- Writing in Der Spiegel, Sascha Müller-Kraenner and Martin Kremer assess how the new European External Action Service (EEAS) might help the EU exert greater influence over climate governance post-Copenhagen. The new diplomatic corps will offer “a unique opportunity to increase analytical capacity and to design the right instruments and institutions for confronting climate change”, they suggest. Reuters meanwhile reports on the failure of EU member states to meet their commitments on development aid, and the implications for climate funding.

- Over at World Politics Review, Frida Ghitis explores how natural disasters can shape the national political narrative, with last weekend’s Chilean earthquake proving only the most recent example.

“No matter where disaster strikes”, she argues, “the script opens with shock, heartbreak and compassion. Then, it inexorably moves towards a cold political calculus about the performance of political leaders responsible for managing the aftermath.”

- Finally, in the midst of ongoing nuclear negotiations and two months before the crucial NPT Review Conference, the Moscow Times assesses the Kremlin’s “stubborn” approach to talks. British Ambassador John Duncan offers his perspective on UK-Russian nuclear cooperation here.

Related posts:

1. On the web: Obama’s Asia tour, the EU’s world role, and Pakistan’s nuclear security…
2. On the web: nuclear progress, gold bubbles, Ashton’s diplomacy, and key thinkers of 2009…
3. The Politics of British Defence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rentschler accompanied Alexander Haig, as the US tried to persuade Margaret Thatcher that the Falkands should be handed over to a  multilateral administration in exchange for Argentina withdrawing its troops. After dinner in Downing Street, Thatcher let rip:

“I did not dispatch a fleet to install some nebulous arrangement which would have no authority whatsoever. Interim authority! – to do what? I beg you, I beg you to remember that in 1938 Neville Chamberlain sat at this same table discussing an arrangement which sounds very much like  the one you are asking me to accept; and were I to do so, I would be censured in the House of Commons – and properly so! We in Britain simply refuse to reward aggression – that is the lesson we have learned from 1938.”

Tough lady. She has some other wonderful quotes while Al Haig sits there, nervously tapping his leg and chain-smoking his Merits, but at the same time keeping his cool, trying to reason, ever so gently encouraging the Brits to think through the course on which they have embarked and to recognize the limits – as yet unspoken – beyond which the US  cannot and will not go in its support of this staunchest of all our Western allies, the one to whom we owe so much.

Attempts to persuade the Argentinians to back down were similarly fruitless. “Why not call these fucking dismal pieces of South Atlantic rock The Mallands? Or maybe Las Falkvinas?” Rentschler wonders. And even more pointedly: “Fuck you, Argentina.”

Rentschler is also scathing about a disastrous Reagan-Thatcher conversation three weeks before the end of the conflict, in which the US President tried to persuade the British PM to accept a Brazilian peace plan or a UN ceasefire resolution sponsored by Panama and Spain. “The President came off sounding like even more of a wimp than Jimmy Carter – “Well, I know I’m intruding on you, Margaret, you see, Margaret, uh …. yeah …. uh …. well …. uh … uh ….”

But Reagan’s talking points for this next bilateral with Thatcher were clear. The American administration was not prepared to write the British government a blank cheque:

To be candid, I am worried about a situation which could lead to a permanent state of war between Argentina and your country. We continue to believe that a mechanism involving, at some point, the presence of U.S. elements and those of another country or countries acceptable to both sides might be useful in reaching a negotiated settlement.

None of this fencing and hedging should come as a surprise. Foreign policy is a complicated business – as Hannan no doubt knows. But he is hoping to emerge as the leader of a British subsidiary of the US Tea Party Movement – and that requires a commitment to populism and cheap sloganeering. Looks like he’s going to fit right in…

Related posts:

1. On the web: skirmish in the Falklands, NATO futures, State Dept’s media relations, and “cloud computing”…
2. Poor poor me
3. Obama administration now having to do, like… literally EVERYTHING around here

- 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”.

Related posts:

1. State Dept announces Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review
2. Can NATO “Re-brand”? What do you think?
3. ‘Nato solidarity more important than winning in Afghanistan’ (er…)

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?

Related posts:

1. Why the September G20 will be in Pittsburgh
2. The G7’s last gasp?
3. Is the Atlantic widening again?

Ali Rizvi has a delicious piece in the Huffington Post, containing such delights as this:

What was until recently a difference in ideology has devolved, in a little over a decade, into a difference in intellect … By painting educated, well-earning, science-embracing, articulate, introspective, intellectual citizens as un-American, the Republican party has built an entire base made up of those who not only don’t possess these attributes, but enthusiastically abhor those who do. Not only are these factions now split along lines of educational achievement, socioeconomic status, and cultural and religious values, but most significantly, along an “intellectual divide”.

And this:

It’s one thing to be ignorant. It’s another to take pride in it. And it’s quite another to venture beyond that into full-blown stupidity. It’s not often that you get to use the word “stupidity” in a non-ad hominem context, but now — with the majority of Republicans believing Obama is a socialist without having any idea what socialism is, over a third believing he is foreign-born, and featured Tea Party speakers calling for the hanging of a US senator — it’s becoming harder and harder to euphemize some of things we’re witnessing as anything but.

Related posts:

1. Hu Jintao’s speech to the Communist Party Congress
2. Windmills to make driving cheaper – official
3. Tehran’s party scene

It doesn’t take a genius to see that America needs more help in dealing with China. That’s why we must shift from what is primarily a bilateral and at times unilateral, pound-the-chest approach to one involving more support from other key countries, many of whom are also having big problems with China, including the European Union and India.

This enhanced multilateralism must be based on at least two premises that are hard to discern in U.S. policy today. The first is that China is not just bursting on the global stage, but rather is changing the world as it does so. Put another way, we can forget about trying to force China into conforming to Western rules and institutions without allowing the country a big voice in reshaping those arrangements to serve its own needs. Secondly, the U.S. and its partners are better off compromising with China on these arrangements so long as they have rules and enforcement mechanisms. The key goal must be to encourage China to obey laws and regulations that are agreed upon.

Not sure I’m wholly convinced that Van Rompuy and his travelling circus are the missing link in getting China to be a constructive world citizen – but hey, we can dream.

Related posts:

1. The US’s increasing reliance on China
2. Oh, did we forget to say we wanted the money back?
3. Lest we forget

The FT, and the city analysts it has spoken to, are speculating that the move may be in retaliation for US arms sales to Taiwan and Obama’s decision to meet the Dalai Lama.

In other cheery news, Iran is promising the ‘demise’ of the liberal capitalist system. But that’s supposed to be tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. Avaaz closes in on largest ever internet campaign
2. Christian China, takes on Islam, Oh Good.
3. China and humiliation

It’s been frustrating then, to watch foreign, especially U.S., news crews pull up to Cite Soleil and start walking down the street with cameras and lights and audio booms. Of course, they would cause a stir. And then all it takes is one card handed out, one bottle of water given to a child in sympathy and it provokes a stampede of folks all under the misapprehension that there’s some form of aid to be had. Jostling begins and suddenly, BREAKING NEWS THERE’S RIOTING IN HAITI!!!

Personally, I have seen no real riots: after the tv crews sprint back to the vehicles the crowd disbands and everyone goes home. But the longer the tv crew remains the more violent the crowd gets: people are desperate especially when they think they’re vying for a few pieces of food or water that they may not get if they’re not out in front. The UN, for example, hired Haitians with megaphones to walk up and down the line assuring people this morning that everyone on line would receive food and water – this calms down the ones behind and stops them from pushing to the front. TV crews obviously don’t do this and, I was told by some U.S. military sources, are potentially leaving behind hurt, injured or dead from the mini-riots they incite.

Related posts:

1. Making a martyr…
2. “We’re making fools of ourselves in the eyes of the world”
3. 2009’s US news stories (and a dog that didn’t bark…)