Global Dashboard Drinks 2010
And a great time was had by all… Thanks so much to ace photographer, Brent Jones, for taking the pics… (Head here for the full size slideshow.)
On the web: the UK Strategic Defence and Security Review, Russia-China-US relations, and India’s international outlook…
– Writing in The World Today, General Tim Cross and Brigadier Nigel Hall examine the prospects of the UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review, suggesting that any reforms it ushers in “must give operational reality to the new concept of comprehensive security”. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, Defence Secretary Liam Fox suggests that “[w]e don’t have the money as a country to protect ourselves against every potential future threat”, with fiscal constraints necessitating Armed Forces tailored to those threats that are “realistic”.
– Yevgeny Bazhanov explores the “triangle” of geopolitical relations between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, while over at Global Europe Shada Islam suggests that the EU must redoubled efforts to improve engagement with Asia.
– In the first of a new column on international affairs, Shashi Tharoor, former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, explores the importance of internationalism in foreign policy and why it “has always been a vital part of [the Indian] national DNA”. The economist Jagdish Bhagwati, meanwhile, assesses US-Indian tensions at the heart of the Doha Round and the prospects of reinvigorating the trade talks.
– Elsewhere, in The Walrus John Schram has an in-depth account of Ghana’s post-colonial transition and how its democratic experience provides an example to other African countries.
– Finally, Keith Simpson, William Hague’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, presents his annual offering of summer reading in foreign affairs. Iain Dale has the full list here.
From the Southside to South Sudan: rap war!
The LSE has just published a very worrying report about the potential for violence in South Sudan, which holds a referendum on secession from Khartoum next year. The list of bad guys and their inspirations includes some eye-openers:
Several youth gangs are emerging in Southern Sudan; the ‘Niggaz’ and ‘Outlaws’ are two of the best-known youth gangs in Southern Sudan, with the term ‘Niggaz’ describing both members of a specific
gang as well as generally bad behaviour by groups of young people. Members of the gangs model themselves on US-rap stars such as Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Lil Wayne and 2Pac.
Gang-members have not, however, imitated (i) Jay-Z by marrying Beyonce or (ii) 50 Cent by endorsing a grape-flavored brand of vitamin water (above). Instead…
They wear baggy trousers, loose t-shirts and sunglasses and are said to be drunk and lascivious at parties they organise in the bush. A large proportion of the members are reportedly women who wear short skirts, tight jeans and have been accused of killing. The older generation decries the activities of the groups (likened by [one] official to ‘Sodom and Gomorrha’) and criticise the dress style. The reverend of the Diocese of Torit laments: ‘The trousers down the buttocks, is it a good dress? They are copying the black Americans who move half naked around the streets killing people.’
So who can stop this lunacy? Wait… didn’t Jay-Z once hang with Kof-I at the UN?
Time to get him on a plane to Sudan!
US Supreme Court: peacebuilding is illegal
Tht’s pretty much the gist of a US Supreme Court ruling last month, according to the 3D Security Initiative, who say the Court
upheld a contentious US counterterrorism law that calls “negotiation training” and “offering advice on peacebuilding” to be a crime when it is done with groups listed by the US as terrorist organizations.
Other countries make a distinction between supporting a terrorist organization’s violent cause, or conversely, communicating with these groups to promote nonviolent solutions.
3D’s director, Lisa Schirch, has a rebuttal of the Supreme Court’s reasoning over on Huffington Post which is worth a read. She argues that there’s still scope for a remedy: Congress should react to the ruling by being much more specific about exactly what kinds of communication are and aren’t allowed with terrorist groups.
For fuller details of the Court’s ruling, see this summary from AP.
Is the post-9/11 moment on military intervention now over?
Just by way of kite-flying, here’s a hypothesis I tried out this morning at a seminar that Chatham House hosted for the US National Intelligence Council:
“Over the next 10 years, neither the UK, nor any other EU governnment, nor any Democrat Administration in the US will embark on any major military intervention for reasons of counter-terrorism or humanitarian peacemaking.” *
(* Where ‘major’ means a large scale deployment of land forces – say of at least brigade strength. Drone strikes, air strikes, covert special forces deployments, non-military actions etc. don’t count.)
The reasoning underpinning this hypothesis basically goes like this:
– Following Iraq and now Afghanistan, UK, EU and US publics are war-weary, and have more or less concluded that their governments have no real strategy for winning such conflicts. The political space for another Afghanistan-style deployment is simply not there.
– So while policymakers argue for NATO’s continued presence in Afghanistan on the basis that “we can’t allow terrorists safe havens”, the fact is that other safe havens – Somalia, Yemen, the federally administered tribal areas in Pakistan – are being handled instead through a policy of containment (drone strikes, special forces – but no major land deployments by western governments).
– On the humantarian intervention side, meanwhile, the Responsibility to Protect was stillborn, as Darfur showed. By and large, the US and EU are willing to support UN and AU peace enforcement missions with kit and a few specialised soldiers (e.g. to beef up command and control capacities), but again, not with large scale troop deployments.
– The hypothesis implicitly admits the possibility of US or EU troops being deployed for peacekeeping (as opposed to peace enforcement) missions, where key interests are at stake; or of US troops fighting in order to support security guarantees to key geopolitical allies (e.g. to counter a salafist takeover in Saudi Arabia, or in a scenario of war on the Korean Peninsula).
– But as far as new large scale US or EU land deployments designed to counter terrorist safe havens or widespread atrocities go, the only circumstances in which this hypothesis sees that happening in the next decade are under a Republican President – and even then without UK or EU support. The post-9/11 ‘moment’ on military intervention, in other words, is now over.
That’s the hypothesis I put forward. I’m not sure I agree with it myself, but it’s at least plausible.