Daniel Ellsberg, in 1968, speaking to Henry Kissinger, who was just entering government for the first time:

“Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.

“I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.

“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.

“You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t….and that all those other people are fools.

“Over a longer period of time — not too long, but a matter of two or three years — you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn.

“In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: ‘What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?’ And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself.

“You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.”

….Kissinger hadn’t interrupted this long warning. As I’ve said, he could be a good listener, and he listened soberly. He seemed to understand that it was heartfelt, and he didn’t take it as patronizing, as I’d feared. But I knew it was too soon for him to appreciate fully what I was saying. He didn’t have the clearances yet.

Recounted in Mother Jones; h/t Nils Gilman.

MEP and internet superstar, Daniel Hannan is up in arms at what he sees Barack Obama sucking up to ‘Peronist Argentina’ on the Falklands.

“When matters last came to a head,” he writes, “Ronald Reagan had no difficulty backing Margaret Thatcher: the Gipper knew who America’s friends were.”

Of course, it wasn’t nearly as simple as that, as I am sure Hannan (a huge Thatcher fan) knows well. Michael Moynihan (no foe of Hannan’s, by the way)  sets the record straight:

Before the British took military action in 1982, the Reagan administration was, to the consternation of the British foreign office, very much on the fence and, initially, wedded to the neutrality position… In a letter to Thatcher, Reagan said that his government would take a neutral position on the matter—again, causing great anger—but would come out in favor of its ally if the Argentinians decide to start shooting…

It was only a communications error that prevented the United States from abstaining, rather than vetoing, a United Nation Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire—which Britain strenuously opposed.

Hannan’s fudging gives me a chance to plug James Rentschler’s superb Falklands diary. Rentschler was the Reagan official who ended up responsible for US policy on the islands after Argentina invaded. He was nonplussed by the task:

Never heard of [the Falklands], right? Me neither at least not until last evening when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent an urgent message through the Cabinet Line requesting the President to intercede with the Argies. 1800 British-origin sheepherders, pursuing a peaceful life on some wind-blown specks of rock in the South Atlantic, now targeted by Argentine amphibious assault units – who, in turn, may soon be attacked by the largest naval armada ever to steam out of British ports since Suez? Yes indeed, the thing certainly does sound like Gilbert and Sullivan as told to Anthony Trollope by Alistair Cooke. But what started out as comic opera now looks to become not only quite serious, but exceptionally nasty. The Argentines have clearly misjudged the British temper, and this guy Galtieri, speaking first in broken mafioso-type English before the State Department interpreter tactfully intervenes, sounds like a thug. (more…)

I am rather taken aback by William Hague’s claim, reported by Iain Dale, that the UK is forecast to be only the world’s 11th largest economy by 2015. Given that Britain currently ranks 6th in PPP and nominal terms, that’s quite a drop. Russia is currently 11th in nominal terms – its economy is 40% smaller than the UK’s.

Now I am very bearish about the British economy, but I also expect many other countries to face rocky times over the next decade. Not only does Hague make me look like a wide-eyed optimist, he obviously expects the UK to be alone in its economic troubles. He even mentions Italy as one of the countries he believes will prosper as the UK suffers – which strikes me as a real stretch (assuming he isn’t factoring in the Euro as a shield for the Italian economy).

Anyone know what source Hague is using for his forecast? (And just to hedge a little – it’s possible that Dale misquoted him.) You can read the full speech here.

Update: The source appears to be this analysis from the Centre for Economics and Business Research Ltd, which argued in a December 2009 press release:

In 2005, the UK was the 4th largest economy in the world. China overtook in 2006, France in 2008 and Italy in 2009. So now the official figures suggest that we have dropped to No7  (although  I still have some doubt about  the Italian figures  that are  incorporated  into  this analysis).

Projecting  forward,  the combination of economic growth and population growth, plus a likely rising real exchange rate mean that Brazil and Russia will overtake us sometime soon, perhaps in 2012. India will almost certainly overtake as well, though probably not till 2015.

But it also looks as though Canada could, if demand for natural resources continues to rise strongly, catch up and surpass UK GDP around 2015 as well. Even Australia is likely to have overtaken by 2020.

Not sure which ‘official figures’ CEBR is using though…

- As the diplomatic temperature continues to rise in the South Atlantic, Simon Jenkins suggests that the Falklands are “the Elgin marbles of diplomacy” and a “post-imperial anachronism” that should lead Britain to the negotiating table. Hugo Rifkind, meanwhile, explains why he won’t be shedding tears for Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, while The Economist highlights her failure to see the current crisis as an economic rather than a political opportunity.

- Rob de Wijk explores (pdf) the future options for NATO as it come to terms with changing geopolitics. Andrew J. Bacevich, meanwhile, cites a failure to sufficiently “reignite Europe’s martial spirit” and carve a global role for NATO in the 21^st Century as cause for the US to draw back engagement in the alliance. Let it return to its origins and “devolve into a European organization, directed by Europeans to serve European needs”, he argues.

- Elsewhere, the London Review of Books blog offers reaction to plans for the new US Embassy in London. Associated Press, meanwhile, has news of an internal State Department report criticising its media operations.

- Finally, VoxEU explores the emergence of “cloud computing” and its potential impact on our lifestyles, business innovation, and economic growth. Charles Leadbeater assesses the associated rise of “cloud culture” and the importance of guarding this new space from the overbearing influence of government and big business. Elsewhere, over at Brookings Mark Muro wonders if the rise of Amazon’s Kindle could be a “symbol of American decline”.

The fifth edition of the Center on International Cooperation’s Annual Review of Global Peace Operations is out today.  Is it any good?  Let’s ask an expert:

Few bestselling books read as well as this annual gem; few text books have even half as much useful and well-presented information on a crucial subject; few publications hold a candle to the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations.

—MICHAEL O’HANLON
Director of Research and Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Ooh yeah, peacekeeping fans, this one’s a keeper!  Buy it here.

I have a new paper out, published by FRIDE in Madrid, on the Obama administration’s approach to multilateralism. It points out that – contrary to our pleas for joined-up thinking on what international institutions should look like – the U.S. has pushed reform in a pretty ad hoc fashion:

Senior figures in the new administration had advocated a wide array of potentially incompatible options: their ideas included a stronger UN, a “global NATO”, a concert of democracies and “network diplomacy” transcending specific international institutions. The President had written of the need to boost the United Nations, but he had also praised NATO and the EU as important allies.

The administration could not continue without a hierarchy of institutional priorities for too long. It needed to find a framework for coordinating the international response to the still-boiling financial crisis – and there was a shared sense among administration members that this must fully involve emerging economic powers like China and India. In this context, one mechanism stood out as the focus for American policy: the Group of Twenty (G20).

The G20 already had momentum.  President Bush had convened its first heads-of-government summit to discuss the financial crisis in November 2008. Gordon Brown was preparing a sequel for London in April 2009. British officials grumbled that the new administration was initially ill-prepared for this, but Obama was a dominant (if deliberately not too dominant) figure at the London talks.

Although the US announced that it would host the next G20 meeting in Pittsburgh in September, this success did not convince all administration officials that the forum should be their priority. Some had been irritated by the long-winded bickering of other participants, or viewed it as a crisis mechanism that would lose steam.

Nonetheless, there was a growing recognition that serious alternatives were in short supply. The administration was unimpressed by Italy’s preparations for the July 2009 meeting of the G8. Susan Rice was making significant diplomatic headway at the UN, but its flaws as a decision-making forum remained clear.

There were enthusiasts in the administration for at least mooting reforms to the Security Council and the dysfunctional UN Human Rights Council, but these options were put on hold (although US officials at least indicated a new level of openness to discussing Security Council reform seriously). Promoting the G20 took priority. The US showed its hand in September, announcing immediately prior to the Pittsburgh summit that the G20 would act as the “premier” forum for economic discussions, displacing the G8.

To summarize: the new administration came into office, looked at what was lying about, and picked up the institution that looked most useful. Bad news for the multilat-nerds, but not that surprising. While writing this paper, I read Mary Elise Sarotte’s brilliant 1989, which probes the decisions around the reordering of Europe at the Cold War’s end. Sarotte points out that there were lots of ideas for rebuilding multilateral cooperation in Europe – Gorbachev was pushing a “common European home” embracing East and West. Yet the U.S. and West Germany went for what she calls the “prefabricated” option of sticking with NATO and the EC. There were lots of reasons for this, but one was NATO was just there already (Sara Batmanglich and I recently wrote a book chapter on how this logic continued in Europe in the 1990s).

I’m not saying that we should give up thinking bold ideas for reforming multilateralism (I’m waiting for David to respond to this post, after our jolly debate on realism…) or just hoping for a bit of policy coherence someday.  But I think that there’s lots of interesting work to be done looking at the dynamics of “prefabricated multilateralism”. Or should that be its absence of dynamism?

Last week I noted that Britain now has fewer European Commission staffers per capita than any other member state apart from Romania.  Now that the news of John Holmes’s departure as head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Assistance has finally gone public (he’s off to replace Jeremy Greenstock as director of Ditchley in September), we’re also about to lose our only senior United Nations official.

The Times, predictably, writes this up as the latest episode in a gradual story of diminishing numbers of Brits in top UN jobs over the past few years (“Britain loses grip on power as last top post is vacated”). 

From 1993 to 2005, it notes, the post of Under-Secretary General for the UN’s Department of Political Affairs (effectively ‘the UN’s Foreign Office’, one of the most politically significant bits of the UN secretariat)  was a Brit – first Marack Goulding, then Kieran Prendergast.  From 1999 to 2005, there was also a Brit – Mark Malloch Brown-  as Administrator of UNDP, regarded as the 3^rd most important job in the UN after SG and Deputy SG. 

But when Malloch Brown became Chief of Staff to Kofi Annan in 2005, the UK lost the UNDP post. Then, when he became Deputy SG shortly afterwards, Britain also agreed to let DPA go elsewhere (first to an Indian, then to an American).  The UK was then left with two USG posts: head of the Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Assistance, and USG for Safety and Security.  It lost the latter to an American in May last year, leaving it with just OCHA; and now, with John Holmes’s departure, it’s losing that too.

Of course, Holmes’s departure also opens up the prospect of the UN equivalent of a Cabinet reshuffle – in which the Foreign Office will be gearing up for a major push to get a Brit or two into key jobs. The UN rumour mill is already in overdrive, with early indications seeming to point towards the UK trying to get either DPA or the post of Chief of Staff in the SG’s office.  Other rumours suggest that the French might want the job at OCHA, which would imply their letting go of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations – which the US is rumoured to covet, which would entail its relinquishing DPA.

What, alas, is missing in all this is much discussion about what would be best for the UN. It’s arguably a make or break moment for the organisation.  It was left largely on the sidelines during the momentous changes in global governance that followed the financial crisis (from G8 to G20, IMF reform, creation of the FSB). Ban Ki-moon’s leadership has been widely criticised. The UN’s record on climate change has been challenged by the poor outcome at Copenhagen and the subsequent departure of its climate chief (another key post to watch in the impending reshuffle).

If member states, especially those on the P5, are serious about managing global risks, then they really need to start getting better at how they make appointments. It’s all very well for member states to mutter about Ban’s leadership – but who appointed him?

The New Yorker has a long profile of Paul Krugman that’s worth a look. The passage that has stuck with me is not really about Krugman but one of his friends…

Krugman began to realize that in the previous few decades economic knowledge that had not been translated into models had been effectively lost, because economists didn’t know what to do with it. His friend Craig Murphy, a political scientist at Wellesley, had a collection of antique maps of Africa, and he told Krugman that a similar thing had happened in cartography. Sixteenth-century maps of Africa were misleading in all kinds of ways, but they contained quite a bit of information about the continent’s interior—the River Niger, Timbuktu. Two centuries later, mapmaking had become much more accurate, but the interior of Africa had become a blank. As standards for what counted as a mappable fact rose, knowledge that didn’t meet those standards—secondhand travellers’ reports, guesses hazarded without compasses or sextants—was discarded and lost. Eventually, the higher standards paid off—by the nineteenth century the maps were filled in again—but for a while the sharpening of technique caused loss as well as gain.

This could act as a metaphor for all sorts of current debates, and academia’s contribution to them, but I leave you to fill in the blanks…

On Tuesday (March 2nd), I am speaking at a seminar on resilience in the UK housing market.

The seminar picks up on my recent paper for the Long Finance Foundation (download it here). The argument in a nutshell:

(1) Housing is probably the biggest economic risk facing the UK – more important even than the deficit; (2) Houses are overpriced – and the fiscal stimulus appears to have reinflated the housing bubble; (3) Mortgages are sold in such a way as to play on borrowers’ cognitive biases – this is bad for many individuals, and systemically disastrous; (4) The FSA’s proposals for reform are half hearted – we’re missing a huge opportunity to rethink how people make long-term financial decisions.

On the panel to discuss the paper, Long Finance’s Michael Mainelli, BrightonRock’s Con Keating, and Channel 4′s Faisal Islam.

It’s at Gresham College at 2.30 – please come along if you can.

Yesterday, a British police dog handler was found guilty of animal cruelty after leaving his two Alsatians in the back of a boiling car. His defence? He forgot they were there.

British tabloid, the Sun is up in arms. Its headline: “Let off…Cop who left dogs to bake.” For some bizarre reason, its website has pictures from the RSPCA of each of the dead dogs.

How can someone leave two large dogs in a car by mistake? Quite easily. Because parents – doting and otherwise competent parents – do the same thing with their children more often than you’d like to think. And if the weather is hot (or cold) enough, the children die:

An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just… forgets a child is in the car. It happens that way somewhere in the United States 15 to 25 times a year, parceled out through the spring, summer and early fall. The season is almost upon us.

Two decades ago, this was relatively rare. But in the early 1990s, car-safety experts declared that passenger-side front airbags could kill children, and they recommended that child seats be moved to the back of the car; then, for even more safety for the very young, that the baby seats be pivoted to face the rear. If few foresaw the tragic consequence of the lessened visibility of the child . . . well, who can blame them? What kind of person forgets a baby?

The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist.

Last year it happened three times in one day, the worst day so far in the worst year so far in a phenomenon that gives no sign of abating.

(more…)

H/t Chuck Currie.