Tag Archives: Development

In AfPak, Iraq and elsewhere: If you break it, you buy it

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Since the two GBU-38 500lb bombs struck the fuel tankers in Kunduz province, Afghanistan and engulfed by-standing civilians in a giant fireball on September 4, 2009, what have we really learned?

I fear that amid all the self-righteous blameshifting and  frantic second-guessing of the attack, which was launched from an American fighter jet, but ordered by the German Oberst Klein, we haven’t learned nearly enough.

We haven’t learned nearly enough about this mayhem of a failed state and the chaos that even the well-intentioned regime changes or peacemaking bring.

We haven’t learned nearly enough about the nightmares, that result all too often, when the high and mighty West comes to the rescue.

Tank Graffiti, via Flickr, originally uploaded by Luodanli

Tank Graffiti, via Flickr, originally uploaded by Luodanli

ISAF, MNF-I Go Home? – not so fast.

This isn’t a simple question of surging or withdrawing: from this nightmare, there is no waking up.

We need to learn a lesson, of what happens when we disrupt and exploit divided, traditional societies, equip them with technology and weaponry far outmatching their level of development. From this responsibility, there is no escaping.

It’s a simple lesson, we all accept before entering a store: if you break it, you buy it.

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Failure in Iraq: It’s Hobbes First, Then Jefferson/Madison

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On May 1st, 2003 when then President George W. Bush, declared the end of major combat operations and the mission Iraqi Freedom to be “accomplished” aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, much of the failure and dying in Iraq still lay ahead.

Mission Accomplished Banner on USS Abraham Lincoln

Mission Accomplished Banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln

The invasion, starting on March 19, 2003, had been a remarkable military success, on schedule and with comparatively few casualties (139 US troops and approximately 7,500 civilians before May 1, 2003 according to CNN and Iraq Body Count estimates, respectively).

In the insurgency that followed (and has recently slightly abated), more than 4,000 US troops and 60,000 Iraqi civilians were killed (ibid.). To this date, seven years after “major hostilities” ended, the country is still plagued by sectarian violence and crime, marred by economic hardship and destruction and paralyzed by deeply divided politics and dysfunctional government. The vision and partial casus belli of the “Coalition of the Willing”, to turn Iraq into a role model liberal democracy for the Middle East, has not materialized. Instead, the suffering and dying continues.

What happened?

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The Copenhagen Game

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The Big Ask is on: These days, the leaders of the world convene in Copenhagen for the 15th time to address that “greatest and widest ranging market failure ever seen“: Climate Change.

Will they ward off that Tragedy of the Commons of our time? We don’t know.

They are playing games in Copenhagen. Not of the entertaining kind, but of the intricately interdependent kind.

The Green Paradox is one of those intricacies: are we reckoning without our fossil-fuel supplying hosts? What are their stakes?

Let’s get the rules straight. Then let’s see what we can do to improve our collective odds for a cooler planet.

And while we’re at it, let’s level out this playing field.

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Multilateral Trade Dispute Settlement Helps “Right over Might”, Equity

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“You skate to where the puck will be, not where it is.”

(Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc.)

Trade liberalization, like much in international governance, happens both through regional and multilateral integration. In political economy, there has been some debate over the merits and demerits of regional trade blocs, whether they constitute “building blocs” or “stumbling stones” for world trade.

I think that by creating universally, rather than regionally binding precedents under the World Trade Organization‘s (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), multilateral integration helps us to level to playing field of trade liberalization, to strengthen “right over might” and to address the fundamental equity concerns of economic globalization.

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