Be Careful of Bad Policy Prescriptions in Libya

I was watching "Morning Joe" today, and they had Richard Haas, the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, in to talk about Libya and the Arab revolts.Morning Joe makes a big deal about how it reflects elite opinion in Washington.  If that's the case, then we're in big trouble.  

They were arguing that the unrest in Libya argues for intervention, and Joe was complaining that it would inevitably be Americans who would be called upon to intervene.  We - the West in general, but Americans in particular - have to be very careful in our diagnosis of ongoing revolutions.  Mike Barnicle said to Haas that he thought Tripoli could become the 21st Century equivalent of Mogadishu.

Not only is this argument probably wrong - it is also very dangerous.

Tripoli could also become the 21st Century equivalent of Singapore.  We don't know, and we should be very careful about imposing our diagnosis and predictions on countries which we know very little about.  In a similar way, this is the same mind-set that got us into Iraq 8 years ago.  We must act as observers - partial on the side of personal freedom and democracy - but observers nonetheless.  This is not our country, nor is it an area where we have a lot of leverage.

Also, Pat Buchanan was calling for the Italians to intervene in Libya, because they were formally a colony. Just because Berlusconi shares some of the same qualities as Mussolini, we should't think that Libyans would happily welcome back their colonial occupiers.

I don't know what the outcome in Libya will be, but I do know that looking at it only through the lens of oil prices - which is how its being played on all the daytime news networks - will only lead to short-term, self-interested responses.  

A quick note on climate skeptics

Anyone who's spent any time on the internet reading and writing about anything to do with climate change has run into some members of the really committed climate skeptics.  Reading the comment threads of some of the more popular climate-related blogs, like DotEarth or the Guardian, can be a strange descent into the minutiae about a) whether the climate is changing, b) whether humans are responsible for it, and c) how fat Al Gore is.  They marshal a lot of scientific-sounding evidence that they claim disproves climate change. The intention, however, is not to educate, but to confuse.  They want to sow doubt about what is admitadly a complicated subject.  You will hear a lot about the  Paleocene\ Eocene Thermal Maximum, or the Medieval warm period, but you won't really be any more certain.

I bring this up because of an article, "Playing Politics with Climate Change" on Atlantic-community.org, by Jean Pierre Schaeken Willemaers of the Thomas More Institute that questions the science behind climate change.

The truth is that the earth is warming- undeniably. We're pretty sure that we're doing it. We don't kow how much it is going to keep warming, but we what we do know should worry us.

That puts climate change as a clear and present "threat". Does that mean it will cause mass disruption? No- but it might. Just because we don't have certainty does not mean that we should not act. I would direct everyone to the recently released report from E3G about risk management planning for climate change. Find it here.

We should not allow uncertainty to preclude action. In fact, uncertainty should be the central reason for action.

Also- the canards that Mr. Schaeken Willemaers puts in there about polls and public opinion are immaterial. The public is reactionary- but it is government's job to be proactive. A government that does not take rational, foresighted action on preventing the dangerous effects of climate change will be held to account by it's citizens in the future.

I hope that this will be my last post about climate skeptics. Whether or not you believe that the climate is warming, you should at least acknowledge that it is a threat that demands prudent action.

Edward Luce's "In Spite of the Gods"

I have just finished reading "In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India" by Edward Luce.  Luce is currently the Washington Bureau Chief for the Financial Times, but is the former South Asia bureau chief, and is married to an Indian woman.  He comes at the story of India from an almost completely economic point of view, which is what I was looking for. The economic growth of India is a revolution.  Since 1991, when economic reforms were enacted, India has turned itself from an economic backwater to a center of global technology.  But, it is not an entirely rosy story.

India is advancing rapidly - and this book, at five years old (published in 2006), at times feels as though it is becoming overtaken by events.  For example, time has shown it to be overly rosy about financial deregulation.  Luce writes that "India has nothing to fear from further financial deregulation".  However, when the crisis in 2008 hit, India's removal from global financial markets have allowed its growth to continue with only a small interruption.  He also shows more optimism about the India-Pakistan peace process than was warranted.  He hoped that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's overtures of peace with then President Musharraf would yield an agreement.  Instead, the Mumbai attack in 2008 closed that process down.  Only now is it restarting.

He is optimistic about India over the long term.  First, India is beginning to enter the time of its 'Demographic Dividend'.  This means that it will have more people of working age - between 18 and 65 - than dependents; a young population, but with a declining birth rate.  The East Asian Tigers used such a dividend to grow very fast.  He also says that India's diversity and its democracy make it resilient.  He compares it to an 18-wheeler.  Not necessarily fast or efficient, but the loss of a couple of tires will not throw the vehicle into the ditch.

The biggest threats to India's continued growth and prosperity, according to Luce, are Hindu Nationalism and a complacent governing class.  Luce spends several chapters discussing the Bharatiya Janata Paty (BJP), its relationship with its militant wing, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and how it creates a toxic atmosphere for the Hindu-Muslim relationship.  I am not convinced that the BJP needs to be characterized as anything more than a conservative, religious party, like a Christian Democratic party.  But - both major parties do have certain factions that do not seem wholly rooted in democratic ideals.

The second threat, I think, is more pernicious.  There is a danger that the Indian governing class will determine that further growth and economic reform is not needed. Just because India has a middle class of between 200 and 300 million people, they will grow complacent.  Unfortunately, that will leave the country with between 700 and 800 million impoverished.  But, because of caste divides and urban-rural divides, many of the ruling elite look at the problems of the poor as separate.  Luce paraphrases the Bhagavad Gita as saying that in India the intentions are more important than the outcomes.  He goes further into saying that many Indians confuse a good argument with a responsible governing position.  In my experience with South Asians at conferences, this has been the case - they do tend to filibuster better than any South Carolina Senator.

Luce also has a lot to say about the environmental, energy, and population challenges that India faces.  I am planning to do some more research tomorrow, and will put up a blog post about those tomorrow.

Climate, Food, and Conflict

Cary Fowler has a provocative piece up in HuffPo: "Avoiding a Global Food Fight".  He draws on three studies linking past changes in climate and weather to increased incidents of conflict, in Africa and in Europe. Notably, these studies are not new, nor were they without controversy when they were released - the study linking climate to conflict in Africa was fairly effectively rebutted in a PNAS article saying "Climate not to blame for African Civil Wars".

Geoff Dablelko's New Security Beat blog had a great break-down of how the media and advocacy organizations react to these arguments among the scientific community in a post titled "Climate Security Linkages Lost in Translation".

The effect is that the media bounces from one side to the other, reporting the controversy more than they report the science.  Advocacy organizations, like Fowler's Global Crop Diversity Trust, seize on the results of the studies that fit their preferred policy options, while ignoring those that could refute them. I don't want to pick on Fowler alone - all advocacy organizations are like this, and arguably politicians are probably worse - they seem to make their decisions, and then go looking for support after.

The truth is that the link between climate change and security is complex, but clear. Fowler was correct to link the the CNA's report on climate change and security from 2007.  But, he should also have looked beyond that to all the research on climate change and security since then.  I would direct him to my old blog, climatesecurity.blogspot.com for more detail on the links between national security and climate change.

A New Blog about our Rapidly Changing World

This is the first post to my new blog.

Our human and natural systems seem to be changing at an ever increasing rate.  Part of the reason for that is that, more than ever, the human and natural worlds are intersecting.  For the past two years, I have written the blog of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security.  Through those two years, a total of 262 posts looked at such questions of whether military action can amplify local glacial melting, how transboundary water resources are shared, and a series of posts looking at how intelligence agencies are addressing the challenges of climate change.

While that blog focused exclusively on how climate change affects issues of security, I aim with this blog to reach further than simply climate issues. A changing climate poses significant threats to security; and I will expand on those in future posts. However, so too does pollution, cyber security, population density, or migration.  These topics and, hopefully, a dose of pop culture and sports, will be addressed in the blog.

I encourage readers to comment to any posts.  Take a look at the links I've posted on the blog to the right for my interests.  Thanks for reading.