Like the liberation of Paris: the moment Hillary arrived at State
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cyunLLKXJV8[/youtube]
Ideas and foreign policy
Two trends that should be welcomed and encouraged: (1) the rising amount of time that foreign ministry policy planning teams from different countries are spending with each other, which helps to build multilateral bandwidth and shared awareness; and (2) the fact that these conversations are also becoming increasingly transparent and accesssible to external stakeholders.
One interesting example of both of these trends in action is this transcript of a discussion between James Kariuki (former head of policy planning at the UK Foreign Office), David Gordon (his US counterpart) and Pierre Levy (their French opposite number) on the role of ideas in international relations, which was published last autumn in Les Carnets du CAP, the French policy planners’ quarterly publication.
The whole piece is well worth a read, but especially interesting to my mind is James’s observation that
…in the West, the US has been particularly successful at forging links between the world of ideas and the world of policy making. This is partly about the soft power of the dominant nation. In my view, it is also a positive spin-off from the politicisation of public service. The significant turnover of staff with each change of administration means that the think-tanks are full of people with real and recent policy experience in the administration, and the administration fills up with those who have spent time outside thinking (in well resourced foundations). In Europe, certainly in Britain, the lines between officialdom and intellectual activity are more sharply drawn.
I think that analysis is exactly right (see also this post from last April). So how to improve matters without ceding the principle of an apolitical civil service? One option would be to open up all London-based FCO posts to external applicants, as David and I called for back in 2007. Overall, that goal remains a long way off, but all due credit to James for practising what he preaches: when he was head of policy planning and needed to recruit three strategy project directors, he advertised every post.
Karzai’s “Southern Strategy”?
This holiday I read Alpha Dogs, the story of the Sawyer Miller Group, a political consultancy firm that pioneered international electioneering. Long before Karl Rove and James Carville became household names, Scott Miller and David Sawyer were peddling the techniques and snake oil of American electioneering to dictators and reformers throughout the world. Before it dissolved in 1991, the company steered Corazon Aquino to power in the Philippines, helped Czechoslovakia’s Vaclav Havel, and backed Israel’s Shimon Peres.
What advice, I thought, would the Sawyer Miller Group give if it was hired by Hamid Karzai? How would it steer the career of this moderate, one-term president who is seeking re-election but is haemorrhaging both international and local support and has failed to deliver much of what his voters — especially his core Pashtun constituency in the south and east — expected?
In figuring out what Sawyer Miller would say, it may be worthwhile recalling what they told Kevin White, the Mayor of Boston, when he looked as though he was headed for defeat in the late 1970s: people don’t like you, but they trust you to get the job done. Make the election about competence, not charisma.
Voters don’t like Karzai anymore, but some still approve of his record. Unfortunately, they are concentrated in the northeastern, northwestern and eastern parts of the country. In Karzai’s base, among Pashtuns in the southeast, little more than half of respondents (56%) told the Asian Foundation the government is doing a good job. So Candidate Karzai, Sawyer Miller would probably say, needs to focus on southerners.
This means getting southerners to vote and then, doing more for them — even to the point of discrimination. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to be accused of favouring southern Pashtuns, the Sawyer Miller consultant might say. True, it might alienate Tajiks, and Uzbeks, the old Northern Alliance, but it is probably safe to assume that the U.S will ensure they do not try to break up the country, even if they make loud noises. So it should be smooth sailing.
But here’s the catch: southerners reveals a clear preference for resolving issues at the community level and are more distrustful of the Kabul government. That may not be surprising with two-thirds telling pollsters their elected representatives are unresponsive. So perhaps Candidate Karzai should launch initiatives aimed at greater decentralisation for the south and compel friendly MPs to organise weekly “town-hall meetings”. Karzai might also persuaded to float the idea of directly-elected governors too. (more…)
Never a good time for a climate deal
Flickr user aturkus
Over at (the truly excellent) Clusterstock, Jay Yarrow notes that US car-markers are complaining bitterly about being forced to cut their fleet’s emissions.
The crippled industry, which we’ve already pumped full of cash, just can’t support changing its production. Big beefy SUVs and light trucks are profitable, compact cars are not. Gasoline is oversupplied, the economy’s in a rut, fewer people are buying hybrids. General Motors just laid off 2,000 workers yesterday. The timing is not right for tougher emission standards.
“When exactly will the timing be right for a shift in fuel standards?” Yarrow asks. “When the economy is flying high? Like it was just a few years ago and nothing changed? Or when gas prices spike again and it’s too late?”
I made a similar point in last week’s talk at the United Nations University. In the boom years of 2000-2006, global emissions shot up by 2.6% a year – blowing to bits the figure of 1% that Stern used in his models. Reflecting on these trends, Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows argued that:
It is difficult to envisage anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilization at or below 650ppm.
But now we have that recession (not planned of course), falling energy demand, and a breathing space where global emissions are likely to decline. Will leaders use the opportunity to do a global climate deal? Or will they listen to their industrial lobbies and decide that tomorrow (or the day after that) will surely be a better time?
Saudi Arabia’s warning to the US
If you missed Turki al-Faisal’s op-ed in the FT last week, then take a look. Entitled “Saudi Arabia’s patience is running out”, the language of the former Saudi Ambassador to the UK and the US (and before that the long-time head of Saudi intelligence) is blunt. For instance:
Unless the new US administration takes forceful steps to prevent any further suffering and slaughter of Palestinians, the peace process, the US-Saudi relationship and the stability of the region are at risk. Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Saudi foreign minister, told the UN Security Council that if there was no just settlement, “we will turn our backs on you” …
America is not innocent in this calamity. Not only has the Bush administration left a sickening legacy in the region, but it has also, through an arrogant attitude about the butchery in Gaza, contributed to the slaughter of innocents. If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact – especially its “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia – it will have to revise drastically its policies vis a vis Israel and Palestine.
Think that’s strong? Try this:
Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran wrote a letter to King Abdullah, explicitly recognising Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and calling on him to take a more confrontational role over “this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children” in Gaza. The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom’s primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shia and Sunni. Further, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s call for Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed. So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls, but every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain …
Today, every Saudi is a Gazan, and we remember well the words of our late King Faisal: “I hope you will forgive my outpouring of emotions, but when I think that our Holy Mosque in Jerusalem is being invaded and desecrated, I ask God that if I am unable to undertake Holy Jihad, then I should not live a moment more.”
The FT followed Turki’s article up with a leader yesterday, observing that:
Anyone with a stake in the stability of the wider Middle East should take very seriously the warning set forth in the Financial Times last Friday by Prince Turki al-Faisal … The Saudis have emitted a crescendo of warnings, as Arab leaders over the past decade have lost faith in American leadership and signalled they may make their own arrangements: hostile to Israel, in detente with Iran, and turning their backs on the US – unless it can restrain its Israeli ally.
Pretty sobering. Also worth checking out this analysis from a retired US foreign service officer who was twice posted to Sauid Arabia.