Earlier this week, Alex linked to a blog-post by Tyler Cowen on why diplomacy is a “a stressful and unrewarding profession.” I’m afraid I found much of the post a bit silly.
Diplomats, we learn, work with “little hope for job advancement, serving many constituencies, and having little ability to control events.” The same is presumably true of a lot of plumbers, dog-walkers and Anglican bishops. Tyler observes that diplomats suffer from a “false feeling of power” because their authority is “borrowed power from one’s country of origin rather than from one’s personal achievements.” Well, yes, welcome to the nature of existence in modern bureaucratic society. A car salesman would be lost without car-makers. A best-selling author requires the framework of editors, PR folk and Amazon to advance their personal achievements.
But Tyler does capture a real complaint about the life of the modern diplomat. Whereas ambassadors of yesteryear enjoyed a lot of autonomy, the current generation are dependent on their capitals and struggle to influence decisions at home. Our Person in X is at the mercy of turf wars back home between junior officials. Now, individual ambassadors can hardly make up their own policies on climate change. But there are still times and places where old-fashioned diplomacy is required.
I’m thinking, as I often do, of the nastier backwaters of the globe – places where old-fashioned conflicts bubble away, and you need personal political contacts if you want to affect the bubbling. In a paper published in July, Bruce Jones and I argued that the UN and other international organizations have lost sight of the political dimensions of conflict, relying instead on the placebos (or pabulum) of semi-scientific conflict indicators. The same is sadly true of a lot of diplomatic services today.
In a significant new report for RUSI Richard Teuten and GD alumnus Daniel Korski argue that its time to tilt the balance of British diplomacy back towards the guys on the ground, at least in conflict zones:
The report suggests developing the function of the National Security Council (NSC) to take on a stronger coordinating role, with British ambassadors taking the responsibility as the ‘whole-of-government’ representative in-country. They propose the systematic development of a more robust supply of civilians and military officers ready to work together in hostile environments, including closer integration of civilian-military personnel and assets, with structured career incentives to encourage collaborative, cross departmental work.
Amen to that! I have questions: in a lot of cases, the real challenge is not just joining up UK initiatives towards a country at risk, but combining everything on offer from the EU, UN, World Bank, etc. Daniel and I have previously argued in favor of shifting greater responsibility to the EU’s people in the field to do just that. But aren’t we swimming against the tide of history? Diplomatic services, not least the UK’s, are going to keep on getting cut left, right and center in the name of austerity in the next few years. Next time we have to deploy a bunch of over-educated but ill-prepared interns to some failed state that we’ve ignored for years, don’t blame Korski or Gowan.
NB: you can see Teuten and Korski live at RUSI in London on 24 September. Register here!
September 3, 2010 at 2:54 pm | More on Conflict and security, Influence and networks, UK | 1 Comment
In April 2009, I noted that UN forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo mounted an anti-rebel operation codenamed “Rock of Steel”. This week, after mass rapes near a UN base in the DRC, the UN mounted operation “Shop Window” which is aimed at “reassuring the population and demonstrating its efforts to use all available resources to fulfill its mandate to protect.” As I’ve noted before, the UN presence in the Congo is in a mess, and the shift in codenames may symbolize its loss of confidence.
Watch out for news of “Operation Cuddly Kitten” in the DRC shortly.
September 3, 2010 at 1:30 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security, Off topic | Comment
This is my 300th post on Global Dashboard. My first, posted on 15 November 2007, was about how peacekeeping was in a troubled state, with senior UN officials warning of “failure” in Darfur. And here we are almost three years later and I’ve recently been blogging away about, er, the possibility of a peacekeeping failure in Darfur…
This could be proof that, while things are bad out there, peacekeeping has proved more resilient than doom-sayers like me predicted. Yes, there was a near-catastrophe in the Congo in 2008, but it was averted. Yes, the Darfur mission exists in state of permanent crisis, but it’s still there. And there have been successes (like the UN’s ability to hold it together in Haiti after the earthquake) and the great rickety mechanism of UN operations somehow grinds on, with 100,000 personnel worldwide.
Perhaps I’m just congenitally alarmist. When I penned an article about “Peacekeeping in Crisis” two years ago, some blue-helmetists argued that peacekeeping always seems to be in crisis. And yet… if you advocate the “muddling through” view of UN ops, you have to contend with stories like this from today’s Guardian:
200 women and four baby boys were gang-raped by Rwandan and Congolese rebels in a brazen attack near a UN peacekeepers’ base, aid workers have reported. Victims described four days of sexual violence that was unusually vicious even by the standards of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, notorious for the use of rape as a weapon of war. The impunity of the assault is likely to refocus attention on the effectiveness of the world’s biggest UN peacekeeping mission, which has been strongly criticised by human rights groups.
There have been efforts to sort out UN ops in the last couple of years – and, sitting in NYC, I’ve been able to make a few direct contributions – stories like this keep coming back to haunt us. Earlier this year, I began to despair and focus on the tragic nature of the UN’s efforts in places like Darfur. But, if it’s acceptable to talk about the end of humanitarian interventionism these days, I’m not ready to give up on it quite yet.
If we’re going to stick with program, we need to work out a much stronger strategic – and, indeed, humanitarian – logic for why we’re doing so. I’ve had a few ideas about this recently, but need to think them through a bit more… I’ll be away from the blog for a week or so now, but when I come back I’ll try and lay these ideas out more clearly.
Afterthought: while I’m sure readers are very excited at the thought of more posts on peace ops, I should note that my most-read post of the 300 to date was “How UN Consultants Get Laid”. Sadly, I have no exciting new insights to offer on this.
August 25, 2010 at 12:01 am | More on Africa, Conflict and security | 1 Comment
Are emerging great powers like Old Etonians or street-fighters? Or, to be a bit more literal, should we expect great powers to emerge out of privileged, prosperous backgrounds with lots of resources and few natural enemies? Or will they punch their way out of tough, highly conflictual regions? If you look at the first decades twentieth century, the U.S. obviously benefited from having a benign neighborhood, while Germany’s rise was complicated by the ring of unfriendly powers around it.
Looking at the world today, strategists get very excited by the potential for Sino-Indian rivalry to constrain one or both of those powers. (Brazil is, by contrast, the Old Etonian amongst the BRICs, with no serious long-term rivals in its region.) Over on his blog “Polaris”, Dhruva Jaishankar highlights how this worries Indian policy-makers:
One of the few points of consensus at a conference on India I helped organise in February was that India would find it difficult to escape its region unless it were able to establish peaceful relations with (and stability within) the countries in its immediate neighbourhood, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The feeling was that India would be tethered by disputes with these smaller states, and adversely affected by the instability spilling over from them. This would, in turn, compromise India’s great power ambitions. A similar logic underlies Pakistan’s longstanding policy of attempting to destabilise India through asymmetric and unconventional means.
But Dhruva can think of quite a few big powers that came out of tough neighborhoods:
Exhibit A. Europe. For much of modern history, the only powers capable of global reach were located in Europe: Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, France, and subsequently Germany and Italy. The close proximity of these states to one another, and the presence of strong second-tier states in their immediate vicinities, meant that at no time were the fates of these countries secure at home. This did not stop any of them from seeking conquests and projecting power on multiple continents.
Exhibit B. Japan. The rise of Japan in the late 19th century after the Meiji Restoration coincided with unstable politics at home and in the region. Nine years into the new era, the Japanese ruling oligarchy had to crush the Satsuma Rebellion in the south. Japan went on to fight wars against China and Russia, and annexed Korea and Formosa (Taiwan). In the midst of almost continuous regional conflict, Japan was accorded all the trappings of a great power, including seats at the League of Nations and the Washington Naval Conference.
Exhibit C. China. The growth of China is a remarkable story, but once again it has come despite—not because—of its political relationships with its neighbours. Certainly, China has not had a significant conflict since 1979 and it has settled many of its land boundary disputes. However, it continues to have uneasy relations with almost all its neighbours, including a sizeable dispute with its largest regional competitor, India. It also has one of the most unstable states in the world—North Korea—immediately bordering it. And the military presence of the world’s preeminent power in its region severely limits its actions. None of this has stopped China’s rise.
As Dhruva recognizes, this doesn’t mean that India – or indeed China – can ignore bad stuff on its borders. But it’s an interesting reminder that, while Western strategists worry about the erosion of the liberal order, today’s rising powers may be able to tolerate a pretty high degree of disorder as they assert themselves…
August 24, 2010 at 11:02 pm | More on Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America | 6 Comments
In the 1950s, British naval strategists briefly adopted the notion of “broken-backed” warfare, by which they meant fighting on after an atomic strike on the UK. The charm of this idea – if you were making a case for spending on the Royal Navy – was that ships at sea would be the only military tools left to the UK after a nuclear exchange.
This concept didn’t appeal to anyone likely to be on land during World War III, and it collapsed under the weight of its horrible silliness. I bring it up for the sake of a cheap pun, because today (you see where this going) the Royal Navy isn’t contending with broken-backed warfare but the “Brokeback Coalition” and its proposed defence cuts.
It’s unclear whether the Navy or the Air Force will suffer most from the cuts – the Army will suffer too, but is protected by the need to slog on in Afghanistan. This seems to be Fleet Week in the defence debate, with RUSI publishing an article arguing that Britain can’t leave the sea lanes to “pirates, terrorists and opportunist governments”:
Article authors Vice-Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham and professor Gwyn Prins argue that with over 90 per cent of the UK’s trade carried by sea, the country must ensure the navy has the ‘presence’ to protect shipping routes. “Real world tasks urgently require significantly more surface combatants, of lower cost and capability,” write Blackham and Prins. “Use of the sea demands presence along the sea routes. Presence is the prerequisite for the silent deterrent messages that naval force alone can articulate.
“…Presence demands numbers. The ability to mass and to surge a force demands numbers. Numbers are also essential for replaceability. If you cannot afford to lose a ship you cannot afford to use it. Presence is the indispensable prerequisite for deterrence.”
The article warns that at the current rate of decline the Royal Navy fleet will have only nineteen frigates in ten years’ time and that many of them will be at the “effective end of their useful lives”. By that time, Prins and Blackham argue, the fleet will be “inadequate for the most fundamental, enduring and vital tasks”. The article calls for at least ten new cheaper and lower capability oceangoing frigates to preserve the “silent deterrent” of a “lower-intensity daily constabulary” force patrolling the major sea routes.
The full article is a curious piece of work, combining some pretty detailed technical and statistical stuff about ships (I assume that’s mainly from the Admiral) with sweeping statements on issues like the fading of the UN and the failures of the EU (I guess that’s mainly from Gwyn, who waxes lyrical on such topics a good deal).
Ultimately this mix of broad and detailed analysis does not convince. The authors seem to be arguing for a strategy that might best be described as “21st Century Francis Drake”. The UK needs a cheap-ish fleet of latter-day privateers that can pop up off the Spanish Main or Far Tortuga as and when a pinnace, like a flutter’d bird, comes flying from far away warning “Terrorist ships of war at sea! We have sighted fifty-three!” (If this means nothing to you, brush up on your Tennyson, you chump.)
This is all well and good, and I accept the argument for a naval presence. But, like it or not, Britain’s ability to provide “daily constabulary” on the seas is, and has long been, dependent on America’s willingness to provide the SWAT Teams, i.e. aircraft carriers, etc. And this is not 100% guaranteed. This point is brought home in an article by Seth Cropsey in the current American Interest, which I strongly recommend:
The size of a fleet is by no means a perfect metric for a nation’s naval strength; numbers do not equal power, reach or technological capability. But numbers are a good enough measure of where a fleet conforms in rough shape to national tasks and expectations. And for the United States, the numbers aren’t adding up. In the year following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. combat fleet numbered 466 ships. By 2001, it had shrunk to 316. The decline continued throughout George W. Bush’s two terms to the current level of 285 ships. Since February 2006 the Navy has consistently maintained that it needs at least 313 ships to perform the missions assigned to it.
You can read this in two ways: (i) “Oh God the Yanks are deserting us, let’s buy every frigate we can!”; or (ii) “If the U.S. is drawing back from its global role, then extra British boats won’t matter, unless there’s an alternative strategic framework to plug into”. I’m with (ii), and (as I’ve noted before) I’m drawn to the ideas of James Rogers, whose views on EU naval cooperation are best described as “21st Century Tirpitz”…
Europeans must now invoke their maritime geography once again and look beyond Europe to concentrate on the wider world. The European Union needs to form an immensely powerful navy, which can be used to circulate maritime power around the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Black Sea, Africa’s Atlantic seaboard, and particularly the Indian Ocean. It is in these regions where future European Union military operations will take place, and it is these regions from where the greatest threats to European security are already beginning to come.
This naval force would need a chain of naval stations to link together a durable maritime order, enabling European power to be projected rapidly into potential trouble spots, and to exert a calming influence over potential belligerents. This maritime posture should accelerate European commercial activity, enabling the continent to retain democratic government, while stimulating an outward-looking approach to world affairs, an outlook Europeans must sustain if they are to remain a major economic power.
Sadly, I don’t see this happening. The EU seems most likely to end up like Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, repeatedly forced to make do with a leaky coracle. There are some limited alternatives – the UK is looking at naval cooperation with the Indians as part of the government’s strategy of charming Delhi. Given my repeated arguments in favor of security cooperation with the rising powers, I like that.
Overall, I just can’t see the case for keeping British fleet numbers up if we don’t have a plan for cooperating with other powers. It’d be like the Royal Navy maintaining its fine tradition of “rum, sodomy and the lash”, but cutting back on the rum and the sodomy – i.e. trying to hold onto something, but missing the big picture.
August 24, 2010 at 12:51 am | More on Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America, UK | 1 Comment
Iran has just revealed its first “bomber drone”:
While this is obviously rather annoying, I can’t help noticing the resemblance between this machine and Thunderbird 2 from the famous British sci-fi puppet series:
Even the fake blue-sky-with-clouds background is almost identical.
August 22, 2010 at 9:25 pm | More on Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa, Off topic | Comments Off
In the week the U.S. withdrew its last combat troops from Iraq (leaving a mere 50,000 who probably could do bit of fighting if required) here’s a small quiz. Name the years that these Coalition of the Willing members pulled their personnel out of Iraq:
- Honduras
- Mongolia
- Dominican Republic
- Tonga
- Iceland
You can find most of the answers over at Duck of Minerva, although you’ll have to check out this list at Wikipedia if you can’t quite recall when the Mongolians and Tongans shipped out… As for Iceland, well they sent one guy and he left in 2007.
August 21, 2010 at 8:46 pm | More on Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa, Off topic | Comments Off
Look at this little fellow…
…and try telling me that he wouldn’t look better with this logo stuck to his furry flank:
What, you may ask, am I going on about? Here we go: this week, the EU’s Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid – Kristalina Georgieva – was asked “why TV reports had shown aid being distributed in Pakistan in sacks carrying the US flag, but never the EU emblem”. She attributed this to (i) EU modesty and (ii) pesky NGOs:
Europe had chosen to work very much with partner organisations present on the ground, as in Pakistan. But these organisations, such as the Red Cross or Save the Children, have their own brand to promote and are reluctant to use the EU’s to a certain extent.
Sometimes this is because it may seem like their work is being politicised, sometimes it is purely for safety reasons, and sometimes it is because they want to show off their own brand, which is understandable, the commissioner explained.
What is to be done?
“Raising the visibility of Europe and making sure that our flag shines when we are abroad helping people in need is something that I find incredibly important. Especially now, when we are still not through with the economic and financial crises and it is hard for people here, and we also have our own disasters at home,” she said.
Georgieva said she was telling humanitarian organisations that they should do more to help the EU to help them by flying the EU flag.
I have questions about this approach, which I’ll write about soon, but I was also struck by this snippet from the interview with Georgieva, who knows her stuff:
She explained that the main problem was ensuring that aid actually reaches people in need, and that in some places donkeys were a more precious means of transport than helicopters.
Surely this points to the difficulty in “branding” any humanitarian operation: the fact that getting aid through involves a great deal of improvisation. It’s hard to wave the EU flag while bartering for donkeys. Unless, that is, the EU wants to set up a Donkey Corps to airlift highly-trained pack-animals to future crises? When one of them appeared on TV, everyone would know exactly whose ass they were staring at…
Biological note: yes, I know donkeys and asses are not identical. The New Yorker had a great piece on mules and the military, now sadly for subscribers only.
August 21, 2010 at 2:00 pm | More on Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system | 1 Comment
Wondering what to cook this weekend? How about beans?
If you like beans, Macedonia is the place to be. The small village of Sarchievo, with only four houses and nine inhabitants, last week welcomed ten thousand people who gathered to see the new Guinness world champion cooking and preparing beans, the most popular national dish in the small Balkan country.
In a huge cauldron holding 2,600 liters of water some 400kg of beans, 91kg of bacon, 70 litres of oil, 40kg of onion, 9kg of salt, 3.6kg of red peppers, 1.5kg of pepper and a hundred tufts of parsley simmered for seven hours.
The official Guinness judge, dispatched to the scene from London, proclaimed that Sarchievo had indeed set a new world best by preparing 3,150 litres of beans. Until now the record was held by students from the US town of Horace, North Dakota, who in 2002 managed to prepare 1,342 litres of beans.
As a service to readers, here is a recipe for a smaller Macedonian bean-feast:
Ingredients needed:
- 500g of white beans
- 1 onion, 1 red paprika
- 100ml of cooking oil
- 2-3 pieces of red dry capsicum
- pepper, salt, plain flour, parsley, mint
Wash the beans and leave them to stay in water over night. After that cook them till it starts boiling, drain the beans and put them in another pot of hot water. Then add chopped onion (1/2 of it) and capsicum.
Continue to cook it till the beans are soft but integral. If there is too much water left, drain the beans.
Fry the chopped onion (the other 1/2) and paprika with one spoon of plain flour in cooking oil and then add this to the beans. Put everything in a pottery saucepan and then pour some parsley, mint, pepper and salt on it. Put the saucepan in oven and bake for a while (the beans shouldn’t be too dry).
Do let us know if you try it.
August 20, 2010 at 6:33 pm | More on Europe and Central Asia, Off topic | 2 Comments
China has been accused of being “stingy” for offering its Pakistan just $2 million in flood aid. India is being more generous, and Pakistan will accept help from its old foe:
Pakistan says it will accept $5 million in flood aid from India, a rare gesture of goodwill between the longtime rivals as Pakistan deals with one of the worst disasters in its history. In an interview with India’s NDTV television Friday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi called the aid a “very welcome initiative.” Spokesman for India’s foreign office Vishnu Prakash called the flood aid a “goodwill gesture in the spirit of solidarity” with the people of Pakistan.
Delhi’s offer has stirred up controversy in India, as Nitin Pai noted earlier this week:
‘Politics,’ some said, should be set aside in the face of the enormous tragedy that has befallen the Pakistani people. Others argued that giving aid will change the ‘politics’ itself, for when ordinary Pakistanis see India as among those who helped them during their time of need, hearts and minds will change, undermining the anti-India position of their government.
On the other side were those, like Atanu Dey, who offered the compelling logic that since money is fungible, giving money to the Pakistani government for flood relief is equivalent to giving money to that government to fund cross-border terrorism or build nuclear weapons. Moreover, another argument goes, since the wishes of the Pakistani people are weakly expressed in their government’s policies, changing hearts and minds won’t make the military establishment stop terrorism directed against India.
Nitin makes the interesting point that “wherever you stand on this issue, what you will notice is that people implicitly assume that when it comes to foreign affairs ‘India’ means only the Indian government.” He thinks that this is a mistake:
Indians should stop seeing the government has having a monopoly on foreign affairs. There is nothing to stop individuals, NGOs and media from taking an active interest in the world outside India’s borders. There is nothing to stop us from standing up for whatever cause we like. There is nothing to stop us from drawing attention to the plight of the world’s oppressed people, collect funds, mobilise volunteers, build institutions, lobby foreign governments and deliver social services beyond India’s shores.
Sure, we could also persuade the Indian government as part of our activism, but what stops us from getting on with it in spite of the Indian government? A large number of NGOs at home do valuable work despite the government. Why should it be any different abroad?
In fact, it is in India’s national interest for civil society to become a foreign policy player in its own right. Governments are constrained by realpolitik. They follow the grammar of power. Civil society does not have the same constraints. It is free to speak the language of values. The Tibetan struggle, for instance, is one area where India’s overall policy has benefited from citizen activism. Similarly, after the 2005 earthquake, Infosys announced that it would provide Rs 10 million in aid to Pakistan. Many of us donated money for Haiti’s earthquake victim through the Red Cross and through religious institutions. These are, however, isolated and sporadic instances.
We should ask ourselves why India’s civil society is not a significant international player? The primary reason, I would say, might be the mindset that sees the government as the Grand Solver of Problems. As long as this mindset is dominant, lesser hurdles like lack of financial resources, organisational capabilities and channels of action will appear insurmountable. Another reason is our tendency to contemplate our collective navels, for there are innumerable, seemingly intractable problems at home that deserve our attention.
A salutary reminder not to talk about “rising powers” as if they are monolithic entities or assume that their rise will be linear, rather than complex and multi-faceted…
August 20, 2010 at 4:00 pm | More on Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Global system, South Asia | Comments Off
At the weekend, I noted increased tensions in Darfur after violence in a huge IDP camp near the town of Nyala. Today, good news: the Sudanese government has allowed humanitarian workers into the camp for the first time in over a fortnight. Meanwhile, the UN peacekeeping force (UNAMID) is using old-school tactics to secure Nyala:
UNAMID said it had agreed with the government to dig a security trench 2 meters (yards) wide by 2 meters deep around Nyala, the town most frequently targeted by the kidnappers.
“The trench … will span approximately 40 km long and is expected to be completed within 4-5 weeks,” UNAMID said in a statement, adding it had begun work on its half on Sunday. Such trenches are intended to prevent vehicles from entering a populated area on the small dirt roads which kidnappers use.
The situation sounds more and more desperate. How long can it go on?
August 17, 2010 at 3:40 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security | Comments Off
Henry Kissinger once said that academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low. In today’s NYT, Mark Taylor (who runs Columbia’s Religion Department) explains that the stakes are now actually rather high in NYC’s seats of learning:
Rather than learning to live within their means, Columbia University, where I teach, and New York University are engaged in a fierce competition to expand as widely and quickly as possible. Last spring, N.Y.U. announced plans to increase its physical plant by 40 percent over the next 20 years; this summer Columbia secured approval for its $6.3 billion expansion in Upper Manhattan. N.Y.U. is also opening a new campus in Abu Dhabi this fall.
The financial arrangements for these projects remain obscure, but it is clear that they will not be completed without increasing the universities’ already significant and perhaps unsustainable levels of debt. Last year Columbia reported $1.4 billion in outstanding debt against a $5.89 billion endowment. N.Y.U. had a staggering $2.22 billion debt with a relatively modest $2.2 billion endowment — one that had shrunk by more than 11 percent over the previous fiscal year.
This is worrying, especially if (like me) you earn your keep at NYU. So what does Professor Taylor propose we do about this ugly situation?
The competition between Columbia and N.Y.U. is an example of what educational institutions should not be doing. Universities should be looking for new ways to provide high-quality education to more students at a lower price. In today’s world, it no longer makes sense for every school to cover every subject.
For example, it is absurd for Columbia and N.Y.U. to be have [sic] competing philosophy departments at a time when there are few jobs for philosophy academics. Instead, they could cooperate by forming a joint graduate and undergraduate program, which would reduce costs by requiring fewer faculty members and a more modest physical presence, while at the same time increasing course choices for students.
Now, as soon as I read this, it rang true. If there’s one problem we have at NYU – and it must be the same up at Columbia – it’s the massive surplus of shockingly overpaid philosophers lolling about the campus. Wander through Washington Square Park any day of the week, and you have to fight your way past hordes of Gucci-shod, Prada-wearing, mink-coated, bling-laden philosophy professors, all weighed down with emerald-encrusted first editions of Kant’s Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy. It’s like Wall Street in the Eighties.
Or not (the only professor at NYU who seems to live like that is Nouriel Roubini). I know that the humanities are hard to fund these days but the idea that NYU or Columbia could much affect their debt burdens by rationalizing their cadres of philosophers strikes me as unlikely. I wonder if Professor Taylor would be as keen on mergers if NYU had a religious department (rather than a smaller program) that could be melded with his own base at Columbia, with staff cuts for both sides?
More seriously, there is an unquestionable advantage in having different universities rubbing up against each other in NYC. For example, Columbia is home to Jeffrey Sachs while NYU houses William Easterly – one of the greatest thinkers on development aid and one of its greatest critics respectively. It’s hard to imagine that, if the two were suddenly housed in one department, a coherent intellectual agenda would emerge… sometimes institutional competition is necessary for debate.
August 16, 2010 at 3:37 am | More on Influence and networks, North America | 2 Comments
David Bosco, author of a good book about the Security Council, has launched a new blog for Foreign Policy called The Multilateralist. Here’s his mission statement:
Coverage of most international organizations is episodic. The media world turns to the Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, or the International Criminal Court at key moments and then, for the most part, turns away. This blog aims to keep a sustained focus on these complex institutions, which are an increasingly important part of the diplomatic landscape.
Sometimes I think that foreignpolicy.com is out to lure all you multilat-obsessed readers away from Global Dashboard, having already given us Colum Lynch’s excellent Turtle Bay blog on the UN and signed up James Traub as a weekly columnist (we discourteously failed to mention Jim’s recent scathing assault on Ban Ki-moon).
But the more bloggers trying to keep up a focus on international cooperation, the better, I say. At least we’re not the only lunatics in the asylum…
August 16, 2010 at 2:20 am | More on Cooperation and coherence, Global system, Influence and networks, North America | Comments Off
The Cable reports tensions – and maybe personnel changes – in Washington:
President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, retired Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, could be on his way to a new job in Kenya as the White House prepares a new approach to Sudan ahead of a January referendum that analysts fear could split the country into two separate nations — or even spark a new civil war.
The news comes in the wake of a contentious principals-level meeting at the White House last week, in which Gration clashed openly with U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice over the direction of Sudan policy. At the meeting, Rice was said to be “furious” when Gration proposed a plan that makes the January referendum a priority, deemphasizes the ongoing crisis in Darfur, and is devoid of any additional pressures on the government in Khartoum.
According to multiple sources briefed on the meeting, Gration’s plan was endorsed by almost all the other participants, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and will now go the president for his approval.
As the Cable’s Josh Rogin notes, Gration was basically restating his existing strategy of cooperation with Khartoum – and this was not the first time Susan Rice had objected. Does his softly-softly approach work? Check out the current Economist:
Late last month fighting broke out in Kalma, a vast camp for internally displaced people near the town of Nyala in south Darfur. It is home to more than 100,000 angry residents, many of them previously victims of the deadly government-supported militias known as the janjaweed. The recent violence flared between supporters of two different rebel groups, a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), led by Abdul Wahid al-Nur, and the Liberty and Justice Movement (LJM). The SLA is boycotting the current round of Darfur peace talks being chaired by the Qataris in their capital, Doha, while LJM, a coalition of several minor rebel movements, is the only rebel group attending the talks with representatives from the Sudanese government.
Several people were killed in the clashes, a direct result of the SLA’s anger at the rival group’s participation in the negotiations. Five male tribal leaders and a woman, all believed to be members of the SLA, sought protection from UNAMID [the UN Darfur peacekeeping force]. Sudan’s government in Khartoum is insisting that they be turned over to the police, as it believes they were responsible for the violence in the camp. President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged genocide and war crimes in Darfur, has personally asked for the men to be handed over.
UNAMID is in a bind. If the peacekeepers hand them over, their avowed mission to protect civilians could be fatally compromised. There is little chance of a fair trial for the six, and the ruthless Sudanese authorities may well torture them. But if the peacekeepers say no to Mr Bashir, he could make life very tough for them. “I tell my brothers the governors of Darfur that anyone who exceeds these boundaries or their mandate can be expelled the same day,” he says.
Could Sudan really boot the UN out? Absolutely, says Darfur expert Eric Reeves:
The threat by al-Bashir to expel UNAMID is real, and there is a good deal of evidence that we’ve been moving toward this moment of confrontation for many months. As a well-informed UN official told me in June, it’s a question of when, not if, UNAMID is either expelled or confronted with intolerable operating conditions. UNAMID has been ever more aggressively denied the right to travel where it wishes . . . Tactical (combat) helicopters that arrived in February have not been allowed to carry out missions, or to fly with normal armaments.
Scott Gration’s strategy isn’t working – and that’s been obvious for a while. It’s tempting to argue that we have to sideline Darfur to maximize the chances for a peaceful outcome to next year’s referendum in South Sudan. But if the UN either caves in to the Sudanese in Darfur or gets chucked out, the signal to the various southern Sudanese factions will be clear: the government of Khartoum is out of control and can play outsiders for fools. So why put any trust in peaceful solutions?
It’s essential that the U.S. finds ways to use its leverage over Sudan more effectively. That won’t be easy. But if Scott Gration is moving on, it will at least be a bit easier.
August 14, 2010 at 8:21 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security, North America | 3 Comments
How do you get your kids out of baby blue bonnets and into manly blue helmets? Send them to summer camp in Harrietsville, Ontario, that’s how:
The rope bridge wavers and wobbles as Devlin Coughlin makes his way across it and over a dried-out stream bed. Back on solid ground, the 12-year-old boy grins as he’s helped from his safety harness.
“Now imagine doing that as a soldier with your rucksack and 150 pounds of gear,” says Chris Farrish. It might be a stretch for Devlin to get his head around that idea. But not for Farrish. After serving 20 years in the Canadian military, including a stint in Afghanistan in 2007, Farrish knows a thing or two about the skills that soldiers need to survive.
And that’s exactly what Farrish and co-director George Myatte, who served in the first Gulf War and Bosnia, are trying to impart to the young people here at their Adreniline Rush Youth Adventure Camp.
Shouldn’t that be “Adrenaline”? Still, the Rush sounds rather fun…
For the past two weeks, about 20 young people ages 12-17 have been learning the ropes (sometimes literally) at Adreniline Rush. The camp is situated at Peacekeeper Park, a registered charity that honours the work of Canadian peacekeepers with programs and facilities, including an outdoor “path of honour” featuring educational plaques about Canada’s peacekeeping heritage.
That pariotic [sic] theme is evident everywhere. The four walls of the mess hall, for instance, are lined with more than 150 photographs of Canadian soldiers killed while serving in Afghanistan or with peacekeeping missions. “It gives them a taste of some of the sacrifices that were made so they can appreciate what they have,” says Farrish.
Farewell, childish innocence, farewell.
August 13, 2010 at 5:18 pm | More on Conflict and security, North America, Off topic | Comments Off
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