by Alex Evans | Mar 26, 2009 | Conflict and security
David Kilcullen on the central concept of his eponymous book:
Interviewer: When did the concept of the “accidental guerrilla syndrome” really start to click?
Kilcullen: It was field observation over ten years or so, but the name came to me one afternoon near the Khyber Pass… My local escort commander pointed out to me that he and his guys were the real foreigners on the Frontier, whereas the al-Qaeda guys had been embedded there for a generation. He said no outsider could tell the locals apart from the terrorists except by accident. And when outsiders intervene to deal with the global terrorists hiding out in areas like the FATA, it turns out people get upset, and the local community coalesces around rejecting outside interference, and closes ranks to support the terrorists….
This has happened in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Europe – basically everywhere I’ve worked since 9/11, I have observed some variation on this pattern. I call the local fighters “accidental guerrillas,” because they end up fighting on behalf of extremists, not because they hate the west but because we just turned up in their valley with a Brigade, looking for AQ. And I calculate 90 to 95 percent of the people we’ve been fighting since 9/11 are accidentals, not radicals.”
Via Kotare.
by Jules Evans | Mar 25, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Influence and networks, London Summit
People in the City are muttering about being invaded by a horde of Swampies this weekend, for the Put People First march. There’s sure to be a lot of angry rhetoric – and rightly so – about the failure of free market capitalism.
But what exactly is the protest demanding?
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by Charlie Edwards | Mar 25, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
What do you get when you mash up images from Google Earth, stats from the electric grid and power grid behaviour modelling and simulation? A real-time status of the national electric grid that federal state and local agencies can use to coordinate and respond to major problems such as wide-area power outages, natural disasters and other catastrophic events.
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by Alex Evans | Mar 25, 2009 | Economics and development, Global system, London Summit
Just before the Washington G20 summit in November last year, David and I co-wrote a paper entitled A Bretton Woods 2 Worth of the Name. As the title implied, we were politely sceptical of some of the political rhetoric then flying around, comparing the G20’s discussions about bank capitalisation with the rather more far-reaching discussions held at the Mount Washington Hotel in 1944.
Now, though, things are getting more interesting. Two days ago, Zhou Xiaochuan – the governor of China’s central bank – quietly published a paper on the People’s Bank of China website, entitled Reform the International Monetary System. It opened like this:
The outbreak of the current crisis and its spillover in the world have confronted us with a long-existing but still unanswered question, i.e., what kind of international reserve currency do we need to secure global financial stability and facilitate world economic growth, which was one of the purposes for establishing the IMF?
Later, Zhou continues that:
The desirable goal of reforming the international monetary system, therefore, is to create an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.
Now this line of thinking really does take us straight back to Bretton Woods – and in particular to Keynes’s proposal for a new global currency called the bancor, and a new global institution called the International Clearing Union (ICU). (more…)
by Richard Gowan | Mar 24, 2009 | North America, Off topic
Exactly how hard can you wring your hands? This question arises from a pained debate afoot within the International Studies Association. Once a year, ISA brings together all the IR academics you’ve ever heard of (plus a lot you’ll go to your grave never having heard of) for a mega-conference in a large U.S. city. Recently, we’ve had Chicago (four days of unmitigated sleet), San Francisco (missed that one, foolishly) and NYC (thousands of foreign policy geeks packed into Times Square like some mad mockery of New Year). The venue for 2010 looks promising: New Orleans.
So, most ISA members are looking forward to four days of theoretical discussion coupled with 24 hour drinking in America’s sin-iest city. I for one am dreaming up some utterly fallacious paper on EU-UN cooperation to justify my presence. But there is a problem. Louisiana has a bigoted gay marriage law refusing recognition to gay marriages transacted outside the state. Some ISA members feel that the Association cannot countenance this – and should, to coin a phrase, call the whole thing off.
Today, an e-mail was circulated with the innocuous title “Information about New Orleans Convention Site”. I assumed this would be about parking. Not so. Here are the highlights of a very long message from ISA:
There has been some controversy and discussion surrounding the site. Yet, in thinking about options, it is important to remember that New Orleans has been through a great deal in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and holding major events there, such as the annual meeting, is one way to help the city recover.
While ISA cannot abrogate the contract at this stage without severe financial loss, possibly leading even to the bankruptcy of the organization, there are a number of ways in which we, as members of the organization, can address the situation. We can work with program chairs and sections to promote panels and roundtables that address Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered/Queer (L/G/B/T/Q) issues.
One option raised at an ISA-New York section meeting was to have T-shirts with a “message” on them. Yet other members have proposed that ISA members actively involve themselves with New Orleans community organizations and support some type of project during the conference that would benefit those most in need. And these are just a few ideas that we are aware of that have been raised to date.
It is incumbent upon us, as members of ISA, to arrive at positive ways in which we can draw attention to the issue without punishing or harming the people of New Orleans who have already suffered, and without jeopardizing the nonprofit status of ISA itself.
Now, I’m in favor of (i) gay marriage and (ii) helping New Orleans in every way conceivable. But I can imagine nothing better calculated to make the citizens feel their suffering anew than hordes of academics in L/G/B/T/Q-themed T-shirts charging about trying to find a community organization to interface with for four whole days. “Hello, I’ve just finished giving my fallacious paper on EU-UN relations and I just thought I’d pop by to share my rage. Erm… Sean Penn was great in Milk!”
I don’t recall a bunch of ISA members offering to break Chicago’s drug culture or clean up Wall Street as a little quid pro quo for their visit. Stop this silliness, and indulge in a form of activism that will help New Orleans: eat, drink, and pour dollars into its coffers.
