by David Steven | May 2, 2011 | Conflict and security
Today’s raid on Abottabad, where US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden, brings back memories of an aborted raid in 2005:
A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.
The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.
But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.
Rumsfeld called off that raid because he thought too many US lives were at risk. The plan started off life sounding very similar to the one that took out bin Laden – just a small team of Seals.
But as the operation moved up the military chain of command, officials said, various planners bulked up the force’s size to provide security for the Special Operations forces.
”The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan,” said the former senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Still, he said he thought the mission was worth the risk. ”We were frustrated because we wanted to take a shot,” he said.
The aborted raid became politically controversial after a young American senator denounced the decision in August 2007 in an early foreign policy speech:
Let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.
Senator Obama was then on the campaign trail, and facing formidable odds, running 23 points behind Hillary Clinton in the polls. His commitment to “getting off the wrong battlefield in Iraq, and taking the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan” didn’t go down well with the other candidates for the Democratic nomination, with Clinton chiding Obama for destabilising President Musharraf’s regime.
In 2008, Senator McCain repeatedly bashed Obama over the issue, using the speech to claim that America would be taking an unnacceptanle risk putting itself under “confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan.”
Asked by Larry King whether he would go after bin Laden in Pakistan, McCain replied “I’m not going to go there and here’s why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation.”
Obama is surely feeling vindicated on two counts today. First, the decision to pursue intelligence that bin Laden was indeed in Pakistan and, second, in not allowing the original plan to mushroom into something too unwieldy as it did in 2005.
Of course, if – say – one helicopter crash had turned into two and the mission had failed, we’d all be busy reaching exactly the opposite conclusion.
by Alistair Burnett | Aug 5, 2010 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia
Two years ago, Georgian forces shelled the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia hitting the base of Russian peacekeepers as well as civilian housing. Russia responded immediately with a massive ground and air assault and in five days inflicted a heavy defeat on its tiny neighbour, occupying a band of Georgian territory into the bargain.
The conflict had several immediate results.
Already fraught relations between Moscow and Tbilisi plunged to new depths and diplomatic relations were severed.
Russia and three other countries recognised the independence of the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
And relations between Russia and the West – the US and the EU – deteriorated to their worst level since the collapse of the USSR – there was even talk of a new Cold War from western politicians.
The Cold War analogies led some commentators to argue Russian foreign policy had taken a decisive anti-western turn and things could and/or should never be the same again
Two years later, the one thing that seems unlikely to ever be the same again is the shape and size of Georgia. If recognition from Russia was not enough, the recent International Court of Justice opinion that Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence was not against international law, makes it even less probable Tibilsi could regain control of its lost regions. (more…)
by Michael Harvey | Jul 30, 2010 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America, South Asia, UK
– Over at The Diplomat, Thomas Wright explores how China’s self-confidence in initial relations with the Obama administration may prove the “catalyst for a more competitive – and geopolitically savvy – US multilateralism.” Der Spiegel, meanwhile, highlights the extent of Chinese soft power, while Charles Grant sees a chance to enhance the EU’s relations with the emerging superpower.
– Focusing on Chinese domestic society, the Economist highlights the growing activism and changing dynamics of the country’s vast labour force, with its associated implications for the global economy. Analysis over at VoxEU, meanwhile, assesses evidence of a potential Chinese property bubble.
– Elsewhere, with David Cameron back from his visit to India, Adrian Hamilton and Geoffrey Wheatcroft offer their views on his approach to international affairs. Kim Sengupta meanwhile remarks that the new Prime Minister “has started his foreign policy journey with a series of very deliberate steps”.
– Finally, Sir John Sulston talks to the New Scientist about the implications of global population change for sustainable development – the subject of a new initiative that he’s leading for The Royal Society. Prospect Magazine‘s blog, meanwhile, highlights favourable demographic trends in the developing world, while figures this week confirm that the EU’s population has now passed the 500 million mark.
by Michael Harvey | Jul 16, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, UK
– This week’s Economist sees Lexington bemoan those advancing the discourse of American exceptionalism, suggesting that “[t]he last thing the country needs is to be distracted from its practical problems by the quest for an elusive greatness”. Elsewhere, The Spectator’s Coffee House blog remembers Jimmy Carter’s fabled 1979 speech in which he spoke of a US “crisis of confidence”.
Delivering the annual lecture at The Ditchley Foundation last week, Strobe Talbott suggested that the “promise” of the Obama Presidency – both in the domestic and the international arenas – is now “at risk”. “[W]hatever fate is in store for the current president of the United States”, Talbott argued,
“one thing is for sure. His success in tackling the major issues of our time will depend on his establishing a degree of common purpose with his partners in national governance at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and with his partners in global governance around the world.”
– Elsewhere, over at The Cable, Josh Rogin reports on the slow progress of reviews into US development policy – the Presidential Study Directive on Global Development and the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. The Economist, meanwhile, highlights Brazil’s growing identity as a significant aid donor.
– Finally, the head of the UK Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, cautions against the default acceptance of prevailing economic ideology, suggesting that policymakers would do well to draw on a diversity of economic opinion. Joseph Stiglitz, meanwhile, explores the Keynesian prescription for the global economy.
by David Steven | May 6, 2010 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
In the run up to Copenhagen, I suggested the economic downturn could be used to push for a goal of an immediate peak to global emissions.
In a pastiche of Kennedy’s man on the moon speech, I imagined President Obama laying down the following gauntlet to the world:
I believe that the world should commit itself to achieving the goal of stopping the inexorable rise in greenhouse gas emissions that is doing so much to put our planet in peril. I don’t believe we should aim to achieve this goal in 2020 or 2030 or 2050 – but right now in 2009, making this year the high water mark for mankind’s global experiment with the global climate.
Obviously this didn’t happen, but – gradually – we’re learning more about has happened to emissions. The figures for US carbon dioxide for 2009 are now in and the good news is that they fell by an astonishing 9%.
Question is: has the US stimulus been wisely spent on measures that will push the economy onto a lower carbon path as it grows again? The answer is probably not, though there is some reason for hope:
As the economy recovers, the structure of that recovery will be important to the future emissions profile of the United States. If energy-intensive industries lead the economic recovery, emissions would increase faster than if service industries or light manufacturing play the leading role. If coal, which was more heavily impacted by the recent economic downturn than other energy sources, rebounds disproportionately, the carbon intensity of the energy supply could rise above the 2009 level.
However, longer-term trends continue to suggest decline in both the amount of energy used per unit of economic output and the carbon intensity of our energy supply, which both work to restrain emissions.
The world is at a major inflection point on its carbon trajectory, but I fear we’re going to blunder through it without realising the opportunity for transformation. As Copenhagen showed, unfortunately, we’re still a long, long way from reframing climate change as a now problem. But it’s still not too late to start working for peak emissions.
