Nicolas Sarkozy has a very large television
Look, look at the screen looming up behind him. It’s enormous.
(As you probably guessed, the picture’s from Vanity Fair).
Closing the helicopter gap (on paper)
In January, I enjoyed 15 seconds of fame commenting on the shortage of helicopters for peace operations in The Economist (I’d already raised the issue on this blog and for ECFR). I found myself in touch with Thomas Withington, an aviation journalist researching the problem. He was kind enought to quote me back in May, but it was evident that he knew a lot more about the technicalities than I did. Now he’s published a first-class study of which countries have what helicopters, and who might send them to Darfur. The IHT takes up the story:
The report said military powers like the U.S., Britain and France are tied down in wars and other peacekeeping operations. But it singled out the Czech Republic, Italy, Romania, Spain, Ukraine and India, saying they have suitable aircraft needed for the mission.
A UN official in Darfur told AP the mission has only 27 transport helicopters, all commercially leased. UN documents say the mission needs 18 medium-lift military helicopters and the force has sought to get six attack helicopters. But the UN official said it has none and an offer from Ethiopia of five combat helicopters was still being discussed.
Many military helicopters that could be used by the UNAMID mission in Darfur are sitting in hangars or being used in air shows, the report said. NATO nations “could provide as many as 104 suitable helicopters for the UNAMID force,” saying the alliance members best placed to provide the aircraft are the Czech Republic, Italy, Romania and Spain. In addition, it said, “Ukraine and India could together contribute 34 helicopters.”
There was no immediate comment from the governments of those nations. The report was endorsed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has repeatedly expressed frustration over the lack of attack and transport helicopters and other critical gear that he says is crucial for the Darfur peacekeeping mission. “Given the terrain and security situation in Darfur, it is critical that member states provide missing aviation assets,” Ban said in a statement released by his office.
The governments involved would doubtless argue that they are doing their best elsewhere: India is the UN’s #1 helicopter supplier, Ukraine has attack choppers in Liberia to deter any new trouble there, Spain has committed two planes to Chad, etc. I am increasingly inclined to think that, while I usually view the idea of “UN standing forces” as a miasma, there is a case for some sort of international helicopter pool for peace ops. That was where Thomas and I ended up in May:
The pool of aircraft “could be available to the UN, AU and others. They wouldn’t be UN owned but it might be possible to fund a standing pool of aircraft,” says Gowan. “The most convincing political basis we’ve seen for it is that it should be something largely focused on the region where the bulk of UN peacekeeping is concentrated, which is Africa, and that it should be something shared between the UN and the AU who would fund this pool for missions that were mandated by the UN or AU.”
A nice idea on paper. But not much comfort to the people of Darfur, I admit.
PS: Mark reminds me that, last November, Indian combat camels were mooted as an alternative to helicopters. I find no evidence of progress on this front.
China and humiliation
Over the past few months, China’s given a few lessons in how not to do public diplomacy, whether it’s nationalist students abroad or Party officials at home. Orville Schell has a piece in this week’s NYRB that’s worth a look for some of the backstory, exploring a sense of persistent historical humiliation that he argues is central to modern China’s self-image.
It all began, he argues, with 19th century colonial humiliations such as the Opium Wars. More recently, when the Treaty of Versailles gave Germany’s concessions in China to Japan, the expression “wuwang guochi” – “never forget our national humiliation” – became a popular slogan.
And so it went on. When the PRC was founded in 1949, Mao said “Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We…have stood up.” When Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, Jiang Zemin said that “the occupation of Hong Kong was the epitome of the humiliation that China suffered in modern history”. And in 2001,
…the National People’s Congress even passed a law proclaiming an official “National Humiliation Day.” (However, so many historical dates were proposed that delegates could not agree on any one, and thus, no day was designated, although one of the leading candidates is now September 18, the day in 1931 that Japan began its invasion of Manchuria.)
And so we come to the Olympics. Already, Schell argues, the protests that disrupted the passage of the Olympic torch have played straight into the humiliation narrative:
While patriots from other countries would doubtless also have felt affronted by the sight of such a potent symbol of their nationhood under assault, the response of many Chinese to these confrontations revealed in dramatic fashion how sensitive China still was to foreign insult. What these Chinese at home and abroad chose to see on television was not oppressed Tibetans seeking a redress of grievances, but China again under siege and again being demeaned in the most public of ways.
Part of the root problem, he continues, is that: “for much of the past hundred years Chinese themselves have also been engaged in a series of assaults on their own culture and history”. At first, it was Chinese reformers “denouncing traditional Confucian culture” at the start of the 20th century. Then it was the nationalists who came under attack, with Chiang Kai-shek and his wife seen as too westernized and American. Then came Mao and the Cultural Revolution, followed by Deng Xiaoping “to perform yet another act of demolition, this time on Mao’s revolution itself”. Schell concludes:
The cancellations of these successive efforts at self-reinvention have left Chinese with an uncertain sense of cultural or political direction. The country has tended to swing from one experiment to another, seeking refuge in a series of large-scale, but never definitive, makeovers. It is therefore perhaps understandable that a more robust sense of cultural and political self-confidence has remained elusive.
So, partly in shock, and partly in disappointment, China responded to the demonstrations against its Olympic torch with incensed outrage, rejecting any suggestion that its own actions could have contributed to, much less have ameliorated, Tibetan demands … what made these demonstrations against the torch such an affront to so many Chinese was the way in which they intruded just when they had allowed themselves to imagine that their national identity might actually metamorphose from victim to victor, thanks to the alchemy of the Olympic Games.
Problem is, as I first noted back in November last year, so much could go wrong with the games themselves – making the torch disruption look like a trailer for the main feature. Let’s hope not.
From Gazprom to Foodprom
Oh dear. First the collapse of Doha, and now this:
Russia plans to form a state grain trading company to control up to half of the country’s cereal exports, intensifying fears that Moscow wants to use food exports as a diplomatic weapon in the same way as Gazprom has manipulated natural gas sales.
The move by Moscow, the world’s fifth-biggest exporter of cereals, has been sharply criticised by US agriculture diplomats as a “giant step back” to the Soviet era.
Morevoer, in the future Russia’s strategic importance as a grain producer is likely to grow as a result of climate change: higher average temperatures are likely to benefit Russia’s agricultural productivity, at least in the short term, as temperate latitudes are projected by the IPCC to see some carbon fertilisation effects between one and three degrees C of warming. (This said, Russia’s yields could still fall in absolute terms if extreme weather events, droughts and changes in water availability impact heavily – but it’s still likely that Russia’s importance as a producer would grow in relative terms.)
Russia (like Canada) looks set to be one of the big winners of the 21st century world of scarcity. Massive investment in new oil production even as the price soars; the prospect of even more resource finds as the Arctic melts; relatively lower exposure to climate impacts; and Russia’s role as a breadbasket of the world (with all the influence that this entails) set to grow and grow.
Supply or demand? Which way to fight drugs?
That cheeky discusser Alex seems to be both praising me and taking me to tasks for believing that a supply-side approach to the Afghan drugs trade will make a difference to drug use in Britain.
Why I have never. . .in fact, I have never. I have never been a supply-sider, at least as CN is concerned. I think we need to help the Afghan government deal with the ballooning opium economy because its existence is deeply corrosive of the Afghan state. If we do not, it will never be able to establish itself, deliver basic services (like order) and deal with threats to its power and the lives of its citizens.
That’s not the same thing as saying that a supply-side strategy will combat drug use worldwide. As David Mansfield, Britain’s leading drugs researchers, notes: “The overall success of supply side interventions will be contingent on reductions in demand both internationally and increasingly in source countries.”
A prime example of the failure of supply-side policies is the U.S crackdown on drugs in Colombia, which Alex highlights. Despite the progress that has been made within Colombia’s borders, little effect has been had on the overall drug war — due to the persistence of American demand, Peru and Bolivia have moved to fill the supply vacuum. But not only did regional production not decline, there were unforeseen political consequences in the countries where coca growth was resurgent – for example the rise of Evo Morales, a former coca grower who rallied the support of Bolivia’s coca growers to won the presidential elections.
But that does not mean all supply-side is useless. It means that you need both supply-side and demand-reduction. For me, CN in Afghanistan was part of the state-building project. I realise that Tony Blair, when he agreed that Britain should be the G8 lead for counter-narcotic, was focused on the flow of heroin into Britain – and probably hoped to keep the British public supportive of the Afghan mission if they could see a direct connection to their daily lives. But few people I worked with on the issue while I was in the Civil Service thought that way.
In addition, we worked hard to highlight the need for demand-reduction inside Afghanistan where demand-reduction facilities are low and the risk of Hep C and other diseases attacking a vulnerable and at-risk population were considerable.
When the UN’s 2005 survey of drug usein Afghanistan was published – estimating that there were 920,000 drug users in the country – I went around the Ministry of Counter-narcotics making bets with the Minsters and senior officials to see if they could guess the number of users. The then-Deputy Minister – now Minister – General Khodeidad guesses a high 10.000, and refused to believe me when I gave him the right figure. In other words, the Afghans themselves are quick to talk about our demand reduction, but struggle to deal with their own demand.