The new public diplomacy and Afghanistan
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.
Food security in Britain: time to head for the hills?
How much should people in Britain worry about food security? Here’s a starter for ten, taken from a recent Guardian article by Harriet Green:
For three years, my husband has talked about taking to the hills. About buying a smallholding on Exmoor where, with our four-year-old daughter, we can safely survive the coming storm – famine, pestilence and a total breakdown of society. I would wait for his lectures to finish, then return to my own interests. I had no time for the end of civilisation. As an editor on a glossy magazine until a few months ago, I was too busy. There was always a new Anya Hindmarch bag to buy, or a George Clooney premiere to attend.
But recently, I’ve wavered. Much of what he has been predicting has come true: global economic meltdown, looming environmental disaster, a sharp rise in oil and food prices that has already led to the rationing of rice in the US, and riots in dozens of countries worldwide. This week, the details got scarier. The UN warned of a global food crisis, like a “silent tsunami”, while Opec predicts that oil, which broke through $100 (£50) a barrel for the first time a few weeks ago, may soon top $200.
In one sense, it’s no surprise that food figures so prominently in her list of concerns: along with shelter and water, after all, food is about as basic as human needs get. But on the other hand, you have to wonder: if you can afford Anya Hindmarch bags, do you really have anything to worry about on food prices? Isn’t the problem actually the converse – namely that as the global middle class grows, its appetite for meat and dairy products (and handbags too) also grows – taking staple grains out of the purchasing power reach of poorer consumers in the process?
Still, the fact remains: people in developed countries who think about resilience a lot are worried about food. John Robb, for instance, sees food as a critical dimension of his concept of the Resilient Community. Or look at the Transition Towns movement in Totnes, who are going nuts about food security (literally):
… the idea is to use town-wide plantings [of nut trees] to create a stock of healthy, productive trees that can serve as a great source of local food, and a buffer in times of scarcity. The reason that the group is concentrating on nut trees is their potential to outgrow cereal crops in terms of carbohydrates, and to utilise poorer soils with fewer inputs. The group has already planted hazelnuts, walnuts and almonds across the town …
So: how worried should we be in Britain, the US or other developed countries? Is it time to head for the hills? (more…)
WFP Appeal
According to today’s FT:
The World Food Programme has launched an “extraordinary emergency appeal” to governments to donate at least $500m in the next four weeks to avoid rationing food aid in response to the spiralling cost of food. The WFP, the United Nations agency responsible for relieving hunger, said in a letter to donor countries that if fresh money did not arrive by May 1, it might cut “the rations for those who rely on the world to stand by them during times of abject need”.
Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director asked donors: “We urge your government to be as generous as possible in helping us to close this gap – which stood at $500m on February 25 and has been growing daily.”
The WFP’s funding gap is now about $600m-$700m, officials said, after a 20 per cent jump in food costs in the past three weeks, the rise in the oil price to about $100 a barrel, and a surge in shipping costs. The US is the largest WFP contributor, having donated about $1.1bn last year, mostly in food shipments. The European Union, with $250m, and Canada, with $160m, are the second- and third-largest donors.
Northern exposure
This morning’s Guardian has a leaked report from EU foreign policy chiefs Javier Solana and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, due to go to all 27 heads of government this weekend, warning of “significant potential conflicts” in the decades ahead as a result of “intensified competition over access to, and control over, energy resources”. Ian Traynor reports:
The officials single out the impact of the thawing Arctic and its emergence as a potential flashpoint of rival claims, pointing to the Kremlin’s grab for the Arctic last year when President Vladimir Putin hailed as heroes a team of scientists who planted a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed. Developments in the Arctic had “potential consequences for international stability and European security interests”.
“The rapid melting of the polar ice caps, in particular the Arctic, is opening up new waterways and international trade routes,” the report notes. “The increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geostrategic dynamics of the region.”
Meanwhile, the FT is carrying a different angle on Arctic energy: consternation in Ottawa that the US Energy Security and Independence Act 2007 might prohibit the US from buying tar sands from Alberta. In a letter to Robert Gates, CCd to Condi Rice and Samuel Bodman (you’ve got to love the public affairs strategy – sent to the Defense Sec, copied to the Energy Sec), Canada raises concerns about section 526 of the law, which
…limits US government procurement of alternative fuels to those from which the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions are equal to or less than those from conventional fuel from conventional petroleum sources. Canada’s oil sands are considered unconventional fuels, and producing them emits more greenhouse gas than conventional production.
So, er, how much more greenhouse gas does oil from tar sands emit? Well, the FT says, “environmentalists say extracting a barrel of crude from oil sands results in five times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions than extracting conventional crude” – though some energy companies dispute the figure.
The Obama NAFTA leak: was it Stephen Harper’s chief of staff?
As you pity Samantha Power for having to resign for calling Hillary a ‘monster’, the story of the week’s other Obama leak is still developing. As readers will recall, that leak was to do with a meeting last month between Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s senior economic adviser, and officials at the Canadian consulate in Chicago. As the FT reported earlier this week,
In a summary of the meeting, a Canadian diplomat wrote that Mr Goolsbee “acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign … He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,” said the memo, which was obtained by the Associated Press …
The Canadian embassy in Washington expressed regret for how the meeting had been interpreted. “There was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private,” it said.
At the time, my reaction was simply: how embarrassing for the Canadian embassy. But there’s a twist. Since then, media coverage has reported that the leak actually came from Ian Brodie – chief of staff to the [highly conservative] Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper – after ABC News identified him as the source of briefing to reporters. As Jeet Heer remarks on Comment is Free,
In Canada, the whole story is emerging as a major political scandal. This sort of interference into another country’s elections is not just a huge diplomatic faux pas, but also a deep affront to democratic norms.