A breaking story from the BBC:

UN peacekeepers were the most likely source of the cholera epidemic sweeping Haiti, according to a leaked report by a French disease expert.

Epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux conducted research in Haiti on behalf of the French and Haitian governments.

Sources who have seen his report say it found strong evidence that the cholera outbreak was caused by contamination of a river by UN troops from Nepal.

The UN said it had neither accepted nor dismissed the findings.

- This week’s Economist sees Lexington bemoan those advancing the discourse of American exceptionalism, suggesting that “[t]he last thing the country needs is to be distracted from its practical problems by the quest for an elusive greatness”. Elsewhere, The Spectator’s Coffee House blog remembers Jimmy Carter’s fabled 1979 speech in which he spoke of a US “crisis of confidence”.

Delivering the annual lecture at The Ditchley Foundation last week, Strobe Talbott suggested that the “promise” of the Obama Presidency – both in the domestic and the international arenas – is now “at risk”. “[W]hatever fate is in store for the current president of the United States”, Talbott argued,

“one thing is for sure.  His success in tackling the major issues of our time will depend on his establishing a degree of common purpose with his partners in national governance at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and with his partners in global governance around the world.”

- Elsewhere, over at The Cable, Josh Rogin reports on the slow progress of reviews into US development policy – the Presidential Study Directive on Global Development and the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.  The Economist, meanwhile, highlights Brazil’s growing identity as a significant aid donor.

- Finally, the head of the UK Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, cautions against the default acceptance of prevailing economic ideology, suggesting that policymakers would do well to draw on a diversity of economic opinion. Joseph Stiglitz, meanwhile, explores the Keynesian prescription for the global economy.

Sweet God, can Britain be trusted with anything these days?

Britain is facing a revolt against its rule of a group of Caribbean islands, amidst a gathering political and economic crisis in the country.  The Foreign Office suspended parliamentary democracy in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) last August after a group of visiting MPs uncovered evidence of widespread corruption in the territory, one of 14 colonial outposts for which the UK still has responsibility.

But an investigation by The Independent has found that the economic situation in the country has deteriorated sharply since then, and islanders are demanding a financial bailout of tens of millions of dollars.  Problems facing the British-appointed governor, Gordon Wetherell, include:

• Debts of tens of millions of dollars, which have left the TCI government unable to pay its bills and trying to impose swingeing cuts;
• The collapse of one of the country’s leading locally owned banks, which wiped out the savings of thousands of depositors and businesses;
• Doubts over the future of a legal investigation set up last year to prosecute former ministers accused of taking bribes.

Now, this is bad. Happily, the genius of British politics offers a solution: David Laws.

(Spoiler alert: what follows is not entirely unserious in intent.)

Mr Laws has, readers will be aware, had to resign as Chief Secretary of the Treasury for reasons that need not (and, I think, should not) concern us. This is a pity, as everyone seems to agree that he is the only person alive capable of reducing the British budget deficit in a competent fashion. Since he resigned, pretty much all of Whitehall and Fleet Street has concluded that they’d like him back sharpish.

There is a simple and happy solution here. Governor Wetherell of Turks and Caicos, who also seems to be a perfectly decent fellow, should be moved to some more fiscally sound speck of our imperial residue. Mr Laws should take his place, with a mandate to fix TCI’s budget in short order. Everyone would agree that he has then paid his penance – and then some – so we could have him back in government pronto.

That would still leave us with BP on our roster on national shame, but whatever.

This image shows NOAA modelling of the tsunami that followed Chile’s earthquake – which proved to be highly accurate.  Yale Environment 360 explains how to decipher the map:

Researchers used seismic information, wave measurements collected from buoy-based equipment, and computer modeling technology to predict the maximum wave amplitude, wave arrival time, and the extent of wave inundation. The colors illustrate the maximum computed tsunami amplitude in centimeters during the 24 hours after the quake, with the highest waves in purple and red and smaller waves in orange and yellow. The red triangles represent buoys.

- The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber has an in-depth profile of President Obama’s under fire right-hand man, Rahm Emanuel, explaining why “laboring as chief of staff during the first year or two of a presidency can be a prolonged form of torture”. Over at The Daily Beast Richard Wolffe gets perspectives from three former presidential enforcers. Elsewhere, Robert Kagan explores the growing bipartisan consensus in US foreign policy.

- 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.

- 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”.

Duncan Green has been perusing ALNAP‘s report on lessons from past experiences of the aftermath of earthquakes, and has summarised some of the key findings.  This one was especially interesting:

Land disputes will rise: Land-ownership emerges as a critical issue in all earthquake disasters. First, there are property disputes even before the disaster. Will opportunists seize land in the chaos? Will squatters be able to return and rebuild their shacks (even if that is a good idea)? The loss of documentation, the destruction of landmarks, the deaths of property owners, and the need to formalise previously informal arrangements all add a new layer of complexity to existing land-ownership issues.

But there are positive opportunities too. Some disaster interventions have been effective in changing the pattern of formal house ownership, with new houses registered in the names of both husband and wife. A follow up on the 2001 El Salvador earthquake response, in which the World Bank implemented a joint-ownership policy for new houses, found some communities where 50% of respondents reported that a woman was one of the legal home-owners and that, overall, 37% of the homes were wholly owned by women.

There’s a load of other interesting material on Haiti in other recent posts on Duncan’s blog – e.g. this piece on why humanitarian work is so hard in cities.

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.

Watch this remarkable video from Guatemala, recorded by the lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, in which he accuses president Colom of ordering his murder. He was gunned down in the street on May 10, and the video released to the media.

Rosenberg was investigating the murder of two clients, Khalil Musa and his daughter, and said he had documents proving that the murders were orchestrated by the president and his wife, after Musa refused to launder drug money for the government at state-owned bank Banrural, where he was recently appointed to the board.

The video has provoked a political crisis in Guatemala, with the president calling for an independent inquiry run by the FBI to clear his name.

As David just noted, this morning’s Lex column in the FT is relatively upbeat about the dangers of protectionism, arguing that “the disaggregation of global supply chains, the source of the huge efficiencies that companies pass on to consumers, will not be easily undone.”

Whether or not that’s right (and like Willem Buiter, Martin Wolf is also a good deal more downcast than the Lex team), it’s interesting to compare today’s Lex column with what they had to say about capital flows to emerging markets just a couple of days ago.  Here’s the bit that made me sit up:

Take Brazil and India, the globe’s ninth and 12th biggest economies, according to the International Monetary Fund’s latest estimates. While the developed world is expected to shrink by 2 per cent this year, the IMF reckons Brazil will grow by 2 per cent, and India by 5 per cent. Why? One answer is that they have stable banks, relatively closed economies, and large internal markets. This has insulated them from much of the global turmoil.

The contrast with East Asia is stark. Singapore’s economy shrank at an annualised 17 per cent rate at the end of last year, South Korea by some 20 per cent. Yet this is not for lack of capital. Asian economies, after all, are global creditors. Their economies have shrunk instead because they are heavily oriented towards collapsing international trade. Meanwhile, their local markets are undeveloped and weak. Asia’s challenge is how to best deploy its accumulated surpluses to boost domestic demand.

(more…)

Last week Fox News interviewed CIA Director Michael Hayden on which countries the next US administration should focus their attention on. In summary:

North Korea: ‘Aid weakness and poverty have made North Korea more aggressive as it threatens to restart work on its nuclear weapons program.’

“Axis of Oil”: ‘$100 per barrel have emboldened Iran, Venezuela* and Russia. Russia’s invasion of Georgian territory in August and Iran’s continued work on acquiring nuclear weapons only compound the threat’.

For background read this.

* Is Venezuela the new Cuba, Iran the new Russia?