by Mark Weston | Nov 22, 2007 | Africa
You know you’re in trouble when you need combat camels to save you. The latest masterstroke in the world’s response to the genocide in Darfur is to import specially trained Indian camels to transport African Union and United Nations peacekeepers around the province. The Sudanese government, the main aggressor in the conflict, has helicopter gunships, but the peacekeepers will have to chase these on humpback because the West won’t send in its own helicopters.
All is not lost, however – Darfurians can be reassured that the camels will have gone through a “crash course in combat” where they will learn how to crawl and, according to the head of the Indian army’s camel division, perform other “soldierly movements.” Phew.
by Alex Evans | Nov 10, 2007 | Influence and networks, UK
This week’s Spectator leads with a full scale assault on FCO minister and former UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown (also picked up in brief by the Telegraph and the Times). The article dredges up various old canards that aren’t exactly news – Malloch Brown’s friendship with George Soros, the UN oil for food scandal, Malloch Brown’s controversial interview with the Telegraph over the summer – but its chief revelation is that since becoming a Minister, Malloch Brown has been living in a grace and favour flat in Admiralty Arch.
Malloch Brown, astonishingly, has secured one of the three government flats in Admiralty House, where John Prescott used to live. In so doing, this newcomer has leapfrogged 20 full members of the Cabinet who notionally enjoy seniority over him … The Treasury’s National Assets Register values the Admiralty House accommodation at £7.76 million and as worth more than the flats above No. 10 and 11 Downing Street. It is, indeed, fit for a Lord, and one with tastes which are the opposite of frugal. A parliamentary answer earlier this autumn revealed that ‘the floor area of the ministerial residences in Admiralty House is 859 square metres.’ In 2006–07 the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office paid the Cabinet Office no less than £173,000 for John Prescott’s living in one of the flats there.
Er… is that it? For one thing, the charge that Malloch Brown has “leapfrogged 20 full members of the Cabinet” wilts somewhat given that the article admits that “the other two flats in the building are empty, and another government grace-and-favour residence in South Eaton Place, SW1, is being sold off”. Not exactly a queue stretching around the block, then. Besides, is it so unusual for a large organisation to provide relocation assistance to a senior executive joining from overseas? And if not, then what on earth would the cost case be for expending taxpayers’ money on renting an apartment when three apartments that the Government already owns are vacant?
Of course, whether you’re a defender or a detractor of Malloch Brown’s, the flat is no more than a tactical football. The real story here is the resurrection of the unilateralist right’s long-standing vendetta against Malloch Brown, and its migration to this side of the Atlantic. One of the authors of the piece, Claudia Rosett, has long enjoyed attacking not only Malloch Brown but indeed anything to do with the UN, as her blog confirms. Not one, not two, but all of the posts on it are attacks on the United Nations; so this December’s UN climate summit, for instance, becomes in Rosett’s view a “UN climate-crowd pajama party on Bali” at which cocktails begin at 3pm.
What is surprising about the article is to see that the other author of the piece is James Forsyth, the Spectator’s engaging and thoughtful web editor. Forsyth is on the right, to be sure – he’s a climate change sceptic, for instance – but his arguments are usually well thought-through, capable of understanding the opposite view, and generally a very long way from Rosett’s obsessive fulminations. His most recent blog post on the Spectator site, for example – which discusses Deroy Murdock’s defence of waterboarding in the National Review, which David discussed here on GlobalDashboard earlier this week – argues that
Some on the right are so determined to always take the toughest position possible on any war on terror question that they sound like a Stephen Colbert parody of themselves.
Swap “the United Nations and multilateralism” for “any war on terror question” and Forsyth might as well be talking about Rosett. So why the joint article? For what it’s worth, my guess is that Forsyth was simply told to write it with Rosett by Matthew d’Ancona, the Spectator’s editor, who’s been after Malloch Brown’s scalp from the start; way back on the 29th June, before Malloch Brown’s interview with the Telegraph had been published, d’Ancona was already calling it a “dreadful appointment”.
What this is really about, one suspects, is Malloch Brown’s opposition to the war in Iraq and his criticism of the Bush Administration. Fair enough. But shall we all stop pretending that this is about a flat, then?
by Alex Evans | Oct 23, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, North America
Here’s a story that seems to have gone virtually unremarked outside the US. Atlanta is running out of water: not in some long term “by 2050” kind of way, but in about 75 days’ time. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it in an article on 11 October,
That’s three months before there’s not enough water for more than 3 million metro Atlantans to take showers, flush their toilets and cook. Three months before there’s not enough water in parts of the Chattahoochee River for power plants to make the steam necessary to generate electricity. Three months before part of the river runs dry. “We’ve never experienced this situation before,” state Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch said of the record-breaking drought and fast-falling lake.
As the New York Times observed over the weekend, “the response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion”. The drought afflicting Georgia has been underway for more than a year. Yet:
All summer … fountains sprayed and football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. On an 81-degree day this month, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million-gallon mountain of snow.
Atlanta’s waking up to to the juggernaut bearing down on it, as the lakes on which it depends – Lake Lanier and Allatoona Lake – sink lower and lower, has been sudden. On September 28, Couch ordered an immediate ban on all outdoor water use, the most severe step laid out in state drought plans – but warned as she did so that, “my calculation is it may be inadequate”. She would be “reaching out”, she went on, to the US Army Corps of Engineers, to lobby for more water to be released from corps-run lakes (of which Lake Lanier is one).
By October 11, the full extent of the problem – including the fact that only three months’ worth of water remained, in the face of a forecast for another dry, warm winter – was becoming clear. Couch and her officials began drawing up a more demanding crisis plan to figure out where the pain should land. Couch commented at the time, “there has to be a balance between determining how much water we can conserve against how much lost jobs and lost economy there is. You don’t do that lightly.”
Then, on Friday last week – with drinking water down to 80 days – Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue staked out his position: it’s not our fault. Carol Couch’s attempts to “reach out” to the Corps of Engineers had been met by a blunt refusal, based on federally mandated protection for mussels and sturgeon downstream in the Sunshine State. The governor’s office claimed bitterly that “the amount of water the corps sends downstream is about double what Mother Nature would provide to federally protected mussels living in Florida’s Apalachicola River”, and promptly sued the Corps. (Even the local paper conceded on its editorial page, “Let’s be honest: It’s not about the mussels. The struggle for control of water flowing down the drought-stricken Chattahoochee River is about money and politics and human frailties such as jealousy, greed, laziness and procrastination.”) On Saturday, as the story went national, the Governor declared a state of emergency for more than half the state, and requested federal assistance.
Yet as the New York Times observed, “these last-minute measures belie a history of inaction in Georgia and across the South when it comes to managing and conserving water, even in the face of rapid growth”. As Mark Crisp, a water expert in the Atlanta office of engineering firm CH Guernsey commented, “we have made it clear to the planners and executive management of this state for years that we may very well be on the verge of a systemwide emergency”.
True and necessary as such statements of tough love may be, they are of scant consolation to the people of Georgia – who, as Katie Couric’s flagship news program on CBS reported yesterday, are feeling “rising panic”:
Across North Georgia, thousands of people are digging private wells, nervous that their regular water’s about to run dry. “The phone is just ringing off the hook,” said Bob Askew, the owner of a well-drilling company. “It’s like working at a telethon or something.”
So here comes another test of urban resilience – and one that emphatically illustrates the importance of futures and horizon scanning (as well as the fact that in the US, when you need a scapegoat for your incompetent water management, you can always blame the Corps of Engineers). And as a thoughtful feature in the NYT magazine on Sunday suggests, that what’s happening in Atlanta may well be a preview of coming attractions:
A catastrophic reduction in the flow of the Colorado River — which mostly consists of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains — has always served as a kind of thought experiment for water engineers, a risk situation from the outer edge of their practical imaginations. Some 30 million people depend on that water. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California.
An almost unfathomable legal morass might well result, with farmers suing the federal government; cities suing cities; states suing states; Indian nations suing state officials; and foreign nations (by treaty, Mexico has a small claim on the river) bringing international law to bear on the United States government. In addition, a lesser Colorado River would almost certainly lead to a considerable amount of economic havoc, as the future water supplies for the West’s industries, agriculture and growing municipalities are threatened. As one prominent Western water official described the possible future to me, if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, “an Armageddon.”
by Alex Evans | Oct 20, 2007 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks, North America
Who’d have thought it? UNCLOS – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, hardly the sexiest multilateral environmental agreement around – has become a cause celebre for both the the progressive end of the US blogosphere and the Pentagon. What gives?
Here’s the story so far. UNCLOS, which covers issues like defining maritime zones, protecting the marine environment and preserving freedom of navigation, came into force in 1994. The US has signed it, but the Senate – where a band of diehards led by Sen. James Inhofe wants to block the treaty- has not yet ratified it. So far, so predictable.
But now the fun starts. First, why is the Administration – including the Pentagon, and indeed the President himself – telling the Senate to get a move on and ratify? Since when does the Pentagon care about this sort of thing? And second, why is the progressive blogosphere right alongside them in this endeavour?
Let’s take the bloggers first. They’re interested in the treaty not because of its environmental benefits (though those are fine by them too), but primarily because they think they can use it tactically to marginalise their enemies. Here’s Scott Paul at the Washington Note:
…the opposition to the Bolton nomination was a battle well chosen. It was very important on its merits: it successfully weakened and then partially removed an extremely negative element from the administration. But just as important was its execution. Thanks to some smart group decisions on strategy and message, the Bolton campaign is making current battles against pugnacious nationalism more winnable than before.
The effort to ratify the Law of the Sea convention is a campaign that matters for similar reasons. Yes, the Law of the Sea is compelling on its face. The armed forces rightly wants its navigational and overflight rights protected. Environmentalists rightly want the U.S. to join and add to global ocean stewardship efforts. And U.S. companies should have a chance to compete with foreign firms for offshore resources…
All of these are good reasons for the U.S. to accede to the Law of the Sea, but none of them alone or even in combination would necessarily make it important for the progressive agenda. So why is the Law of the Sea significant? Simple: our absence from the Law of the Sea is the outer wall of Fortress America. Winning the ratification battle would seriously de-fang the same pugnacious nationalists who are on the opposite side of almost every important foreign policy issue facing the U.S.
Matt Stoller expands on the point:
Without being able to pass the very basic Law of the Sea treaty, there is no way we will ever get a treaty through on global warming, create the space to internationalize the Iraq mess, or work with allies abroad in any coherent manner. Fortunately, this is extremely winnable. All it will take is some floor time from Reid, and we’ll win, embarrass, and marginalize the hyper-nationalists.
Note also the messaging strategies that progressive bloggers are using. Take this post by Taylor Marsh, for instance, which employs the derisive term “black helicopter crowd” no less than seven times to describe Sen. Inhofe’s band. It’s a pretty smart marginalising strategy, especially given that the national security tribe want the treaty.
Which leads us on to our other question. What does the Pentagon care? And what makes UNCLOS such a big deal that President Bush himself should endorse it? Essentially, the answer has to with securing access to international waters for the US Navy. The military worries that without being a party to the treaty, states might arbitrarily restrict access to US ships.
Well, fine, but that doesn’t altogether explain the urgency. This is hardly a new concern, is it? Well, actually, it is: step forward the emerging spat over the Northwest Passage, which in a warmer world becomes navigable by normal ships rather than just icebreakers. Canadian PM Stephen Harper is trying to make the case that the Passage lies within Canada’s waters – and hence that Canada gets to choose who sails through it. And if the US ratifies UNCLOS, it gains an important new tool in its kit for contesting Canada’s claim. QED!
So that, my friends, is the story of how the Pentagon, the netroots, President Bush and the Natural Resources Defense Council all got into bed with each other. Say what you like about climate change, it sure can trigger some curious political realignments…
by David Steven | Oct 19, 2007 | North America
Talking Points Memo:
Mitt Romney pulled off an interesting bit of U.N.-bashing today, calling upon the United States to withdraw from a United Nations council that the United States isn’t a part of to begin with.
“The United Nations has been an extraordinary failure of late,” Romney said during a South Carolina campaign stop. “We should withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council.”
Romney also suggested a new ‘coalition of free nations’ to act as a UN alternative.
