Diplomacy’s Prospects: Looking Forward, Looking Back – Part I

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.

Coming up Short in Copenhagen: Puzzling a Multilateral Meltdown

Today is Winter Solstice in Central Canada. From this point forward, and for the next six months, the days begin to get get longer.

That is an encouraging thought. And a superior one when compared to anything that I can muster when reflecting on the meaning of the just-concluded Copenhagen conference on climate change.

Some background. For the past few weeks I have been preparing the detailed syllabus for a graduate seminar in Science, Technology (S&T) and International Policy (IP) which I will be teaching next term at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre.

One of the central themes the course, and indeed of Guerrilla Diplomacy, is the need to bridge the near complete disconnect between the worlds of S&T, on the one hand, and IP, on the other. This is necessary because science and technology are profoundly implicated in the majority of the principal threats and challenges facing international policy managers and decision-makers in the globalization age.

Nowhere has the gulf separating these two solitudes been more clearly revealed than over the past several weeks in Copenhagen, where COP 15 dissolved December 19th in a fiasco of damage control and forced face-saving.

Despite best efforts on the part of conference organizers to somehow salvage something from the ashes of the event, no amount of spin could obscure the vacuity of the results, which amount to little more than an almost inaudible whimper. Absent entirely from the “Take Note” agreement are verifiable emission cuts targets, numbers,  dates, and deadlines. Nor is there any reference to a strategy or a time frame for the conversion of this vague statement into a detailed and binding treaty.

By any reasonablee measure, Copenhagen radically underachieved on even the most modest of conceivable expectations. Without high level political commmittment, direction and drive from the largest greenhouse gas emitters, the process drifted aimlessly. The negotiations were disperate and unfocussed, and the outcomes, for those looking for fundamental change, were appalling. Early on the event descended into  a circus of infotainment, and it never recovered. The void created by the lack of any real news related to substantial progress on the issues was filled by the mass media, who with little better do reported  on whatever sideshows happpened to be running whenever it came time to file.

Dashing the hopes of millions and defying the benefit of years of planning, the Copenhagen Accord amounted to an  empty vessel at a time when the need for freight is acute.

The ramifications for global governance are little short of depressing. Based on this experience, the prospects for effective international collaboration towards the design of brighter collective future are slender.

And for Canada?

Things did not pan out as might have been hoped. Instead, it was the disjuncture between this country’s long established image and ruptation as a progressive, constructive and engaged participant in international negotiations, and the present, distant reality which was on prominent display. This very public transformation and departure from past peformance was noticed, not least by the NGO community.  Their representatives dished out dollops of scorn, rebuke and ridicule upon a country who not long ago placed a premium on international environmental stewardship, leadership and partnership with civil society.

Lest we forget… Canada once led the world by initiating action on environmental treaties designed to help protect the ozone layer of the atmospherereduce acid rain, and clean up the Great Lakes. Canada was the motive force behind the organization of the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, which, building upon the foundations set out in the Earth Charter,  produced Agenda 21, the Biodiversity Convention, the Statement of Forestry Principles, and – yes – the first Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The difference between then and now is so stark as to be shocking.

Jean Charest was Canada’s federal Environment Minister at that the time of the Rio Conference. He was also at Copenhagen, this time as Quebec premier. Like most delegates, he arrived in Copenhagen with a full agenda. Like all of them, he left with little to show for his efforts.

Who knows how he must have felt?

I, however, do know how I feel.

Sadness, mainly. And shame.

For Canada.

And for the world.

Let’s hope that this miserable failure can at minimum serve as a learning experience, and that massive multilateral meltdowns of this nature will not be repeated.

Yet if the climate change science is at least indicative, and baring any short-term breakthroughs in bio-remedies, the world and its leaders are going to have to learn very, very fast.

Canada and the World – II

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Canada and the World

In recent years a spate of books and reports by Jennifer Welsh, Andrew Cohen, Canada 25, and many others have set out in some detail Canada’s recent international performance and perceptions thereof.

To know where to go in international policy, you must know where you have been.

Having a narrative, of course, is one thing; having an assessment is another.  How did this country arrive at what many consider to represent an all time a low tide?

In my estimation, this has occurred, in roughly equal measure:

* By default. That is, the inevitability of a relative decline post-1947 in Canada’s power and influence as other countries rebuilt or emerged; the generally shrinking place of the state in the overall globalization mix, and; the movement of the locus of activity upwards, outwards and downwards to supranational, transnational and sub-national actors, respectively.

* By design. That is, the deliberate reductions in DFAIT resources;  the ascendance of micro-management and centralized control; the nature of recent ministerial appointments; the downsizing of Ottawa’s world-view, and; agglomeration of decision-making function at the executive level.

* As a result of long term domestic trends. That is, the fragmenting of the old middle class, non-partisan consensus which used to exist around a suite of widely-held notions (Pearsonian internationalism, middle power role, generous aid donor, conflict resolver, helpful fixer, peacekeeper, provider of good offices) in favour of a focus on more highly particularistic special interests (climate change, aboriginal issues, weapons of mass destruction, rain forests, terrorism, women’s rights, pandemic disease, genomics, etc.)

This splintering – for better or worse – of international policy values and interests will make it difficult to again catalyze public opinion around broad Canadian objectives. That said, public diplomacy, or PD, as a technique for delivering international policy results through dialogue, plays directly to Canada’s soft power strengths (image, reputation, brand). Equally significant, it minimizes the weaknesses and vulnerabilities associated with diminished hard power, ongoing capacity limitations and this country’s generally shrinking space in the planetary scheme of things.

With an admirable reputation and positive image, public diplomacy is Canada’s strongest comparative advantage in international relations.  It is almost incomprehensible that this function has taken among the hardest of hits in the recent round of resource reductions. Not only is this akin to shooting yourself in the foot when you are in a race, but it forces even greater distortions and misallocations throughout the diplomatic network.

The Public Diplomacy Officers assigned to Canadian missions abroad are on the front lines of reductions, and in some cases the removal of their budgets for programming, travel or representation. The very significant administrative overheads and related costs associated with keeping these people in place is difficult to  justify when in many cases no real work can be done.

How might a compelling value proposition be rebuilt?

The bottom line, I believe, will involve restoring DFAIT in general, and PD in particular to the centre of a whole-of-country, whole-of-government Canadian grand strategy for international policy re-engagement. In this, diplomacy and development would displace defence as the policy instruments of choice.

This strategy would be crafted in explicit response to key contemporary developments in world political economy:

* power shift, in favour of the (re)emerging Asia-Pacific region

* the coming into place of a new suite of global  challenges, distinct from the Cold War threat set in that most of these transnational issues are rooted in science and driven by technology

* the rise of heterpolarity as the basis for world order

Canada is unique in this highly competitive world in that it bridges: to Europe, through our history; to the USA and the Americas, through our present priorities and orientation, and; across the Pacific, to Asia, the largest source of new Canadians and the dynamic centre of the new global economy.

It is long past time for this country to use those bridges, diplomatically, as conduits to a brighter international policy future.

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference – dealing now with one of the foremost issues, among many, which is rooted in science and driven by technology – will offer manifold opportunities to engage constructively.

Canada and the World – I

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Canada and the World

It has been a week now since I returned from Foreign Policy Camp in Vancouver – an amazing enterprise largely ignored by the mainstream media.

What to make of the Camp?

The event was superbly organized, innovatively delivered and very well attended by a diverse selection of Canadians drawn from across the country – students, teachers, NGO representatives, business-people, the interested public. CIDA and DND had several delegates each, and all participants were eligible to contribute to a survey of government performance, the findings of which are now available.

DFAIT, curiously was not represented. The absence was noted.

One might wonder what kinds of factors might have combined to keep Canada’s  foreign ministry from attending a major national conference on foreign policy. Have the budget cuts been so deep that any travel by anyone is now impossible? Was the Department under political instruction not to attend? Were officials just too busy dealing with all of the urgent issues – such as rising waters around several officials associated with the Richard Colvin  affair – to spare time to attend to issues which might merely qualify as important?

I don’t have these answers.

Yet book touring all fall and engaging many audiences on both sides of the Atlantic nonetheless did provide some useful perspectives. With that experience in mind I can offer a few observations related to DFAIT’s unprecedented predicament and the challenges facing Canadian international policy generally.

Despite serial attempts at reform, the Department has mainly failed to adapt to the imperatives of globalization. It remains  overly state-centric, hierarchic, rigid in structure and risk-averse in culture. At a time when it might be focussed suppley on managing the clusters of cross-cutting issues which are not the responsibility of other government departments or other levels of government – public administration and policy development, international science and technology issues, the rule of law, rights and democracy, and governance, to name a few – the Department must instead devote its energies to identifying further cuts.

Nor has DFAIT been able to resist the continuing militarization of Canadian foreign policy. It’s influence was reportedly near invisible in high-level discussions on Afghanistan held during the crucial period of 2005 – 07, when arguments favouring a move from stability operations in Kabul to aggressive counter-insurgency in Kandahar were permitted to trump the case for peace-support.

The DND-driven decision to depart from ISAF and join Operation Enduring Freedom, aka the GWOT, was hugely consequential, yet the larger implications for Canada’s security and the management of its overseas brand apparently received scant attention. War has since come to dominate competing international policy priorities.

On these points and others, some of the commentary ventured at the Foreign Policy Camp was insightful, and a number of the prescriptions refreshingly forward looking and strategic.

With so little going on in Ottawa in terms of strategic planning, policy development and global analysis, it was re-assuring to hear so many new voices in Vancouver.

Heteropolarity Under Construction: Reflections from the GD Road Show

Looking out at dawn over the banks of the South Saskatchewan River from a hotel restaurant in Saskatoon,  the thin, reedy, late November light illuminates a grey-brown landscape impatient for the arrival of snow.

That blanket will obscure the detritus of a season passed and reveal in its place the essential patterns and forms which lie beneath.

Looking out over Canada, the USA, the UK and Europe after the first few months of the GD tour, I am left with a similarly expectant feeling.

I see a world waiting, impatiently, for change, for the renaissance in diplomatic institutions and practice which will permit to diplomacy to displace defence at the centre of international policy.

In the wake a few days in Boston and Washington, I very much hope that similar thoughts are on President Obama’s mind as he ponders the way forward in Afghanistan.

Keep fighting – only harder – or start talking with a view to ending, rather than extending the war?

It seems to me that the Nobel Committee, in selecting Obama as its 2009 Peace Prize winner, has sent a clear political indication of its preference in that debate.

That option would not involve escalation. Quite the contrary.

After Scheherazade, talk, and talk, and keep talking until they send the executioners home.

Nearing the end of the first phase of the book tour, then, I find myself more convinced than ever that the world is at a delicate moment, a strategic juncture in history which is likely to condition, and perhaps even determine the geopolitical shape of things to come.

I am referring to:

  • power shift, in favour of the re-emerging Asia-Pacific region
  • the coming into place of a new suite of global  challenges, distinct from the Cold War threat set in that most of these transnational issues are rooted in science and driven by technology

In earlier writings I have had occasion to elaborate on the first two points; here I would like to dwell for a bit on the third.

Many observers have suggested that with the rapid passing of hegemonic American uni-polarity, the planet seems to be reverting to some kind of multi-polar dispensation.

Well… I don’t think so.

This is not the world of Metternich and Castlereigh, nor of Bismark, or Churchill, or Trueman.  Attempts to secure stability can no longer be ensconsced in the likes of  the Congress of Vienna or the Treaty of Versailles. In those days, the vectors of power (military, economic, territorial) were relatively easily measured and compared. Attempts at balancing the resulting calculation – however unsuccessful –  appeared to hold some promise.

As it happens, they didn’t, as centuries of endless war attest with some conviction.

Even moreso in the globalization age, this is kind of thinking is no longer of much relevance or utility.

Looking forward a decade or so, it seems clear that the trump card of the USA will be its hard, or military, power. The dynamic epicentre of the world economy, however, will have shifted to an increasingly integrated Asia.

Europe, with its peace, prosperity, social democracy and rich artistic and cultural heritage will lead in soft power, the power of attraction. For the post-Treaty of Lisbon EU, the trick will be to find effective ways to translate that soft power into practical influence, almost certainly through the implememtation of  innovative public diplomacy.

Brazil, too, will be a pole.

Russia, as well.

Other poles will emerge – Turkey? Iran? – and the sources of their power are all likely to be different as well.

Which is to say, heterogeneous.

Bombs and guns, generals and admirals won’t have a major role in finding a way towards development and security in this kind of a world. That enterprise will turn on dialogue, on cross-cultural communication, on knowledge-based problem solving and on complex balancing.

Calling all (guerrilla) diplomats…

So, then, back to the banks of the South Saskatchewan River. In the lead up to next Monday’s Foreign  Policy Camp in Vancouver, I have been thinking about what all of this might mean for Canadian strategy, institutions, policies and interests.

More on that soon.

Twenty Years On in Berlin: One Europe in the Making?

Last night at the Brandenburg Gate I attended the commemorative ceremony organized to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, the re-unification of Germany and Europe,  and the end of the Cold War.

That is a lot to celebrate, but to call the event historic does not quite convey the emotion, the excitement, and the sheer exhilaration that was palpable in the streets. If the rain dampened the numbers, it could not douse the spirit of the evening.

Not even close.

Gorbachev and Genscher. Medvedev and Merkel. Sarkozy. Brown.  Walesa. Secretary Clinton introducing a videogram from President Obama.

Imagine. As a symbol of the new Europe, this was a breathtaking sight to behold.

Amidst the speeches, music, fireworks and mulled wine, I found myself thinking, what does all of this mean, and where might it be going?

For the past few hundred years, European statesmanship has been concerned mainly with balancing power, first on a multi-polar continent, then in a bipolar world. In the days of Metternich and Castlereagh, the then vectors of national power – armies, navies, economies, populations, territories – were carefully calculated and then balanced. Alliances were made and treaties entered into for purposes of expressing that balance, and so was world order fashioned.

When imbalances occurred, negotiations usually resumed. If they failed, more often than not it was conflict which decided the new order.

After the Cold War began, the balancing act continued, but this time it was predicated upon the possibility of the apocalypse, and the major players were the USA and the Soviet Union. The thinking was thermo-nuclear, and it was deterrence, containment, and the certainty of mutually assured destruction which resulted in a very heavily armed peace. This was a terrifying kind of stability, but still, the underlying dynamic was the same – because the sources of power were comparable and measureable, they could be balanced.

And so they were.

In the 21st century, none of this kind of thinking really works very well any more. The brief period of American uni-polarity flamed out in a violent starburst of shock and awe over Baghdad in 2004. But that did not, in my view, signal the much-heralded return to some kind of multipolarity. Why not? Because in the era of globalization, the principal vectors of power and influence are now both highly dispersed geographically, and, among and between themselves, fundamentally different in kind.

Unlike in the previous eras, the heterogenous nature of the competing poles renders them very difficult to compare, and even more difficult to balance.

The USA, for instance, will for the forseeable future be the world’s leading military power. Yet its economic and industrial hegemony is fading fast, a trend accelerated by the continuing financial crisis. Within a decade or two the mantle of economic leadership will have passed to the Asia-Pacific region generally, and to China in particular – with India not that far behind. Russia will be an energy and resource pole, a status complicated by its residual capacities as a former superpower. Brazil may also emerge as a pole, the exact nature of which remains unclear. So, too, with other countries and regions.

And Europe?

With its peace, prosperity, safe and liveable cities, social safety net,  excellent public infrastructure, rich historical heritage and thriving artistic and cultural life, Europa is very likely destined to lead the world in soft power, the power of attraction. In practice, then, the source of Europe’s strength and the basis of its comparative advantage will be in the demonstration effect, in the ability to project its success internationally.

The emergence of a hetero-polar world order will call for nuanced, and highly complex balancing between dynamic poles, and knowledge-driven problem solving to address common threats and challenges. Many of these, such as climate change, resource scarcity and pandemic disease, will be rooted in science and driven by technology.

Defence departments, although they have been allocated the lion’s share of resources, are, as instruments of international policy, both too sharp, and too dull to provide these kinds of services.

Diplomats, on the other hand, with their specialized cross-cultural, linguistic and political communications skills can, and indeed must connect.

So… As I was standing last night by the Brandenburg Gate, it occured to me that the translation Europe’s immense success into tangible, progressive influence vis-a-vis the other poles will depend, perhaps more than anything else, on the quality, agility and acuity of its diplomacy. If that idea catches on at the level of decision-makers and opinion-leaders within the European Union, it just might help to re-capture the public imagination – which lately appears to have been flagging as regards the integration project –  and in so doing assist in taking the entire process to a higher level.

In the face of such an outcome. we would all be more secure.

A Grand Strategy for Europe?

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

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

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

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.

Guerrilla Diplomacy and Grand Strategy

This fall I have begun to tour in support of the release of Guerrilla Diplomacy. Last week I addressed undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Toronto, and participated in a forum before a mixed group at Dalhousie University in Halifax. That institution’s Centre for Foreign Policy Studies has a special place in the overall scheme of the book project, and as such I was particularly delighted to appear there at this early juncture.

Next week I speak in Montreal and Ottawa.

I tend to open these events with a few prefatory remarks about guerrilla diplomacy as both an approach to diplomatic practice and a framework for the understanding and management of international relations and global issues. Following that introduction I usually set out a statement of the book’s main argument, to the effect that if development is the new security in the era of globalization, then diplomacy must displace defence at the centre of international policy. I then outline several the essential building blocks of the analysis, such as the ACTE world order model, and suggest some of the implications for public administration and international policy.

Over the course of the these, and the previous discussions which have followed my presentations, the question often comes up: how can your program be implemented?

How do we get from where we are to where you are advocating that we should be?

I reply that there are at least three prerequisites:

  • The rehabilitation and popularization of diplomacy per se, bringing it in from the far reaches of esoterica and closer to the mainstream of public and political discourse by making it relevant and real
  • The radical reform of, and reinvestment in, the foreign ministry and foreign service
  • The formulation and articulation of a grand strategy in which guerrilla diplomacy can be situated

With the publication of the book and related articles, increasingly frequent forays into journalism, and now with an extended road show, I hope to be able to contribute in some way to the realization of the first and second goals.  It is the third element, however, which I would like to elaborate somewhat at this point.

The notion of grand strategy comes up at various points in the volume, and I consider it a core element of statecraft. Few other analysts, however, seem to share that view. As a term, it is largely unknown outside of specialist circles, and is rarely mentioned in the media. Even in academia it is rarely taught, particularly at North American universities. Canada does not have one; the last effort to cobble together such a document collapsed in a smouldering heap following  a change in government, and nothing has been offered since. A grand strategy may be under construction south of the border, but the Obama administration has yet to set out anything comprehensive.

All of this, I think, is unfortunate, because grand strategy is an extremely useful concept.

In the absence of grand strategy,  international policy tends to be ad hoc, incoherent and splattered. Perhaps the only thing worse than no grand strategy is one which is flawed or failed,   such as the notorious Bush Doctrine of the Global War on Terror, pre-emptive defence and unilateral intervention. If bad or non-existant, poor decisions are made, lives are squandered, finance is wasted, and insecurity – often in concert with underdevelopment – is advanced.

In the particularly memorable words of Oxford University historian and theoretician Hew Strachan, without grand strategy, policy can become an instrument of war, rather than the other way around.

In the next posting or two, we are going to drill down into the concept of grand strategy, identifying the critical elements and assessing their significance vis-a vis guerrilla diplomacy in the age of globalization.

In the interim, a provisional definition might read something like this:

Grand strategy is a unifying, long-term vision of a country’s global values and interests; an expression of where that country is, and wants to go in the world, and; an analysis of its potential and capacity to achieve the objectives, and to reach the destination set forth.

Well worthy of some sustained reflection, wouldn’t you say?

Science, Technology and Diplomacy

In his typically excellent September 1 – 2 press and blog review of the burgeoning discourse on public diplomacy (PD), John Brown cites a quotation by Manuel Castells, author of the magisterial Information Age trilogy:

Public Diplomacy is the…projection in the international arena of the values and ideas of the public… The aim of the practice of public diplomacy is not to convince but to communicate, not to declare but to listen. Public diplomacy seeks to build a sphere in which diverse voices can be heard in spite of their various origins, distinct values, and often contradictory interests.

Among the almost infinite variety of subjects which might form the basis for that kind of conversation, science (because of its universality, inclusivity and relevance to almost everything) and technology (because of its power and ubiquity) represent one area which is is particularly well-suited to international ventilation.

For those reasons, among others, scientific exchanges, alongside similarly popular educational and cultural programs, were prolific during the Cold War. Although not necessarily considered an element of public diplomacy at the time, international S&T programming nonetheless played a prominent role in both the American and Soviet camps.  In those days, wide-ranging ideological, strategic and geopolitical competition provided the framing and context, both directly and through third parties whose allegiance was being sought. One of the sources of continuing Russian influence in places such as India, Syria and Iran, for instance, stems from the scientific training received in the Soviet Union by at least a generation of  students.

In the globalization era, however, world order has become more hetero– than bi- or even multi-polar, and the institutional memory of those Cold War activities is fading fast. Now, markets rule, and much of the scientific research and technological development has  been either moved out of government and privatized, or has remained focussed on defence-related objectives.

None of that, of course, makes S&T writ large any less relevant. But it does make it harder to understand why so little is said about it outside of a few specialized, and somewhat isloated and obscure circles.

Although many of the most pressing issues facing humanity are based in science and propelled by technology, with critical downstream implications for development and security, most governments have not made significant efforts to ramp up the level of scientific and technological interchange globally. Were this to become a priority, foreign ministries, as the primary points of contact between the national and international interests of states, would almost certainly have to become involved.

All of which brings me to offer an account of a session I attended recently on “The Foreign Ministry of the Future”. Senior officials spoke at some length about matters related to to the creation of an international platform for the efficient delivery of common services abroad to other federal government departments, about the need to transform various aspects of the bureaucratic process, and about a number of human resource initiatives.

S&T?

It never came up.

In fact, the entire episode was suffused with a somewhat surreal air, not least because of the complete absence of any references to either diplomacy or foreign policy, which one might otherwise think would have to be germane to such a discussion. Nor did the acute shortage of resources, which is at present wreaking havoc upon operations at home and abroad, attract any commentary. All of which is quite surprising.

One dimension of S&T which might have come up regards the issue of virtuality and foreign ministries, by which I mean the application of information and communications technology (ICTs) and the use of the new media. Especially in OECD countries, and particularly in the USA and UK,  diplomatic methods and practices after a slow start have in fact have in fact adapted quite well to the possibilities inherent in the new media and ICTs. Ambassadors and foreign ministers are blogging, the web is being used interactively for the conduct of outreach and public diplomacy, foreign service officers in the field are being enabled through the issue of mobile communications devices such as Blackberries, and personnel departments are experimenting with telework and distance learning.

Among the many factors subversive of  the lingering elements of hierarchy, secrecy, cultural conservativism and top-down control still prominent in contemporary diplomatic institutions, these sorts of developments, and the revolution in S&T more generally, are likely to figure centrally.

In my view, that can’t happen too soon.

I began with a quotation from communications theorist Manuel Castells; let me conclude with a passage from Canada’s own Marshall McLuhan:

The vested interests of acquired knowledge and conventional wisdom have always been bypassed and engulfed by new media.

Enough said.

Science, Technology and International Policy – Part II

Remember the 20th  century?

At that time international relations revolved, variously, around geopolitical confrontation, ideological competition, territorial disputes, alliance politics, and multilateral  organizations. Today, clearly delineated empires are no longer colliding, the spectre of world war and mutually assured destruction has receded, and the centre of gravity in global relations has shifted. States are still with us and remain important, but they are now only one actor among many.

In the globalization era, the most profound  threats and challenges to human survival – public health, food security, alternative energy sources, to name a few – are rooted in science and driven by technology. The management of this sprawling suite of transnational  issues cannot be left to governments alone; it requires not only relentless creativity and tireless collaboration, but the engagement of cross-cutting civil society networks – NGOs, business, universities, think tanks and the media.

All of this is germane to guerrilla diplomacy, which at the highest level of analysis  is about advancing innovation in response to a world of complex and multiple insecurities, about charting the way from where we are to where we need to be. This means finding ways to get from looking to seeing, from hearing to listening, and from diktat to dialogue.

What better place to do that than at the intersection of science, technology and international policy?

What better means to spread the benefits of research and development,  and in so doing to help bridge digital divides, than diplomacy, which privilages talking over fighting, is powered by continuous learning and can tap into the global political economy of knowledge in order to solve problems non-violently ?

It all sounds just great…  except that it isn’t happening. Diplomacy has been marginalized as a result of the  militarization of international policy – probably the worst of our collective Cold War carry-overs. Foreign ministries are in large part without scientific expertise or technological savvy.  Except for certain defense-related issues, S&T is almost completely absent from the mainstream international policy mix.

Yet a capacity to generate, absorb and use S&T plays a crucial role in international relations, not least by improving development prospects and addressing the needs of the poor. Poverty reduction contributes to development, and development is the flip side of security.

All of which leaves the world in a rather precarious and exposed position – precision munitions can’t help much with increasing crop yeilds; legionaires are not very concerned with diminishing biodiversity or species extinction. Nor are international S&T issues much like the familiar suite of  political, economic  and ideational differences to which diplomacy, to the extent that it was engaged, had become accustomed. Those kinds of issues are by nature highly subjective and dependent upon perception – where you stand depends in large part upon where you sit.

Scientific and technological issues, on the other hand, are different in kind, and that may help to explain why the institutions of international policy have had such difficulty cooperating with S&T organizations or otherwise accommodating those sorts of considerations. Foreign ministries and international organizations are in the main just not culturally sensitive or attuned to S&T.

But the more intractable problems are even deeper:

  • Public and private sector interests in and perspectives on S&T are not necessarily complimentary
  • NGO representatives, academics and diplomats do not always agree on the role and place of S&T in the assessment of threats to international peace and security
  • S&T issues have not been accorded a central place in the non-specialist discourse on development/underdevelopment.

Each of these observations is troublng, and each requires some further unpacking.