It’s commonplace to describe the financial crisis as a once-in-a-century event, but I question whether that is the case. Perhaps we’re not in the midst of a short-lived financial shock, but a long crisis that stretches back into the 1990s.

Here’s Paul Blustein on Alan Greenspan:

The Fed chief told the G-7 that in almost fifty years of watching the U.S. economy, he had never witnessed anything like the drying up of markets in the previous days and weeks.

Greenspan wasn’t speaking in Autumn 2008 when Lehman’s collapsed, however, but ten years’ earlier in the wake of the spectacular blow-up of Long-Term Capital Management, which lost $4.5 billion almost overnight in what the fund’s principals post-rationalised as a 100-year flood.

Long-Term (with its superbly hubristic name) was brought low by derivatives, just as Lehman’s would be a decade later.

(Robert Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, was one of those left picking up the pieces – part of ‘the committee to save the world’, with Greenspan and Larry Summers. Rubin went on to preside over Citigroup as it needed a succession of massively expensive bailouts, when its derivatives tanked in the subprime crisis.)

The proximate cause of Long-Term’s failure was Russia’s Rouble crisis, when the country defaulted on its debt after the IMF refused to mount a second bailout.

The Russian crisis itself came in the midst of a long series of dramatic economic failures that hits the world between 1997 and 1999, mostly in East Asia (Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia etc), but which also battered Brazil and would devastate Argentina in 2002. Blustein again:

Time and again, panics in financial markets proved impervious to the ministrations of the people responsible for global economic policymaking.

IMF bailouts fell flat in one crisis-stricken country after another, with the announcements of enormous international loan packages followed by crashes in currencies and sever economic setbacks that the rescues were supposed to avert.

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Business is slow at Dori’s spectacular weekly livestock market. The crowds of turbaned Fulani nomads and bejewelled Bella and Tuareg are as dense and colourful as ever, but although a few goats and sheep change hands, trade in cattle – for so long the stars of the show – has ground to a halt. Huge herds of powerful horned beasts led in from across the Burkinabe Sahel stand uninspected, undisturbed, unsold. Admiring Fula, whose love for cattle can be as intense as their love for their wives, look on wistfully from a distance, not daring to get involved.

‘It’s very hard to sell cows these days because people no longer have the confidence to herd them,’ says a young Fula who is trying in vain to offload some of his ten-strong brood. ‘There’s not enough rain and boreholes are drying out, so keeping a large herd is difficult. Sometimes you have to travel for three or four days to find water. Some animals don’t make it. So it’s risky to buy cattle, for both economic and emotional reasons: you don’t want to see the animals suffer.’

It is not only business that is under pressure. Hunger stalks the towns and villages of northern Burkina Faso. In 2005, a million people needed emergency food relief as the prices of maize and millet doubled. In 2008, riots protesting the high cost of food rocked the country. Poverty in Dori is Dickensian – large gangs of scrawny kids forage for food; toddlers’ stomachs are bloated by kwashiorkor. In the villages, theft from granaries has increased as the contest for food intensifies. ‘Famine has become cyclical,’ says a nurse, adding that last year’s shorter than usual rainy season has left many thousands vulnerable in the coming months as their stocks of grain run out.

Fula and Tuareg cattle herders are especially exposed – they have no tradition of growing crops as they must spend all their time finding pasture for their livestock. To obtain essential carbohydrates, they must buy them, and when crop prices rise in a drought many starve.

The main cause of food insecurity here is population growth. The population of the Dori district has tripled in the past forty years. As well as meaning that water and pasture have to be shared more thinly, this increase has also hastened deforestation and desertification. Wood is the only source of fuel, so more people means fewer trees and a clearer path for the encroaching desert. The Sahara is advancing into the Burkinabe Sahel at a rate of 10cm per year, reducing the land and water available for herding and farming. Periodic conflict breaks out between roaming herders and settled agriculturalists over access to these precious resources.

Climate change, which everyone here blames on the West (‘you caused it, we’re suffering from it,’ is a common and irrefutable accusation) could be the final nail in the coffin of the nomadic herding lifestyle. This year, the harmattan wind which deposits huge clouds of sand from the desert is still blowing, over a month after it normally stops. Rainy seasons are starting later and finishing earlier. The Sahel is expected to be one of the world regions hardest hit by climate change: rainfall could decrease by a quarter in the next eighty years.

Adapting to the increasingly challenging conditions will not be easy. As an older Fula man in the oasis village of Oursi (whose large lake has virtually dried out) explains, ‘People here don’t know how to do commerce, they only know herding.’ He himself used to have forty head of cattle, taking them north to Mali in the dry season and returning to Burkina for the rains, but many died through lack of pasture and water and he is now left with just ten cows. He has been forced to take up a menial job at a campsite to make ends meet, and spends hours sitting and staring into space, dreaming of cattle and long journeys. His peers are moving to the cities, quitting their quiet wanderings for a grim life spent hawking the roaring streets of Ouagadougou.

Back at the market in Dori, the young herder is reluctant to accept the new reality. ‘People are keeping their money in their pocket in the hope that the climate will improve,’ he says, desperation cracking his voice. It is likely to be a long wait.

This week, all the big ideas for the future of world order are coming from Frenchmen.  Here’s WTO Chief Pascal Lamy speaking in Brussels on how the EU should present itself in future G20 meetings (as recorded by Charlemagne):

“If one European takes the floor on one topic, and then another European takes the floor on the same topic, nobody listens. Nobody listens because either it’s the same thing and it gets boring, or it’s not the same thing and it will not influence the result at the end of the day….So the right solution, if I may, is at least to make sure that they speak with one mouth. Not one voice—one mouth—on each topic on the agenda. That would be a great improvement.”

If plodding Anglo-Saxons find this voice/mouth thing a bit too Gallic for comfort (they’ll be distinguishing the signifier and signified in EU policy next!) it’s really rather elegant: if lots of European leaders insist on going to G20 confabs they should “divvy up the agenda ahead of time, and agree that one leader would speak (and only one) on each topic in the name of the EU”.  In New York, meanwhile, President Sarkozy spoke on global governance at Columbia today, forsaking elegance for ambition:

“In the 21st century,” he said, “we cannot afford that only a handful of countries lead the way. India, Africa and Latin America represent 2.5 billion people, but have no permanent seats in the Security Council. On this trip, I am initiating a reform to have permanent members from every region of the world. We need this in order to tackle the global environmental and financial challenges we are facing.”

I’d like to tell you more about Sarkozy’s speech, but (i) he abandoned his prepared text, so we’re still waiting for a full transcript; (ii) almost every account of the event I’ve read so far has focused on how Carla looked.  Which was, if you must ask, good.

[Picture credit: Columbia's Hoot.]

Update [David]: The Telegraph sees a conspiracy in something called asymmetrical translation:

The French version of the binding summit text, agreed on Thursday, used the original words “le gouvernement économique”.

To spare Mr Brown’s feelings, the English text used the more innocuous and less controversial term “economic governance”.

“There is no fundamental difference of view, but rather a sensitivity to certain words which has led to an asymmetrical translation,” remarked the EU president.

The BBC reports that U.S. forces may soon be slimmer targets for Taliban snipers:

Burger bars and pizza joints in Nato bases across Afghanistan are being closed down in an effort “to increase efficiency across the battlefield”. A Nato spokesman said that “amenities” at bases across the country are being phased out for logistical reasons. He said officials at each base will decide exactly when they are axed.

Nato’s top Afghanistan commander, Gen Stanley McChrystal, made it clear last year that the days of Burger King and Pizza Hut on bases were numbered. He expressed concern that burger bars, pizza restaurants and other stores in large International Security Assistance Force bases at Kandahar, Bagram and Mazar-e-Sharif served as a distraction to the military mission.

That may sound like common sense, but McChrystal’s stand against military obesity may be as doomed as Custer’s against the Sioux.  A recent humor piece in the New Yorker drew attention to this remarkable news story from last December:

The latest Army statistics show a stunning 75 percent of military-age youth are ineligible to join the military because they are overweight, can’t pass entrance exams, have dropped out of high school or had run-ins with the law. So many young people between the prime recruiting ages of 17 and 24 cannot meet minimum standards that a group of retired military leaders is calling for more investment in early childhood education to combat the insidious effects of junk food and inadequate education.

“We’ve never had this problem of young people being obese like we have today,” said Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He calls the rising number of youth unfit for duty a matter of national security. “We should be concerned about how this will impact this overstretched Army and its ability to recruit.”

So, are we fated (fatted?) to defeat at the hands of meaner, leaner foes?  Not if we choose to pick a fight with China, according to the latest edition of Foreign Policy.  It notes that China’s one-child-per-family policy “is widely perceived as creating a generation of spoiled, overweight boys, dubbed ‘little emperors’, who are doted on by four grandparents while their parents toil to support them in fields, factories, and offices.”  The result: soldiers who resemble first-year undergraduates!

The [Chinese Army] has found that such soldiers have better communication and computer skills than their peers with siblings. However, they haven’t performed as well in other ways. Only-child recruits are not as tough; they don’t like to go through the pain of intense training; they call in sick more frequently; and they struggle to perform some simple chores like doing their own laundry.

Is this the shape of future war: no more mass armies, just massive soldiers?

[Picture credit: Son of the South.]

Lots of protestations from European leaders that they really can be credible partners for the United States:

Stung by a perception of America’s indifference to its historical alliance with Europe, senior European leaders are calling for a rebalancing of the relationship, promising the Obama administration that the Europeans can be partners for global challenges ranging from security to climate change.

A high-level conference here on Sunday was dominated by European efforts to get Washington’s attention, with promises of new, concerted action that were met with polite skepticism. American officials and European experts largely see European national leaders as focused on their own debates about Greece and the debt crisis afflicting the group of countries that use the euro, divided over China and Russia and tired of Afghanistan. Europe is seen just now as not a problem for the United States, but not much help, either.

But the European message here was striking, both as a response to criticism from Washington and as an effort by Europe’s new leadership, put in place under the Lisbon Treaty, to articulate a new foundation for an old relationship that most take for granted.

The European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, urged Europeans to “think global and act trans-Atlantic.” After President Obama’s postponement of a European Union-United States summit meeting, which caused resentment in Europe, Mr. Barroso, speaking to the conference here, the Brussels Forum of the German Marshall Fund, called for future summit meetings to be more substantive, less scripted and “much more efficient and results-oriented.”

The new president of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy, said it was vital “to translate this shared history and our shared values into a shared future.” Both Europe and the United States “are entitled to ask the other: ‘What do you bring to the table?’ ” he said. “The only easy relationship is an empty relationship.”

I am all in favour of the Obama administration ignoring the European Union when it is divided and/or inward looking. But will the Americans create positive incentives for unity, by working hand-in-hand with the EU when it caucuses effectively on a global issue, and invests energy and resources in trying to reach agreement?

In the past, this has not been the case – think Copenhagen. Indeed, my impression is that many US policy makers instinctively (and perhaps unconsciously) prefer to see Europe weak and marginalised. In the future, a policy of divide-and-ignore needs to be replaced by one of notice-when-united.

- With the US and Russia finally concluding negotiations on a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, Julian Borger assesses the deal’s significance. Josh Rogin, meanwhile, wonders whether Obama will be able to get the treaty past Republicans in the Senate.

- Kenneth Weisbrode explores the “reinventing diplomacy” debate, suggesting that “while America thinks in terms of networks, the rest of the world is busy connecting circuits.” Writing in The World Today, Christopher Hill assesses the current challenges facing UK foreign policy, the difficult decisions that lie ahead, and where future priorities may lie. “If it is to serve us well over the longer term”, he argues, UK foreign  and security policy “needs a radical overhaul of its underlying outlook”.

- Elsewhere, The Atlantic Monthly‘s Joshua Green offers a wide-ranging profile of US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner – “a superstar of the bureaucracy” – assessing his influence on President Obama and his central role in shaping the US response to the global financial crisis.

- Finally, discussing European immigration Brigid Grauman highlights the example of Switzerland, suggesting that the rest of Europe would do well to learn the lessons of participatory democracy in promoting integration and fostering multiculturalism. Over at Foreign Policy, meanwhile, Steve Kettmann assesses the recent buffeting taken by the country’s international image, asking if the Swiss stance on neutrality is still feasible in an age of interconnectedness.

NATO is not impressed by Geoff Hoon’s involvement in lobbygate:

NATO says it is dropping former British defense secretary Geoff Hoon from a group of experts drawing up the alliance’s new strategic concept.

Hoon is among three former Cabinet ministers who have been suspended from Britain’s ruling Labor Party over allegations they tried to trade access to government officials for cash…

NATO spokesman James Appathurai says Hoon had been nominated to the group by the British government. Appathurai says given Hoon’s suspension “he has been asked to end his participation in the group.”

Via @David_Stringer

John Bolton:

The collapse or at least the decline of intra-EU political cooperation, facilitated by the corrosion of trust inherent in the EU financial crisis, inevitably will affect the common foreign and security policy. It may well affect and permanently hurt the continued quest for an “ever-closer union.”

If so, the United States and its European friends who believe in popular sovereignty, limited government and Atlanticism can only rejoice. The EU may be weaker, but the West as a whole will be stronger.

The State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs has just released a fact-sheet entitled U.S. Multilateral Engagement: Benefits to American Citizens.  It opens with a bang:

“…the time has come for the world to move in a new direction. We must embrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and our work must begin now.” –President Barack Obama

The United States is deeply engaged with the United Nations and other international organizations to promote U.S. national interests, particularly through U.S. leadership at the United Nations as part of the Security Council and as a leading voice in support of human rights, economic development, security and global health. In addition, the United States derives many other far-reaching and positive benefits from U.S. engagement with international organizations.

Keeping up the momentum, State turns to the first of those benefits:

WEATHER FORECASTING

By facilitating free and unrestricted exchange of weather-and climate-related data, products, and services in real or near-real time among members, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) contributes to U.S. economic interests by protecting U.S. life and property from severe weather, particularly in the agriculture, aviation, shipping, energy, and defense sectors. Coordinating data also makes it possible for the National Weather Service to issue the ten-day weather forecasts that Americans use every day.

Um, OK, fine – that’s got us fired up and ready to go I guess. So, on to benefit #2:

INTERNATIONAL MAIL

Every year, post offices in the U.S. and around the world handle in excess of 400 billion letters and packages, under a legal and procedural framework overseen by the Universal Postal Union (UPU). The UPU sets guidelines for international mail exchanges and ensures that Americans can communicate by mail with friends, family, customers, and colleagues in all corners of the world. Without the UPU, the United States would need more than 200 bilateral postal agreements, likely resulting in considerably higher international postage rates for Americans. Postal services in the U.S. private sector generate an estimated $900 billion in revenue each year, employing approximately nine million people nationwide.

Thank God for international cooperation, eh? No UN, no cheap stamps. At this point, the fact sheet authors finally get their act in gear, and turn to nuclear non-proliferation. After that, they chunter through a reasonably respectable list of multilateral priorities (public health, peacekeeping, etc.). And just in case you’d forgotten that this administration never stop thinking about jobs, they sign off this way:

AMERICAN CITIZEN EMPLOYMENT

Thousands of Americans are hired by the UN and the entire array of UN agencies, bringing U.S. values and work ethic to the Secretariats of UN system agencies.

Every cent you put into the UN means more jobs for hard-working Americans!

What happened here?  I have nothing against the WMO and UPU – their uses are obvious. But I don’t think that the President’s vision of engagement centers on better parcel post.  Maybe this focus on the weather isn’t just an effort to make multilateral diplomacy have folksy charm.  The WMO has a Russian president and Iranian vice-president… is it a back channel for talks on Iran’s nuclear plans?

The President has clearly been led astray by Gordon Brown… On Twitter, @omairzahid comments: “Quite gloriously captured by the timorous and positively sombre look on the man sitting next to the fireplace.”

Ever wondered what a nuclear strike would do to the environment?

The detonation of 100 15-kiloton nuclear weapons in Indian and Pakistani megacities would create urban firestorms that would loft 5 million tons of thick, black smoke above cloud level. (This smoke would engulf the entire planet within 10 days.)

Because the smoke couldn’t be rained out, it would remain in the stratosphere for at least a decade and have profoundly disruptive effects. Specifically, the smoke layer would block sunlight, heat the upper atmosphere, and cause massive destruction of protective stratospheric ozone.

A 2008 study PDF calculated ozone losses (after the described conflict) of 25-45 percent above mid-latitudes and 50-70 percent above northern high latitudes persisting for five years, with substantial losses continuing for another five years. Such severe ozone depletion would allow intense levels of harmful ultraviolet light to reach Earth’s surface–even with the stratospheric smoke layer in place.

Beneath the smoke, the loss of warming sunlight would produce average surface temperatures colder than any experienced in the last 1,000 years. There would be a corresponding shortening of growing seasons by up to 30 days and significant reductions in average rainfall in many areas, with a 40-percent decrease of precipitation in the Asian monsoon region.

Basically, the Earth’s surface would become cold, dark, and dry.

Via @jduncanMACD – the UK’s tweeting Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control and Disarmament.