Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

Der jüngste Streit zwischen Japan und Südkorea über die Entschädigung ehemaliger koreanischer Zwangsarbeiter scheint bekannten Mustern zu folgen. Schließlich sind bilaterale Auseinandersetzungen über die gemeinsame Geschichte – insbesondere über die Phase der japanischen Kolonialherrschaft – nichts Neues. Doch die Span­nungen greifen diesmal tiefer und das beidseitige Misstrauen hat ein nie dagewesenes Niveau erreicht. Deutlich angestiegen ist auf japanischer Seite die Frustration über Südkoreas Politik, von der sich die Regierung in Tokio hintergangen fühlt. Unterschiedliche Geschichtsauffassungen sorgen seit jeher für Konflikte, doch aktu­elle innenpolitische und regionale Entwicklungen belasten das Verhältnis zusätzlich. In den Führungen der beiden wichtigsten Demokratien Nordostasiens sind in den letzten Jahren Zweifel aufgekommen, ob der jeweils andere noch ähnliche Wertevorstellungen und strategische Ziele vertritt. Das zunehmende Zerwürfnis könnte die regionale Machtbalance in den nächsten Jahren beeinflussen, denn es schwächt die Position der USA in Asien als Bündnispartner Japans und Koreas.

 

∎ Das Wachstum der chinesischen Wirtschaft wurde seit 2008 durch immer höhere Schulden finanziert. Die Gesamtverschuldung des Landes stieg in dieser Zeit um gut 100 Prozent seiner Wirtschaftsleistung.

∎ Die zunehmende Schuldenlast bedroht die Stabilität der chinesischen Wirtschaft. Eine Finanzkrise in China wiederum hätte gravierende Folgen für die Weltwirtschaft.

∎ Der chinesische Staat reagiert auf das zunehmende Misstrauen der eigenen Bürger durch scharfe Beschränkungen des Kapitalexports.

∎ Peking muss sich zwischen einer Stabilisierung der chinesischen Finanz­märkte und der Förderung des Wirtschaftswachstums entscheiden. Beide Ziele werden sich nicht gleichzeitig erreichen lassen.

∎ Die Kommunistische Partei Chinas versucht angesichts stagnierender Binnennachfrage, das bisherige Wirtschaftsmodell des Landes, das auf immer höherer Verschuldung basiert, zu exportieren. Das Instrument hierzu ist die Belt-and-Road-Initiative (BRI), auch als »Neue Seidenstraße« bezeichnet.

∎ Einige Nehmerländer geraten in eine gefährliche Überschuldungslage, wenn sie Infrastrukturprojekte im Rahmen der BRI finanzieren.

∎ Europäische Länder sollten auf Chinas Strategien reagieren und eine eigene Infrastruktur-Initiative insbesondere für asiatische Entwicklungs- und Schwellenländer starten. Deutschland könnte ein solches Projekt finanzieren, das zunächst ein Volumen von etwa 300 Milliarden Euro haben sollte.

 

 

Um die Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung (SDGs) bis 2030 zu erreichen, benötigen die Entwicklungsländer zusätzliche Finanzmittel. Dafür gibt es vier Finanzierungsquellen: inländische öffentliche Mittel (oder Einnahmen), internationale öffentliche Mittel, inländische private Mittel oder internationale private Mittel. Von diesen vier Quellen haben inländische Zuflüsse aus Steuern und nichtsteuerlichen Einnahmen (beispielsweise Gewinne von Staatsunternehmen) bei weitem den größten Stellenwert. Im Jahr 2016 beliefen sich die Steuereinnahmen allein in den Ländern mit niedrigem und mittlerem Einkommen auf 4,3 Billionen USD – mehr als das Doppelte des internationalen Kapitals, das im gleichen Jahr in diese Länder floss. Viele dieser Länder haben ihre Einnahmen in den letzten 15 Jahren steigern können. Der Anstieg reicht jedoch nicht aus, um den Finanzbedarf für die SDGs zu decken, der von den Vereinten Nationen für die Entwicklungsländer auf 2,5 Billionen USD pro Jahr geschätzt wird. Zudem haben diese Länder einen Rückgang der Mittel aus internationalen öffentlichen und privaten Quellen zu verkraften, der sich zwischen 2013 und 2016 auf 12 Prozent belief. Infolgedessen stehen viele Regierungen unter dem Druck, mehr Mittel im eigenen Land zu mobilisieren. Welche Möglichkeiten haben sie, dieses Ziel zu erreichen?
Im vorliegenden Dokument konzentrieren wir uns auf die internationale Dimension dieser Fragestellung. Wir vertreten dabei die Auffassung, dass die Regierungen in drei Schlüsselbereichen multilateral agieren sollten.
Erstens ist die Steuervermeidung durch multinationale Unternehmen (MNU) trotz wichtiger Fortschritte in den letzten Jahren nach wie vor ein globales Problem. Auch wenn kein offener Rechtsverstoß vorliegt, kann Steuervermeidung für ein Entwicklungsland erheblichen Schaden verursachen. Ärmere Länder hängen in höherem Maße von Unternehmenssteuern ab als reiche, und sind für solche Praktiken entsprechend anfälliger. Internationale Initiativen gegen Steuervermeidung wie die Einführung einer Mindeststeuer für Unternehmen und die Besteuerung der digitalen Wirtschaft sollten daher die Besteuerungsrechte ärmerer Länder besonders berücksichtigen.
Zweitens ist auch die Bekämpfung der illegalen Steuerhinterziehung ein relevantes Thema. Auf internationaler Ebene ist der Austausch von Steuerinformationen ein Schlüsselfaktor. Die Entwicklungsländer müssen an diesem Austausch umfassend beteiligt werden, was national wie international zusätzliche Reformen für den Kapazitätsaufbau und die Förderung der Glaubwürdigkeit erfordern wird.
Drittens sollten die Regierungen weltweit die Transparenz ihrer Subventionssysteme erhöhen und schädliche bzw. unwirksame Strukturen beseitigen. Als ersten Schritt in diese Richtung sollten die Regierungen gemeinsame Berichtsstandards verabschieden und dann regelmäßige, öffentlich zugängliche und umfassende Berichte zu den von ihnen gewährten Steuervergünstigungen einführen.
Offensichtlich ist dies weder eine Agenda für einzelne Staaten noch ein Aufruf zum unilateralen Handeln. Die gegenwärtigen Ansätze für internationale Steuerzusammenarbeit, die von der Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD) und der G20 vorangetrieben wurden, müssen ausgeweitet werden und alle Länder auf gleicher Grundlage miteinschließen. Inwieweit Entwicklungsländer an der Festlegung internationaler Standards und Regelwerke beteiligt sind, hängt aber nicht zuletzt auch davon ab, wie erfolgreich sie selbst wesentliche Governance-Reformen vorantreiben können.

As a traditional frontrunner in international climate policy, the European Union (EU) is under great pressure to meet global expectations. In 2020, it must present its long-term decarbonisation strategy to the United Nations. Political attention has so far focussed on the lack of consensus among the Member States on whether they should adopt the European Commission’s proposed goal of »greenhouse gas neutrality« by 2050. Two aspects of this decision have hardly been debated so far – first, the ques­tion of whether this will herald the end of differentiated reduction commitments by Member States, and second, the tightening of the EU climate target for 2030. National governments and climate policymakers will have to take both issues into account.

The Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) highlights the urgent need to strengthen cooperation between security, health, and development actors. As the disease spreads, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an international health emergency. In crisis situations like these, the interdependencies between health and security are highly complex. Which population groups and which diseases are perceived as suspected health risks, and why, is a normative question for donor countries. It has political consequences above all for affected developing countries. Where health and security are common goals, it is not enough to contain infectious diseases in developing countries. Instead, resilient, well-functioning, and accessible health systems must be established. This fosters the implementation of the human right to health, creates trust in state structures, and takes into account the security interests of other states. In the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the German government could advocate for policies based on the narrative “stability through health.”

Gonzalo Escribano, Lara Lázaro y Elisa Lledó. ARI 87/2019 - 29/7/2019

España debe aprovechar el nuevo Parlamento y la nueva Comisión para mantener y renovar su influencia en materia de energía y clima.

Die Ebolafieber-Epidemie in der Demokratischen Republik Kongo ver­deutlicht, wie dringlich es ist, die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Sicherheits-, Gesundheits- und Ent­wick­lungsakteuren auszubauen. Da die Krankheit sich ausbreitet, hat die Weltgesundheits­organisation (WHO) den internationalen Gesundheitsnotstand ausgerufen. In Krisen­situatio­nen sind die Zusammenhänge von Gesundheit und Sicherheit hochkomplex. Welche Be­völkerungsgruppen und welche Krankheit mit welcher Begründung als angebliches Gesundheitsrisiko wahrgenommen werden, ist eine normative Frage für Geberländer. Politische Konsequenzen hat sie vor allem für betroffene Entwicklungsländer. Wo Gesundheit und Sicherheit gemeinsame Ziele sind, reicht es nicht aus, nur Infektions­krankhei­ten in Entwicklungsländern einzudämmen. Vielmehr müssen dort krisen­resistente, funk­tionsfähige und zugängliche Gesundheitssysteme etabliert werden. Dies fördert die Umsetzung des Menschenrechts auf Gesundheit, schafft Ver­trauen in staat­liche Strukturen und berücksichtigt Sicherheitsinteressen anderer Staaten. Die Bundesregierung könnte sich im Sicherheitsrat der Vereinten Nationen (VN) für eine Politik unter dem Narrativ »Sta­bi­lität durch Gesundheit« einsetzen.

 

 

Obsolete, too expensive, unfair – Donald Trump has repeatedly and harshly criticised the NATO defence alliance. In a new SWP Research Paper, Marco Overhaus addresses the question of how credible the US security commitments to NATO still are and what this means for Europe. An interview with the author.

Particularly in the complex environments where it increasingly deploys, the UN depends on a range of functions to implement its mandate. These include but are not limited to provision of security, facilitation of access, medical support, support to staff welfare, logistics, coordination, and risk management. Compared to substantive tasks implemented as part of mandates, these enabling functions, or enablers, have received less scrutiny. As a result, enablers—and their financial costs—are often unknown or misunderstood by member states, donors, and even UN staff.

This paper explores these enablers by explaining what they are, why they are needed, how much they cost, and how they are—or should be—funded. It then investigates the challenges the UN needs to tackle to put enablers on a path to sustainable funding, including:

• Reporting and consolidating data: While data is not the end point, it is a necessary starting point for the UN to engage in dialogue with those who use enablers and those who pay for them.
• Dedicating the necessary capacity: More spending on enablers is required now if lives and resources are to be saved later.
• Managing trade-offs: The UN needs to set and articulate clear priorities to guide the difficult trade-offs between different enablers and their associated risks.
• Integrating operations into planning: Operational planning is critical to avoid retroactive, ad hoc arrangements, especially during mission transitions.
• Communicating the importance of enablers: Effective communication on the need for enablers is necessary to convince member states and donors to fund them.

Ultimately, there must be greater coherence between those who define UN mandates, those who fund them, and those who implement them.

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Enrique Fojón. ARI 86/2019 - 25/7/2019

La forma de hacer la guerra depende de los espacios (dominios) donde se desarrolla, de las capacidades militares disponibles y de los conceptos operativos de las Fuerzas Armadas para emplearlas, una dependencia que se acentúa bajo la aceleración tecnológica.

 

 

Die seit Mai 2019 erneut amtierende Regierung des indischen Premierministers Narendra Modi und die im August 2018 angetretene Regierung seines pakistanischen Amtskollegen Imran Khan stehen für eine Neuausrichtung der politischen Systeme und der Außenpolitik ihrer Länder. Zugleich verändert die chinesische Seidenstraßen­initiative (Belt and Road Initiative – BRI) fundamental die außenpolitischen Konstellationen Indiens und Pakistans. Welche Szenarien ergeben sich daraus für ihr bilate­rales Verhältnis, für regionale Konflikte wie Kaschmir und für regionale Organisationen wie die South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)?

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Rising nationalist discourse and ethnic tensions have reinforced the need to prevent conflict grown from societal division. Such was the topic of a July 18th discussion on “conflict prevention through societal integration” at IPI, featuring OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Ambassador Lamberto Zannier.

To address the inadequate response to the minority-based ethnic conflicts of the Yugoslav Wars, the post of High Commissioner on National Minorities was established in 1992 at the Helsinki Summit of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, now the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The High Commissioner is mandated to alert the OSCE to risks, providing early warning and action where there is a potential for minority and ethnic-based tension. “My mandate is a conflict prevention mandate,” Mr. Zannier explained. “If you look around, interstate conflicts are increasingly rare, and conflicts tend to come from within split societies.”

Mr. Zannier said he views his mandate as “an old but new conflict prevention tool,” and identified two sides to his work. The first, “quiet diplomacy,” involves watching for instances of ethnic conflict and deciding which ones could develop in a dangerous direction, and then engaging with actors and constituencies that could help accordingly. The second centers on better informing the public on best practices and lessons learned, “communicating what are things that have worked in other places, and discouraging governments from making policy calls that would create friction,” he said.

In striving to make societies more peaceful and inclusive, Mr. Zannier stressed the centrality of integration. “If there are groups not well integrated, there is a high likelihood of seeing marginalization and radicalization and potentially violent extremism,” he explained. “One of our most effective tools is working on strengthening the resilience of society itself to crisis and conflict.”

Mr. Zannier admitted that working on integration within societies is not easy, as it touches on politically sensitive issues and is often seen as a departure from the “established order.”

“What we see today are extremely complex conflicts where it is difficult for the international community to intervene, but which are also very difficult to prevent,” he said. “Very rarely is there one thing that you can solve; there is always a gap between tensions and what you manage to do.”

In his work, the High Commissioner highlighted youth engagement and education as essential. “Equal opportunities for all starts from a balanced process of education, which does not cancel the identity of those who are different,” he said. Mr. Zannier further advocated for engaging “youth as an interested party… with long-term perspectives, interested in living in a society that is stable and prosperous where they have contribution.” He described various education- and inclusion-oriented programs for youth in minority communities under his tenure that “encourage them to be part of larger political discourse in this country.” “Young people understand that they need to overcome division of the past,” he said, “and take a future-oriented approach to address issues.”

The event was preceded by a showing of a video about the 2018 Max Van der Stoel Award given by Mr. Zannier and the Government of the Netherlands, highlighting a positive example of young people working for societal integration. The discussion was moderated by Adam Lupel, IPI’s Vice President.

In response to the threat of violent extremism, the UN has adopted a comprehensive approach that involves both aligning ongoing interventions with the goals of preventing violent extremism (PVE) and implementing PVE-specific programming. These initiatives aspire to use human rights-based approaches as opposed to hard-security counterterrorism responses. To date, however, there has been inadequate research on how the UN and other international organizations can promote human rights as part of their PVE programming.

This issue brief introduces findings on the strategic shift of UN peacebuilding interventions toward PVE and the barriers these interventions face to protecting human rights, drawing on research conducted in Kyrgyzstan. It concludes that PVE approaches to peacebuilding are fundamentally ambiguous, which may be hindering promotion of human rights. These ambiguities lie both in the terminology and strategies of intervention and in the drivers of radicalization and violent extremism. By clarifying its approach to PVE, the UN can dilute the inherent contradiction in its dual role as a critic and supporter of host states and reduce the odds that its interventions legitimize human rights violations.

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The public and private sectors are often seen as having incompatible objectives, but the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become a point of intersection as the UN and its partners create new avenues to finance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The SDGs have attracted diverse types of investments in a number of areas that support their achievement. In particular, the financial services sector has pioneered a number of innovations in both financing and promoting sustainable development.

A July 17th IPI policy forum addressed the contributions of the financial sector to the 2030 Agenda and how financial institutions are integrating the SDGs into their core business. This side-event to the UN High-Level Political Forum was organized in partnership with the UN Bahrain Office and the Al Baraka Banking Group, and it brought together several of the world’s leading financial institutions to discuss how to fund sustainable development.

In welcoming remarks, IPI Vice President Adam Lupel emphasized that in order to advance a shared and practical understanding of how to accelerate Agenda 2030, financing and financial institutions are a “critical piece of the puzzle.” Building upon his remarks, Amin El Sharkawi, UN Resident Coordinator in Bahrain, added, “The private sector is becoming an increasingly important actor in the global developmental landscape.”

“We can no longer afford to conceive of social responsibility as a specialized dimension of the private sector,” Mr. Sharkawi conceded. “We must find ways to integrate social responsibility into the very DNA of how core business is conducted.” In order to do so, he said, “We must advocate for approaches such as blended finance and green investment, both of which are becoming increasingly popular avenues for private sector support to the 2030 Agenda.”

Adnan Ahmed Yousif, President and Chief Executive of Albaraka Banking Group, said, “One of our objectives for this event is to highlight these SDGs stories from the banking and the financial services sectors.” He explained that his organization was able to focus on “seven SDGs that align with four of Albaraka goals. These are namely job creation, financing, healthcare, education and clean energy.”

“None of us expected that this agenda would resonate as strongly as it has with the private financial industry,” Elliott Harris, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development and Chief Economist in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), commented. But, in fact, for the private financial industry, the SDGs are becoming increasingly a “good business opportunity,” as environmental concerns are also a “risk to the balance sheets of financial institutions… making unsustainable investment increasingly unattractive.”

Mahmoud Mohieldin, Senior Vice President of The World Bank Group, argued that the finance sector’s investment in sustainable development was not simply a “PR function” of a bank or company to say that “we do what we can,” but that it was, in fact, a “good line of business.” He told the audience that most people have not yet realized the potential of private sector participation. “The opportunities are there, there could be some good examples here and there, and we see some interest in infrastructure projects, revival of PPPs, some good interest in renewable energy, there are some bits and pieces, but so far… we do not have an SDG consensus yet,” he said.

Shaikh Abdullah bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Undersecretary for International Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Bahrain, said, “I believe that without a public-private partnership many of the goals would be almost impossible to achieve.” Asked what was lacking in public-private partnerships, Mr. Mohieldin replied, “Different tracks are not speaking to each other… Now we talk about implementation, but very few VNRs submitted by governments are providing any kind of costing, or any kind of suggestion of budget any kind of signaling to the private sector.” Development, he said, required an “integrated approach.”

Muna AbuSulayman, a global SDG philanthropist, spoke on why achieving SDGs requires immediate action and how these goals differ, for businesses, from corporate social responsibility (CSR) aims. “We are finding that it is very easy to articulate the things you are already doing and put them in the SDG framework, which speaks to the differentiation between SDG funding and CSR funding,” she said. However, “We’re not playing a more active role, a more serious role in collective work to deliver on all the SDGs. We don’t want to just capture, we want to also add, otherwise we will fail to make significant changes needed for 2030.” What was necessary was deeper involvement from the financial sector as “partners, rather than merely funders,” she said. “We need to sit at the table.” She concluded, “I don’t think we’re going to reach the 2030 SDG goals if a sense of urgency is not conveyed to the major financial institutions around the world.”

Zubaida Bai is the founder and President of, ayzh Inc and Happy Woman Fund, where she has brought the perspectives of entrepreneurship and sustainable development together to invest in women entrepreneurs. “We are missing the fact that we need to be having half the population of the world leading SDG conversations,” she said. She suggested that another entry point to achieve the SDGs would be funding education for young people, since, “Per child/per annum we are investing about 300 dollars per child in the developing world. If we look at it from the developed world we are investing about 8000 dollars per child.” But, she concluded, “There is a lot of money that is going in. In our own fund that we are setting up, we are looking at the SDGs… our core is the company needs to be led by women, or the company needs to have the intention to let us come in and allow the organization to be gender neutral.”

“How do you measure success?” asked Bruno Bastit, Senior Corporate Governance and  Sustainable Finance Specialist at S&P Global Ratings. He said that he had seen some “positive signs,” of qualitative change as a result of the SDGs. “There is something to be applauded,” he remarked, in that “two years ago, investors didn’t know what climate change was.” In reporting this progress, “people are looking for actual measurable results, measurable impact to judge whether or not things are moving in the right direction and whether indeed investors and corporates are doing their best to address the SDGs,” he continued. Annual reporting on sustainable development has to contain more content than “trees and flowers and saving the world,” he said.

Ali Adnan Ibrahim, First VP and Head of Sustainability and Social Responsibility at the Al Baraka Banking Group pointed out that the SDG funding gap is about three trillion US dollars. But, he added, there are 317 trillion dollars already in the global financial system.” “If you look at the asset management industry, it is already 79 trillion dollars. So there is enough money in the system, but somehow we need to bridge that gap, that’s the magic recipe, to make that money flow into the sectors.” He said that to develop a funding strategy, “portfolio alignment is something very important, very easy to do, at the same time it has to be a gradual bottom-up process and there has to be a buy-in from all teams and subsidiaries to make it happen.”

Amit Puri, Global Head of Environmental and Social Risk Management at Standard Chartered, highlighted how his bank chose to prioritize where to invest. “We are a UK headquartered bank, but we make over 90% of our revenue and profits in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Our footprint is in emerging markets… Financing the SDGs is inherent in our strategy,” he said, and “We believe we are doing it where it matters most… We feel it is more impactful to meet the SDGs if we do this in places like Botswana, Bangladesh, Taiwan etc.”

Rebecca Self, the CFO of Sustainable Finance at HSBC, concluded the event, saying in her experience, “it’s becoming quite clear not all of the SDGs, and particularly not all of the indicators are necessarily relevant to banks… Some or others might be more relevant for us.” But where the SDGs did apply, she argued that progress toward the SDGs isn’t necessarily clear cut. Progress can be “saying no to short-term revenue in order to achieve some of these longer term sustainability goals,” she said. “There has been progress… but there is a lot more to do.”

Jimena Leiva Roesch, IPI Senior Fellow, moderated.

Saskia Gamradt 2019-07-17T14:58:00Z

Saskia Gamradt 2019-07-17T12:49:00Z

Le 18 juin, l’association de droit suisse "Libra Association" présentait un projet de cryptomonnaie destiné à offrir au monde dès 2020 "une monnaie digitale sûre et stable", le Libra, pour en faire "l’internet de la monnaie". L’annonce serait passée inaperçue, si l’association n’incluait pas Calibra, filiale ad hoc de Facebook et une trentaine d’organisations allant d’entreprises comme Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, Booking, Uber, Spotify,…