Volume 1, Issue 8
A WORRISOME DEAL WITH IRAN
Paul Sullivan
THE IRAN DEAL
Robert Jervis
September 2015
September 2015
1
Chief Publisher Eugène Matos De Lara
Letter from the Editor Greetings loyal readers,
Editor
Benjamin Miller
Academic Advisors Arne Ruckert Dave Van Ginhoven Jennifer Haire
Associate Publisher Amelia Baxter
Associate Editors Eric Wilkinson Mete Edurcan Guillaume Lacombe-Kishibe Kristina R. Proulx
Lead Designer
Pierre-Alexandre Lubin
Contact us By email:
bordercrossing.info@gmail.com (submissions)
In person:
19 rue le Gallois, Gatineau, Quebec, J8V 2H3 Canada
www.diplomatmagazine.nl
From the beginning, Border Crossing has attempted to reflect two fundamental aims of diplomacy: fostering discussion and transcending borders. Perhaps no issue to date has engaged these goals as directly with its subject matter and approach as this issue. For the first time ever, we will be featuring two articles side by side on opposite ends of the same issue. In this case, the issue is the Iran deal, with Paul Sullivan expressing some grave worries and Robert Jervis explaining why we shouldn’t worry (too much). We hope this rich debate will offer calm and considered insight into one the most important developments in the summer unfortunately, if understandably, caught up in many emotional and fraught public debates. On the other hand, you will have the opportunity to engage with the very notion of borders as Fiona McConnell, Jason Dittmer, and Terri Moreau examine the diplomacy of non-state actors to reveal the patterns and fuzzy limits of state-centric diplomacy. At the same time, Melanie Torrent will give us a history lesson that, among other things, highlights how post-imperial linguistic borders can continue to play a significant role for an otherwise unified state’s divergent international roles. Last but not least, Jennifer Clapp and Stuart Clark offer us a history of the highly bordered response to a problem without borders, hunger. Their concise and enlightening account of this evolving staple of the international stage will no doubt be a good resource for practitioners and students of diplomacy alike. In the end though, we cannot accomplish our aims solely within our own covers. To truly foster discussion, we need you to engage and challenge our authors. To truly transcend the most important borders, these bold and diverse ideas must be given life in our world. We therefore welcome and encourage any and all efforts to reach us and our authors with questions, comments, and responses.
Happy reading,
Benjamin Miller 4
Border Crossing
Contents 6
10
14
18
FOOD ASSISTANCE AND FOOD PRICES – WHO BEARS THE PRICE RISK? Jennifer Clapp, C. Stuart Clark
MIMICKING STATES: WHAT NON-STATE DIPLOMATS CAN TELL US ABOUT THE STATUS QUO Fiona McConnell, Jason Dittmer, Terri Moreau
CAMEROON’S MEMBERSHIP OF THE COMMONWEALTH: WHY IT MATTERS Melanie Torrent
A WORRISOME DEAL WITH IRAN
Paul Sullivan
20
THE IRAN DEAL
Robert Jervis
September 2015
5
FOOD ASSISTANCE AND FOOD PRICES WHO BEARS THE PRICE RISK? Jennifer Clapp is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability in the Environment and Resource Studies Department at the University of Waterloo, Canada. C. Stuart Clark is a retired Senior Policy Advisor with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and former chair of the Trans-Atlantic Food Assistance Dialogue.
Jennifer Clapp C. Stuart Clark
M
iss a meal and you may feel virtuous. But miss ten meals and food becomes the only thing that matters. This is the reality for people caught in emergencies that deprive them of food – and why food assistance (food aid) has long been one of the most widely supported aspects of international assistance. Since the 1950s, countries with large surpluses of grain – notably the United States, Canada, and Australia – became regular donors of food aid. From the 1960s on, European states (both individually and jointly via the European Community) and Japan also became regular donors, and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) was created to provide a small but important multilateral channel for food assistance. Donor food assistance programs have provided a life-
6
Border Crossing
line for hungry people, especially in emergency situations, but not without problems. These issues included slow delivery times, culturally inappropriate foods, and expensive logistics, to name but a few. Over the years, policies that govern food aid have seen important changes in response to these problems. Some of these changes have helped to improve the ability of food assistance to address hunger, but at the same time these policy shifts have also brought new challenges, including the potential to shift the risk of sudden food price rises onto recipients. Although policies have changed, one thing remains constant; namely that food assistance is a highly complex aspect of international assistance, and must be approached with both caution and flexibility. Food Aid in the 20th Century In its early years, food aid accounted for a sizable portion
of all overseas development assistance. It was also provided largely in commodity form – that is, in the form of grain and other foodstuffs – that was typically “tied aid”, meaning that it was sourced in and directly transferred from the donor country to the recipients. Food aid provided in this manner delivered food to hungry people, but it also opened opportunities for donors to benefit as well, which was often part of the political deal. Food aid was used as a mechanism for donors to dispose of surplus food through long-term food delivery arrangements, thus helping donor country farmers by keeping market prices buoyant. The amount of food aid provided in this way often fluctuated depending on the availability of surpluses, with the greatest needs perversely often coinciding with the smallest surpluses. Donors were also able to use food aid as a tool of foreign policy, particularly
during the Cold War, when donors favoured allies over others for donations (Clapp 2000). By the early 2000s, in response to widespread criticism, many donors had reformed their food aid policies. They began to target food assistance to the poorest countries that were most in need. Donors increasingly purchased the food for aid from the private sector rather than sourcing it directly from government held food stocks. Donors also moved away from food aid for long-term development programs as they increasingly allocated food aid to emergencies. In the 1960s, approximately 20 percent of food assistance was directed to emergencies; by the early 2000s, this figure was well over 60 percent (WFP 2010). Over that same period, there was a major shift to the vast majority of food aid being provided on a multilateral basis via the WFP, rather than bilateral aid provided directly from donor countries. Despite these changes in food assistance, almost all food aid remained largely tied to food commodities sourced in donor countries until only recently. Over the last decade or so, food assistance has gone through a further revolution as pressure has grown for donors to untie their food aid (i.e. buy food wherever makes the most sense for the beneficiaries, rather than requiring it to be sourced in the donor country). A number of economic studies have
highlighted the problem of market inefficiencies and distortions that are typically associated with tied food aid (Clay, 2006). The expansion of both international food commodity markets and local markets within developing countries opened opportunities for greater use of these markets to source food aid. Purchasing food wherever appropriate resulted in lower cost, faster delivery, and/or the encouragement of local food production. Untying Food Aid A number of donors have untied their food aid since the mid-1990s. The European Union untied its aid and shifted to the provision of cash assistance in 1996. Canada and Australia also untied their food aid programs in stages over the course of the 2000s (Clapp 2012). These donors have instead provided monetary assistance earmarked for food purchases. Those purchases can come from a variety of sources, including local markets in the recipient country where food is often available but people cannot afford to purchase it, as well as markets in nearby countries. This change improved the effectiveness of food aid in a number of cases. The efficiencies gained by untying food aid freed up resources that enabled aid budgets to provide food assistance to more people in need, and to do so in a more timely fashion (Lentz 2013). But
there were other challenges that came with this shift. Because untied food aid removed the domestic benefit for donor countries’ interests, it introduced the risk that political support for this type of assistance could diminish. There has been a downward trend in food aid provision in the wake of these changes, but the cause is not clear. There is the risk that cost savings may justify reducing aid budgets rather than maintaining levels and helping more people. The untying of food aid also prompted donors to change their commitments to international food aid governance arrangements. The Food Aid Convention (FAC), which was first agreed to in 1967, has been periodically updated over the years and provides a governance framework to ensure consistent amounts of food aid from donor countries from year to year. The FAC convention was last updated in 2012, and is now called the Food Assistance Convention. Whereas the previous agreement included commitments from donors measured in tons of wheat or its equivalent, the new agreement allows donors to provide commitments in monetary form, in their own national currencies. This change reflects donors’ practices of providing cash for the purchase of food assistance. However, the effect of changing the nature of donor commitments is that the risk of volatile food prices and
September 2015
7
exchange rate fluctuations is transferred from the donors to those least able to adjust: the recipients themselves (Clapp & Clark 2010). This change in the agreement also makes it much more difficult to monitor and track how much food assistance actually reaches recipients and to hold donors accountable for what they have pledged to provide. The Market Turn More recently, in a desire to give recipients more independence, there have been further donor policy shifts away from distributing food and towards distributing the means to obtain food on local markets (in the form of cash or food vouchers). These types of food assistance tools aim to work within and strengthen domestic food markets (Barret, Lentz and Maxwell 2007). Beneficiary reactions have been mixed, with many welcoming the autonomy this provides while others still preferring to receive at least some food with the cash, especially if the market prices are unstable. These recent shifts in food aid policy mark a growing reliance on market mechanisms to respond to hunger. At least part of the reason for these shifts is related to a desire to reduce transaction costs and to increase efficiencies. Ideally each change in this direction held the promise of being able to help more people in need with the same amount of resources.
8
Border Crossing
But markets can and do frequently fail, particularly in the situations that create conditions for hunger. Too much demand for food grains, including for non-food uses such as biofuels, and chasing too little production due to erratic weather linked to climate change, has contributed to periods of skyrocketing food prices on all markets in recent years. Local conflicts can disrupt domestic food markets and in some places, well-functioning local food markets simply don’t exist. Conclusion and Take-Aways The business of getting food to hungry people has become increasingly complex, as donors have adopted these newer market-oriented food assistance tools. But each new tool in the food assistance toolbox has brought its own strengths and weaknesses. And with the prospect of food crises becoming more frequent and more severe due to climate change and its impacts, all these tools, both old and new, will be required if we are to reach those most in need. Just as earlier food aid policies brought problems and risks due to the rigidity of the tied aid delivery mechanism, there is also risk in being too rigid about the use of market mechanisms alone for food assistance provision. What does this mean for policymakers? Food assistance policies require flexibility of response and greater assumption of price
risk by donors. Policies should build in a requirement that donors make a careful assessment of the particular conditions where food is needed and have access to a mix of tools in order to respond best to each unique situation. While market-based tools offer the promise of greater efficiencies and the ability to reach more people, in practice the result has been far from straightforward due to uncertainties and complexities brought about by market weaknesses and failures in some cases. In such a context, policymakers should not be afraid to go outside the market mechanism to address hunger. References
Barrett, Christopher and Daniel Maxwell (2005), Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role, Oxford, UK and New York, NY: Routledge. Barrett, Christopher, Erin Lentz and Daniel Maxwell (2007), A Market Analysis and Decision Tree Tool for Response Analysis: Cash, Local Purchase and/ or Imported Food Aid?, accessed 3 August at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id=1141992 Clapp, Jennifer (2012), Hunger in the Balance: The New Politics of International Food Aid, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Clapp, Jennifer, and C. Stuart Clark. 2010. Improving the Governance of the Food Aid Convention: Which Way Forward. Centre for International Governance Innovation, accessed 5 August at https://www. cigionline.org/sites/default/files/policy_brief_20_0. pdf Clay, Edward, Barry Riley and Ian Urey (2006), The Development Effectiveness of Food Aid: Does Tying Matter?, Paris, France: OECD. Lentz, Erin C., Simone Passarelli and Christopher B. Barrett (2013), ‘The Timeliness and Cost-Effectiveness of the Local and Regional Procurement of Food Aid’, World Development 49 (September), 9–18. WFP (World Food Programme) (2010), Food Aid Flows 2009 Report, Rome: WFP, accessed 24 June 2015 at http://www.wfp.org/content/food-aidflows-2009-report .
"Over the last decade or so, food assistance has gone through a further revolution as pressure has grown for donors to untie their food aid"
...the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) was created to provide a small but important multilateral channel for food assistance. Donor food assistance programs have provided a lifeline for hungry people, especially in emergency situations, but not without problems.
September 2015
9
MIMICKING STATES: WHAT NON-STATE DIPLOMATS CAN TELL US ABOUT THE STATUS QUO Fiona McConnell is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on issues around sovereignty, legitimacy and diplomacy with a particular interest in communities officially excluded from formal state politics. She is author of Rehearsing the state: the political practices of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (Wiley Blackwell, 2016) and co-editor, with Jason Dittmer, of Diplomatic Cultures and International Politics (Routledge, 2016). Jason Dittmer is Professor of Political Geography at University College London. His current research is focused on assemblage theory and the morethan-human nature of diplomacy. His books include Geopolitics: an Introductory Reader (Routledge, 2014) and The Ashgate Research Companion to Media Geography (Ashgate, 2014). Terri Moreau received her Ph.D. at Royal Holloway University of London and is an independent researcher. Her research interests focus on micronational practices of state creation through representation, symbols and diplomacy, secession movements, and subversive sovereignty.
Fiona McConnell Jason Dittmer Terri Moreau
G
eneva, Brussels, and New York are cities seemingly over-run with diplomats: smartly dressed with briefing papers from their Foreign Ministries, a confident grasp of English and French, and tasked with the responsibility of representing the needs, wants, and concerns of their government. They engage in negotiations, attend formal functions and summits, adopt resolutions and provide consular services. Yet, these traits and functions are not the sole preserve of diplomats from recognised states. They also describe the everyday realities of self-proclai-
10
Border Crossing
med diplomats from Tibet, Nagorno Karabakh, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Western Sahara, to name but a few examples. The diplomatic corps of these exiled governments, de facto states, and liberation movements might catch our attention as spurious anomalies, and are therefore easy to dismiss. These diplomats are routinely denied accreditation to the UN, enjoy no diplomatic immunity and, if they do secure a meeting with their counterparts from recognised states, those engagements are usually held in back rooms far from public gaze. But if we pause to consider how and why these otherwise unrepresented communities seek to copy, or mimic, formal state diplomacy, then we can gain useful insights into what is taken for granted in the world of diplomacy. Taking the European state system as the traditional point of departure,
scholarship on diplomacy has conventionally assumed the state to be a natural and bounded container for political activity. However, it perhaps goes without saying that this state-centric understanding of diplomacy is a rather narrow one. If we instead consider diplomacy simply as the conduct of negotiations between groups of peoples then it can be seen as a practice engaged with by a range of actors who may – or may not – be trained and recognised as formal state diplomats. This has, of course, long been the case. With its origins in the early city-states of ancient Greece and in early modern China and India, diplomacy pre-dates the modern sovereign state by many centuries. In the contemporary period, we see attention being paid to the increasingly broad array of non-state actors engaging in diplomacy. We can think of examples of the intervention of
NGOs in formal diplomacy to promote conflict resolution, the role of corporate diplomacy in international trade relations, or the institutionalization of indigenous communities’ engagement with diplomacy. Then there is the phenomenon of paradiplomacy, the foreign policy capacity of sub-national, regional or local governments which is a form of diplomacy often more functionally specific, opportunistic and experimental than conventional state diplomacy. Recognizing this broad range of nonstate diplomatic actors can be useful for a number of reasons. It brings to the fore the diversity of international society, shines a spotlight on the shifting dynamics of international decision-making, and raises questions about what constitutes a player in the game of diplomacy. It can also offer valuable insights into the 'rules of the game' of conventional state based diplomacy. Here, the notion of mimicry is instructive. Post-colonial scholar Homi Bhabha defined mimicry as something that is almost the same, but not quite. A mimic gets close to the 'original' but can never match it. However, in the process, the mimic troubles the distinction between the official and the unofficial, thereby exposing the norms by which the former is constituted. In the world of diplomacy, non-state actors that aspire to play the state game can emulate formal state diplomacy, but nevertheless fall short of full recognition as equals on the international stage. Yet the fact that non-state actors draw power from emulating Eurocentric practices of diplomacy, even when operating outside of it, means that this mimicry both promotes official state diplo-
macy as the 'gold standard' to aspire to, and also unsettles it by reducing the gap between the 'real' and the 'mimic'. Two contemporary examples illustrate this notion of mimicry. The first is the Tibetan Government-in-Exile which has been functioning out of its base in north-west India since 1960. A key activity of this exile government has been its engagement with foreign policy and, to this end, it has a Department of Information and International Relations – which has its origins in the pre-1959 Government of Tibet’s foreign relations office – and runs eleven overseas missions in cities including London, Brussels, Washington DC and Tokyo. The staff at these pseudo embassies may have no recognition as ambassadors or diplomats, but nevertheless offer consular services to the Tibetan diaspora, give briefings to cross-parliamentary groups and represent their exile government at international forums. Meanwhile the protocol office at the government’s headquarters extends official reception to visiting government officials and hosts international conferences on the future of the Tibetan homeland. Given that no state or government recognises the exile Tibetan administration, why does this community invest so much time, effort and scarce resources into emulating these formal modes of diplomacy? The answer, at least in part, lies in the fact that these diplomatic practices are mechanisms whereby legitimacy (as distinct from legality) can be claimed. The exile Tibetan government seeks to act in state-like ways in order to be taken seriously on the international stage. The power that is vested in the modern diplomatic order is one that is revered and
coveted. The mimicry of formal state diplomacy is not only enacted by polities which have past links to statehood. The second example is The International Christian Embassy – Jerusalem (ICEJ), a new type of geopolitical actor that seeks not just to represent, but also to constitute, Christian Zionism on a global scale. The embassy was founded in Jerusalem in 1980 as an act of solidarity with the Israeli people and their government. As a counter to the shifting of national embassies from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv by states refusing to accept Israel’s unilateral declaration of Jerusalem as its capital, the ICEJ was a statement of diplomatic support for, and recognition of, Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem. The ICEJ continues to exist today as an organization devoted to representing the interests of Christian Zionists to Israel and Israelis, with a staff of fifty at the embassy in Jerusalem and support from ICEJ branches in almost eighty countries. Given its origins as a statement of diplomatic support for Israel it is perhaps fitting that the ICEJ styles itself as a diplomatic entity. However, in performing this identity ICEJ produces a space in which conventionally understood relations between diplomacy and sovereignty are exposed as a fiction. As the representation of a non-sovereign political constituency within the state system, the ICEJ serves a double role – (1) to affirm and recognize the state of Israel and (2) to produce the political constituency of Christian Zionists as an institutionalized diplomatic actor. In sum, in order to attempt to construct an international personality and a degree of legitimacy within the international community, non-state
September 2015
11
actors strive to imitate formal and official diplomatic practices and institutions. It is the establishment of a pseudo embassy, organisation of parliamentary exchanges and enactment of formal diplomatic protocols that are perceived as key leverages of power. By blurring the boundaries between 'traditional' definitions of state and non-state players, the examples highlighted here pose important questions as to what constitutes a diplomatic actor and the norms that underpin the exclusion of non-states from certain diplomatic spaces. Through such mimicry, 'official' Eurocentric practices of diplomacy become the norm to which others conform. In many
ways, these non-state actors leave the inter-state system itself intact and actually bolster the modern diplomatic order. However, paradoxically, mimicry also undercuts that elevation by closing down the distinction between the authority and the mimic upon which political legitimacy rests. Practitioners already know that dealing with non-state diplomats can be useful for their own agendas; what is left is the need for a broader reconceptualization of diplomatic actors to take place. Instead of thinking of diplomats as legitimate or illegitimate, it is more fruitful to think of legitimacy as contingent on the context of a diplomatic encounter: who else is there, and what is being
Consider us for the publication or peer review of your academic work. Contact us at: bordercrossing.info@gmail.com
12
Border Crossing
discussed? Who is being represented, and how? These are just some of the several dimensions in which legitimacy can be assessed, rather than the current state/non-state binary.
September 2015
13
Mastermind China’s CAMEROON’SMerging MEMBERSHIP OF THE COMMONWEALTH: WHY IT MATTERS Energy Diplomacy Mélanie Torrent is senior lecturer in British and Commonwealth history at Paris Diderot (Sorbonne-Paris-Cité), and senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (School of Advanced Studies, University of London). Her research focuses on the long endings of the British and the French empires and on their influence on African politics, European construction and the evolution of the international system. Her publications include Diplomacy and Nation-Building: Franco-British Relations and Cameroon at the End of Empire (I. B. Tauris, 2011) and British Decolonisation, 1919-1984: The Politics of Power, Liberation and Influence (PUF, 2012). She also co-edited La puissance britannique en question: diplomatie et politique étrangère au 20ème siècle / Challenges to British Power Status: Foreign Policy and Diplomacy in the 20th Century (Peter Lang, 2012).
Melanie Torrent
W
hen Michaëlle Jean, the Francophonie’s newly elected Secretary General, visited Yaoundé earlier this year, she celebrated Cameroon’s linguistic heritage, the diversity of its numerous African languages and the choice of English and French for its official bilingualis.1 In Cameroon, official bilingualism is rooted in the legacy of British and French rule and the complex independence and reunification processes of the early 1960s. It has been a political tool for national unity and state building after independence, as well as a diplomatic tool for international influence in the latest phase of globalisation. Cameroon’s official bilingualism is also currently reflected in its joint membership of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the two multilateral organisations to have emerged from the imperial networks of Britain and France.2 Cameroon is not unique in holding joint CommonwealthFrancophonie membership. Canada, Dominica, Mauritius, Rwanda, St Lucia, the Seychelles and Vanuatu share this characteristic, while two other
14
Border Crossing
Commonwealth states, Ghana and Cyprus, are associated states of the Francophonie, and Mozambique has observer status. But Cameroon’s approach to membership has been unique, reversing both the decision in 1960 to reject participation in the Commonwealth and the French Community and the decision in 1975 to seek only associated membership of the OIF’s predecessor, the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique, even after Cameroon had participated in the discussions for its creation in 1970. It is also unique because Commonwealth membership was only secured in 1995, six years after the Paul Biya administration announced Cameroon’s application to both organisations in 1989. Cameroon’s diplomatic shift shows both the influence of language politics on diplomacy and the impact of diplomacy on cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communities in the post-colonial period. 'Reunification' diplomacy and the challenges of independence In the run-up to the UN plebiscites of February 1961, in which the British Northern and Southern Cameroons were to choose union with Cameroon or Nigeria,
President Ahmadou Ahidjo demonstrated how his diplomatic skills could serve his national ends.3 By pledging that Cameroon would join neither the Commonwealth nor the French Community, he sought two immediate objectives: reassure Southern Cameroonians that a 'reunified' Cameroon would not be plunged into the latest avatar of France’s African empire; and assert Cameroon’s independence from imperial networks, in the context of the on-going war against the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC)4. In reality, Commonwealth membership was not on offer and Cameroon had never been part of the French Community. Showcasing distance from both; therefore, left greater space to entertain strong bilateral relations with France, including close defence and trade agreements, at a time when French backing was needed in the war against the UPC and to meet the costs of unification with the smaller, poorer and less populated Southern Cameroons (including replacing Sterling and imperial preference with the Franc Zone and EEC trade and development agreements). British priorities lay elsewhere, and in the global Cold War London rather welcomed strong French influence
in West and Central Africa. Antagonism with Ghana over its support of the UPC, and with Nigeria over the Northern Cameroons, also made the Commonwealth unappealing, while English itself was a barrier. Interpreters had been needed in the reunification negotiations, as Ahidjo spoke little English and John Ngu Foncha, the Southern Cameroons Premier, little French. Cameroon’s diplomatic choices were largely political ones, but they were also influenced by the predominance of French among the citizens, security forces, administrators and politicians of the new, officially bilingual state. The economic crisis of the 1980s and the rise of aid conditionality, the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of apartheid all contributed to reshuffling the diplomatic cards, in Cameroon as elsewhere. But beyond global and regional shifts, Cameroon’s application for Commonwealth membership was also rooted in rising domestic tensions. One might argue that it simply enabled the Yaoundé government to apply for full Francophonie membership without jeopardising the diplomatic balance set by Ahidjo. But it is perhaps better understood as a direct response to the 1980s mobilisation in the former Southern Cameroons for more linguistic and cultural as well as political plurality, against the political interests, cultural habits and personal relationships giving a distinctly Francophone dimension to the practice of Cameroon’s diplomacy. Linguistic distinctions between 'Anglophones' and 'Francophones' acquired stronger political connotations,5 inherited from the tense plebiscite campaigns of 1961, magnified during the reign of the single party state and sustained by the physical and financial domination of France’s cultural diplomatic network in Cameroon. Delayed membership brought into sharper focus the relationship
between language, history (personal and national), and culture, as the Commonwealth made the observance of democratic principles a condition for membership and Cameroon saw a fraught return to multipartism. In Cameroon, calls for membership to be withheld came from a variety of groups, from pro-democracy actors to the secessionist Southern Cameroons National Council. Membership in 1995, based on Cameroon's heritage and democratic progress, was therefore a political and diplomatic victory for the Biya administration. The current structure of the Ministry of External Relations, which gives Commonwealth Relations its own Minister Delegate, is intended to show that Cameroon has embraced this new status.6 Commonwealth and Francophonie membership: opportunities and pitfalls Commonwealth membership has been accompanied by two sets of important trends within both Cameroon and the Commonwealth itself. Firstly, it has coincided with a more global diversification of Cameroon’s relations. China is now Cameroon’s second largest trading partner behind the EU, and links with Japan, Germany and Canada have also intensified. But these trends are not cloudless. Chinese activity threatens to increase Cameroon’s debt while blocking its expansion into industry and services.7 The EU itself has not fully shed the imperial traits of its first trade agreements with the then colonies. France remains a key player in all areas, including trade, foreign direct investment, defence, and cultural diplomacy. Therefore, the fact that the Commonwealth has extended diplomatic diversification with a track record of piloting prodevelopment programmes increasingly in partnership with other multilateral bodies makes it a useful forum to belong to. The
latest Hub and Spokes programme (2012-2015) that links the Commonwealth to the Francophonie, the EU, and the ACP Group Secretariat to enhance trade capacity development is a case in point.8 Secondly, Cameroon’s history remains a politically charged subject. On February 20th, 2014, Biya spoke in Buea to commemorate fifty years of reunification.9 But delayed from 2011 and delivered thirty years since the term 'united' was dropped from the Republic of Cameroon, the speech stirred anxieties about 'Anglophone' marginalisation—as the independence commemorations in 2010 had already done.10 Cameroon remains marginal to Britain’s global diplomacy, even the expanding influence of Boko Haram in the North has generated few comments, and there has been no significant British visit to the country. Indeed, Cameroon remains one of the few Commonwealth countries the Queen has never visited. At the same time the Commonwealth itself is experiencing internal divisions, with Zimbabwe's dramatic exit followed by tensions over principles and funding, often pitching the 'old' against the 'new' Commonwealth of the global south. Such crises may perhaps limit Cameroon's ability to use the Commonwealth as a diplomatic pillar for national cohesion. Cameroon's experience has also highlighted the very different diplomatic cultures of the Commonwealth and the Francophonie, particularly (and perhaps problematically for Cameroon), in the two key areas that had raised national tensions during the application process: democratic cultures and cultural diplomacy. The Francophonie may have followed the Commonwealth route in making democracy one of its tenets, but never with the same constant scrutiny. The promotion of democracy, human rights, and
September 2015
15
the rule of law, a central concern since Cameroon's application, has driven recent high-level visits from the Commonwealth Secretariat.11 Recent developments in the Francophonie, including the introduction of shorter contact missions for election observation, confirm that approaches differ.12 The Commonwealth, however, may be lagging behind the Francophonie in terms of cultural diplomacy. Elan-Afrique, a Francophonie programme for the progressive introduction of bilingualism at primary school, centres on French, and one local African language.13 But what of English, in a country like Cameroon, where young children (and adults) have to grapple with two official languages, as well as local languages? English may be omnipresent internationally, but it remains a minority language in Cameroon. More cultural and linguistic diplomacy in the Commonwealth would improve communication across linguistic communities in Cameroon and facilitate the country's ability to participate fully in Commonwealth forums—where there are no interpreters.
multifaceted heritage among the young Commonwealth, it also facilitated open debate about what being Cameroonian meant to the diverse young people who joined in. The extension of ACU membership among Cameroonian universities outside Buea is an encouraging sign. But results will only be achieved if the intergovernmental Commonwealth is prepared to give real diplomatic space to transnational and transcultural mobilisation. A common language is the condition for this, and English should certainly remain the working language of Commonwealth diplomacy. But this should not obscure the impact of linguistic choices on negotiation, mediation and decision-making. It is when diplomats unpack the historical constraints, cultural assumptions and political consequences of linguistic practices that diplomacy can help manage the long-term consequences of the European empires. This is arguably one of the key areas where Cameroon’s official diplomats and aspiring, informal ambassadors have a unique contribution to make.
Commonwealth Membership, Diplomatic Networks, and Cross-Cultural Dialogue Cross-cultural initiatives in Cameroon have emerged most forcefully from civil society groups, and youth and student associations particularly. Cameroon initiated a notable trend when the University of Buea hosted the first Association of Commonwealth Universities Summer School in 2011, which was also the occasion of a formal consultation by the Youth Programme of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Cameroonian students from across the country met with Commonwealth students, from neighbouring Nigeria to far-flung Fiji. This not only raised awareness of Cameroon's
1 Michaëlle Jean, Discours de remerciements, Yaoundé, 15 April 2015, http://www.francophonie.org/IMG/pdf/discours_honoris_causa_yaounde_i.pdf.
16
Border Crossing
References
2 Joint membership should be placed in the wider context of Cameroon’s many multilateral engagements, which also include the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the African Union, the Central African Economic and Monetary Community and the Lake Chad Basin Commission. 3 The Southern Cameroons voted for Cameroun (independent from France since January 1960), the Northern Cameroons for Nigeria (independent from Britain since October 1960). 4 See Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergues, Jacob Tatsitsa, Kamerun! Une guerre cachée aux origines de la Françafrique, Paris, La Découverte, 2011. 5 See for instance Piet Konings, Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Negotiating an Anglophone Identity: A Study of the Politics of Recognition and Representation in Cameroon, Leiden, Brill, 2003.
6 A second Minister Delegate is responsible for Cooperation with the Muslim World; http:// www.diplocam.cm/Cameroon-diplomaty/ index.php/le-ministere/minrex-et-ses-collaborateurs. 7 Jean-Pierre Cabestan, ‘China-Cameroon relations: Fortunes and limits of an old political complicity’, South African Journal of International Affairs, 22:1, 2015, 87. 8 www.hub-spokes.org. 9 Speech of the Head of State on the occasion of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Reunification, 20 February 2014, Republic of Cameroon, Presidency of the Republic, https://www.prc.cm/en/multimedia/documents/1379-discours-de-se-paul-biya-a-buea20-02-2014-fr. 10 ‘What is your take on Cameroon’s 50th independence anniversary celebrations ?’, Compiled by Daniel Gwarbarah, Leocadia Bongben, Francis Tim Mbom, Olive Ejang Ngoh, Elvis Tah and Lydie Yuri, Cameroon Postline, 7 January 2010. 11 Mmasekoga Masire-Mwamba, Speech to the International Colloquium on Civic Education and National Integration, organised by Cameroon’s Ministry of Civic Education and Youth Affairs, Yaoundé, 9 July 2013, http:// thecommonwealth.org/media/news/civic-education-key-upholding-commonwealth-values-deputy-secretary-general; Amitav Banerji, Speech to the 60th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference, Yaoundé, 6 October 2014, http://thecommonwealth.org/sites/ default/files/news-items/documents/60th%20 Commonwealth%20Parliamentary%20Conference%20speech.doc. See also Report of the Commonwealth Expert Team, Cameroon – Legislative and Municipal Elections, London, The Commonwealth, 30 September 2013. 12 Les missions francophones d’observation des élections – Projet de Rapport, Présenté par Jean-Claude Maene, Brussels, 10 July 2012, http://apf.francophonie.org/IMG/ pdf/2012_07_64_MOE.pdf. 13 www.elan-afrique.org.
September 2015
17
A WORRISOME DEAL WITH IRAN Dr. Paul Sullivan is a Professor of Economics at the National Defense University, an Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University, a Senior International Fellow at the National Council on US-Arab Relations and a Senior Fellow on Future Global Resource Threats at the Federation of American Scientists. He has been involved with issues related to nuclear energy since 1986, when he was at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and issues related to Iran and the Arab world in a serious, scholarly way since 1993, when he was teaching at the American University in Cairo.
Dr. Paul Sullivan
T
he combination of short-term thinking on how to contain Iran’s nuclear activities, the lack of pragmatic and actionable foresight on how a snap-back of sanctions would work after billions of investments have already poured into Iran, and the lack of provisions to reign in Iran’s aggressive actions in the region are cause for concern about the potential results of this deal beyond its very short fifteen-year horizon. The Crucial Role of Business One can see why so many are in a rush to make business and trade deals with Iran. The Iran nuclear deal opens up one of the biggest hydrocarbon prizes in the world as well as many considerable domestic industries. Iran has the second largest conventional reserves of natural gas in the world, and the fourth largest conventional oil reserves in the world. It has a lot of stranded reserves that are in need of investment to get them out to the rest of the world. Iran has a quickly growing petrochemicals industry that could be a major exporter to the world. Iran could also be a significant exporter or natural-gas based fertilizers. Furthermore, potentially high-yielding domestic industries range from automobiles and textiles to healthcare and military. It is therefore unsurprising to find European business leaders joining political leaders in their
18
Border Crossing
visits with their counterparts in Iran towards the deal. The Swiss have already decided to get rid of their sanctions. Some EU countries, given their difficult economic times, seem quite happy to see the sanctions go away. The EU can also look at the opening up of Iran as developing an alternative to Russian energy sources. The further drop in oil prices expected after Iranian oil exports are opened up could also benefit EU economies – and others. This potential is reflected in the enthusiasm of many EU businesses to do business in Iran. It is therefore not surprising that the deal is a lot more effective in taking off EU sanctions than US sanctions. Many US sanctions would remain in place even after the deal is implemented. The real winners in the business world will be those from the EU, China, Russia, and India. US companies could be left out in the cold as their potential markets and investment possibilities in Iran are taken by others. The only real effective sanctions are multilateral ones that are constantly monitored, supported, and enforced. In many ways, the US has painted itself into a corner with this deal and the horses of EU and other businesses are already running out of the barn. Deals are already in the works with Russian, Chinese, and other companies, not just EU companies. US companies are mostly warily watching what might happen. Many of the major law firms in the US have sent out warning signals to their clients about when, where, how, and by how much sanctions could be taken off.
However, the effectiveness of sanctions is already being chipped away even before the Iranians fulfill their obligations. Maybe that was Iran’s strategy all along. A key set of sanctions to keep an eye on will be those that will allow Iran back into the SWIFT system, and effectively back into the world financial clearing system. The Political Implications of Greater Economic Ties As investments pour in and as Iran’s trade grows when many sanctions are taken off, Iran’s economy will expand. There is an important concept in economics that could be applied here: the production possibilities frontier. The future growth and development of the Iranian economy will allow it to make more "butter", but also more "guns". Such growth and development also allows it to import more guns. It could also develop its cyber-warfare and other capabilities a lot better with more money flowing into and in the country. It could also send more funding to its proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah. Some sanctions and controls on Iran's arms trade will stay in effect for a good part of the time of the deal, especially those from the US, but this deal opens doors to growth in the offensive power of Iran. Naturally, this is particularly concerning to Iran’s neighbors. The risks for the US or others turning away from this deal could be significant in the short run. Relations could be harmed in the short run with some in the EU and elsewhere. However, the mutual needs of the US
and the EU run pretty close and over time they will see the continuing importance of their partnership. The US dollar would hardly be at risk by turning away from the deal. There are far greater risks to the dollar, such as the looming debt and other economic problems that the US may face in the not-too-distant future. US trade and investment with the EU will continue. US trade and investment with its largest trading partner, Canada, will not be affected. US trade negotiations with the EU on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership could get bumpy, but in the medium run it will likely be concluded given the mutual benefits to all. The world economy and many of the parties involved with it are a lot more important than the Iran nuclear issue in the really big picture. Iran’s Mischief and the GCC Even though many in the GCC have publicly “supported” the deal, in private they have doubts and concerns. Iran has been actively and dangerously mischievous in Bahrain, Eastern Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere by supporting its proxies, allies and more against the interests of Sunni states and leaders. Sunni-Shia tensions are real and growing. Iran sees itself as a leader of the Shia world. The GCC, and especially Saudi Arabia, sees themselves as leaders of the Sunni world. The lack of trust between many Sunni leaders and the Shia leaders of Iran is intense, although some of the Sunni leaders are taking a pragmatic approach of wait-and-see. Some Sunni leaders, especially in Bahrain, have publicly expressed that they are appalled at this
deal and what it could do to make Iran far more powerful that it is today. There are a lot more weapons pouring into GCC countries. This is not because they feel safer or more secure after the Iran deal. The nuclearization of the Gulf region is a distinct possibility—and this deal could speed that up. The development of nuclear weapons by others in the region should not be dismissed. The concerns of the GCC and other Sunni states in the region are serious. The US meetings at Camp David and in the GCC might assuage a few of these concerns for the short run. In the long run, a lot of hard work will be needed to keep US and EU relations with the GCC and other Sunni states in good shape—especially as Iran gets more economically, financially and militarily powerful. This deal is a thorn in the side of the Sunni leaders. For now they are fairly quiet about it for strategic and diplomatic reasons, but that could change. The growing power of Iran as a direct result of sanctions relief that are part of this deal may considerably magnify Sunni-Shia tensions in the region. The deal, importantly, does not have any provisions to reign in Iran’s aggressive and destabilizing behavior in the region. This is a significant weakness of the deal that is of great concern to the GCC states and others. The Fatal Flaw: Short Term Thinking The deal’s Termination Day is on or about October 18, 2025, after which the provisions of the UN Resolution supporting the deal and various EU Council Decisions and Regulations related to the deal become null and void. There are various provisions in the deal that
restrict Iran’s plutonium and highly enriched uranium production, its use of heavy water facilities, and fuel reprocessing for 15 years after Adoption Day, which will be on or about October 18, 2015. Fifteen years is a short time, at the end of which, on the one hand, it is unlikely historic Sunni and Shia will be resolved, and on the other, it is impossible to know if the more extreme hardliners in Iran will have more or less clout. There is a date to be determined in 2023, when the IAEA will have "reached the Broader Conclusion that all nuclear material in Iran remains in peaceful activities". These peaceful activities could quite easily be transformed to other activities in the post-2025 environment. That date in 2023 is when even more sanctions relief occurs. By then investments and other forms of bilateral relations will be quite significant and will make any snap back of sanctions ever more unlikely. "Snap-back" in the Iran deal may go the way that "cake walk" did for the Iraq war. This deal has the underlying assumption that Iran will be increasingly peaceful as its prosperity develops. I have a much less sanguine view of that, and a much more cautious and skeptical view of the deal and the process by which is was developed and the processes that will now follow from it, than many. Conclusion Am I worried for the region, including the Iranian people (the real problem in Iran is the leadership, not the people), and the world and what this deal and the sets of precedence it contains could mean for our future? Indeed, I am.
September 2015
19
THE IRAN DEAL Robert Jervis is Adlai E Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Columbia University and author of Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq.
Robert Jervis "How’s your wife?" "Compared to what?" - Henny Youngman, famous and crude American comedian
T
he deal with Iran falls far shorter than what the U.S. and its European allies would like. They wanted Iran to dismantle its nuclear program, agree to unimpeded inspections, and forego ballistic missiles and support of Hezbollah and Hamas. But these are terms that can only be imposed on a country that has been militarily defeated. So, the two pertinent questions are whether we got the best deal possible and (more importantly) whether it is better than the likely results of walking away from the table. Although this may disconcert proponents of the deal (which includes me), it is extremely unlikely that we did get the best deal possible. Part of the reason for this shortcoming is that, as the critics have alleged, President Obama wanted the deal very badly and while I doubt that any leader who was not so predisposed would have undertaken the arduous efforts that were necessary to pull this off his strong desire for a bargain did
20
Border Crossing
reduce his leverage. Of course, the U.S. is only one of the six parties on the Western side, but while France may be tempted to play its normal spoiler role, the U.S. is still dominant. Of more important note, though, is that it is extremely rare for one side, let alone both, to get all that it could. In almost all cases, the two sides’ preferences do not meet at a single point, but instead have some overlap, which means that it would take extraordinary intelligence and luck for either side to be able to squeeze the last drop out of the other. While the question of whether the West could have gotten a bit more bears some academic interest, much more important is the question of whether the deal was better than a breakdown of negotiations. I think it was, and by quite a wide margin. In light of the agreement, there are now three things to worry about: breakout, creep out, and sneak out. Breakout means that Iran would renounce or simply break the agreement, expel the inspectors, and use the declared facilities to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU). This has received most attention in the media, but most experts believe it is the least likely route to a bomb because it invites an immediate attack. Although the U.S. has said
that limits on uranium centrifuges give a year between the time Iran would start a breakout and the time it would get a weapon, this calculation depends on numerous questionable assumptions. Fortunately, it really does not matter much; the timeline was selected to appease domestic critics because it would not take long for the U.S. to decide to bomb Iran if it did stage a breakout. Creep out would involve a series of small steps, some cloaked in either secrecy or spurious justifications, which could take Iran to a bomb. But this would be difficult and risky given the surveillance that Iran has agreed to, and while it is perhaps true that frogs do not jump out of water that is slowly being heated to the boiling point, the U.S. and its allies (although certainly capable of blindness and foolishness) are not frogs. Experts worry most about sneak out, a secret program that would produce nuclear weapons before the West knew about it. Given Iran’s history of guile and deception, this is a real worry. Of course, this is a path Iran could follow without an agreement but critics are certainly correct that it would be easier to finance its programs once sanctions are lifted. This is more than counter-
balanced; however, by the greatly enhanced surveillance provided by the agreement. Granted, these inspections fall short of the "anywhere, anytime" that the West had wanted, but they are still much more intrusive than has been imposed on any other country other than Iraq after the Gulf War. We cannot be 100 percent sure that they would be caught cheating, but sneaking out would not be a simple procedure, as it would involve a large number of steps, procedures, and facilities. The West would not have to detect all of them; one or two would be sufficient. Here it is the Iranians who have to worry about certainty. Is it plausible that advisers would tell the Supreme Leader that they are anything close to certain that they could acquire the necessary materials, enrich HEU, and build a bomb in secret in the face of extensive inspection? Critics argue that the inspections are not extensive enough, but whatever the truth of this claim, it is clear that the probability of detecting sneak out will be an order of magnitude greater than it would be without an agreement. However, here as in the Cold War, a crucial question is whether the West would respond adequately to violations and whether the Iranians would anticipate these responses. Here, too, what is crucial is the comparison to a situation without an agreement and I think that it is indisputable that the likelihood that the U.S. would take military action is increased if the triggering Iranian actions are not only worrisome in themselves but also violate an agreement. Much attention has been given to the re-institution of economic sanctions as a deterrent to Iranian violations—the so-called "snapback provisions". The legalities are complicated, but both the defenders and critics of the
agreement have downplayed if not missed the basic political truth that what would happen if Iran violated the agreement would be determined less by legal niceties than by the state of domestic and international politics at the time. If Iran had been subject to attack by the Islamic State or Israel, for example, it would be much harder to build a coalition to re-impose sanctions. Sanctions that require unanimity would be hard to reinstate if there were high
tensions between the West on the one hand and China and Russia on the other, and the West’s will could also be sapped by domestic disruptions of various kinds. But the alternative of rejecting an agreement and maintaining sanctions faces these dangers as well. Indeed, unless all in the P5+1 agreed that it was Iran’s unreasonableness that put agreement beyond reach, sanctions would be extraordinarily difficult to maintain let alone increase. The alternative to agreement then would seem to be either going to war-which Obama would not do and even a critical successor would have to undertake over the objections of the military-or greater unilateral sanctions, and few observers believe that these would be sufficient to coerce Iran into the sort of agreement that the critics seek. The hope, then, would be that increased
economic distress would lead to the regime’s overthrow although this discounts the mitigating effects of other countries' relaxing their pressure. In an unpredictable world, it is always possible that the regime will crumble, but I cannot think of a good theory or past case that would lead us to expect this outcome. Furthermore, now that the Security Council has endorsed the agreement an Congressional rejection of it would not return us to the status quo but would leave the multilateral sanctions in ruins. With some reason, critics of the deal can blame Obama for this state of affairs, but it nevertheless puts them in a box. Unpredictability also plagues one of the larger questions lurking in the background. This is whether the economic boom that will accompany the lifting of sanctions will solidify support for the regime because it has succeeded in securing international recognition of Iran’s rights and reinvigorating the economy, or whether the boom will corrode the regime’s strength by building an independent middle class that rejects theocracy. The hope, if not the expectation, for the latter processes is part of the reason why the bargain’s defenders worry less than the critics do about what will happen when the limits on enrichment expire. Critics are correct that, if the latter dynamics were certain, Iran’s leaders would not have signed the agreement and can also point to the example of China, in which economic growth and a semi-free market has not produced a critical mass of support for political liberty. Defenders can respond that the two cases are quite different and that the foundations of the theocratic regime are already less than firm. In any case, much will depend on the politics that will evolve as the agreement is implemented. There
September 2015
21
is a danger that the leaders of the West, and Obama in particular, will be so committed to the agreement that they will overlook Iranian violations although the fact that there will soon be a new president reduces this concern. Ironically, if relations between Iran and the West improve, even greater reassurances will be needed for Iran’s Sunni neighbors as well as for Israel. But although diplomats cannot say anything this rude, these countries do not have good options other than to work with the U.S. and supporting them should not be as hard as keeping Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. I can easily imagine a better deal, but in the world as it is, this one is quite good.
Université d’Ottawa
|
University of Ottawa
Come Learn…And Live! Complete your Master of Laws with Research Paper or Thesis here! Our fields of expertise include: • International Law, including International Humanitarian and Security Law;
• Human Rights; • International Trade and Investment Law; • Environmental Law;
• Law and Technology; • Law and Social Justice; • Law and Women’s Studies.
Benefit from a variety of choices and opportunities to enrich your academic experience Join a community of students that is both diverse and close-knit. Ottawa is home to important national institutions, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and interesting cultural and historic attractions.
For more information, please visit http://llmphd.uottawa.ca/en/programs/llm
September 2015
23