by David Steven | Apr 30, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Global system
I am at the Diplomatic Academy of London for a conference on ‘transformational public diplomacy’ (programme- pdf).
As the title suggests, the launch pad for the conference is US one – the agenda Condoleezza Rice first set out in a speech at Georgetown University in 2006:
I would define the objective of transformational diplomacy this way: to work with our many partners around the world, to build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system.
Let me be clear, transformational diplomacy is rooted in partnership; not in paternalism. In doing things with people, not for them; we seek to use America’s diplomatic power to help foreign citizens better their own lives and to build their own nations and to transform their own futures.
In her speech, Rice set out priorities for preparing ‘old diplomatic institutions to serve new diplomatic purposes.’ First, a new ‘posture’ – getting staff out of Europe and the US and onto the diplomatic front line. Second, a regional rather than a bilateral approach. Third, ‘localization’ – less focus on capitals, more on major population centres. Fourth, more ‘jointness’ between soldiers and civilians. And finally, a reskilling of diplomats to meet new challenges.
Rice returned to this agenda in a second Georgetown speech in 2008. The nub of this speech was the scant resources the US devotes to diplomacy (despite some recent increases):
How can it be, for example, that the Pentagon has nearly twice as many lawyers as America has Foreign Service Officers? How can it be that the United Kingdom, with one-fifth of our population, has a diplomatic service nearly as large as America’s? Clearly, modernizing our diplomacy and fully resourcing it will be the challenge of a generation, not just one administration.
In questions at Georgetown, Rice was asked about the United States’s international reputation and gave a bullish response. “America is viewed and revered throughout the world as a country that is a fierce defender of human rights, a fierce defender of liberties, a great multiethnic democracy,” she claimed, while also hailing US leadership in the development field (“the largest international development effort since the Marshall Plan”).
Presenting this agenda to the conference, though, Barrie Walkley, from the United States embassy in London, noted that transformational diplomacy was “a purely American initiative”. Rice “leaves it to other countries to respond to this situation and say what they’re going to do.”
This assumption of US leadership reminded me of the words of Jim Connaughton, the US climate negotiator, at the Bali climate conference: “The US will lead and continue to lead [on climate] but leadership requires others to fall in line and follow.”
But if the problems of an interdependent world are essentially multilateral, interoperability between like-minded actors is surely at a premium. It’s probably not enough for the US to wait for its allies to fall in line…
by Mark Weston | Mar 28, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security, Economics and development
A few weeks back the Guardian noted the transformation of Guinea-Bissau, a tiny, jungly and desperately poor country on the tip of West Africa, into the world’s first “narco-state.” Presumably this phrase means that its economy relies on drugs, though it has never been clearly defined and Guatemala and Afghanistan have also laid claim to the title in the recent past. No matter, what is not in doubt is that Guinea-Bissau, which had hitherto relied for survival on a meagre harvest of cashew nuts and fish (at least those fish that are not plundered by European Union trawlers), has found its diamonds/oil/gold/coltan substitute: cocaine.
The traditional route for exporting the drug from Colombia to Europe – Britons and Spaniards are the world’s biggest cokeheads – is via the Caribbean, but the American crackdown (no pun intended) has made that option both risky and expensive. Guinea-Bissau, which is the nearest point of Africa to South America, has no prisons and a police force that owns no handcuffs or vehicles, presents an alluring alternative. A few years ago, therefore, Colombian drug cartels began flying consignments of the drug to airstrips (left over from a recent civil war) in the remote jungles of the Bijagos islands. From there, having paid off local police, they move it north across the Sahara to Europe. (more…)
by Charlie Edwards | Mar 24, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
According to today’s FT:
The World Food Programme has launched an “extraordinary emergency appeal” to governments to donate at least $500m in the next four weeks to avoid rationing food aid in response to the spiralling cost of food. The WFP, the United Nations agency responsible for relieving hunger, said in a letter to donor countries that if fresh money did not arrive by May 1, it might cut “the rations for those who rely on the world to stand by them during times of abject need”.
Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director asked donors: “We urge your government to be as generous as possible in helping us to close this gap – which stood at $500m on February 25 and has been growing daily.”
The WFP’s funding gap is now about $600m-$700m, officials said, after a 20 per cent jump in food costs in the past three weeks, the rise in the oil price to about $100 a barrel, and a surge in shipping costs. The US is the largest WFP contributor, having donated about $1.1bn last year, mostly in food shipments. The European Union, with $250m, and Canada, with $160m, are the second- and third-largest donors.
by Richard Gowan | Mar 20, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security
For over a year, one of the biggest questions among officials in UN-land has been: will the Security Council make us go to Somalia? Back in November, I debuted on this blog by noting that Ban Ki-moon had announced that a mission was not “a realistic and viable option.” Well, the Council didn’t like that one bit, and told the Secretariat to get planning for that option right away. Sometimes an international organization can’t say no: this week, the Council gets to discuss a new report from the SG, which envisages an operation involving 27,000 troops plus police. That’d be a few thousand more than the UN is pushing (slowly) into Darfur.
Now, this isn’t a complete volte face: the report makes it clear that there’ll need to be a progress on a peace deal before any such force is possible. It also moots a smaller mission of 8,000. But now the numbers are out there, the media are naturally jumping on the 27,000 figure, and I fear the Council will follow…
All of which moves me to pick up something I really should have written about last week, had I not been sunning myself in Chile. That is, of course, the publication of the new Annual Review of Global Peace Operations by my colleagues at the Center on International Cooperation. The FT picked up the story under the reasonably accurate title “UN Attacked For Overloading Peacekeepers.” Here’s the gist:
The United Nations Security Council is criticised on Wednesday for authorising big peacekeeping missions around the world in spite of warnings that demands on troop contributors are overtaking their ability to deliver. “Repeated warnings of overstretch did not forestall the authorisation of ambitious new mandates by the Security Council and regional organisations,” says the New York-based Center on International Co-operation in its annual report on global peace operations.
The criticism was made as the Security Council met to consider the latest report from Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, on Darfur, where deployment of a combined UN and African Union peace force, Unamid, is badly behind schedule as the result of lack of vital resources and delaying tactics by the Sudanese government. “The mission was a compromise from the start,” Sarjoh Bah, editor of the CIC report, told the Financial Times, “because Sudan resisted a UN-only force”.
The CIC report said some of the problems of international peacekeeping by both the UN and regional organisations stemmed from decisions to deploy forces in spite of the absence of peace agreements on the ground. “By year-end, peacekeeping was becoming a victim of its own success,” the report said. “The complexity of operations began to outstrip the ability of international organisations to keep peace.”
But I’m sure Somalia will be fine, just fine.
by Charlie Edwards | Mar 17, 2008 | Conflict and security, UK
This Wednesday the British Government will publish the UK’s first ever National Security Strategy. This is a big moment for Gordon Brown and comes with great expectations. Don’t be surprised if there is no Minister on the Today Programme discussing the strategy’s pros and cons on Wednesday morning – this will be Gordon Brown’s opportunity to kill lots of birds with one mighty strategic stone (so lets hope he does wait and announce it in Parliament).
Dignity and gravitas will ooze from every pore of the front bench as Brown steps up to the dispatch box and announces the strategy. MPs from all sides of the House will nod and mouth their agreement. In the gallery sketch writers will pen columns for Thursday’s newspapers about how important Parliament is. For a brief moment the Government will look in complete control of its destiny – polls will even show the Labour party jump ahead of the Conservatives.
Some British newspapers are already trailing the announcement. The Telegraph suggests that ‘a national security council will be created, staffed by senior politicians including, potentially, individuals from other parties, intelligence and military chiefs, and scientific experts.. and that Paddy Ashdown has been suggested as a possible leading opposition figure with the experience to be invited to serve alongside senior Government ministers’. The Guardian points to the fact that ‘officials were divided about how broad they should paint the security threats facing Britain, and whether they should include such issues as social cohesion, for example,’ while The Times believes that a ‘group of veteran specialists will advise Gordon Brown on all aspects of national security, ranging from terrorist strikes to pandemics’. Finally the Financial Times writes that Sir Paul McCartney has been ordered to pay his estranged wife Heather Mills £24.3m.
Below are some thoughts ahead of the publication of the UK NSS.
(more…)
