Spare a thought for those Obama foreign policy advisers left on the shelf

by | Jan 21, 2009 | Influence and networks, North America

[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DTNhU4zwAh0]

Here’s Joe Biden swearing in the new White House senior staff as President Obama looks on (looking rather unamused at Biden’s wisecrack about the Chief Justice’s memory, one might add).  But over at ForeignPolicy.com, there’s dark muttering from some of Obama’s foreign policy advisers during the campaign, who are feeling as though they’ve been left on the shelf.

As we reported here back in October 07, some of the people advising Obama on foreign policy were taking a career risk, given that

Team Clinton has put the word out that the usual process – whereby foreign policy advisers to other candidates are allowed to switch horses as and when their candidate gets eliminated during primary season – has been abolished, at least as far as Hillary as concerned. The ‘you’re with us or against us’ ethos is no longer limited to the GOP, it seems…

So: payback time for them now that Obama’s in office, right? Not exactly.

The irony, these people say, is that those who joined up with the Obama campaign early on — some at the risk of alienating their old bosses in the Clinton administration — now find that the Clintonistas have a patron who is taking better care of her people, as they see it, than Obama is of those who worked for him.

(more…)

Get us out of this mess…

by | 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.

(more…)

Britain was the enemy in the inauguration speech

by | Jan 21, 2009 | North America

Various of the UK political blogerati have been reflecting on the fact that “the enemy” referred to in President Obama’s inauguration speech yesterday was, er, Britain.  The Times’s Sam Coates asks:

Did you notice how the British were the only nation disparaged in the speech (we were the enemy America was defending itself against…)?

Benedict Brogan at the Daily Mail has more:

Put aside Aretha Franklin singing God Save the Queen (with the wrong words), Gordon Brown will have noted how Britain’s history as the colonial bad guy infused Barack Obama’s striking inaugural speech. The new President was kind enough to refer to us as the “enemy” when he recounted the dark moments of the winter of 1776 when the Revolution nearly collapsed. He quoted from George Washington’s address to his shivering and under-equipped army as they braced themselves to be finished off by the advancing Brits and their German mercenaries. The general and future first president was in fact quoting an essay by Thomas Paine, but it helped turned the tide in the audacious Christmas eve attack on Trenton across the Delaware. Paine wrote:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. . . . Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it!”

But hey, new spirit of multilateralism and that, right Mr President?  … Right?

(Afterthought: no need for any Americans to have to worry about repulsing Brits from their shores these days.  With the pound in freefall, none of us can afford to buy the dollars anyway…)