In Small Wars Journal, Sergeant Michael Hanson laments the weight of the equipment that a US marine carries to keep himself safe. 40 pounds of body armour, plus a pack that can weight twice as much again (at a total of 120 pounds or 54 kilos, that’s like lugging Jennifer Lopez around wherever you go).

The consequences are predictable:

This weight limits their speed, mobility, range, stamina, agility and all around fighting capability. They can’t go out far and they can’t stay out long with all of this gear. It is simply too much. Combat patrols are typically four hours, and even that short amount of time is exhausting. Our Marines are being consistently outrun and outmaneuvered by an enemy with an AK, an extra magazine and a pair of running shoes.

Sergent Hansen believe that the flight to security  (“all the best equipment for our soldiers”) – ends up making soldiers less secure. You’ll find a similar sentiment in General Petraeus’s admirably concise counterinsurgency guidelines. Walk, is one of his directives. You can’t commute to this fight, is another.

But where does this leave civilian agencies? I doubt there is a single British or American embassy in the world that hasn’t seen dramatically increased security since 9/11. Many now resemble prisons.

Aid agencies, meanwhile, operate from fortified compounds in a growing number of countries, while the Iraq operations of some international NGOs are said to have hidden their use of armed guards from their own head offices. Both struggle against the prospect of an ‘armed humanitarianism.’

Petraeus calls on soldiers to live among the people, deepening their cultural understanding and ability to navigate informal networks, through prolonged and regular face-to-face contact. Diplomats, of course, need to do the same.

He advises them to “understand how local systems are supposed to work – including governance, basic services, maintenance of infrastructure, and the economy-and how they really work.” That’s the mission of development workers.

I am not trying to make a glib point here. Soldiers have the means to defend themselves (and to prevent the kidnaps that, once amplified by the media, can be strategic game changers). Diplomats and aid workers do not.

But how can civilian agencies deepen engagement with populations, while responding to growing insecurity? And what will they do if they find that – like the overloaded marine – security measures are eroding their ability to do their job?

Image Author: mike_is_scrumptious

Assume a robust global deal on climate and the world’s cities will have to transform their infrastructure, economies and societies in little more than a generation.

Assume uncontrolled emissions growth and they face growing impact from a less hospitable and more volatile climate.

Either way – big changes are on the way. Few cities’ leaders grasp the scale of the challenge, especially in developing countries, where towns and cities will have an additional 1.5bn residents to cope with by 2030.

This new think piece has been prepared as part of the British Council’s Climate and Cities programme. Download the pdf (which has full references) or read the full text below the jump.

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Climate and cities think piece, co-authored by David Steven and the British Council’s Peter Upton (29 January 2009)

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I’ve been in Japan today, speaking at ‘Reforming International Institutions – Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century’,  a seminar organized by the United Nations University and the British Embassy in Japan.

You can download my talk here (with pictures, references etc) – or the text only is available below the jump. There’s a webcast too.

Headlines:

• It’s going to be a tough year. The financial meltdown has a long way to go, and the downturn is risking turning into a global depression.
• Trade is a bell wether. Protectionist pressures are already on the rise. If they gain traction, take that as a warning of a wider loss of confidence in global institutions.
• The unravelling of global economic imbalances could prove corrosive to the international order. If countries start to devalue to protect exports, expect a tit-for-tat dynamic to kick in.
• Scarcity issues (energy, water, land, food, atmospheric space for emissions) remain the key medium term driver of global change. Commodity prices will spike again as soon as there’s recovery.
• The downturn has stemmed the uncontrolled growth of emissions, but also lessened the chance of a robust global deal on climate.
• Economic bad times could well drive increased conflict. A major new security threat might be the fabled black swan – hitting just when the global immune system is already overloaded.
• If we experience a long crisis (or a chain of interlinked crises), we are likely to see either a significant loss of trust in the system (globalization retreats), or a significant increase in trust (interdependence increases). 
• You need to stretch time horizons to get the latter – shared awareness (joint analysis of risks and challenges), as a basis for shared platforms (loose coalitions of leaders), which can lobby for a shared operating system (a new international institutional architecture).
• 2009 sets a challenging agenda for the G20 (financial reform and economic recovery – but framed by a broader vision on climate, resources, security etc.)…
• …the G8 (caucus of rich countries able to tee up Copenhagen and kick start development assistance if developing countries begin to teeter)…
• …the UN (especially Ban Ki-Moon’s proposed high level ‘friend’s group’ on climate, but also as a fora for getting to grips with scarcity issues)…
• and the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO (first of all ensuring they keep their heads above water, then looking to ’save globalization from itself’).
• Oh and be ready for the backlash – people are angry and rightfully so, but that may well lead us down some populist blind alleys.

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Yesterday morning, many of us here in the UK heard from Mark Abell, a British lawyer, who spoke to British radio from the Oberoi in Mumbai, where he was barricaded in his room. Abell was extraordinarily calm – remarkably collected despite the danger he faced.

This morning it was a relief to hear that he’d been rescued, after long long hours in his room, communicating with others in the hotel using his Blackberry, and latterly with the British Council, who appear to have played some role in keeping in touch with UK hostages.

Abell is devastated by the experience – not so much by what happened to him, as by the fate suffered by others. In particular, he talks movingly of the death of the waitress who served him in the restaurant just before he went to his room, and of a Japanese businessman who he’d been chatting to (in Japanese) just before the attacks.

If you didn’t hear his interview with the Today programme, then make sure you listen. He’s a great guy.

We spent 48 hours, all but, with no food and little water, surrounded by explosions, gun shots, people running up and down the corridor screaming. It was grim, very grim…

The people here have been fantastic… the Indian authorities, the hotel people, they’ve just been incredibly good and kind…

The lobby was carnage. There was blood and guts everywhere. It was very very upsetting. Just before I went to my room, I had dinner in the Kandahar restaurant. I’ve now just found out that that was one of the places it started. Unfortunately…[he breaks down] the waitress who served me was one of the first to get shot….

It’s been a picnic for me. It’s all these other brave people who need acknowledgement and praise. 

Update: I just wanted to underline my gratitude for the role played by British Council staff, and by staff from the British embassy and consulates in emergencies such as these. They tend to see some dreadful things, but do their best under immense pressure.

Update II: More heroics from hotel staff:

[Prashant] Mangeshikar, 52, told Reuters that he had been in the foyer with his wife and daughter when the attackers arrived and started firing. Hotel workers ushered guests into an upstairs service area to escape, but they then came across another gunman.”He looked young and did not speak to us. He just fired. We were in sort of a single file,” said the Mumbai gynaecologist. “The man in front of my wife shielded us. He was a maintenance staff. He took the bullets.”

Mangeshikar added that the guests managed to take shelter inside a room, dragging the injured staff member, identified only as Mr Rajan, in with them. For the next 12 hours they attempted to stop the bleeding from his stomach wound. Rajan was eventually evacuated, but it is not known whether he survived.

“I’m going out today to the hospital to find out what happened to him,” Mangeshikar said. “I owe it to that brave man.”

Update III: Apparently members of the some people visiting the British Council were caught in the Taj restaurant – but have now been freed, while another British Council staff member visitor was shot in another incident at the hotel. Adrian Bregazzi speaks to the BBC World Service:

He was shot at close range by what appears to have been a teenager with an AK-47. He was left for dead, luckily for him, and managed to crawl into some bushes. He’s suffered from a huge blood loss, but is in surgery now.

[I have clarified the above - as it seems that those injured were visiting the BC - probably from the UK (and probably to promote British education] – not staff members]

Update IV – Great quote from Mark Abell as he arrived back in the UK: “Without food, information became our sustenance.”

Listening to Gordon Brown’s speech today, Philip Stephens notes that “Mr Brown kept his audience in its comfort zone”:

Though he set out the challenges Britain faces in a period of tumultuous global upheaval, Mr Brown did little to challenge his audience’s preconception that the present mess was all the fault of greedy capitalists.

Reading that brought to mind another Labour Conference speech in times of global upheaval: Tony Blair’s back in 2001.  Remember this?

This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.

I re-read the whole thing this afternoon, and was struck by a) its brilliance, b) its insight, c) how it soars compared to Brown’s speech today and d) the extent to which - in retrospect, with all that’s happened since – it shines with an eerie messianic fervour.  It’s well worth another look: full text below the jump.

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The Telegraph has another “EU-is-taking-over” story today about how moves to create a European intelligence service will jeopardise the work of British spies.

Improving intelligence cooperation and information-sharing inside the EU is important both to help combat terrorism and to provide the necessary intelligence for ESDP missions, such as the EULEX mission in Kosovo.
A first step towards improving intelligence-sharing was the establishment of the Joint Situation Center (SITCEN) for intelligence analysis within the Council Secretariat. One of its goals is to bring together experts from both the intelligence and security services.

For a while federalist-minded politicians have tried to push the idea further. In 2004, Finnish and Austrian politicians proposed to take this further, creating an EU intelligence service.

But this has gone – and will go – nowhere. Nor is it even clear how such a service would function. Creating trained and experienced staff, investing in technology, networks, agents etc is beyond what the EU can do.

Whilst EU-level bodies may develop their analytical functions, creating a cadre of analysts that may even sit in EC Delegations, no serious analyst believes that the member states will loose full control of operational decisions, information gatheredm their network of sources etc.

But don’t let that stop a story like the one the Telegraph is running.

Having just returned home to the U.S. after a long trip to Britain, I am naturally consoling myself with frequent readings of the expat section of the Daily Telegraph website.  This appears to be designed to lull far-off anglo-nostalgists into believing that the UK is still a green and pleasant land, give or (preferably) take the odd immigrant.  But all is not well: classic British dishes are dying out.

Traditional British dinners are being replaced by ‘foreign quick fixes’ as they take too long to cook. Classic dishes such as toad in the hole, bubble and squeak and hot pots are dying out are diasppearing from the family dinner table, a survey shows.

Researchers found almost one in three people now opt for pizza or spaghetti bolognese at the majority of meal times. And more than a quarter of adults polled named Italian as their favourite type of food.

However, not all British classics are disappearing as the research found that roast dinners and jacket potatoes are still firm favourites.

Kathryn Race from The Potato Council, which carried out the poll, said:

“It’s a shame to see that some of our country’s best loved foods are no longer seen on UK dinner tables – they are our heritage and something we need to keep. We are travelling the world more than ever now, and it seems we are trying to recreate the dishes we sample abroad once we get back home. Foreign foods and the ingredients needed to make those dishes are readily available in supermarkets making it far easier to cook them back at home, although this is, it seems, at a price.”

The Russian and Chinese veto of UNSC sanctions against Zimbabwe may in hindsight have been predicable, even inevitable, but on day of the vote they came as a clear surprise to many, not least British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who only days earlier told the House the tougher sanctions were in the bag.

Leaving aside whether you believe sanctions are a good idea – I certainly do – what happened? Had Russian President Dmitri Medvedev not signed up to sanctions only days before at the G8 Summit in Japan? Did the Prime Minister simply not take “Njet” for an answer? Bit by bit, the run-up to the vote is emerging. 

It now seems the issue was driven not by No. 10, but from the 7th floor of the U.S State Department, where Jendayi Frazer, U.S Assistant Secretary of State, sits. Even though no U.S interests are at stake, Ms Frazer, an academic colleague of Condi Rice’s from her Stanford days, has focused intently on Zimbabwe, apparently raising the issue whenever she meets African leaders.

Ms. Frazer – who is known to abhor her British opposite number Lord Malloch Brown from his UN days – apparently was in the driving seat on Zimbabwe policy, after having waited in vain for a UK lead. With the US Ambassador to the UN, Zal Khalizaid, she apparently pushed hard for a tough resolution. Better to make a stand, the argument went.

But after the G8 meeting, British diplomats apparently thought that the Russians would balk and became nervous. In fairness, Brown – who had been micro-managing the issue – thought he’d gotten Medvedev on board. But either little thought was given to whether the Russian president could in fact deliver – especially after the British Prime Minister harangued him at his first summit – or the issue was not deemed important enough to merit a Russian rejection.

To be on the safe side, however, the Foreign Office apparently asked Bush to call Medvedev and Rice to raise the issue with her Russian counterpart. None of this happened and things began to fall apart. The Chinese, who diplomats believe would probably have abstained if the Russians had not decided to veto, moved to veto as well.

By then the Prime Minister had already sounded confident in his post-G8 address to the House during PMQs. As a last-ditch effort, diplomats considered tabling a weaker resolution, giving South Africa more time to find a solution and thus putting the onus back on Tabo Mbeki and, ultimately, Robert Mugabe. But the U.S – who chaired the UN Security Council – decided to go for broke, tabled the old text and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the aftermath of the no-vote, the U.S government has been quick to point out that the Russian veto shows Russian cannot be seen as a reliable partner. Russian officials have reacted angrily at this, saying Medvedev never promised support for U.N. sanctions.

But what does the episode say about U.S and UK foreign policy?  That even on an issue of such totemic importance to Britain – and where the Prime Minster has taken a personal interest – the U.S remains in the lead, yet unable or unwilling to do the necessary due diligence to ensure more than declaratory success. 

As European foreign ministers settle down to what must be one of their most uncomfortable meetings this year, my colleague Ulrike Guerot and I try to remind people why the Lisbon Treaty was proposed in the first place. No, not an evil scheme to vanquish long-held British liberties. That role, if you believe the critics , is Gordon Brown’s . But rather, they did it to help deal with Europe’s decline.

If uncorrected, what does this mean in the long-term: a greater diffusion of power and decreased support for a rules-based multilateral system and international norms, such as human rights, at a time when the world is moving to a no-polar set-up.

In the article, we suggest two options are available: a minimalist and a maximalist one.

Minimally, European leaders should think about ways of improving the Union’s foreign policy instruments. Many of the changes could probably be created without a Treaty and through Council and Commission decisions.

But a more maximalist option would be to push ahead with a multi-speed Europe. Multi-speed not in the sense of fast/middle/slow; rather, multi-speed in the sense of overlapping ellipses of cooperation. This is not the same as consigning Europe to fragments – because the key ellipses (e.g. euro, Schengen) expand over time until they come to cover all European countries.

Last week, I gave a talk at the Defence Academy on the new public diplomacy, focusing in particular on its implications for Afghanistan.

The full text is after the jump or read it as a pdf.

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I am at the New America Foundation this morning, where David Miliband is due to ‘discuss the challenge of promoting Western style liberalism, democracy, civil society development in a world that in some corners views the word “democracy” suspiciously.’ The event will be streamed live here.

This is Miliband’s opportunity to connect with a younger audience in Washington. The meeting has been set up by the British Council, as part of its TN2020 network. I moderated the network’s first event in Berlin just before Easter, while Alex and I wrote an essay on climate for the TN2020 book. The intro:

The climate problem is now urgent enough to be a major determinant of the transatlantic relationship. In the wake of Bali, we are promised summits and shindigs galore as the world struggles to agree a global deal to replace Kyoto. This will keep climate at the top of the political and news agenda.

But if a global deal is signed in 2009, the fun will only just have started. Greenhouse gas emissions will need to be slashed by at least half, and probably much more, by 2050. Rich countries will be expected to make deep cuts almost immediately. A colossal and unprecedented economic realignment will therefore be needed. It’s a huge task. So how will Europe and the US fare on this shifting terrain?

The warm-up act is Andrew Sullivan, über-blogger and hawk turned hardcore Obamafan, and absolutely charming in person. He’s talking about the way that – in the new media age – the British and American media audience are merging, with southern England a centre left or centre right ‘blue state’. “I often feel my blog is better understood in London than it is in certain parts of the United States,” he says.

But then Miliband arrives and Sullivan is shuffled off the stage. Introduced by the Washington Note’s Steve Clemons (and our host) as ‘primarily a blogger’, Miliband sits on the table and talks without notes.

He starts with the much-stated, but seldom practised, point that the new diplomacy needs to meld state-to-state relations, economic integration, and the ‘new public diplomacy’ – the mobilisation of non-state audiences.

The great causes in international relations are far from dead, he says, focusing on four challenges. Can we build strong communities across race and religion? Can we take on the conflicts that blight people’s lives? Can we stabilise the global climate? And can we build stronger and more effective international institutions?

Miliband argues that the problems of globalization will be solved by extending globalization. The world needs to tackle its problems through more internationalism not less.

I suggest that the major challenge for globalisation is the combination of rising expectations with limits to strategic resources (food, energy, emissions etc – it’s now a familiar list). What impact will the politics of scarcity have on the international system?

Miliband’s response (with apologies for the paraphrase – hard to type while nodding attentively):

We are living through an unprecedented triple crunch of credit, food and fuel. The common denominator is between food and fuel is carbon dependence. Climate change closes the circle. The key question is whether we can get on a lower carbon trajectory or not. If we don’t, the conflicts that people fear are a real danger.

So, yes, we share an analysis – but I suspect that, collectively, the world is far from having the answers…

I’ve been at the Brookings Institution in Washington today for its conference on the transatlantic relationship.

In the chair, Daniel Benjamin, who runs Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe, and who wrote The Age of Sacred Terror and The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven Simon.

In The Next Attack, Benjamin and Simon argued that:

It is unlikely that even in his feverish reveries, Usama bin Laden could have imagined that America would stumble so badly and wound itself so grievously. By occupying Iraq, the United States has played into the hands of its opponents, affirming the story they have been telling to the Muslim world and adding to their aura as true warriors in defence of Islam…

There is, as has so often been said, a war of ideas going on, a battle for hearts and minds. Unfortunately, America has wound up on the wrong side.

Of course, this was pretty predictable. Every effective terror movement in history has been fuelled by the adverse reaction of its host society. The Bush administration has simply proved particularly obtuse and self-destructive- a fact for which Al Qaeda is appropriately grateful. In 2004, bin Laden mischievously quoted an unnamed British diplomat speaking at Chatham House (!) to support his assertion that ‘it seems as if we and the White House are on the same team shooting at the United States’ own goal’.

Benjamin and Simon’s policy prescription for the US can be summed simply as: stop scoring own goals. They call for a ‘deep and dramatic’ engagement with the Islamic world and point to Turkey’s relationship with the EU as a model. It has moved from military repression to relative liberalism, they suggest, albeit a liberalism that has an Islamic hue.

‘These changes, as well as the speed with which they have taken hold, are nothing short of remarkable,’ they write. ‘That they have happened at all is due to one thing: the prospect of membership in the European Union. The transformative potential this prospect has held has been clear to American policy makers for years, and, wisely, they have supported Turkey’s bid consistently and vocally.’

Of course, US support for Turkish accession to the EU is somewhat problematic. George Bush pushed this line in 2004 despite attempts from the French and others to warn him off. ‘Including Turkey in the E.U. would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the clash of civilizations as a passing myth in history,’ he said.

It’s hard for Europeans to be lectured on this issue by a man who believes that the US is in the midst of a Christian revival prompted by the ‘confrontation between good and evil’ (his words) that America finds itself in. Or from a guy who said this in 2001:

Oh, I know there’s some voices who want to wall us off from Mexico. They want to build a wall. I say to them, they want to condemn our neighbours to the south in poverty, and I refuse to accept that type of isolationist and protectionist attitude.

And then signed a bill to build a 700 mile fence along the Mexican border in 2006 – part of a desperate attempt to shore up his approval rating with the shrinking portion of Americans who represent his base.

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General Richard Dannat, the head of the British army, once remarked that the British Armed Forces are less understood and less honoured for their commitment and sacrifice by ordinary Britons than in comparable societies, like United States, and probably even less than in earlier periods.

But this is not unique to Britain. And it is part of two broader inter-related trends; the disappearance of sacrifice as an element of Europe’s development and, as a result, the divorce of the institution most knows for sacrifice – the military – from European society.

The most obvious example is the disappearance of ex-military officers from politics. The appointment of Admiral Sir Alan West, the decorated former head of the Royal Navy, to a junior ministerial post in Gordon Brown’s government is remarkable precisely because it’s rare. Military experience has similarly become less important for reaching reach high office; no Ministers in the current Cabinet have served in the armed forces.

Few European countries appoint general officers to civilian positions; none serve at the top of the European Union’s bureaucracy, the Commission or the Council Secretariat. Of seven hundred European parliamentarians, only one was a former high-ranking officer: Philippe Morrilon, the former French UN general.

Contrast this with the United States, where, from George Washington onwards, military officers have regularly shed their uniforms to take high office.

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Last night I had dinner with a group of security experts and sat next to Chatham House’s Robin Niblett . We got to talking about the role of Ministers and how they seem to struggle with their role in overseeing today’s counter-insurgency missions i.e. operations like in Iraq. They shy away from detail, but are forced into minutiae by events. They go for headline-grabbing figures – like withdrawal numbers – that rarely materialise. They oversell missions – does anyone remember John Reid’s comment that British soldiers would not fire a shot in Helmand? You get the point.

However, is this any different from the past; and if so, why?

Even a cursory reading of Churchill’s memoirs or those of any of his wartime colleagues (like his defense chief, Lord Alanbrooke) leaves you with the impression that no detail was too small, no maneuver too inconsequential for the PM to take an interest – and, frequently, a direct role. As we know, this did not always have the intended beneficial effects, but the PM’s involvement was clear, all-pervasive – and ultimately crucial for Britain’s war-time effort. 

But in the 1950s, 60s and 70s as Britain fought countless battles against Soviet-backed, liberation movements – the heyday of counter-insurgency – the role of Whitehall seemed to decrease. Decisions were delegated to theatre level, as in the Malay campaign. It was only when the Troubles began – and the fight was brought home – that the day-to-day involvement of Whitehall began to increase.

But besides Northern Ireland, the Cold War did not include – indeed require – day-to-day ministerial oversight. Plans were laid to roll back a Red Army advance and the PM had to write a letter to submarine commanders bearing instructions for nuclear retaliation. But there was no day-today role. The Falklands War was may have been an exception to this hands-off, strategy-focused Cold War role.

In the modern world, however, wars like the Iraq War are fast-paced, cost billions of pounds, risk the lives of hundreds of soldiers and can cost ministers their careers. This drives greater ministerial involvement in decision-making than before. But, on the other hand, the complexity – and sometimes brutality – of modern counter-insurgency means many ministers are reluctant to get too involved in decisions, lest they be blamed for the choices made by a soldier in Basra or a diplomat in Kandahar. (more…)