by Jules Evans | Jan 28, 2009 | Europe and Central Asia
Last week, I saw the leader of the Hungarian opposition, Viktor Orban, call for a new central European security alliance against Russia.
Orban warned that the EU needed to take a tougher line with Russia. He said: “Russia has made two requirements that are not acceptable for European civilisation. Firstly, it has said it has legitimate security interests outside of Russia, so it can decide, for example, whether other countries can join NATO or not. That’s dangerous.”
He went on: “Secondly, Russia wants to buy out alternative sources of energy around the region, and to monopolise gas deliveries to the whole region, which is totally against our values.”
Orban said that the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 testified to “the weakness of common EU security policy”, and added: “We in central Europe have a different approach to emerging Russian power, and it’s obvious that sooner or later, central Europe will emerge as an independent player in security.”
He also warned that Germany was playing a “dangerous game” with Russia, by not checking its expansionism more aggressively.
There’s some domestic politics going on here. Orban’s ouster in Hungary, Ferenc Gyurscany, has taken a much more conciliatory stance towards Russia and Gazprom, including supporting Gazprom’s Blue Stream pipeline over the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline. Gyurscany said he wanted Hungary to become an “energy hub” in Europe. You can practically smell the vodka on his breath.
Still, now Hungary’s economy is deep in recession, Gyurscany may be on the way out, and Orban sounds like he is likely to introduce a much tougher eastern foreign policy.
by Alex Evans | Jan 28, 2009 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
A few days ago, I did a post on the UK government’s current horizon scanning exercise – part of the process leading up to its second National Security Strategy – in which I suggested that “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 [will undermine] their ability to respond to all the global trends that we were discussing”.
As regular readers will know, that observation comes straight out of the writings of ‘fourth generation warfare’ theorists like William Lind, Martin van Creveld and John Robb. But what may come as more of a surprise is the interesting revelation that Kaiser Wilhelm II made a similar point yesterday in his birthday conversation with Lind*:
“My generation of kings and emperors were fixated on the age-old contest between dynasties. Would the houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern defeat those of Romanoff and Savoy or the other way around? We could not see the paradigm shift welling up all around us, the onward rush of democracy and equality and socialism and all the rest of that garbage. What we needed was an alliance of all monarchies against democracy. Instead we wiped each other out, putting the levellers in charge everywhere, to the world’s ruin.”
“Does that hold any lessons for our time?”, I asked.
“From Olympus, the picture could not be more clear,” His Majesty replied. “As we were mesmerized by dynastic quarrels, so your politicians cannot see beyond the state. They think only of states in conflict. Will America be threatened by China? Should India go to war with Pakistan? Is Iran a danger to Israel? They cannot see that states are now all in the same, sinking boat, just as all the dynasties were in 1914.”
“What should states then do?”, I enquired.
“Form an alliance of all states against non-state forces, what you call the Fourth Generation,” the Kaiser answered. “The hour is late, and the state system itself has grown fragile. That is the lesson of America’s quixotic war in Iraq. You destroyed the state there, and now no one can recreate it. That is what will happen almost everywhere when states fight other states. But none of your leaders can see it, because they, too, are time-blinded. It is the human condition.”
* Since you ask: in addition to being one of the top experts around on counter-insurgency and fourth generation warfare, William Lind is also an ardent Prussian monarchist. Consequently, he marks the birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm II (“my reporting senior and lawful sovereign”) with a column each year in which he records a conversation with that leader’s ghost. Previous editions are highly recommended – e.g. here and here.
by David Steven | Jan 26, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
Nick Stern isn’t going to like this, but there’s a new Stern on the climate block: Todd Stern , who is set to be announced as the US’s new climate envoy.
(Todd) Stern has set out a fairly clear road map for US engagement in the climate process (nb. these are his personal pre-appointment views, not those of Obama or Clinton). He thinks the US should:
- Start with domestic policy – get the National Academcy of Sciences to recommend (and review on regular basis) a stablization target; legislate cap and trade, not a carbon tax; supplement with regulation on energy efficiency and tex incentives for R&D.
- Use domestic policy as a lever in the international arena – negotiating first with a core group of countries (the ‘E8’ – Brazil, China, EU, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa and the US); then building a post-Kyoto framework on the back of their agreement, with binding long-term targets for all developed and ‘as many advanced developing countries as possible,’ and a built-in mechanism to ratchet those targets up over time (and as scientific findings dictate).
Stern is fairly tough on China. The country needs to accept targets (calculated on what basis is a question he does not address), but he makes lots of positive noises. Joint action on a climate can form the basis of a new strategic partnership between the 800-pound gorillas, but only if it is elevated from “traditional place in the second tier of mutual concerns.”
Throughout, of course, he has an eye on the US Senate and ratification. Bottom up targets and sectoral agreements should be deployed if they can suck more countries into a climate deal, as this will shut up antsy Senators. Access to carbon markets should be used as another tool that creates an incentive for developing country participation.
But there needs to be a stick too, Stern believes – and that stick is trade. Unilateral tarrifs on carbon-intensive goods would be ‘profoundly alienating’ and ‘a prescription for mutual recrimination, not progress’, especially after the US has spent so many years in the climate wilderness. But:
Considered in a mutilateral context…the idea…is more interesting. Today, the carbon content of goods is not captured in their price…If the premise of a climate regime were that countries must capture those social costs by putting a price on carbon, whether by means of a cap-and-trade program, a carbon tax, or equivalent policies to cut emissions, tarrifs could then be imposed on the exported products of any country that lacked such policies.
The Europeans will welcome Stern’s appointment with open arms – the Brits in particular. John Ashton, the UK’s climate envoy, gets name checked by his new US counterpart – and it wouldn’t surprise me to see the two working hand in hand…
by Jules Evans | Jan 23, 2009 | Economics and development, Global Dashboard, Global system, London Summit
David Cameron yesterday warned that the UK could be forced to go cap in hand to the IMF, as it did in 1976 under chancellor Denis Healey. (This, by the way, at the launch of a new programme at Demos about ‘progressive conservatism’. Et tu, Demos?)
The question is, would the IMF have the cash. Click on more to read a story I recently wrote for my mag, www.emeafinance.com, which looks at the risk of the IMF running out of money in the next 18 months, and asks what the chances are of it receiving more funds from cash-rich G20 governments (answer: slim).
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by David Steven | Jan 21, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global Dashboard, Global system, London Summit
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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