by Richard Gowan | May 31, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Global system, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, UK
Sweet God, can Britain be trusted with anything these days?
Britain is facing a revolt against its rule of a group of Caribbean islands, amidst a gathering political and economic crisis in the country. The Foreign Office suspended parliamentary democracy in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) last August after a group of visiting MPs uncovered evidence of widespread corruption in the territory, one of 14 colonial outposts for which the UK still has responsibility.
But an investigation by The Independent has found that the economic situation in the country has deteriorated sharply since then, and islanders are demanding a financial bailout of tens of millions of dollars. Problems facing the British-appointed governor, Gordon Wetherell, include:
- Debts of tens of millions of dollars, which have left the TCI government unable to pay its bills and trying to impose swingeing cuts;
- The collapse of one of the country’s leading locally owned banks, which wiped out the savings of thousands of depositors and businesses;
- Doubts over the future of a legal investigation set up last year to prosecute former ministers accused of taking bribes.
Now, this is bad. Happily, the genius of British politics offers a solution: David Laws.
(Spoiler alert: what follows is not entirely unserious in intent.)
Mr Laws has, readers will be aware, had to resign as Chief Secretary of the Treasury for reasons that need not (and, I think, should not) concern us. This is a pity, as everyone seems to agree that he is the only person alive capable of reducing the British budget deficit in a competent fashion. Since he resigned, pretty much all of Whitehall and Fleet Street has concluded that they’d like him back sharpish.
There is a simple and happy solution here. Governor Wetherell of Turks and Caicos, who also seems to be a perfectly decent fellow, should be moved to some more fiscally sound speck of our imperial residue. Mr Laws should take his place, with a mandate to fix TCI’s budget in short order. Everyone would agree that he has then paid his penance – and then some – so we could have him back in government pronto.
That would still leave us with BP on our roster on national shame, but whatever.
by Richard Gowan | May 29, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, UK
Five years ago today, I had a chicken korma for dinner. I know this not because of quality of the curry (it was, as I recall, not bad) but because about half way through the meal I got a text message from a friend. This announced that the French had just voted “non” to the EU constitution. I had been working on the possibility of a British referendum on the constitution. This suddenly seemed rather irrelevant.
That French “non” arguably started a period of political drift in Europe that, in spite the protracted passage of the Lisbon Treaty, has never really ended. If you start talking about major reforms to the EU, it’s not long before someone says “but that will mean referendums!” And everyone knows that referendums mean trouble – not only because of the French experience but also because of the Dutch “nee” to the constitution that followed a few days later, and Ireland’s vote against Lisbon in 2008.
With the EU struggling to save the Euro – and almost every pundit in existence talking about the power-shift away from Europe – it’s tempting to look back and ask if things might be better if the French had said “oui” in May 2005. There’s an alternative universe in which the constitution came into force in 2006 or 2007, the new EU structures were tried and tested before the financial crisis struck and, as a result, European leaders still treat the Union as a stirring political project.
But, before you shed a tear for this EU that never was, it’s worth recognizing that there’s another alternative EU universe out there in which a French “oui” led to an even worse crisis than we have today. I explain how this could have happened in a short essay to mark the anniversary of the French vote:
A French Oui and Dutch Ja would not have marked the end of debates about the constitution. Instead, they would have signaled the start of a vicious referendum campaign in Britain that could have altered EU politics permanently.
Other countries also still had to vote on the constitution. The outcome looked very dicey in Denmark and the Czech Republic. But the political calculus was clear. If some smaller member states voted No while Britain said Yes, the constitution would get through in the end. If Britain voted No, a much more radical solution might be necessary.
Having spent much of 2004 and early 2005 chewing over polling data on British attitudes to the constitution, I am pretty sure it was on course to be rejected. The pro-constitution lobby included some awfully nice people – but they were just too nice to win. Some expected then Prime Minister Tony Blair to revitalise the campaign, but his grip on the country was waning.
If the then prime minister could not inspire the British to embrace the constitution, some politicians in France and Germany thought they could terrify them into doing so. By spring 2005, there was muttering about an “exit strategy” or, rather more credibly, a “Norwegian option” (leaving the EU but remaining in the European Economic Area) for Britain. This would have got a lot louder before a referendum.
Had Britain ended up teetering on the edge of a No vote in the spring or summer of 2006 – the likely poll dates – it would have been treated rather as Greece has been this year. It is easy to imagine a lot of talk about how German (or French, or Dutch) voters could not be expected to allow one trouble-making country to thwart their political dreams.
There would have been other strident voices in the mix. The Bush administration, yet to plunge into the grim torpor of its final years, might well have intervened vocally on behalf of its British allies. Warnings from Washington about Britain’s essential role in EU-US relations would have been counter-productive, reopening the wounds of Iraq and pushing France and Germany to form a united front as defenders of the constitution.
If Britain eventually rejected the constitution, it is unlikely that Tony Blair could have stayed in office, leaving Gordon Brown to take the reins of an exhausted Labour Party. Brown might have had to call an early election – with the Tories the guaranteed winners.
It would have been a sour victory. With Britain’s European status in doubt, the pound would have plummeted while City bankers looked for nice places to live near Frankfurt.
I can hear a few Euro-federalists muttering (if there are a few left) that what I’m describing here is not a crisis for Europe, just a crisis for Britain. And there definitely was and is a camp of people in Brussels who feel that the EU can only achieve its potential by sidelining the Brits – and lots of Brits would be happy to be sidelined. But the sort of fight I’m imaging here would have had unpredictable side-effects.
If, for example, France and Germany had shoved Britain out of the EU, a lot of other reasonably pro-British governments (I’m thinking of Denmark, Poland, etc.) would have been left deeply unhappy. I can imagine headlines about France imposing a “Diplomatic Terror” on the rest of the Union, with Jacques Chirac as a latter-day Robespierre. Cooperation on issues like the Balkans and Iran would have suffered.
It might not have been that nasty. Charles Grant of the Center for European Reform published a widely-read paper in March 2005 looking at ways to navigate out of the crisis that would follow a British “no”. Perhaps a “soft landing” could have been devised. But, given the sort of diplomatic hysteria we’ve witnessed over the Euro crisis, I wonder if the voices of reason would have triumphed over Britain.
On balance, I think that the French voters may have saved the EU from some very unpleasant blood-letting with that “non” back in 2005. I certainly wasn’t betting that the future would be bright for British EU analysts like me. The day after that vote, and that korma, I moved to the United States.
by Richard Gowan | May 28, 2010 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Global system, Middle East and North Africa, North America
Yesterday, I blogged about Hillary Clinton’s speech on the U.S. National Security Strategy at Brookings. Since then, a good few pundits have popped up to knock the NSS, taking issue with its emphasis on international cooperation. Here’s Les Gelb:
As for Mr. Obama’s strategic desire to build cooperation with nations around the world and get international institutions effectively on Washington’s side, forget about it—at least in any short or medium term. Most nations don’t do a damn thing and aren’t prepared to sacrifice a penny to what they see as “an American cause.” No amount of American niceness and understanding will change that.
And here’s the rather more measured Will Inboden:
Much of the document is devoted to heralding worthy things like “engagement,” “cooperation,” and “partnerships.” These are all essential methods of foreign policy, of course, but they are more means rather than ends in themselves.
Since hearing Clinton speak, I’ve had the chance to talk to a number of serious U.S. foreign policy types – a lot of them committed fans of the UN and other multilateral, cooperative outfits. But it’s fair to say that most of them at least shared Inboden’s qualms – and more than one agreed with Gelb. The general view seems to be “international engagement’s great, but what are your intended outcomes?” Another frequent question is “OK, if we try cooperation, when will we know that it’s working?”
What if cooperation turned out to be working on an issue like Iran, well, today? Look at this story about the growing tensions between Moscow and Tehran:
In one of the worst rows between the two countries in decades, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday admonished the Kremlin for bowing to what he said was U.S. pressure to agree to sanctions. Ahmadinejad bluntly warned President Dmitry Medvedev to be more cautious or risk being seen as an enemy of the Islamic Republic. The Kremlin told the Iranian president to refrain from “political demagoguery.”
When asked by a reporter about Ahmadinejad’s tirade, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he viewed the comments as “emotional.” Underscoring Moscow’s growing impatience with Iran, Lavrov said that Russian leaders had tried repeatedly to resolve the dispute but that Tehran had failed to respond properly.
“To our great regret, during years — not just months — Iran’s response to these efforts has been unsatisfactory, mildly speaking,” Lavrov said at a briefing in Moscow.
There may be posturing here (of course there is, Ahmadinejad’s involved). But it does look as if the U.S. strategy of working closely with Russia on Iran is having some impact. As American diplomacy improves, Iran’s gets creaky. Does that guarantee our security? No. Does it suggest that U.S. advocacy of international cooperation might alter other powers’ strategic calculations? Yes. Perhaps we’ve all been too busy asking if international cooperation works in theory to spot that it’s working in practice.
by Richard Gowan | May 27, 2010 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America
Hillary Clinton just spoke on the new U.S. National Security Strategy at Brookings. Having been in the audience, the bits that stick in my mind are:
- Clinton defined the tensions inherent in globalization as creating a “race between the forces of integration and the forces of disintegration”, which is snappy;
- She spoke convincingly about the paradox that while the U.S. needs “strategic patience and persistence” in applying “indirect power” in cases like Iran, these virtues are hard to maintain in the high-speed information age;
- We want to shift from a “multi-polar world to a multi-partner world”.
Clinton spoke a lot about China. That’s not surprising as she’s just back from Asia. She also highlighted America’s commitments to Japan and South Korea – again, a sine qua non given current events in that part of the world.
She didn’t mention Brazil in her main speech, which one questioner assumed was a rebuke over Lula’s efforts to befriend the Iranians. But, rather gracefully, Clinton admitted that Brazil has a “theory of the case” when it comes to dealing with Iran – she even gave a fair summary of this theory, before saying she disagrees.
What was missing? Europe, big-time. NATO got two mentions in the main speech, and was raised in a follow-up question. Answering, the Secretary of State complained about the Alliance’s “sprawling” committees. The EU hardly featured at all.
UPDATE: read far better-informed commentaries on HC’s speech here.
FURTHER UPDATE: the speech transcript is here.
by Richard Gowan | May 27, 2010 | Africa, Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, North America
The UN has had peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a decade. Congolese President Joseph Kabila, hoping to show he’s not reliant on the blue helmets, wants the force to go in 2011. Almost every outside analyst thinks that this could precipitate a disaster, with militias running rampant, the hopeless Congolese army unable to cope and the country’s neighbors moving in to gobble up territory.
The UN hopes that it will be able to keep at least some troops – maybe about 6,000, compared to the current 20,000 – to protect civilians in the especially vulnerable eastern Congo. This would do some good, but how much? The peacekeepers were thoroughly outmaneuvered by militias in the east in 2008, and I’m not sure that a reduced presence could do more than stifle low-level violence. What is to be done?
Over at World Politics Review, David Axe quotes Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings, who argues that the U.S. and its friends should tell Mr. Kabila (still in a very precarious position) that it’s time for more peacekeepers, not fewer:
“Ideally, we’d see an entire American brigade, but that’s not realistic. Barring that, how about a battalion doing a mission along the lines of Special Forces, doing intelligence-gathering and planning? . . . That would enable a country like France, which is not as globally committed but is afraid to stick its neck out [to deploy troops]. We need more Western forces. There’s not much of an alternative if the mission is to do what it was designed do.”
I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, although I applaud O’Hanlon’s advocating an idealistic but unpopular line. France is trying to cut back its presence in Africa, and there are huge obstacles to it playing a role in the Great Lakes region – the locals haven’t forgotten the questionable French part in the Rwandan genocide.
But I think that there may be a broader fallacy here: the idea that getting new combat forces into the Congo is what’s needed in the first place. Yes, the UN has struggled with 20,000 troops – but as I think O’Hanlon himself once noted, you might need up to 200,000 to stabilize somewhere on the scale of Congo. Rather than focus on numbers, I’d try to see if there are any light-weight ways the U.S. can affect the political decision-making of Mr. Kabila and his neighbors (especially the hawkish Rwandans).
Here’s one possible formula. While the UN should maintain the 6,000 troops on active protection duties, the U.S. should deploy around 100 military observers to operate in the UN framework. Why? The UN already has a bunch of observers in Congo, and the U.S. is said to have spooks and special forces in the east. But American colonels and captains publicly monitoring the situation would send a clear message to the Congolese and their neighbors that Washington wants calm. This American mini-presence would also play a tripwire role: it’s one thing to outflank and embarrass standard UN infantry, but quite another to play games in front of U.S. observers.
What makes this option half-credible is that the Obama administration has already thought about sending more military staff officers on UN missions – the President said so himself last year – so this idea is not too far from current policy. That said, the U.S. has just 10 military experts in UN operations at present (the figures are here). 2 of them are in the Congo. The Pentagon is rumored to be unenthusiastic about helping the UN – but 100 personnel is not beyond the realms of the possible. They don’t need to be O’Hanlon’s green berets… though that would be nice.
I don’t think that 100 Europeans would have the same effect. China, which has invested a lot in the Congo, could send more observers or regular troops and reinforce the American message. I can see this proposal running into lots of quibbles, but it might be just the low-cost, high-profile help the UN needs in Congo now.
UPDATE: the Security Council agreed the first reduction of the DRC force today.
