• John Brown’s Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, Version 2.0. If you aren’t reading this on a daily basis you should be.  It is the best collection of everything you need to know about public diplomacy and it’s downright entertaining, too.

• An excellent post on putting Ottoman ghosts into proper historical context - by Patricia Kushlis at WhirledView

• Article: “Does Soft Power Matter: A Comparative Analysis of Student Exchange Programs 1980 - 2006,” by Carol Atkinson of Vanderbilt University.
  

• Article: ” Beyond Minarets: Europe’s Growing problem with Islam,” by Shada Islam at Yale Global Online.

• Mark Dillen has an excellent post on Kosovo at the FPA Blog U.S. Diplomacy.  I worked on the first post-war elections in Kosovo in 2000 and Dillen’s post shows how much has changed since then - and how much hasn’t.

• An interesting discussion about higher education in Ethiopia by Liz Reizberg and Laura E. Rumbley in International Higher Education (from the Boston College Center for International Higher Education).

• Marc Lynch’s blog at Foreign Policy on the “Qaradawi Index”.

• If Martin Luther King had been an aid official - the Powerpoint version of I Have A Dream (from AidWatchers).

"Power Corrupts, Powerpoint Corrupts Absolutely" - Graphic Credit: William Easterly

Today is a national holiday here in the U.S., celebrating the life and achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr.  There is nothing I could add to the many paeans to King (but I recommend that anyone needing a refresher look up his writings and speeches). But in thinking about the times King lived in and tumult of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s, I am reminded of a key moment in which those struggles were linked to another similar case, South Africa.

In June 1966, Robert Kennedy, then a senator representing New York, traveled to South Africa during some of the darkest days of the apartheid era.  While there, Kennedy delivered the Day of Affirmation speech at the University of Cape Town and clearly connected the struggles for civil rights in the U.S. and South Africa:

I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.

Robert F. Kennedy in South Africa - Photo Credit: Marion Kaplan

Later in the speech is a section that would eventually (two years later) be inscribed on Kennedy’s grave at Arlington Cemetery:

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.

The speech is remarkable in many ways (it can be found in its entirety here). It was delivered to a mostly white audience, and to mostly students.  In the speech Kennedy appeals to them to champion real change and to draw on the dynamism of their youth and to make connections to other young reformers around the world.  It would take another 27 years for apartheid to end but Kennedy’s trip to South Africa is still remembered there as a notable event in the anti-apartheid movement.  It is less well remembered in the U.S.  But without the U.S. civil rights movement and the example of Martin Luther King, Jr, Kennedy’s speech as he gave it would not have been possible.

One of the great lessons of the speech for our era and for American foreign policy is that it does not seek to downplay the difficulties the U.S. was having in addressing civil rights.  Instead, Kennedy uses the U.S. struggles as a way to make a connection to South Africans. By doing so, Americans are positioned as fellow travelers on the long road to improve government and society, rather than seen as delivering haughty and pedantic lectures bent on teaching the rest of the world whatever it is we think we know best.  The key to global engagement is finding ways to truly engage, to connect with other people on issues that affect their lives, and ours.  That sort of engagement is a long process and involves knowing another country very well (as well as having a deep understanding of one’s own country) and building relationships in which working in partnership is the main component. It also requires a deep sense of humility and an understanding that the U.S. does not always have the answers.  The State Department and USAID work hard to train our diplomats and development professionals to work along these lines.  (Contractors are generally not as good at this, which is often no fault of the individual contractors but because of a system that values contractual “deliverables” and winning the next contract.)  It takes many years of experience and training to do the work of engaging the world on behalf of the U.S. (or any country); diplomacy and development are professions and not work to merely be farmed out to the lowest bidder.

I know a distinguished former U.S. diplomat and current international educator who carries a copy of Kennedy’s Cape Town speech in his briefcase wherever he goes as a reminder of why he does his work, and how it should be done.  Perhaps the speech should be required reading for anyone interested in how global engagement should work.

COP15 is over and Christmas is over which means I can spend some time digesting news that I ignored in December.  Here are some of the lighter bits:

While the United States begins mobilizing the Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative (”Climate REDI”), the uptake of renewable energies in developing countries is inching forward.  Kenya-based Nomadic Communities Trust (NCT) has partnered with California’s Art Center College and Princeton University to create a solar-powered refrigerator to preserve medicines traveling (via camel-back) through harsh African climates.  The “mobile camel clinic,” made of bamboo, is an extremely cost effective way of transporting vaccines throughout remote regions.

*****

Billionaire, inventor, eccentric and Renaissance Man Nathan Myhrvold speaks with Fareed Zakaria on ways to address climate change.  The former Microsoft executive shares his enthusiasm for Patagonian wildlife, geo-engineering,  and the best way for the U.S. to help developing countries adapt to climate change (hint: emission cuts won’t work).

*****

Writing for the Economist’s “World in 2010″ issue, Oliver Morton insists that the way to make any change in the world’s emissions is to invest in new capabilities:

“The best thing a bright young person can do to help rid civilization of fossil fuels is get an education in engineering.”

Read the whole article here.

The New York Times is reporting that three Malians have been arrested and charged with being part of an operation that smuggles drugs across West and North African routes into Europe.  The money then goes to groups associated with Al Qaida, so the charge goes, and also involves  “the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a Colombian rebel group that has taken advantage of lax enforcement and corruption to use Africa as a significant transshipment route to Europe.”

The three men believed that they were helping the informants set up the trafficking network to move what they thought was FARC’s cocaine from Ghana to the deserts of North Africa to Spain, the drugs’ ultimate destination, according to the complaint.

graphic credit: New York Times

See the full criminal complaint here.

This is troubling, to be sure, but there is nothing particularly new about the various levels of these links. If I may be allowed a brief “I told you so,” I wrote about these links in 2001 in an article in Middle East Report , “Networks of Discontent: Drugs, Opposition and Urban Unrest.” The links among drug traffickers throughout Northwest Africa and southern Europe, arms traders (into Algeria), Latin American cocaine conglomerates and potential (and real) terrorist organizations are but the most recent variation on longstanding versions of the same. But a UN official recently expressed surprise at the “discovery” of these overlapping networks:

“It is scary that this new example of the links between drugs, crime and terrorism was discovered by chance,” [ Antonio Maria Costa, head of the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] noted. In recent years west Africa has become an important transit point for South American cocaine being smuggled to the European markets.

What? The bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004 should have been enough to alert everyone and anyone to the existence of this growing problem.  Those attacks were carried out by drug traffickers and petty criminals who had only recently become attracted to Islamist ideology.

Coordinated bombings of trains in Madrid killed 191 people and injured 1,900 - photo credit CBC

Nobody knows the intricacies and persistence of these networks better than David Gutelius who recently testified before the US Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs - his full testimony is here. Gutelius notes:

None of these larger issues – with one exception – is new. The southern Sahara has seen serious desiccation punctuated by severe periodic droughts over the last forty years, which has had a devastating impact on local livelihoods. Northerners (Arabs and Tamshek in particular) are, as ever, largely seen and treated as bandits by the southern majorities who control national politics, armed forces, foreign direct investment, and the foreign aid that flows into Mali and Niger. Informal trade remains a staple of economic activity through the desert – there are few others ways for people to sustain themselves in the Sahara’s edge.

I would add that the split between northerners and southerners that Gutelius mentions should not be overdrawn, at least in terms of these networks.  These drug networks go far beyond overlapping relationships of criminals and terrorists. To a large degree they include the entities of the state designed to thwart such illegal activity: political institutions and the armed forces.  And they also manipulate foreign aid and foreign direct investment.  Take a hard look at what is going on in Guinea , for just one example, and you will see a state largely hijacked by a military that is fully engaged in the trafficking of drugs and weapons.  Another example is Mali, where Touareg rebels have claimed an independent state in the northern region and where Libya and Algeria are involved in a variety of ways.

Touareg Rebel in Mali - Photo Credit: Les Afriques

The next paragraph in Gutelius’ testimony also bears especially close reading:

The one major exception to these longer-term dynamics is the changing nature and scale of smuggling. Over the past decade, and particularly in the last four to five years, the volume of trade has increased and cocaine has rapidly overtaken other commodities (people, cigarettes, fuel) in the long distance cross-desert trade. Demand from Europe and the relative efficiency of South American cartels in moving drugs to and through West African ports has led an exponential growth in the value and volume of the trade. Less appreciated,however, is that this has affected social and political patterns that may be creating more opportunities for political disintegration as the sheer number of those involved in this new trade grows. In my view, this is the largest current threat to regional stability – rather than either AQIM (Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb)specifically or reformist Islam more generally.

And his summary paragraph nicely puts the issue into a perspective that is extremely useful for policymakers:

In summary, the threat of instability in the Sahel is real, but the source of that threat is more directly linked to economic desperation, criminality, and differential access to political and economic control rather than Al-Qaida or Salafist ideology. AQIM and its allies still pose a real threat. But we tend give the group more credit than it deserves. U.S. counterterrorism efforts should provide a well-planned, integrated programmatic focus on those larger regional challenges and hold itself and its partners accountable for outcomes. The stakes related to the growing criminality in the region that feeds violence and erodes societal institutions are high and growing – not just for African governments, but for the U.S. and Europe as well. We ignore these at our collective peril.

My only addition to Gutelius’ summary is that US efforts in addressing this issue ought not be limited to counter-terrorism strategy but must also include regional development programs targeted to ameliorate the conditions of “economic desperation, criminality, and differential access to political and economic control.” Weak states and their corresponding sclerotic institutions are fertile ground for corruption - no surprise there.  But addressing those weaknesses in a way that also counter the money and force of groups like AQIM and FARC who now have vested (and often mutual) interests in maintaining the flow of drugs, arms and money is a daunting task.  Networks of loyalty have been developed that foreign governments and international aid organizations will be unlikely to compete with on their own, particularly as the those networks of loyalty reach into West and North African governments at very high levels.  This will take years to undo and will require deft diplomacy and coordinated efforts that include foreign assistance, support of local police investigations, counter-terrorism and sustained resources.  What does this mean in real terms? It likely translates into a decade of multilateral engagement in the region and sustained efforts to enhance the capacity and role of national and regional institutions such as courts, police forces, parliaments and oversight agencies - and links with civil society.  All in all, that is standard fare for the democracy and governance part of the US Agency for International Development but for too long this part of the world has been seen as ancillary to US strategic interests.   That must change and resources must follow. In addition, diplomatic pushes must be made that bring competing forces in the Maghreb to work together, no mean feat.  That will require a joint US and European approach and new carrots and probably a few sticks.

Some of those carrots might well include more programmed visits to the US via the International Visitors Leadership Program through the US embassies in the region.  Also included might be more programs to bring African students to the US and more university partnerships through USAID and Higher Education for Development.  And to be sure enormous amounts of money on economic and agricultural development programs will have to be expended (experience shows this can be wildly counterproductive if the funds are diverted by the very actors who have created the problems being addressed).  The sticks will require continued and probably expanded engagement of the U.S. military (the US African Command - AFRICOM - was established in 2007).  There will also be hard conversations with regimes in the region and a coordinated approach from the US and France (this has not been easy to do in the past).  These are all long-term strategies in support of the more immediate security needs - but we need to be able to engage in short-term tactics with broader goals in mind. Yes, we will have to interdict what we can but we can only arrest so many people; the overarching contextual issues must be attended to if we have any hope of mitigating this threat.  Finally, bureaucratic barriers within the US government that put “Africa” in one bureau and the Maghreb in another must be addressed.  To continue to see North Africa as distinct from West Africa will be of little use in this effort; these trade routes and networks have existed for centuries and the flow of drugs and arms along them is merely the latest iteration in an old story.

Last week I was pleased to meet with a delegation of Members of Parliament and staff from the Parliament of Ghana, who were in town as part of a USAID-supported legislative strengthening visit coordinated by the SUNY Center for International Development.While in Albany, NY they spent the week meeting with state legislators, staff from the legislative and executive branches, and scholars of public policy.  After their week here they left for Canada, where they are spending a week with the Ontario Legislative Assembly (coordinated by the Parliamentary Centre of Canada).  Their meetings focused on learning more about budget processes, budgetary oversight, and the work of finance committees and legislative research offices.  Ghana is a hybrid parliamentary-presidential system (although it operates much more like a parliamentary system than its constitution would indicate), so getting a comparative perspective in the US and Canada makes sense, as does doing so on the state/provincial level (which is closer in size to Ghana).

Ghana is doing very well in terms of economic and political development - and it is no accident that President Obama chose to visit Ghana earlier this year and to give a speech in the parliament.  But enhancing the capacity of legislatures is a never-ending process that requires patience and persistence.  It takes a long time to build the capacity and culture that can support a robust legislature willing and able to carry out some level of oversight of the executive.  Also, legislative institutions are not well understood anywhere.  As legislatures become more involved in governance things slow down; they are supposed to be deliberative, sometimes adversarial, and their work results in complex compromises rather than definitive solutions.  That is the nature of the legislative process - but it can be seen as inefficient and unsatisfying to the public.  This is true in Canada and the US as well as in Ghana.  But there is much that these visits can teach all involved and the meeting of MPs and staff across borders creates connections that endure.  Substantially strengthening a legislature cannot be accomplished is a few years (like the life of a USAID contract) and cannot be taken for granted once real gains have been made. The only solution is to persist in the effort and to create connections between and among legislators and staff that give then the best comparative examples as to how best to enhance their own institutions.