by Charlie Edwards | Aug 3, 2008 | UK
I can’t be the only one scratching my head at the Conservative Party’s summer holiday reading list. It’s week 2 of silly season, I grant you, and journalists will take pretty much anything on offer, but this just smacks of column filling (that said perhaps some of the larger tomes will act as wind breakers and/or sun shades on the beach).
According to the Sunday Times the reading list was chosen by Keith Simpson, a shadow foreign affairs spokesman and a former lecturer at Cranfield and Sandhurst. This is clearly reflected in his choice of reading material as 24 of the 38 books are on military history, geography, and terrorism. Nudge, the book currently feted by all three political parties looks like a definite afterthought.
What I find so puzzling is the choice of books on offer. I really can’t believe Cameron will be leafing through Empires of the Sea or Five Days in London on his hols.
There are no decent books on China (the more recent by Will Hutton, Charles Grant and Mark Leonard). What about Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody; Diplomacy by Henry Kissenger, or Thomas Rick’s Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005? The list of good books is endless – this list is meaningless.
MPs have approximately 11 weeks off, so here’s how they might spend their summer holiday (according to Keith Simpson):
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by Charlie Edwards | Jul 30, 2008 | Conflict and security, UK
Readers of GD will be familiar with my/ our claims that the focus on international terrorism has often been to the detriment of other risks. So interesting to note Richard Mottram comments in the FT recently on the relationship between science, technology and terrorism. From the FT:
The challenge will be to engage a broad range of scientists in the fight against terrorism, without causing an unhealthy imbalance in the scientific enterprise. For instance, the billions of dollars spent by the US government on biodefence over the past few years may have distracted researchers from the fight against infectious diseases. The risk of a flu pandemic – or the emergence of a lethal new disease – is far greater than of a large-scale bioterrorist attack. While there is some scientific crossover between the expertise needed to fight natural and man-made epidemics, it is important to allocate research resources on a balanced view of the risks we face globally.
There’s also an interesting paragraph on why intelligence should draw more on scientific advice:
One lesson to learn from the episode over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is the importance of ensuring that intelligence analysis and assessment draw on expert scientific advice – and more broadly on the scepticism at the heart of the scientific method. Experts should never again be frozen out of intelligence assessments whose outcome may make the difference between war and peace, as they were in the run- up to the Iraq war.
by Alex Evans | Jul 28, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
It’s been his campaign’s policy since October last year, but in case you needed reassurance, here’s what Obama’s July 15 speech on foreign policy had to say about energy security (one of five national security priorities – the others being “ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; … and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century”):
One of the most dangerous weapons in the world today is the price of oil. We ship nearly $700 million a day to unstable or hostile nations for their oil. It pays for terrorist bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut. It funds petro-diplomacy in Caracas and radical madrasas from Karachi to Khartoum. It takes leverage away from America and shifts it to dictators.
This immediate danger is eclipsed only by the long-term threat from climate change, which will lead to devastating weather patterns, terrible storms, drought, and famine. That means people competing for food and water in the next fifty years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Most disastrously, that could mean destructive storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline.
This is not just an economic issue or an environmental concern – this is a national security crisis. For the sake of our security – and for every American family that is paying the price at the pump – we must end this dependence on foreign oil. And as President, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Small steps and political gimmickry just won’t do. I’ll invest $150 billion over the next ten years to put America on the path to true energy security. This fund will fast track investments in a new green energy business sector that will end our addiction to oil and create up to 5 million jobs over the next two decades, and help secure the future of our country and our planet. We’ll invest in research and development of every form of alternative energy – solar, wind, and biofuels, as well as technologies that can make coal clean and nuclear power safe. And from the moment I take office, I will let it be known that the United States of America is ready to lead again.
Never again will we sit on the sidelines, or stand in the way of global action to tackle this global challenge. I will reach out to the leaders of the biggest carbon emitting nations and ask them to join a new Global Energy Forum that will lay the foundation for the next generation of climate protocols. We will also build an alliance of oil-importing nations and work together to reduce our demand, and to break the grip of OPEC on the global economy. We’ll set a goal of an 80% reduction in global emissions by 2050. And as we develop new forms of clean energy here at home, we will share our technology and our innovations with all the nations of the world.
It’s a much more progressive target than the G8 was able to come up with: at Hokkaido, the most leaders could manage was “at least 50%”. It’s more in line with the IPCC, too, which says that to limit temperature increase to between 2.0 and 2.4 degrees C, the 2050 reduction needed is between 50 and 85 per cent: so assuming you want 2.0 rather than 2.4, and adding in the rate of sink failure as well, we should certainly be looking at closer to an 85 than a 50 per cent reduction by 2050 (see page 15 of this).
And lest you wonder, yup, he’s talking about 80 per cent below 1990 levels, rather than the 2000 levels (which would be a lot less demanding). Here’s his campaign’s full energy policy brief.
by Charlie Edwards | Jul 25, 2008 | UK
I’ve just given a talk to 120 + senior officers at the Australian Command and Staff College on national security. My talk was deliberately aimed at the strategic level and focused on three interrelated areas: the new geography of risk, the connecting the dots concept, and the system vulnerabilities associated with strategic myopia.
The Australian and British defence establishments face many similar issues but one in particular shines out: the lack of a strategic capability in the system, in the sense that the connections between the tactical and operational levels are often separate to, and removed from, the strategic decision making cycle (hence the failings of the current defence planning assumptions). This, I realise, is hardly new and experts more qualified than I have talked at length about the sub-strategic behaviour that characterises much of UK Defence. But as I made clear in my talk this morning this is not a criticism of an individual. It is a recognition that the system is broke.
However a window of opportunity is about to present itself (possibly). Plans are afoot to recruit a new Director of Strategy at the MoD this autumn. There is a slim possibility that Des Browne may be moved in a summer reshuffle. Both these ‘opportunities’ must be set against the background of cuts in the defence budget – something like £5 Billion over the next three years. Taken together all three things offer the MoD a real opportunity to refocus, rearm (metaphorically) and redeploy.
But this will require a new Minister to have an ‘open mind’. The very worst thing that could happen is for Gordon Brown to chose a ‘safe pair of hands’. Given current circumstances this may sound counter-intuitive, but bear with me. There is probably 22 months or so before a General Election. Short-termism and political expediency dictates an experienced operator should ‘hold the fort’ for the remaining period but given the current political, operational and military climate that would be suicide – lots of things need to change now not post 2010.
The MoD has long been considered a political backwater for aspiring politicians, by Labour MPs especially. Education, health and latterly development have been the portfolios of choice. But the MoD is crying out for change – a (youngish) Minister with an open mind is the best bet for the future of UK Defence, not a tired ‘safe pair of hands’ riding out his last term in office.
by Alex Evans | Jul 24, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, North America
Last year, while she was still working as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair of international security at West Point – and shortly before she went to the State Department as deputy head of policy planning – Kori Schake wrote a pamphlet for the Center for European Reform entitled The US Elections and Europe: The coming crisis of high expectations.
In it, she argued that in order to avoid such a crisis, and to capitalise on the change of leadership in the US,
Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic need to adjust their sights. Any changes that the new American president introduces on issues that matter to Europe – Iran or climate change – will be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Europeans and Americans will need to find a way to talk about Iraq in terms that resonate with both sides and do not belittle the continuing US involvement. The US feels alone in bearing the burden of Iraq, and Americans tend to gloss over the political price their European allies paid for supporting the war.
Europeans will also need to find ways of reminding the US of their comparative value as allies. Americans are likely to enter into one of their periodic fits of searching for better allies than the Europeans.
As Europe waits breathlessly for Obama’s set-piece speech in Berlin, this sounds like sage advice (particularly given the gentle dressing down that the Germans can apparently expect on troop commitments in Afghanistan). But there’s another reason to read Kori’s pamphlet, too: she’s now one of the key foreign policy advisers to John McCain.
