Diplomacy & Crisis News

Innovation is a key development tool that could boost economies and provide a way out of the growing squeeze on the world&#39s food resources &#8211 one of the major challenges of the 21st century &#8211 according to a new United Nations report.

The United Nations must move towards a more institutionalized approach for the joint planning, mandating, financing and supporting of African Union (AU) peace-support operations, the Secretary-General&#39s Chef de Cabinet told the Security Council today.

The United Nations envoy for Somalia today strongly condemned last night&#39s attack on a pizza restaurant and an adjacent hotel in Mogadishu that reportedly killed at least 19 people.

Actions against severe human rights abuses meted out to Eritrean citizens must not be delayed, a United Nations rights expert has warned in a new report to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

A United Nations human rights expert today urged the Government of Myanmar to do more to protect children in the country, citing cases of detention and alleged incidents of child labour and marriage.

The African Union (AU) and the United Nations are proposing 44 per cent and 30 per cent reductions in their troop and police presence in Sudan&#39s Darfur region as a step towards an eventual exit, a senior UN peacekeeping official told the Security Council.

The United Nations deputy chief today called on Member States to fund the Organization&#39s new strategy to counter cholera in Haiti, stressing that the initiative is facing a critical shortage of resources.

Reducing gender disparities at workplaces by 25 per cent by 2025 could inject nearly $5.8 trillion into the global economy and boost tax revenues, a new report released today by the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) has revealed.

Raising alarm over lack of safe drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the so called contact line in Donetsk Oblast of eastern Ukraine since 11 June, the top United Nations relief official today called on all parties to the conflict to abide by their obligations under international law and ensure that civilian areas and infrastructure are not targeted.

In a contentious Senate hearing, Trump’s top law enforcement officer called Russiagate allegations “scurrilous” and said he has been the victim of a smear campaign.

(Own report) - A strategy paper prepared by the US Atlantic Council think tank - with the assistance of Germany's CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation - is proposing measures for Western powers to take to insure their continued influence in Iraq following the fall of Mosul. According to the paper, published a few days ago, US military forces should remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future, train and equip Iraqi forces to prevent IS from regrouping and recovering after its expected defeat. To push back Iran's influence, measures should also be taken to help the country's economic development. In Baghdad, a government "strongly inclined to cooperate closely with the United States" is needed, the paper states, and calls for US allies - particularly European countries - to engage in Iraq to "tackle sensitive areas in which the United States is not seen as neutral." Berlin is already using this opportunity to build its own base of influence in Iraq and is supporting the reconstruction of towns recaptured from the IS. Insuring western control of Iraq is considered all the more urgent, since Russia could successfully obtain major influence in Damascus following the anticipated end of the Syrian war.

A deal for thousands of precision munitions kits wins approval, but opponents of Washington’s support for Riyadh’s war in Yemen claim moral victory

The Stanley McChrystal — and the war in Afghanistan — I knew is not at all like what you’ll see on Netflix.

The Balkan nation is in the middle of a tug-of-war between Russia and the West.

Rather than affirming his commitment to Western values and institutions during his recent trip to Europe, President Donald Trump did the opposite, breaking with and alienating America’s closest democratic allies.

The administration is concerned that Russia is doing more business with the nuclear-armed Kim regime, but it hasn’t said anything publicly yet.

Tibetans are setting themselves on fire in record numbers to protest Beijing’s heavy hand. But the brutal cycle of violence is only increasing.

The best course of action is for Washington to take a back seat to Kuwait’s efforts to negotiate an end to the Gulf impasse.

France presses for a swift vote on a U.N. resolution endorsing an African force, betting Washington will back down.

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister, Mohammad bin Salman, discussing the Islamic coalition on Dec. 15, 2015 (Reuters).

During the Arab-Islamic-American summit in Riyadh, leaders and representatives from Arab and Muslim countries stressed their countries’ commitment to combating extremism and terrorism. At the summit, it was decided to establish a strategic alliance. Nations facing a ‘common threat’ often pool their defense efforts in alliances.

While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a formal alliance, nations can also cooperate implicitly in informal ones. In fact, Saudi Arabia had already announced the formation of the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (the ‘Islamic NATO’) end of 2015.

In many ways, defense is a public (“collective”) good. This means consumption of the good by one person does not reduce the amount available for others to consume. It also means that the benefits a given person derives from the provision of a collective good do not depend on that individual’s contribution to funding it.

The same reasoning applies to countries within strategic alliances: whatever the nature of the Islamic NATO, the defense efforts aimed at its ‘common goals’ are a collective good.

Empirical evidence on the political economy of alliances tells us that wealthier countries—like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—would spend significantly more on defense. Smaller states will thus be more inclined to “free-ride” as long as everyone (in the Arab Gulf, the Levant, East Africa and the Sunni world) benefits.

Since the 1960s, “burden sharing” (the specific efforts each member has to make) has been a recurring test of the theory of collective action. As in the case of NATO, members of the Islamic NATO might often bargain over burden sharing. But any ambiguity in this definition will create further tensions within the Islamic alliance. For instance, the alliance might deploy forces in faraway places than the traditional theaters of Yemen, Syria or Iraq. Some members will try to do these missions on the minimum while continuing to cut their defense budgets in response to their macroeconomic difficulties, fiscal pressures and welfare state budgets at home.

In addition to the challenges of free-riding and burden sharing, a ‘shared goal’ (fighting terrorism) might lead to a massive growth of the size of government (among the bigger members of the alliance). When counter-terrorism ends, government control diminishes, but never back close to its pre-war level. In his book, Crisis and Leviathan, economic historian Robert Higgs was the first to point out this pattern (which he called the “ratchet effect”).

In other words, the leader of the Islamic NATO (Saudi Arabia) will face increased spending (in terms of increased defense/security spending; increased subsidies needed to increase public support for the increased provision of the collective good; possible financing of compulsory military service; and so forth). This entails that the Saudi government must obtain resources through the tax system (or through implicit taxation, such as inflation) adding further complexities to Vision 2030.

Another point on a ‘common threat’: the defense budgets of the Islamic NATO’s members will diverge as long as defense strategies and choices diverge. Allies would have differing views on the sources of threat to their national security: while some countries consider Iran as their chief source of threat; to others, the Islamic State (ISIS) is the chief threat.

In his classic work on what defense goals best meet threats; which military means best serve those goals; and how to compare the value of military and other spending, Warner Schilling attributes the difficulty to uncertainty about future threats with the result that “the defense budget, while susceptible to rational analysis, remains a matter for political resolution.”

The last two words above are critical for the Islamic NATO: how much defense is enough will be answered through politics and tradeoffs. Thus, larger members will be promising private goods (especially financial aid and/or regional investments) to smaller ones in return for contribution to the public ones. Yet, this strategy is extremely expensive and usually well beyond the means of all states except, for the time being, the leader of the alliance (Saudi Arabia).

Also, we should expect smaller states which strongly identify their “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia as an important key to their security and their political clout to be willing to contribute significantly (both in terms of troops and risk-sharing).

Islamic NATO could survive, if and only if Saudi Arabia carefully compares other goods to offer (than public goods) and assesses the burden sharing perspectives within the alliance. That said, smaller members can and should be expected to provide their comparative advantage in areas such as ground forces and niche capabilities.

If the above-mentioned challenges are hard to reach, the Islamic NATO will be a fractured, uniquely privileged group.

The post The Future of the ‘Islamic NATO’ appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.