by Richard Gowan | Feb 1, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa, Off topic
Late yesterday, I briefly speculated that the latest upsurge in violence in Chad is being stimulated by the prospect of the forthcoming EU deployment there. Alors, that is now the official position of the French government:
Pour le ministre de la défense, Hervé Morin, les récents événements sont “directement liés” au déploiement au Tchad et en Centrafrique de l’Eufor Tchad-RCA, la force européenne qui doit protéger des centaines de milliers de personnes déplacées ou réfugiées en raison du conflit faisant rage au Darfour, dans l’ouest du Soudan.Même “neutre”, estime M. Morin, l’Eufor Tchad-RCA “va gêner les desseins des rebelles tchadiens”, en limitant leur liberté de mouvement. La France doit contribuer avec environ 2 100 hommes à cette force européenne qui en comptera à terme près de 3 700.
Or will it? Oddly enough, the Irish – who are the supposed to be the next biggest supplier of troops after the French – lack M. Morin’s somewhat sanguine approach to the whole affair:
The deployment of 54 Irish peacekeepers for Chad that was postponed last night appears threatened by further heavy fighting around the capital N’Djamena today with the European Union now monitoring the situation hour by hour.
Which is probably another way of saying that a lot of European planners are getting really cross and wondering what Paris has got them into.
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 1, 2008 | Global system
A common theme that has run throughout all presentations at Wilton Park is the reliance on stats. Presentations have been an orgy of numbers and percentages sprayed liberally on the unsuspecting audience. But the blur of digits comes at a price (literally if you are speaking about world energy demands in 2030). First and foremost we lose all sense of perspective. Faced with a succession of boxes on MTOEs it’s very easy to lose sight of what the real story is. Second, it becomes extremely tempting to use stats to support a set of questionable assumptions on the basis that your stats will trump everyone else’s. I reckon if we had taken a recording of all the presentations over the past couple of days then we would find a host of numerical discrepancies. Finally we dismiss the social and political issues at our peril. In our pursuit of hard facts and proven numbers we often miss the more nuanced conversations that are critical in understanding how the world works. Context in this game is everything.
by Alex Evans | Feb 1, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
In the margins of Wilton Park’s conference on European security in 2020, a timely reminder that for some of the delegates here – who, collectively, represent a clear majority of European states – the concept of ‘European security’ is much more real than for other delegates (like us Brits, who tend to see it as an interesting theoretical exercise in blue sky thinking).
Talking to two eastern European diplomats over lunch today, I asked them how they felt about the argument – made by a western European participant yesterday – that NATO had expanded too fast during the 1990s, and that perhaps some of Russia’s misgivings about the Conventional Forces in Europe agreement were understandable.
Rubbish, they answered immediately, and with surprising intensity. Both cited chapter and verse on when Russia had invaded their respective countries – and how many of their compatriots had been lost. Only when Russia was on the back foot, as it was during the 1990s, did their countries have a chance to make progress in foreign policy. From the point of view of many eastern European foreign ministries, recent Russian behaviour – on energy, on Lugovoi, on the British Council – is a totally predictable reversion to type.
by David Steven | Feb 1, 2008 | Conflict and security
A third underwater data cable has now been severed:
A submarine cable in the Middle East has been snapped, adding to global net problems caused by breaks in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday.
The Falcon cable, owned by a firm that operates one of the previously damaged cables, was snapped on Friday morning.
The cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a repair ship has been deployed, said owner Flag Telecom.
Following the earlier break internet services were severely disrupted in Egypt, the Middle East and India.
There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to 60% disruption.
One’s tempted to quote Goldfinger: “”They have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”
It’s probably just an accident, but repairs will will take a week or more and Richard Stiennon, who points out that “anchors have an uncanny way of finding cables just as backhoes are the bane of terrestrial fiber”, warns of possible cascading failure:
What if US oil and gas companies that have operations in the Mideast put some back up services there? What if another coincidence shuts down a data center in the US and the backups cannot occur in time because of unreachable storage devices? What about all the “Business Process Outsourcing” handled in India? Try telling Dell, or Microsoft, both companies that rely on Indian support services, that “most of our content is here”.
The US has had its own problems. Backhoes have taken out big chunks of the Internet. Routing flaps, bad route announcements, attacks on Cisco vulnerabilities could all impair our beloved Internet.
It’s one ‘Net now. Anyone relying on the Internet for their business has to be concerned about its inherent vulnerability and prepare for it as best they may.
Further reading: As I recall Space Wars: The First Hours of World War III starts out with a few severed undersea cables… things then get a lot worse.
by Alex Evans | Feb 1, 2008 | Influence and networks, South Asia
Sha Zukang, the smooth-dressing, tough-talking USG in charge of the dedicated men and women of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, is in The Onion…
From the moment I showed up at the General Assembly, the other countries knew I was trouble. They took one look at my three- button navy suit jacket and my dark, searing eyes, and prayed to whatever God they knew up there to keep their daughters safe from me. I guess it was the way I just waltzed right in, pulled my collar up, looked Ol’ Ban Ki-moon dead in the eyes and asked if we were gonna sit around talking like a bunch of nancies all day or do something about child slavery in Burma. “Just what are you the U.N. Undersecretary of?” they asked. “Well,” I said, stubbing out a cigarette on my wingtips. “What do you got?”
See, I’m not like those other public servants who are dedicated to saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war and promoting social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom. I’m dangerous. I play by my own set of detailed bureaucratic procedures. I’m a rebel. A rogue. And I make the ladies swoon from sub-Saharan Africa to the shantytowns of the Mekong River Delta.
So don’t call me Undersecretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang. Call me Daddy.
