Gobalization: "Shift Happens"

This video brings home the challenges of Globalization:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqfunyCeU5g

Or if you do not have audio, try:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q&feature=related

Next posting: The Visionist as Latin Americanist

OOTB Idea # 2 - How to Fix Somalia and Other Failed States

Until the world became transfixed with the terrible problem in Gaza, it was fascinated with the problem of piracy off the coast of Somalia. Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates of Penzance. Now it's Pirates of Puntland. Arrgh! Before this problem exploded--and it has existed at lower levels for years--Somalia was already the prototypical "failed state." Ever since the US and the UN abandoned Somalia following the "Blackhawk Down" incident, Somalia has been mired in chaos and anarchy. A wild west land of warlords whose militias rode around in "technicals" and a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.

In fact it was the chaos that brought into the forefront the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC) that came close to taking control of the country, largely because they offered law and order to quell the disorder. In fact, it was the Mogadishu business community, which somehow managed to conduct its affairs in the country, that encouraged the CIC to bring Sharia law, peace and order to the anarchy. However, the rise of an Islamic group that included radical extremists posed a threat to both the United States and to neighboring Ethiopia. The US did not openly oppose the CIC, but it did not object when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in December 2006. Ethiopia's involvement was linked to a concern with a a historically redentist Somalia intent on taking back the Somali region of Ethiopia, commonly known as the Ogaden.

This is not the place to go into the complexity of relations in the Horn of Africa. What is important is that after two years trying to bring some order to Somalia in support of an extremely weak Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) whose legitimacy largely derived from its recognition by the African Union, it has decided to pull out. Only a small, undermanned Ugandan-Burundian AU peacekeeping force (AMISOM) will remain in Mogadishu. This is happening when the most radical wing of the Islamic movement in Somalia, a group called Al Shebaab, declared a terrorist organization by the US government and with ties to Al Qaida, is resurgent in the country and fast taking more territory.

At this very moment, the problem of Somali piracy burst upon the scene. Former fishermen turned pirates started overtaking and rendering ever larger ships, including a huge Saudi petroleum tanker and a cargo ship loaded with heavy weapons and tanks. By holding the ships and their crews hostage, the pirates have negotiated tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments and have turned once sleepy fishing villages into high life, big-spending centers of conspicuous consumption. No local Somali government has the force or the will to stop them.

So, doing nothing is not an option. The implosion in Somalia represents only the latest incident in which the world is feeling the risks and dangers of globalization. Globalization is in its essence the shrinking of time and space due to technological advances. A recent article in Foreign Affairs, actually pinpointed the onset of globalization with the invention of containerized shipping. It was predicting an "end to globalization" with the high cost of oil. This is a rather parochial view of globalization focused purely on international trade, but the advances in shipping are a huge part of globalization. The vulnerability of these ships to private individuals empowerd by simple technology of fast boats, GPSs, modern cheap weapons, cell phones and radios, however, is also part of globalization.

The world can no longer accept the existence of "ungoverned spaces." Whether Somalia or the under-governed tribal areas of west Pakistan, terrorists and criminal organizations can not be allowed to operate with impunity. The response to the Somali pirates has been to beef up and organize a multi-national naval force that is backed up by a united diplomatic effort or contact group meeting at the UN, which passed a Security Council resolution authorizing stronger measures against the pirates, including striking at the pirates' land-based lairs.

A few people have said, however, that the problem of piracy and anarchy and the threat of the establishment of a Taliban-like nation-state in Somalia cannot be dealt with by military means alone. The problems of Somalia are political. Where their is not a rule of law, i.e. governance, you get lawlessness. So the large question is will the international community take responsibility to bring governance to Somalia, or will it continue to be traumatized by the failure of "Provide Comfort" and keep an arms length and for how long?

The answer to Somalia and in my view other failed, failing or collapsing states is a UN organism that can assume responsibly for the political and economic aspects of these areas. Call it "nation building" if you will. Call it an ER for sick states. The logical organization within the UN system for this task is the now nearly defunct Trusteeship Council. The TC is the only organization of the UN to actually successfully work itself out of a job. It was asked, at the inception of the UN, to take overseeing the governance of former League of Nations Mandated territories as well as other territories taken from Japan, Germany and Italy following WW II, eleven territories in all. Large chunks of Africa gained Independence or joined together with other territories to gain independence through trusteeship. The last trust territories were the three Micronesian mini-states that found self governing status in the early 90s. The TC was then suspended. However, it was not abolished.

Trusteeship is a status that goes beyond a name. Indeed, many referred to such UN missions in East Timor, Cambodia and Kosovo as forms of trusteeship. There are, however, legal and political impediments to simply putting already independent states under the control of another state or entity. But it is not impossible. Sovereignty is not always a black or white kind of thing. There are shades of grey. There is nothing in the UN charter that says the TC cannot be assigned new territories to govern . Most likely, however, an amendment to the UN Charter would be required, but not a wholesale one. Also, one might want a name change that focused more on the positive purpose of re-establishing the failed state as soon as possible, such as the Council for Governance and Rule of Law. I would not abandon the TC and start from scratch, in part because the TC was designated as one of the UN's six "principal organs." It also has its own chamber at the UN Headquarters in New York. Together these status elements would demonstrate the UN's priority in finding a way of dealing with ungoverned spaces.

Bringing the UN back into Somalia (beyond its present humanitarian mission) should not be done as an invasion of a soverign state by foreign armies. the stage needs to be set diplomatically to get the various parties in Somalia, the TFG, the unrecognized governments of Puntland and Somaliland and the non-radical elements of the CIC, plus a large commitment by the AU. A significant UN/AU force needs to back up this civlian effort with enough cloat to either convince the more radical groups to agree to a diplomatic solution or to confront them.

Will this be easy? Not at all. Do we really have any better ideas? I have not heard any. What advantage we have is the coming into office of the new American adminsitration with a large amount of credibtility and capital and a capcity to spread hope, especially in Africa. It is also an administration publicly commited to using multilateral as opposed to unilateral solutions to global problems. This cannot be squandered or deferred. The Horn of Africa is an extremly vital and vulnerable geopolitical space. The threats looming there need to be addressed

The Visionist as Feminst

The Girl Effect

This is a great, simple, and not so out of the box idea that will rock our world:
http://www.care.org/getinvolved/girleffect/
I want to thank my son Andrew, more commonly known as Bad Brilliance, for sending it to me.

When I was the Executive Director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, the most significant thing that we accomplished , in the wake of the 1995 Beijing Women's Conference, was to launch the Girls' Leadership Workshop. Now over a decade old, GLW at ERVK continues to teach girls Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way, to use the title of the book by that name written by Robin Gerber. BTW a number of people are reading Robin's novel that fantasizes that ER actually did run for President, Eleanor vs. Ike. We came pretty darn close in this country to electing a woman as President this time. That too shall come to pass.

For information on the GLW: http://www.ervk.org/html/glw.html

"Invisible Man"

The Visionist sees far and wide. He sees, but he himself is invisible. Nobody sees him. Of course, it is perfectly logical that an outsider would be invisible. One of the books that deeply shaped my early view of the social world, was Invisible Man, by Ralph Waldo Ellison. I was particularly fascinated by African American writers during my college years and their stuggle with their identity in America. I will save for another time, going into my fascination with issues of race. Let's just say that I loved and love jazz, and my interest was one of understanding Black soul.

Jews and Blacks are the only peoples in the world who include the experience of slavery as part of their history and cultural baggage and who celebrate their liberation from slavery. They have that in common. There are Black Strassers. I wrote a term paper for my college freshman English class on James Baldwin. African-American writers, particularly of that era, saw themselves as alienated outsiders, and Ellison took that idea to the extreme by stating the sense that nobody saw the character in his book, and by the way, the only book he ever wrote. I was fortunate to meet and hear Ralph Ellison while I was a student at Columbia University. I have a signed copy of Invisible Man, but was disappointed when I got home and found he had dedicated it to "Daniel Stern."

In any event, the Visionist is like Superman: he has x-ray vision and can see through walls, but nobody notices the Invisible Man; they see right through him without noticing him. As Ellison notes, this actually has some advantages. Being invisible allows one to be stealthy. A seeming weakness is thereby transformed into a strength. How many of us wish we could be a "fly on the wall" during great events? There is less risk in not being noticed. Many great writers are like this. They observe enormous social or political movements, Tectonic shifts in the world that nobody else is noticing, but they can do it without fanfare. It is only when he writes his observations down that he become visible. The Visionist does not need to be a celebrity, does not seek notoriety. He wishes, however, to be an advisor, a wise man, an insider, someone behind the scenes. He wants to help humanity and believes he knows how to do it. But he himself cannot do it. He needs to find that Great Man or Woman whom he can help to do it. He needs to convince others of his credibility, of his powers of observation, of the value of his ideas, of his vision.

For preview of Invisible Man:

http://books.google.com/books?id=YpTA74jz018C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Ralph+Ellison+invisible+man&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0

"Diplomat Among Warriors"

I have already written that a diplomat is an outsider. He or she brings a keen eye and ear to an understanding of another culture. He or she must be something of an anthropologist in order to get inside that culture without going totally native. The first diplomat whom I met that personified this, was Calvin Maelert, an old China hand who I and several of other young foreign service officers sent to Vietnam visited on our first day in Saigon in 1970. Maelert spoke fluent Vietnamese, lived in a huge old apartment in downtown Saigon and was known to have captained a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco. He had fantastic contacts throughout the Vietnamese government and political circles. I aspired to be like him. His trophies were a series of absolutely fascinating political reports on the inside doings of Vietnamese political life.

However, I always admired another diplomat from my earliest days in the service. Knowing I would be going to Vietnam to work as a civilian advisor in a military led pacification advisory program, I discovered the book, Diplomat Among Warriors, by Robert D. Murphy. Murphy had one of the most distinguished diplomatic careers in our nation's history and was honored with five other diplomats in 2006 with his own postage stamp. Murphy, who worked in the US Embassy in Paris had a thorough knowledge of France, was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's personal envoy to French-speaking North Africa where he prepared the diplomatic underpinning for the bloodless Allied invasion of North Africa. Murphy worked under the direct instructions of FDR, meeting with him and addressing communications personally to him.

Murphy described another form of cultural adaptation that is characteristic of a strong foreign service career: working alongside the US military and understanding their culture. In so doing one also is an outsider, a civilian in a military world. Murphy had to satisfy both President Roosevelt in Washington and the Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in both England and later in North Africa. I have done this my entire professional life. In Vietnam, where for six months I was the only civilian, and the second in command, among a twelve man civil-military advisory team, pulling my time ever week to man the radio and check the Vietnamese perimeter guards at night. As a civilian in the State Department Bureau overseeing the Drug War in South America, I worked closely with military, law enforcement and economic development counterparts and had two military officers under my supervision.

Today, I work within a US military command as a civilian political analyst, working shoulder to shoulder with military officers and DoD civilians engaged in supporting US war fighters in conflict zones. My boss is a Brigadier General. Not being a military person, I can never be exactly like one, nor should I. The US military today values the skills and experience that civilians "bring to fight." This can sometimes be a painful interaction as military people are not used to or comfortable with thinking about political aspects of war. As they like to point out, their job is "warheads on foreheads." But it is my job to make sure they "get it," when the political realities trump the military realities. Politics, like social, economic and cultural elements also add complexity to the problem.

What I have transmitted above may be taken as just a war story. But my purpose is to point out that the future of American national security rests with the capability of American diplomats and other government civilians, defense contractors and our foreign partners to work together with the US and coalition military. At the highest level, this is called, "National Security Reform."

Besides two wars and a global economic crisis, perhaps the most important thing that the new Obama administration can do is to get it right about National Security Reform and to address this challenge quickly. The US national security architecture, designed ofter World War II and forged by the Cold War, is today considered by most who work in it "broken". Fixing it is a very large and complex subject, addressed in a number of reports that have been written by leading Washington think tanks hoping to get the attention of the new administration. These I hope to address separately, but the essence of it is, can we recruit, train, fund and manage a civilian national security workforce that knows how to be, like Robert Murphy, diplomats among warriors?

OOTB Idea # 1 - A Solution for Gaza

BBC Map - Do you remember the movie "The Graduate," when a friend of the family leans over to young Dustin Hoffman and says, "I am going to say one word to you--plastics"? Well, I am going to say one word to you: trusteeship. Trusteeship for Gaza. I have been studying revival of the UN Trusteeship Council, where I was the Deputy US Representative during the Carter administration for three years, for quite some time and think it is the answer. I and am talking to several people about this idea, but want to throw it up there now for the sake of discussion. This is how it would work:
1. Israel defeats Hamas decisively, but without destroying it. Humble it, disarm it, and, when Hamas cries "uncle," force it into a purely political role. Hamas cannot be allowed the capacity to return to using terror against Israel. But Israel does not want to occupy Gaza again. The above is perfectly possible even with an EU or French-Egyptian inspired ceasefire. Israel is not going to allow the conditions before its incursion into Gaza to prevail, period.

2. Invite the UN Security Council to place Gaza under the now mothballed Trusteeship Council and a UN peacekeeping force, made up primarily of troops from Arab and Muslim states but with strict orders to not allow the rearming of Gaza.

3 Israel turns Gaza over to the UN as the administering authority. Gaza is labeled a "strategic trust," under the oversight of the Security Council, not the General Assembly.

4. Trusteeship will last one year, with only a six month possible extension.

5. An intense negotiating process with the Palestinian Authority begins immediately. All issues must be resolved between Israel and the PA without the interference of Hamas or the Gazans.

6. Meanwhile the TC takes charge of the economic recovery and development of Gaza with a large fund collected from UN member states under Tony Blair's direction. This role will continue for all of Palestine after independence but only working through the PA.

7. Upon agreement of a peace between PA and Israel, a referendum is held in Gaza to determine if the population wishes to become part of an independent Palestine. Assuming they will, Gaza's trusteeship status is ended and it is joined with the West Bank under the PA. Hamas may compete as a legal opposition political party, but only if it agrees to the peace settlement once the Gazans make their decision.

The above is possible because formally, Palestine never achieved independence, and sovereignty remains with the UN. However, the PA, under Oslo, does exercise partial sovereignty over the West Bank, so it cannot be made part of the Trusteeship. (Sovereignty is a tricky legal question under international law,but is subject to decisions by the UN itself. It is a sensitive political issue, and politically you cannot take sovereignty away once it is given.)

The above creates incentives for all parties. Hamas can chose to continue to come under Israeli occupation or under UN trusteeship and oversight. The AP has fewer impediments to negotiating a peace accord and the incentive of being handed Gaza back to its authority as an independent state following a legitimate referendum, which delegitimises Hamas rule. Hamas wins its ability to continue to exist as a political opposition party. All Palestinians are made an economic "offer they can't refuse."

There will be some resistance to this idea, since the TC represented colonialism to many UN members that are former colonies. The TC was formally suspended since it had completed its mission of bringing all designated trust territories to self-government of independence. But the UN Charter allows for further trust territories to be formed. As one of the principal organs of the UN, the TC--which has its own chamber at the UN in New York--has a special superior status to any ad hoc body that would be formed instead and it has procedures for how the administration of the trust territory is conducted and for what purposes.

A successful completion of the process of independence of Palestine and ME peace under TC tutelage would lay the foundations for the TC to be transformed into a new body, as has been suggested in the past, responsible for handling failed or failing states. But that, unlike the question of Gaza, would require reform of the UN Charter. It would be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The whole process would create a mechanism for dealing with most of the countries which pose a threat to peace and security and are a haven for terrorists. This is actually OOTB Suggestion #2, but I want it to be laid out clearly as linked to Suggestion# 1. Is this idea totally new? Not at all. The idea of restoring the TC to some new status has been around since the early 1990s following completion of its initial mission--a great accomplishment for the UN system--of getting all of the Trust Territories that came under its jurisdiction to self-government or independence. But its operations were suspended, not ceased. Morton Halperin, former Clinton senior official at the National Security Council, proposed transforming the TC into an organ for dealing with failed and failing states. More recently, , former US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, writing in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2003, suggested "Trusteeship for Palestine." I have written to both Halperin and Indyk about their individual ideas.

Why I Joined the Foreign Service

I refer you to a piece I wrote for American Diplomacy:

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2005/0709/life/life_joiningfs3.html#strasser