by Daniel Korski | Jul 29, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, North America, UK
National security reform is, I guess, one of the leitmotifs of this blog and both Charlie and I have written about this in its U.S and British forms.
Now, the U.S Project on National Security Reform (full disclosure: I advise the project pro bono) is about to publish its first report, Ensuring Security in an Unpredictable World: The Urgent Need For National Security Reform.
Based on research and analysis by more than 300 national security experts from think tanks, universities, federal agencies, law firms and corporations – it identifies the following major problems in in the national security system:
- Frequent feuding and jurisdictional disputes between cabinet secretaries and other agency heads that force the president to spend too much time settling internal fights, waste time and money on duplicative and inefficient actions, and slow down government responses to crises.
- Too much focus by the president and his top advisers on day-to-day crisis management rather than long-term planning, allowing problems to escape presidential attention until they worsen and reach the crisis level.
- An increasing number of political appointees who serve only briefly in top national security posts.
- A budget oversight process in Congress focused on individual agencies, crippling efforts to move quickly to fund emergency operations by multiple agencies.
- A Congress increasingly polarized along political party lines on vital national security issues.
PNSR member Thomas R. Pickering – who served as under secretary of state, ambassador to the United Nations and in other top posts in the State Department – has said:
Our national security system is broken and needs fixing. Agencies need to cooperate rather than compete with each other as they work to protect the United States from a broad range of new dangers never imagined when the National Security Act of 1947 was signed into law. This isn’t a Democratic or a Republican issue, but a challenge facing our country that must be met by America’s leaders on a bipartisan basis.
PNSR is scheduled to issue a final report in October recommending actions by Congress and the next president. The project is also expected to prepare draft presidential directives and a new National Security Act to replace many of the provisions of the one enacted 61 years ago. Now out of the presidential race, Senator Hillary Clinton is said to have taken a keen interest in sheparding legislation through Congress whilst both the Obama and McCain teams have had de facto representatives on the Project.
In other words: read the report available on here and watch this space…
by Richard Gowan | Jul 28, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
After Jean-Marie Guéhenno’s comments last week on the perils of Darfur, here’s more plain speaking from a senior peacekeeper – in this case the Darfur mission’s commander, responding to a report criticizing his force…
General Martin Luther Agwai greeted the report’s recognition that the force was short of critical resources, saying that people had had unrealistic expectations. “If really you have an organisation that lacks critical resources and you expect that force to do magic then I think you are not being fair to the force,” he told the BBC.
He said many people had overlooked logistical constraints including delays at Sudan’s single sea port, and the large distance from the port to the area of operation in Darfur across land routes that are unusable during the rainy season. “People thought that things would work faster and better but the reality from the ground does not translate that way.”
But he also rejected concerns that the mission was doomed to fail, saying that it had the backing of the UN and the AU. “I’m not sure the United Nations and the African Union would want to fail because if they do, the whole world would fail. So based on that, I am optimistic.”
I find that optimism genuinely inspiring – analysts like me punch out our prophesies of doom while veteran peacekeepers get on with the actual job. But I fear that the whole world may be keen to avoid a perception of failure in Darfur, while having no idea of how to achieve (or even define) “success”. It’s Agwai’s task to provide as much security as he can with the resources he has. But for how long?
by Alex Evans | Jul 28, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
It’s been his campaign’s policy since October last year, but in case you needed reassurance, here’s what Obama’s July 15 speech on foreign policy had to say about energy security (one of five national security priorities – the others being “ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; … and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century”):
One of the most dangerous weapons in the world today is the price of oil. We ship nearly $700 million a day to unstable or hostile nations for their oil. It pays for terrorist bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut. It funds petro-diplomacy in Caracas and radical madrasas from Karachi to Khartoum. It takes leverage away from America and shifts it to dictators.
This immediate danger is eclipsed only by the long-term threat from climate change, which will lead to devastating weather patterns, terrible storms, drought, and famine. That means people competing for food and water in the next fifty years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Most disastrously, that could mean destructive storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline.
This is not just an economic issue or an environmental concern – this is a national security crisis. For the sake of our security – and for every American family that is paying the price at the pump – we must end this dependence on foreign oil. And as President, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Small steps and political gimmickry just won’t do. I’ll invest $150 billion over the next ten years to put America on the path to true energy security. This fund will fast track investments in a new green energy business sector that will end our addiction to oil and create up to 5 million jobs over the next two decades, and help secure the future of our country and our planet. We’ll invest in research and development of every form of alternative energy – solar, wind, and biofuels, as well as technologies that can make coal clean and nuclear power safe. And from the moment I take office, I will let it be known that the United States of America is ready to lead again.
Never again will we sit on the sidelines, or stand in the way of global action to tackle this global challenge. I will reach out to the leaders of the biggest carbon emitting nations and ask them to join a new Global Energy Forum that will lay the foundation for the next generation of climate protocols. We will also build an alliance of oil-importing nations and work together to reduce our demand, and to break the grip of OPEC on the global economy. We’ll set a goal of an 80% reduction in global emissions by 2050. And as we develop new forms of clean energy here at home, we will share our technology and our innovations with all the nations of the world.
It’s a much more progressive target than the G8 was able to come up with: at Hokkaido, the most leaders could manage was “at least 50%”. It’s more in line with the IPCC, too, which says that to limit temperature increase to between 2.0 and 2.4 degrees C, the 2050 reduction needed is between 50 and 85 per cent: so assuming you want 2.0 rather than 2.4, and adding in the rate of sink failure as well, we should certainly be looking at closer to an 85 than a 50 per cent reduction by 2050 (see page 15 of this).
And lest you wonder, yup, he’s talking about 80 per cent below 1990 levels, rather than the 2000 levels (which would be a lot less demanding). Here’s his campaign’s full energy policy brief.
by Richard Gowan | Jul 24, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
So, it’s not only me and my fellow-wonks who are worried about the state of peacekeeping. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, outgoing head of peace ops at the UN, pops up in today’s FT to ram it home. Here are the edited highlights:
The head of United Nations peacekeeping has urged the Security Council to satisfy itself there is a peace to keep before sending troops on further large-scale missions such as the one in Darfur.
“I would say very bluntly that there are good reasons to be hesitant,” said Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who leaves his post this month after eight years. “The danger is that you do something and then, if you go into a failure, you compromise an instrument that could make a real difference in other places. And so you haven’t helped really those you meant to help but you have done a disservice to all those where peacekeeping could make a real difference.”
Referring to Darfur, where the Security Council a year ago ordered the biggest deployment in UN peacekeeping history, he said: “I’ve always been worried about it. We’re reaching the outer limit of peacekeeping. But I do see the enormous plight of the people in Darfur.”
“The fundamental error is to think of UN forces as if they were the world police. I think very often now there’s an overemphasis on what force can achieve. The more troops I have had under my responsibility, the more convinced I’ve become that – on the one hand – they are very important in places where trust has been destroyed, but at the same time they are a means to an end, an instrument in a tool kit to build a political process and support that political process.”
Mr Guéhenno said the Security Council had to weigh the risks carefully before deciding on new deployments, noting armed force was not a universal medication that could be used in all circumstances. “One failure can damage the whole of UN peacekeeping … The Security Council faces tough decisions and it is not easy to say ‘no’. But it should never say ‘yes’ for the wrong reasons.”
He said he was concerned by growing division within the Security Council that has pitched Russia and China against its western members on a number of peacekeeping issues. “One big worry that I have today is the risk of a more divided Security Council. We can fudge a resolution, we can fudge a statement, we can’t fudge a strategy.”
But could we – to return to the point with which I conclude my most recent survey of the state of peacekeeping – start to think of how to develop minimalist but achievable strategies that even a divided Council might be able to live with?
I share JMG’s belief in the need for strategy, but there is sometimes a “strategic = bigger” mentality in the UN (as in all organizations). That results in the “Christmas Tree” approach to peace operations, which involves overloading a mission with unmeetable responsibilities. Better to do less, but do it credibly. That is, of course, what JMG is saying about Darfur here… I have a feeling that once he returns to civilian life, he is going to sweep the floor with insta-pundits like me.
by Mark Weston | Jul 23, 2008 | Africa, Economics and development
I was doing a little research for my upcoming book on West Africa yesterday, and came up with the following factoid: since 1960, the top five countries on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (that is, the countries with the best quality of life in the world – Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada and Ireland) have had 44 changes of government following peaceful democratic elections. The total for the bottom five countries? Two. Yes, in a total of two hundred and forty years, there have been just two peaceful handovers of power that have respected the will of the people. One in Sierra Leone, one in Mali. Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau and Niger have had none. Doubters of the economic value of democracy, take note.
