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 Daniel Korski | Jun 11, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security
Do interventions work? With the vicissitudes of the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions and conflict returning to the Balkans, it is hard to answer in the positive. But the always well-read Nick Grono of ICG alerted me yesterday to this fascinating report – Human Security Brief 2007.
Against current wisdoms, it says that conflict in Africa has dropped dramatically:
Between 1999 and 2006 (the most recent year for which we have complete data), sub-Saharan Africa’s security landscape was transformed. The number of armed conflicts being fought in the region fell by more than half. The number of people being killed dropped even more steeply—by 2006 the annual battle-death toll was just 2 percent of that of 1999.
It goes on to say that while in 2002 there were 26 non-state conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, this number has dropped by more than half across the region, and their death tolls had fallen by some 70 percent.
Why is this happening? Because of international intervention:
Research suggests that the drivers of this remarkable decline in armed conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa are to be found not in long-term structural change, but in the post-Cold War surge of policy initiatives designed to stop wars (“peacemaking”) or prevent them from starting again (“postconflict peacebuilding”).
So despite the poor coordination, underpowered missions, occasionally illegal activities of UN soldiers, the lack of political will to push through large-scale peace-deals etc. etc. intervention actually works.
by Daniel Korski | Jun 9, 2008 | Conflict and security, Economics and development, Middle East and North Africa
Audit results of Iraq’s 2007 oil sales and revenue flow conducted by Ernst & Young questioned 13.8 million barrels of oil produced but unaccounted for last year; a continued lack of metering throughout the oil value chain; $849 million deposited the wrong place etc. etc.
As Cassablanca’s Captain Renault would have said: I’m shocked, shocked to find that corruption is going on.
by Daniel Korski | Jun 9, 2008 | Conflict and security, Influence and networks
Simon Jenkins has a good piece in the Sunday Times about the decreasing willingness to contemplate humanitarian intervention. The humanitarian creed, he says:
can no longer override considerations of state sovereignty and the natural caution of diplomats and generals.
While opposing every intervention known to man, Jenkins goes on to lament:
This noble cause has vanished in the wind. Almost before it is put to the test it is gone. The failure to intervene in Darfur and the deference shown to the dictators of Burma and Zimbabwe indicate a pendulum swinging fast in the other direction.
It is not hard to see why the negativity. The West has failed to intervene in Burma and ships are now being forced to return after waiting in vain. The EU military mission in Chad was originally conceived by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner as a repeat of the U.S safe zone created in the Kurdish areas in Iraq. But instead of a mandate to go into Sudan, it has had to sit on the Chadian side of the border. Problems, of course, plague missions in Iraq and Afghanistan while Kosovo refuses to solve itself.
But Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan argued against this pessimism in the Washington Post last year.
America has frequently used force on behalf of principles and tangible interests, and that is not likely to change.
The duo behind the League of Democracies, remind readers that the U.S has intervened between 1989 and 2001 with significant military force on eight occasions — once every 18 months. This interventionism, they go on, has been bipartisan — four interventions were launched by Republican administrations, four by Democratic administrations. The implication: interventionism is here to stay. It is as much a part of international politics as state sovereignty.
I have to say I agree with Daalder and Kagan. The West is only temporarily numbed by recent failures, as well as being logistically constrained because of troop overstretch. True, in Europe few governments seem willing to spend the necessary funds on the required military and civilian capability. True, the U.S electorate is in a particularly sour mood, to the extent that more Europeans now support democracy-promotion than Americans.
But this will pass. And once a new U.S president begins a draw-down in Iraq – a policy I expect from both Senators McCain and Obama – and surge in Afghanistan – again something to expect form both – the balance of sentiment will be re-calibrated in favour of intervention.
However, we need a re-definition of interventionism, a Chicago speech for the new post-Iraq millennium. And David Milliband is the man to give it, in my view.
