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 Charlie Edwards | May 20, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Influence and networks
I’ve just been sent an invitation from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) to their Land Warfare Conference (VIII). It strikes me (an idea not the invite) that this should be an illuminating and insightful conference – certainly worth the £800 ‘I’ would have to fork out. The conference agenda is ambitious:
examine the role of armed forces in helping to defuse complex crises in the world today and will ask how the Army, the government and the nation at large can better support its soldiers to meet the challenges of these operational theatres
But it doesn’t take long, while reading through the conference agenda, to become thoroughly depressed. This is a conference for the Army by the Army.
While it’s important for the armed forces to discuss their respective roles, debate the merits of new doctrine and network with like minded souls, surely if you are serious about wanting to understand the role of the armed forces in defusing complex crises it would be sensible to look beyond MoD HQ, and the General Staff to other organisations and individuals who play a role. At the very least invite speakers from DFID, or USAID, the Red Cross or perhaps a senior police officer – after all as the armed forces constantly remind us their role is to create the space for political, economic and social change to flourish – so one might think having some other views around the table might be useful.
by Alex Evans | May 19, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global system
What can you do but shake your head in wonderment at the debacle over the UK government’s £800m Environmental Transformation Fund? As John Vidal reported in the Guardian on Saturday, the initial idea seemed such a good one:
The UK environmental transformation fund was announced by the prime minister to international acclaim in November 2007, and was widely expected to be made in direct grants to countries experiencing extreme droughts, storms and sea level rise associated with climate change
But now, a small detail has emerge: the Fund’s cash is in fact loans rather than aid – so they’ll have to be repaid with interest by developing countries. Odd, then, that Gordon Brown forgot to say so when trumpeting the Fund in his climate speech last year, and that International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander also overlooked it when he came to CIC to speak on climate change last month.
As the Guardian reports, it seems the problem lies not with DFID or Defra, but with the Treasury, which overruled both departments. This makes it astonishing that Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling should have co-authored an FT comment piece on the Fund with US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson back in February – which said nothing whatsoever about loans, instead giving a clear impression that the money would be given as grant aid.
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by Daniel Korski | May 14, 2008 | Conflict and security, Influence and networks
Last night I had dinner with a group of security experts and sat next to Chatham House’s Robin Niblett . We got to talking about the role of Ministers and how they seem to struggle with their role in overseeing today’s counter-insurgency missions i.e. operations like in Iraq. They shy away from detail, but are forced into minutiae by events. They go for headline-grabbing figures – like withdrawal numbers – that rarely materialise. They oversell missions – does anyone remember John Reid’s comment that British soldiers would not fire a shot in Helmand? You get the point.
However, is this any different from the past; and if so, why?
Even a cursory reading of Churchill’s memoirs or those of any of his wartime colleagues (like his defense chief, Lord Alanbrooke) leaves you with the impression that no detail was too small, no maneuver too inconsequential for the PM to take an interest – and, frequently, a direct role. As we know, this did not always have the intended beneficial effects, but the PM’s involvement was clear, all-pervasive – and ultimately crucial for Britain’s war-time effort.
But in the 1950s, 60s and 70s as Britain fought countless battles against Soviet-backed, liberation movements – the heyday of counter-insurgency – the role of Whitehall seemed to decrease. Decisions were delegated to theatre level, as in the Malay campaign. It was only when the Troubles began – and the fight was brought home – that the day-to-day involvement of Whitehall began to increase.
But besides Northern Ireland, the Cold War did not include – indeed require – day-to-day ministerial oversight. Plans were laid to roll back a Red Army advance and the PM had to write a letter to submarine commanders bearing instructions for nuclear retaliation. But there was no day-today role. The Falklands War was may have been an exception to this hands-off, strategy-focused Cold War role.
In the modern world, however, wars like the Iraq War are fast-paced, cost billions of pounds, risk the lives of hundreds of soldiers and can cost ministers their careers. This drives greater ministerial involvement in decision-making than before. But, on the other hand, the complexity – and sometimes brutality – of modern counter-insurgency means many ministers are reluctant to get too involved in decisions, lest they be blamed for the choices made by a soldier in Basra or a diplomat in Kandahar. (more…)
by Daniel Korski | Apr 29, 2008 | Conflict and security, Economics and development, UK
Despite having practically invented modern counter-insurgency, today Britain is woefully ill-equipped for this kind of complex, mosaic-style warfare. The Times, echoing David’s post from a few days ago, has picked up on the problems Britain has in spending money in places like Afghanistan.
As readers will know, even though the Labour government sought to overcome the problems of “departmentalism” in 1997 with the promotion of “joined-up” government and the creation of cross-departmental funding mechanisms, through the Global Conflict Pools, one of its main innovations – the creation of a stand-alone Department for International Development – militated against the kind of close civil-military cooperation necessary in post-conflict operations.
This stands in sharp contrast to the U.S, which – led by David Petraeus and his band of “neo-coins” – has revamped its approach entirely.
How to solve the problem in Britain is contentious issue, which I debated on the Guardian website a few weeks ago (see here and here).
The only way to resolve it is to rewrite the International Development Act. Yes, I know that the Act itself does not prevent DfiD from spending funds, but it creates a cultural ethos inside the department, which militates again the necessary kind of flexibility and cooperative links with the military.
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