by Alex Evans | Feb 7, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, UK
While we’re on the subject of Sue Cameron’s awesome Whitehall gossip network, note also her piece yesterday about DFID (or ‘Difid’ as she enchantingly calls it) – which bears all the hallmarks of hostile briefing from King Charles Street.
Could the horror engulfing Kenya change the balance of power in Whitehall? I am told that questions are being asked at the highest levels about Britain’s “limp-wristed” response to the Kenyan crisis. Senior Foreign Office people blame their colleagues at the Department for International Development for not realising that Kenya was, as one put it, “about to blow”. Difid is now the major arm of British policy in Africa because it has all the money for development.
Yet I am told its people are unwilling to discuss abuses of aid – which are widespread – and have little idea about good governance and how to bring it about. Now there are inquiries as to why pressure was not brought to bear on the Kenyan government. Why was aid not restricted? Why were Kenyan politicians – such as vice-president Stephen Kalonzo, now in London – not banned from visiting? We have spinelessly allowed him in even though Kenya has just declared Sir Edward Clay, our former high commissioner to Kenya, persona non grata. The outspoken Sir Edward once attacked “the massive looting and grand corruption” of Kenya. He accused Kenyan officials of behaving “like gluttons” and “vomiting on the shoes” of donors. His successor Adam Wood, a Difid man, has been more emollient. But change may be coming. Two months ago Mark Malloch Brown, Africa minister, said: “We have a development policy for Africa; is it time that the UK also has a foreign policy for Africa?” David Miliband, foreign secretary, shares this view. Difid’s ascendancy, which owes much to Gordon Brown’s influence, may be ending.
Now I’m not saying donors have their approach a hundred per cent right in Kenya. I’m unconvinced, for example, by arguments that Kenya was a suitable country for direct budget support; and I think donors have a lot of work to do to set out a clearer theory of how they work in developing countries that, like Kenya or Nigeria, could go either way – lift-off or basket case – especially given that such work has more to do with the quality of influence and political engagement than with the amount of aid spent.
But if it is indeed the case that DFID staff are “unwilling to discuss abuses of aid”, as the article charges, then it’s a bit of a stretch to see how bringing the debate to the diary column of the Financial Times is likely to coax DFID into a franker discussion. What kind of idiot thinks that this sort of approach will lead to policy coherence between the two departments?
The great majority of officials at FCO and DFID understand that their ability to work together is of paramount importance to their closely overlapping – if still distinct – missions. But in each department there are still a fair few old-fashioned turf warriors who know exactly which buttons to push in the other department to guarantee a rise.
Each time they press those buttons – especially in public – it makes life a bit harder for those officials who understand the need for the two departments to cohere with one another, by confirming the old stereotypes as to why you can’t trust DFID / FCO [delete as applicable].
Briefing stuff like this to the FT might be fun, but it does nothing to advance either department’s mission. The handful of turf warriors at each end of St James’s Park need to grow up.
by Charlie Edwards | Jan 23, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
Alex has blogged before about black swans and the human assumption that the unexpected can be predicted by extrapolating from variations in statistics based on past observations. Nassim Taleb argues they can’t. But that hasn’t deterred Oxford Analytica, the consulting firm that draws on a network of over 1,000 senior faculty members at Oxford. The company has developed an Early Warning system to meet exactly these needs, catchily named the ‘Global Stress Points Matrix’. According to OA:
The Global Stress Points Matrix provides a means of identifying and monitoring potential political and economic surprises and threats. These may appear unlikely but would have severe consequences should they occur. It is a disciplined approach for ‘stepping outside conventional wisdom’ and uses Oxford Analytica’s global network of experts to ‘ask the right questions’ and the Oxford Analytica Daily Brief process to monitor developments.
There’s a cool matrix too:
Some of the stress points:
1 CHINA/TAIWAN: Armed hostilities
2 US/IRAN: US strike on Iran
3 INTERNATIONAL: Human avian flu pandemic
4 UNITED STATES: Deep recession
5 INTERNATIONAL: Oil price shock
6 PAKISTAN: State collapse
7 INTERNATIONAL: Return to protectionism
13 SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY: Increasing climate regulation
14 RUSSIA: Return to regional ascendancy
18 NORTH KOREA: Military conflict
19 NIGERIA: Large-scale disorder in the Delta
21 CENTRAL ASIA: Risk of major disorder
22 BALKANS: Return to serious
If any of this does actually happen don’t say we didn’t warn you….
by Alex Evans | Dec 10, 2007 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, UK
Earlier today I went along to the launch of Demos’s new report, National Security for the 21st Century, by Charlie Edwards. It’s an excellent pamphlet and anyone interested in how governments co-ordinate themselves to deal with complex risks should read it. Anyway, at the event, Liberal Democrat leadership contender Nick Clegg made a strong call for an end to the “politics of fear” (duly picked up the media), arguing that the public “will come to resent parties and governments who beat the drum of fear most loudly”. He said:
“In a climate of fear, decisions are taken as a short-term response rather than as part of long-term strategy. As more and more of these decisions are made, the overall approach becomes less – rather than more – coherent. And as government lurches from one decision to the next, it succeeds in neither protecting people nor empowering them”.
Well, amen to that. Instead, Clegg went on, we need a national security strategy “based in part on public engagement, involvement and action … putting power and confidence into people’s hands so they are equipped to tackle danger”. So, he said,
“If Britain is to be prepared for emergencies of all kinds, I believe we need to re-establish some form of Civil Defence organisation. And it must be community-based, community-led, and engage people. I want to explore how we can get people to learn skills to serve their community, and share the skills they have, so when emergencies happen – from flooding to a terrorist attack – it isn’t just a small, professional elite who step up, it’s everyone, with their own particular skills. I will set up a working group to look at how best to structure this sort of Community Resilience Force. And I want to use the principles of openness, engagement and individual action across the board, not just in terms of national security.”
Now, admittedly Clegg’s Community Resilience Force is thin on the detail. Well, fair enough; he’s in the closing straight of a leadership contest. But what’s appealing here is the idea of resilience as a bottom-up undertaking. Clegg seemed tacitly to admit that faced with a really serious system shock – a ‘Black Swan’ event – top-down co-ordination will quickly become overwhelmed: even a competent FEMA would have struggled to cope with Katrina, in other words. In such circumstances, a resilient citizenry will be the difference between breakdown-and-recovery versus outright collapse (c.f. The Upside of Down).
Or so I thought. But then came the questions. Having spent the weekend reading John Robb’s must-read book Brave New War, I stuck my hand up. Quoting Robb, I observed that insurgents in countries as disparate as Iraq and Nigeria were proving increasingly adept at identifying ‘systempunkt’ nodes: the critical hubs which, if attacked successfully, risk taking down the entire system through a cascading failure. There are plenty such points in our power, water, gas, food and financial systems – just look at today’s FT for a snapshot of how much trade into Britain relies on a couple of over-congested ports, Felixstowe and Southampton.
What would Clegg’s vision of participatory resilience look like in the context of that kind of shock, I wondered? Hmm, said Clegg. Well, community empowerment wouldn’t really be the point in that kind of context. That sort of context is more a matter for the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. Right, I nodded, ignorant of the content of said Act but resolved to look it up at the earliest opportunity.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered this afternoon that not only does the CCA 2004 not appear to be based on participatory resilience, it is in fact the epitome, the quintessence, the very archetype of a top-down approach.
Once you’re past the (sensible) parts on emergency planning, you find that the part Clegg was referring to is about overhauling Emergency Powers in UK law. What it says, in essence, is that that in an “emergency” (that’s any event, not necessarily in Britain, which “threatens serious damage” to human welfare or the environment, or “war or terrorism that threatens serious damage to the security of the UK”), then the relevant Secretary of State – that’s any Cabinet member, not just the PM- can do anything.
Oh, you think I exaggerate? Here’s section 22 (1):
Emergency regulations may make any provision which the person making the regulations is satisfied is appropriate for the purpose of preventing, controlling or mitigating an aspect or effect of the emergency in respect of which the regulations are made.
Now, I may not be a politician, but I must admit that I’m struggling slightly to see any particular correlation between (a) this interesting approach to governance and (b) community-based resilience or decentralised, participatory citizenship. If I understand Nick Clegg’s position correctly, then, the executive summary goes something like this:
“Centralised bureaucracies perform badly in conditions of stress, while decentralised citizen-led systems are more robust – except if the conditions of stress are sufficiently stressful, in which case the exact opposite applies.”
Um… glad we got that straight.
by Alex Evans | Nov 2, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
Reuters and AFP are both carrying the intriguing story of a wargame / simulation exercise held in Washington yesterday to explore how the National Security Council would manage an energy crunch scenario set in 2009 – with an all-star line up of former Presidential advisers and top officials as players, including former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (as National Security Adviser in the game), Richard Armitage (Secretary of State), John Abizaid (Chair of the JCS), Gene Sperling (Treasury Secretary), Philip Zelikow (Director of National Intelligence) and Mike McCurry (White House Chief of Staff).
The scenario they played starts on 4 May 2009, when saboteurs successfully shut down the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, removing a million barrels of oil a day from world markets. Oil prices rise from the mid $90s to $115 a barrel. As the stock market plummets, possible Russian or Iranian involvement in the blast is posited. As the game goes on, more and more variables are introduced to render the Storm ever more Perfect. A secret uranium enrichment plant is discovered in Iran; oil production in Nigeria is curtailed by rebel attacks; Iran, and then Venezuela, respond to sanctions by reducing oil supplies, sending the price sailing past $150 a barrel.
Predictably, it all goes rather pear-shaped as divergent priorities lead to the requisite inter-agency cooperations failing to materialise. Reuters describes the bunfight:
The president’s political adviser, played by former Clinton-era White House press secretary Mike McCurry, worried about the backlash of $4 gasoline prices ahead of an impending mid-term election in 2010.
“How the hell do you expect me to go sell that?” McCurry said of a nationwide speed limit. “Eat your peas messages aren’t going to go very far with the American people.”
When the subject of tapping the strategic oil reserve came up, the Defense Secretary reminded the group that the military should get first dibs on the oil.
“Before … I let you stick your fingers into the oil it has got to get into our tanks,” said John Lehman, former Navy Secretary [playing the Secretary of Defense].
As the meeting unfolded, things went from bad to worse.
…so much so, in fact, that by the end of the exercise the Secretary of Defense is calling for the return of the draft, noting that “we are facing a mortal threat to our way of life”.
The wargame, called “Oil Shockwave”, was organised by two energy policy groups – Securing American’s Future Energy (SAFE) and the Bipartisan Policy Center – in a very smart piece of political theatre designed to make a point. Which is, according to Robert Rubin in SAFE’s own news release, that:
“Oil ShockWave demonstrates the critical importance of preventative action in mitigating the risks of oil dependence. Once a major supply crisis occurs, the short-term options are extremely limited. The profound nature of the risks to our economy and security argue for concerted action to enact a national energy policy designed to reduce oil dependence.”
by David Steven | Oct 14, 2007 | Africa, Economics and development
His Telegraph obit:
A huge, lumbering bear of a man, 6ft 2in tall and nearly as broad, with a booming voice and bristling moustache, Muffett looked rather like a cross between Falstaff and Captain Mainwaring.
He spent 16 years in the colonial service in northern Nigeria, where he claimed to have been one of only two Britons whose name passed into the native Hausa language: “Aka yi masa mafed” (literally “One did to him Muffett”), meaning “Justice caught up with him”.
Muffett liked to regard himself as a hard-riding “bush DO” (district officer) of the old school and he allowed nothing to stand in the way of justice and good administration. Yet although he was ebullient and thick-skinned, he was always sensitive to local tradition.
In 1960 he apprehended the Tigwe of Vwuip, a northern Nigerian tribal chief who had eaten the local tax collector. The Tigwe had apparently been so impressed by the man’s ability to acquire money on demand that he had — understandably — decided to try to assimilate his powers.
It was not so much this particular misdemeanour that bothered Muffett; what really worried him was the fact that a UN delegation was due to visit the area, and “I wasn’t about to have one of them eaten. I considered that it would be a highly retrogressive step.”
The Tigwe, who was surprised to learn that the colonial authorities disapproved of his eating habits, was duly sent to jail — but only “until the delegation had departed beyond the reach of his culinary aspirations.”
Muffett often seemed to have magical powers of his own. He was once shot at with poisoned arrows, all of which miraculously missed his bulky frame, though one lodged in the pommel of his saddle.
On another occasion a witch doctor who had pronounced a curse upon him fell down dead the next day, an event which, Muffett recalled, greatly enhanced his standing among the local population.
Via Mark Steyn.
