Diplomacy & Crisis News

As Botswana prepares for its 50th Anniversary, on 30 September, Vice-President Mokgweetsi E.K. Masisi, described to the United Nations General Assembly the journey of how the country went from one of the world’s poorest nations to a middle income country.

Addressing the annual debate of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, leaders from Pacific Small Island Developing States underlined today the urgency of strong and committed action on the global pledges made for the planet and its people.

Two Caribbean island nations took to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly today to highlight their vulnerabilities, including indebtedness and poor access to financing for development.

Senior United Nations officials today called for those responsible for human rights violations and crimes associated with human trafficking and forced migration to be held accountable, noting that some of the crimes committed in this respect may amount to atrocity crimes.

Leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) mounted the podium of the General Assembly today to call for global cooperation in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and United Nations reform in tackling the multiple crises facing the world.

The world has become an unsafe place for far too many people, and with so many challenges to address, at times, it seems all but hopeless, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany, told the United Nations today, “but all of us politicians here have a choice – between resignation or engagement in the face of these crises” and working towards a better future for all.

South Sudan’s vice-president today assured the General Assembly of further steps toward deploying 4,000 more United Nations peacekeepers after this summer’s resurgence of a civil war that has engulfed the world’s newest country for most of its five years of life.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Nicaragua’s Vice-President today warned that endemic poverty and inequality have become more noticeable than ever, both in developing and developed countries, especially in vulnerable and marginalized groups, including peoples living under colonial occupation and foreign intervention.

Peace and security are vital conditions for security and development, leaders from Africa’s Sahel region told the United Nations General Assembly today, laying out their plans to end conflict, counter terrorism and press ahead with meeting the Gaols of the 2030 Agenda.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People&#39s Republic of Korea (DPRK) told the United Nations General Assembly today that while the Organization aspires towards sustainable development, the world is besieged by terrorism and a refugee crisis due to war and increasing global hotspots.

While political dialogue and multilateral negotiations might be tedious processes, they are nevertheless the surest way to secure lasting solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges, the Prime Minister of Belgium said today, joining other European leaders at the United Nations today calling for broad-based diplomatic action to end five years of chaos and bloodshed in Syria.

Noting the progress made by Armenia in the past 25 years, including strengthening its democratic institutions, good governance, protection of human rights and advancing economic reforms, the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs highlighted that the needs of the country’s most vulnerable groups form the core of its development strategy 2014-2025.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov today warned that some Western countries’ supremacy and exclusiveness undermined equitable international cooperation, calling on world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly to support Russian initiatives in counter-terrorism and disarmament.

The United Nations (UN) is a polarizing institution. To liberals, it is essential to peacekeeping and development. To conservatives, it is an ineffectual talk shop that infringes on American sovereignty while standing on American soil. One finds greater agreement, however, when pointing out the disparity that exists between the UN’s post-World War II structure and today’s international system. Most agree that for the UN to reflect today’s world accurately, reform of both of the Security Council permanent membership and of underlying national contributions to the UN Budget would be necessary.

Without the political capital of victory in war that governed the Atlantic Alliance in the UN’s initial creation, however, substantial reform is an intractable political problem. So substantive UN reform is a fantasy. For the moment, assume that is true. What harm did fantasizing ever do anyone? Thinking about what the UN would look like if it were created today to represent the current balance of global power may be instructive. So, let’s fantasize.

Permanent Security Council Membership is often the focus of UN reform discussion. The five permanent members—U.S., U.K., France, China and Russia—reflect the influence of the victorious Allied powers following World War II. Although other countries join the Security Council for rotating terms, its permanent membership is Euro-centric and ignores rising economic powers in Asia and Latin America. With India and Pakistan rival nuclear powers in Southeast Asia, it also no longer exclusively represents the world’s nuclear arsenals.

However, with the Soviet Union an enemy of the West at the UN’s inception—and Russia and China now rival powers to it—the Security Council has never functioned smoothly. To serve its function as “talk shop”, in the best sense, it does not need to; the current UN is a global diplomatic forum that catalyzes collective responses to global crises and helps frame the terms of debate and push incremental progress on global issues. As the recent Paris Agreement on Climate Change attests, that is a net positive.

Better indicators of what a “reformed” UN would look like lie in the UN Budget. Member countries are assessed contribution levels to the budget based on UN Resolutions (the 2016 country contribution levels were set in a December 2015 resolution). Below is a chart outlining the UN Budget contributions of select UN member countries, compared to defense spending by those countries as a percentage of their GDP, and their relative size in the global economy.

Country 2016 UN Budget Contribution (%) National Defense Spending (2015; %National GDP) Global Rank by GDP (World Bank, 2015) United States 22.0 3.3 1 Japan 10.8 1.0 3 Germany 7.1 1.2 4 France 5.6 2.1 6 United Kingdom 5.2 2.0 5 China 5.1 1.9 2 Canada 3.0 1.0 10 Brazil 2.9 1.4 9 Russia 2.4 5.4 13 Australia 2.1 1.9 12 South Korea 2.0 2.6 11 Poland 0.9 — 24 Saudi Arabia 0.9 13.7 20 India 0.7 2.3 7 Pakistan 0.09 — 40

Sources: UN Secretariat; Stockholm International Peace Institute; The World Bank

Contributions from Japan and Germany are at levels that reflect both their economic standing and their status as defeated powers that were de-militarized following World War II and that maintain restrictions on their ability to project military power. The combined UN Budget contribution of these two countries amounts to 81% of the annual U.S. contribution. Yet, if Germany’s internal struggle to take over the de-facto leadership of Europe in the wake of the Eurozone crisis is any indication, neither country is necessarily comfortable with advancing its strategic power to be commensurate with its economic power. In the case of case of India in particular, a desire for a greater voice within the UN has so far not been matched with any contribution on par with its economic standing.

The list also includes regional powers—Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and (to a lesser extent) South Korea, who spend substantially more on defense as a percentage of their GDP than they do on UN contributions. These disparities between defense spending as a percentage of GDP and levels of UN contributions, while imperfect (UN spending encompasses more than military operations), may be the best data point to illuminate where UN structures have grown out of step with current global realities. This is particularly true when one compares the size of India’s economy (the world’s seventh-largest) with the amount of the UN’s budget it pays (less than one percent.)

The matter of what nations step forward in UN leadership, however, is a sensitive one. In some cases, powerful countries are reluctant to take a bigger strategic place on the world stage (e.g., Germany); other countries have resources but autocratic characteristics that preclude them from leadership in the eyes of the international community (e.g., Saudi Arabia).

The biggest headwind the UN and Bretton Woods institutions face is the same one NATO currently faces. It is simpler, politically, to form new institutions than to reform outdated ones. Asia, led by China, is not looking to increase its standing within current international institutions; rather, it is building its own network of rival institutions. Old global institutions do not die, then, they just fade away. This is a common line of thinking but a divisive one. The UN and the Bretton Woods system were designed to unify and reduce the potential for strategic and economic strife between nations.

The world may have outgrown their structures, but is a dangerous time to allow them to atrophy or to let sets of rival regional institutions emerge in their place. There is a great deal of discussion about renewing America’s global leadership. That should start with the renovation of the post-World War II international system it built.

The post UN Reform by the Numbers appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Cette allocution a été prononcée le 27 octobre 2000, à Salzbourg, dans le cadre de la Conférence internationale sur les services, par un certain Andreas Bichlbauer en remplacement du directeur général de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC), M. Mike Moore, indisponible. Le public était constitué de spécialistes du commerce international et d'avocats d'affaires. Nous en présentons ici quelques extraits.

Le thème qui nous occupera aujourd'hui est celui des obstacles au libre-échange, des diverses barrières qui ont été érigées à son encontre — de façon officielle, semi-officielle ou complètement informelle. Bien entendu, ces barrières n'affectent pas seulement les présents, elles affectent aussi le reste du monde. Il s'agit d'un problème crucial pour le progrès et le développement. (…)

Les barrières tarifaires

Par « barrières tarifaires », j'entends les initiatives prises à diverses reprises par les gouvernements de divers pays pour protéger les conditions de leur développement économique en vue du bien-être de leurs propres citoyens, ou bien des citoyens d'autres pays dans la mesure où ils éprouvent envers eux un certain sentiment de responsabilité, pour telle ou telle raison historique.

L'exemple le plus notoire, celui que tout un chacun associe au thème du commerce international dans plusieurs régions du monde, en particulier dans les secteurs de la population les plus réticents au libre-échange, est celui dit « de la banane équitable ».

Vous connaissez tous la blague : « On ne peut pas tuer quelqu'un en le frappant à la tête avec une banane. Mais on peut tuer quelqu'un pour une histoire de bananes en le frappant à la tête avec une machette. »

Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire au juste ? (…)

Si nous permettons qu'un seul pays paie une seule banane au-dessus de sa valeur, la porte est ouverte à tous les excès. C'est comme quand un amateur de vin passe un beau jour à la marijuana, un peu plus tard à l'héroïne et, de fil en aiguille, devient accro à la coke. Le jour où vous verrez vos proches chanceler comme des zombies, vous saurez que vous avez glissé sur une sacrée peau de banane !

Le thème des bananes n'est pas de ceux qu'on peut prendre à la légère.

Les barrières non tarifaires

La question des barrières non tarifaires est un peu plus compliquée. Elles peuvent inclure tout un tas de choses, depuis la protection de l'environnement — cf. les dauphins — jusqu'aux coutumes locales, qui se substituent au gouvernement en matière de restriction du flux des biens et des capitaux, imposant des limites au fonctionnement normal des forces économiques.

Il n'y a pas longtemps, il y a eu une tentative de fusion entre KLM, une entreprise néerlandaise, et Alitalia, une compagnie italienne. La variable principale, en l'occurrence, était le facteur sieste.

En effet, aux Pays-Bas et dans la plupart des pays nordiques, les gens dorment la nuit et se permettent au maximum un bref Mittaggesundheitschlaf au milieu de la journée. Il y a très peu d'occasions de se soustraire aux exigences de l'environnement de travail. Les gens ont un emploi du temps quotidien extrêmement régulier, en particulier en ce qui concerne le sommeil.

En revanche, en Italie, la situation est tout à fait différente. On dort presque autant le jour que la nuit. En outre, la pause-déjeuner peut durer une ou deux heures. Une petite sieste est souvent de mise après le repas. Les gens sont très conviviaux, ils aiment bien se payer une bonne tranche de rigolade. On boit souvent un peu trop de vin, on s'offre volontiers un saltimbocca alla romana et tous ces plats délicieux qui finissent par nuire à la discipline de travail.

Tous ces problèmes ont fait échouer la fusion et toute l'opération est tombée à l'eau. Voilà encore une grande opportunité de transnationalisation remisée au placard.

C'est là un exemple particulièrement déchirant pour l'OMC, car s'il y a un mot qui résume notre identité, c'est bien celui d'« alliance ». L'OMC est une excroissance du GATT, qui a lui-même émergé au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale dans un souci de prévenir les conflits futurs. L'idée de base — que nous colportons toujours volontiers —, c'est que les fournisseurs tuent rarement leurs clients et que, quand on fait des affaires avec quelqu'un, on n'a généralement pas recours au meurtre.

Bien entendu, il y a des exceptions : la première guerre mondiale, la seconde guerre mondiale, le génocide rwandais, la Yougoslavie, l'Irak, etc. Mais notre théorie est valable pour au moins un cas important, la totalité du XIXe siècle, époque où le libre-échange a empêché les partenaires en affaires de s'entretuer. Pendant cent ans, le type de liberté des échanges que l'OMC s'emploie à mettre en pratique aujourd'hui a contribué à préserver la paix entre les nations riches et puissantes d'Europe, avec comme seule exception le colonialisme et la traite des esclaves.

C'est pourquoi, quand les fusions sont menacées par des idiosyncrasies locales, quand les mœurs font obstacle à la marche forcée du commerce, c'est tout le système des intérêts transnationaux qui est remis en question et, avec lui, la paix et la stabilité de l'après-guerre.

Nous sommes confrontés à une situation globalement assez grave. Tout obstacle artificiel au libre flux des capitaux constitue un risque majeur. Dans quel sens va l'évolution de cette situation ? Nous n'en savons rien. Quelle est la solution, lorsque non seulement les gouvernements, mais la diversité des cultures locales conspirent pour faire obstacle au libre flux du progrès ?

Mystère.

Les barrières systémiques

Pour conclure, j'aimerais vous parler d'un type de barrières commerciales qui est à la fois le plus énigmatique et, bizarrement, sans doute le plus facile à éliminer : les barrières systémiques.

Nous savons tous ce qu'est la démocratie : la participation du plus grand nombre possible de consommateurs au fonctionnement direct du gouvernement et de l'économie. Il s'ensuit de façon quasi obligée que le libre-échange n'est que l'autre face de la monnaie démocratique, et que la consommation est la forme suprême de démocratie et de citoyenneté dans le monde moderne.

Démocratie, deux voies possibles

La liberté du consommateur est, bien entendu, un élément essentiel du processus démocratique, même si son rôle est rarement apprécié à sa juste valeur, et si elle est toujours inopérante dans la pratique. Cela est dû à la multiplicité de phénomènes spécifiques qui caractérisent la politique dans les démocraties contemporaines, aux diverses manifestations du pouvoir du peuple : les Parlements, les Congrès, etc. Une telle variété, une telle complexité ne peuvent que déboucher sur l'inefficacité, une inefficacité parfois fatale pour l'idéal d'une démocratie de consommateurs.

Heureusement, l'exemple du secteur privé nous permet d'envisager des solutions émergentes au faible rendement des institutions dites « démocratiques ».

Une solution possible, actuellement testée sur la scène politique américaine, serait de rationaliser un processus électoral qui s'avère grotesquement inefficace — et les élections sont évidemment au cœur de la démocratie des consommateurs.

Examinons d'abord le fonctionnement actuel des élections, avec toutes leurs déficiences. Au sommet, nous avons une série d'entreprises, que nous baptiserons Entreprises A. Chacune d'elles emploie en moyenne une douzaine de salariés pour transférer des sommes importantes au bénéfice de telle ou telle campagne électorale — disons la Campagne B. Il peut s'agir de n'importe quelle élection, y compris au poste de président. De son côté, l'état-major de la campagne — qui emploie lui aussi un grand nombre de salariés — transfère des sommes non moins importantes à une agence de relations publiques, type Hill & Knowlton, que nous nommerons C. Ladite agence de relations publiques, qui emploie une cinquantaine de salariés à plein temps, transfère de coquettes sommes à plusieurs chaînes de télévision qui, en fin de parcours, transmettent l'information pertinente au consommateur — sans lui remettre d'argent, bien entendu.

L'ironie de la chose, c'est que pour engendrer toute la quantité d'argent nécessaire afin d'alimenter cette chaîne, au début de la chaîne, vous avez les travailleurs des entreprises qui financent la campagne, lesquels se trouvent être aussi les citoyens et les électeurs en fin de chaîne. Il s'agit donc d'un système qui s'autoalimente et dont l'utilité réelle est proche de zéro.

Mais on peut proposer un autre modèle. Avec l'aide d'à peu près le même nombre de salariés, les entreprises ne paient plus qu'une seule entité : Voteauction.com. Voteauction.com, à son tour, n'a besoin que de quatre salariés pour transmettre directement à l'électeur-consommateur non pas de l'information, mais des espèces sonnantes et trébuchantes. Voteauction.com est un système qui permet aux électeurs de mettre de leur plein gré leur vote aux enchères et de le vendre au plus offrant. Il s'agit d'un espace où les gens qui ne ressentent pas d'affinité particulière pour tel ou tel candidat peuvent confier leur voix au marché. Cela permet de rationaliser l'ensemble du processus électoral et, comme dans tous les marchés, tout le système fonctionne au profit des consommateurs — et des entreprises qui en sont à l'origine, bien entendu.

Cette conférence est l'un des nombreux canulars réalisés par le collectif des Yes Men. Au début des années 2000, grâce à un faux site de l'OMC, ils se font inviter à plusieurs réunions économiques où ils présentent leur « expertise » devant un public enchanté. Leurs performances sont visionnables sur : http://theyesmen.org/

Photo by orangesparrow. (FlickR)

The world of climate change wonks suffers no shortage of policy ideas. Virtually every day, a new visionary policy proposal joins the portfolio of clever climate change solutions both big and small. The latest and greatest of these belongs to the Club of Rome, of “Limits to Growth” fame. In sweeping fashion, the organization’s newest report suggests a number of measures to curb environmental degradation and set the world on a path towards sustainable development. The authors’ grab bag of policy ideas includes a universal basic income, carbon and wealth taxes, but also an increase in the retirement age. Most controversially, the report suggests paying women in industrial countries to have fewer children.

On the one hand, the report can be read as an important contribution towards how to think about climate change. There is a growing awareness that it is not exclusively an environmental phenomenon. As such, climate change is not exogenous to society. It is a direct corollary of what we produce in society, how we decide to produce it, where our priorities lie, and how we distribute gains. With that in mind, we should be more creative in conceiving effective social and economic policies at a much broader level. The days of climate change as a niche policy area are gone. By contrast, it is an outcome of a vast array of decisions we as members of society make every day. That should be reflected in public policy.

So far so good. Yet, the Club of Rome report, like most of its kind, lacks a fundamental quality. Whatever you think of paying women to have fewer babies, or the merits and downsides of a wealth tax, the paper has little to say about possible strategies to implement these suggestions politically. This is where most policy experts fail. We often tend to segregate policy generation from policy implementation. Sure, from a climate perspective a carbon tax sounds lovely. Both economists and environmental activists are for it. Mountains of detailed studies have been produced to determine the most efficient design of such a tax. Yet, it has proven exceedingly difficult to actually establish the political conditions under which carbon taxes can be implemented. National or supranational carbon taxation schemes remain practically non-existent. The few that do exist remain marginal.

What explains the repeated failure of policy implementation? Political scientist Robert MacNeil argues that policies associated with market environmentalism—such as carbon levies and emissions trading—tend to fail in liberal-market economies. At first, that seems paradoxical. MacNeil’s hypothesis is that, in countries like the United States, Canada, or Australia, workers enjoy less protection from market-based effects. In turn, putting a price on carbon is perceived as an additional tax on the most vulnerable. As Oscar Wilde knew, it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The politics around policy matters. The lesson is that we should pay as much attention on researching possible enabling conditions as we do on policy content. It should not just be left to politicians to figure it out.

Of course, climate change is not exceptional in this regard. There are plenty of public policy areas in which much is made about detailed plans without giving sufficient thought to a political implementation strategy. Clever education policies often end up on the scrap heap when the political coalitions to implement them fail to materialize. Most people agree that infrastructure spending in industrialized countries is woefully inadequate, but policy change continues to be elusive. With climate change increasingly becoming an issue associated with political identity, however, there is some exigency in paying more attention to politics instead of policy.

Now, it goes without saying that we need visionary policy ideas. There is a certain legitimacy to thinking about ideas in the abstract. Without the restrictions of actual political conditions on the ground, we can develop ideal scenarios and bench marks. This is not where research should stop, however. The analogy here is the way many economists tend to think about their discipline. As the joke goes, you need eight economists to change a light bulb—one to change the bulb, and seven to hold everything else constant. Reality is messier than that. And climate change policy needs to adapt to reflect a messy political reality. We should think hard about whether policy suggestions should generally be accompanied by an analysis of what would need to happen politically to make them feasible. Would we need a change in norms? Is there a particular set of policy entrepreneurs that would be required? Does policy change in field X presuppose a change in field Y?

Take the debate about fossil fuel subsidies. In many cases big fossil fuel companies continue to receive unnecessary handouts from governments. By all accounts, that should stop. Yet, the majority of subsidies actually go towards consumers. Governments, justifiably or not, use these subsidies as a substitute for social policy. As repeated examples have shown, it is then incredibly difficult to remove them. While research has indicated that fossil fuel subsidies are wasteful, kill the climate, and are not actually beneficial to the poor, the perception among people is a different one. Therefore, the emphasis has rightly shifted towards an analysis of the enabling conditions which would allow for meaningful reform.

If we return to the Club of Rome report, the same concern emerges. Take something like curbing population growth. This has been a popular idea for quite some time now. As early as the 1960s, Paul Ehrlich warned about the impending “population bomb”. Suppose for the sake of argument that you agree that managing population growth is key to curbing climate change. We have only seen two mechanisms by which population control has actually been achieved. One is, of course, China’s one-child policy. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective, the one-child policy appears to be particular to China’s political system and the point in time when it was implemented. With its erosion even in China itself, it has little to no chance of revival. The other option would be economic development broadly speaking, and education in particular. That is not a policy. So if the aim is effective population control, one has to both describe a set of policies and provide an analysis of how those policies will be put on the agenda.

The politics around policy matters. To be more effective at policy implementation, wonks should contextualize ideas within the given political environment. Climate change is politics. Policy ideas need to reflect that reality.

The post What We Get Wrong about Climate Change Solutions appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

(Own report) - The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has once again sharply criticized the EU for its policy of warding off refugees. In view of the disastrous living conditions for the refugees on the Greek islands, it is urgent to at least bring a larger number of them onto the Greek mainland und finally begin to relocate them to other EU countries in accordance with these countries pledges, a UNHCR representative demanded in Athens. Berlin rejects this. The German government is demanding, on the contrary, that refugees be transported from the Greek islands back to Turkey and to resume the "Dublin III" deportations from Germany to Greece. The Athens asylum authorities' legal misgivings that Turkey, by no means, is a "safe third country," do not induce Berlin to change its course. Neither do current reports by human rights organizations, showing that hundreds of unaccompanied refugee minors are being held in camps, in violation of international norms, and some in police jail cells, often under desolate hygienic conditions. While Berlin is increasing pressure to deport, the number of refugees that have drowned, trying to cross the Mediterranean has set new records.

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