by Charlie Edwards | Feb 1, 2009 | Global Dashboard, UK
Once upon a time the Conservative Party was the natural home for national security policy. Not anymore. A combination of factors including the very necessary rebranding of the party; a focus on climate change, health and education has meant national security policy (in its broadest sense: defence, foreign affairs, and intelligence) is now, arguably, Cameron’s weakest policy area.
When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, he deliberately set out a different vision than that of his predecessors by focusing on policy areas such as health, education and climate change. This was both a reflection of a shift in strategy – to move the Tories away from its ‘nasty party’ image but also because some of the best minds in the Conservative Party were thinking progressively on these issues (health in particular).
During this process of change national security policies largely became second order issues for the new leader. Cameron delegated these policy areas to colleagues, safe in the knowledge, he assumed, that each would be managed by a safe pair of hands. But he underestimated two forces at play. First the decline in knowledge and experience among Conservative MPs (which is still more than the Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined) in these policy areas and second; a lack of fresh and innovative thinking on national security within the party.
Arguably David Cameron’s first mistake was to assume that experience comes with expertise and sound judgement. In a speech to the think tank IISS on terrorism and national security he was quick to make reference to the ‘wealth of experience’ he had, citing numerous Lords and Dames he had recruited. The message was clear: I’m young and fresh but I have experienced politicians and practitioners on tap. But I’m reminded of a brilliant quote by Chris Donnelly, the former special adviser at NATO – who’s now at Oxford University:
In a period of stability and slow evolution our greatest asset is our experience. But at times of revolution our experiences can be fatal baggage. We can no longer assume that, because something we did worked well in the past, it is likely to continue to do so in current circumstances. If we are to survive living in a revolution, we will need to make a correspondingly revolutionary shift in the way we think about both the risk and the response.
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by Alex Evans | Jan 28, 2009 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
A few days ago, I did a post on the UK government’s current horizon scanning exercise – part of the process leading up to its second National Security Strategy – in which I suggested that “the really stand-out risk that barely got a mention in the events I attended was the possibility that serious erosion of states’ capacity and legitimacy [will undermine] their ability to respond to all the global trends that we were discussing”.
As regular readers will know, that observation comes straight out of the writings of ‘fourth generation warfare’ theorists like William Lind, Martin van Creveld and John Robb. But what may come as more of a surprise is the interesting revelation that Kaiser Wilhelm II made a similar point yesterday in his birthday conversation with Lind*:
“My generation of kings and emperors were fixated on the age-old contest between dynasties. Would the houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern defeat those of Romanoff and Savoy or the other way around? We could not see the paradigm shift welling up all around us, the onward rush of democracy and equality and socialism and all the rest of that garbage. What we needed was an alliance of all monarchies against democracy. Instead we wiped each other out, putting the levellers in charge everywhere, to the world’s ruin.”
“Does that hold any lessons for our time?”, I asked.
“From Olympus, the picture could not be more clear,” His Majesty replied. “As we were mesmerized by dynastic quarrels, so your politicians cannot see beyond the state. They think only of states in conflict. Will America be threatened by China? Should India go to war with Pakistan? Is Iran a danger to Israel? They cannot see that states are now all in the same, sinking boat, just as all the dynasties were in 1914.”
“What should states then do?”, I enquired.
“Form an alliance of all states against non-state forces, what you call the Fourth Generation,” the Kaiser answered. “The hour is late, and the state system itself has grown fragile. That is the lesson of America’s quixotic war in Iraq. You destroyed the state there, and now no one can recreate it. That is what will happen almost everywhere when states fight other states. But none of your leaders can see it, because they, too, are time-blinded. It is the human condition.”
* Since you ask: in addition to being one of the top experts around on counter-insurgency and fourth generation warfare, William Lind is also an ardent Prussian monarchist. Consequently, he marks the birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm II (“my reporting senior and lawful sovereign”) with a column each year in which he records a conversation with that leader’s ghost. Previous editions are highly recommended – e.g. here and here.
by Jules Evans | Jan 23, 2009 | Economics and development, Global Dashboard, Global system, London Summit
David Cameron yesterday warned that the UK could be forced to go cap in hand to the IMF, as it did in 1976 under chancellor Denis Healey. (This, by the way, at the launch of a new programme at Demos about ‘progressive conservatism’. Et tu, Demos?)
The question is, would the IMF have the cash. Click on more to read a story I recently wrote for my mag, www.emeafinance.com, which looks at the risk of the IMF running out of money in the next 18 months, and asks what the chances are of it receiving more funds from cash-rich G20 governments (answer: slim).
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by David Steven | Jan 21, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global Dashboard, Global system, London Summit
I’ve been in Japan today, speaking at ‘Reforming International Institutions – Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century’, a seminar organized by the United Nations University and the British Embassy in Japan.
You can download my talk here (with pictures, references etc) – or the text only is available below the jump. There’s a webcast too.
Headlines:
- It’s going to be a tough year. The financial meltdown has a long way to go, and the downturn is risking turning into a global depression.
- Trade is a bell wether. Protectionist pressures are already on the rise. If they gain traction, take that as a warning of a wider loss of confidence in global institutions.
- The unravelling of global economic imbalances could prove corrosive to the international order. If countries start to devalue to protect exports, expect a tit-for-tat dynamic to kick in.
- Scarcity issues (energy, water, land, food, atmospheric space for emissions) remain the key medium term driver of global change. Commodity prices will spike again as soon as there’s recovery.
- The downturn has stemmed the uncontrolled growth of emissions, but also lessened the chance of a robust global deal on climate.
- Economic bad times could well drive increased conflict. A major new security threat might be the fabled black swan – hitting just when the global immune system is already overloaded.
- If we experience a long crisis (or a chain of interlinked crises), we are likely to see either a significant loss of trust in the system (globalization retreats), or a significant increase in trust (interdependence increases).
- You need to stretch time horizons to get the latter – shared awareness (joint analysis of risks and challenges), as a basis for shared platforms (loose coalitions of leaders), which can lobby for a shared operating system (a new international institutional architecture).
- 2009 sets a challenging agenda for the G20 (financial reform and economic recovery – but framed by a broader vision on climate, resources, security etc.)…
- …the G8 (caucus of rich countries able to tee up Copenhagen and kick start development assistance if developing countries begin to teeter)…
- …the UN (especially Ban Ki-Moon’s proposed high level ‘friend’s group’ on climate, but also as a fora for getting to grips with scarcity issues)…
- and the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO (first of all ensuring they keep their heads above water, then looking to ‘save globalization from itself’).
- Oh and be ready for the backlash – people are angry and rightfully so, but that may well lead us down some populist blind alleys.
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by Daniel Korski | Jan 7, 2009 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Global Dashboard
One of the presumed parts of Obama’s Afghan strategy will be to look at ways of coopting the country’s various tribes, much like General David Petraeus did it in Iraq. The idea has sparked off a torrent of criticism in the foreign policy community.
One of the smartest young Democratic things, Brookings security expert Vanda Felbab-Brown, wrote to Obama that his administration should cultivate Afghan tribal leaders, but it would be a mistake to expect them to play a military role in the counterinsurgency. Michael Williams, the US-born British academic spoke for many when he called the idea “a very high-risk strategy that cuts directly against counter-insurgency theory and will most likely be seen in hindsight as a serious mistake.”
Those with longer memories talk about the failure of the Red Army to work with the Afghan tribes. The Russians spent large sums of money arming and supporting tribes in their own “Vietnamization” strategy. So much money was, in fact, spent that Kandahar in the south of the country, saw an in-flux of clothes from Pakistan and shoes from France, were the norm. For a short period it worked. The defection of one commander, Esmat Muslim, to the Afghan government’s side was said to be a blow for the mujahedeen, who suddenly found all their routes to Pakistan had been compromised. But once the Soviets left the in-fighting began. Even Esmat Muslim was not able to manage all the problems in Kandahar.
Those who reject any comparison between Iraq and Afghanistan, like author Alex Strick van Linschoten highlight key differences in the two countries. The Taliban movement, even if it contains foreign fighters, has deep roots in Afghan society. Many Taliban commanders grew up through the 1980s jihad against the Soviets. In this, the Taliban are different than Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who were run by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and seen by many tribesmen as foreigners.
A key factor in Iraq was also the cruelty of Al Qaeda, which proved too much for the Anbari tribesmen. Though the Taliban have displayed similar cruelty -– for example in the recent Maiwand atrocities where many Laghmani civilians were killed –- but the Afghan government has not been able to spread information about such acts. The final problem in transferring solutions from Iraq to Afghanistan is the nature of the Taliban’s recent success. Since 2005, the Taliban has bandied together with a strong network of drug barons, while forcing many tribesmen to be supportive or, at the very least, remain passive towards the insurgency. Reaching out to these groups is unlikely to succeed, it is claimed, as they benefit from the status quo and the U.S cannot offer a better, long-term alternative.
But in Rageh Omar’s latest documentary for Al Jazeera — Pakistan’s War: On The Frontline – another side emerges. In Bajaur province – where Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second in command, is believed to be hiding – the documentary shows how the Pakistani army has managed to do exactly what the U.S is now contemplating. In their fight against the Pakistani Taliban the army has armed a particular tribe, which is now charged with keeping the peace in a number of cities. So far, it has proven successful and is being emulated in other places.
Yesterday, Omar was careful not to say the strategy could necessarily work elsewhere. But he was emphatic that it seemed to work in Bajaur; and that he knew of several examples where tribesmen had asked to be armed or had risen up against the Pakistani Taliban spontaneously.
So far, both the strategy of working with the tribes -– and the backlash against the idea –- seemed to be based on speculation and hunches rather than the kind of hard empirical research the question merits. Before any steps are taken let us hope the Obama administration commissions research on the tribes, and comparative experiences. For this is exactly the kind of complex policy dilemma that requires an evidence-based approach rather than the gut-based policy-making of the Bush administration or the arm-chair soldiering so beloved by left and right alike in Washington, DC.
