And no, it's not about to crash. Not one of mine, but taken at Aviemore in Scotland with one of RAF Leuchars' crews doing what the F3 does best - low and fast.
Toby
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Gratuitous Seasonal Picture of a Tornado F3
And no, it's not about to crash. Not one of mine, but taken at Aviemore in Scotland with one of RAF Leuchars' crews doing what the F3 does best - low and fast.
Toby
Future Imperfect
This post is dedicated to Jay and Carlos who've prompted it in an FB discussion* last night.
So, for whom or what is it "Future Imperfect"?
Probably many things, but in this little column I want to look at the existing borders the world's nation states. In essence, when and how should a region be allowed to secede from a country - and crucially, what qualifies as the "regions" that are allowed to secede? And yes, this has been prompted by yesterday being the sesquicentennial of South Carolina Legislature's attempt to secede that would lead in April 1861 to the first shots of the US Civil War being fired at Fort Sumter. But the modern relevance is underscored by the ICJ's decision on whether Kosovo had the legal capacity to declare independence, and on the Jan 9th, 2011 referendum on the independence of South Sudan, and the on-going refusal of the international community to recognise Somaliland.
First the "Why?"
Though not exclusively an African problem, the right of secession is especially stark in Africa, given the wholly arbitrary borders drawn by European states in the 19th Century "scramble for Africa". Whether or not borders were drawn specifically to divide existing indigenous political units, it is clear that existing ethnic and religious divisions were irrelevant to modern Europeans divvying up the "Dark Continent"; after all, competing colonial claims had a dangerous habit of threatening to start wars in Europe which was tiresome (and expensive). But the key point is that the permanence and inviolability of lines on maps is a curiously modern - and western - notion.
What was interesting was the post-colonial settlement in Africa: everyone agreed that whatever else they did, States would never reopen the questions of borders because once one border was up for negotiation on ethnic, historical or any other lines then the whole edifice would crash down, with the result that the continent would descend into chaos. And broadly, that's what happened through to the end of the Cold War; there are obvious exceptions - e.g. Siad Barre's Somalia's invasion and then proxy war with Mengistu Haile Mariam's Ethiopia in the Ogaden, but largely elites focussed on promoting a nationalism within their borders and in some sense creating a supra-national identity loyal to the newly independent state. Indeed, it can be argued that it was the failure of this project to replace existing ethnic and religious loyalties with the new nationalism that has resulted in social cleavages lines that have been exploited to such negative ends in Africa since 1960.
That having been said, my inclinations are that if a territory wants to secede, shows this through an internationally supervised free and fair expression of the will of the territory's people, is not under military occupation, agrees to respect the rights of minorities, and abide by the rules of the club that is the international community, then the default setting should be to allow it. This is higher bar than it looks: it means no irredentist claims, no puppet states and no racist regimes. And it demands that those in whom sovereignty is vested - the people - are the ones making the decision.
Why is this a good idea? Partly because it allows a safety relief valve for unhappy minorities to escape a political construct that doesn't work for them; again, based on the popular sovereignty argument, this is about the rights of the individual writ large. Second, stemming from the first, is that this is in the long a measure for stability rather chaos, as the record of peaceful development in unhappy countries is not great.
However, the challenge lies in the "Who"?
In his treatise on the subject, Professor James Crawford SC talks about "self-determination units", or SDUs (note to Middkids: not a far-flung dining hall with dubious pizza).
What constitutes one of these mystic SDUs? It is clear that States within Federations do - Singapore's 1965 independence attests to this - and State practice has extended this to formerly Federal entities - e.g. Kosovo. Under this basis, Somaliland should be recognised. The fact that Somaliland isn't appears to be largely due to African Union (AU) reluctance / refusal / terror at the notion of fiddling with existing African boundaries should resisted at all costs - the classic bureaucratic "floodgates" argument (ie, it may be right in this case, but if we do it here, we open the floodgates to having to do it elsewhere).
It is also invidious to force a territory to remain under the rule of a government which has allowed - or indeed facilitated - acts of oppression or genocide against a minority. Under this criteria, Darfur could not be forced to remain under Sudanese rule if it elected to go its own way under the rules outlined above.
But it these examples are all based on territorial constructs. What would happen if a government oppressed a national minority that was evenly spread, rather than one which had a clearly defined "homeland" that could be spun off? In other words, how does this help Jews, Communists and Christians in Nazi Germany?
The short answer is that it doesn't, and can't. It would be madness to incentivise the creation of ethnic laagers in order to allow them to declare independence; the communal blood-letting of the 1947 Partition of India which cost roughly 500,000 lives as 15 million people moved to be in the "right" country is an instructive lesson in what to avoid.
Hence, secession is in my view a last resort, and one which emphasises the importance of human rights law in protecting minorities within existing states. This is where the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR), International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Genocide Convention and UN Convention on the Rights of Child (UNCRC) come into their own - the requirement on governments to treat their populations humanely.
The good news is that once the "Who" is sorted out, the "How" is comparatively straightforward: internationally supervised referenda, an internationally-brokered panel to oversee the process, in particular in managing the technical aspects of this sort of divorce - power grids, water supplies, citizenship, and an international presence to support the new state and report on the rights of minorities.
Not perfect, but designing and implementing an international mechanism to allow for States to peacefully divorce is every bit as important as a tool for letting them go bust.
Thoughts most welcome!
Toby
* I've no idea whether this works or not, but here it is - http://www.facebook.com/notes/jay-robison/thoughts-on-the-decline-of-empire-and-the-neo-secessionists/471840697700?notif_t=note_reply
So, for whom or what is it "Future Imperfect"?
Probably many things, but in this little column I want to look at the existing borders the world's nation states. In essence, when and how should a region be allowed to secede from a country - and crucially, what qualifies as the "regions" that are allowed to secede? And yes, this has been prompted by yesterday being the sesquicentennial of South Carolina Legislature's attempt to secede that would lead in April 1861 to the first shots of the US Civil War being fired at Fort Sumter. But the modern relevance is underscored by the ICJ's decision on whether Kosovo had the legal capacity to declare independence, and on the Jan 9th, 2011 referendum on the independence of South Sudan, and the on-going refusal of the international community to recognise Somaliland.
First the "Why?"
Though not exclusively an African problem, the right of secession is especially stark in Africa, given the wholly arbitrary borders drawn by European states in the 19th Century "scramble for Africa". Whether or not borders were drawn specifically to divide existing indigenous political units, it is clear that existing ethnic and religious divisions were irrelevant to modern Europeans divvying up the "Dark Continent"; after all, competing colonial claims had a dangerous habit of threatening to start wars in Europe which was tiresome (and expensive). But the key point is that the permanence and inviolability of lines on maps is a curiously modern - and western - notion.
What was interesting was the post-colonial settlement in Africa: everyone agreed that whatever else they did, States would never reopen the questions of borders because once one border was up for negotiation on ethnic, historical or any other lines then the whole edifice would crash down, with the result that the continent would descend into chaos. And broadly, that's what happened through to the end of the Cold War; there are obvious exceptions - e.g. Siad Barre's Somalia's invasion and then proxy war with Mengistu Haile Mariam's Ethiopia in the Ogaden, but largely elites focussed on promoting a nationalism within their borders and in some sense creating a supra-national identity loyal to the newly independent state. Indeed, it can be argued that it was the failure of this project to replace existing ethnic and religious loyalties with the new nationalism that has resulted in social cleavages lines that have been exploited to such negative ends in Africa since 1960.
That having been said, my inclinations are that if a territory wants to secede, shows this through an internationally supervised free and fair expression of the will of the territory's people, is not under military occupation, agrees to respect the rights of minorities, and abide by the rules of the club that is the international community, then the default setting should be to allow it. This is higher bar than it looks: it means no irredentist claims, no puppet states and no racist regimes. And it demands that those in whom sovereignty is vested - the people - are the ones making the decision.
Why is this a good idea? Partly because it allows a safety relief valve for unhappy minorities to escape a political construct that doesn't work for them; again, based on the popular sovereignty argument, this is about the rights of the individual writ large. Second, stemming from the first, is that this is in the long a measure for stability rather chaos, as the record of peaceful development in unhappy countries is not great.
However, the challenge lies in the "Who"?
In his treatise on the subject, Professor James Crawford SC talks about "self-determination units", or SDUs (note to Middkids: not a far-flung dining hall with dubious pizza).
What constitutes one of these mystic SDUs? It is clear that States within Federations do - Singapore's 1965 independence attests to this - and State practice has extended this to formerly Federal entities - e.g. Kosovo. Under this basis, Somaliland should be recognised. The fact that Somaliland isn't appears to be largely due to African Union (AU) reluctance / refusal / terror at the notion of fiddling with existing African boundaries should resisted at all costs - the classic bureaucratic "floodgates" argument (ie, it may be right in this case, but if we do it here, we open the floodgates to having to do it elsewhere).
It is also invidious to force a territory to remain under the rule of a government which has allowed - or indeed facilitated - acts of oppression or genocide against a minority. Under this criteria, Darfur could not be forced to remain under Sudanese rule if it elected to go its own way under the rules outlined above.
But it these examples are all based on territorial constructs. What would happen if a government oppressed a national minority that was evenly spread, rather than one which had a clearly defined "homeland" that could be spun off? In other words, how does this help Jews, Communists and Christians in Nazi Germany?
The short answer is that it doesn't, and can't. It would be madness to incentivise the creation of ethnic laagers in order to allow them to declare independence; the communal blood-letting of the 1947 Partition of India which cost roughly 500,000 lives as 15 million people moved to be in the "right" country is an instructive lesson in what to avoid.
Hence, secession is in my view a last resort, and one which emphasises the importance of human rights law in protecting minorities within existing states. This is where the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR), International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Genocide Convention and UN Convention on the Rights of Child (UNCRC) come into their own - the requirement on governments to treat their populations humanely.
The good news is that once the "Who" is sorted out, the "How" is comparatively straightforward: internationally supervised referenda, an internationally-brokered panel to oversee the process, in particular in managing the technical aspects of this sort of divorce - power grids, water supplies, citizenship, and an international presence to support the new state and report on the rights of minorities.
Not perfect, but designing and implementing an international mechanism to allow for States to peacefully divorce is every bit as important as a tool for letting them go bust.
Thoughts most welcome!
Toby
* I've no idea whether this works or not, but here it is - http://www.facebook.com/notes/jay-robison/thoughts-on-the-decline-of-empire-and-the-neo-secessionists/471840697700?notif_t=note_reply
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Public Interest and Wikileaks
Completely irresponsible.
It's not often that I use words as definitive as this; but amongst the tittle-tattle of the Wikileaks material, some of which is undeniably interesting, I was appalled that Wikileaks decided that it was a good idea to release the list of crucial infrastructure worldwide.
Or, in other words, a list of things it would be really bad for the United States - and by extension the rest of the West - if they got attacked.
In an era where the pre-eminent security challenge is posed by salafist jihadis with a persecution complex and a fetish for ritualised "martyrdom", the release of this material has no basis in the public interest or anything else. It is simply irresponsible and shows both a complete disregard for the West's collective interest, and for many of these installations, of public safety.
I say again: completely irresponsible.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Poetry
Doggerel, actually. Meant to post this earlier on the failure of the 1998 Strategic Defence Review:
Implementing SDR 1998
Geoffrey had a little Plan, with contradictions that weren’t hidden
And anything that Gordon said, Geoffrey did unbidden;
“The Plan” demanded tanks and tankers, breaking Gordon’s “Golden Rule”
But “The Plan” was very popular in Preston, ’ull and Poole.
So Geoffrey stretched “The Plan” out, with “jam tomorrow” for all
And everyone was satisfied, waiting patiently for The Ball.
But then the budget, it collapsed, imperilling “The Plan”
And all that Comrade Bob could do was blame another man…
Sad but true. Time will tell whether the 2010 version is any better - it doesn't look too hopeful.
Implementing SDR 1998
Geoffrey had a little Plan, with contradictions that weren’t hidden
And anything that Gordon said, Geoffrey did unbidden;
“The Plan” demanded tanks and tankers, breaking Gordon’s “Golden Rule”
But “The Plan” was very popular in Preston, ’ull and Poole.
So Geoffrey stretched “The Plan” out, with “jam tomorrow” for all
And everyone was satisfied, waiting patiently for The Ball.
But then the budget, it collapsed, imperilling “The Plan”
And all that Comrade Bob could do was blame another man…
Sad but true. Time will tell whether the 2010 version is any better - it doesn't look too hopeful.
Why is the UK's SDSR like the Ground Zero Mosque?
(Artist's impression of Park 51)
Leaks amuse me.
Especially ones which reinforce my (sometimes strongly) held views about things. (And no, dear readers, not prejudices - analytical views!). And I have a stinking cold, slept all day and so can't sleep, hence blogging on this now.
So, over to our friends at the Daily Telegraph (I know, I know - rightwing claptrap etc etc):
Quelle surprise: Tom McKane's review team have written (and someone helpfully leaked) a mea culpa that conveniently blames the nascent UK NSC for the daft decisions, the rushed timelines and the no-briefing rules. All presumably correct and all entirely predictable, especially as this "Review" took as it's intellectual starting point the previous Secretary of State's (Rt Hon Robert "Comrade Bob" Ainsworth) "effort" at a Green Paper in January could politely be described as "anti-intellectual facile bullshit".
But this underscores the reason I've not blogged on the UK's Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) - it's not strategic, and it's not a policy driven defence and security review; instead, it's a cash cuts lead review which has fundamentally unbalanced the UK's military capabilities, with far too strong a focus on big toys and not enough thought on what the UK is trying to achieve.
Specifics: Binning Nimrod MRA 4 and the UK's fixed wing anti-submarine maritime patrol aircraft to save £200m p.a. at a time of increased hostile submarine operations and without credible search and rescue alternatives is abysmal, and will cost lives. Ignore the £3.5bn already spent - such sunk costs are sunk - it is a capability that the UK needed and which will be sorely missed, especially as the number of frigates and destroyers (FF/DD) are reduced (again).....
FF/DDs to 19 hulls. Which means that approximately 12-14 can expect to be ready for use at most times, and which compares poorly with the 32 that were required as a minimum in 1998's SDR. Has the RN's tasking fallen by more than a third since '98? Hardly, though their presence on the world's oceans has. But these cuts allowed the Aircraft Carrier programme to proceed......
Ah yes, the Carrier programme.... c. £6bn for two ships, one of which will almost certainly never operate British fixed-wing aircraft as the Harriers are being scrapped (a good choice in a poor document), and the other of which may operate F-35C JSFs from 2020 (another good choice if the money is ever there). But neither of these behemoths will (even if shared with the French) actually be of any use if they can't be protected, and the assets required to protect them (FF/DD, Airborne Early Warning aircraft, Maritime Patrol Aircraft, Attack Submarines) have all had their numbers cut, in some cases to zero. Oops.
And then there's UK's nuclear pretensions with Trident. A subject for another post.
So, why is the UK's SDSR like the Ground Zero Mosque? Because like that project, it's neither Strategic, nor about defence and security. Unlike Park 51 (aka the Ground Zero Mosque - which let's remember, is neither at Ground Zero nor is it a mosque), SDSR is a bad idea, and constitutes a massive missed opportunity for the UK, which will take a decade or more to work through.
Friday, August 13, 2010
So what if Iran gets THE bomb....?
(Trinty Test, Almagordo, July 1945. This one actually did change the world.)
There's been more of the on-again, off-again rumblings about whether or not Israel or the US or the rest of us should attack Iran if the new sanctions fail to stop Iran producing a nuclear weapons this week Weekly Standard ,The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy proffer a range of views.
President Obama has described an Iranian nuclear weapon as "unacceptable".
To no-one's surprise, Israeli PM Netanyahu has made clear that he'd be happy to attack Iranian nuclear targets to ensure that Israel remains the only nuclear weapons state in the Middle East.
But what actual difference would a nuclear Iran make? If it achieved it, what evidence is there that Iran would attack anyone?
I should make quite clear up front that I am not in favour of nuclear proliferation by any State; quite the reverse, I applaud Obama's declared intent of working towards nuclear zero - including all of the verification challenges that go with that.
Before we begin, a definitional point: being able to conduct a nuclear test is not the same as producing an operational nuclear weapon. The initial American thermonuclear test (Ivy Mike, 1952, the darkly hilarious contemporary classified film is here) was a 62t experiment, built over several months.
And so it was with India's "Peaceful Nuclear Explosion" of 1974 (also known as "Smiling Buddha") - a 1400kg device which India could not at the time deliver to target (except in a shipping container). Therefore, even if Iran were to stage a nuclear test, this is not definitive proof that it has a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.
So, what difference would a nuclear armed Iran make?
Let's assume that Iran wishes to acquire nuclear weapons, and despite sanctions succeeds in perfecting a bomb design small enough to fit onto a domestically produced ballistic missile. Let's also assume that it manages to deploy enough - say 25 operational warheads - in hardened shelters sufficient to survive a conventional attack.
Not being an intelligence analyst, I am left as an historian to point out that this level of development was not achieved by the USA until the early-1960s with the deployment on Minuteman I ICBMs; and the US in the 1950s had considerably more weapons technology expertise than is apparent in Iran's domestic military programmes public displayed today.
And to make this doomsday tomorrow, let's assume that the Iranians can do all of this by the end of 2011.
What changes?
Well, not much until the Iranians decide to:
(i) engage in nuclear blackmail,
(ii) attack another state (e.g. Israel) or
(iii) dish them out to non-state actors (e.g, Hezbollah).
But why would President Ahmadinejad - or any other Iranian leader - want to do something as suicidally stupid as any of these options?
If the Islamic Republic is determined to do anything, it is determined to survive. And regime survival is incompatible with a nuclear counter-strike if Iran attacks someone else. But having a bomb is sensible if it means that other people don't attack you.
In other words, good ol' Cold War deterrence.
"Ah", I hear you cry - "but the Iranians are nuts! They're fanatics and have a global domination ideology".
Hmm. Didn't we say the same (& worse!) about the Soviet Union? Godless Communism and all of that?
The point for me is that though a nuclear armed Iran is unwelcome because any proliferation is unwelcome, and Iran's acquisition of a viable nuclear capability could bounce Saudi Arabia into have a Sunni/Arab bomb to deter a Persian/Shiite bomb, there is no rational reason for Iran to attack anyone with nuclear weapons. To do so would only be to invite massive retaliation.
Moreover, military action to stop an Iranian nuclear weapon is likely to shore up the (unpopular) Iranian regime, is unlikely to have UN Security Council sanction, and would therefore be manifestly illegal, and there is no guarantee of success. In short, even if military action is a "cure" (which to me seems very unlikely), it is likely to be worse than the "disease" of an Iranian nuclear weapon.
If the Iranians want a deliverable nuclear capability, they will at some point get it. By all means make this as difficult and expensive as possible, but rely on deterrence to keep the peace.
And remember, the only thing that bullies like less than losing is being ignored - how have nuclear weapons helped Kim Jong Il's North Korea? (Other than landing him a leading role in Team America, of course.... "so ronrey... so ronrey...")
I'll be back with more on the UK's SDSR in the next few days.
Update: Interesting piece from RUSI - airstrikes won't work and invading Iran is a seriously bad idea, people:
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Strategic Defence and Security Review, Part 1
The UK is undergoing a Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) at the moment. What the SDSR should do is provide an analysis of what the UK’s place in the world is, what role the UK aspires to have, and how much the UK is prepared to spend to achieve this. This includes deciding how to spend money between the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the intelligence agencies and, potentially, the Department for International Development (DfID).
Naturally, how much you want to spend is pretty important. Portugal at the end of the Salazar / Caetano dictatorship spent 40% of the total Portuguese budget on the colonial wars in Africa, whereas Germany (1.3% of GDP) and Japan (0.9% of GDP) demonstrate that the level of defence spending is all about political choices. And of course with the 1974 Portuguese Revolution, the wars abroad ended, and defence spending fell quickly. So, in a spirit of titanic modesty, I want to scribble some thoughts on what I would put into SDSR over the next few days.
First up, the UK’s place in the world.
What are the UK’s long-term interests? Foreign policy has been largely bipartisan, and somewhat timeless. It was Lord Palmerston who opined in 1848 that:
‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.’
This is good news if it means that this is an area of public policy that is amenable to long-term planning. It would be much healthier if we were politically able to have a cross-party planning process, but even in this era of coalition building, this appears to be a bridge too far. Nonetheless, what do I think are the UK’s long-term interests?
1. It’s the economy, stupid.
Bill Clinton was spot on in the ’92 Presidential Race – if you can’t get the economy moving and provide a credible plan to eliminate the deficit, then it’s all going to end in tears. (See Portugal, above).
Put crudely, the British military is not self-funding – and therefore it relies on a strong economy to pay for it through taxation. And so for the remainder of the UK’s international position – diplomacy, aid, spooks.
What does this mean in concrete terms? For me, it means that a key role of the Foreign Office is to promote British commercial interests abroad – with a key focus being about strengthening the international legal protections for the UK’s service industries as well as promoting physical UK exports. Given that the current rules of the international trade are a largely Anglo-American production, we need to extend enforcement and to ensure that efforts to roll back liberalisation are tackled and defeated. In this, the appointment of Simon Fraser as the professional head of the FCO is timely and welcome, given his background in trade policy - normally a comparatively less important policy area (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=22577659).
What do the military contribute to the economy? Well, the obvious is some £14bn of public spending on “stuff” with private companies. And though the days of Gun Boat Diplomacy are ostensibly over (much to the disappointment of some Naval Service Officers of my acquaintance), the role of UK forces in increasing international stability and ensuring freedom of navigation worldwide is an indirect economic benefit.
But no-one would claim that the military should be used as an economic stimulus – even the UK defence lobby’s study last summer inadvertently showed that stimulus should be spent on construction or biochemistry. Critically, we should dismiss the argument that placing military equipment orders in the UK is a sensible use for economic stimulus as the things you build cannot realistically support the UK economy after they are completed, unlike a new railway or an upgraded trunk road.
2. We are international traders.
The UK’s wealth has come from trade of things, ideas and services. This means that we must be forward and outward looking – isolationism is simply not an option. This means that we must be fully engaged with the EU as our largest market and that we need to engage with the outside world to ensure that UK firms and UK-based taxpayers have the best possible shot at winning business.
3. We are a Status Quo power.
No, not prog rock. The UK has been a player on the international scene since the before the Norman Conquest. It is also party to the world’s oldest alliance Treaty still in effect – the 1386 Treaty of Windsor, which seals the UK’s alliance with Portugal.
With such a history, today’s UK policy planners build on several hundred years’ diplomatic effort to cement the UK’s international influence in good times and to hold onto these gains in barren periods. After all, it could be argued that the British Isles are a rather wet and gloomy group of islands perched precariously off the north west coast of Europe.
And no generation did better than the WWII generation in bequeathing us Permanent Membership of the Security Council, 4.85% of the votes at the IMF and a Director (currently Alex Gibbs), a slew of politico-military posts in NATO, including the Number 2 (Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, DSACEUR), and a British Judge on the International Court of Justice (currently Christopher Greenwood).
This is tremendously helpful, as it is disproportionate to the UK’s actual level of international economic and military clout. But it is a double-edged sword given that the UK’s optimal position is to keep the institutional structures legitimate whilst retaining as much UK influence as possible. My thinking is that this means that we need to be seen to be a leading proponent of reform to ensure that we can play a leading role in defining the terms of reform.
The cause celebre is UN Security Council reform that will (at some point) increase the number of Permanent Members to include some of Brazil, Germany, India, Japan and maybe Nigeria or South Africa. In order for the Council to operate effectively, it is as inconceivable that the new Permanent Members would gain vetoes as it would be that the existing Permanent Members would give their vetoes up – which they would have to vote for. Therefore, fear not – the UK will never be forced to give up its Security Council veto.
And so with the institutional and legal structure – it’s strongly in our favour, so we need to defend it by ensuring it’s legitimacy by supporting incremental reform on our terms - and the main route to this is to underpin the existing international legal order.
Conclusions
Public spending will be constrained as the UK undertakes a fiscal repair job over the next five years; the international affairs portfolio will bear cuts along with the rest of Government. But the real challenge will be to focus on the long-term national interest, which is to reinforce the UK’s existing systemic advantages by underpinning the legitimacy of the overall system.
In our next instalment, we’ll look at the numbers.
Naturally, how much you want to spend is pretty important. Portugal at the end of the Salazar / Caetano dictatorship spent 40% of the total Portuguese budget on the colonial wars in Africa, whereas Germany (1.3% of GDP) and Japan (0.9% of GDP) demonstrate that the level of defence spending is all about political choices. And of course with the 1974 Portuguese Revolution, the wars abroad ended, and defence spending fell quickly. So, in a spirit of titanic modesty, I want to scribble some thoughts on what I would put into SDSR over the next few days.
First up, the UK’s place in the world.
What are the UK’s long-term interests? Foreign policy has been largely bipartisan, and somewhat timeless. It was Lord Palmerston who opined in 1848 that:
‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.’
This is good news if it means that this is an area of public policy that is amenable to long-term planning. It would be much healthier if we were politically able to have a cross-party planning process, but even in this era of coalition building, this appears to be a bridge too far. Nonetheless, what do I think are the UK’s long-term interests?
1. It’s the economy, stupid.
Bill Clinton was spot on in the ’92 Presidential Race – if you can’t get the economy moving and provide a credible plan to eliminate the deficit, then it’s all going to end in tears. (See Portugal, above).
Put crudely, the British military is not self-funding – and therefore it relies on a strong economy to pay for it through taxation. And so for the remainder of the UK’s international position – diplomacy, aid, spooks.
What does this mean in concrete terms? For me, it means that a key role of the Foreign Office is to promote British commercial interests abroad – with a key focus being about strengthening the international legal protections for the UK’s service industries as well as promoting physical UK exports. Given that the current rules of the international trade are a largely Anglo-American production, we need to extend enforcement and to ensure that efforts to roll back liberalisation are tackled and defeated. In this, the appointment of Simon Fraser as the professional head of the FCO is timely and welcome, given his background in trade policy - normally a comparatively less important policy area (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=22577659).
What do the military contribute to the economy? Well, the obvious is some £14bn of public spending on “stuff” with private companies. And though the days of Gun Boat Diplomacy are ostensibly over (much to the disappointment of some Naval Service Officers of my acquaintance), the role of UK forces in increasing international stability and ensuring freedom of navigation worldwide is an indirect economic benefit.
But no-one would claim that the military should be used as an economic stimulus – even the UK defence lobby’s study last summer inadvertently showed that stimulus should be spent on construction or biochemistry. Critically, we should dismiss the argument that placing military equipment orders in the UK is a sensible use for economic stimulus as the things you build cannot realistically support the UK economy after they are completed, unlike a new railway or an upgraded trunk road.
2. We are international traders.
The UK’s wealth has come from trade of things, ideas and services. This means that we must be forward and outward looking – isolationism is simply not an option. This means that we must be fully engaged with the EU as our largest market and that we need to engage with the outside world to ensure that UK firms and UK-based taxpayers have the best possible shot at winning business.
3. We are a Status Quo power.
No, not prog rock. The UK has been a player on the international scene since the before the Norman Conquest. It is also party to the world’s oldest alliance Treaty still in effect – the 1386 Treaty of Windsor, which seals the UK’s alliance with Portugal.
With such a history, today’s UK policy planners build on several hundred years’ diplomatic effort to cement the UK’s international influence in good times and to hold onto these gains in barren periods. After all, it could be argued that the British Isles are a rather wet and gloomy group of islands perched precariously off the north west coast of Europe.
And no generation did better than the WWII generation in bequeathing us Permanent Membership of the Security Council, 4.85% of the votes at the IMF and a Director (currently Alex Gibbs), a slew of politico-military posts in NATO, including the Number 2 (Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, DSACEUR), and a British Judge on the International Court of Justice (currently Christopher Greenwood).
This is tremendously helpful, as it is disproportionate to the UK’s actual level of international economic and military clout. But it is a double-edged sword given that the UK’s optimal position is to keep the institutional structures legitimate whilst retaining as much UK influence as possible. My thinking is that this means that we need to be seen to be a leading proponent of reform to ensure that we can play a leading role in defining the terms of reform.
The cause celebre is UN Security Council reform that will (at some point) increase the number of Permanent Members to include some of Brazil, Germany, India, Japan and maybe Nigeria or South Africa. In order for the Council to operate effectively, it is as inconceivable that the new Permanent Members would gain vetoes as it would be that the existing Permanent Members would give their vetoes up – which they would have to vote for. Therefore, fear not – the UK will never be forced to give up its Security Council veto.
And so with the institutional and legal structure – it’s strongly in our favour, so we need to defend it by ensuring it’s legitimacy by supporting incremental reform on our terms - and the main route to this is to underpin the existing international legal order.
Conclusions
Public spending will be constrained as the UK undertakes a fiscal repair job over the next five years; the international affairs portfolio will bear cuts along with the rest of Government. But the real challenge will be to focus on the long-term national interest, which is to reinforce the UK’s existing systemic advantages by underpinning the legitimacy of the overall system.
In our next instalment, we’ll look at the numbers.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Should they be allowed to secede?
Hello,
Firstly, many thanks for the response to the first of these musings; and so I’ll continue to scribble.
One of the great joys about being an international relations geek in London is that it is always possible to get a fix at Chatham House, where you’ll find fellow sufferers from this malign affliction. I was there last Friday night for Professor Abdi Ismail Samatar speaking on Somali Piracy: Alternative Approaches and Solutions. Professor Samatar’s speech was thought provoking and there will be write up on the CH website later this week. If you’re remotely interested in the politics of the Horn of Africa, it’ll be well worth a read.
Accepting the principal thrust of his argument that piracy off the Somali coast is a symptom of a lack of governance rather than something unique to Somalia that leads to acts which the naval lawyers describe as “Piratical Behaviour”, the solutions will be found on land. And in Somalia, this could involve redrawing the post-colonial boundaries in a way that violates a major taboo in African politics.
I should stress at this point that Professor Samatar himself made clear that he opposes secession, even though he is from north-western Somalia / Somaliland, and his point was that allowing Somaliland to secede would result in a precedent that would allow many Ethiopian groups to claim the same right, and would see Ethiopia implode.
I disagree.
I understand why newly-independent African countries accepted the artificial colonial borders, in order to avoid redrawing the entire map based on ethnicity, which, for better or worse, was expected to lead to chaos. The tragic experience of ethnic Germans at the end of WWII and of the population “transfers” at the birth of India / Pakistan, and Turkey / Greece underline the risks posed by basing boundaries on ethno-nationalism.
But are there cases where exceptions to this rule of the inviolability of pre-existing colonial boundaries should be made? I believe that there are, notably where a federal state exists, or where regions with a profoundly different colonial experience were not offered the choice of independent statehood at independence – in other words, things that Professor James Crawford would describe as “self determination units”.
This applies in at least three cases in Africa: Western Sahara, Cameroon and Somaliland, with South Sudan as the agreed outlier resulting from the 2004 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (the Naivasha Agreement). Of these, only Southern Sudan is unique (or sui generis in legalese) – Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco and Mauritania after Spain withdrew in 1975, French Cameroun and British Southern Cameroons were consolidated and as the Republic of Cameroon in 1961, and Somaliland which was independent for five days in June 1960 before union with Italian Somaliland as the Republic of Somalia on 1 July 1960.
Why does this matter? In my view, it is important to recognise that international law does provide for cessation by States, and the ICJ in the Kosovo Advisory Opinion underlines this. Indeed, Kosovo, as a non-autonomous province of a federal state at the time of cessation, arguably had less of a claim than Somaliland had in 1960 or today, after withdrawing from Somalia in June 1991.
So the point is that because Somaliland is in a different legal position to, for example, the Oromo region of Ethiopia, it could hold another independence referendum without rendering asunder the post-colonial settlement of not moving lines on a map. And we know from E. Izzard, Esq., quite how important maps and flags are.
Levity aside, it does suggest that the international community could plausibly claim that recognising Somaliland - if that's what the Somalilanders want - does not mean initiating a free-for-all in Africa. Indeed, the longer the policy of no change under any circumstances goes on, the more likely and completely it is to crumble under its own contradictions rather than a pragmatic recognition of the exceptional cases.
Oh, and there's a direct payoff in the Somali piracy problem, too: areas with a functioning government don't have piracy in anything like the same intensity - Somalia under the Union of Islamic Courts showed this during their time in power. So it is predictably unsurprising that Somaliland doesn't feature as a base for pirates off the Somali coast. Recognition means membership of the international system - and in this case, membership helps everyone.
Firstly, many thanks for the response to the first of these musings; and so I’ll continue to scribble.
One of the great joys about being an international relations geek in London is that it is always possible to get a fix at Chatham House, where you’ll find fellow sufferers from this malign affliction. I was there last Friday night for Professor Abdi Ismail Samatar speaking on Somali Piracy: Alternative Approaches and Solutions. Professor Samatar’s speech was thought provoking and there will be write up on the CH website later this week. If you’re remotely interested in the politics of the Horn of Africa, it’ll be well worth a read.
Accepting the principal thrust of his argument that piracy off the Somali coast is a symptom of a lack of governance rather than something unique to Somalia that leads to acts which the naval lawyers describe as “Piratical Behaviour”, the solutions will be found on land. And in Somalia, this could involve redrawing the post-colonial boundaries in a way that violates a major taboo in African politics.
I should stress at this point that Professor Samatar himself made clear that he opposes secession, even though he is from north-western Somalia / Somaliland, and his point was that allowing Somaliland to secede would result in a precedent that would allow many Ethiopian groups to claim the same right, and would see Ethiopia implode.
I disagree.
I understand why newly-independent African countries accepted the artificial colonial borders, in order to avoid redrawing the entire map based on ethnicity, which, for better or worse, was expected to lead to chaos. The tragic experience of ethnic Germans at the end of WWII and of the population “transfers” at the birth of India / Pakistan, and Turkey / Greece underline the risks posed by basing boundaries on ethno-nationalism.
But are there cases where exceptions to this rule of the inviolability of pre-existing colonial boundaries should be made? I believe that there are, notably where a federal state exists, or where regions with a profoundly different colonial experience were not offered the choice of independent statehood at independence – in other words, things that Professor James Crawford would describe as “self determination units”.
This applies in at least three cases in Africa: Western Sahara, Cameroon and Somaliland, with South Sudan as the agreed outlier resulting from the 2004 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (the Naivasha Agreement). Of these, only Southern Sudan is unique (or sui generis in legalese) – Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco and Mauritania after Spain withdrew in 1975, French Cameroun and British Southern Cameroons were consolidated and as the Republic of Cameroon in 1961, and Somaliland which was independent for five days in June 1960 before union with Italian Somaliland as the Republic of Somalia on 1 July 1960.
Why does this matter? In my view, it is important to recognise that international law does provide for cessation by States, and the ICJ in the Kosovo Advisory Opinion underlines this. Indeed, Kosovo, as a non-autonomous province of a federal state at the time of cessation, arguably had less of a claim than Somaliland had in 1960 or today, after withdrawing from Somalia in June 1991.
So the point is that because Somaliland is in a different legal position to, for example, the Oromo region of Ethiopia, it could hold another independence referendum without rendering asunder the post-colonial settlement of not moving lines on a map. And we know from E. Izzard, Esq., quite how important maps and flags are.
Levity aside, it does suggest that the international community could plausibly claim that recognising Somaliland - if that's what the Somalilanders want - does not mean initiating a free-for-all in Africa. Indeed, the longer the policy of no change under any circumstances goes on, the more likely and completely it is to crumble under its own contradictions rather than a pragmatic recognition of the exceptional cases.
Oh, and there's a direct payoff in the Somali piracy problem, too: areas with a functioning government don't have piracy in anything like the same intensity - Somalia under the Union of Islamic Courts showed this during their time in power. So it is predictably unsurprising that Somaliland doesn't feature as a base for pirates off the Somali coast. Recognition means membership of the international system - and in this case, membership helps everyone.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Did Wikileaks change anything?
Hello,
I was planning to write on the ICJ's Kosovo decision, and I’m sorry that I’ve not got to that yet – hopefully I’ll get to read it on the weekend. Instead, I’m going to scribble on the Wikileaks publication of the formerly classified files on Afghanistan which came into the public domain this week.
What difference does "Wikileakgate" actually make? At one level, this is clearly a massive security breach that needs to be investigate, but the real challenge is that there is a danger to a number of informants whose identity can be ascertained. Worse, it sends a message to future potential informants that in cooperating with American and NATO forces that they cannot guarantee their identities will be protected. In this, Hamid Karzai is right, and it makes gathering human intelligence much more difficult.
Beyond this, however, there is a broader question of “so what?” Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) may be playing both sides of the game in Afghanistan? Hardly a surprise – Pakistan has sought “strategic depth” in its quasi-existential proxy war with India for decades, and it is equally unsurprising that ISI is alleged to have maintained contacts with the Soviet-era mujahedeen groups which it funnelled equipment and fighters to in the 80s and then to the Taliban which ISI played a major role in sponsoring in the 90s. Indeed, NATO will probably need these contacts to talk to the Taliban and the other rebels based in Pakistani territory.
Moreover, does the Afghan operation look like it is achieving its aims? Assuming that the aims are to create time, space and conditions for the Afghan government to build a state structure that can ensure that Afghan territory cannot be used for the training and preparation of attacks on the West, and that this is achieved by building a truly demotic and responsive state in Afghanistan, the scorecard must be mixed.
For me, the greatest failure has been western unwillingness to allow democratic norms to operate, instead overlooking Presidential election anomalies that saw Hamid Karzai re-elected despite serious questions over the elections. Worse, combined with systematic corruption, this democratic deficit acts as a deeply corrosive force on the nascent Afghan state, as well as providing clear recruiting messages for the Taliban’s blend of Pashtun nationalism and religious fundamentalism. It is essential to keep repeating that what is needed is a political and developmental solution, and that though the military’s role in creating the security conditions for this to occur is critical, there is no exclusively military “solution” to the Afghan conflict.
Finally, Wikileaks' suggestions that civilian deaths were in effect tolerated and covered up goes to the heart of the counter-insurgency methods and messages that NATO have built over the last 18 months. Unless Afghan civilians across the country come to believe that a popular government can delivery security, national dignity and economic improvements to them individually and collectively, then support for the international presence will surely dwindle. Add in an apparently cavalier approach to ‘collateral damage’ resulting in the death, injury or permanent maiming of civilians resulting from legal attacks on legitimate targets – attacks on civilians are a war crime that should be prosecuted – and the siren call of the Taliban and other rebels becomes all the more compelling.
Did Wikileaks change the price of fish? Not for me. What it did do was to underscore the scale of the challenge NATO faces if it is to achieve its goals in Afghanistan over the next five to ten years.
Good luck, David Petraeus – you’ll need it.
I was planning to write on the ICJ's Kosovo decision, and I’m sorry that I’ve not got to that yet – hopefully I’ll get to read it on the weekend. Instead, I’m going to scribble on the Wikileaks publication of the formerly classified files on Afghanistan which came into the public domain this week.
What difference does "Wikileakgate" actually make? At one level, this is clearly a massive security breach that needs to be investigate, but the real challenge is that there is a danger to a number of informants whose identity can be ascertained. Worse, it sends a message to future potential informants that in cooperating with American and NATO forces that they cannot guarantee their identities will be protected. In this, Hamid Karzai is right, and it makes gathering human intelligence much more difficult.
Beyond this, however, there is a broader question of “so what?” Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) may be playing both sides of the game in Afghanistan? Hardly a surprise – Pakistan has sought “strategic depth” in its quasi-existential proxy war with India for decades, and it is equally unsurprising that ISI is alleged to have maintained contacts with the Soviet-era mujahedeen groups which it funnelled equipment and fighters to in the 80s and then to the Taliban which ISI played a major role in sponsoring in the 90s. Indeed, NATO will probably need these contacts to talk to the Taliban and the other rebels based in Pakistani territory.
Moreover, does the Afghan operation look like it is achieving its aims? Assuming that the aims are to create time, space and conditions for the Afghan government to build a state structure that can ensure that Afghan territory cannot be used for the training and preparation of attacks on the West, and that this is achieved by building a truly demotic and responsive state in Afghanistan, the scorecard must be mixed.
For me, the greatest failure has been western unwillingness to allow democratic norms to operate, instead overlooking Presidential election anomalies that saw Hamid Karzai re-elected despite serious questions over the elections. Worse, combined with systematic corruption, this democratic deficit acts as a deeply corrosive force on the nascent Afghan state, as well as providing clear recruiting messages for the Taliban’s blend of Pashtun nationalism and religious fundamentalism. It is essential to keep repeating that what is needed is a political and developmental solution, and that though the military’s role in creating the security conditions for this to occur is critical, there is no exclusively military “solution” to the Afghan conflict.
Finally, Wikileaks' suggestions that civilian deaths were in effect tolerated and covered up goes to the heart of the counter-insurgency methods and messages that NATO have built over the last 18 months. Unless Afghan civilians across the country come to believe that a popular government can delivery security, national dignity and economic improvements to them individually and collectively, then support for the international presence will surely dwindle. Add in an apparently cavalier approach to ‘collateral damage’ resulting in the death, injury or permanent maiming of civilians resulting from legal attacks on legitimate targets – attacks on civilians are a war crime that should be prosecuted – and the siren call of the Taliban and other rebels becomes all the more compelling.
Did Wikileaks change the price of fish? Not for me. What it did do was to underscore the scale of the challenge NATO faces if it is to achieve its goals in Afghanistan over the next five to ten years.
Good luck, David Petraeus – you’ll need it.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Starting out all over again
Well, here we are. I started this blog back in 2008, and never did anything with it - and when I did think about doing something with it, I was constrained by work.
So, in the spirit of fresh starts, here's a new blog.
What do I want to cover? Well, it's going to reflect public policy issues and international law, and we'll start with an analysis of the ICJ Kosovo decision over the weekend, and then move onto an assessment of the UK's options in the on-going Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).
I don't really have any idea whether anyone will read these musings, but if you've got this far, thank-you, and I hope to turn it into a place for conversation.
Cheers,
Toby
So, in the spirit of fresh starts, here's a new blog.
What do I want to cover? Well, it's going to reflect public policy issues and international law, and we'll start with an analysis of the ICJ Kosovo decision over the weekend, and then move onto an assessment of the UK's options in the on-going Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).
I don't really have any idea whether anyone will read these musings, but if you've got this far, thank-you, and I hope to turn it into a place for conversation.
Cheers,
Toby
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)