by Richard Gowan | Nov 12, 2010 | Africa, Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, UK
When I was small, I was taken to London’s Imperial War Museum (above) and I had a good time. With the EU and NATO lowering their military ambitions, I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t set up some sort of Post-Imperial War Museum to explain our recent military adventures to future generations, as I muse in Canada’s The Mark:
Readers of serious European newspapers – admittedly a dwindling breed – should know where to find Kabul, Kandahar, and Kunduz on a map. NATO’s fight against the Taliban has given us a passable knowledge of Afghanistan’s major towns and cities.
But what about Bunia and Goz Beïda? Asked to identify these places, many Europeans might guess they could be found in the Star Wars universe. But they are real – located in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and eastern Chad, respectively – and they feature significantly in the recent military history of Europe.
In 2003, French troops were deployed to Bunia under the European Union’s flag of Congo to fend off militias. In 2008, Irish troops were flying the EU flag in Goz Beïda, tasked with protecting supplies to refugees from Darfur. A Chadian rebel group attacked. The Irish escaped with no casualties, although some aid workers complained that the soldiers failed to fight back.
If anyone ever builds an EU War Museum to rival the Imperial War Museum in London, it will include displays on these engagements. But museum guides may have to explain that, after the Chad mission ended in 2009, EU soldiers never returned to Africa.
Read the rest of the article to find out why. In the meantime, readers are invited to suggest items that should be on display in my EU War Museum. I’d certainly want to include some of these Action Man-style uniforms, apparently worn by Belgian Special Forces (yes, they really do exist) that deployed to Chad…
by Richard Gowan | Nov 12, 2010 | Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks, UK
The European Council on Foreign Relations has a new blog. I’ll be contributing to it occasionally while maintaining my undying loyalty to Global Dashboard too. In the meantime, check out other ECFR authors on:
Add it to your blogroll right away!
by Alex Evans | Nov 11, 2010 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global Dashboard, Global system
Back in 2007, Martin Wolf wrote an opinion piece in the FT in which he noted that,
“…the biggest point about debates on climate change and energy supply is that they bring back the question of limits. This is why climate change and energy security are such geopolitically significant issues. For if there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth. But if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart. Intense distributional conflicts must then re-emerge – indeed, they are already emerging – within and among countries.”
Wolf might equally have mentioned other resource scarcity factors such as competition for land, water scarcity and global food security, where similar worries and questions apply. But is he right that the issue of limits necessarily leads to a world of zero-sum games, resource nationalism and intensifying competition for dwindling resources? And if that outcome isn’t set in stone, then what kinds of multilateral action are needed in order to prevent it?
These are the questions at the heart of a new Center on International Cooperation report of mine out today, entitled Globalization and Scarcity. It tries to avoid falling into the usual trap of playing ‘fantasy multilateralism’ – imagining what a perfect international organogram for managing these issues would look like, which countries would sit on which new decision-making bodies, whether a new World Environment Organisation is needed and so on – and instead takes a much more functional approach that starts by asking: what is it that we actually need the international system to do in order to manage an age of growing scarcity?
With this framing in mind, the report looks at four key areas for action: development and fragile states; finance and investment; international trade; and strategic resource competition between states. In each case, it sets out where global (as opposed to regional, national or local) action is needed, and then identifies a range of actions needed in order to manage scarcity, grouping them into those that could be undertaken in the next year or two; those that will require greater political heavy lifting, and consequently need more time; and various underlying questions and issues that will need to be resolved along the way.
The report also marks the first published output of CIC’s program on Resource Scarcity, Climate Change and Multilateralism, which David and I are both heavily involved in – do visit the program’s homepage on CIC’s website, or this summary of what we’ll be looking at and who’s on the Steering Group.
by Alex Evans | Nov 11, 2010 | Articles and Publications, Reports
Center on International Cooperation report by Alex Evans on what forms of multilateral cooperation are needed to manage scarcity of resources like land, food, energy and water (November 2010)
Download Report
by Alex Evans | Nov 11, 2010 | Climate and resource scarcity
This from ICTSD in Geneva:
Days after calling for a dramatic reorientation of European farm subsidies towards environmental protection, the French ministry for ecology and sustainable development has taken the controversial proposal off its website, following a firestorm of protest from the country’s farm lobby. Environmentalists and others, however, have praised the ideas in document. They want it to be reinstated online, and are seeking the launch of an inter-ministerial consultation process on the subject.
The 20-page proposal, entitled “Pour une politique agricole durable en 2013? (”For a sustainable agriculture policy in 2013?) was published by the French Ministry for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and the Sea in late October. However, the news portal Euractiv.fr reported that the text was no longer available online on 4 November, two days after a farm group voiced objections.
[snip]
The ministry proposes abolishing the existing two-pillar structure for farm payments, and replacing this with a series of separate policy instruments that would achieve these three goals. Income payments – determined by farm workers rather than by the number of hectares – would guarantee a minimal income. Environmental payments, linked to compliance with standards, would be covered by a second category of support. A third category, based on contracts, would help farmers move toward more ecological methods of production.
Baby steps, but surprising all the same.
On a related note – some are starting to wonder whether one silver lining of the mid-term results in the US could be that the Republicans might start to push back on US farm support, including on biofuels, as part of a broader reaction against federal subsidies. (Contrary to what you might have thought, the biggest demandeurs for farm subsidies on the Hill are often Democrats rather than Republicans. Of the five largest corn producing states, three – Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota – are generally seen as blue rather than red states.)
We can but hope – especially since the recent trend has been in the wrong direction. Btw, if you’re following biofuels, this excellent Economist briefing from last week is worth reading.
