by David Steven | Feb 13, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
Canadians used to think of themselves as global citizens, par excellence. Recently, though, this image has taken a battering.
Canada is now so obstructive in climate negotiations that even the Chinese government has had enough of its ‘conniving’ ways. In the midst of global economic turmoil, Canada’s main priority for the recent G7 summit was to force feed finance ministers seal meat.
And, at the Winter Olympics, it is so desperate to Own the Podium that it has long planned to keep practise sessions for other countries to an absolute minimum in order to ensure its athletes get maximum home advantage. “Skeleton racer Mellisa Hollingsworth will be flying down the fastest track in the world at Whistler with the benefit of 200-plus more practice runs than her rivals,” boasted one of its papers last week.
Canada was told that this policy could be disastrous, especially for the luge and for skeleton (a kind of tobogganing) where the Canadians have built a faster track than any in the world, making practise essential. “The speeds are going to be high up in the 100s,” warned the British performance manager. ” Therefore accidents are going happen and do happen in sports such as these. We’ve seen broken legs or even worse before for example.”
Sure enough the worst did happen, with Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili killed just hours before the opening ceremony. Charmingly, the Canadians have quickly wrapped up an investigation that blames the dead guy for the accident.
On Thursday, a BBC survey showed that Canada’s international image is beginning to take a battering:
Several countries saw sharp falls in positive ratings of Canada—in the USA the proportion rating Canadian influence as positive fell from 82 per cent to 67 per cent, in the UK from 74 per cent to 62 per cent, in Australia from 77 per cent to 72 per cent, and in China from 75 per cent to 54 per cent. Overall, comparing views in 15 of the countries that were surveyed last year, the proportion rating Canadian influence in the world as mainly positive has fallen on average from 57 per cent to 53 per cent.
Even Canadians, the survey shows, believe the country has a less positive global influence than before. One wonders: do they care?
by Michael Harvey | Feb 12, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, UK
– With the UK election campaign under way in all but name, the FT’s Martin Wolf explains why he doesn’t fear a hung parliament – arguing that it might be just what’s needed to achieve fiscal restraint. “So poorly has single-party despotism governed the UK”, he suggests, “that I would welcome a coalition or, at worst, a minority government.” The Institute for Government, meanwhile answers all your hung parliament-related questions here, placing things in international and historical perspective.
– The Cable highlights the Obama administration’s key people on Iran. Richard Haass, meanwhile, suggests that the West’s strategy must do more to help the Iranian people – with the US and EU acting to “energise and lend rhetorical support to the opposition, helping it to communicate with the outside world”.
– Elsewhere, Der Spiegel profiles the five main risks to the Euro – namely Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy – assessing their economic woes. Charlemagne, meanwhile, interviews Cathy Ashton. And The Economist also has news that Dominique Strauss-Khan, current IMF head, is considering running against Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s 2012 presidential elections.
– Finally, this week saw a group of British Academy experts writing to the Queen about the failure to foresee the credit crunch – a follow-up to a question from the monarch at the LSE last summer. Their suggestion: the need for a better-coordinated government horizon scanning capacity – something that could take the form of a monthly economics briefing to the Queen, which would serve – as Professor Peter Hennessy has commented – to “sharpen minds” of officials. Read the full letter here (pdf).
by Alex Evans | Feb 12, 2010 | What we're watching
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5cdU4t43u4[/youtube]
by Richard Gowan | Feb 12, 2010 | Conflict and security, Economics and development, Off topic
“Meandering” is an excellent new-ish blog on peacekeeping and its discontents by Ed Rees, who works for the Peace Dividend Trust. Ed recently asked readers with UN experience to contribute anonymously to a “working list of what host communities ‘pick up’ from peacekeepers” (with the important qualification that “STDs don’t count”). Here’s a sample of the answers he’s got so far:
• A taste for double standards
• Disrespect for rule of law & due process
• Poor morals
• Poor discipline
• A poor work ethic
• A ID card fetish
• A propensity towards meaningless platitudes – ie “this is the year of development”
• A lack of accountability
• A Big Car fetish
• Having a driver to ferry one to important meetings in one’s Big Car
• Obsession with titles and status
• Posters announcing important initaitives that are adorned with many logos
• Long lunches
• Organograms
• The inability to fire people, rather selecting a move them up option
• Making “decisions by committee”, resulting in no decision
• An understanding that money derives not from labor but from being at the right place at the right time
• Keen understanding of the micro-gradations in classiness cocktail party venues
• Precise knowledge of per diem rates for international organizations
This one will run and run…
by Alex Evans | Feb 12, 2010 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security
Blogs hosted by large institutions can often be a bit hit-and-miss, but the World Bank’s blog on conflict and development is an exception to the rule. The blog is a tie-in with the 2011 World Development Report, which will be on state fragility and violent conflict; most of the WDR core team – including Bruce Jones (David and my co-author on Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization, who’s on secondment to the team as its senior adviser on multilateral issues) – are posting on the site.
As part of the research process, the project team are engaged on a grand tour of the globe’s troube spots, blogging as they go. Yesterday Nigel Roberts, one of the report’s directors, was in Gaza City, wondering “what the %*$& happened here”; last month he was in Helmand, pondering Gerald Templer’s lessons on counter-insugency; in November he was in Nepal, reflecting that “peoples’ expectations of what ethnic federalism can deliver seem out of all proportion to what any devolved Nepalese state can do”. Meanwhile, the report’s other director, Sarah Cliffe, was in Haiti shortly before the earthquake, looking at drugs and gang-related violence. At the same time, the team have commissioned a flotilla of research inputs – no less than 37 background papers and case studies designed to review the data, explore thematic issues, and draw lessons from a battery of geographical case studies. (The full list of background studies is here.)
This WDR comes amid changing times on the conflict front. As the project’s overview paper notes, the incidence and severity of state-to-state and civil war have declined significantly in recent years – but it’s not all good news. Not only are there ongoing problems such as long-running conflicts that have resisted resolution, post-conflict countries at risk of relapse, and regimes who’ve been isolated without conclusion; a range of new issues also seems to be coming into play…
Some countries once seen as stable have experienced recent violence. Sub-national conflict in otherwise stable middle-income countries is a significant phenomenon, and organized crime and drug trafficking now make use of cross-border networks which threaten poorer regions, middle-income countries and high-income nations. The WDR will examine new datasets to assess the implications of these trends, as well as potential triggers of future conflict, such as rising youth unemployment; water, land and fuel shortages; nuclear proliferation; religious militancy; and climate change.
I’ve just finished writing the team’s background study on what climate change and resource scarcity mean for the risk of violent conflict (more on that at a later date). It’s been great to work with such an interdisciplinary team – and sobering to reflect on the risk drivers that lie ahead.
