by Alex Evans | Jun 14, 2008 | Conflict and security
It’s not often that you expect clothes shopping in Covent Garden to turn into a lesson on defence procurement. But as I emerged from Reiss feeling pleased with my new acquisitions, what should I see above my head but the Royal Air Force flaunting theirs?
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqEBR9shy6A]
This being the year of the RAF’s 90th birthday, they really pulled the stops out for the annual Trooping the Colour flypast, which included a Lancaster bomber, an E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft, a Hercules, a C-17, no less than 17 Tornado F3s – and 9 brand spanking new fresh-out-of-the-box Eurofighter Typhoons.
But it seemed like something was missing. I scratched my head. Where were the Harriers?
Duh – silly me. They’re in Afghanistan, obviously, because – unlike the new Typhoons – they’re actually useful in the kinds of war that Britain fights these days. Still, never let practicality get in the way of fun new playthings where defence procurement is concerned, eh readers? As Ann Winterton observed in the House of Commons last year,
I am often reminded of the phrase “boys and toys” when I hear about the huge expenditure on procurement in the UK’s defence budget, not least because I have always believed that it is not what we spend but how we spend it that is more important.
For example, the RAF’s budget is haemorrhaging because of the Eurofighter—that fantastically expensive creation of European integration—and if we enter into tranche 3, which will provide for ground attack, the aircraft will be too fast to be of any use as close air support in counter-insurgency work.
A point neatly proved earlier today, methinks. Happy birthday, RAF.
by Alex Evans | Jun 14, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Economics and development
At a seminar held yesterday as part of IPPR’s Commission on National Security, we got onto a discussion of how far aid donors still need to go in sorting out their approach on conflict prevention. The problem isn’t with the specialist departments that deal with conflict within donor agencies – which are often excellent (e.g. the CHASE department in DFID) – but rather with long-term systemic issue areas that just aren’t mainstreamed properly throughout donors’ work. For me, four spring to mind.
First, governance. I’ve written about this at length before on GD, and I still think the same now. When European donors think governance, they think about techie work in the executive branch: public financial management, anti-corruption commissions, that sort of thing. What they overlook is the politics: elections, what happens in the smoke-filled rooms of the ruling party, the process of bargaining between states and citizens. And it’s here that conflict risk – or risk reduction – is often to be found.
Second, resilience. Many donors have great work underway on specific areas of resilience – like peacebuilding, adaptation to climate change or disaster risk reduction. But donors often fail to identify the syngergies between these different kinds of resilience work – as International Alert did in their report on climate adaptation and peacebuilding last year. How about a more joined-up approach across the board that focuses really hard on identifying the sources of resilience in different developing countries, and then working to build them up? After all, about the only thing that’s clear about the next couple of decades is that they’ll be increasingly turbulent. You wouldn’t know it from looking at donors’ country programmes.
Third, scarcity. Disputes over land in Kenya; water as a threat multiplier in Darfur; riots over food and energy prices in more than 30 countries this year alone; the looming shadow of climate change. Scarcity issues are set to become one of the principal obstacles to achieving the MDGs, and a major source of increased conflict risk. Helping partner countries to manage competing claims to scarce resources – at all levels from local to global – should be a core competence in donors’ policy and programme work alike. Is it? Nope.
Fourth, counter-insurgency and fourth generation warfare. Whether you’re looking at the Taliban in Afghanistan, MEND in Nigeria, drug lords in Mexico or organised crime in the Balkans, there are plenty of participants in the ‘global bazaar of violence’ who are interested in hollowing out weak states – not the same as causing them to collapse, as Daniel and I were discussing earlier this week – so as to give them the space and legitimacy to operate as they want. Alas, it’s the military coming up with the really innovative approaches on this – not aid donors.
As should already be clear, these aren’t so much new agendas for aid donors, as cross-cutting ones: involving joining up the dots between current areas of work, being willing to take more risks, and realising that being an effective donor in the 21st century is as much about influence and the quality of your people as it’s about cash.
They also involve forging a lot of new, more coherent relationships: with new donors (like the Gates Foundation); with new country players (like China); and – perhaps most of all – with other parts of government (c.f. DFID and the the Foreign Office).
But here’s a key point: it’s crucial that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I always hesitate when I hear people in the UK calling for DFID to be merged back into the Foreign Office, or for the International Development Act to be revised or scrapped. True, there are [numerous] times when DFID needs to interpret its poverty reduction mission with a bit more verve and imagination. But remember why it was necessary in the first place to make DFID independent and to create the Act to protect it.
We do need a more substantive conversation about joining up the dots on aid and foreign policy – both in Britain and internationally – in order to get better at conflict prevention. But before we can start it, there need to be some upfront guarantees of no sliding back to aid being a tool for pursuing narrow, short-term national interests.
by David Steven | Jun 13, 2008 | Conflict and security, North America
I have nothing against John McCain. The man is a war hero. He has carved out a distinctive career as a political maverick. And his support for the surge in Iraq showed a willingness to stake out a position that, at the time, seemed politically suicidal.
But McCain keeps saying stupid things. In March, he wasn’t clear whether condoms prevent HIV (they don’t – but that’s another story), while ten days ago, when Obama finally slayed Grendel’s wife, he gave the worst speech I have ever seen. (Fox’s reaction was priceless, while you can watch McCain’s ‘lime green’ speech here if you missed it.)
This week, McCain has been in trouble for his assertion that bringing American troops home from Iraq was “not too important.” Here’s the full quote:
Interviewer: And a lot of people say the surge is now working.
McCain: Anybody who knows the facts on the ground will say that.
Interviewer: If it’s working Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?
McCain: No. (Shrug.) But that’s not too important. What’s important are the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.
All this echoes his remarks from January, when in response to a question, he advocated keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years if casualties could be eliminated – a way of controlling “a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training and equipping and recruiting and motivating people every single day.”
Again, McCain took US troop presence in Korea and Japan as yardstick for what the US could achieve in Iraq, echoing the Bush administration’s desire for a network of permanent bases in the country.
What’s the problem with this vision? Apart from its improbability, there’s the evidence that suggests that an enduring US presence would be highly likely to provoke an equally enduring campaign of suicide bombing.
Someone should therefore ask McCain – how many suicide attacks does he want?
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by David Steven | Jun 12, 2008 | Global system, South Asia
Last week, I gave a talk at the Defence Academy on the new public diplomacy, focusing in particular on its implications for Afghanistan.
The full text is after the jump or read it as a pdf.
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by Alex Evans | Jun 12, 2008 | Conflict and security, Influence and networks
Things keep going from bad to worse in Naples, where the piles of uncollected rubbish are still heaped up. Last week, the head of a waste disposal firm turned ‘super-witness’ – who was due to testify about links between corrupt politicians and the Camorra, Naples’ mafia – was gunned down in the street. According to John Hooper in the Guardian:
The Carabinieri, the military police, said yesterday the killing was impossible to reconstruct because no one would admit to having seen it. However, after a search for bullets and casings, they concluded that at least 18 shots were fired from two 9mm-calibre automatics. Orsi was hit twice in the chest and once in the head, suggesting that, in classic mafia style, he was given a “coup de grace” by one of the killers as he lay dying.
Why the Camorra’s interest in trash? Because they’re big players in the sector, Hooper explains – not least in illegally dumping toxic waste which they truck down from the north of Italy. That’s also why the people in and around Naples are opposed to the government’s plan to build incinerators to get rid of the rubbish backlog; they figure that the Camorra would take them over within about ten minutes, and use them to burn the toxic stuff too.
Meanwhile, Mexico‘s also sliding. Last month, the country’s acting chief of police was gunned down. According to the Economist:
One of his bodyguards, who was also wounded, managed to wrestle the police chief’s assailant to the ground and arrest him. Mr Millán was conscious for long enough to ask his killer who was behind the hit, but died before he could get a reply. The answer to his question, provided later by investigators, helps cast some light on why it is so hard to end drug-related violence in Mexico. They say that his assassin was sent by José Antonio Montes Garfias, another federal police officer.
The week leading up to May 13 saw 113 murders in Mexico, including 17 in just one day – and estimates of total deaths due to organised crime range from 1,100 to 2,500 people this year. 2,700 federal troops have now been deployed. As the Economist concludes, “the war on drugs has never seemed less like a metaphor”. And here’s the real catch: “success in disrupting drug cartels only leads to more violence as gang members fight to fill power vacuums and continue to supply the ever-lucrative drug market”. (See also John Robb’s recent write-up.)
In Naples and Ciudad Juarez alike, organised crime’s basic stance towards the state is the same as you’d find with Hezbollah in Lebanon, MEND in Nigeria or the Taliban in Afghanistan. The aim is not to cause the collapse of ‘official’ governance. Rather, it’s to keep the state ‘hollowed out’: so short of capacity and legitimacy that insurgents or organised crime can step into the gap, and then not only operate freely, but also start building up legitimacy powerbases of their own (c.f. another example of the Camorra in action).
