After side trips to Haiti and Afghanistan in recent postings, I return now to the matter of inter-cultural political communications, and to the role of diplomacy as an alternative to the use of force.

No matter how you cut it, the decision to intervene militarily in foreign lands is fraught, and past experience with escalation in the face of complex political, security and development issues has not been good.

Ironically, some of the keys to future success may lie in the past, that is, in revisiting the models of the Victorian era District Officers and Political Agents who worked in the employ of the British Colonial Service. The best of that lot knew the language(s) and the history, were networked, connected, relentlessly innovative and highly self-reliant.

Consider, for instance, a comment received from one of my correspondents who has acquired some recent professional experience working in a PRT for ISAF in Afghanistan. He writes in reference to a feature article by Jerome Starkey (Ignorant CIA should copy Raj agents to avoid failure says spy chief) which appeared in the Times of London 06 January 2010:

This article got my attention, because it actually says what I am writing a novel about: the resurrection of a cadre of Victorian era-style political agents for today’s badlands. As a former political advisor in Afghanistan, General Flynn aptly describes how I saw and performed my job. So the one thing he doesn’t mention, is that military personnel are incapable of doing this. You can’t expect people who have been drilled to frogmarch and do everything following proper procedure to suddenly be extrovert and think out of the box. Diplomats can. At least those diplomats who stay clear of the perfume route to an ambassadorship, i.e. your guerrilla diplomats.

In a follow-up exchange, my correspondent continues:

… in the borderlands of the Raj the colonial officers were called ‘Agents’, because the authorities were under no illusion they could administer anything. They were basically eyes and ears, and schemers. In the settled areas, the authorities maintained presence through District ‘Officers’, because there was something to administer there.

These agents leased small tribal coalitions, ran with small bands of the so-called Waziri Scouts, divided but did not rule, bribed, and when things got really out of hand, they called in the Indian Army that would bombard entire villages in what was an official policy of ‘collective punishment’. This was something the Waziris, Afridis, Youzoufzai and other Pathans understood very well. Essentially, a forward strategy that you employ towards buffer states: you keep a weary eye on things, gather intel, but you stay the hell out of the place!

Can somebody tell Obama?

…Indeed, we shouldn’t be studying (if we are studying at all) the Russian experience, but Britain’s colonial experiences in that part of the world.

This is perhaps a thread worth following. Certainly, the colonial enterprise deserves its place in the dustbin of history, and all of this seems overly reliant upon the the threat or use of force.  As Sir John Malcolm is reported to have said, “A political agent is never so likely to succeed as when he negotiates at the head of an army”, and almost two hundred years later I still have a problem with that.

Nonetheless, there is always something to be learned from past experience, and some of these these kinds of observations might usefully be taken on board if performance in dispute resolution and the non-violent management of international relations is ever to improve. The crucial elements of flexibility, adaptability, risk-tolerance, autonomy and resilience remain all too rare in contemporary diplomatic practice.  The fundamental message here is that there are political and diplomatic alternatives to military occupation and large scale combat operations. These alternatives merit closer examination and experimentation.

Consider as well this final passage excerpted from Starkey’s article:

Only a handful of NATO soldiers speak Pashto, the language of the Taleban, and few spend more than a year in Afghanistan at a time.

General Flynn warned that NATO had concentrated too much on plotting out terrorist networks to launch kill-and-capture missions at the expense of understanding the local people they were trying to win over.

But in a rare example of an operation in which intelligence was working, he said US Marines in Nawa, Helmand, had managed to build up a detailed picture of the people around them. “As the picture sharpened, the focus honed in on what the battalion called ‘anchor points’ — local personalities and local grievances that, if skilfully exploited, could drive a wedge between the insurgents and the greater population.”

Such knowledge was the currency of Britain’s Raj-era political officers, who — armed with little more than wit and a keen sense of adventure — often disappeared into the hills for years at a time, penning detailed dispatches to their political masters in Delhi and London.

“The collection of information is one of the most important military duties,” wrote Winston Churchill in his first-hand account of a British campaign along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The Story of the Malakand Field Force, published in 1897, includes reams of colourful detail about local tribal dynamics.

General Flynn argued that soldiers needed to learn from recent mistakes. He cited one example in which local women destroyed a new well in their village because it denied them a chance to walk to the river each day and gossip.

His warning was clear: “Without the ability to capture this simple history, prosaic as it may be, others are doomed to repeat it.”

Put another way, to borrow from Robert Fisk, when it comes to high-risk expeditionary interventions and related foreign adventures, it appears so far that “the only thing we ever learn is that we never learn”.

If radically re-constructed and  dedicated to knowledge-driven problem solving and complex balancing in an increasingly heteropolar world, diplomacy offers the prospect of something better.

{ 0 comments }

In the wake of the London conference on Afghanistan last week, there has been much speculation about whether or not a page has been turned. Does the strategic balance now favour talking over fighting en route to the withdrawal of foreign troops?

In order to understand, frame and contextualize recent developments, it may be useful to highlight some of the‭ ‬essential differences,‭ ‬and perhaps especially several of the less appreciated ones,‭ ‬between the nature and agency of hard and soft power.‭  ‬In terms of international policy instruments, the former is associated principally with the armed forces,‭ ‬and the latter with diplomacy,‭ ‬in general,‭ ‬and public diplomacy,‭ ‬in particular.‭

When the two power sources and international policy instruments are compared,‭ ‬the obstacles and constraints to their effective‭ ‬combination may become clearer.‭

Following are some of the basic distinctions:

• Definitions.‭ ‬Hard power is about compelling your adversary to comply with your will through the threat or use of force.‭ ‬Soft power is about attracting your partner to share your goals through dialogue and exchange.‭

• Objectives.‭ ‬Hard power seeks to kill,‭ ‬capture,‭ ‬or defeat an enemy.‭ ‬Soft power seeks‭  ‬influence through understanding and the identification of common ground.

• Techniques.‭ ‬Hard power relies ultimately on sanctions and flows from the barrel of a gun.‭ ‬Soft power is rooted in meaningful exchange and the art of persuasion.‭

• Values.‭ ‬Hard power is macho,‭ ‬absolute,‭ ‬and zero sum.‭ ‬Soft power is supple,‭ ‬subtle,‭ ‬and win/win.

• Ethos.‭ ‬Hard power engenders fear,‭ ‬anguish and suspicion.‭ ‬Soft power flourishes in an atmosphere of confidence,‭ ‬trust and respect.‭

These distinctions between hard and soft power can become dis-junctures when placed in an institutional setting or applied in the field.‭ ‬That is,‭ ‬while significant enough in themselves,‭ ‬the disconnects are exacerbated by differences within and between the bureaucratic cultures of the military and, for example, foreign ministries or international organizations.‭ ‬‭ ‬

Hierarchy,‭ ‬obedience,‭ ‬and control are part of the‭ ‬DNA of military hard power; an institution designed primarily for fighting is not best-suited for talking.

The genome of soft power,‭ ‬of public diplomacy,‭ ‬in contrast,‭ ‬turns on relationships,‭ ‬on lateral connectivity and on the construction and maintenance of collaborative networks.‭ ‬These tasks are better left to diplomats, not soldiers, especially in a place such as Afghanistan, where the sheer complexity is staggering.

For most of its time in-country, however, NATO has been relying primarily on hard power. ISAF diplomats, particularly those working from PRTs outside of Kabul, spend much of their time inside heavily guarded compounds, venturing outside the wire mainly in armoured convoys, and not frequently or for protracted periods.This is the antithesis of guerrilla diplomacy, and does not position NATO representatives to effectively engage the population.

The issues sketched above touch on several of the highly problematic aspects inherent in the smart power formula, which seeks to combine hard and soft power.

There are also a number of questions and issues particular to Afghanistan which remain unaddressed.

If the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan has come to be seen by significant elements of the population as that of an occupying force, does it not follow that the  surge will only make matters worse?

With the highly decentralized, and far from monolithic Taliban by most accounts ascendent on the ground within Afghanistan at this time, are they likely to respond favourably to an invitation to talk, to negotiate in good faith, or to make the concessions necessary if any form of compromise is to prevail?

With the political popularity of the war slipping in most ISAF member states, would it not make more strategic sense for the Taliban simply to step back and wait until the majority of foreign forces depart?

Given Afghanistan’s long history as a graveyard of imperial ambitions, and after incurring – and imposing – such high human and economic costs, why did it take NATO planners eight years to arrive at this juncture?

Stability in Afghanistan, to the extent that it has ever been enjoyed, tends to feature a weak political centre governing lightly through complex and constantly shifting alliances with various powers in the periphery.

It is very likely that this pattern will re-assert itself. Whether or not that is achieved through a resumption of the civil war into which ISAF intevened on one side (the Northern Alliance, who for all intents and purposes had been defeated by the Taliban) or can be accomplished through the careful orchestration of some kind of peace remains to be seen.

Based on performance to date, skepticism seems warranted. When the history is written of this latest, sorry chapter in the long history of attempts on the part of Western powers to have their way with Afghanistan, it will be likely be judged to have been ineptly managed since the day the Taliban were driven from power. Throughout the interim period, Afghanistan has been allowed to swing like a pendulum, alternating back and forth from centre stage to sideshow in the Global War on Terror.

Under the circumstances of (yet another) failed foreign intervention, any attempt to combine hard and soft power in Afghanistan will necessarily be fraught, both morally and strategically.

On one hand, it is hard to imagine that NATO’s performance might worsen.

On the other, if one of the parties is headed for the exits and the other prepared to bide its time, the best that might be expected is a Vietnam style peace with honour which will provide a decent interval before the inevitable occurs.

Should that outcome eventuate, the really difficult questions will surely follow.

{ 0 comments }

I will return to a consideration of diplomacy’s prospects in the 21st century in a future posting.

In the meantime, it seems to me that the disaster in Haiti, and the response of the international community, merit some sustained reflection.

In Haiti, do the ethos of guerrilla diplomacy and the imperative of providing emergency medical and humanitarian assistance to those in need intersect?

I think so. But to see how, and as with the role of diplomacy in international relations writ large, it is time both to look back, and to look ahead.

Thirty years ago on a backpacking trip I had the opportunity to travel on both sides of the border which divides the second largest island in the Caribbean, Hispaniola, between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I have been fascinated by the place ever since. There is much to be learned in studying this locale, very little of which is coming out in the frenzy of sensational and heart-rending coverage which has attended the arrival of the legions of mainstream media, a group otherwise conspicuous mainly by their absence.

On the other hand, given the frequency and intensity of natural calamities which have beset Haiti in recent years,  many of those involved in the disaster relief industry must be developing quite a familiarity with the country. Some aspects of it, anyway.

The better hotels and restaurants, for instance…

In the wake of witnessing the machinery of  celebrity in full mobilization in delivering the Hope for Haiti Now telethon – admirable despite the glitz and sometimes forced images – it’s easy to be hard.

And there is certainly plenty of blame to go around.

But the story is more than just complex. It’s tragic, and that makes lapsing into cynicism and despair all too tempting. Yet from knowledge can come the understanding leads to change.

Stepping back a bit, what might be said of the island’s history?

Christopher Columbus founded the first European settlements in the New World on Hispaniola in 1492 and 1493.

It was not, however, considered the new world by the the estimated 400,000 native Amerindian Arawaks (Taino) who were living there before the period of European colonization and the importation of slaves from Africa to work the plantation economies.

The Taino initially welcomed the visitors.  Yet a combination of harsh treatment by the Europeans and exposure to imported diseases to which they had no immunity, such as smallpox, resulted in the near extinction of the island’s original inhabitants.

When the western third of Hispaniola was ceded by Spain to France in 1697 as part of the settlement of the Nine Years War, the French colony quickly came to eclipse its Spanish neighbour in power and wealth, and became known as the “Pearl of the Antilles“. For a time, it was the richest and most prosperous colony in the Caribbean.

Following a successful struggle for independence which concluded in 1804, Haiti became only the second country in the Americas to achieve that status after the United States.  In response, a trade embargo was imposed on Haiti by France, the former colonial master (which for a variety of reasons has never left anywhere that it has not been thrown out of), the USA, where slavery was still legal, and Great Britain, which did not wish to see its Caribbean colonies follow the Haitian example.

This animosity proved costly. In the intervening years, the fortunes of Haiti and the Dominican Republic have been reversed, with the former now the poorest country in the hemisphere, and the latter becoming the largest economy in the region.

Nowhere is this dichotomy move vividly illustrated than in satellite telemetry, which in places shows  relatively lush, green terrain on the Dominican side of the border, and a deforested, over-cultivated, and exhausted land on the other.

Haiti was occupied by the US marines from 1915 – 1934, due mainly to its indebtedness to American banks and concerns over the influence of expatriate Germans. It has experienced many foreign interventions since and has become, in effect, a ward of the international community.

Today it might be best be described not only as a failed state, but, in every sense, as a collapsed one.

That is one set of observations which play into the complex emergency now unfolding on the ground.

But there are many.

For example, it is crucial to distinguish between humanitarian relief, which is immediate and short term; aid, which tends to be technical and project oriented, and; development, which, at its best, is long-term, human-centred, equitable and sustainable. Development is the flip side of security. It is a process, not an end state, and is characterized by a situation in which people have access to social, political and economic opportunities to reach their full potential.

Haiti has much experience with disaster relief, and has received substantial amounts of aid, but has achieved very little over the 200 years since independence in terms of development.

In reference ACTE model of world order set out in Guerrilla Diplomacy, with the exception of a tiny elite and almost non-existent middle class, most Haitians inhabit the T and E worlds.

And it must be asked, in this crisis of colossal proportions, why is it that foreign military forces, especially those of the US, are leading the international response? If the answer is that it is an issue of capacity and resources, then a larger question is begged.

Why is it that the capacity and resources required to respond to complex emergencies are lodged in defence departments, and not in specialized civilian agencies?

Is this the most efficient, effective model for the delivery of emergency humanitarian assistance?  I have real doubts. As institutions, and at the most basic level of analysis, militaries exist to kill or capture enemies. As instruments of international policy they are designed to compel your adversary to submit to your will through the threat, or use of armed force. Sure, they can do other things, but those things – reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, cross-cultural and strategic communications – are not what they were intended for.

So, then. Where are the purpose-built institutions, and why are they not resourced to lead?

Another issue is intelligence. Intimate knowledge of the way things work, and how to get things done in Haiti would greatly expedite relief efforts. How much of that kind of essential, granular intelligence was being generated by the local embassies of the countries now most involved in the relief efforts?  Like the tourists alighting on a heavily guarded beach from the cruise ship Independence of the Seas a few days after the earthquake, were the Port au Prince based diplomatic representatives of Western countries living in a bubble, talking mainly to others of their ilk about what might be going on out there?

Or were they getting out of the compound and finding out for themselves, seeping down like penetrating oil into the interstices of power and influence by navigating pathways inaccessible to others?

Senior officials in sending states and managers in foreign ministries should be asking, and demanding answers to these hard questions.

Finally, there is the matter of the Haitian diaspora communities abroad. Members of this group will know more about what is going on Haiti than a handful of diplomats working out of an embassy in Port au Prince ever can or will.  In Canada, almost 100,000 persons of Haitian origin live in Quebec, mainly in Montreal. Haiti is also the second largest recipient, after Afghanistan, of Canadian development assistance.

Canadian interests are engaged.

With the Haitian diaspora’s dense network of ties back to the old country, it is long past time that foreign service officers were posted to Montreal with the explicit task of openly and transparently getting to know everything about, and all of the key people in that community.

There are huge challenges to be broached in Haiti at the best of times. The situation at present is dire and requires immediate and compassionate redress.

But there is much more to be learned from contemplating the roots of Haiti’s distress than will ever be gleaned from newspaper headlines or the fleeting images crossing television and computer screens.

There is also great potential for improving performance, an imperative which should be front and centre at the donors meeting being convened in Montreal January 25th.

We will delve more deeply into these issues in future posts.

{ 0 comments }

During my travels in the fall of 2009, and especially while spending time on trains and in airports, I  had many opportunities to reflect on the nature and future of diplomacy and international policy. I concluded that during the first decade of the 21st century, and 20 years after the end of the Cold War, there has been much more continuity than change in the conduct of international relations.

Global governance is still faltering.  States, however diminished in relative stature, and various transnational actors are still relying on the use of force – not simply as the final arbiter in settling disputes, but often as the chosen instrument in addressing their differences.

International policy remains heavily militarized, and the consequences have been calamitious.

Might the arrival of a new decade mark the beginning of diplomacy’s return to the mainstream of international relations from a protracted period of exile in the margins?

The arguments in favour are as persuasive as the track record is discouraging.

Diplomacy at its best is supple, versatile, highly cost-effective, and can produce lasting results.

The military, ironically, works best when it is not used. That was the enduring implication of the Cold War. The sword stays sharpest when left in the scabbard. Take it out, and you can make a terrible mess.

And the blade dulls very quickly.

In Afghanistan, the presence of foreign soldiers, once seen as liberating, has apparently become part of the problem. The Afghan people do not represent a threat to their neighbours or to the West. Like most anyone, however, they do not like to be occupied. They never have, as all who have tried can attest. Yet the burden of history has been ignored.

NATO metes out punishment with one hand, then offers to help and protect the population with the other.

When not rebuilding schools, power dams and hospitals, NATO troops fire on locally registered vehicles that fail to stop when a convoy passes, mistakenly bomb wedding parties, kick down doors looking for arms and Taliban, and incidentally maim and kill children as collateral damage.

This seems more like a formula for making enemies than friends. A percentage of the population will inevitably resist. That highly motivated group has nowhere else to go – they live there, they can wait, and they know the land and its people intimately.

What to do? Casualties are mounting as the ferment intensifies. Yet the US military, supported symbolically by at least some of their NATO allies, is surging. Whatever the window dressing, this may amount to an effort to put out the fire by adding more gasoline.

No one can read the future, and all historical parellels are imperfect, but in this case Viet Nam seems to me a better point of comparative reference than Iraq. Whatever its troubles, and however nasty the leadership and venal the regime, Iraq was an otherwise functioning country now ruined by the misguided application of external force.

Viet Nam, on the other hand, and not unlike Afghanistan today, was poor, had been wracked by civil war, and had a recent history of failed imperial interventions. The US role was divisive, media saturated and increasingly unpopular on the home front.

Legitimacy remains the issue. Karzai now is eerily evocative of Thieu then – weak, surrounded by corrupt cronies and acolytes, and deeply discredited domestically and internationally. A pair of marionettes. ISAF committments to accelerate training and the transfer responsibility to the Afghan National Army and Police sound very much like echoes of Vietnamization.

After a huge expenditure in terms of lives, finance and national reputation, in 1973 a face-saving way out of Southeast Asia was finally negotiated for the USA and its few remaining allies.  A few years later, the inevitable occured.

Diplomacy was used, but only as an exit strategy of last resort.  Sooner or later a replay is to be anticipated in Kabul for whatever remains of ISAF.

Meanwhile, as Iraq is being scaled back and Afghanistan cranked up, the threat conjurers are looking for the next candidate. Hardy perennials Iran and North Korea are again being tried on for size.

Yemen returned to centre stage after another stunning failure of intelligence and near epic tragedy on Christmas day.

Keep an eye on that space.

All of this might be sounding a bit too familiar. Whether restyled as counterinsurgency, stabilization, overseas contingency operations, or whatever, this is a continuation of the Global War On Terror (GWOT) by another name.

Watch what governments do, not what they say, and follow the money.

The GWOT is an open-sided, universal and undifferentiated campaign which may serve the interests of some, but amounts to a prescription for war without end.

British analyst Robert Fisk famously remarked that the only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn. There is a better way.

What if diplomacy was used, in the first instance, as the international policy instrument of choice?

In the next installment, we will cast our gaze backwards in time to look for some clues regarding how diplomacy might be employed to address the drivers of insecurity and underdevelopment in the decade ahead.

{ 0 comments }