And now, by way of Friday afternoon amusement, a selection of headlines from the always-excellent English language version of Pravda: if you haven’t discovered, add it to your favourites immediately.

For where else can you find such an infectious mixture of imperial swagger – “Russia creates its own version of NATO in Central Asia to be prepared for big war“; “Ukraine’s Tymoshenko makes ridiculous offer to Russia’s Putin” - together with touching moments of national self-doubt such as “Europe may not even want to improve ties with Russia at all“, or the heart-breaking ”Russian fighter jets worse than those of USA and Europe?”

The science section is equally diverting. Not for Pravda the hand-wringing about impending environmental catastrophe that you’ll find in the Guardian or the NY Times; instead, Pravda reports with a weary roll of the eyes that “Scientists predict men’s extinction again“, while noting elsewhere that “Vegetarianism proves to be perversion of nature“.

Above all, be sure to check out Pravda’s approach to lifestyle issues, which blends approving reports of bling  being brandished – “Russian billionaire opens Europe’s most expensive luxury hotel“; “Putin and Medvedev to open holiday season in their luxury beach mansions“; or best of all, “Putin makes public presentation of his very serious new car ” - with undisguided bemusement towards those who fail to share its enthusiasm for same (“Russia’s richest man moves to god-forsaken village “).

By way of a small sample of the kind of genius you’re missing out on, herewith the full story on Putin’s pimped-up new ride:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made a public presentation of his new Niva vehicle, which he bought about a month ago. The car was unveiled to reporters near Putin’s residence in the city of Sochi in Russia’s south, where Putin conducted negotiations with the prime minister of Turkey.

Putin told reporters that he was enjoying driving his new car, although he only traveled about 300 meters, RIA Novosti reports. Putin did not specify the price that he paid for the SUV.

Putin said that he liked the new wheels of the car, its soft suspension and the powerful engine. The prime minister also said that his car had a special specification, although it was already available at the manufacturing company (Russia’s AvtoVAZ).

“You’d better step aside, guys, it’s a serious car,” Putin warned the photographers, who were taking pictures of the car.

Several journalists had the privilege of driving Putin’s SUV. One of them took a ride around Putin’s residence and acknowledged that the driving was really enjoyable.

A female correspondent of RIA Novosti news agency said that it would be a very good car for a blonde.

A journalist from Turkey was the third to drive Putin’s car.

“Is it really Niva?” he asked Putin after the ride.

“It surely is,” Putin responded.

The journalist wondered if these cars would be available in Turkey.

“This car can be available in many countries of the world. This is a best-seller of AvtoVAZ,” Putin said.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who visited Sochi on Saturday, did not drive the car.

“He didn’t drive it, because the car arrived today. If they had delivered it yesterday, me and Silvio would have obviously taken a ride,” Putin said.

As regular readers will know, Global Dashboard is a hotbed of David Kilcullen fandom – so bravo to David Miliband for noting on his blog that Kilcullen’s his ”favourite Australian analyst”.  But it also raises an interesting question, which I’ve just put to Miliband via the comments section on his post:

Out of curiosity, what do you make of Kilcullen’s argument on US use of drone attacks in Pakistan? He wrote recently that,

” While violent extremists may be unpopular, for a frightened population they seem less ominous than a faceless enemy that wages war from afar and often kills more civilians than militants. Press reports suggest that over the last three years drone strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent — hardly “precision.”

“Expanding or even just continuing the drone war is a mistake. In fact, it would be in our best interests, and those of the Pakistani people, to declare a moratorium on drone strikes into Pakistan.”

Do you think that’s right?  And if so, is there a case for the UK disassociating itself from US policy on this – particularly given how much of a focus for grievance drone attacks are becoming among UK-Pakistani diaspora communities?

Update: David Miliband has now replied to my question – see his subsequent blog post here.  David Steven has done a detailed response to Miliband’s reply here.

For those of us who love nothing better than a global governance nerd-out, this year is turning out to be a feast. As I noted back in April, the London Summit made a decent start on tackling the immediate term economic crisis – but also left the really big, long-term questions about global risk management (climate, economic imbalances, oil and food security and so on) for another day. But which forum is supposed to pick up the baton?

One point on which most observers of summitry increasingly agree is that it’s not the G8. Even before the G20 meeting held in DC in November last year, it was unclear how a body that excluded China, India and other emerging economies as full members could really play a serious role on issues like climate, trade or global economic governance.  Now that China has bailed out the IMF to the tune of $40 billion – and started to flex its muscles on the question of the world’s reserve currency - a return to the status quo ante seems highly unlikely. 

Another factor is the increasing likelihood that Italy’s shindig in July could prove the final nail in the G8′s coffin. While seasoned G8 watchers agree that ruthless prioritisation is crucial for an effective summit, Italy’s stated priorities now include “the financial and economic crisis and the search for new proposals for stability and growth”; “the battle against climate change”; “the fight against terrorism and nuclear proliferation”; “development in Africa and other less advanced economies”; and (after dinner, presumably), “regional and global security … with special attention paid to the Middle East and Afghanistan”. 

But if the G8′s future looks pretty uncertain, don’t assume that means that the G20 is here to stay.  Although another summit is already scheduled for Washington in September, the signals are that the US may use its position in the chair to knock the forum on the head at the leaders’ level and return it to its former role as a finance ministers’ gathering.

US policymakers were struck by the unwieldiness of the forum in London, it is said – particularly once Spain and the Netherlands had pushed successfully for inclusion in the summit, making the G20 a de facto G22. The US could therefore signal a preference for falling back to a G13 (comprised of the G8 and its +5 grouping, with the emerging economies finally included as full members), or maybe the G16 proposed by the Managing Global Insecurity project (pdf - see also my 2007 CIC paper comparing proposals for new G[x] forums).

Meanwhile, there’s also the glorious, doomed attempt by the UN General Assembly to turn itself into the cockpit of global economic governance.  The current President of the GA – Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, a senior Sandinista from Nicaragua – began by commissioning a report (pdf) from a panel of experts chaired by Joseph Stiglitz, and followed this by organising a summit (the snappily titled ‘United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development’) – which was to supposed to have been held next week in New York.

Just another UN talking shop, you ask?  Not if d’Escoto has anything to do with it.  On 8th May, he published a draft outcome document for the summit, which – bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘big bang approach’ – set out plans for the creation of:

- a Global Stimulus Fund (which would attract funds from big surplus nations like China and Japan, and use them for purposes like balance of payment support, stimulus investments, food security or trade credit);

- Global Public Goods Authorities for Sea, Space and Cyberspace (raising new revenues from taxes, fines, permits and controls on the use of these goods);

- a Global Tax Authority (which would run international taxation on, for example, carbon, pollution or financial transactions);

- a Global Financial Products Safety Commission (to regulate financial instruments globally since it “has been demonstrated that these instruments can destroy even the largest hedge funds, banks, insurance companies, and local governments, as well as the economies of entire countries and the world”);

- a Global Financial Regulatory Authority and a Global Competition Authority (to regulate cross-border businesses given the extent to which national regulatory authorities struggle to do so);

- a Global Council of Financial and Economic Advisors (to “assess long-term trends … identify problems in the global economic and financial architecture, and … provide options for coherent international action”);

- a Global Economic Coordination Council (“elected amongst member states on a rotating basis through regional representations”); and last but not least,

- a World Monetary Board (which would dish out new Special Drawing Right allocations on the basis of need and effectiveness if the IMF proved unable to perform this role).

Well, as you might already have guessed, things haven’t proceeded quite according to plan. (more…)

President Obama announced a raft of reforms to the National Security Council yesterday, summed up in this White House statement and this Washington Post article.

Both lead on the merger of the Homeland Security Staff and the National Security Council, which will bring the total NSC staff to around 240. But of particular interest are two new directorates within the NSC: one on resilience (“a national security directorate aimed at preparedness and response for a domestic WMD attack, pandemic or natural catastrophe, officials said”), and

a new Global Engagement Directorate to drive comprehensive engagement policies that leverage diplomacy, communications, international development and assistance, and domestic engagement and outreach in pursuit of a host of national security objectives, including those related to homeland security.

This has the potential to be an important step forward.  But for the new directorate to work, it will be essential to understand that engagement isn’t some sort of stand-alone area of endeavour, and nor is it just ‘the public relations bit of foreign policy’.  Instead, it’s a different kind of approach to foreign policy itself.  As David and I wrote last year in a paper commissioned by the Foreign Office,

What we are reaching for is a theory of influence for contemporary international relations, with the new public diplomacy at its heart. The new public diplomat should therefore not be seen as a particular kind of diplomat, but rather, simply, as tomorrow’s diplomat. He or she understands that other governments are one of many target audiences (albeit an especially important one), is at ease with the chaotic, fluid nature of today’s global issues, and tends naturally towards a search for the strategic synthesis. This diplomat is constantly looking both inwards, at our policy stance – is it coherent and compelling? – and outwards, at whether people are joining forces with us, or with other tribes.

The new public diplomat brings to the task a willingness to pull together all the tools of international relations and mix them together to create a coherent whole. The aim is to blend analysis, policy-making and communications; the focus is more on what the country does than on what it says. And with the job comes a new investment mindset. Instead of behaving like a bank manager – with a large portfolio, low risk appetite and a desire for incremental returns – the new public diplomat acts like a venture capitalist, focusing on a smaller portfolio, tolerating risk and aspiring to achieve transformational change.

The stakes, after all, are high. Globalization has brought with it a series of ever more complex challenges. Above all, therefore, the new public diplomat must be genuinely at ease with discussion of values (rather than mere interests), understanding that without clearly stated principles – and consistent adherence to them – it will be impossible to animate coalitions of state and non-state actors, and even harder for members of that coalition to work together to deliver a common goal.

As Charlie noted here last week, counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen was pretty damning on US drone attacks during his recent visit to London.  But another interesting point he made was on the need for western governments to provide more support to Pakistan’s beleaguered police.  Here’s Kilcullen giving evidence to the House Armed Services Committee on April 23:

The police are a critically important element in any counterinsurgency, and I am not aware of any successful campaign in which police reform, police capability-building, police intelligence and the use of police to protect the population and uphold law and order, were not key components.

Pakistan needs a much larger, much better equipped, better trained, better supported and better paid police force. The fact that it doesn’t have one is partly because the police are a major institutional rival to the army, and we have funneled the vast majority of our aid to, and through, the military.

From a policy standpoint, increasing police reform and assistance efforts would thus serve four purposes at the same time – it would protect the Pakistani people, improve counterinsurgency performance, enhance the rule of law and weaken the stranglehold of the army over the civilian leadership of Pakistan.

As Kilcullen argued when he was in London, Pakistan’s army sees its raison d’etre in terms of Pakistan’s rivalry with India.  The police, on the other hand, see their raison d’etre in terms of the rule of law: a much more useful strategic concept, given the extent to which counter-insurgency is a fight for legitimacy, or the fact that successful counter-insurgency often requires de-escalation rather upping the ante – something that often comes more naturally to police forces than armies.  (Bill Lind’s seminal paper on 4GW makes the same point:

…the key to keeping the peace is to de-escalate situations rather than escalate them. Soldiers are taught to escalate.  If something isn’t working, bring in more firepower. Cops don’t do that, because it enrages the local community.)

As has been widely noted, Pakistan’s army has minimal expertise in counter-insurgency, and is attempting to counter the Taliban’ offensive in the Swat valley with conventional tactics.  The Taliban, for their part, appear to be clear on who they should be worrying about most: look at this morning’s attack on police HQ in Lahore, or the attack in March on the police academy in the same city.

From today’s Washington Post:

KISUMU, Kenya — With the U.S. economy in turmoil, his job as a truck driver no longer secure and his upwardly mobile life in the Dallas suburbs in jeopardy, James Odhiambo decided it was time for a change.

He wanted a healthier lifestyle for his family, less anxiety, fewer 14-hour days. So he recently traded his deluxe apartment, the pickup truck, the dishwasher and $4.99 McDonald’s combos for life in a place he considers relatively better: sub-Saharan Africa.

“Right now I’m no stress, no anxiety,” said Odhiambo, 34, relaxing in his family home in this western Kenyan city along the shores of Lake Victoria. “Think of it this way: When I was in the U.S., I was close to 300 pounds. Now, I’m like 200. The biggest thing for me was quality of life.”

While that may seem counterintuitive to Americans accustomed to bleaker images of Africa, recent studies have documented the flight of immigrant professionals from the United States to their home countries. Chinese and Indian workers increasingly say they see better opportunities and lifestyles at home. And diaspora associations of Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans and other Africans say their members — mostly from middle-class backgrounds — are joining the exodus, choosing life in the land of slow Internet connections and power outages over the pressures of recession-era America.

“I personally know many people who are going back,” said Erastus Mong’are, who works as a program manager for an insurance company in Delaware and heads an association of Kenyans living there. “The people I know here work two or three jobs just to make ends meet, while in Kenya — despite its problems — people seem more happy. They seem to be getting more time with family. More relaxed. Here, if my neighbor sees I’ve parked in his spot, he becomes so upset.”

A while back, David did a post extolling the virtues of biochar as a potentially important – but widely overlooked – element of the response to climate change. Well, here’s another: black carbon.

As Durwood Zaelke of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development notes, black carbon is “the dark soot that comes from old diesel vehicles and burning biomass for cooking”. It accelerates global warming in two crucial ways: first, by absorbing more heat while particles of it float around in the atmosphere, and second by darkening snow and ice surfaces after it falls to the ground, thereby absorbing still more heat.

It’s a big deal.  One recent study cited by Zaelke suggests it’s responsible for 50% of Arctic warming; another that it reduces springtime Eurasian snow cover by as much as CO2 does.  Black carbon’s also a major part of the recent why the MIT study published 2 days ago is so gloomy (it predicts “a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees” - great).

The good news?  This is eminently tackle-able, especially through pretty basic technologies like better cooking stoves and smoke hoods. More good news?  Undertaking a major push on this would not only deliver immediate progress on reducing climate change, but would also save millions of lives and make a tangible difference to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. 

As Practical Action (one of the best NGOs in this area) summarise, more than a third of humanity (2.4 billion people) use biomass as their main cooking fuel, of whom 800m depend exclusively on crop residues and dung. Smoke in the home from these fires kills 1.6 million people a year – mainly women and kids. That’s more than malaria, and almost as much as poor water and sanitation. This WHO graph shows worldwide causes of death and illness:

While this one shows causes of death among under-fives:

So sorting out such stoves is one of those rare things, a genuine win-win. It’s also something the development community could actually deliver.  As a rule I’m sceptical when I see the aid world cheerfully adopting a throw-money-at-it approach – but one area where resource transfer can clearly achieve results is when (a) it’s geared towards getting stuff distributed, and (b) the stuff in question doesn’t depend on complex delivery systems (such as a functioning health sector).  In those conditions, donors can be extremely effective: look at distribution of bed-nets to combat malaria.

So: someone needs to initiate a major push on universal access to basic stoves and safe cooking technology.  But who has the standing to unite the climate world and the development world in this endeavour, and could also bring it to G8 or G20 summits for high level political cover? 

Sounds like a job for the SG to me.

Don’t get too excited about Portugal.  The Wire creator David Simon is less than sanguine about prospects for change in the US:

..despite his avowed admiration for Obama, Simon believes the new regime will do nothing to solve the US’s drugs problems. “I do not believe that we have the stomach for serious change,” he said. “The war on drugs is as disastrous as any government policy has been over the past 50 years, but I do not believe Obama and his people will use their political capital to end it … If a policy failed this unequivocally in any other part of US life you would cashier the generals. But the drug problem oppresses the poor. If rich kids were wandering the streets stealing car radios we would not be so complacent. But it is easier to brutalise the poor and discard them. We are not a manufacturing economy any more and we don’t need our least educated people, so we marginalise them. The cynicism of Reagan and Thatcher still applies.”

Today’s Guardian has a big splash announcing that “China and US held secret climate talks“.  According to Suzanne Goldberg,

A high-powered group of senior Republicans and Democrats led two missions to China in the final months of the Bush administration for secret backchannel negotiations aimed at securing a deal on joint US-Chinese action on climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The report continues that the track 2 talks were orchestrated by the Carnegie Endowment’s Bill Chandler, who says that “My sense is that we are now working towards something in the fall… It will be serious. It will be substantive, and it will happen.”

Hmm. For all the breathless talk of “secret” dealings and ”backchannel” negotiations about which “the Guardian has learned”, you have to figure that the talks probably weren’t that secret if Radio Free Asia was able to report fully two months ago that,

China has raised hopes for environmental cooperation with the United States despite differences that emerged during a Washington visit by leading officials this month. 

On March 18, Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC), stressed a positive outlook for cooperation on climate change at a Washington meeting co-hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Global Environmental Institute of Beijing. After years of disagreement over which country bears greater responsibility for global warming, Xie, China’s top climate negotiator, voiced readiness to discuss joint action.

If you’re wondering where Bill Chandler is coming from on climate change, then this 2007 interview with CFR  is worth a look (n.b. his heavily sceptical view of Kyoto’s crappy Clean Development Mechanism); more up-to-date and in depth is this 2008 article entitled “Breaking the Suicide Pact: US-China Cooperation on Climate Change” (see also this summary on China Stocks Blog).

There’s a lot of good stuff in the article, with a particular focus on cooperation on best practice technologies and innovation in new ones.  But here’s what gives me pause: “Both countries could reach a deal – without a treaty – that could unlock the global stalemate”.

Without a treaty? Hmm. Chandler’s article is full of sensible proposals for confidence building measures between the US and China.  But none of these can substitute for a global system of binding, quantified targets, if the world wants to be sure of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations at any given level.  Initiatives like this are useful – but if we learned anything from the Bush Administration, it’s that there’s always the risk of them becoming figleaves.

At the REEL Iraq festival, the question is: “Has Iraq turned a corner?” In the chair, Rob Edwards kicks off asking the audience whether they think things in Iraq are getting better or worse. A few optimists but – in general – pessimism prevails. So on to the panellists… are they optimistic or pessimistic? (more…)