Archive Page 2

Indecision and Justice in Kenya

Published March 15, 2011 International Criminal Justice Leave a Comment

As the International Criminal Court (ICC) starts an investigation into its most high-profile suspect yet – Libya’s “Brother Leader” Muammar Gaddafi – politicians in a far more democratic country, 2,700 miles to the southeast, are also looking to evade the long arm of the law.

Kenya became the 98th member of the International Criminal Court in March 2005, when it ratified the Rome Statute. Over the past three months, the ICC has issued Kenya with summonses for the ‘Ocampo Six’: six individuals, both in and out of government, deemed by Chief Prosecutor Louis Moreno Ocampo to be those most responsible for the post-electoral violence that unfolded in 2007-08, leaving an estimated 1,500 people dead.

Is it really necessary for the ICC to be involved? Could Kenya not prosecute those involved on a purely domestic level? Yes, it could: but only with an adequate institutional framework in place. The Rome Statute provides for the legal principle of complementarity; that is, legitimate local efforts at justice enjoy primacy over international efforts. Politicians in Nairobi, however, have botched various attempts to establish a local tribunal, or to reform their judicial system. Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara has spearheaded the campaign to establish a local tribunal that would meet international standards – in essence, removing the need for ICC involvement. A copy of his bill can be found here. Three attempts to pass the legislative text – February 2009, August 2009 and February 2011 – were, however, defeated as a result of parliamentary infighting.

As a result, the Ocampo Six have all but assured themselves lengthy sojourns behind bars, if brought to trial and convicted by the ICC instead of domestically. The upside for Kenya and its people, who, thanks to a remarkably vocal and independent press, have access to quality reporting – and broadly back the ICC as they don’t trust many of their own leaders’ commitment to justice – is that the intervention stands to seriously curb impunity.

Now, astonished that Mr Ocampo hasn’t given up, some Kenyan politicians from the PNU faction have taken to lobbying the US and the UN for an Article 16 one-year deferral of the investigation. The Parliament also passed a conspicuously desperate vote calling on the country to withdraw from the ICC. This would not halt the ongoing investigation though, even if enacted into law. Indecision has cost the ‘Ocampo 6’ any hope, however slight, of bending the administration of justice.

On a tangential note, it is worth briefly comparing Washington’s supportive stance (however morally justified) on the Kenya, Libya (a potentially significant precedent-setter) and Darfur dossiers with its own arms-length conduct presently, and downright hostility under President Bush, vis-à-vis the ICC, as the exercise exposes its application of double standards. For that matter, so do Beijing and Moscow’s positions on Darfur and Libya. But great powers don’t subject themselves to the rule of law; they mostly impose it.

Original Print: http://isnblog.ethz.ch/government/indecision-and-justice-in-kenya

Creative Commons – Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

Iran: Little Room for Maneuver

Published February 22, 2011 Arms Control Leave a Comment

Although the rest of the Middle East is now rightly in the spotlight, Iran, with a simmering opposition movement and a highly controversial nuclear program (the focal point in regional diplomacy prior to the ‘Jasmine revolutions’) will no doubt return to the forefront of regional affairs very soon. However, the diplomatic equation in the conflict between Iran and the West may be changing, and contrary to the sometimes hysterical warnings of some commentators in the West and the bellicose rhetoric of Iran’s president, Tehran is in a corner. Below some points to keep in mind when analyzing the situation:

- What country, more precisely what regime, currently faces an existential threat and finds itself surrounded by the world’s most powerful fighting force on three of four borders (principally Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, but also Iraq): nuclear-armed Israel or Iran?

- How much of this all is a securitization game? Prime Minister Netanyahu and especially Israel’s political right keep the focus on the country’s purported ‘insecurity’ and off the West Bank; President Ahmadinejad, in turn, exploits the external threat to consolidate support back home and divert attention from his lousy track record in actually governing Iran.

- If Iran decides to weaponize, will it not first withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)? The 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and the NPT, which the US and Iran have both signed and ratified, respectively, demand it. Although this instance could very well prove the exception to the rule, Iran is not North Korea. Iran maintains relations and accords with many other states in the international system, all of which count on it to uphold some modicum of predictability. It is likely to do so despite its belligerent rhetoric.

- Even if Iran obtains a bomb does that suddenly mean that it cannot be deterred? Is it genuinely plausible that policymakers in Tehran will commit to a suicide pact? It takes more than one person to deploy a nuclear weapon. President Ahmadinejad, incidentally, is far from top dog in all things military in Iran.

- The West’s present negotiating strategy vis-à-vis Iran – suspend uranium enrichment and comply with all International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards or incur sanctions, other unpleasantries (read covert war) and possible military strikes – reveals just how asymmetric the strategic environment actually is. The West, led by the US, rather than mollify Iran’s legitimate security concerns, can bomb the country into serially delaying or discontinuing its nuclear weapons program, likely without causing intolerable harm to Western interests elsewhere throughout the region. Some salient omissions from the West’s negotiating platform include: public security guarantees and a public retraction of all threats of regime change and obliteration; a truly handsome cash and investment offer to induce Tehran to stop enriching uranium; a willingness to countenance ‘grand bargains’ that fully restore US-Iranian relations and would include Iran yielding to international concerns regarding its nuclear ambitions; Israeli nuclear disarmament.

On 3 February, the authoritative International Institute for Strategic Studies headquartered in London released a comprehensive assessment of Iran’s WMD capabilities. The report concludes that Iran can most likely not break-out using its monitored stock of enriched uranium without tipping off IAEA inspectors and inviting an immediate strike against its nuclear facilities, and possibly other targets. More alarmingly – notwithstanding that only circumstantial evidence in support of this scenario has to date surfaced in the public domain – Iran could be running a parallel enrichment program with the aim of clandestinely achieving a break-out or surge capacity and eventually a full-scale nuclear deterrent capability.

The game is certainly coming to a head. Prevailing intelligence estimates – admittedly imperfect and often conspicuously pliable – put crunch time in the 2012-2016 range, with apprehensions mounting significantly after 2012. Indeed there is little doubt that Tehran will be returning to center stage of regional diplomacy as soon as these momentous events in the rest of the region wind down.

Make sure to check out The Leveretts’ The Race for Iran.

Original Print: http://isnblog.ethz.ch/security/iran-little-room-for-maneuver#more-13434

Creative Commons – Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

Trying to Play Chicken with Everybody’s Money

Published February 10, 2011 Inequality Leave a Comment

The bumbling US Tea Party has issued its latest ultimatum: cut public expenditures or risk defaulting on the national debt. And how? By stopping lawmakers from raising the country’s legal debt ceiling, currently set at $14.3 trillion. The US Treasury reckons it will hit and inevitably exceed the limit sometime between late March and May.

The Obama White House has deemed the issue non-negotiable. Is it an idle threat?

Strictly speaking, the Tea Party doesn’t have the votes in Congress. Mainstream Republicans would all have to vote no. Mainstream Republicans, however, primarily serve the interests of the corporate and financial elite; overt attempts to undermine US economic power typically receive a cold reception with this crowd.

As discussed in my ISN Blog post last week, the instance of disagreement nevertheless puts the spotlight on the growing rift in the American Right. It also exposes the ignorance of the frustrated Tea Partiers. Nuking your economy is no solution to your economic woes.

Ask Americans what specific spending cuts they prefer and almost unanimously they respond that Social Security and Medicare (the national pension scheme and healthcare for the elderly) are off-limits. Non-defense discretionary spending, about $650 billion, is a perennial favorite for the axing but too small to rectify America’s fiscal quandary. Defense spending is ultimately the one thrown under the bus, but few politicians would ever get caught dead saying so.

In the end, broad and balanced reforms on both the revenue and spending sides will be necessary. To date, mainstream Republicans have promised $100 billion in cuts and come up with a paltry $32 billion. The Tea Party, again, proposes nuking the economy to force spending cuts.

Washington defaulting on its debt would indeed be catastrophic. Leading US policymakers’ takes here, here and here. To start, as Reinhart and Rogoff meticulously detail in their must-read book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, the US, unlike most other sovereigns, can be considered a ‘default virgin;’ it has almost effectively never defaulted on its debt in its 235-year history. US Treasury debt and those of it agencies (primarily Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) are the largest, most liquid financial asset class in the world.

The US, moreover, is the steward of the world’s monetary system: the US Dollar system. It serves alongside the military and foreign assistance as the bedrock of US hegemony. Two thirds of all central bank reserves the world-over are held in Dollars or Dollar-denominated securities. The lion’s share of today’s cross-border trade and transactions are denominated and settled in Dollars.

As University of California, Berkeley Professor Barry Eichengreen argues, this ‘exorbitant privilege’ – which allows the US to live beyond its means because the world’s demand for Dollars permits it to pay interest rates on its foreign liabilities typically two to three percentage points lower than the rate of return on its foreign investments per year, licensing it to run persistent current account deficits of this size with foreign countries without becoming more indebted – has held since WWII. Within the next 10 to 30 years, however, the advantage will most likely dissipate, resulting in a multipolar global monetary system. The Euro, which increasingly looks as though it will survive its recent travails, is available and growing in its attraction as an alternative to the Dollar. The transition need not be abrupt or dramatic.

Significant economic mismanagement in Washington, however, Eichengreen cautions, could bring about a Dollar crash. Precipitating a debt default certainly qualifies as such. Failing to adopt a credible medium- to long-term strategy to bring US debt under control qualifies equally if not more so.

The Tea Party should expend its energies affecting change in the latter category, where its middle-class economic interests lie, rather than in the farcical former.

For more information, check out: The Cost of America’s Free Lunch, by Daniel Gros.

Original Print: http://isnblog.ethz.ch/government/trying-to-play-chicken-with-everybody%E2%80%99s-money

Creative Commons – Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

The American Right: A Marriage on the Rocks

Published February 1, 2011 Inequality Leave a Comment

Your humble blogger would have appreciated an invitation to this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF). Unfortunately, no such letter landed in my mailbox. No matter, I probably couldn’t have accepted anyhow.

The entry-level $71,000 price tag, it turns out, – travel, room, board and entertainment excluded – is a smidgen out of my league. Good thing that the WEF publication Global Risks 2011 calls attention to economic disparity (aka income and wealth inequality), both within and between countries, as the most pressing risk out there today. Are the plutocrats beginning to feel the heat?

In America, home to the highest economic inequality in the developed world today, the winds of change may have started to blow.

The American Right has for the past 30 years effectively existed as an alliance of convenience between middle-class social conservatives from the American heartland on the one hand, and members of the corporate and financial elite intent on hoarding cash on the other. The informal arrangement has proved remarkably durable, at least up until the Great Recession.*

The social conservatives got politicians who extolled the virtues of American family values, promoted constitutional bans on gay marriage and abortion, and never missed an occasion to exalt America’s exceptionalism. The corporate and financial elite got ‘Benjamins’, lots of them. To make the economics attractive, the corporate and financial elite promised what George H W Bush in 1980 mocked as ‘voodoo economics:’ tax cuts, tax cuts and just when you though there couldn’t be any more, tax cuts. This all coincided nicely with America’s unipolar moment in the post-Cold War period.

The perception was that tax cuts would pay for themselves and would only work to make everyone wealthier. In the short term they did, but over time they led to the bifurcation of American society. Legislators with the help of lobbyist disproportionately targeted the tax cuts to benefit the top income brackets, and massively so. The socially conservative wing, blinded by its reactionary ideals, got duped. Its followers have effectively voted time and again against their own economic interests.

Enter the Tea Party. They say they are mad as hell. They say it’s time to take their country back. They say it’s time to reduce spending, rein in the debt and return government to its ‘limited’ role in American society. The reality is that the Tea Party, which basically happens to be comprised of white, middle-class social conservatives from the American heartland, doesn’t really have a clue about what it wants or how it will go about getting it. The lowest common denominator of Tea Partiers, however, is that all have concluded that their long-term economic security is in peril and that the time for reform has come.

The Tea Party is so ill-informed and disorganized that its members have completely missed out on exploiting and driving home to their political advantage the biggest bailout of all – the $3.3 trillion the US Federal Reserve loaned out against largely dubious collateral almost overnight at the height of the panic by way of the emergency discount window. The official, congressionally approved $700 billion financial sector bailout (which bankers today can and do claim has largely been repaid) and President Obama’s 2009 $819 billion stimulus pale in comparison. This is not to argue that at the time the Fed shouldn’t have thrown open the gates – it had no other choice – but the Tea Party would do itself an enormous favor by getting its facts straight.

Self-appointed representatives’ superficial arguments for reducing the national deficit and debt (the Tea Party maintains that it has no leadership) further illustrate the movement’s ignorance. Cutting spending is all well and good, but where exactly? What Tea Partiers will discover once they take a hard look at the US fiscal position is that there simply isn’t that much waste, fraud and abuse around to cut. The defense budget will inevitably have to shrink. So will Medicare expenditures. But choices regarding these areas are exceedingly difficult to make, as the debate over Obamacare exemplified. The former also cuts into the US’s ability to project overwhelming force wherever, whenever it wants, a psychological as much as a geostrategic blow.

Alas, we should empathize. The social conservatives have outsourced the framing and development of their economic talking points to the conservative, corporate-funded think tanks in Washington DC for the past three decades, and have permitted these groups to in effect brainwash them. As such, they’re a bit rusty.

Tax reform combined with spending cuts – in particular shifting the balance of taxation from income to consumption and making the pinnacle of the corporate and financial elite who got away with and continue to get away with the economic equivalent of murder for the past three decades pay much more in taxes (middle-class taxes will also have to rise, but proportionately far less so) – is the only real fix. The recent extension of all 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, however, doesn’t inspire confidence.

Last week, CNN exclusively aired the Tea Party’s first-ever rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address, presented by none other than oft-nonsensical US Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota. Representative Bachmann carried herself as a classic demagogue. Her aim was to exploit the festering economic malaise prevalent throughout the US today to further her own political career; she offered few to no viable policy prescriptions. But make no mistake about it, her and the Tea Party’s burgeoning popularity stand as a testament to many Americans’ desire for a fundamental change of course.

Maybe, once mindful of how they’ve been taken for a ride, Tea Partiers will consolidate their thoughts, vote for their economic interests, jettison the demagogues and become competitive among independent voters at the ballot box (times are bad but not that bad), call out the infidelities of their alliance partners and file for divorce.
____
* There is, in addition, an important libertarian streak that pervades the discourse and policy preferences of the American Right, and for that matter American political culture in general. It articulates the arguments ad extremum of the Right and currently informs a great deal of Tea Party activism. Its actual impact on US economic policy-making since President Reagan, however, has been more limited; if anything, it has favored the interests of the corporate and financial elite by lending legitimacy to the neoliberal economic paradigm.

Original Print: http://isnblog.ethz.ch/government/the-american-right-a-marriage-on-the-rocks#more-13067

Creative Commons – Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

Assessing the Iraq Surge

Published September 16, 2010 Iraq Leave a Comment

The US formally ended combat operations in Iraq on 31 August. The country remains without an elected government and many commentators in the media have questioned whether a return to civil war and the spectacular violence of 2006-2007 is possible, Claudio Guler comments for ISN Security Watch.

By Claudio Guler for ISN Security Watch, 16 September 2010

The short answer is no. The matter was decided back in 2007 at the time of the US surge.

I have argued with the assistance of maps developed by Dr Michael Izady for Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) Gulf/2000 Project, which tracked the sectarian make-up of Baghdad in the post-invasion period, that the US surge in Iraq coincided with a shift in a sectarian balance of power and was not the primary driver of the decreasing violence.

Sunnis Arabs, Iraq’s demographic minority formerly in charge under Saddam Hussein, lost the civil war in 2006-2007. And Shia Arabs, prior to the invasion the oppressed majority, won. This manifested itself on the ground with the sectarian cleansing of Sunnis and other ethnic minority groups primarily by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and sectarian elements of the burgeoning Iraqi state in Baghdad, where 80 percent of the bloodshed in Iraq transpired.

The surge, especially in the American mainstream, has since taken on an aura of unadulterated success. The received wisdom, however, is misleading.

Dr David Kilcullen, a senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus, then commander of Multinational Force Iraq, and a contributing architect to the surge strategy, provides one of the most comprehensive, authoritative and likely influential accounts of the surge available in his book, The Accidental Guerrilla.

I agree with Kilcullen that US military operations and the adoption of population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics during the first half of 2007 and particularly during the summer of 2007 helped temper some of the bloodletting. But in my view, Kilcullen, as well as the received wisdom, overstates the transformative effect of these efforts.

The ethno-sectarian violence, the most significant and alarming component of the Iraqi civil war casualty figures, peaked in December-January 2006-2007, well before the onset of either limited (March-April 2007; page 135) or full (June-July 2007; pages 143-148) military surge operations. By the time the cavalry showed up then, the segregation of Baghdad was complete, the remaining Sunnis having been driven into sectarian enclaves. Izady’s maps corroborate this chronology.

During 2006, US troops kept out of the fight, almost certainly cognizant of the fact that intervention, as they started doing in March-April 2007, would be costly.

Thus, the extra boots and improved COIN tactics consolidated the ethno-sectarian cleansing of Baghdad (by erecting blast walls for example) but did not reverse it. The surge did not, in Kilcullen’s words, “pull Iraqi society back from the brink of total collapse” or “turn around a war that many believed had already been lost.” The surge put a lid on the tail end of the fighting and secured the emergence of the new, Shia-dominated political order in Iraq.

The counterfactual, unknowable for sure of course, is instructive here. What would Baghdad and in turn Iraq look like if the US had not surged? Probably much as it does now, just with a handful fewer Sunnis.

Kilcullen writes that ‘even on the most conservative estimate’ in the 18 months of the surge to date (I assume July 2007 to January 2009) the new counterinsurgency (COIN) approach saved 12,000 to 16,000 Iraqi lives.

Kilcullen himself remains rather ambiguous on the total number of lives saved by the surge. His only other mention of the topic is that the surge saved ‘tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.’ Moreover, Kilcullen does not furnish any citations for the estimates he puts forward.

Ultimately though, however one crunches the body count numbers, there is no plausible result that would maintain that the surge saved more lives than the civil war ended. The surge did not turn the tide of the civil war or in the technical jargon make a strategic difference.

It would also be insightful to learn whether Kilcullen’s estimates of the total counterfactual number of lives saved by the surge include those saved as a result of the Sunnis changing sides, seeking US support and getting cement blast walls to protect their sectarian enclaves – they would likely have done so regardless of the extra boots and improved COIN tactics. This report from Stars and Stripes, a US Department of Defense publication, suggests the blast walls were not a part of the original surge strategy.

The violence in effect transpired independently of US actions and was already on a downward trend by the time the surge started, petering out on its own because there was simply little left to kill, expel or fight over. For those individuals who benefited from the intervention, the move was likely worthwhile. But in the grand scheme of things, the intervention was largely too little too late.

This is particularly evident when one compares the suggested surge benefits Kilcullen furnishes to the overall carnage of the 2006-2007 civil war, which sent somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 to 2 million packing, many of whom now reside on the outskirts of Amman and Damascus (the human angle documented especially well by Deborah Amos) and likely killed northward of 50,000 Iraqis. Moreover, assuming that all motivations for hostilities had not yet been satisfied, the surge may only have delayed rather than prevented some of the added ethno-sectarian cleansing.

Kilcullen omits any mention of the refugee and repatriation crisis in his analysis – to date unresolved and the focus of exceedingly little attention in Baghdad or Washington. He also neglects to mention the August 2007 unilateral ceasefire by Muqtada al-Sadr and the admittedly incomplete compliance of his Mahdi Army.

Kilcullen overstates the impact of US military operations, and understates the process and culmination of the ethno-sectarian cleansing of Baghdad in bringing down the violence. The troop surge and change in tactics, then, can on balance be described as a lukewarm success – they saved some lives, albeit on the tardy side, but did not make a strategic difference.

Kilcullen also gives significant credit to the reduction in violence to the Sunni awakening movement – armed tribal outfits that turned against their guests, instigators-in-chief, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI). The key question is: Why did they flip?

My disagreement here is not with Kilcullen, but with pundits who have focused almost exclusively on promulgating only half of his explanation, coincidentally, the rosier half.

Kilcullen argues that the Sunni sheiks and tribes outside Baghdad turned against AQI because of ideological rifts that they probably knew of in advance, specifically, the marrying of indigenous women. But inside Baghdad, as Kilcullen writes, the Sunnis’ volte-face, where the development would have had the greatest impact on the level of violence in the country, was driven by desperation, a realization that permanent subjugation at best and annihilation at worst had come to define their range of options for the future. Izady’s maps leave little room for doubt.

In Kilcullen’s words: “Clearly, in Baghdad the revolt was not exactly tribal, but was based on informal district power structures that evolved through the intense period of sectarian cleansing that so damaged the city and its population in 2006.”

“By the end of 2006, therefore, the Sunni community had been driven into a corner, had closed ranks against outsiders, and believed that only AQI and the other takfiri extremist groups stood between it and oblivion at the hands of the Shi’a-dominated government.”

“[…] AQI’s “pitch” to the Sunni community in 2004-2005 was based on the argument that only AQ stood between the Sunnis and a Shi’a-led genocide.”

If Kilcullen’s last two quotes are accurate, and the Sunni tribes originally welcomed AQI on that basis, then logically it follows that once AQI failed to live up to their pitch – the Sunnis were losing the civil war badly and AQI only exacerbated the situation – the Sunni tribes started looking for alternatives. The US was the obvious candidate for savior of last resort.

Incidentally, recent reports from NPR and IWPR suggest that the Iraqi government has not been properly paying members of the Sunni awakening for some time now. The groups have not, however, mustered the courage to fight anew. Most of the violence since the March 2010 election has been attributed to remnants of AQI, and it is the Sunni community in Iraq that has voiced among the loudest concerns about a US troop withdrawal.

The Sunni awakening then adds up to a morbid, timely bit of luck that pundits, particularly in the US, have time and again mischaracterized in their descriptions to the general public.

Lastly, the strategic aim of the surge, to give Iraqis (as former president George W Bush put it) the “breathing room” to achieve national reconciliation, has failed outright. At the national level, the ongoing electoral imbroglio exemplifies this. Izady’s maps suggest that the grassroots level has equally seen little improvement.

Kilcullen is sober in his outlook. “Even with the success of the 2007 Surge and the associated political progress in Iraq, these are currently not in balance, due in part to the sectarian bias of certain players and institutions of the new Iraqi state, a bias that continues to promote Sunnis’ belief that they will be permanent victims in the new Iraq.”

In conclusion, the military component of the US surge facilitated but was not the primary driver of the decreasing violence in Iraq from early to mid-2007. Two dynamics on the ground – the process and culmination of the ethno-sectarian cleansing of Baghdad, and the associated U-turn of the former Sunni insurgency – played more prominent roles.

The Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq is largely settled and has been for several years now. As such, the country is more or less stable even without an elected government in place.

In fact, every day an elected government stays at bay is another day Nouri al-Maliki rules and another day he can make progress in building the central government’s new patronage network and security sector with the backing of the remaining 50,000 US troops in the country.

A return to the butchery of 2006-2007, however, can on the basis of the available empirical evidence, be excluded for now.

Original Print: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=121161

Creative Commons – Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

Climate Change, That Slippery Slope

Published August 9, 2010 Climate Change Leave a Comment

As US climate policy stumbles, runaway climate change scenarios highlight the dangers of complacency, Claudio Guler comments for ISN Security Watch.

By Claudio Guler for ISN Security Watch, 9 Aug 2010

A choice topic to spoil dinner parties and a long-standing, legitimate source of concern among scientists and well-informed policymakers, abrupt climate change – climate events that unfold faster than the pace at which humans can adapt to them – was the focus of a December 2008 report released by the US Climate Change Science Program, a collaborative project of relevant US government agencies scrutinizing the four most pressing scenarios.

A relatively high degree of indeterminacy characterizes each scenario. Nevertheless, the potential downsides make for sober reading. Here then, an overview.

Scenario A: Ice melts and sea levels. Noting the historically inverse relationship between atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and sea levels, the report argues that “although no ice-sheet model is currently capable of capturing the glacier speedups [i.e. accelerated melting] in Antarctica or Greenland that have been observed over the last decade, including these processes in models will very likely show that IPCC Assessment Report 4 projected sea level rises [9 to 88 cm] for the end of the 21st century are too low.” The complexity of the climate refugee challenge looks set to grow.

Scenario B: Water supply and shortages. Hydrological scientists have long identified protracted droughts and water shortages in the subtropics as a likely outcome of climate change. The report agrees with this viewpoint and adds that the processes might already have begun. For example, the American Southwest, parts of East Africa and Australia have as of late witnessed exceptionally dry years.

Scenario C: Disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The AMOC transfers significant heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic and likely plays an important role in maintaining Europe’s temperate climate. The report concludes that a decrease in the strength of the AMOC due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, possibly by 25-30 percent, is very likely over the course of the 21st century, but a collapse or abrupt transition to a weaker state is very unlikely. Beyond the 21st century, the report argues that a collapse of the AMOC is also unlikely but cannot be entirely excluded.

Scenario D: Abrupt changes in the atmospheric concentration of methane. Methane in the atmosphere, the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and responsible for roughly 20 percent of all warming (methane exhibits 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 100 year period), has more than doubled since the pre-industrial age – 700 parts per billion to over 1,780 ppb. Flatulent livestock is interestingly enough the primary source of anthropogenic atmospheric methane, but the relevant concern here is that higher temperatures could lead to a sudden release of trapped methane, creating so-called positive feedback loops that accelerate climate change, possibly inexorably.

The primary sources of a potential rapid methane release are melting permafrost in Alaska and Siberia and methane clathrates in shallow waters, mainly in the Arctic. The report concludes rather ambiguously that “While the risk of catastrophic release of methane to the atmosphere in the next century appears very unlikely, it is very likely that climate change will accelerate the pace of persistent emissions from both hydrate sources and wetlands. Current models suggest that wetland emissions could double in the next century. However, since these models do not realistically represent all the processes thought to be relevant to future northern high-latitude CH4 emissions, much larger (or smaller) increases cannot be discounted. Acceleration of persistent release from hydrate reservoirs is likely, but its magnitude is difficult to estimate.”

These scenarios all imply significant global security risks and underscore the need for Washington to legislate a comprehensive energy and environment policy – a necessary step to ensure emerging emitters China and India that they are operating on a level playing field and a prerequisite for global climate policy to move forward.

On 22 July, US Congressional Democrats announced that in the face of mounting bipartisan opposition, the time had come to throw in the towel on cap and trade legislation. This is hardly all bad news. A cap and dividend solution, as proposed by the CLEAR Act now in the US Senate, makes for a far more sensible and politically attractive fix.

An end has made way for a new beginning. And with the disruptive potential of abrupt climate change scenarios in mind, members of the US Congress should seize it.

Original Print: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=119842

Creative Commons – Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

Shale gas hopes

Published July 1, 2010 Climate Change , Energy Leave a Comment

With the noxious mix of oil and natural gas continuing to spew from the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, an emerging, onshore source of natural gas is raising expectations of energy independence, improved security and reduced emissions. Last week I took a look at the upsides, downsides and geopolitical implications of shale gas for ISN Security Watch. Keep reading.

Original Print: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-44036-Foreign-Policy-Examiner~y2010m7d1-Shale-gas-hopes

Shale Gas: Eureka or False Dawn?

Published June 25, 2010 Climate Change , Energy Leave a Comment

An alternative source of natural gas is making waves in producer and consumer countries alike, Claudio Guler writes for ISN Security Watch.

By Claudio Guler for ISN Security Watch, 25 Jun 2010

Unconventional gas – pockets of underground natural gas found in hard-to-reach places – comes from several sources, coalbed methane (CBM) and tight gas sands among them. None, however, are raising expectations of energy independence, improved security and reduced emissions for consumer countries more so than shale gas. Can it deliver?

Global estimates of shale gas reserves remain highly tentative.

Notwithstanding, the US alone enjoys anywhere from roughly 17 trillion cubic meters (tcm) to an eye-popping 108 tcm, depending on what projections you look at and how convincing you find their production potentials to be. Americans consume approximately 650 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year.

One of the largest shale gas plays in the US is the Marcellus Formation, which stretches across southern New York state, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and eastern Ohio. In 2009, the US Department of Energy estimated that the formation could contain 7.4 tcm of recoverable natural gas.

Europe may also have shale gas reserves to tap. Estimates here are even flakier as exploration and drilling initiatives, unlike in the US, are just now starting to take off. But in countries as varied as Poland, Germany, Hungary and the UK, up to 15 tcm of trapped natural gas might be underground.

According to Statoil, the Norwegian energy group, prospectors are also likely to find large shale gas plays in China, Australia, the Middle East and North Africa region, and Latin America.

The US sweet on shale

When it comes to shale gas, the US has blazed the trail. US production took off in the mid to late 2000s. According to the independent US Energy Information Administration, US wells produced 34 bcm in 2007, a figure that jumped 70 percent to 57 bcm in 2008, comprising approximately 9 percent of US gas consumption.

The growth continues. In2009 the US surpassed Russia to become the number one gas producer in the world. The US, counting its conventional gas production, is now effectively self-sufficient in natural gas.

Advances in technology – horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in particular – and an elevated secular price for natural gas are the principal factors that have made complex shale gas drilling operations possible and economical.

Horizontal drilling improves gas recoverability by better intersecting the myriad fissures between shale slabs. To expedite the process and to increase the amount of gas captured, water mixed with sand and other drilling chemicals is pumped into the well at high pressures to prop open the shale slabs in a practice known as hydraulic fracturing or ‘hydro-fracking.’

The corporate leader in the shale gas bonanza is Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy, a company that has stakes in the Barnett (Texas), Fayetteville (Arkansas), Bossier and Haynesville (Northwest Louisiana and East Texas), and Marcellus natural gas shale plays. Other interested parties include familiar energy multinationals BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and Statoil. Beijing and Washington are also cooperating in the development of shale gas resources in China.

A ‘shale’ game

During the past two or three years a conflagration of adverse developments has put traditional natural gas producers on the defensive. The Great Recession tangibly dampened global gas demand. And shale gas especially, but also liquefied natural gas (LNG), started coming online in significant quantities.

Speaking with ISN Security Watch, Matthew Hulbert, a senior researcher and energy expert at the Center for Security Studies in Zürich, Switzerland, explains, “The main countries to lose out,at least for now, are the major gas producers,or what we traditionally think of as gas producers, Russia, Algeria, Iran, Bolivia the most obvious ones, Qatar and some smaller Gulf producers the others. West Africa comes into the mix a bit, but LNG developments are relatively small at this stage.

“The main example you have is [shale gas] production in the US. This has totally scuppered any prospects that North America would be the LNG export market of choice. The result is that Europe and much of Asia finds itself swamped in gas. China stands to gain from this considerably as it now has a number of strong supply options to hand rather than being picked off in a sellers market. The real concern now for producers is if unconventional gas takes off in Asia and Europe.”

But Hulbert counsels prudence. “The world will need lots of gas, the market could well tighten, especially once economic growth returns, and consumers better hope they are either well prepared or shale gas is a real runner. Otherwise the world could look very different again, and pretty quickly.”

Hulbert argues that a hard-hitting international gas cartel along the lines of OPEC or a troika of powerful, price-fiddling producers (Russia, Iran, Qatar) is unlikely. That said, some sort of backlash could be in the offing should producers feel their margins are squeezed too far too fast and sanguine shale gas projections fail to materialize.

For Washington, shale gas is a much-welcomed stepping stone in the decades-long, seemingly elusive pursuit of energy independence. European capitals equally welcome any opportunity to chip away at their energy dependence on equivocal Russia.

But energy independence in natural gas will not alleviate the US’s national security predicament in the Middle East, whereby a US military presence in the Muslim world and US financial and diplomatic backing for local autocrats to guarantee oil supplies and the free flow of commerce creates domestic tensions that in part manifest themselves as Islamic terrorism.

“The sea lane issues from the Gulf of Aden, to the Indian Ocean and beyond is still about maritime power and oil supplies – hence the game is still on,” Hulbert notes.

An inconvenient catch

Natural gas combustion results in roughly sixty percent the greenhouse gas emissions from coal.

Using more natural gas could help copious emitters like the US achieve yet unstated reduction targets, but there’s a catch. Professor Robert Howarth from Cornell University cautions in a March 2010 preliminary assessment of the environmental impacts of shale gas production that methane leakage from drilling and distribution could negate any anticipated environmental benefits. Methane, over a 100-year period, has 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. The outcome could thus be a wash.

What is more, as reported by National Public Radio (NPR) and experienced by the residents of rural Dimock, Pennsylvania, shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing are anything but risk-free undertakings.

The top secret solutions used in hydro-fracking are highly toxic. The contamination of local water wells and underground aquifers, although much of the drilling occurs far below the water table, remains a concern. The US Environmental Protection Agency is considering updating the outdated and likely deficient regulatory framework.

In Europe, environmental concerns could delay shale gas drilling operations, as population densities tend to be higher and regulations more stringent.

In sum: An energy, environment and security panacea? Hardly. A boon for consumers? Probably, but only if the numbers hold.

Original Print: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=117987

Creative Commons – Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

False Advertising About the Iraq Surge

Published June 13, 2010 Iraq Leave a Comment

Sunday 13 June 2010 – by: John Agnew and Claudio Guler, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

It’s a matter of timing, and the numbers don’t add up. The US surge in Iraq did not by itself bring about an end to the country’s civil war in 2006-2007 as Washington and the received wisdom have maintained.

A temporary troop increase and the adoption of civilian-friendly counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics were largely too little too late. The primary factor responsible for the decline in violence in Iraq was the culmination of the sectarian cleansing of Sunnis – principally in Baghdad, formerly a thoroughly mixed ethnic city since the advent of the republic in 1958 and through Saddam Hussein’s rule – by the newly empowered Shia majority in their drive to national pre-eminence.

The details of our argument are outlined in two reports available online: “Baghdad Night ” (UCLA) and “Baghdad Divided” (ISN). The former uses light emissions at night by neighborhood, before, during and after the surge to track the effects of the violence in the capital and to make its case. It was the predominantly Sunni areas that were overwhelmingly most likely to darken; the Sunnis were either killed or ejected and shut off the lights in the process. The latter report contains maps chronicling the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad and its consequent division. (Maps developed by Dr. Michael Izady for Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) Gulf/2000 Project).

To begin, the sectarian cleansing of Sunnis peaked well before (December 2006-January 2007) the full onset of surge operations in mid June 2007 – as shown by data provided by the US Department of Defense, particularly the report issued by Gen. James Jones in September 2007, now President Barack Obama’s national security adviser. Our light signatures and sectarian maps corroborate the effective partitioning of Baghdad by February-March 2007.

With much of the Sunni population left fleeing toward Anbar province, Syria and Jordan, and the remainder holed up in the last Sunni stronghold neighborhoods in western Baghdad and parts of Adhamiyya in eastern Baghdad, the impetus for the bloodletting waned. The Shia had won, hands down, and the fight was over.

US forces never had control over the contest. The extra boots served as a psychological boost to the American public and the Iraqi government. Their sole achievement on the ground was to seal off the newly segregated neighborhoods from one another, preventing the massacre of the remaining Sunnis in Baghdad, and finally, to nudge any still active Shia militia groups to back down.

The Sunni “awakening” component of the surge has also earned plaudits in decision-making and analytical circles for contributing to the cessation of hostilities. Surge backers claim that the Awakening Councils teamed up with US forces in their shared contempt for al-Qaeda in Iraq’s (AQI) brutality, the outfit’s burgeoning challenge to the traditional authority of the Sunni sheiks, AQI’s role in igniting the civil war with the bombing of the al-Askaria shrine in the city of Samarra in February 2006 that the Sunnis knew they could not win, Sunni-AQI ideological rifts and the Sunni sheiks’ search for a post-Saddam patron. This account, however, is incomplete.

There would have been an internal political price to pay by the Sunni sheiks for cooperating with the invading forces that had just toppled their ruling establishment; a cost likely much higher than tolerating the presence of AQI on their territory, a largely Sunni organization. Moreover, once on the US side, their fate would, in so many words, be in Washington’s hands.

Rather, the Awakening Councils awoke and turned against AQI for an added and largely unreported reason: By the autumn of 2006, the Sunnis were looking down an exceedingly dark tunnel. They “awakened” to the prospect of total subjugation, if not annihilation, at the hands of the Shia.

When then-president George W. Bush announced the surge on 10 January 2007, he sent the Sunnis a signal: Get on board now and we’ll guarantee your security and a modicum of political participation … at least until we leave. Otherwise, continue fighting and risk extermination. They made the rational choice.

A charitable interpretation would have it that Washington’s narrative overlooks the near wholesale sectarian cleansing of Baghdad that it indirectly triggered.

Iraq is now largely stable, at least as regards the Shia-Sunni conflict in Baghdad. The Shia are at the helm and the remaining Sunnis, a shadow of their former self, will likely acquiesce to majority rule, especially once the US leaves and the petrodollars start rolling in.

The US surge in Iraq did not play out as advertised. Rather, it fit into a series of converging and violent dynamics on the ground, coinciding expediently with a shift in the balance of power. That is what the empirical evidence shows.

John Agnew is a professor of geography at UCLA. Claudio Guler is a senior correspondent for ISN Security Watch.

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Original Print: http://www.truth-out.org/false-advertising-about-iraq-surge60326

Reviewing Justice in Kampala

Published May 27, 2010 International Criminal Justice Leave a Comment

The summit of summits on the international criminal justice circuit is set to kick off in Uganda next Monday with debate over the crime of aggression commanding center stage, Claudio Guler writes for ISN Security Watch.

By Claudio Guler for ISN Security Watch, 27 May 2010

From 31 May to 11 June, 1,500 to 2,000 delegates from 110 states parties, observer states, other states invited by the UN General Assembly, and members of civil society, academia and practitioners of international criminal justice will descend on Kampala, Uganda to participate in the first and only statutorily mandated review conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The conference will feature numerous events and debates, including an exhibition football match promising to showcase the dribbling skills of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. None, however, is garnering more comment and attention than efforts to define and operationalize the crime of aggression.

Judging performance

The conference agenda includes a series of stocktaking exercises that will appraise the first and soon-to-be eight years of the Court’s work. The stocktaking will look at four areas: the impact of the Rome Statute system on victims and affected communities – discussions will certainly address ongoing witness protection concerns in Kenya; complementarity, the legal principle that calls for the primacy of national judicial efforts ; cooperation with the Court; and peace and justice, striking the proper balance between the demands of making peace and guaranteeing accountability.

The Assembly of States Parties (ASP), the intergovernmental body that oversees and funds the Court, has further approved for debate two amendments to the Statute other than the crime of aggression.

Delegates must decide whether or not to remove a temporary and transitional war crimes amnesty provision. Set out in Article 124, the provision gives states parties the choice to exempt their nationals from war crimes prosecutions for seven years following ratification of the Statute. To date, only France and Colombia have made use of the provision.

The second amendment is a Belgian proposal to criminalize ‘the use of poison, poisoned weapons, asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and all analogous liquids, materials or devices as well as the use of bullets that expand or flatten in the body to armed conflicts not of an international character.’ The provision already exists for conflicts of an inter-state nature.

Thou shall not aggress

The debate on the aggression amendment has in the main two parts: definitional issues and jurisdictional issues.

The ASP established a Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression in 2002. Since then, the group has convened periodically to come up with a definition and has tabled a draft version for the conference.

The draft version defines the crime of aggression as: “the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations”; and an act of aggression – favoring a specific, list-based interpretation based on UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974 rather than a generic one – as: seven different acts of hostility that amount to an act of aggression.

Discussing the US position with ISN Security Watch that Washington is widely seen as the most significant holdout from the Rome Statute system given its frequent rhetorical appeals to human rights and the rule of law, Matthew Heaphy, deputy convenor of the American NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court (AMICC) explained, “The US was absent from the aggression negotiations for eight years and thus did not participate in the informal discussions that led to a draft proposal to be considered at the Review Conference. The American delegation will be under pressure from various actors at Kampala to accept the already agreed definition of the crime of aggression and to negotiate actively on the other elements of an amendment, including how the ICC gets jurisdiction over an aggression situation.

“The Review Conference, given its importance to the ICC community, will arouse close attention to US actions and positions. If the US seeks to reopen issues that have already been settled or takes positions different from its allies who are ICC States Parties, the resulting reactions could make a closer US relationship with the Court difficult.”

Jurisdictional issues also feature prominently. Should the crime of aggression require acceptance by both the aggressor and the victim state, or only the victim state, for the ICC to proceed? Should any effort to try the crime of aggression first pass muster by way of a filter, either the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, a Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC or other body?

Two thirds of the members of the ASP must ratify the amendment to make it enter into force. Seven-eighths must ratify it for it to become binding on all states parties.

The voices weigh in

With apprehension characterizing much of the pre-conference debate, a number of scholars and practitioners have expressed their viewpoints. Stephan G Rademaker, a former Bush administration official, and a recent Council on Foreign Relations report authored by Vijay Padmanabhan have argued against adoption. Both primarily cite sovereignty concerns and misgivings about the potential politicization of Court prosecutions.

Other notable voices such as Anton du Plessis, Richard Goldstone, Harold Koh, David Kaye and civil society groups under the Open Society Justice Initiative umbrella fret adoption could overwhelm the Court at an early stage, blight its credibility and hamper cooperation with the Court by non-states parties, in particular powerful states. They urge putting off the matter to a later date. Others yet, such as professors Michael Glennon and Anthony Clark Arend, have primarily taken issue with the definition produce by the Special Working Group.

Notwithstanding, there is significant momentum in favor of realizing the crime of aggression; especially among states parties that rank low in the international power hierarchy and would on balance benefit from the added legal protections. Many of the critical observers mentioned above, moreover, are notably calling for the delay and not the dismissal of the amendment. And the original framers of the Statute included the offense – Article 5 (2) – but left the paragraph undefined.

Noah Weisbord, a visiting assistant professor at Duke Law School and an expert on the working group defining the crime, advocates a compromise approach, which he popularized in a recent International Herald Tribune op-ed. If a definition can be agreed and the amendment adopted, Article 121 (5) of the Statute provides for an ‘opt-in’ mechanism whereby states parties that ratify the amendment accept jurisdiction while those that do not ratify remain immune, unless and until they sign on.

Regarding jurisdiction, Weisbord explained to ISN Security Watch, “Judging from the meeting of the Assembly of States Parties in March, the two most likely, and competing, scenarios are: 1) acceptance by aggressor State not required plus non-SC or no filter and; 2) acceptance by aggressor State required plus non-SC or no filter. The SC filter, which was on everyone’s mind until recently, is not very popular, though a number of influential states, including the United States, are advocating for it. But things can change quickly at the review conference, especially if a creative diplomat or legal scholar invents a new idea that appeals to a wide range of interests.”

Weisbord prefers the latter, primarily because, although he reckons option 1 is the most fair, it could lead to a scenario in which the ICC prosecutor is unable or unwilling to prosecute a powerful and victorious aggressor, thereby undermining the credibility of the Court. “A reasonable compromise – one that tempers justice with prudence – is to require that both the aggressor and the victim state have signed onto the provision before the court can proceed. The drawback is that not all states will be bound by the new law. The hope is that states will gradually sign on, as they have with unexpected speed with the ICC Statute, and that, over time the prohibition on aggression will become the norm.”

Original Print: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=116618

Creative Commons “Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported”

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Listing does NOT imply endorsement.

Twitter

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.