anarchies & hierarchies

China and US in cold standoff in Copenhagen

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/science/earth/15climate.html?ref=world

China, for the first time, last month publicly declared that it would attempt to reduce it's rate of growth of it's greenhouse gas emissions. This is great news, however the problem is China is refusing to allow international monitoring of its emission levels. This has caused a problem for the United States which refuses to sign any accord without stringent verification of China's actions.

The slow progress of the climate negotiations could pose problems later in the week, when the heads of government begin arriving. It is not customary for so many technical, financial and emotional issues to be unsettled when national leaders sit down to negotiate an agreement. President Obama and other world leaders have said that they hope to reach some interim agreement at the Copenhagen talks, but that a binding global accord is not likely to be completed until next year.

This is an issue of sovereignty for China while it's an issue of cooperation much like the stag hunt for the United States, who is concerned with China's defection on it's supposed greenhouse gas emissions. In the article it says how China would try to avoid tariffs from the United States that may be levied if no accord is reached. It will be interesting to see how this will affect China-US relations in the future, considering what Omar said in class about China potentially putting sanctions on the US during the presentations.

Obama’s Address Concerning Troop Increases in Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/world/asia/03pstan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

During a Tuesday night address, President Obama signaled that he would be sending an additional 30,000 combat troops to Afghanistan. He also vowed to begin withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan by the middle of 2011. The reasoning behind the troop increase came after years of backsliding in Afghanistan, with the Taliban gaining more and more ground against the United States and other coalition forces. The troop increase is meant to stabilize Afghanistan in a relatively short amount of time, and to train the Afghani police and army so they will be able to eventually secure Afghanistan without aid from the US military.  

 

In the hours following the speech, cabinet members in the Afghan government described the withdrawal date of 2011 as a bit of a “shock therapy” for the government. If Obama’s purpose was to create a sense of urgency in Afghanistan to “get the job done”, he seems to have achieved just that.

 

By setting a definite withdrawal date, Obama is sending a message to Karzai and the rest of the Afghan government: clean up and clean out the bureaucracy and appoint new members, and start taking definitive steeps towards stabilizing the country against the insurgents.

 

It is interesting to note how much stress Obama placed on the fact that the United States is not going to attempt a nation building strategy, such as the one attempted by President Bush in Iraq. Instead, Obama veered away from these strong liberal tendencies, and instead took a more constructivist approach to Afghan. Obama claimed that the goal of the United States was to institute strong internal stability and structure, in the aspects of the military, civilian and government realms. Then, once this was achieved, the county would be governed and secured by the Afghanis. President Obama plan is to construct the tools that the Afghan people need to achieve success in their own right.

 

This is a huge shift from the liberal policies of the Bush era, when the United States seemed to be in Iraq for the long run, and constructed an entire new system of democratic governance in a county that had previously been a dictatorship.

Pirate Actors

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gB7YMEDuCwwY9ncDOtPAkEI4-H2wD9CA477O0

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8385845.stm?ad=1

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8011158.stm

The sun sets on the Arabian Sea and a group of pirates look off into the distance from their boat. They check their weapons and take a moment to reflect on the events of the day. These pirates aren't characters of fiction, and Johnny Depp isn't among them, these are Somalian pirates. The real deal. And these pirates aren't actors of Hollywood, they are actors of International Politics. Their spoils and treasures aren't gold pieces, their prize is mobile and is also their most powerful weapon: oil tankers.

Sunday, a Greek-owned oil tanker carrying $20 million dollars worth of crude oil was captured by a group of Somalian pirates 800 miles off of the coast of Somalia. The tanker was unguarded on it's way from Saudi Arabia to New Orleans, Louisiana. Now you may wonder why this is particularly interesting to International Politics. This one case by itself probably shouldn't be seen as such, however, Somalian piracy accounts for these facts:

Pirates are currently holding 11 vessels and 264 crew members in Somalia.

In November 2008, the Sirius Star, carrying two million barrels of oil - a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily output - became the largest ship ever seized by pirates. The Sirius Star held 2 million barrels of oil valued at about $100 million.

Twenty percent of global shipping — including eight percent of global oil shipments — is funneled into the narrow, pirate-infested Gulf of Aden that leads through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal.

After a while, the affects the Somalian pirates can have on the world economy can be dreadful. The seizure of the tanker will have a minimal effect on global oil markets, said Ben Cahill, the petroleum risk manager at global oil consultancy PFC energy, but Cahill did understand and comment on the persuasion these attacks may have.  "The situation could degenerate into a choke point for global shipping," in five to ten years, Cahill said, driving up the costs.

The Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group think-tank Rashid Abdi says the fact that pirates are now operating so far out to sea shows that the intervention of the world's navies has made little difference to the problem of piracy."I don't think the solution is in building the naval deployment there, or increasing the naval deployment. The problem is actually in dealing with the governance crisis which feeds the problem of piracy."

Why are these Somalian pirates able to operate? Because Somalia has not had a functioning government in nearly twenty years which could never possibly hope to control the coast. Somalia's neighbor on the other side of the Red Sea, Yemen, has been becoming increasingly more unstable. This geographical and political combination has made Somalia a safe haven for many pirates who continue to commandeer oil tankers for ransom which make high profits that the pirates of the movies could only dream of. In the past, the EU and other political and economic forces have placed more and more naval forces on patrol on the area. However if Rashid Abdi is correct, these will do nothing and it is up to the international community to put political power into effect if they wish to change the current situation. Stabilizing Yemen and helping the government of Somalia attain legitimacy and control is the first step to stopping this piracy.

Langeweische's Observations Applied to Kidnapped Journalist's Experiences

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/world/asia/20hostage.html?pagewanted=1

This article is one in a series of blogs by a reporter for the New York Times who was kidnapped and held in Pakistan by the Taliban. In this installment, the author talks about car rides with the Taliban and his interactions with his guards.

This particular blog post speaks to two themes in the two articles from the Atlantic. First of all, the blog confirms the point Langeweische makes in Point of No Return about the cooperation between terrorist organizations and the government. The author talks about the policy that if the Pakistani army is passing by a road, all civilians have to leave their car and wait for them to pass, but the Taliban can send only their driver. This rule ensures that the army doesn't see any kidnap victims. Such policies allow the army to not see what the Taliban is doing, and therefore not do anything about it. His observation that "The Haqqanis oversaw a sprawling Taliban mini-state in the tribal areas with the de facto acquiescence of the Pakistani military" is reminiscent of Langeweische's experience in How to Get a Nuclear Bomb that prove that in many regions, the government really has little relevance in how things work. He also said that there were many nights when commanders and soldiers in the Pakistani army came over to the house where he was held and discussed the war and how the US is waging a war on Islam. This proves again that one, the army is basically consenting to the Taliban's kidnaps, and two, that people's opinions are important and any sort of American effort in the Middle East should be applied on an individual basis.

The author talks about many instances of his interactions with his captors that really prove that a majority of the conflict comes from misunderstandings or at least a difference in opinions. The Taliban guards, the author points out, are mostly young men who have spent a lot of time as refugees, are not well educated, have not known anywhere outside their local surroundings, and have had relatives or friends killed by Americans or Russians. They don't really know Americans, since one of them asks the author if "a necktie was a secret symbol of Christianity", so it is easy to see how they can harbour opinions about Americans that they invaded Afghanistan for its resources, or that they treat women more badly than the Taliban does because they see women as sex objects. Like Langeweische talks about in How to Get a Nuclear Bomb, the bureaucratic efforts of the US, as in bombings, regime changes, etc. is the least useful of all its efforts, and reconciling the differences in opinion is more important than just wiping out the Taliban, which the US seems to forget is made up of citizens of the Middle East. 

Swiss voters OK ban on minarets

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-swiss-minaret30-2009nov30,0,5417813.story

The people of Switzerland have voted to approve a constitutional ban the construction of minarets on mosques. According to Ulrich Schluer, leader of the Egerkingen Committee, who wrote the bill, a minaret "is a political symbol against integration; a symbol more of segregation, and first of all, a symbol to try to introduce Sharia law parallel to Swiss rights". The ban passed with 57.5% of the vote.

I believe that this truly marks a low in the Western world. The imaginative geographies which have been nourished and taken root off of their foundations in colonialism have skewed the views of many people. I would equate this to a primarily Muslim country banning the construction of steeples on churches. This law seems to be designed to further widen the gulf between "us" and "them", with "us" being Switzerland in this case, and "them" being everything Islam. I would bet that this will be found as unconstitutional, but I did have a double-take when I saw this on a real news site. It really sounds like a story The Onion would run.

Obama's foreign policy versus that of George W Bush

I wish to continue the discussion of the topic in class, regarding how these two Presidents have/had different styles of foreign policy dealings. I express my opinion regarding how I believe one of these styles were more effective than the other, though this has nothing to do with my political choices nor does it mean that I accept any of the wars as justified. I just aim to draw a comparison and evaluate the effectiveness of their foreign policy.

George W Bush's style of dealing with other states has often been "my way or the highway". It was a style that didn't make him popular, but certainly made him effective. He dedicated very little time to diplomacy and bi-lateral or uni-lateral negotiations, and when he did it was generally because of immense domestic pressure to do so rather than choice. His world was black and white, few things were grey. For every incident, action or behavior he believed one side should be followed while the other was wrong.

The tragic incidents of 9/11 gave him the license to behave in aggressive and less accommodation ways and to demand certain changes or shifts. His behavior was often irrational, aggressive and prone to extremes. This led to a deep-seated fear for Bush by his adversaries as well as allies. They realized that he could do what he threatened and he wasn't afraid of others perceiving him negatively.

Obama on the other hand is believed to be the alter-ego of George Bush when it comes to foreign policies, a "refreshing" change. He advocated building of relationships and attempting to understands the needs and demands of others. Though he has the power, he doesn't believe that exercising it to the fullest will lead to fundamental change. Since his term began, he has visited multiple countries in almost all the major regions of the world.  The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has also taken many steps in this direction, following Obama's policy of appeasement. He believes that under Bush and even before Bush, relations with certain communities or regions have been tense, and this prevents advancement of mutual aims. For him, military threat or actual use of force ranks very low in effectiveness in advancing aims of the USA and of the world.

This, in my opinion, leads him susceptible to manipulation by cunning world leaders. In certain areas immediate and cautious actions need to be taken and concerns need to be addressed however his approach requires a large amount of time allocation and large potential for being taken advantage of. In his case, adversaries have realized his reluctance to take the path of his predecessor and to shun violence and threats as far as possible, and this makes the "evil minds" not consider him seriously. He has often been accused by his own country people and statesman that he is "too soft".

Taking the case of Iran, Bush threatened the use of force if Iran pursued any nuclear armament plans. Due to his personality and projection of power, the Ayatollah and other leaders knew that he was perfectly capable to backing his words with actions. His irrationality and ruthless attitude resulted in Iran being extremely cautious not to anger him. Iran certainly didn't appreciate his style, nor did they respect him but they certainly feared him. In Obama's case, efforts to use diplomacy have failed terribly and recent developments suggest that Iran has made detailed plans for 10 nuclear enrichment centers within the boundaries of Iran. In the critical period where Iran was choosing whether to pursue nukes, Obama took the soft approach and tried to negotiate, and this gave Iranian's time to further their plans and to cunningly decide their approach.

Inspite of their different approached, Obama will almost certainly impose economic, political and trade sanctions against Iran, and might be forced to threaten with use of force. However, this threat might not seem convincing enough since many would doubt his ability to go ahead. Thus the compelling power that weapons provide is lost when one tries to use "soft" means in arenas where one must stand tough!

Nuclear Instability

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8384555.stm

Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, has handed over control of his countries nuclear program to prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. The stated reason is that it was a triumph of empowerment for parliament, but skeptical observers think the move has more to do with providing cover. The move will mean critics cannot blame him for nuclear related problems, and will grant him amnesty from impending corruption charges. Most think the unpopular president is just trying to survive, limiting his own power to decrease his immense lack of popularity.

To me this shows the main problem with less developed, or in a broader sense any, countries gaining nuclear capabilities. regardless of the governments stance, or the factors which make actual using a nuclear bomb stupid, political instability still creates the potential for a party with less to lose to attain a bomb. Clearly an organization such as al-Qaeda would have very different motives than a sovereign nation. In a less extreme case, in a country with leaders vying for control it is not totally far fetched to think that rivals could use their countries nukes in a way they thought advantageous to themselves but which was dangerous for the rest of the world.

Mount Everest to host Nepal cabinet meeting

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8385170.stm

Nepali Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and members of his cabinet will meet in early december at base camp at the foot of Mount Everest to discuss the threat posed by melting ice and snow. Indeed, aside from rendering moutain-climbing in the region much more dangerous, global warming has caused glaciers in the area to melt at an alarming rate thus leading to the formation of lakes which are now flood threats to nearby villages. This meeting comes days before the Copenhagen Convention which will deal with similar issues on a global scale.

Though in my opinion holding a meeting in such a location comes off as being a cheap publicity stunt, the important thing to keep in mind is the content of the meeting. I find this article interesting because it exemplifies the effect global warming has had on politics. Global warming has become a major world-wide problem (dare I say crisis?) and it would seem the only solution to it is for countries to cooperate and all take great steps such as reducing CO₂ emissions. Thus, while nations always distrust each other and are never willing to take the first step for fear being taken advantage of, we are now presented with a case where we can either mutually work together and attempt to reduce the damage already done, or all go our separate ways and as most scientists would have us believe, self-destruct. Global Warming represents a threat to every country's security but instead of it being a state it is a global phenomena. This is unforeseen and if nations realize the significance of this, we may find unlikely alliances being made. As I prefer to stay optimistic, I think that global warming could prove to be a common enemy which may help unite previously unfriendly states. Unfortunately, there also remains the possibility that this will instead result in increased aggression as major powers attempt to secure their own safety.

Washington's possible exit strategy in Afghanistan the source of much debate

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Afghanistan-Pakistan/idUSTRE5AQ1VB20091127?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=11604&sp=true

Washington's recent hint of an endgame strategy in Afghanistan has been a source of much debate lately, as in lieu of Obama's decision to send up to 40,000 more troops to aid in the fight against the Taliban insurgency, many say the idea of a complete withdrawal by 2017 is both hasty and unlikely. A primary concern of critics of the war is that unlike the U.S., which is forced to invest valuable resources and money with every additional day it spends in Afghanistan, the Taliban can simply keeps doing what it does, and thereby "wait out" the U.S. invasion.

This distinction is interesting in terms of modern warfare, in that there are obvious differences in what a war looks like between two states and a state and a terrorist organization. While combating the Taliban is merely one of the things the U.S. has on its agenda, the Taliban exists almost singularly TO combat the U.S. and its allies, and is thereby hurt less by a prolonging of the conflict. One must not forget, insists this article from Reuters, that war has been going on in Afghanistan for 30 years now.

Critics of the endgame strategy also suggest that it could send the "wrong message" to neighboring Pakistan, whose supposed ties to the Afghan Taliban might be less easily broken if there remains a possibility of the Taliban still being strong in Afghanistan when the U.S. leaves. There has been much mutual suspicion between Afghanistan and Pakistan over each others' involvement with the Taliban, and a U.S. exit could exasperate the situation, say some. Additionally, Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani worries that the upcoming U.S. troop surge could push Afghan Taliban fighters across the border into Pakistan. Finally, critics of the plan question its affability, in that the (speculated ) numbers needed to attain security in Afghanistan may quite simply be out of reach.

Iran rebuked over nuclear 'cover-up' by UN watchdog

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8382486.stm

With the attention of the international comunity being strongly focused towards Iran's nuclear facilities, the Internation Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calls for the stopping of Iran's nuclear project. Iran advocates for the peacefulness of its projects but the resolution is the first against Iran in 4 years--showing how fear and anxiety are escalating in regards to the nuclear program in Iran. Both Russia and China backed the resolution, perhaps in response to the discovery of another facility near the town of Qom during the month of September.

The resolution calls for Iran to expose its intentions for its second discovered plant and the confirmation that no more facilities are being built without communication to the international community. While the most opposition is coming from the US, support is growing as leaders of countries such as Russia and the UK are reiterating Robert Gibbs' (of the White House) point  "Our patience and that of the international community is limited, and time is running out." In response to these 'threats,' Iranian leaders have been calling them useless and potentially harmful to negotiations.

It has been over a year since the IAEA has been able to have successful discussions with Iran about its nuclear power facilities. Iran seems to be milking the upper-hand it has in this power struggle since the liklihood of the U.S. bombing Iran for the threat of possessing/building nuclear weapons is extremely low. While in theory the IAEA holds the ultimate power, I don't know what they can actually do to stop Iran from defying their restrictions. From how the situation has been playing out, Iran is cunning in its creation of facilities and for all the world knows could have several more unannounced ones. So even if the IAEA were to send people to physically inspect Iran, things could still slide beneath the radar. It seems like at this point investigating Iran's actual intentions for its nuclear plants is more important than stopping their creation. Iran continually says it just wants fuel for civilian power, so what would happen if the IAEA took that as truth and let things play out for a bit? Would that be dangerous? Or would it help relations between the IAEA and Iran, leading towards better communication in the long run?