Yesterday, Ban Ki-moon announced the formation of a Senior Advisory Group for the Review of International Civilian Capacities (which will hopefully not be known as SAGRICC).  “Another UN panel,” I hear you cry, “whoopy-ruddy-doo!”  But this is a serious panel dealing with a serious problem: the shortage of decent police, justice experts and other civilian specalists to deploy to post-conflict countries.  Many UN missions have only 60-70% of their planned civilian staff, leaving them overstretched and unable to deal with day-to-day political issues, human rights and so on.

The new advisory group (involving former UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guéhenno and my boss, Bruce Jones) will oversee a review “to improve the international response in the aftermath of conflict by strengthening the availability, deployment and appropriateness of civilian capacities for peacebuilding.” My colleague Rahul Chandran is leading the team conducting this review.  I think they’re the right team for the job.

I also think that this would be a good moment for the EU to learn a lesson from the UN.  As Daniel and I pointed out in a tough paper for ECFR last year (with a foreword by Jean-Marie Guéhenno…) the EU’s own civilian peacekeeping efforts have big problems.  EU missions suffer from staff short-falls almost as bad as the UN’s.  In part, that’s because demand (for UN and EU ops alike) outstrips supply – which also creates technical headaches, as we pointed out in Internationale Politik:

Since the European Council sent a police mission to Bosnia in 2003, the European Union has deployed fifteen civilian operations worldwide—compared to just six military operations. These have ranged from small police reform missions in Congo to a 3,000-strong mission in Kosovo, launched in 2008, that handles not only policing issues but judicial reform, war crimes investigations, and customs.

The Union’s ability to deploy so many missions—even sending personnel as far away as Aceh, Indonesia—was one of the great successes of Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief from 1999 to 2009. Working with a relatively small group of officials, Solana used personal diplomacy and sheer persistence to get each mission on the ground.

The EU’s bureaucratic systems have often struggled to keep up. Financing has been a particular headache: when the first personnel arrived in Aceh, they had to use their personal credit cards to fund the mission start-up. European officials also admit that they have been lucky. Although EU civilian personnel have come under attack in the Balkans and Afghanistan, they have yet to suffer any fatalities. Had a European mission suffered significant casualties—as the United Nations suffered in Iraq in 2003 and in Haiti —EU governments might have recoiled from approving missions at such a high rate.

So I’d argue that the EU should match the UN’s review with a formal self-ananlysis of its civilian capacities. Actually, I’d go further. Ten years ago, the UN published the highly influential Brahimi Report – an in-depth study of all aspects of peacekeeping. Succeeding reform initiatives, including this new review, all build on this extremely strong basis. The EU doesn’t have any equivalent ur-text for its operations. The Union should put together a team of wise persons to start drafting one, the sooner the better.

The Economist’s David Rennie asked a disturbing question last week: if Obama’s America can’t make soft power work, what hope does Europe have? His thesis is that Obama has followed just the sort of multilateral, engagement-before-confrontation type of strategy that the EU advocates, and been rebuffed by Iran, Israel, China, etc.  Meanwhile, Baroness Ashton and her fellow EU-builders still hanker after soft power…

But here is the question that I am starting to turn over in my mind.If our big bet in Europe is that speaking with one voice will make our norms-based, soft power approach work, what lessons should we draw when Mr Obama’s outstretched hand of friendship is smacked away? Because even in a perfect, parallel universe, in which the EU magically falls in line behind Catherine Ashton and the new EU diplomatic service, we will struggle to become one half as united as the American government is. Our 27 countries will always find it hard to match America when it comes to identifying and defending our interests. And though there can of course be differences in the messages sent out by the White House, the State Department, Congress and so on, in general America speaks with one voice to the outside world, in a way that the EU can barely hope to match.

And yet all that speaking with one voice, in defence of agreed, common interests, does not seem to shield the Obama administration from snubs.

This is an eloquent version of a problem that wonks who worry about multilateralism and transatlantic relations have been aware of for some time. The EU did a huge amount to sustain multilateral institutions during the Bush years, and benefited from playing good cop to Washington’s bad cop. Now Washington wants to be a good cop too, and European leaders feel vulnerable. If Obama’s strategy fails it won’t just discredit him, but the EU’s international approach since 2001 (or earlier).

Rennie quotes a European official who claims the problem isn’t the strategy, but the execution: the Americans are guilty of “incompetent multilateralism”. The implication is that, if only the U.S. applied its power with a little more European finesse, Obama would be in a better place right now. I’m not so sure. (more…)

- The FT has news that London’s position as the dominant global financial hub is slipping, with the UK capital now tied with New York for top spot in the latest rankings. Elsewhere Barry Eichengreen and Kevin H. O’Rourke examine the latest economic data comparing the present crisis with the Great Depression across a range of indicators (including global output, world trade, and equity markets). Robert Shiller, meanwhile, explains the difficulties of using past experience to predict the course of the current crisis.

- European Geostrategy suggests that EU security and defence policy is like a jazz band and explains why a White Paper providing a “grand strategy” is needed. EUobserver, meanwhile, has news on the emerging shape of the European diplomatic service – its structure and staffing – as member states gear up to secure the important EEAS secretary general post.

- Elsewhere, Constanze Stelzenmüller takes an in-depth look at the travails of German security policy, offering insights into how it might evolve. Highlighting the lack of strategy, she argues that “fundamental decisions regarding German security policy have been repeatedly forced into the Procrustean bed of moral necessity, domestic imperatives, or the demands of external alliances.”

- Finally, over at openDemocracy, Andy Yee explores the “hedgehog’s dilemma” between China and the West, highlighting a gradual acceptance of different core values. TIME magazine, meanwhile, assesses the slow progress toward democracy in Hong Kong and the possible wider implications from Beijing’s perspective.

We at GD like to fret about examples of badly joined-up global governance wherever we can find them.  Climate change, security, trade… and now religion.  The latest English-language edition of Internationale Politik (which happens to contain a small rant by GD’s Korski and Gowan on crisis management) includes an enjoyable piece about how the Pope isn’t using his global leverage.  But at least, author Otto Kallscheuer points out, the pontiff formerly known as Ratzinger has global reach…

Even in today’s modern age, there is a strong argument to be made for the Holy See’s active presence in the international arena. Now that the power of the papacy has long since been reduced to a “minuscule and, as it were, symbolic temporal sovereignty,” as Pope Paul VI put it in 1965, the power politics in which earlier popes actively participated for centuries have been replaced by the papacy playing a metapolitical role. Such a presence in the emerging international public sphere could contribute to mediating religious conflicts—not only because the Vatican, in contrast to nation states, is an institution well suited to deal with the demands of globalization, but also because it possesses professional routines and knowledgeable actors trained in normative politics.

One question that must first be answered is whether there are international institutions of transnational “religious policy” other than the Catholic Church. In fact, there is nothing of the sort, in Christianity or in any other world religion. In the 1970s and 1980s, at the high point of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the peace movement in Western Europe, the Protestant World Council of Churches was able to raise hopes around the world of a “Christian” means of overcoming conflicts. But even in these years, no theological understanding emerged between the Christian West and East—between more liberal Protestantism and the traditional spirituality of Greek, Russian, and Serbian Orthodoxy. In the face of the explosive worldwide growth of Pentecostalism outside the historical established churches, the Ecumenical Council remains rather powerless, outside of the mainline historical churches or denomination.

And outside of Christianity? Is the Dalai Lama a sort of “pope for Buddhists?” As doubtful as an analogy between the many forms of Buddhism and the Christian churches may be, the combined political and religious role of the Tibetan leader creates a parallel to the 19th century Catholic political crisis, when the pope was simultaneously the sovereign of the papal state in middle-Italy and the spiritual head of a world religion. So far, however, the fourteenth Dalai Lama has not clearly decoupled the spiritual authority of the reborn Buddha from his political role as the exiled leader of a nation and culture fighting for autonomy. Should this separation of religious authority and civil power actually occur, the Dalai Lama or his successor in exile could perhaps become the apostle of a global Buddhism.

No institution comparable to the papacy—a universal monarchy with purely spiritual authority but indirect political power—is found in the Islamic world, aside from the Ismailite Shia, an extreme minority of the “party of Ali,” whose world leader is the Aga Khan. The message of Islam, like the Gospel, is geared universally toward expansion, mission, and globalization. But a billion Muslims have no international form of organization that would offer a starting point to relativize their local conflicts and rationalize their political defeats and identity crises.

Come on non-Catholics, get your multilateral cooperation act together.

- 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?

Proving again why he should be on everyone’s must-read list of foreign policy blogs, the Economist’s Charlemagne has news of even more clamouring from national governments on the need for Cathy Ashton to assert greater independence from the European Commission (and in particular from Jose Manuel Barroso).

Last week, the trouble started again after “news broke that Mr Barroso had pre-empted the creation of the new European External Action Service, and chosen the next EU ambassador in Washington”:

The incumbent is a former Irish prime minister, John Bruton, and plenty of EU politicians would like to see a similar heavyweight, political figure get the job. Instead, Mr Barroso has chosen a career Brussels official from his native Portugal, João Vale de Almeida (who was until a few months ago the head of Mr Barroso’s private office). In theory the appointment was made under the old rules, which operated before the Lisbon Treaty came into force on December 1st 2009, when overseas missions of the EU were delegations of the European Commission. In practice, most if not all foreign ministers found out about the appointment only very recently, and they are hopping, because they were not consulted.

Late on Sunday, as EU foreign ministers started to arrive for the monthly meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, news started to emerge that Carl Bildt (“arguably the most serious and heavyweight foreign minister in the EU, thanks to years of international experience and a stint as prime minister of his country”) had written formally to Cathy Ashton – demanding “a discussion of how Mr Vale de Almeida came to be nominated for the EU’s most senior overseas post”:

Mr Bildt’s letter, dated February 19th, asks Lady Ashton how the nomination of Mr Vale de Almeida came about, without applying the very principles governing such appointments which are currently the subject of discussion among the 27’s EU ambassadors. The letter also seeks clarification about the impression that the nomination was made without Lady Ashton playing the leading role set out for her in the Lisbon Treaty.

So what happens now?

Is there any prospect of Mr Vale de Almeida’s appointment being reversed? I must admit, I do not see how that can happen without causing a scandal that leaves the EU worse off. The EU’s biggest diplomatic partners, from America to China or Russia, are already slack jawed with amazement at the squabbling that has broken out since the Lisbon Treaty came into force. Yet Mr Bildt is not alone in his desire for answers, I am told. Other foreign ministers are incredulous about the way this appointment has been handled.

Well, at least we finally know the answer to Kissinger’s question about who to pick up the phone to when he wants something done. Beijing, Brasilia or Delhi.

I’ve just returned from the UAE, where the Center on International Cooperation, NYU’s Abu Dhabi Institute and Brookings organized a conference on “Emerging Powers, Global Security and the Middle East”. Discussions ranged pretty far and wide but (unsurprisingly) kept coming back to whether or not the U.S. and China are trapped in a cycle of confrontations, and how this will affect the Iran issue this year. Julian Borger of the Guardian was there, and gives an excellent summary of this strand of debate:

The conference was under Chatham House rules, but broadly speaking: the Chinese were furious about the Taiwan arms sale, arguing it had come at a time when relations between the island and mainland China were at their best for years. They warned that Chinese nationalism was slowly awakening and should not be provoked. The current political turmoil in Iran actually serves to harden China’s resistance to sanctions, because it makes them appear more like interference in another country’s affairs – anathema to Beijing.

Others hit back at a rising nation they saw as seeking more global power than responsibility. The westerners urged China to play more of a broader role in the Middle East, beyond its immediate energy needs. India is angry at what it sees as China’s increased assertiveness along their common border. The Gulf Arabs accused China of allowing Iran to get away with its nuclear manoeuvring. Interestingly enough, it was clear at a public function put on as part of the conference, that “ordinary” Arabs, outside the government and think-tanks, were more sympathetic to Tehran’s case.

More broadly, I was struck by the fact that most participants – not only from the US and China, but also from India – were hung up on “old” hard security issues. There was a rough agreement that the Copenhagen climate talks were a mess, but that it should be possible to start making some real progress on climate again soon – although not through the UN framework. By contrast, almost everyone was extremely downbeat about the odds for alleviating classic inter-state competition (be it over Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Sino-Indian border or the Gulf). A number of participants highlighted the need for great power cooperation to handle failing states, but this was overshadowed by talk of big power rivalry – an excellent panel on Afghanistan concluded that the odds for real Sino-US-Indian cooperation there are low.

Given conversations like these, we need to take a long hard look at how we think we advance international cooperation. Good multilateralists like the authors of this blog are very good at saying “transnational threats require transnational responses” and assume that new threats like climate change and pandemic disease can be used to persuade governments to think beyond classic inter-state rivalries. David, Alex and Bruce Jones make a compelling version of this case in their recent paper on Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization:

In his 1948 classic, Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau exhorted his readers to “assume that statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power.” This assumption, he argued, allowed all foreign policy decisions to be placed on a single “intelligible, rational continuum, by and large consistent within itself, regardless of the different motives, preferences, and intellectual and moral qualities of successive statesmen.” While this focus on national interest and the primacy of nation-states had explanatory power in the 19th and 20th centuries, it is outmoded in the post-Cold War context.

Now, David, Alex and Bruce know me well enough to know that I’m unlikely to agree with this. And, yep, I think it’s fallacious. They argue that today’s statesmen are constrained by so many transnational factors (capital flows, etc.) and threats (H1N1, etc.) that a state-centric approach falls apart. And so it should in theory. But in practice, today’s statesmen seem extraordinarily adept at sticking with “national interest”-based thinking – and many are having to struggle with rising nationalist and populist forces at home. Territorial disputes still get people awfully worked up. Military-industrial complexes still follow their own logic. And politicians assume, not wrongly, that there are more votes in these issues than in swine flu.

Oddly, it’s possible to believe all that and still share Alex and David’s concerns about transnational threats. Actually, they terrify me. And we need to completely retool how we respond to them (again, when it comes to the threat-by-threat specifics, I concur with my GD colleagues on what needs doing).  But I’m increasingly convinced that we can only construct our responses to those threats on a traditional, balance of power foundation – which means prioritizing hard security talks, and basing deals on transnational threats on agreements on the global division of influence.

Goddamit, I feel like John Bolton this morning.

Canadians used to think of themselves as global citizens, par excellence. Recently, though, this image has taken a battering.

Canada is now so obstructive in climate negotiations that even the Chinese government has had enough of its ‘conniving’ ways. In the midst of global economic turmoil, Canada’s main priority for the recent G7 summit was to force feed finance ministers seal meat.

And, at the Winter Olympics, it is so desperate to Own the Podium that it has  long planned to keep practise sessions for other countries to an absolute minimum in order to ensure its athletes get maximum home advantage. ”Skeleton racer Mellisa Hollingsworth will be flying down the fastest track in the world at Whistler with the benefit of 200-plus more practice runs than her rivals,” boasted one of its papers last week.

Canada was told that this policy could be disastrous, especially for the luge and for skeleton (a kind of tobogganing) where the Canadians have built a faster track than any in the world, making practise essential.  ”The speeds are going to be high up in the 100s,” warned the British performance manager. ” Therefore accidents are going happen and do happen in sports such as these. We’ve seen broken legs or even worse before for example.”

Sure enough the worst did happen, with Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili killed just hours before the opening ceremony. Charmingly, the Canadians have quickly wrapped up an investigation that blames the dead guy for the accident.

On Thursday, a BBC survey showed that Canada’s international image is beginning to take a battering:

Several countries saw sharp falls in positive ratings of Canada—in the USA the proportion rating Canadian influence as positive fell from 82 per cent to 67 per cent, in the UK from 74 per cent to 62 per cent, in Australia from 77 per cent to 72 per cent, and in China from 75 per cent to 54 per cent.  Overall, comparing views in 15 of the countries that were surveyed last year, the proportion rating Canadian influence in the world as mainly positive has fallen on average from 57 per cent to 53 per cent.

Even Canadians, the survey shows, believe the country has a less positive global influence than before. One wonders: do they care?

- With the UK election campaign under way in all but name, the FT’s Martin Wolf explains why he doesn’t fear a hung parliament – arguing that it might be just what’s needed to achieve fiscal restraint. “So poorly has single-party despotism governed the UK”, he suggests, “that I would welcome a coalition or, at worst, a minority government.” The Institute for Government, meanwhile answers all your hung parliament-related questions here, placing things in international and historical perspective.

- The Cable highlights the Obama administration’s key people on Iran. Richard Haass, meanwhile, suggests that the West’s strategy must do more to help the Iranian people – with the US and EU acting to “energise and lend rhetorical support to the opposition, helping it to communicate with the outside world”.

- Elsewhere, Der Spiegel profiles the five main risks to the Euro – namely Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy – assessing their economic woes. Charlemagne, meanwhile, interviews Cathy Ashton. And The Economist also has news that Dominique Strauss-Khan, current IMF head, is considering running against Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s 2012 presidential elections.

- Finally, this week saw a group of British Academy experts writing to the Queen about the failure to foresee the credit crunch – a follow-up to a question from the monarch at the LSE last summer. Their suggestion: the need for a better-coordinated government horizon scanning capacity – something that could take the form of a monthly economics briefing to the Queen, which would serve – as Professor Peter Hennessy has commented – to “sharpen minds” of officials. Read the full letter here (pdf).

In sync with Chinese Vice Premier (and likely PM-in-waiting) Li Keqiang’s address at Davos, an interesting piece appeared today in the Global Times (the international news arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, i.e. a mouthpiece), which is revealing about the Chinese leadership’s continued ambivalence towards projecting China as an emerging superpower. Excerpts of the article entitled ‘managing the world’s rising expectations‘ follow:

The world has been expecting more from China, especially since the financial crisis. But between the increasingly high expectations and China’s real capabilities, there is a huge gap, which is evident in the 2010 World Economic Forum that opened Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland.
At the forum attended by about 2,500 leaders from over 90 countries and regions, China is expected by many to purchase Greek bonds, to continue holding US treasury bills, and to lead global recovery while under the onslaught of protectionism.
Even those who are blaming China’s monetary and trade policies for causing tensions in the post-crisis period expect that China should save the world’s economy.
Though such expectations may boost national pride among a section of Chinese, there is a strong case for China to remain clear-headed about the reality it is facing.
On the one hand, it is an emerging economy, with its 8.7 percent GDP growth in 2009 and its soaring middle class population.
On the other hand, it remains a developing nation, with its per capita GDP ranked 106th and over 100 million people below the World Bank indicated poverty line.
The world’s expectations, unless cautiously managed by China, could jeopardize the hard-earned fruits of labor accumulated in the past six decades.

As The Economist once shrewdly observed, “China’s own world view has failed to keep pace with its growing weight. It is a big power with a medium-power mindset and a small-power chip on its shoulder.” The cautious attitude of the leadership reflects concerns that a ‘superpower’ role in international affairs would: (i) make it difficult for China to avoid adopting positions that will add complexity to decision-making and may be at odds with the raw pursuit of national self-interest; (ii) divert its attention and resources away from addressing domestic issues. The more cynical, such as Yan Xuetong, the Director of the Institute for International Studies at the elite Tsinghua University,  go as far as to suspect a Western conspiracy to ‘trap’ China and ‘exhaust our limited resources’ by locking it in to onerous international agreements and obligations. Li Keqiang’s  address at Davos was in keeping with Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of keeping a low profile in international affairs. It was a reminder that the national interest will remain paramount even as China’s voice and involvement on global affairs rises. Along similar lines, see also the report on China’s participation at Davos in today’s FT: ‘West too busy with its crises to engage east’.

Tomorrow, the 40th anniversary session of the World Economic Forum begins in Davos, with the theme of ”Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild“.  To coincide with it, David and I have teamed up with CIC director Bruce Jones to co-author a new report entitled Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization: Risk, Resilience and International Order.

The report – commissioned and sponsored by the UK Foreign Office (though not a statement of government policy) - focuses on the mismatch between new transnational threats and flawed international institutions, and argues that if efforts to develop, reform and renew international institutions continue to fail, then there is a real and under-appreciated risk of a systemic failure that sees the current period of globalization start to unwind.

There’s precedent for this, we note in the report. The ’first globalization’ came to an abrupt halt in 1914 with two world wars and an intervening depression, having failed because:

States’ shared assumptions pushed them towards fragmentation rather than cooperation, mutual incomprehension instead of shared awareness. An epoch that that seemed to be characterized by interdependence and common interests ended in shared disaster.

Even just in the last decade, the three defining events -  9/11, the 2008 food and fuel price spike, and the credit crunch – were all about a collective international failure to manage shared risks effectively.  So, we argue, states’ foreign policy doctrines need to move away from the national interest – which is in any case defined badly, if at all – and towards shared risk management.

We also set out a range of concrete recommendations in pursuit of the same ends, including:

Creating new analytical mechanisms for creating shared awareness about shared risks. E.g. the IPCC provides crucial analysis of the problem of climate change – but there’s no equivalent on the solution.

Improving the ‘bandwidth’ of the G20. E.g. by strengthening Sherpa mechanisms, and building links between the G20 and formal institutions, thus improving the range of policy options going to heads.

Setting up a ‘red team’ in the international system that has the job of exploring risks and challenging policymakers on whether enough is being done to manage them – similar to the Defense Research Advanced Projects Agency in the US, which has the job of “preventing surprise”.

Changing how governments organize and deliver foreign policy. We argue that all governments will need to spend more money on managing global risks, and do more to integrate the different elements of foreign policy (aid, diplomacy, military).

The paper’s conclusion:

The challenge facing globalization can be compared to ‘shooting the rapids’. Charting a course through whitewater, there are many possible paths, but few attractive destinations. It is the river, not the paddler, that dictates the speed with which the boat moves. There is no opportunity to pause and rethink strategy, or to reverse direction: it is the capacity to reorganize while undergoing change that ultimately determines the journey’s outcome. Above all, the challenge is a collective one: the direction of the boat depends on the combined efforts of all those on board.

The task of building a resilient globalization is similar. Much could go wrong. The pace of the transition will be dictated by the risks themselves, yet governments will only succeed if they are prepared to take the initiative. Even in the best case, outcomes will be ‘messy’ and far from perfect. Results will be determined by governments’ ability to act in concert, as well as with networks of non-state actors.

The aim should not be to balace power between competing states, but to aggregate the efforts of those willing to aim for the preferred destination, while marginalizing or excluding those who are not (including those who actively seek to capsize the boat).

Yesterday – not long before news of the awful earthquake in Haiti - there was a rumpus in Brussels over whether the European Commissioner-designate for humanitarian aid (Bulgaria’s Rumiana Jeleva) has been fully honest about her business relationships.  There’s a chance that MEPs may try to claim Jeleva’s scalp as the price of voting in the new Commission.  I don’t know the rights and wrongs of her case, but events in Port-au-Prince have rammed home the need for properly-coordinated humanitarian response mechanisms – and shown that the EU has a lot more to do on this front.

Here’s how some of the Union’s leaders reacted to the news from Haiti:

Today, the Spanish Secretary of State for the EU, Diego López Garrido, stated, on behalf of the ministers for Europe that are taking part in the meeting in La Granja (Segovia), that they have been informed about ‘the horrific earthquake that has hit Haiti and that the EU has immediately mobilised to help the victims’.

‘All the EU’s institutions, especially those most involved with humanitarian affairs, such as ECHO, are working to provide an efficient response to this situation,’ he said during a press conference.

‘Spain,’ he went on, ‘as the Presidency of the EU Council, is in close contact with the High Representative, Catherine Ashton, and there will therefore be the most coordinated response possible to the tragedy in Haiti from the EU.’

The most coordinated response possible?  The Spanish announced that an assessment team would be flying out of Brussels for Haiti on Wednesday afternoon.  So there’s a single EU response here?  Not according to the NY Times:

France said it would send three military transport planes, including one from nearby Fort de France, Martinique, with aid supplies, and that 100 troops based in the French West Indies would be sent to help, according to TF1, a French television network. Britain and Germany were sending governmental assessment teams, and Germany said it would make 1.5 million euros, or about $2.2 million, available for emergency assistance.

There were some doubts if the British would be able to make it out of snow-bound Gatwick. But we now have four European assessment teams (to say nothing of the U.S., UN, a Chinese rescue squad, etc.). Or 5… the Italians are on their way:

Following the earthquake that yesterday afternoon shook the Democratic Republic of Haiti, on Minister Frattini’s instructions the Directorate General for Development Cooperation (DGCS) went into immediate action.

Two financial contributions were earmarked for international agencies operating on the ground [500,000 euros for WFP and the same for the Red Cross/Crescent]. The DGCS will also be participating in a coordinated Italian mission made possible by a flight arranged by the Civil Defence Department scheduled to leave soon for Haiti.

I’m not an aid expert.  It’s possible that we need as many assessment teams in Haiti as possible right now. The people getting on all these planes are brave and committed individuals.  And I’m certainly pleased that European governments are signing up to throw money at the problem (assuming that they pay up, and it’s used properly, which can’t be guaranteed). But is this really the most coordinated EU response imaginable? Or just an ad hoc rush to do some good? Ms. Jeleva may or may not be the right person to take on these challenges. It’d be nice if someone did.

A tragic tale from the Khaleej Times of the UAE:

At long last there is a foreign minister on the international scene with ice-cold blood in his veins and an uncomplicated, unemotional comprehension of national interest. His name is Kieren Keke. He carries the flag for Nauru, an eight-square-mile island-nation of 11,000 inhabitants in the South Pacific famous on two counts.

It is the smallest republic in the world, and its principal source of revenue was through the export of phosphates formed by bird droppings [guano]. That was undoubtedly the most valuable bird waste in history, but the republic killed the local version of the golden egg by selling more phosphate than the birds 
could drop.

When the money ran out, Nauru’s imagination blossomed. It invested millions of dollars from its national saving in a London musical. The musical flopped, wrecking the country’s bank balance. It then tried to solve Australia’s troublesome problem by providing a base for immigrants en route to the Pacific El Dorado, in return for suitable compensation. Regrettably, the refugees wanted refuge in Australia rather than amidst lost bird droppings.

But Nauru’s imagination remained fertile. In 2002 Nauru took $130 million from China to break relations with Taiwan. In 2006, presumably after this sweetener was exhausted, it reopened links with Taiwan. It is not known whether there was a financial angle to this decision, but the track record tells its own story. This year Nauru recognised Abkhazia [population: 215,000], one of two “nations” that Russia “liberated” from Georgia in 2008. The price: $50 million. Mr Keke has also paid a visit to the second region, South Ossetia, possibly with an accountant as travelling companion. The message has gone to every chancery: if the price is right, Nauru, a full member of the United Nations, will oblige.

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