by Richard Gowan | Jul 25, 2008 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
Just when you thought it couldn’t look much bleaker for peacekeeping, a reminder that it can:
Sudan has again warned it cannot guarantee the safety of UN and African Union peacekeepers in Darfur if its president is indicted for war crimes. A presidential adviser said that if the International Criminal Court indicted Omar al-Bashir, Sudan could not be held responsible for the troops’ well-being.
Earlier this month, the ICC prosecutor asked judges in The Hague to issue an arrest warrant for President Bashir. The judges are expected to announce their decision in a few weeks’ time.
The adviser, Bona Malual, told the BBC the government was not expelling the joint UN/AU force, or even threatening the troops.
It was, he said, simply saying how Sudan would view the situation.
by Daniel Korski | Jul 25, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, South Asia
Thomas Schweich, previously the Bush administration’s Afghan drugs “czar” has made a big splash in the New York Times by claiming that President Hamid Karzai supports the drugs trade and that aerial eradication of the crop is the only way ahead:
An odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban were preventing the implementation of an effective counterdrug program. And the rest of us could not turn them around.
Juicy stuff, no doubt. But Schweich has been challenged before, including by Barnett Rubin, a well-known Afghan expert.
Schweich’s argument seems to hinge on a central proposition: that insurgency, not poverty drives opium cultivation. But as a CN expert David Mansfield argues, this assertion is based on “the finding that households in these [poppy-growing] provinces reported higher average annual incomes ($3,316 for poppy-growing and $2,480 for others) to UNODC surveyors than those in the north ($2,690 for poppy-growing and $1,851 for others) or centre ($1,897 for poppy-growing and $1,487 for others).” He has further criticized the UN’s lack of reporting of sample size and statistical significance – both of which are necessary to determine the accuracy of the conclusion that poverty is not a factor.
In others word, the basis to argue that poverty does not drive opium-cultivation is weak. The link between opium and insurgency is also not as direct as Schweich imagines.
True, opium cultivation and insurgent violence are correlated geographically, and opium now provides the insurgents with a portion of their revenues. True, this portion may have increased as NATO pursues a decapitation strategy, trying to kill high-level insurgents. But the Taliban, al-Qaida and the other insurgent groups have many sources of revenue; and while a correlation exists between instability and opium cultivation, the causality derives from insecurity, not the other way around.
Why is is not possible to conduct aerial spraying then, as Schweich suggests? Simple. Afghan farmers do not use chemicals, so aerial eradication will likely be blamed as the cause of disease, premature deaths or crop destruction, which is a regular but unrelated occurrence in Afghanistan, as in any developing country. The Afghan government, already mistrusted, would suffer from any backlash.
For what to do, read this post.
by Charlie Edwards | Jul 25, 2008 | UK
I’ve just given a talk to 120 + senior officers at the Australian Command and Staff College on national security. My talk was deliberately aimed at the strategic level and focused on three interrelated areas: the new geography of risk, the connecting the dots concept, and the system vulnerabilities associated with strategic myopia.
The Australian and British defence establishments face many similar issues but one in particular shines out: the lack of a strategic capability in the system, in the sense that the connections between the tactical and operational levels are often separate to, and removed from, the strategic decision making cycle (hence the failings of the current defence planning assumptions). This, I realise, is hardly new and experts more qualified than I have talked at length about the sub-strategic behaviour that characterises much of UK Defence. But as I made clear in my talk this morning this is not a criticism of an individual. It is a recognition that the system is broke.
However a window of opportunity is about to present itself (possibly). Plans are afoot to recruit a new Director of Strategy at the MoD this autumn. There is a slim possibility that Des Browne may be moved in a summer reshuffle. Both these ‘opportunities’ must be set against the background of cuts in the defence budget – something like £5 Billion over the next three years. Taken together all three things offer the MoD a real opportunity to refocus, rearm (metaphorically) and redeploy.
But this will require a new Minister to have an ‘open mind’. The very worst thing that could happen is for Gordon Brown to chose a ‘safe pair of hands’. Given current circumstances this may sound counter-intuitive, but bear with me. There is probably 22 months or so before a General Election. Short-termism and political expediency dictates an experienced operator should ‘hold the fort’ for the remaining period but given the current political, operational and military climate that would be suicide – lots of things need to change now not post 2010.
The MoD has long been considered a political backwater for aspiring politicians, by Labour MPs especially. Education, health and latterly development have been the portfolios of choice. But the MoD is crying out for change – a (youngish) Minister with an open mind is the best bet for the future of UK Defence, not a tired ‘safe pair of hands’ riding out his last term in office.
by Richard Gowan | Jul 24, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
So, it’s not only me and my fellow-wonks who are worried about the state of peacekeeping. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, outgoing head of peace ops at the UN, pops up in today’s FT to ram it home. Here are the edited highlights:
The head of United Nations peacekeeping has urged the Security Council to satisfy itself there is a peace to keep before sending troops on further large-scale missions such as the one in Darfur.
“I would say very bluntly that there are good reasons to be hesitant,” said Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who leaves his post this month after eight years. “The danger is that you do something and then, if you go into a failure, you compromise an instrument that could make a real difference in other places. And so you haven’t helped really those you meant to help but you have done a disservice to all those where peacekeeping could make a real difference.”
Referring to Darfur, where the Security Council a year ago ordered the biggest deployment in UN peacekeeping history, he said: “I’ve always been worried about it. We’re reaching the outer limit of peacekeeping. But I do see the enormous plight of the people in Darfur.”
“The fundamental error is to think of UN forces as if they were the world police. I think very often now there’s an overemphasis on what force can achieve. The more troops I have had under my responsibility, the more convinced I’ve become that – on the one hand – they are very important in places where trust has been destroyed, but at the same time they are a means to an end, an instrument in a tool kit to build a political process and support that political process.”
Mr Guéhenno said the Security Council had to weigh the risks carefully before deciding on new deployments, noting armed force was not a universal medication that could be used in all circumstances. “One failure can damage the whole of UN peacekeeping … The Security Council faces tough decisions and it is not easy to say ‘no’. But it should never say ‘yes’ for the wrong reasons.”
He said he was concerned by growing division within the Security Council that has pitched Russia and China against its western members on a number of peacekeeping issues. “One big worry that I have today is the risk of a more divided Security Council. We can fudge a resolution, we can fudge a statement, we can’t fudge a strategy.”
But could we – to return to the point with which I conclude my most recent survey of the state of peacekeeping – start to think of how to develop minimalist but achievable strategies that even a divided Council might be able to live with?
I share JMG’s belief in the need for strategy, but there is sometimes a “strategic = bigger” mentality in the UN (as in all organizations). That results in the “Christmas Tree” approach to peace operations, which involves overloading a mission with unmeetable responsibilities. Better to do less, but do it credibly. That is, of course, what JMG is saying about Darfur here… I have a feeling that once he returns to civilian life, he is going to sweep the floor with insta-pundits like me.
by Alex Evans | Jul 24, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, North America
Last year, while she was still working as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair of international security at West Point – and shortly before she went to the State Department as deputy head of policy planning – Kori Schake wrote a pamphlet for the Center for European Reform entitled The US Elections and Europe: The coming crisis of high expectations.
In it, she argued that in order to avoid such a crisis, and to capitalise on the change of leadership in the US,
Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic need to adjust their sights. Any changes that the new American president introduces on issues that matter to Europe – Iran or climate change – will be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Europeans and Americans will need to find a way to talk about Iraq in terms that resonate with both sides and do not belittle the continuing US involvement. The US feels alone in bearing the burden of Iraq, and Americans tend to gloss over the political price their European allies paid for supporting the war.
Europeans will also need to find ways of reminding the US of their comparative value as allies. Americans are likely to enter into one of their periodic fits of searching for better allies than the Europeans.
As Europe waits breathlessly for Obama’s set-piece speech in Berlin, this sounds like sage advice (particularly given the gentle dressing down that the Germans can apparently expect on troop commitments in Afghanistan). But there’s another reason to read Kori’s pamphlet, too: she’s now one of the key foreign policy advisers to John McCain.
