Economics for a world with limits
Text of speech by Alex Evans to Institute for New Economic Thinking annual conference at Bretton Woods; the YouTube video is here. (April 2011)
Soul searching on Chinese foreign policy
ECFR and the Asia Centre have a new edition of China Analysis just out which is on the question of whether China has become too bold in its dealings with the rest of the world – and focuses, rather intriguingly, on some of the apparently quite charged debates that Chinese policymakers are having among themselves on this theme.
Some of the key themes to emerge, they say, are:
- Alarm about a trend towards triumphalism and confrontational behaviour in dealing with both the USA and Asian states over the past year, and the belief in some quarters that “2010 was unequivocally a year of losses for China,” during which its relationships with everyone – except the Europeans and North Korea – deteriorated
- Concern that Chinese insensitivity might encourage other countries to form balancing coalitions against China – noting, for example, astute US exploitation of Beijing’s recent disputes with neighbours, for example over the South China Sea
- A sense that Chinese foreign policy has become internally divisive because nobody is driving it – not even the foreign ministry
- An unprecedented degree of confidence in the inevitability of China’s rise, despite its foreign policy problems; a feeling that China’s future on the world stage will be determined by its own choices, rather than by anyone else
Download the pdf here.
Ban and Cathy: soulmates?
How did the EU and UN go from being run by these guys…
…to their current leaders?
Having written a fair bit about the UN’s Ban Ki-moon and EU’s Catherine Ashton in the past, I’ve done a piece for the European Voice comparing their leadership styles…
Ban and Ashton have both received frequent criticism for their diplomatic styles, which are strikingly similar. Both are widely agreed to be genuinely decent, hard-working officials. But both are also naturally cautious and have said they prefer ‘quiet diplomacy’ to headline-hogging strategic initiatives.
Each has sometimes struggled to escape the shadows of their generally well-respected predecessors. Ban lacks Kofi Annan’s charm while Ashton does not manoeuvre around Brussels as easily as Javier Solana.
This is not just a matter of personalities. While journalists are not particularly sympathetic to Ban and Ashton’s plight, historians may conclude that their careers were shaped by a common dilemma: how to adapt multilateral institutions to an era in which Western powers are diminished, if as yet far from dead.
Read the rest of my argument here.
Afterthought: look closely at Kofi and Ban in the pictures above. It looks like they’re wearing the same tie. Did Kofi leave it behind in the office?
The right mix for humanitarian intervention
I’ve posted a piece on the BBC Editors’ Blog about Libya, Ivory Coast and humanitarian intervention.
Since the foreign military intervention began in Libya in early March, The World Tonight has been airing the debate over why action is being taken in Libya and not other countries, such as Ivory Coast.
Over the past decade, we have covered the waxing, in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, of so-called humanitarian or liberal intervention, and its waning in the wake of the Iraq invasion in 2003. It is never a simple case of the international community intervening to protect civilians who are victims of repression from their own governments. If it were, we would have seen foreign forces going into such countries as Sri Lanka or Burma as well as Sierra Leone and former Yugoslavia.
How will more UK aid reduce poverty in fragile, corrupt and ‘non-free’ places?
A new report, covered by the UK Guardian says that DFID, the UK aid agency, needs to be careful ‘to minimize fraud and corruption risks’ as it spends more aid money in fragile states.
You don’t say…
In the week of its release in March, the UKAID/DFID Bilateral Aid Review or BAR as it’s called gathered considerable attention. Everyone has done their sift through and given their two cents worth (and here’s one or two or three).
Lawrence Haddad and myself have been unpacking the BAR since its release with IDS colleagues, Henrique Conca Bussacos and Pui Yan Wong.
We’ve tried to take a more detailed and closer look at what the spend means for global poverty reduction.
We have placed an excel file on line (here) and the ppt graphs that tell the story (Asia here, and Africa here) to accompany this blog in the interests of others delving into our analysis and challenging it if there’s a different story to tell or we’ve made a mistake.