Month: October 2009

A Grand Strategy for Europe?

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In late September I posted a piece on the relationship between guerrilla diplomacy and grand strategy, which might be summarily defined as the achievement of broad agreement on comprehensive international policy objectives, and on how that, and they, might best be accomplished.

I would like to pick up that thread, and examine in particular some of the strands in relation to the emergence of the New Europe. This subject, BTW, is one about which I profess no special expertise, apart from having travelled often in the region and having been a participant in a wonderful three week British Council program back in 1999 intended to expose “mid-career opinion leaders” to the wonders of the emerging Europa.

Let me also declare from the outset that it worked for me – I became a convert. There is something very good happening here.

For the past week and a bit I have taken Guerrilla Diplomacy on the road, and find myself now in heavy Eurotation; this part of the tour will continue until the middle of next month. Today, I am writing from Brussels, the capital of Euroland and, judging not least by the vast number of office buildings flying the gold star studded,  royal blue flag,  also its administrative headquarters and institutional epicentre.

At present, Europe is all abuzz about the implications associated with the coming into force, at long last, of the Treaty of Lisbon. This will bring the level of integration in the ever-expanding Union to a higher, more political level, and will take effect pending ratification by the Czeck Republic – a development which appears increasingly certain.

This latest phase in European integration will also create the post of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. For those interested in diplomacy, this will also almost certainly require the creation of a much expanded European diplomatic service, the European External Action Service, with a headquarters operation in Brussels and representation in capitals across Europe and around the world. These outcomes are widely interpreted as steps along the long road leading, one day, to the creation of a common European foreign and security policy.

To date, of course, that goal has proven elusive, and has attracted some derision, especially on the part of certain Euro-skeptic commentators, based mainly in the UK.

Even so, that is not to suggest that a common European approach to the management of various global threats and challenges is either unattainable or undesirable. Rome, after all, was not built in a day, and these are early days yet for the integration project, which has made remarkable strides inthe space of  a scant half century. Not to be forgotten is the fact that the Union has so tightly bound the destinies of Germany, France and the UK, and so ingrained the habits of cooperation, that war between these once irreconcilable adversaries now unthinkable.

Given the horrific events of the 20th century, this is an enormous accomplishment, the value of which cannot be overstated.

But let’s step back from all of this a little.  If history can be taken as a reliable indicator, then it is entirely likely that in the fullness of time the consolidation of the European economy will be matched, one day, by the consolidation of the European polity. With an increasingly interwoven economic union will inevitably come a higher degree of political influence, and that enlarged political influence will, in my view, sooner or later translate into Europe’s increased international sway.

That said, the task of folding sometimes divergent national values, policies and interests into a a larger, and shared vision of the way forward will not be easy. In the words of Nabil Ayad, Director of the Diplomatic Academy of London, “the Americans may act without thinking, but the Europeans think without acting…”

Back, then, to the matter of European grand strategy, and the question then must be put:  how will this newfound power be expresssed, and to what end will it be directed?

Those issues will be broached in this space presently, and, hopefully, with the added benefit of a few more weeks of close observation on site.

Noam, Me and the Media

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Not too far back, I  promised to share with readers a short blast of vintage Chomsky which I received while researching Guerrilla Diplomacy. That posting will have to be perused in order to establish the context for the passage which follows.

Fasten your intellectual safety belts:

The suggestion you make is not consistent with the facts.  Timor was covered quite extensively in 1974-5, when Washington was greatly concerned with the break-up of the Portuguese empire.  Coverage began to decline as soon as the US invaded, and literally reached zero (in the NY Times; there was very little elsewhere) when atrocities peaked in 1978, along with US aid.  That continued until the end, and it continues today.  Here’s a report on ET in yesterday’s NYT:  “East Timor was torn by civil war in 1975 after the abrupt end of colonial rule by Portugal, and virtually razed in 1999, when the people voted in a United Nations-sponsored referendum to end 24 years of occupation by Indonesia, prompting an angry reaction from the losers.” In fact, the civil war was a minor affair that lasted a few weeks, and from December 1975 (well after the marginal civil war was over) and through mid-September 1999 (well after the Indonesian terror that is the “angry reaction” he refers to) the US gave decisive support, along with Britain, to some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.  But it’s crucial to suppress our vicious role.  The cowardice and servility to power surpasses comment…

…As for the bitter US condemnation of the Vietnamese invasion, that cannot be accounted for by presence of journalists.  Authentic journalists would have hailed Vietnam for opening a new era of humanitarian intervention by kicking out the KR just as their atrocities were reaching their peak in 1978.  Servants of state power, in contrast, would join Washington in bitterly condemning Vietnam’s actions to terminate Pol Pot’s atrocities.  As they did.  The same journalists were there when Washington supported a Chinese invasion to punish Vietnam for daring to end Pol Pot’s crimes, and when the Reagan State Department officially declared that it supported Democratic Kampuchea (that is, the Khmer Rouge) but not Fretilin (the resistance in ET) because DK was more representative of the Cambodian population than Fretilin.  Of course that was not reported, and my repeated citation of it in books and articles cannot be mentioned, not because of distribution of reporters, but because of what it tells us about the US government and about the intellectual and moral culture.  In Canada and Europe as well.

The explanation throughout is clear and simple, and reinforced by the fact that the pattern is routine….  But the conclusions are doctrinally unacceptable, so all sorts of evasions are tried — or usually the overwhelming record is simply ignored.

While readers are invited to reach their own judgements, in my view the distribution of media representation remains a salient element in determining what becomes a mainstream story, rather than the other way around.  This seems to me true even if the pattern of representation, and hence the amount of coverage, does  reflect the interests of media owners, especially in the early stages. Exceptions could include cases of natural disasters, most notably if the areas hit are popular with Western tourists.

On a more day-to-day level,  when it was announced that the 2008 summer Olympics would go to Beijing, a capital formerly on the margins, correspondents were despatched and filing from that location joined the circuit of regular coverage. With that comes all of the trimmings and the endless spin-offs, from documentaries on human rights and the environment to the vacuity of infotainment,  features on fashion and the  vicissitudes of film stars. Catastrophic suffering  – civil war, mass migration, unspeakable violence and vicious criminality – continues daily in many parts of the globe, yet it’s almost invisible in the news stands, not least because no journalists are not there to bear witness.

And of course that, after Chomsky,  might be explained at least in part by an absence of deeply implicated Western interests…

So, are we both right?

Quite possibly. After all, one of the mature pleasures of adulthood is learning to live with unresolved issues, ambiguity and paradox.

The Meaning of Obama’s Nobel Prize? Diplomacy Rehabilitated

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The saturation coverage of Obama’s big win has focussed overwhelmingly, and almost exclusively  on whether or not he deserves the prize based upon his performance in presidential office to date.

That is a worthwhile debate, and  a formidable case can be made on either side of the issue. No, Obama has not yet managed to deliver on much of what has been promised, perhaps especially as regards that hardy, and extremely thorny perennial, Middle East peace. But yes, there have been some very promising initial signs, such as substantially reprofiling of European missile defence, reaching out to the Islamic world, banning of torture and extraordinary rendition, moving to close Guantanamo Bay and the global network of  so-called “black” interrogation sites and secret prisons, repairing transatlantic relations, and so forth.

Much of this has already paid measurable dividends in terms of the restoration of America’s global image, reputation, soft power and influence.  Brand America is again showing some global lustre.

In any case, so far, we can see elements of both continuity and change in US international policy, and in these still early days the jury is out as to which trend will in the end prevail.

There is a sense, however, in which simply framing the question in that way obscures what seems to me the more profound political signal transmitted by the Nobel Committee. That message boils down to a very public gesture of support for diplomacy in general, and for American diplomacy in particular. After a protracted period of languishing on the sidelines, unilateralism and pre-emption have given way to dialogue, and diplomacy, which was mentioned three times in the Committee’s four paragraph announcement, has been restored as a legitimate tool of statecraft.

For the USA – and the world – the return of a preference for talking over fighting is well worth celebrating.

That conclusion, I believe, is unassailable, and to my mind represents the most compelling interpretation of Obama’s award.

For a much fuller treatment of the theme of diplomacy in rehab, please go here.

Back to Chomsky in my next post.

Me, Noam and the Media

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In the last posting, I noted that the existence of a carefully considered, broadly-based, and widely-subscribed grand strategy could help countries situate themselves, and stay on a chosen international policy course, in constantly whirling world.

The reality, however, is that most governments, and their policies, are blown around like the flotsam and jetsam on the pond in Central Park. And much of the wind which causes the movement is generated by the conventional media. If a story is on the front page or featured as the lead item in the network news, then you can bet that politicians and officials will respond. For that reason – and more –  diplomats must understand how the media works.

And how to work the media.

Most of the stories which receive prominent coverage,  it must be added, either originate in the metropolis – or the A-world, in GD parlance – or have some direct connection to metropolitan interests. Events in planet’s margins, whether a homeless shelter in Toronto or a barrio in Rio, will rarely receive protracted prime-time attention or main event billing. If vital interests are not at risk, coverage will be limited to disasters or conflicts, and treated as unfortunate sideshows, instantly terrifying and just as soon forgotten. If the scale of the tragedy is sufficiently overwhelming – like the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean – or if the news media happens to be fully engaged, as during hurricane Katrina in August 2005,  then the popular resonance may linger.

For the most part, however, mass suffering in Darfur or the disintegration of the Congo receive at best episodic treatment. Indeed, much of what happens outside of the metropolis, or at least outside of areas of immediate metropolitan interest, commands about as much serious or sustained international attention as the Maoist insurrection in Assam, the aftermath of the civil war in Sri Lanka or the struggle of the Sarahawi people for independence from Morocco in what was once the Spanish Sahara.

In the early 1990s, while working in the Canadian Foreign Ministry as the intelligence analyst for Central, South and Southeast Asia, I had an interesting exchange with Noam Chomsky on this issue. I had heard him in a radio interview attribute the intense negative media coverage of the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia (to remove Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge) to the slavish adherence of the Western press to the political ends of its owners and masters. Chomsky compared this to the almost negligible coverage of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, which he suggested was equally worthy of coverage but was not accorded similar treatment because of ideological inconvenience and Western support for the Suharto regime.

I wrote to Chomsky to say that while I was not in principle unsympathetic to his analysis, I believed that some of his observations might be explained by the structure of media representation and the geographic location of foreign correspondents and stringers.  In the late seventies, I suggested, Bangkok and Hong Kong were still brimming with reporters desperate for stories in the wake of the Indochinese conflicts, and renewed Vietnamese activity on their doorstep gave them something to write about.

On the other hand, almost no international reporters were anywhere near the island of Timor, nor was there an easy or fast or easy way to get there. That might help to account for the paucity of coverage.

Professor Chomsky did not agree.

I checked my (quite possibly flawed) recollection of this exchange with Chomsky during the preparation of the Guerrilla Diplomacy manuscript. He e-mailed me back, on the same day, making clear that his views had not changed. His arguments, I think, are vintage, and although I decided in the end not to use the material as a sidebar in the book, the contents nonetheless bear repetition.

They will be coming to this screen presently.