by Charlie Edwards | Jan 25, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia, North America, UK
In the heady days of the late 1990s, European defence was the subject of choice for journalists, academics and think tanks. Then in 2002 it all went phut. No one I’ve spoken to knows why. The most obvious reason – the attacks on 9/11 and the shift in focus on international terrorism – actually sparked more debate about Europe’s role in security and defence. But then, the constant hum of debate on European defence that had been the backdrop to the 80’s , 90’s and early naughties suddenly became a quiet whimper of hostility – between those Europhiles who favoured closer defence cooperation but were resigned to listening to agonising debates about the future of the A400M on one hand, and on the other, those Atlanticists who warned about the costs of such an enterprise (famously summed up by Albright’s 3 Ds – no diminution discrimination and duplication of the alliance), but wanted Europe to get some balls and share the burden with the US.
This year however could see European defence back on the agenda as Philip Stephens comments in today’s FT:
Out of sight, the governments of Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown are quietly discussing the terms of a new accord on European defence. Behind the seemingly arcane discussions on military planning cells, collaborative procurement, interoperability and shared capabilities lies a deep strategic truth exposed by the war in Iraq.
Offered assurances by Mr Sarkozy that nothing much need be said publicly while the treaty is going through the British parliament, Mr Brown has approved the preparatory work. Perhaps more significantly the mood within 10 Downing Street has changed. Mr Brown’s disdain for Europe was summed up by his decision to arrive late for the official signing of the Lisbon treaty, adding his name to the text in unsplendid isolation. Those close to him now say he was badly advised. His officials, prone to tell the prime minister what he likes to hear, had not properly explained the important symbolism of the moment. Mr Brown was badly jolted by the reaction in other European capitals, not least Berlin.
I’m not sure about the rest of the article as I think the briefing(s) may have been heavily weighted in favour of Whitehall’s view of the future. But aside from 2008 being the year of the rat and potato, it is also the tenth anniversary of St Malo – the great Anlgo-French defence agreement. In order for St Malo II to be meaningful the discussion should, in my mind, focus only on capabilities and implementation rather than vacuous rhetoric about Mars and Venus or the future of transatlantic relations (remember, Britain is no longer the bridge between Europe and America – we’re a global hub).
The FT have kicked off the debate today, and the think tank CER have the first of many seminars this year on the subject. But please let’s first focus on the practicalities of European defence – not the politics of a European project that could always do more.
by Alex Evans | Jan 15, 2008 | Conflict and security
The NY Times has this sorry tale:
Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army. This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”
Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it. “Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”
Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”
In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him. “Who did I take fire from?” he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively “engaged the targets.” He shook. He also cried. “I felt very bad for him,” Detective Andersen said.
Thing is, this kind of story has been amply predicted by 4GW theorists like Bill Lind and John Robb. Here, for instance, is Lind – writing over a year ago – on the ‘boomerang effect‘:
When a state involves itself in 4GW over there, it lays a basis for 4GW at home. That is true even if it wins over there, and all the more true if it loses, as states usually do. The toxic fallout from America’s 4GW defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan will be far greater than most people expect, and it will fall most heavily on America’s police.
And as Lind explains in the same article, highly trained servicemen suffering from post-traumatic stress are the least of the police’s worries. What about those with a grudge against the government that sent them to war?
One of the things U.S. troops are learning in Iraq is how people with little training and few resources can fight a state. Most American troops will see this within the framework of counterinsurgency. But a minority will apply their new-found knowledge in a very different way. After they return to the U.S. and leave the military, they will take what they learned in Iraq back to the inner cities, to the ethnic groups, gangs, and other alternate loyalties they left when they joined the service. There, they will put their new knowledge to work, in wars with each other and wars against the American state. It will not be long before we see police squad cars getting hit with IEDs and other techniques employed by Iraqi insurgents, right here in the streets of American cities.
I know this thought – not to speak of the reality when it happens – will be shocking to some readers. To anyone who really understands Fourth Generation war, it should not be. Fourth Generation war does not merely work on the will of a state’s political leaders, as some theorists have said. It does something far more powerful. It pulls an opposing state apart at the moral level.
The Bush administration, as usual, has it exactly backwards. The danger is not that the “terrorists” we are fighting in Iraq will come here if we pull out there. Rather, American involvement in 4GW in Iraq will create “terrorism” here from among the people we have sent to fight the war there. Well educated in the ways of successful insurgency, they will come home embittered by a lost war, by friends dead and crippled for life to no purpose. Thanks to America’s de-industrialization, they will return to no jobs, or lousy “service” jobs at minimum wage. Angry, frustrated and futureless, some of them will find new identities and loyalties in gangs and criminal enterprises, where they can put their new talents to work.
It will, of course, be only a small minority of returning troops who will go this route. But something else they will have learned from the Iraqi insurgents, along with how to make and deploy IEDs, is that it takes very few people to create and sustain an insurgency.
by Mark Weston | Jan 8, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa
Iran has taken a leaf out of its sworn enemies’ book by building a wall to keep out the PJAK, the PKK’s Iranian wing whose emergence I mentioned on here a couple of months back. Unlike the downright ugly walls America and Israel have built to keep out their enemies, Iran has at least decorated its wall, albeit with large photographs of frowning mullahs.
Iraq’s Kurds, not surprisingly, are upset that every time they glance east they will be met with the hostile glare of Ayatollah Khomeini, but the latter’s successors presumably think that what’s good enough for Israel is good enough for them. Trouble is, as this succinct analysis of the West Bank monstrosity shows, people find ways to get around, over or under walls. If it wants a long-term solution to the problem, Iran, like Israel and America, will have to confront the grievances of those it is trying to keep out. Planting bricks in the desert will solve nothing.
by Alex Evans | Jan 7, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, East Asia and Pacific
This year’s G8 summit is brought to you by Japan, who as David Pilling reports have decided to hold the event in a uniquely Japanese-sounding venue: the Windsor Hotel on Hokkaido.
As with the Germany G8 at Heiligendamm last year, Japan plans to put climate change front and centre – an issue on which, Pilling reports, “Japan likes to feel it has strong leadership credentials”.
Japan has among the world’s most advanced energy-saving technology and lent its name to the Kyoto Protocol, a breakthrough agreement, albeit a flawed one. That gives it the moral authority, officials say, to act as a bridge between the far-flung positions of the US, Europe, China and India.
But, he goes on, that strategy is not without challenges:
Japanese officials admit that their “bridging” strategy is fraught with difficulties. At home, the government is handcuffed by the intransigent attitude of business, which insists on voluntary cuts rather than mandatory targets reinforced by a carbon tax. Partly as a result, Japan is far from achieving its Kyoto targets and is likely to make up much of the difference by buying emission rights.
The debate is also moving very quickly, say officials. The growing scientific and political consensus on the urgency of tackling global warming could rapidly make Tokyo’s emphasis on technology and voluntary national targets out of date. Some Japanese officials say that, by July, serious discussion may well have shifted to the cap-and-trade mechanisms favoured by Europe.
International development, too, figures heavily among Japanese priorities. Fletcher Tembo has a good discussion of this on the Overseas Development Institute’s blog, where he observes that while the midpoint for the Millennium Development Goals has just passed, levels of aid to developing countries still haven’t increased significantly – at least, not after debt relief (supposed in theory to be additional to aid) and aid to Afghanistan and Iraq have been taken off the balance sheet.
But in practice, there’s every chance that events will buffet the Japanese agenda – especially if oil prices continue their upward march and the solvency crunch continues to worsen. Meantime, the elephant in the room continues to be: how substantive a discussion of climate and energy is it actually possible to have without China and India as full participants (rather than guests invited for canapes)? Quite a challenge for Yasuo Fukuda, the new PM – Japan’s third in a year…
PS. As preparations for the summit (to be held from 7 – 9 July) get going in earnest, the best website to watch will – as ever – be that of the G8 Information Centre at the University of Toronto. Meanwhile, here’s the official Japanese website too, where the ‘What’s New’ section today helpfully informs us that the domain name has been renewed for 2008. Lucky, that.
by Richard Gowan | Jan 3, 2008 | North America
So, Iowa is upon us and assuming that (at a minimum) it delivers a victory for either Mr. Huckabee or Mr. Romney, journalists everywhere will be churning out pieces of the “American Voters Are A Bit Odd” variety. Expect lots of stuff about how religion sets the U.S. apart from Old Europe, and so on ad nauseam. In this context, it’s worth skimming this snap-shot of opinion polls of American voters, put together for the annual New York Times New Year’s quiz. There are a few hints of nuttiness, although nothing you wouldn’t expect from pretty much all Western electorates. And, on average, the American voter seems to be, well, normal – and on torture, the death penalty and cell phones, extremely sensible:
87% think an innocent person has been executed in the previous 15 years. 62% fly the Stars and Stripes at home, in the office or in their car. 81% think smoking in movies encourages teenagers to take up the habit. 68% think circumstances exist in which a patient should be allowed to die. 69% believe “waterboarding” to be a form of torture. 65% of pet owners give holiday gifts to their furry friends. 47% believe that “nearly everything causes cancer.” 33% changed summer vacation plans because of gas prices. 15% abstained from sex until they were at least 21. 31% of Southern coastal residents would not evacuate if a hurricane struck. 65% spend more time with their home computer than with their spouse. 57% drink coffee every day. 56% oppose allowing cell phones to be used during flights. 7% are prepared for a disaster or emergency. 67% consider full-fat ice cream to be “worth the guilt.” 85% of women would rather reveal their age than their weight. 11% know the recommended number of calories to consume daily. 58% have no homosexual friends or relatives. 61% think it is too soon for movies about the Iraq war.
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