With Chad accusing Sudan of assisting the rebels, he’s calling this an “international war”:
“The European Union force in Chad has been caught in a bit of a trap – most of the troop contributing countries do not want to get involved in a shooting war; they don’t want to be partisan. Trying to keep the peace when there’s no peace to keep is actually an impossible mandate, so the European Union troops have essentially decided to keep their heads down and stay out of the war as it begins to unfold.”
The troops may be keeping their heads down, but many European politicians – caught up with the “crisis” of the Lisbon Treaty – will want to bury their heads in the sand on this one. The EU is in a war and it doesn’t even know it yet.
