Time was when any suggestion that conflict prevention might be central to development would be met by blank (if not outright hostile) stares at DFID’s headquarters – but DFID’s latest White Paper, published yesterday, certainly puts that attitude to rest for good.

Fully half of new UK bilateral aid will focus on conflict-affected and fragile states; there will be an intensive focus on job creation in five at-risk countries (Yemen, Nepal, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Afghanistan); security is for the first time defined as an essential service, like health or education; there’s lots of additional focus on SSAJ (safety, security and access to justice); and there’s plenty more besides.

Now, sharp-eyed conflict watchers among you will already be wondering: does all this mean that the cuts to UK conflict prevention spending announced by David Miliband in March this year are effectively reversed?

(The problem, readers will recall, was that while peacekeeping missions were mushrooming – MONUC, UNMIS and the AU mission in Somalia in particular – the pound was collapsing against the dollar and the euro, the currencies in which peacekeeping bills are denominated. This was driving a coach and horses through the planned cross-governmental conflict prevention budget of £556 billion – comprised of £109m for the Conflict Prevention Pool, £73m for the Stabilisation Aid Fund and £374m for peacekeeping missions. The peacekeeping bit would now have to rise £456 million. So even after DFID and MOD had lobbed in an extra £71 million, it was clear that tough cuts would have to be made – a point made with anguish in a letter to the FT in March from foreign policy luminaries including Lords Ashdown, Hannay, Howe, Jay, Kerr, Robertson and Wallace. Now read on..)

Well, now that DFID’s Secretary of State Douglas Alexander is promising that the UK will spend £1 billion a year in post-conflict countries, it’s clear that much of the money that was cut in March will effectively be available again – though you’ll have a fight on your hands to get DFID to admit this to be the case, since it’s shy of creating any impression that it’s there to bail out other departments when the full, epic sweep of spending cuts becomes clear after the election.

But we’re nonetheless in a new situation, rather than back to the status quo ante, in at least three important ways. (more…)

A few days ago the House of Commons International Development Committee released its latest report (entitled Aid Under Pressure: Support for Development Assistance in an Economic Downturn) and there are a few points which might be of interest to Global Dashboard readers.

As its title would suggest, the report focuses on the impact of the financial crisis on international development efforts. It opens on a grim note with the news that DFID estimates that by the end of next year 90 million more people will be living in extreme poverty as a result of the crisis. Moreover, the WHO believes that up to 400,000 additional children could die as a result. The International Development Committee adds that progress towards the MDGs may have been set back by up to three years.

A major point made in testimony given to the Committee was that initial expectations that the developing world would be insulated from the impact of the crisis have proven false. Whilst the contagion effect of the crisis has only directly harmed western economies, the indirect knock-on effects have applied pressure to transnational business flows worldwide. The World Bank reports that of the 107 counties it categorises as ‘developing’, 40% are ‘highly exposed’ to the downturn.

Unsurprisingly-though quite rightly-the International Development Committee’s response to all this is to insist on the importance of maintaining ongoing aid commitments, as agreed at the G20 summit in July.

Aside from that, the issue of tax havens is highlighted and it would seem that the British government is increasingly committed to making progress in this respect. Gordon Brown in particular has been forthright on this issue, but his government seems somewhat hamstrung at present and we shall have to await developments.

In the wake of the London Summit, institutional reform is back on the agenda. The need to overhaul the IMF and World Bank, particularly in regard to apportionment of votes within those organisations needs to be a priority for the post-crisis politics of global governance. Indeed, reform has been presented as a condition for the boost to IMF funding that the G20 agreed upon earlier this year. Broader questions of operational versatility are also important. In these respects, the Committee’s report is strong on good ideas and analysis, but light on suggestions for how Britain can help bring about the desired changes. For that perhaps we need to wait for the DFID White Paper due later in the summer.

On a seemingly superficial note, the Committee proposes that DFID’s name be changed and puts forward ‘British Aid’ and ‘DFID UK’ as possibilities. The intention, it seems is to increase the ‘visibility’ of UK international development spending. Of course, DFID does a lot more than aid, so I think we can immediately dismiss the first suggestion. As a reserved Brit, the idea of being so brash as to use ‘UK’ on international development work is too reminiscent of the US tendency to splash the Stars and Stripes on aid parcels. It seems… immodest, somehow. But it might be a good idea all the same – US aid is part of its soft power and in the same way, the work of the Department for International Development has the potential to be a significant contributor to British attempts to win ‘hearts and minds’, particularly in countries like Afghanistan. After all, the Committee’s report points out that DFID is the largest donor to the World Bank’s International Development Association. Maybe blowing our national trumpet more boldly isn’t such a bad idea. Though one wonders if there isn’t a snappier name out there somewhere – suggestions welcome, of course.

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?

The Economist has a piece on its website today bemoaning the effect of the credit crunch on aid flows:

It is unclear how aid flows are responding to the slowdown but the most recent data (which predate the crisis) hardly encourages hopes of a substantial expansion. Aid from OECD countries fell between 2006 and 2007, partly because of an exceptionally high level of debt relief in 2006. Disregarding this one-off effect, aid only crept up by 2% in 2007. And as a new report from the OECD points out, a 1970 United Nations target for aid of 0.7% of rich-country GDP remains a distant dream. Only Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have reached this target. The average contribution is 0.45% of GDP.

And this sum was calculated before donor countries were hit by an economic crisis that has shifted priorities dramatically. Moreover, the size of the overall pot in rich countries will shrink as economies contract. Maintaining current levels of aid implies the unlikely earmarking of an even greater share of GDP.

Ah, the target of giving 0.7% of GNI to development assistance: bow your heads in reverence.  But hang on a minute.  Why are we all paying so much attention to a target that’s (a) not based on any assessment of how much money is needed to achieve any defined set of objectives, and (b) nearly forty years old?

(more…)

One debate that will run and run in the coming months is on the whether, why and how of reforming US foreign assistance – a theme that Barack Obama riffed on frequently during the course of the Presidential campaign.

Over at the Center for Global Development, Sheila Herrling has just posted a Q&A on reforming the antiquated 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, which created USAID in the first place. As Herrling observes, the Act has only been overhauled fully on one occasion – and that was back in 1985. So what should reform achieve?  According to Herrling, a new act should:

- clearly outline the objectives and priorities of U.S. foreign assistance programs;

- consolidate decision making and implementation functions into a single independent institutional entity;

- specify the roles and responsibilities of other government agencies where appropriate;

- clarify the coordination of oversight responsibilities and functions; adjust regulatory requirements to fit the reality of implementing assistance programs; and

- discourage to the highest degree possible political and bureaucratic constraints (such as earmarks and presidential initiatives).

However, the really big question lurking in the background is whether USAID should be hived off and made into a separate department, a la DFID in the UK: expect plenty of speculation and debate about this over the course of the spring.  Me, I’m not holding my breath – for two formidable obstacles stand between here and USDFID.

One: the fact that Obama can’t just create a new department with a stroke of the pen.  In the US, machinery of government changes of that magnitude need Congressional approval (many would argue that the only reason the Department for Homeland Security came into being was the determined campaign run by the 9/11 families for just this outcome).

Two: the even more challenging hurdle of one Ms Hillary Clinton.  Hillary made plenty clear as soon as she arrived at State that she sees development as one of the core pillars of foreign policy.  It’s very unlikely that she’d see such a significant part of her empire slip through her fingers…

We recently published an interview with the CEO of Actis, Paul Fletcher, in www.emeafinance.com. Actis is the emerging market private equity fund which was created in 2004 when DFID, the department for international development, privatised CDC and sold its private equity arm to the then-managers of CDC, led by Fletcher.

I thought it was quite a balanced piece, but I just got a call from them saying they no longer consider our magazine friendly and will neither cooperate or advertise with us.

Some people are so touchy. All I did was quote a report published by the National Audit Office in December, which revealed that Actis had made around £130mn in fees and carry from 2004 to 2007, purely from its main investor, DFID.

And the  managers of Actis only paid £363,000 to the government when the fund was privatised from DFID in 2004. That’s a percentage growth of 30,000% in three years. Not bad!

I would have celebrated that if I was Actis. What an eye for a bargain they possess. But no, they seem to want to hide this fact from the public. Why? Just modest I guess.

Over the past few weeks the UK government has been organising an extensive series of horizon scanning events to feed into the current revision of the National Security Strategy.  In all, some 24 workshops have been held on the full range of foreign policy issues; various other events have also been held, including the Wilton Park conference I mentioned a couple of weeks back. 

Having been to a few of these events, I must admit to being less than convinced that the sessions are really breaking out of the comfortable groupthink that can so easily characterise futures work.  Like Charlie, I’m starting to feeling a sense of deja vu each time I attend an awayday or brainstorming session that concludes that emerging economies are, well, emerging; that resources are becoming more scarce; that everything’s interconnected; and so on. 

I can see the utility of futures work that focuses on a pretty specific area – prospects for the pharmaceutical sector, say, or the future of UN peacekeeping – but I suspect that very big picture horizon scanning is only really helpful at this stage if it yields up insights or possibilities that are being ignored or overlooked.

For me, the really stand-out risk that barely got a mention in the events I attended was the possibility that serious erosion of states’ capacity and legitimacy undermines their ability to respond to all the global trends that we were discussing (viz. climate change, organised crime, economic meltdown, terrorism, energy scarcity – you know, the usual list).

Normally, when we think about state fragility we assume that we’re talking about the Lebanons, Somalias and Guinea-Bissaus of the world.  But as people who work in the counter-insurgency sphere have been pointing out for some time, the problem of erosion of state capacity is a whole lot more widespread than that.  (more…)

As everyone waits to see what Obama plans to do about reforming foreign assistance in the US, back here in Britain change is in the air too: the Conservatives are coming clean about what they really think about DFID, the Department for International Development.

For a while now, there have been whispers that the Tories don’t really buy into the idea of an independent DFID – and that perhaps (gasp!) they might be considering merging it back into the Foreign Office, where it resided until 1997. Well, following last week’s Independent interview with Conservative aid spokesman Andrew Mitchell, we can put that notion to rest: “We are very committed to DFID continuing as an independent department of state”, says he.

So, a ringing endorsement of DFID, then?  Er, not quite.  Here’s the full context:

The shadow International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said DFID had begun to encroach on the work of other departments and to come “perilously close” to setting its own foreign policy, a role he said should be reserved for the Foreign Office. He said the Foreign Office will be given much greater influence over the use of overseas aid should the Tories win the next election …

“There are times when DFID comes perilously close to pursuing its own foreign policy and that is not right,” Mr Mitchell said. “Foreign policy is decided by the government and the Cabinet, led by the Foreign Office, and DFID should not be an alternative to this. We are very committed to DFID continuing as an independent department of state. But we would make it more of a specialised development department and a little less like an aid agency,” he said.

That left me wondering just which specific instances Mitchell was thinking of in arguing that DFID was coming close to having its own foreign policy.  Iraq? Afghanistan? Climate change? (Thinking that Paul Wolfowitz might not be such a great idea for President of the World Bank?) Sadly, we don’t know.  Earlier today I called his office to ask him to elaborate, but he declined to say more.

This is a shame, on two counts. First, because it’s a cop out.  For the Opposition front bench spokesman on international development to argue that the Department he shadows has come ‘close to pursuing its own foreign policy’ is a serious claim – and one which he ought to be prepared to substantiate.  To fail to do so leaves him open to accusations of offering soundbites rather than reasoned argument.

More fundamentally, though, it’s a shame that Andrew Mitchell wouldn’t elaborate because this debate needs to be had.   (more…)

While everyone else is amusing themselves speculating about Obama’s picks for his Cabinet, here in New York everyone’s focused on a different question: what it all means for senior posts in multilateral agencies.

Start with the one thing we know for sure (as of yesterday): Kemal Dervis is leaving his post at the helm of the UN Development Programme, citing personal and family reasons.  By and large most people think this really is why he’s leaving (his family is based in DC, so an NY-based job probably isn’t much fun). But at the same time, it also hasn’t escaped notice that Dervis might also be well placed to win another senior multilateral post, should one open up. He’s an intellectual heavyweight, not least on global governance reform (at a time when the G20’s evolving role makes that especially topical) – and he has impeccable economic credentials too.

So is another multilateral post likely to open up? With Strauss Kahn now clearly out of the woods at the IMF, speculation is revolving around two posts in particular: UN Deputy Secretary-General, and World Bank President.

The DSG post is currently held by Asha-Rose Migiro of Tanzania, the third holder of the post since it was instituted in 1997.  Theoretically the DSG is supposed to have a key role in bringing coherence to the UN’s development activities, but in practice the current postholder is generally regarded as having underwhelmed.  With everyone wondering just how robust Obama’s commitment to multilateralism will prove to be in office, some are speculating that this would be a good moment for Ban Ki-moon to shake up his top team – and with Migiro’s post soon due up for renewal anyway, a new face in the DSG’s office might be just the ticket.

Bob Zoellick, meanwhile, has been terrific for the World Bank.  He’s been outstanding on the food price crisis (not least thanks to his alliance with WFP head Josette Sheeran, another former State Dept minister under Condi Rice), incredibly thoughtful on multilateral reform and he has brought calm to the institution after all of the Wolfowitz shock therapy.  So why might he leave? 

In a nutshell, because of the new Administration.  To be sure, Zoellick is greatly respected by Republicans and Democrats alike; and there’s no precedent that a World Bank President (to date, always an American, though this convention may be crumbling) must leave when an Administration of a different political stripe arrives.  But another precedent, one that may worry Zoellick, is that a World Bank President in such a situation can find himself eclipsed to some degree by the arrival of a new and powerful US Executive Director on the Board.  There’s no sign of any whispering campaign against Zoellick – but he may decide that it’s a good time to move on anyway.

Kemal Dervis would be a credible candidate for either of these positions, of course – so who knows, perhaps some of this analysis features in his thinking.  But there’s another angle to the story too: the UK dimension.  From a British perspective, the departure of the UNDP Administrator and potentially of the DSG as well must have people at the Foreign Office and DFID thinking hard. 

Historically, the UK has always had two USG posts at the UN.  Until Mark Malloch Brown moved over to the SG’s office (first as chief of staff, and then as DSG), the two Brit posts were at the top jobs at UNDP and at the UN Department of Political Affairs.  But when Mark became DSG, muttering about British over-representation started to be heard – and so the Foreign Office allowed an American to become head of DPA when Kieran Prendergast retired.

Today, the UK is more modestly represented.  It still has two USGs, yes – John Holmes at OCHA and David Veness at Safety and Security.  But these posts are rather more junior than DSG or DPA – and in any case, David Veness is leaving.  (He resigned over the bombing of UN offices in Algeria – a deeply honourable action, taken simply on the basis that it happened on his watch, when in fact there’s universal agreement in the UN that Veness has been a truly outstanding head of security, who has delivered a quantum leap in the quality of UN security around the world.  Ban Ki-moon was crazy to accept Veness’s resignation, but there it is.)

So with a vacancy open at UNDP, and another potentially opening up in the DSG’s office, the question in London must be wheter this is a chance to make up lost ground.  Lists of senior Brits with international development experience are doubtless being compiled even now…

As President Elect Obama and his new foreign policy team contemplate how to deal with the growing number of security challenges that will confront them on Inauguration Day, a bi-partisan group of experts has tabled a series of thought-provoking ideas for how to reform the U.S government.

The report from the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) shows the U.S national security establishment at its finest – willing to think far into the future, push creative ideas and suggest the reorganization of vast swathes of government. (Full disclosure: I served pro bono as an adviser to the team). It stands in sharp contrast to Gordon Brown’s timid reforms, outlined a few months ago in the now-forgotten National Security Strategy. In fact, the report is veritable smorgasbord of ideas that any up-and-coming Tory security specialist should pick from.

The first recommendation, which a Conservative Party ought to consider when they take office – and legislate to repeat with every new Parliament — a National Security Review, which should prioritize objectives, establish risk management criteria, specify roles and responsibilities for priority missions, assess required capabilities, and identify capability gaps. This would go well beyond both the traditional Defence Reviews, as it would take in all of governments, and leave the National Security Strategy to elaborate on strategy and policies rather than being the hotchpotch of policies and reform proposals that it currently is.

To implement this, the U.S report suggests National Security Planning Guidance, to be issued annually, in order to provide guidance to departments based on the results of the National Security Review. This, too, would make sense in Britain where the National Security Strategy has not been able to force any change in the way departments operate because it never moved into specific requirements.

In Britain, such a document would have to be tied to the Budget and preferably the Comprehensive Spending Review. But with a National Security Planning Guidance, the Treasury and other Departments will be able to draft   multi-year resource plans for each department and ensure consistency with the National Security Review. Perhaps a part of a future Comprehensive Spending Review would by  a National Security Resource Document, which could contain  which presents the government integrated, rolling six-year national security resource strategy proposals.

The report suggests that a Presidential Security Council replace the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, thus removing an artificial divide. In many ways, the Brown government foresaw this development with the creation of a Cabinet Committee on National Security, International Relations and Development. But the establishment of a cross-government committee was not accompanied by reforms of the Cabinet Office and so did not create anything resembling the U.S set-up. In fact, the last couple of years have seen a well-reported hallowing out of the Cabinet Office.

Adapting from the U.S report, the Conservative Party should look at ways to adapt the idea of a Director for National Security, who would work to the National Security Adviser and manage the Whitehall decision-making process. This would allow the Prime Minister to appoint a political National Security Adviser –- like Pauline Neville-Jones -– but have a Civil Servant manage the bureaucratic work. The Cabinet Office would have to be considerably expanded with permanent staff covering key countries and issues. Decision-making would still have to lie with Ministers and Cabinet, but the fact that modern policy-making require a stronger center is recognized by everyone except the current officials in the Cabinet Office.

I would add the idea of having Prime Ministerial Regional Envoys or in the cases where Britain has a large-scale, multi-departmental commitment, like Afghanistan, Resident Ministers, such as Harold Macmillan’s role in Austria, Duff Coooper’s in Singapore and Oliver Lyttelton’s in Cairo during World War II. These individuals would have the clout to manage all departmental interests, have a direct link to Parliament (and so could keep the arguments for interventions alive) and ensure the necessary delegation of authority. Their constituency duties could be dealt with like the Speaker’s. Now that I’m thinking about the subject, I’d add the previously-floated ideas of upgrading the UK military representative in the U.S to a Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff akin to John Dill’s role during WW II.
 
To get the right kind of people supporting missions, the report recommends a National Security Professional Corps and a National Security Strategic Human Capital Plan to identify and secure the human capital capabilities necessary. Here too the Conservative Party should take note. Though there are Arabists in the Foreign Office and micros-finance specialists in DfiD, Britain does not really have a cadre of national security professionals. And why not? National security work is, after all, the most imrpotant kind of work and now cuts across all departments so it makes sense to create a career-path and incentives for people.

As changes cannot only happen in the Executive branch. The report therefore recommends the establishment of Select Committees on National Security in the Senate and House of Representatives. This, too, makes sense in Britain where the various Select Committees tread on each others toes, and fail to provide oversight of cross-department issues. A Lords/House Select Committee on National Security seems like a good idea.

The next election will not be fought on defence policy and few have been won on the strength of bureaucratic reforms. But the Tories will need to have serious ideas ready if they hope to change the country’s foreign and security policy. This U.S report shows how it can be done.

The received wisdom within the British Government and the higher echelons of the Ministry of Defence’s Main Building is that the situation in Basra is safer and better since Charge of the Knights, the Iraqi led operation earlier this year. Given the situation on the ground, the argument goes, it makes sense that British Armed Forces should depart soon.

This argument is seductive and credible – but not without risk. Senior Ministers who have recently returned from Basra, like Douglas Alexander, have argued that it makes sense to leave now. In theatre the discussion is more nuanced and centres on the progress of each Military Transition Team (MiTT) in Basra and the surrounding areas. If one was to characterise the general feeling then it would be something along the lines of: ‘We have done our best but now it is up to the Iraqis’.

But should we really be thinking of leaving Basra so soon?

(more…)

My erstwhile DFID colleague Owen Barder knows a thing or two about finance and financial services (he has, after all, been a private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Tony Blair’s economic affairs private secretary at Number 10, among other interesting jobs). Over on his blog, Owen’s now ruminating about the fact that since Gordon has nationalised our banks, we’re all shareholders. And he has a message for his new employees. 

To the managers of the banks

Every time I have suggested things you might do differently, I have been told that this is impossible as you are under an obligation to pursue the interests of your shareholders.

Now that I am – unexpectedly – one of your shareholders, I expect you’d like to know what I would like you to do.  Here are seven new instructions to be getting on with.

1.  Short-term profits are not important: what is important is long-term value.  I would like you to stop chasing short term arbitrage opportunities and overnight trading and focus on identifying and investing in the best-run, most productive and valuable enterprises.  There will be no trading in derivatives or other purely financial products.

2.  Cut executive pay immediately.  From now on, nobody in the bank will get paid more than four times the salary of the lowest-paid employee.  If you want to award yourself a pay rise, you’ll have to increase the salaries at the bottom.

3. All our branches and subsidiaries overseas will pay local taxes, in full. There will be no clever arrangements to transfer profits to tax havens to avoid tax.

4. No more junk mail trying to persuade people to take out new credit.

5. It is no longer our objective to inflate house prices.  An increase in house prices is not an increase in net wealth: it is a transfer from those who do not own houses to those that do.  We will try to dampen the housing market, not reinvigorate it.

6. Every bank that is “too big to fail” will be split up into smaller banks.  We are going to reverse the cycle of mergers and takeovers that has created these monolithic institutions that have held us all to ransom.

7.  There will be no lending for businesses or individuals involved in industries that are harmful to our society and planet.  That means no lending to any of the following: the arms trade, advertising and marketing, tobacco, extracting or burning fossil fuels, or the motor industry.   Instead, please invest more in clean technologies, technologies appropriate for developing countries, non-profit organisations and community groups.

I know that you have many new shareholders, and it will take time for you to get to know us all.  My views won’t necessarily be shared by all your new bosses, but you can be pretty sure that lots of your new bosses  think more along these lines than the old lot.

I was a bit hesitant about becoming a bank-owner, but now that it has happened, I think I’m going to enjoy it.

Work hard – but not too hard.

Yours,

Owen

As news of Hutton’s new role as Defence Secretary travels across Politics Home, Twitter and email a few quick thoughts:

Next week John Hutton will face his first test as Defence Secretary when he walks down Whitehall to Parliament for a debate on Defence in the World. Given his new brief, politicians from across the floor may be gentle in their questions and speeches. Some people may even advise him that he should stay away and let Bob Ainsworth do the job. But this would be bad idea.

The MoD is not in a great place right now, morale is low, there is no strategic direction and people are exhausted. Unlike Browne, Hutton has to show commitment right from the start. On Sunday, having spoken to senior officials he should board a plane and visit Iraq and Afghanistan. There he should listen to senior commanders, FCO and DFID personnel, get up to speed with what’s happening on the ground and give a short pep talk to the troops before coming home. When the debate comes around next week he should enter the chamber and let it be known there are three things he cares about in his new brief – people, people, people.

Back in Main Building things won’t be so easy. There are three key things he will need to focus on. First: Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As has been reported in the French press – not all is well in Helmand – and while the people on the ground are the one’s who will stabilise the situation, getting a grip on Whitehall is as just as important.

Second: Strategy – Main Building is rudderless, that said there is hope in the shape of a new Director of Strategy, and a new head of policy & planning is also on the way. Coupled to this political consensus on a strategic review is close to reaching a tipping point – all parties publicly and privately now agree that a a review must happen, but when? With limited time until a General Election it may not be in the best interests politically and organisationally to kick a big review off now, instead it would be better to prepare the ground work. Laying the foundations is crucial and should never be underestimated. It may be a thankless task but Hutton will get kudos for doing it.

Third: Strategic Communications. Forget we are staring into an economic abyss for a moment and the other important issue the British Government is dealing with today are the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the fragile peace in Iraq and general instability in East Africa and elsewhere. And yet no one is entirely sure what we are doing and why these places are important. For reasons best known to the MoD senior commanders and officials don’t seem to be able to get their message out – this may be down to personal, bureaucratic and organisational interests but this needs to be corrected in days not weeks – the British public need to know what their armed forces are doing abroad and how it connects to issues like terrorism at home. Newspaper features on our men and women [insert country/ operation here] isn’t a sustainable policy. If Hutton is feeling bold he should copy No.10 and the FCO and overhaul the entire of MoD’s communications – website and all.

And what about procurement? This may prove, in time, to be Hutton’s Achilles heel. His constituency is home to a major defence contractor (BAE Systems) so it may be advisable to steer clear of procurement issues to begin with. He will have enough on his plate with savings that still need to be found, projects and platforms given the chop – a bit more transparency around the MoD budget wouldn’t go a miss either (but perhaps save this for another day). He should learn from US SecDef Bob Gates who has been weaving a completely new approach in the Pentagon and set the context and narrative first before doing anything major on procurement. After all – the question that has been buzzing around Main Building for the last couple of years is relatively straight forward: what is defence for?

Jim Pickard at the FT’s excellent Westminster blog has been wondering whether David Miliband really has the common touch.  “Will the public warm,” he wonders, “to the former policy wonk who – despite shedding the previous Mr Logic image – is still best known as an intellectual?”

In seeking to answer that question, he turns to Gideon Rachman’s profile of Miliband from earlier this year.  “Here,” he proffers, “is one extract:”

“Amartya Sen is a brilliant man,” remarks Miliband. “I think his argument that there is a fusion tradition – a liberal tradition that is concerned with social justice – is right. And I admire his work on capabilities, and on freedom as capability.”

Hmm: is that really all that nerdy?  It’s not as if Miliband is the only Cabinet member who’s into Sen: so are Gordon Brown, Douglas Alexander, and Hilary Benn (who quoted his views on freedom at length in his preface to DFID’s third White Paper).  David Cameron turned out to be a fan too, when he made his first big speech on development back in 2006.

Here’s a profile of Sen from back in 2000 by Meghnad Desai in case you haven’t made the acquaintance of this excellent writer; his book Development as Freedom can’t be recommended highly enough.

A new draft study is about to be presented to the British Prime Minister, which will suggest ways to improve what’s now being called “civilian effects” i.e. what can be achieved in places like Iraq in support of the armed forces, but with non-military means.

Complaints from the military about the role of DfiD, especially in southern Afghanistan, have grown louder over the last few months. The Times’s Anthony Lloyd claimed soldiers in Musa Quala said of the Provincial Reconstruction Team:

They wouldn’t know how to pour p*** from a boot if the instructions were on the heel,” one soldier remarked. “That’s the PRT.”

The study will seek to deal with this kind of criticism. But it will be the umpteenth such study about how the UK “does conflict” if you include the capability reviews, the CRI study, DfiD’s work on conflict, various internal reviews etc. And while the PM has defied many in taking up the “stabilisation issue”, where he could have focused on more traditional development matters exclusively, change is not happening quickly enough.

The question being debated in No. 10 now, as part of the study, is whether to create a civilian reserve corps like the U.S ; or to use the chance to steel David Cameron’s idea of a JFK-style Peace Corps for kids. Part of the problem is that since the PM announced the establishment of a force of 1,000 civilians including police, members of the emergency services and judges – ready to be deployed to conflict zones around the world - as part of his National Security Strategy, nothing much has happened. 

Both the Reserve and the Youth Corps are needed, but mixing the two concepts is a seriously bad, bad idea. Instead, the PM should be bold and go for three things:

1. The Youth Corps
2. A U.S-style Civilian Reserve
3. Back a European Civilian Reserve into which the UK could plug

The latter would encourage other European allies to build their capabilities. If there is over-lap between the three, great. But if not, don’t force it. It would take away from each one.