South of the border, there have in recent years been a growing number of voices expressing serious concern over the militarization of American life.

I certainly share that sentiment.

Is an F-16 fly over and trooping the colours  really appropriate for the opening of the Super Bowl?

The USA is apparently becoming the Praetorian pole in an increasingly  heterpolar world order. Still, I think that a debate of this nature is culturally healthy, and have always admired the fact that some of the most trenchant, even withering criticism of U.S. policy and actions comes from domestic sources, including not least that country’s many military academies and war colleges.

Even in the mainstream media, a decade’s worth of assumptions used to justify deploying the military to pursue the epically misguided global war on terror are finally being questioned.

One could only wish that a similar degree of the scrutiny accorded defence issues in the USA  might one day be evident in the discourse on international policyin Canada.

Apart from a few faint echoes in the academy and a handful of specialized publications, that discussion here  is practically non-existent. I find that most unfortunate.

Canadians need to start talking about the kind of military that they require in the face of all identifiable threats and challenges. They must then somehow try and square the outcome of that conversation against a thoughtful consideration of whether or not the defence capability that they need matches the one that they have got.

I have my doubts.

* * * * * * * * * *

Post-Afghanistan, the Canadian forces are fully kitted up. Main battle tanks and artillery. Light armoured vehicles and troop transports. Heavy air lift. New fighter aircraft are next.  By international standards, they may be small, but they are sharp. After a period of rest, they will again be ready for combat.

But here’s the rub. Garrisoning our borders will not stop infectious disease. We won’t find alternatives to the carbon economy by sending out an expeditionary force to capture them. Generals and admirals won’t be able to save us from a warming planet or changing climate.

That said, and to be sure, in the firmament of international policy there is a place for hard power instruments, and I am certainly not an unequivocal pacifist. Having a capable military gets you a place at the table at NATO headquarters in Brussels, and the ear of some influential people in Washington.  And  not just hawks and neo-conservatives.

But is that enough?

Militaries exist, in the first instance, for capturing or killing enemies, and for compelling your adversary to submit to your will. This is what armed forces  were designed to achieve and why they are lethally equipped.

It seems unlikely, for example, that any kind of diplomatic intercession could have stopped Hitler and the Nazis. The problem is that, early in the 21^st century there is no threat out there that looks remotely like the Third Reich, or even Imperial Japan. In the nuclear age, moreover, large scale conventional war has become inconceivable.

In fact, the enduring lesson of the Cold War is that militaries work best when they are not used. Take the blade out of its sheath for purposes of doing harm, and it tends to make a terrible mess, as can be witnessed today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Libya seems set to become the next case in point.

The problem with leading with the sword is that you run the very real risk of allowing policy to become an instrument of war, rather than vice versa.

* * * * * * * * * *

Today, militaries are being deployed as first responders in complex emergencies, such as natural disasters in fragile or failed states. In such cases, the questions must be put: how, when, and with what should a nation intervene? Given the elemental purpose of the armed forces, in humanitarian intercessions are they really the most appropriate international policy instrument, or do they just get the tasking because they have the nominal capacity while the other instruments have been allowed to wither for lack of resources? When resources are scarce, does this represent a misallocation?

Crucially, could not purpose-built civilian organizations do a better, more cost-effective  job?

A decade ago, recruitment advertisements for the Canadian Forces had the memorable refrain. “There’s no life like it”. Soldiers were being shown keeping the peace.

Today, the slogan is “Fight” and soldiers are shown going to war.

If security is the flip side of development, does this re-alignment make sense?

None of this came up in the recent federal election campaign, which is unfortunate.

It is time to begin an overdue national conversation on where to go with defence policy, international security and the Canadian military.

The following commentary, based in part on my “Ferment in North Africa” entry, was posted by the University of Southern California’s Public Diplomacy Blog 02 February:

This is one of those rare, defining moments in world history. In Egypt – as well as Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere – change is unfolding at almost blinding speed. The reactions of the USA, EU, and UN  so far have succeeded mainly in positioning the international community well behind the curve, scrambling to catch up. Developments on the ground continue to outpace responses by a wide margin.

In Washington, Brussels, Paris, and London, the deepening crisis, with Cairo at its epicentre,  underscores the difficulties inherent in trying to balance values – democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law – and interests, and in expressing that balance through the articulation of coherent international policy. When autocratic regimes have been supported for decades, and even when the status quo becomes obviously untenable, it is difficult to know how best to react.

The outset of a new year, and indeed, of a new decade, is as good a time as any to pause and reflect.  As far as I can determine, the roiling, whirling forces of globalization which have been dominant for at least twenty years continue to cut all ways.

Consider, for instance, this initial sampling:

• Long-serving Tunisian President Ben Ali – one of the region’s less despotic rulers in one of its more stable and prosperous countries – has been driven from power in a revolt which few, if any saw coming

• The Australian states of Queensland and Victoria, which have in recent years experienced severe drought,  now face disastrous flooding

• Baby Doc Duvalier, a reviled former dictator forced to seek exile in France in 1986, has returned to his still earthquake-devastated homeland, Haiti, for reasons as yet unknown

• A previously obscure Icelandic MP and one-time WikiLeaks volunteer spokesperson, Birgitta  Jonsdottir, has become a near-celebrity, mainly by virtue of the attention lavished upon her by the US Justice Department

• After decades of intermittent civil war and failed peace negotiations, the results of an internationally-monitored referendum suggest that Southern Sudan is now headed inexorably towards independence

• The latest mass shooting incident in the USA has unleashed torrents of political vitriol and interpersonal venom, but has not appreciably advanced the case for gun control

Add to this mix a smattering of, say, suicide bombings and IED blasts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq,  and what emerges is a pretty good snapshot of the day’s news.

At first blush, it doesn’t sound much like anything that would have inspired Louis Armstrong to record “What a Wonderful World”.

For those old enough to remember, it is hard to believe that we have been living in this sort of highly unpredictable environment for nearly a generation. Twenty years ago, much of the planet’s population was just beginning to come to terms with the fact that the Cold War had actually ended. Weakening walls, not tumbling towers were the dominant image. Today, many of the students in my fourth year international policy seminar at the University of Toronto were not born when the Brandenburg Gate once again unified, rather than divided Berlin.

Since then, the job of the international relations analyst – and the diplomat, and the soldier – has only become more complex and difficult.

As historians are fond of remarking, however, change is seldom found in the absence of continuity, and in that respect it is perhaps worthwhile to cast a glance backwards.

The Cold War was about ideological rivalry, territorial competition, and a struggle for client states on the part of two giant blocs. But there was more to it than that. And despite its established conventions and unwritten rules, in my experience the Cold War was far from dull.

During the early days of glasnost and perestroika in the mid-late eighties, I had been posted as political officer at the Canadian Embassy in Ethiopia, an ancient country located in the contested Horn of Africa and wracked by the civil war and famine. At the time, I likened it to being assigned to a theme park designed by the four horsemen of the apocalypse. With the world-wide geopolitical and strategic landscape evolving rapidly from freeze to flux, it was a fascinating time to be doing diplomacy.

From 1989-92, I returned to the headquarters of the (then) Department of External Affairs, working as senior intelligence analyst for Central, South and Southeast Asia.

Looking back on that period, it has become clear to me that many had come not only to know, but to love that familiar scheme of things. The Cold War fit its adherents like a comfortable,  well-worn coat.  It served as a world order model, a moral compass and an all-purpose frame of reference. Like the Global War on Terror – or the Long War, or Stabilization Missions, or Overseas Contingency Operations –  today,  budgets, bonuses,  promotions and reputations depended upon fealty to the Cold War’s assumptions and unconditional belief in its precepts.

When confronted in 1989 with incontrovertible evidence, for instance, that the Soviet Union was withdrawing from Afghanistan or vacating its naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Viet Nam, many balked is disbelief. Some responded acrimoniously when such lines were pursued. On those occasions,  I often imagined myself in conversation with one of the more zany cast members featured in Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film Dr. Strangelove.

Similar individual reticence, if not wholesale institutional resistance can be encountered in 2011 if one argues that security in the age of globalization has less to do with counter-terrorism than it does with finding solutions to more profound and enduring challenges such as underdevelopment, resource scarcity and climate change.

In fact, I have become convinced that three key elements of Cold War thinking have been carried forward into the present, and now represent the intellectual and psychological foundations that underpin the West’s continuing fixation on terrorism and Islamic extremism.

Those recycled ideas? A black and white, us-versus-them world view; the characterization of the principal threat as universal and undifferentiated, and; the militarization of the international policy response.

The consequences have been catastrophic.

More on all of that, what it might mean over the next decade, in the next posts.

Readers of Guerrilla Diplomacy will know that in that volume I argue that if development is the new security in the age of globalization, then diplomacy must displace defence at the centre of international policy.

Were policy-makers to accept this formulation, then diplomacy, and in particular public diplomacy (PD), would be placed front and centre in international relations. Science diplomacy (SD), a term which encompasses both the use of international scientific cooperation to advance foreign policy objectives and the use of diplomacy to achieve scientific ends,  represents a critical component within the broader public diplomacy ambit.  Science diplomacy is an expression of soft power. It is perhaps best understood as a way to liberate scientific and technological (S&T) knowledge from its rigid national and institutional enclosures and to unleash its progressive potential through collaboration and sharing with interested partners world-wide.

Framing and contextualizing science and technology within international relations

In the globalization era, the most profound challenges to human survival – climate change, public health, food insecurity, and resource scarcity, to name a few – are rooted in science and driven by technology. Moreover, underdevelopment and insecurity, far more than religious extremism or political violence, represent fundamental threats to world order. In that context, the capacity to generate, absorb and use S&T could play a crucial role in improving security and development prospects.

By way of comparison, the continuing pursuit of the Global War on Terror – under whatever new name – tends to have the opposite effect.

To compound further the complexity of this calculus, S&T is haunted by an abiding paradox in relation to international policy (IP). While it can provide the remedies which contribute materially to the achievement of security and development, for instance through remote sensing, agronomy, or the introduction of game changing information and communication technologies, it can also give rise to the opposite – insecurity and underdevelopment.  Here I refer to the scourge of weapons of mass destruction, the mismanagement of toxic wastes, the repression of human rights and civil liberties, and so forth.

In other words, when it comes to understanding the dynamics of contemporary international relations, S&T plays the part of a powerful, two-edged sword.

So… hold that thought. But not at the expense of the main point of emphasis, which is that development – addressing the needs of the poor, and bridging the digital divide – advances the cause of security, and accordingly should become a pre-occupation of diplomacy in general, and of science diplomacy in particular.

If science diplomacy is so important, then why is nobody paying much attention?

At present, little is heard of science diplomacy. This may be attributable in part to the fact that public diplomacy, the larger construct in which science diplomacy is situated, is today but a shadow of its former self. PD boomed during the global struggle for hearts and minds – and client states and proxies – which characterized the Cold War. In those days, PD was about winning converts in a competitive political and territorial context.  But in the 1990s, the blocs melted and rigid alliance politics gave way to the globalization age. Large swathes of the globe no longer mattered, or no longer mattered as much. Over the course of that decade, many of the international programs which promoted science (and education, and culture) as part of broader ideological and geopolitical strategy were either wound down or greatly reduced. Notwithstanding  some build-back in the wake of 9/11, support for  the S&T dimension of public diplomacy has not recovered to anywhere near its Cold War levels.

In sum, to address the global security deficit, contemporary PD/SD should be about working to achieve equitable, sustainable, long term and human-centred development.

The fact that PD is not fulfilling this promise in my view goes much of the way towards explaining the underperformance of foreign ministries, the continued incidence of international conflict, and the persistence of a variety of vexing transnational issues.

Two solitudes, triple whammy

Given the nature of the threats and challenges faced by decision-makers in the 21^st century, it would seem to follow that science diplomacy should occupy a central role in international policy. However, there exists a fundamental problem: S&T issues are largely alien to, and almost invisible within most multilateral institutions. S&T, on the one hand, and international policy, on the other, are effectively two solitudes, existing in separate, floating worlds which rarely intersect.

When diplomats or politicians talk about international policy, you rarely hear anything about S&T, and vice versa.

How often do scientists and diplomats mix?

How many diplomats are scientists?

How many scientists have ever thought about diplomacy?

Worse yet, in mainstream popular culture, diplomacy is widely regarded as irrelevant and ineffective, its practitioners perceived as dithering dandies lost in a haze of obsolescence somewhere between protocol and alcohol. International policy is seen as esoteric and exotic, far removed from everyday domestic concerns. Science is viewed as complex and impenetrable, something that you might have had to study in high school, but can now largely forget about.

Put all three together – diplomacy, international policy, science and technology – and you will very likely be able to stop any dinner party conversation in its tracks. Most people’s eyes will instantly glaze over.

That’s the image problem.

The substance problem, unfortunately, is even more serious.

Last month I made a presentation on these matters at the Canadian Science Policy Conference. More on all of that in the next post.

I would attribute the running down of diplomacy in recent years to a trio of developments related to the carry-over from the Cold War of certain habits of mind, or intellectual baggage, which have been hoisted into the globalization age from the preceding era. In a nutshell, in the face of the complex threats and challenges engendered by globalization, and the concomitant need for deep knowledge, nuanced understanding and a subtle approach, many continued to view the world in a way best described as Manichean, alarmist and militaristic.

Without getting into the full details of the argument, or assessing the important implications for recruiting, training and diplomatic practice, this must be unpacked a bit. During the Cold War, the West organized its international policy around the objective of ‘containment’, by deterring, blocking, and wherever possible, rolling back what was seen as a world-wide Communist threat. Think Harry Truman, George Keenan NSC 68 and Mutually Assured Destruction. From 1947 to 1991, the adversary was portrayed as a monolithic Red Menace – Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, North Vietnamese, Cubans, Nicaraguans… No matter. Those Commies were all the same.

For a decade after the walls came down, there were few credible threats available to be conjured, but this changed instantly post 9/11 when a very similar, open-ended impulse – and function – again found expression. The Global War on Terror filled the ideological void once occupied by the Cold War. Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah – no matter. All Islamic extremists were alike. Substitute terrorism for communism, recycle a familiar ideological construct, et voila - away they went. Again. No secretive conspiracy here, just consensus among members of certain influential groups who identified an opportunity to advance their agenda.

The principal elements of this Cold War carry-over include:

• the adoption of a binary world view, which reduces almost infinite complexity to a matter of “us versus them; you are with us, or with the terrorists”;

• the use of fear to galvanize domestic support by characterizing the threat as urgent and universal “they are not only out there, everywhere, but they are among us and could strike anywhere, anytime. Red alert. “, and;

• a preference for armed force in responding to perceived threats, and the favouring of defence over diplomacy or development in what might be reasonably described as the militarization of international policy.

Taken together, these elements constitute a persistent, and troublingly resilient line, one endlessly hyped in the media and deeply lodged in the public mind.

What is wrong with this picture? In my view, getting over this debilitating mindset, even more so than taking full account of science and technology as a driver of international policy and transforming diplomacy, will be the sine qua non for the success of any diplomatic renaissance. Diplomats can become entrepreneurial brokers and network nodes, building relationships and supporting civil society actors in efforts to advance democratic development, good governance and the management of political and social plurality. But this won’t be possible unless the model, the context and the motives are changed. It is not yet clear that all of these pre-conditions are in place.

In particular, and in response to the burden of left luggage:

The world is not black and white but a many layered and multi-stranded swirl of greys.

Fear motivates the construction of gated communities within a national security state; hope is a far superior starting point for policy formulation.

Compulsion has its place in international relations, but attraction is more widely applicable, generally more effective and much less costly.

The fact of this psychological transfer of Cold War perceptions into the globalization age has meant not only that the peace dividend remains unpaid, but that for the past two decades the scope for applying non-violent approaches, such as diplomacy, to the resolution of international differences has been very limited. Iraq and Afghanistan are the obvious examples, but there are many more ranging from Darfur and the Democratic Congo to Israel/Palestine and India/Pakistan/Kashmir.

The planet has paid a high price for this hiatus. Notwithstanding that diplomacy, often in combination with development, offers the key to sustainable security, both have in recent years been in large part displaced by defence. By any measure – resource allocation, domestic political influence, even academic interest – diplomacy, the foreign ministry and the priority of equitable, sustainable and human-centred development have been on the back burner. Not so the legions, although an over-reliance on the state’s instruments of violence has imposed a whole host of other costs.

The economic and market meltdowns have spurred a realization of the need for innovative thinking in coping with the uncertainties of globalization. They have also given rise to a sense that some of the tools so hurriedly stashed when the train left the Cold War station may be worth dusting off, public diplomacy (PD) perhaps foremost among them. Not only are the large scale international scientific, educational, and cultural exchanges of days gone by now sorely missed, but AIDs cannot be detained; the climate cannot be garrisoned; the environment cannot be extraordinarily rendered; hunger cannot be bombed out of existence.

For these reasons and more, the ball is finally coming back, at long last, to practitioners of the world’s second oldest profession. By linking development and security through the medium of international policy, diplomacy, and especially public diplomacy, is poised again to occupy a place front and centre in international relations. Diplomats are advantageously placed to provide the essential strategic advice required by governments to integrate values, policies and interests right across the international policy spectrum. Neither members of the military, nor aid workers, NGO reps nor journalists can provide the sorts of supple intelligence required. They lack the tools of engagement, the cross-cultural skill set, and the capacity to generate the detailed, place-specific knowledge which might permit them to substitute in this critical role.