merged

Spring 2015 • Vol.XXXVI • No. 3

Julio Frenk Dean of the Faculty, Harvard School of Public Health

HIR.HARVARD.EDU

Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona

Kevin Rudd

Former Prime Minister of Australia

United Nations Special Rappoteur on extreme poverty and human rights

A POVERTY PANDEMIC The Politics of Public Health

THE NEW ICE AGE:

The Arctic Battleground Anders Fogh Rasmussen

12th Secretary General of NATO and former Prime Minister of Denmark

Mary Robinson

Former President of Ireland

Chung Un-Chan

Former Prime Minister of South Korea

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a publication of a Harvard College student-run organization a publication of a Harvard College student-run organization

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

N

ot until 1908 or 1909 would humans even reach the North Pole, an accomplishment today usually credited to either Frederick Albert Cook or Rear Admiral Robert Peary and a team of Inuit men. Almost exactly a century later, in 2007, Russia would plant a flag in the Arctic seabed beneath the North Pole by deep-sea submarine, prompting fears of a resource race for the Arctic’s vast petroleum reserves. Indeed, the northernmost roughly six percent of our planet that makes up the Arctic continues to fascinate our species and incite it into conflict.

Today the Arctic is regulated by a complicated web of international treaties and understanding. While research in the Arctic has long been a great example of collaborative international efforts, the region has also been the battleground of territorial disputes, cultural clashes, and environmental debate. In a global context where nations’ claims to sovereignty over territory shape much of our world order, this vast ungoverned territory, rich in natural resources, home to indigenous peoples, and of unparalleled scientific importance, is a fascinating yet often ignored region in the international relations discourse.

This issue of the Harvard International Review, entitled The New Ice Age: The Arctic Battleground, focuses on this dynamic region. Former Prime Minister of Denmark and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen discuss challenges facing peace in the Arctic. Stéphane Dion, former Canadian minister of the environment, asserts the importance of a world price for carbon in combatting global climate change, an issue of profound importance to this fragile region. An article by Yolanda Kakabadse, president of the WWF, argues that we must stop thinking about the Arctic as a resource frontier. In a pair of interviews, Ann Bancroft, an Arctic explorer, talks about her daring adventures on polar expeditions while William Antholis, director and CEO of the Miller Center of Public Affairs, discusses the foreign policy implications of climate change. Finally, staff writers Daryn Forgeron and Kevin Xie write about the challenges facing the indigenous people of the Arctic and the BRICS nations in the Arctic respectively. Between them, these feature articles probe the diverse range of issues facing this complex terra incognita.

Our Perspectives section, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi discusses the challenges and opportunities facing the Eurozone economy, Tara Shirvani analyzes the Eurasian energy landscape, Professor Myoung-Kyu Park puzzles over the politics of peace on the Korean peninsula, and Steve McDonald scrutinizes US foreign policy in Africa. This issue also presents interviews with Mary Robinson, UN Special Envoy on Climate Change and former president of Ireland, and Chung Un-Chan, former prime minister of South Korea. In our World In Review section, Jessica Dorfmann and Emma Dwight write about hedge cities across the globe and the role of the Catholic Church in global peacemaking and international relations respectively. Finally, we feature an article that US Vice President Joe Biden wrote for the HIR in 1999 as a teaser for our upcoming Anniversary Book.

We are also excited to be launching a readership survey in this issue, to better understand and serve our print readers. By simply scanning the QR code below or visiting http://hir.harvard.edu/survey and filling out a short survey, you will be given a free year-long subscription to the HIR’s website, including premium access to the HIR’s digitized archives. We are eager to hear your opinions.

The Arctic is a complex wilderness of politics, resource, life, exploration, discovery, and change, and shall remain a global battleground for decades to come. Vast yet vulnerable, it is a region of huge importance to the human race and to the entire planet, and we hope that this edition of the Harvard International Review will reignite the global dialogue on this oft-overlooked region.

To breaking the ice—

James Watkins & Neha Dalal Editors-in-Chief

Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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Vol. XXXVI, No. III • Spring 2015

10 Global Notebook

World in Review

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New Wealth Seeks a “Home”: the Rise of the Hedge City

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Disecting a Miracle: Pope Francis the Peacemaker

Photo Courtesy Reuters

- Leading The Long Journey: The Future of the African National Congress - European Policy: A Nudge in the Right Direction - Shadows Over Pakistan: Critiquing the Drone War - The Palestinian Question: Europe’s Paradigm Shift - Destination Europe: The Persistence of Immigration to Europe - Shanghai 2020: Understanding the Cautious Pace of Reform

Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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The New Ice Age: The Arctic Battleground 41 45 49

Anecdotes from the Arctic from 1986 to Today Ann Bancroft, Polar Explorer

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Climate Change and Foreign Policy Implications for Rising Powers William Antholis, Director and CEO of the Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia

A Place Apart: A Peaceful Arctic No More?

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 12th Secretary General of NATO and former Prime Minister of Denmark

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Frontier Mentality Has No Place in the Arctic

A World Price for Carbon: A Necessary Condition for a Global Climate Agreement

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Some BRICS in the Arctic: Developing Powers Look North

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Indigenous Rights: The Hidden Cost of Arctic Development

Stéphane Dion, Former Canadian Minister of the Environment

Yolanda Kakabadse, President of WWF International

Interviews

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Perspectives

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Towards an Equitable and Effective Climate Deal

Have US Priorities in Africa Changed?: Do Security Concerns Trump Others?

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The Case for Shared Growth and Economic Democracy in South Korea

Steve McDonald, Woodrow Wilson Center

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Europe’s Economic Policy Conundrum

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Korean Unification: A New Kind of Peacebuilding Project

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, Former Executive Board Member of the European Central Bank

Myoung-Kyu Park, Director of the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, Seoul National University

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The Dash for Gas: How Iran’s Gas Supply Can Change the Course of Nuclear Negotiations Tara Shirvani, World Bank Energy & Transport Unit

Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland

Chung Un-chan, Former Prime Minister of South Korea

Books and Reviews

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Feuding Nationalism: Jaime Lluch’s Visions of Sovereignty

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Trapped within Walls: Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall

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HIR Anniversary Book Teaser US-Russian Relations in a Post-Cold War World Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States

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WORLD IN REVIEW

Vol. XXXVI, No. 3 • Spring 2015 EDITORS-IN-CHIEF DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS DIRECTOR OF CONTENT CHIEF OF STAFF

Neha Dalal & James Watkins Zoe Simon Ava Zhang Mahnoor Kahn

WRITING CHAIR SOLICITING CHAIR FEATURES CHAIR SPECIAL CONTENT CHAIR BUSINESS CHAIR MEDIA CHAIR TECHNOLOGY CHAIR OUTREACH CHAIR EVENTS CHAIRS

Daniel Epstein Ashley Collins Shahrukh Khan Edyt Dickstein Sarah Sohn Anna Kim Serguei Balanovich Layla Stahr Akshay Verma & Nick Wood

CONTENT EDITORS

OPERATIONS MANAGERS

Nick Ackert, Jessica Dorfmann, Benjamin Legesse, Madeleine Snyder, Emilie Robert Wong, Cyndia Yu Auden Laurence, Jonathan Tan, Akshay Verma, Willa Wang

ASSOCIATE STAFF Andres Alvarez Davila, Nida Ansari, Lev Asimow, Mason Barnard, Joshua Barthel, Maddy Berg, Stephanie Carr, Ben Cashin, Jeffrey Chang, Inhwa Chi, Jasmine Chia, John Chipoco-Campoverde, David Clifton, Andres Cornejo, Eli Davey, Claire Dinhut, Gregory Dunn, Emma Dwight, Henry Eccles, Cole Edick, Mikaela Esquivel, Andra Fehmiu, Sarah Fellay, Amanda Flores, Daryn Forgeron, Anna Gomez, Alice Han, Barrett Hansen, Caetano Hanta-Davis, Tianhao He, Elvis Herrera, Pierre Hirschler, Alice Hu, Diana Im, Isaac Inkeles, Curren Iyer, Kamran Jamil, Farhan Javed, Daniel Kang, Rachel Kassa, Cameron Khansarinia, Natalie Kim, Sophie Kissinger, Priyanka Kumar, Khue La, Mos Laoprapassorn, MacKenzie Lawrence, Julia Lechner, Priscilla Lee, Eunice Lee, Dennis Lee, Chris Li, Shengxi Li, Mark Liu, Andrew Ma, Patrick Mauel, Ian Maynor, Siobhan McDonough, Kay McGarrell, Julio Mendez Cabrera, Steven Menelly, Phoebe Mesard, Daniel Montoya, Mathilde Montpetit, Sarah Moon, Yousra Neberai, Alasdair Nicholson, Erik Owen, Shivangi Parmar, Dev Patel, Anchisa Pongmanavuth, Miga Purevochir, FatumaAyaan Rinderknecht, Aman Rizvi, Basia Rosenbaum, Priscilla Russo, Maria Jose Sada de la Garza, Tuba Sahiti, Sam Heyward, Nick Seymour, Reed Shafer-Ray, Hassaan Shahawy, Yoav Shaked, Hansen Shi, Aaisha Sikander Shah, Demren Sinik, Phoebe Stoye, Amy Tan, Nazow Tarakai, Mirza, Jean Paul Valencia, Jacques van Rhyn, Ian Van Wye, Daniela Veloza, Emelia Vigil, Anthony Volk, Chelsea Wang, Thomas Westbrook, Nathan Williams, Alice Xiao, Kevin Xie, Judy Yang, Alan Yang, (Andrew) Keum Yong, Kate Yoon, Alex Young, Hellary Zhang, Lily Zhang, Ashley Zhou ADVISORY BOARD Roderick MacFarquhar, Joseph Weiler, Robert Rotberg, Patrick Mendis, Roland Benedikter, Hussein Kalout, Majid Rafizadeh, Michael Singh, Sohail Hashmi, Bill Kovach, J Bryan Hehir The Harvard International Review is published quarterly by the Harvard International Relations Council, Inc. Copyright 2015 (ISSN 0739-1854) Harvard International Relations Council.

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H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W • Spring 2015

New Wealth Seeks a “Home” The Global Rise of the Hedge City

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staff writer JESSICA DORFMANN

ancouver is a city in flux. A stroll through one of its residential west-side neighborhoods reveals blocks and blocks of construction sites, for-sale signs, and ostentatious new mansions, often left vacant. The west coast Canadian city is North America’s least affordable urban housing market. Local incomes and property prices are extremely out of sync— Vancouver has the median income of Reno (roughly 70,000 Canadian dollars) and the skyrocketing property prices of San Francisco (the average detached home on Vancouver’s west side is valued at 1.8million Canadian dollars). Vancouver’s imbalance may reek of a domestic housing bubble, particularly in the wake of the US real estate crash of 2007, but its story is quite different. The city’s property prices have been inflated by massive foreign investment from mainland China. It has become a “hedge city,” a safe financial haven for China’s wealthiest investors. The Vancouver experience speaks not only to the globalization of the world’s real estate market, but also to the political structure of China and other large countries, most notably Russia, that pair capitalism with authoritarianism. Real estate markets in Vancouver, as well as Sydney, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore have been transformed by Chinese and Russian money as investors seek to protect themselves against risk at home. What does the future hold for these hedge cities? And does this movement of capital represent a vote of no confidence in the stability of capitalist authoritarianism?

Vancouver, at first glance, appears an odd choice of city for large-scale investment. The city of two million is Canada’s third largest metropolitan area and consistently ranks amongst the top five cities in the world for livability and quality of life, but it lacks a major industry or the cultural significance that draws foreign capital to cities like San Francisco, New York, and London. By all accounts, Vancouver appeals to investors for more mundane reasons—the city is socially and politically stable, comfortable, and in close proximity to Asia. According to Vancouver urban planner Andy Yan, who coined the term “hedge city,” Chinese investors are not on the lookout for the most profitable cities, but rather “places where they can park some of their cash and feel safe about it.” After all, the security of capital in China is uncertain—economic freedoms abound, but the government maintains the power to expropriate property at will.

Just last summer Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a massive anti-corruption campaign that some accused of tar-

WORLD IN REVIEW geting the assets of political competitors and wealthy critics tinely top the aforementioned rankings for livability and qualof Beijing’s elites. Chinese real estate purchases in Vancouver ity of life, but it also has the mildest climate of any Canadian are not intended to produce enormous returns, but to hedge city, strong grade school and university systems, and a large against crisis. In fact, Yan claims that the prospect of property Chinese diaspora community. All of these factors, paired with investments losing value is not a major concern for Chinese a stable housing market, make it an ideal location for invesbuyers. Losses of 10 or 20 percent on foreign properties still tors to cache their money and live out a portion of their lives. beat losing everything at home.

Singapore and Sydney share many of these qualities—both But hedge cities are not just about storing money. cities have long had significant Chinese populations and There are many locations and assets outside of China where are attractive places to live and attend school. London also capitalists could choose to stash their savings, but there is has a large Russian community and many Russian language particular prestige and pragmatic benefit to owning a home schools that allow Russia’s ultra-rich to settle there comfortin Vancouver and other hedge cities. Home ownership is a ably. Investors could store their money in many stable assets, form of “conspicuous consumption”—owning an extravagant but owning a luxury home in a great city offers perks that mansion in an exclusive other value stores simply neighborhood is a more cannot. visible display of wealth But what is life like than a Swiss bank account on the receiving end of or a safe of gold. Hedge Chinese and Russian incities tend to be places vestment? The influx of the ultra-rich in China foreign capital has both and Russia are inclined to good and bad effects visit and even live. These on hedge cities. On one individuals could afford hand, foreign investment to stay in the Four Seain real estate is a boon for sons penthouse suite, existing property owners. but a permanent vacation Vancouverites who purhome in a desirable city chased homes in the early offers significantly more 2000s or prior are now sitstatus. Not only that, but ting on land worth three Chinese capitalists oftimes as much on averten follow their wealth to agae. Many are choosing Vancouver, Sydney, and to sell and downsize or Singapore. They invest head to the suburbs with in residential properties a hefty lump sum payout. because these allow them The construction boom to split their lives between has also stimulated the China and a foreign city.

Vancouver economy and Vancouver’s real estate provided ample tax revboom is correlated with a enue for the municipal A worker cleans the glass roof of a building in Vancouver, where wealthy steady stream of foreign government. However, investors from mainland China have been buying up properties, transimmigration of a very gloChinese investment has forming the city of two million into a “hedge city.” balized nature. Wealthy created an affordability immigrants will live part of the year in Canada while maintaincrisis for what should be the next generation of local property ing their lives and lucrative business ventures back in China. owners. The Vancouver housing market has become prohibiThis explains how Vancouver home prices have become so tively expensive for young people and families. Vancouver out of step with local incomes—homebuyers are generating now has the world’s second highest housing prices relative their wealth outside of the country. It has also become comto local income, trailing only fellow hedge city Hong Kong. mon for wealthy capitalists to settle their children in a hedge Rental properties are also becoming more and more pricey, city while continuing to live and earn money in China, the and new house construction is eliminating basement suites so-called “astronaut family” phenomenon. In a sense, astroand rental units needed by students. While many foreign naut parents are using foreign cities to protect their families investors live at least part of the year in Vancouver, a growing along with their capital. The children can learn English and portion of homes are purchased and left empty. This trend take advantage of the educational opportunities in a Western has disturbing consequences—certain neighborhoods are city while the parents support them with the high salaries emptying out as new properties are left unoccupied after they earn back in China. construction. A survey done in one wealthy downtown With this in mind, it becomes easier to understand why neighborhood found a quarter of purchased condominiums Vancouver is an appealing hedge city. Not only does it routo be uninhabited. This is perhaps the most damaging form Photo Courtesy Reuters

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WORLD IN REVIEW of investment, as it inflates real estate prices and reduces available housing without contributing to the community or economy.

It is unclear whether foreign real estate investment is on balance good or bad for hedge cities. But different cities have reacted to it in a variety of ways. In response to Russian investment, London introduced a special levy on homes left vacant. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney have all enacted tax or legal barriers to property purchases by foreigners. And Vancouver has considered new methods of densification to address the lack of affordable housing. For better or worse, no city has found a way to halt the flow of foreign capital and the massive changes it brings. So long as the push factors in China and Russia remain strong, the money will continue to come.

These push factors themselves warrant examining. The hedge city trend says just as much about Chinese and Russian politics as it does about Vancouver, Sydney, and London. The late 20th century saw the rise of a new regime type that paired a capitalist economy with authoritarian politics. In both China and the Soviet Union, it became evident that centrally planned Workers construct a block of apartments in London. London’s large Russian socialism could not effectively compete with capitalexpat community and English private schools have attracted Russian buyers. ism. China under Deng Xiaoping and Russia after the However, sanctions and increased taxes have forced out the richest Russians. fall of the Soviet Union opened up to global economic competition and permitted individual citizens ownit is a genuine source of vulnerability that these governments ership of assets, allowing them to amass wealth. Economic should find alarming. A recent survey of high-net-worth freedom increased greatly, but political freedom continued individuals by Barclays found that almost half of Chinese to be stifled. Citizens in China and Russia are allowed a derespondents planned to emigrate within the next five years. gree of economic autonomy and other private freedoms (for By pairing capitalism with authoritarianism, China and Russia example, the rights to travel and emigrate freely), but denied have ended up with imperfect versions of both—property public freedoms or legal recourse against the government. owners don’t feel secure and the regimes have lost some of In a way, economic reforms have actually contributed to the their dominance. legitimacy and popularity of China and Russia’s governments In this era of globalization, the challenges and contraby generating prosperity and development to shield against dictions of capitalist authoritarianism cross oceans and are discontent. But the rise of hedge cities may indicate a crack reflected in cities half a world away. Vancouver today bears in the armor. Simply put, it hints at doubts about property little to no resemblance to the city it was 20 years ago. Whole rights under capitalist authoritarianism. Human rights scholar neighborhoods are under construction. Each year nearly Michael Ignatieff has described the legal situation in Russia 20,000 new homes go up, a number that far outpaces the and China as “rule by law” as opposed to “rule of law.” There city’s population growth. All this change begs the question— is enough procedural regularity for capitalist economics to how long can Vancouver sustain these levels of growth and function—business deals can be made and contracts are geninvestment? And what will a sudden crisis in Beijing mean for erally honored—but there is no protection against arbitrary Vancouver and other hedge cities around the world so closely government crackdowns or property expropriation. Capital tied up in Chinese politics? Across the Atlantic, Russia’s recent can never be completely secure under authoritarianism and, economic woes have created mayhem in the London housas such, Chinese and Russian capitalists are scrambling for ing market. As the ruble tumbled in value at the end of 2014, security abroad.

Russia’s super-wealthy bought London real estate in a panic, Hedge cities signify a potential source of discontent while moderately wealthy Russians scrambled to pull out of amongst the most affluent members of Russian and Chinese the market. As a result, demand for London’s most expensive society, and they also reveal the trade-off that authoritarian properties—homes worth 20 million pounds or more—has regimes face when they embrace free market capitalism. By skyrocketed just as the market for mainstream properties entering the global economy, illiberal governments sacrifice a has crashed. This chaos in London may be a glimpse into the degree of control over their citizens’ wealth. The very fact that future of cities like Vancouver, Sydney, and Hong Kong. Hedge Chinese and Russian capital owners can offshore their money cities can hope for the best, but in a truly globalized real estate is a mark of government weakness. Will this weakness spell market, their fates are out of their hands. the end of capitalist authoritarian regimes? Probably not. But 6

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Photo Courtesy Reuters

WORLD IN REVIEW

Dissecting a Miracle Pope Francis the Peacemaker

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staff writer EMMA DWIGHT

fter more than five decades of hostility, embargo, the embargo imposed indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban and diplomatic frigidity, December 17, 2014 people, a more open relationship may bring better results. brought news of the seemingly impossible—the There is precedent for this perspective. Many credit China’s beginnings of a thaw in relations between the meteoric rise over the past few decades to US President United States and Cuba. The man at the center Nixon’s diplomatic work in 1972, which formally normalized of it all, credited with fostering the deal: Pope Francis. It has relations with the People’s Republic. Likewise, the opportunity been revealed that the Holy See had been mediating secret promised by trade between Cuba and the United States will negotiations between Havana and Washington for 18 months surely be leveraged by Washington and Havana to better the in Canada and at the Vatican. The pope himself wrote letters lives of Cubans. These talks are just the beginning of a more of appeal to Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro that open diplomatic relationship that will lead to the exchange helped to catalyze the reconciliation. of the goods, people, and ideas that should bring serious While many hail this first step towards peace as michange to a country so long cut off from progress. raculous, a small but vocal So how did Pope minority are bitter and Francis work this miracle? disparaging of the news— And might his peacemakmostly Cuban-Americans ing powers be similarly who fled from Fidel Caseffective in the Middle tro’s regime. For them, the East, or in other areas of diplomatic thaw diminconflict? ishes their experience of For as long as there oppression under Fidel have been popes, they Castro, and they are not have been key players in convinced that the Cuban international relations government will make and peacemaking. Even as any human rights concesearly as the fifth century, sions, even as Obama sets by which time the Latin out to persuade Congress honorific papa had been to dismantle economic reserved for the bishop sanctions. Furthermore, of Rome, Pope Leo the since Cuban Americans Great (440-461) personally are overwhelmingly Cathpersuaded Attila the Hun olic, many feel betrayed to withdraw from Italy by the key role of their and spare Rome. Charspiritual leader. Following lemagne, the king who the announcement, Miunited much of Western ami resident Efrain Rivas, a Europe, was crowned Holy political prisoner in Cuba Roman Emperor by Pope for 16 years, stated, “I’m Leo III (795-816). The paPope Francis, seen here leading an audience in prayer at Saint Peter’s still Catholic till the day pacy crowned Holy RoSquare, was vital in mediating the negotiations between Cuba and the United States that led to the restoration of relations.

I die, but I am a Catholic man Emperors through without a pope.” to the 15th century, and These reactions are understandable, but on the whole, ruled as kings over what were then the Papal States. More the international community should be buoyed by the anrecently, Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) visited 129 countries as nouncements. As President Obama said, the US policy of pope, strengthened relations with countless other world reliisolating Cuba was “rigid and outdated.” It is only openness to gions, had a hand in the collapse of several dictators, and has discussion, negotiation, and cooperation that will bring Cuba been credited as being a key player in the fall of communism the economic benefits, and most importantly, the human in Europe. The Vatican has long exercised a policy of dialogue rights improvements, that are so desperately needed. While with any and all parties (though previous popes have used

Photo Courtesy Reuters

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WORLD IN REVIEW dent Barack Obama wields significant power. More importantly, he took a political risk in reaching out to establish relations with Cuba, and so is personally invested in seeing further negotiations succeed.

Similarly, Cuban President Raúl Castro can be expected to deliver on his promises. His willingness to release two key US prisoners in return for three high profile Cubans from the United States earned him a surge of public support, and proved him to be more pragmatic than his brother. That he is prepared to make concessions is critical, as is the fact that his public image and power are now tied to the outcomes of these inA Cuban exile reacts to the news of the normilization of relations between the United States and Cuba.

Many Cuban-Americans who fled Fidel Castro’s regime have reacted negatively to the announcement, and teractions with the United similarly feel betrayed by the pope’s role in the negotiation.

States.

Over the past few years, the conditions for successful peace negotiations were varying approaches and levels of caution) and has become a indeed in place for the United States and Cuba. But the queskey player in mediating heated international disputes. tion remains: how did Pope Francis succeed in brokering this Pope Francis’ efforts in Cuba fit in with this tradition, but deal when so many diplomats and leaders before him had his success, after decades of failure, demands deeper review. failed? In short, the nature of the US-Cuban situation and the Jonathan Powell, the chief British negotiator who brought confluence of several more timely factors made it an arena about peace with Northern Ireland in 1998 following decades uniquely suited to the Pope’s intervention. of tension and violence, believes there are two conditions Firstly, Cuba’s population, like much of Latin America, necessary for successful peace negotiations. is overwhelmingly Catholic, so Pope Francis’ word carries One is a “mutually hurting stalemate.” The two sides significant authority. For decades, Catholic leaders in both must both find current relations disadvantageous, and be the United States and Cuba have lobbied for reconciliation. persuaded that they cannot win through force alone. In the

“... the conditions for successful peace negotiations were indeed in place for the United States and Cuba. But the question remains: how did Pope Francis succeed in brokering this deal when so many diplomats and leaders before him had failed?” case of US-Cuban relations, the stalemate that endured for nearly five decades hurt the economies of both nations.

The second condition Powell believes is required for peacemaking is strong leadership from both parties that hold the power to follow through on any concessions made in the course of negotiation. Though he cannot lift US embargoes on Cuba without the cooperation of Congress, US Presi8

H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W • Spring 2015

High-ranking US Cardinals John O’Connor and Bernard Law regularly visited Cuba beginning in the mid-1980s and pushed for the White House to lift its restrictions. Within Cuba, Archbishop of Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega is said to have worked closely with Pope Francis in bringing about this deal.

Popes John Paul and Benedict both made official visits to the island nation during their terms as supreme pontiff, though Photo Courtesy Reuters

WORLD IN REVIEW their efforts for peace were waylaid by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and the imprisonment of American aid worker Alan Gross respectively. Pope Francis himself was present in 1998 at the dialogue between Pope John Paul II and Fidel Castro in Cuba, and went on to write a book about the meeting. The pope’s success plainly built on years of Catholic efforts towards US-Cuban reconciliation.

It is important to note that until very recently, the Catholic Church in Cuba had been heavily restricted and repressed under Fidel Castro’s Cuban government. It is only since 2008, when Fidel’s health struggles caused him to step down in favor of his brother Raúl, that Havana has increased religious freedoms in the country. The pope’s influence in Cuba is complemented by the respect his personal integrity has earned him in the United States, allowing him to act as a mediator with serious clout.

Perhaps the main strength of the Vatican as a peacemaking entity is that it is uniquely positioned to play the long game. The very long game. Unencumbered by the constant campaigning for reelection faced by a president or prime minister, the pope himself can expect many years as head of the Church. Nor does the election of a new pope require every other minister to be replaced. Indeed, the patience and

grow weary of violence, the forecast looks bleak for these war-torn regions, no matter how skillful and respected possible mediators might be. Additionally, few conflicts on Earth feature leaders as strong as Obama and Castro on both sides, and fewer still will accept a representative of the Catholic Church as a legitimate mediator, especially in the Middle East.

Still, Pope Francis has shown the ability to be impactful in other ways. In the aftermath of the shootings in Paris that saw 17 people killed, 12 of whom were journalists at the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, Pope Francis demonstrated the sagacity and the thoughtful analysis that he is known for. The attacks were staged as retaliation against offending material from the publication that insulted the prophet Mohammed. French President François Hollande lauded the journalists as “heroes” and the massive rallies and demonstrations around the world since have treated those killed as martyrs for the cause of freedom of speech. But, dear as this cause is to the West, Pope Francis made a statement a week following, saying that, while he steadfastly defends freedom of expression, “there is a limit,” especially when it comes to mockery and insulting of religion. He illustrated his point by saying that if his aide were to curse or insult his mother, the aide could expect to be punched, driving this home by

“Perhaps the main strength of the Vatican as a peacemaking entity is that it is uniquely positioned to play the long game.

The very long game.” persistence that the Catholic Church is capable of makes it an exceedingly effective diplomatic corps. Small gestures over time can build relationships and trust that can reap rewards decades later. And Pope Francis has been described as a master builder of bridges who has started this work around the world already. In an entirely unprecedented move, he welcomed the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I, to his papal inauguration, and a close personal alliance has followed. In only two years, he has visited Brazil, South Korea, Albania, France, Turkey, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines, as well as the Holy Land.

He has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to a prayer summit at the Vatican. This pope, even more so than his predecessors, is audacious in his pursuit of peace.

Might the pope help ameliorate conflicts elsewhere in the world? It will certainly be more difficult. Pope Francis, being the first Latin American pontiff, was exceedingly well-suited to deal with the situation in Cuba. In addition, most other conflicts in the world fall short of Powell’s criteria for peace.

Continued armament, commitment, and hostility in places like Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, and Syria, for example, evidences belief that there is victory to be won in fighting. Conflicts in these areas each saw over 10,000 fatalities in 2014, with Syria topping that list at 76,000. Until actors

stating, “you cannot provoke, you cannot insult the faith of others, you cannot make fun of the faith of others.” However, in that very same conversation, he reaffirmed his belief that the violence of the reaction could not be justified, showing his willingness to criticize both sides. Other commentators have said that if Charlie Hebdo were an American publication, it would long ago have been condemned as hate speech, though few besides the pope have publicly attributed any culpability to the publication.

The pope was shrewd in his handling of the US-Cuban dispute, and bold in his statements following the tragedies in Paris, but the most important trait the pope has shown is humility and integrity. This is what makes him such a worthy and credible mediator, listened to by many of the most powerful heads of state around the world. His success in Cuba drew on the influence of Catholicism and the Church in Cuba, the patience and experience of the Catholic Church, and his own skill and suitability for the task. But is this historic peacemaking less of a miracle simply because the stars were aligned?

Not at all, and who is to say that Pope Francis cannot, with his patient and bold interventions, cause the stars to be aligned elsewhere? Though there may not be opportunity for him to mediate so directly in the near future, his influence and authority as a moral figure could be used to persuade warring parties that it is finally time to come to the table.

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Leading a Long Journey The Future of the African National Congress

Qunu, a humble farming village in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province, has little reason on its own to enter the consciousness of those more than a few miles away, but on December 15, 2013, it held the attention of the whole world.

On this date, iconic anti-apartheid activist and national patriarch Nelson Mandela was laid to rest in the village, where he spent his childhood. Highranking dignitaries from around the world attended the ceremony, at which Jacob Zuma, current president of South Africa and member of Mandela’s own African National Congress party (ANC), delivered a stirring eulogy, promising the deceased “will remain our guiding light, illuminating the path as we continue the long journey to build the South Africa of [his] dreams.”

The moment was a poignant one, but to many South Africans outside the makeshift tent in Qunu, these words are beginning to ring hollow. In the years since 1994, when the ANC took over the country’s government after the fall of the apartheid regime, the party has

SOUTH AFRICA

staff writer DANIEL EPSTEIN

slowly abandoned the revolutionary fervor and strength of ideas that girded its founding. More than a year since the death of its talismanic standard-bearer, the ANC faces existential questions. It must eliminate the complacency and corruption of its recent years, or else the party of Mandela will cede the reigns of the country it built, and worse, tarnish its proud legacy.

When the African National Congress was founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress, its aims were the continuance of black voting rights in Cape Provence and the general condemnation of discriminatory practices. In 1923, the group changed its name to the one we see today. When the Afrikaner-dominated National Party took control of the government in 1948, a harsh system of racial policies, known as apartheid, was put into action. From here on, the ANC’s mission was to oppose apartheid in all its forms. After the ANC was banned in 1960, its resistance took on a militant character. After several decades

A child watches as a crowd of African National Congress (ANC) supporters await election results in Johannesburg, South Africa on May 10, 2014.

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of protracted struggle combining civil disobedience, international pressure, and violent resistance, the ban on the ANC was removed in 1990, and talks to eliminate apartheid began. Since its sweeping victory in the 1994 general election, in which Mandela became the nation’s first black president, the ANC has dominated South African politics at all levels, a reality that would have been beyond the wildest dreams of its 1912 founders.

On the surface, the ANC years have brought rapid economic and social improvements. Gross National Income (GNI) per capita has nearly doubled since 1994, with many of the most robust growth years coming since 2008, while much of the rest of the world was in the throes of recession. Most significantly, a primary locus of this growth has been the native African population. According to the South African Institute for Race Relations, the number of Africans earning university degrees increased from 8,514 to 36,970 between 2001 and 2008, a 334 percent increase. In 2010, the nation was invited to become the S in the prestigious BRICS network (the other members being Brazil, Russia, India, and China), indicative of its status as a rising star in the global economy. That same summer, South Africa hosted the FIFA World Cup, and fans from all over the world filed into world-class stadiums while banners proclaimed, “It’s time for Africa.”

However, many of these achievements are not as monumental as they appear, and others had little to do with ANC guidance. The late 1990s and early 2000s were good years for most countries, especially resource-rich developing nations. South Africa’s membership in the BRICS is regarded by many to be undue; the Economist even claims its chief qualifications were its Africanness (the original set of BRIC nations were criticized for ignoring Africa), and its beginning with the letter S, so as to keep the acronym intact for aesthetic purposes. Its bid to join the network is believed by some to have been backed by China, which has significant stakes in South Africa’s resource and energy sectors, as a strategic move, not a merited honor. Additionally, despite Photo Courtesy Reuters

GLOBAL NOTEBOOK its economic strides, South Africa still struggles with high degrees of inequality and unemployment and has failed to bring HIV/AIDS under control; almost one in five citizens between the ages of 15 and 49 are carriers of the virus.

Most of the World Cup stadiums built in 2010 now stand unused, gathering dust, symbols of the nation’s hollow rise.

Worse still, the ANC is showing signs of institutional and moral decay. In March 2014, South Africa’s anti-corruption watchdog published a damning report detailing US$23 million worth of “security improvements” to President Jacob Zuma’s rural estate, which included an amphitheater, a visitor center, and a swimming pool, paid for out of the public coffers. The party has also received criticism for abuse of “cadre employment,” the practice of appointing party loyalists to high level positions in state bodies, which some claim has amounted to cronyism. As the ANC’s ethical center begins to rot, so too does the broad political consensus it has maintained. The fierce rhetorical lambasting the party received from Julius Malema of the breakaway Economic Freedom Fighters party, erstwhile leader of the ANC Youth League and once considered a “future leader” of South Africa by ANC dayan Zuma, exposed deep fault lines in the party during last year’s general elections.

Additionally, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the nation’s largest labor union and important bellwether of working-class political opinion, announced in October 2014 that it would break rank with the ANC and form a new socialist political party.

For two decades, the ANC held the unquestioned mandate of its people and retained the moral direction to justify it, but alas, the center cannot hold.

On May 7, 2014, South Africa held general elections, and the ANC retained control of the government with 62.1 percent of the vote. For now, the party’s internal cracks have not sunk it, but it is surely taking on water. The Democratic Alliance, long the most serious opposition of the ANC, had its best ever year, securing 22.2 percent of the total vote, and various other parties, such as Malema’s Economic Freedom

Fighters, had strong showings as well.

As the apartheid years fade further into history, the unquestioned loyalty many South Africans feel toward the ANC may fade. 2014 marked the first year that “born frees,” those born after 1994, played a voting role in an election; their influence will only increase, and they will demand more from the party they have inherited. If the ANC hopes to continue to lead “the long journey

to build the South Africa of [Mandela’s] dreams,” it must recapture the idealism, boldness, and fervor that liberated a country, and cast off the malaise that has consumed it. Its proud past must be a pillar, not a crutch. At rallies this past spring, ANC supporters chanted, “Do it for Madiba,” an affectionate nickname for their late hero. Next time, if it hopes to survive, the party will need to find a new refrain.

European Policy A Nudge in the Right Direction

A man in the UK opens his email after receiving his monthly energy bill.

Along with a smorgasbord of information about energy conservation and his current spending on energy, he sees how much he could potentially save by doing small things, like insulating doors and windows and using more efficient light bulbs. The next day at the supermarket he passes an aisle filled with draft blockers and LED lights. Remembering the email and that potential 200 pound saving, he purchases three energy efficient light bulbs and schedules to have his door reinsulated. This is one example of a new technique the UK government is using to encourage citizens to be ecofriendly, while avoiding the pitfalls of expensive public policy.

In 2010, the UK partnered with an intelligence and consulting company to give its more ineffective and expensive policies a nudge in the right direction.

The aptly named Nudge Unit, or more formally, the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) is co-directed by the UK Cabinet Office and Nesta, the leading UK charity for innovation. The BIT uses ‘nudging’, or ‘behavioral insights’, at the intersection of psychology, political theory, behavioral economics, and social anthropology, to engineer more effective and efficient policy to influence social behavior. Policy goals range from getting more people to save for a pension or actively look for a job if they become unemployed, to encouraging people to

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staff writer MADELEINE SNYDER

recycle or donate to charity.

But what exactly counts as a ‘nudge’? According to Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of the book Nudge, it is “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.”Thus including more footage of actors recycling in popular TV shows counts as nudging, but limiting trash collection to once a month and expanding recycling pickup to twice a week does not. Nudging is all about using incentives, responses, and psychology to design effective policy.

Beyond working closely with the UK government, the BIT helps other companies, small businesses, and charities use behavioral insights to improve internal affairs and productivity. In addition, the BIT runs workshops and seminars on behavioral insights policy design for multinational organizations such as the UN and World Bank. The BIT defines four stages for creating an effective policy. The first is to outline the ultimate goal (for example, increasing the amount of people that save for a pension). The second is to understand the context in which individuals currently view the ultimate goal (who saves for pensions, who does not, and why). The third step is to aggregate information on people’s behavior and come up with ways to meet the ultimate goal (make it easier or more convenient for people to save for their pension by automatically

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GLOBAL NOTEBOOK enrolling them in a pension plan). The final step is to test the new policies with randomized and controlled trials to see if the new policy is more effective than the old way (automatically sign up some people at larger companies for pensions, and compare how much that group saves in comparison to their peers who were not automatically signed up).

The key to BIT policy and the bulk of step three is the Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely (EAST) set of insights.

Study results from the BIT indicate that

to long-term goals. Nudge techniques target these times at which it is most likely that people will accept change.

Although nudging has proved an enormous success in many respects, opponents say that the idea of the government using covert nudging tactics to achieve policy goals is suspiciously Orwellian. At first glance, nudging seems like it could be used for nefarious purposes: guiding individuals toward government goals that they may not personally believe in and discretely implementing policy controlled by the

that individual is provided with more information about his or her financial situation, not being forced to change his or her lifestyle or behavior. The goals of the government nudge policy will be aligned with what the public voted for, and the scope of BIT influence within the government is on the level of consulting, not of legislation.

According to studies from the BIT, nudge policy has been incredibly effective: it has increased saving towards pension funds by employees at large firms in the UK by almost 10 percent,

“Although nudging has proved an enormous success in many respects, opponents say that the idea of the government using covert nudging tactics to achieve policy goals is suspiciously Orwellian.” the most effective policies incorporate all four of these. The Easy part harnesses the tendency to stick with the default: people avoid signing up for or canceling services if they imagine the process will be a hassle. By changing the default to automatically sign someone up for a service, nudging guides individuals toward choices the government considers desirable. The Attractive part aims to make the policy more eye-catching by using personalized messages, colors, or images to capture people’s attention.

This part also uses rewards to incentivize participation, such as financial compensation or lotteries, which play on people’s sense of possible winning, but is on the whole, much cheaper for the people who provide the funds. The Social component draws on people’s tendency to behave in accordance with the norm. It aims to make policies seem accepted by the majority, creating a sense of peer pressure to follow the new policy. It also aims to foster network creation, so policy accordance spreads between individuals rather than coming only from government messages.

Finally, the Timely part takes advantage of people’s receptiveness to change.

People are more likely to alter their behavior when they are undergoing a major life change, or when there are tangible short-term benefits in addition 12

few at the top of the political totem pole. However, it is important to note that this is already happening on an enormous scale, and billions of people are exposed to nudging each day.

How? Through advertising. Nudging is not a new idea, and companies have been using it for decades to sell their products. Adapted to suit government policy needs, there is reason to suppose that nudge tactics could suddenly gain enormous power. People who see advertisements are exposed to temptation or reason to buy the product, but ultimately they have the choice to purchase or not. The same occurs in government nudge policy. If an individual receives an email notice alerting him or her to potential energy savings,

it has increased tax payment rates by over five percent, bringing in 210 million pounds of previously uncollected tax revenue, and increased the number of organ donors by 100,000 people in one year. Perhaps the most compelling argument for nudging is that it puts taxpayer money to more effective use.

BIT policy helps governments’ funds go further, which ultimately saves individuals money on the policy goals they voted for, and allows public funds to go toward more tangible projects that improve the quality of life, such as education, public works, and infrastructure.

Nudging directs policy in ways where it has the most impact. In other words, it makes government policy actually do what it was designed to do.

Shadows in Pakistan Critiquing the Drone War

“It was Ramadan. We were about to break our fast with the children,” begins a somber thick-bearded Pakistani.

“We took a bite, said our prayers. The children had just started eating when the missile struck.” The man, a resident

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staff writer REED SHAFER-RAY of the tumultuous northwest region of Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) had lost two brothers and a nephew in one tragic instant. However, the bomb that killed his family was not directed by

GLOBAL NOTEBOOK a rival tribe, or by a surging terrorist be fairly effective in eliminating leaderhave signs of post-traumatic stress disnetwork. The culprit instead was the ship of terrorist networks (as evidenced order: some now refuse to leave their United States. with the death of Abu Yahya al-Libi, alhomes. These conditions may aid in In the unconventional war in WaQaeda’s former second-in-command, understanding why US-Pakistani diploziristan (a mountainous region of in June 2012; Hakimullah Mehsud, the macy has rapidly deteriorated. During the FATA), unmanned aerial vehicles former leader of the Pakistani Taliban, the presidency of Barack Obama, rela(UAVs), commonly known as drones, in November 2013; and Ahmed Abdi tions with Pakistan have gone from bad have been a weapon of choice for the Godane, the former leader of al-Shabab, to worse, which is likely in response to United States. Yet the question remains: this past September). Often, when leadthe corresponding rise in drone strikes are drones the most ethical and efership is removed, these groups weaken over the same time period. According fective method for fighting terrorists? or fracture and become less of a threat to a Pew Poll, 74 percent of Pakistanis Although drones certainly have their to the United States. Other benefits of view the United States as an enemy, merits, the truth is that their use has drone warfare include its cost effectiveup from 64 percent three years ago. In set a dangerous ethical precedent, ness and its prevention of “boots on light of this, many experts go so far as to and often drones are a self-defeating the ground” warfare. However, faceless say that the drone strikes have actually mode of war. drone attacks may be reinvigorating spurred on the terrorist movement in In the aftermath of 9/11, the United hatred of the West, as new and posPakistan. In the words of David KilculStates has fought the war against tersibly even more radical movements len, the former advisor to General David rorism in ways that many in the interare sprouting up. The rapid ascent of Petraeus, “every one of these dead nonnational community say lack combatants represents…a legal and ethical justification. new desire for revenge, As evidenced by a Central and more recruits for a Intelligence Agency (CIA) militant movement.” torture report released in DeAs drone strikes have cember 2014 revealing previformed a natural rallyously unknown US prison ing point for terrorists in camps employing draconian their plan to rid Pakistan interrogation techniques, the of Western influence, they United States is very secretive have also united Pakistani when it comes to its military politicians against the unoperations. In May 2013, US manned attacks, which Attorney General Eric Holder can be viewed as a proxy shockingly announced that for the United States and since 2009 four US citizens its people. While before have been murdered by politicians had publicly Nabila Rehman, 9, shows a picture she drew of a US drone strike on drone strikes without trial or given tacit approval for her home village in Pakistan at a news conference on Capitol Hill. jury, including 16-year-old the strikes, the Pakistani Anwar al-Awlaki. In 2013, the government, led by Prime UN Human Rights Council Minister Nawaz Sharif and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula condemned drone strikes in Pakistan, his Pakistan Muslim League, now (AQAP), an active Al-Qaeda subsidiary declaring that the attacks were a condemns the attacks on its own soil. founded in 2009, may be one example violation of international law. The use In the aftermath of a drone strike on of this phenomenon. of drone strikes is still a topic largely January 4, 2015, Pakistan called for the The frightening ethical implicaavoided by the US government; the “immediate cessation of such strikes,” tions of drone warfare also cannot Unites States does not acknowledge and declared that the strikes “constitute be overlooked. One common public its covert drone operations, so the a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and impression of drones is that they are media’s scant knowledge of the attacks territorial integrity.” Although there is precise, killing mainly the target and come from anonymous independent some evidence that Pakistani officials entourage. In reality, out of 24 highsources or the Pakistani government. have privately continued approving profile terrorists targeted by drone This general secrecy in military operathe attacks, it is evident that the drone strikes since 2004, only six were killed, tions, while ostensibly protecting the strikes are now political dynamite in compared with 874 Pakistani civilians, country’s national interests, may also Pakistan. The diplomatic climate behundreds of whom were children. In be a front to keep away the skeptical tween nuclear-armed Pakistan and the Waziristan, drones hover over villages eye of the American public.

United States has never been worse, twenty-four hours a day, striking their But are drone strikes accomplishpossibly in part due to disgust over targets without warning. Researchers ing their goal of weakening terrorism civilian killings from drone strikes. have discovered that many residents in Pakistan? The attacks do appear to What, then, is a more ethical and Photo Courtesy Reuters

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GLOBAL NOTEBOOK effective method of fighting the war on terrorism? According to Scott Horton, a world expert on drone warfare, more transparency in US military operations would be an important first step to begin an informed public discussion.

In addition, more cooperation and support from Pakistan seems to be necessary for any success plan. After a Pakistani Taliban attack on a Karachi airport last June, Pakistan launched its Operation Zarb-e-Azb (in translation, “Strike of the Prophet’s Sword”), a massive offensive against the Pakistani Taliban that killed 2,100 militants and recaptured 90 percent of the territory in North Waziristan for Pakistan. This campaign, orchestrated with the assistance of the Unites States, has greatly weakened the TTP while remaining popular with the Pakistani public. The operation led by Pakistan has arguably been more effective in six months than the past ten years of conflict combined.

For future success in the war in the FATA,

strong leadership must continue to be taken by a united Pakistani military, and US drone strikes must be used sparingly, if at all.

As evidenced by the achievements of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, a domestically popular war is much more effective in cooling the flames of terrorism and its anti-Western sentiments. Drones without Pakistani support have been making enemies for a decade. Radical groups use drone attacks as anti-West propaganda and Pakistani politicians ubiquitously denounce their presence.

Even while some terrorist groups have been weakened by drone strikes, others have thrived in an environment of increasing enmity towards the United States. It is time that the US drone operations took a back seat to the efforts of the Pakistani army. According to a Waziristan civilian affected by the conflict, an end to drone strikes is more than a hope: “it is our plea.”

The Palestinian Question Europe’s Paradigm Shift

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peeches are given, echoing across the vast hall in Strasbourg, in the various tongues native to the small continent, sparking debates on a thorny topic that has been bitterly disputed worldwide for almost seven decades now. On December 17, 2014, a grand total of 697 present members of the great body assembled submit their stances on the resolution posed. Finally, the results are in…and yes, the motion carries, with 498 in favor, 88 against, and 111 abstentions. The European Parliament, the main legislative body of the European Union, has just passed a resolution recognizing the statehood of Palestine along the 1967 armistice lines that partition Jerusalem into East and West to serve as the Palestinian and Israeli capitals, respectively. This bold move follows a trend established by several national parliaments in Europe who have all passed resolutions moving to acknowledge Palestine as a state, 14

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staff writer FARHAN JAVED and marks a major paradigm shift in Europe illustrating a growing sense of sympathy for Palestine coupled with a deepening disconnect with Israel and a more independent attitude toward US foreign policy.

It cannot be denied that the European Union has historically almost always been a proponent, if only formally, of Palestinian statehood. The European Union first marked where it stood on the matter in 1980 with the Declaration of Venice that acknowledged the right of Palestinians to self-government.

Then, in 1986, the European Union enacted legislation that allowed Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories to export products to Europe under the label “Made in the West Bank and Gaza.”

The European Union took further action regarding the conflict in 1993, offering financial support to the fledgling Palestinian government as part of the Oslo Accords. More recently, in December

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2010, 26 former EU leaders called for economic sanctions to be imposed on Israel in response to its continued construction of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, settlements that even the Israeli High Court of Justice have found to be illegal. Israel has consistently deplored such measures, holding that they detract from bilateral engagement with Palestinian leaders and complicate the peace process. Interestingly, the European Union has been one of Israel’s largest trading partners and a major supplier of weapons for its army, and continued engagement with Israel and the Israeli military even while issuing formal declarations supporting a Palestinian state has caused many to accuse Europe of hypocrisy. Yet, with new talks of possible sanctions, it is becoming clear that European nations are taking a more adamant stance against what they feel is unwarranted Israeli aggression. The historic December 17 vote is not solely definitive of this paradigm shift; rather, this vote is the culmination of a recent and unprecedented trend where countries across Europe, such as Sweden, Ireland, the UK, France, and Portugal, have passed resolutions at the national level asserting their wishes to recognize Palestine as a free and independent state.

Europe’s new show of support for Palestinian statehood carries several implications that will alter the European Union’s current foreign relations with both Israel and the United States. The United States has always considered itself to be Israel’s greatest ally and has often condemned third-party involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict, agreeing with Israel that the most effective way to reach a solution is for the Palestinians to directly engage with Israel instead of skirting around and seeking international recognition. This maxim came to the fore most recently when the United Nations approved Palestine’s bid to be upgraded to a NonMember Observer State in 2012, drawing intense criticism from the United States. Others argue that one-on-one negotiations have so far failed and are unlikely to succeed in the future, and so by allowing them to involve the international community, Palestine

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Young Palestinian boys play at a refugee camp near Jenin, a city in the contested West Bank, on September 15, 2011.

would be able to operate within a more legitimate legal framework, thereby putting greater pressure on Israel to approach the Palestinian side with a more compromising nature. Another development that will put further strain on EU-US relations is an EU High Court’s removal of Hamas, the dominant political party in the Gaza Strip with an associated military wing that has engaged in intentional violence against civilians as a method of resistance, from its list of terror organizations, much to the dismay of the United States. The court defended its reversal by claiming that factors leading to the initial deeming of Hamas as a terrorist organization were based not on examined facts but rather on unverified statements by the press. Yet, this justification will do little to abate the United States’ anger at the decision, evidencing a significant change in Europe’s mindset where it is no longer afraid of taking actions despite intense US outrage. It cannot be overlooked that Hamas’s charter, drawn up in 1988, calls for the explicit destruction of Israel as a state. However, we cannot ignore recent statements made by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, asserting that the charter is “a piece of history and no longer relevant, but cannot be changed for internal reasons.” This new attitude exhibited by Hamas’s leadership, if it is sincere, will Photo Courtesy Reuters

be instrumental in bringing about any compromise.

It is clear that we are witnessing a major shift in the European attitude towards Palestine. It is most likely that these new developments between Europe and Palestine will help accelerate the peace process as they bring increased international attention to the issue, adding a sense of heightened global pressure on both sides to resolve the issue in a civil manner without the need for further violence. Though Israel still has staunch support from the United States, this European shift might also pressure the United States to be sterner with Israel regarding negotiations. We can already see the beginning of this decision’s contagious effects on

the United States as the Obama Administration has hinted at possibly, for the first time, not using its veto power on the next UN Security Council Resolution that Israel finds detrimental. This would be quite problematic for Israel, as it has depended for decades on the previously unwavering US veto to secure its interests on the global stage. On the other hand, Europe’s solidarity with the Palestinian cause while at the same time stressing the two-state solution may further compel Hamas to reform, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and operate using legitimate methods in order to gain further support abroad. Israel’s several military excursions into Palestinian territories in recent years, aimed at cracking down on Hamas, have driven many Palestinians to look for other avenues, such as international recognition, to achieve self-government free from Israeli dominion. The most recent military engagement, Israeli Operation Protective Edge conducted in the summer of 2014 during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, resulted in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians. It is obvious that something must change. Ultimately, leaders in the region from both sides need to rise above ideological differences to reach an agreeable solution. Regardless, it is now evident that Europe will be a bastion of support for the future free state of Palestine living side-by-side with a safe and secure Israel, something both Israeli and Palestinian leaders will have to accept and work toward if there is to be peace in the region.

Destination Europe

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The Persistence of Immigration to Europe

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staff writer GREGORY DUNN

urope’s economic woes have continued unimpeded for the past seven years, and recent data from the EU makes it clear that the malaise that grips Europe is unlikely to change. Yet, despite the economic struggles of Europe, millions remain eager to immigrate. Over 3,000 people

have died in boat accidents while trying to cross the Mediterranean illegally in 2014 alone, a crisis that Pope Francis has described as akin to a “vast migrant cemetery.” Chinese investors are clamoring to invest at least 500,000 euro in Portuguese real estate to be granted citizenship by the

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GLOBAL NOTEBOOK Portuguese government, despite the fact that Portugal’s GDP has decreased by approximately 10 percent since 2008. The influx of cash from Chinese investors seeking to earn citizenship through investment has been so great that Portugal’s interior minister has needed to resign due to allegations of corruption.

Of course, many immigrants to Europe immigrate as a means of making money, rather than as a result of spending it like their affluent Chinese counterparts. Europe’s relative wealth makes this choice understandable, but in some senses it remains puzzling.

The Middle East and North Africa are predicted to grow at 4.2 percent in 2015, and Sub-Saharan Africa at over 5 percent, according to the World Bank.

These figures represent rates 21 and 25 times greater than Europe’s GDP growth, which is currently expanding at a rate of one fifth of a percentage point, according to Eurostat. Despite this considerable difference in economic

The United Kingdom is not the only country in which the anti-immigration right is alive. In September 2014, the French National Front won two seats in the French Senate, a first for France’s far-right party. The National Front has distinguished itself by advocating the cessation of immigration from North African countries on the grounds that the values of Islam are incompatible with those of France. In Berlin, attempts to build a refugee center have been met by anti-immigrant rallies. The January 2015 terrorist attacks in France further strengthened the position of far-right parties, and stoked anti-immigrant sentiment, yet immigrants continued their attempts to come to Europe. In the winter of 2014, groups of Syrian refugees were placed on crewless vessels guided only by an autopilot towards the Italian coast, indicative of the continuing appeal of Europe despite its shifting political landscape.

Traditionally, an influx of immigrants is an indication that a country

immigrants from Africa come from countries experiencing historically high rates of growth, but where they still cannot find a job. Some immigrants from the Middle East come from countries with infrastructure and wealth greater than what Europe will ever be able to offer, but are part of lineages that are not privy to the bounty of the state.

Immigrants remain willing to leave their friends, family, social connections, and governmental connections behind for the hope of Europe. Yet, Europe is growing slower than most other regions, has fewer social services for immigrants than others, and has colder weather than most.

Despite this, on the whole, Europe stands strong. Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama, author of the influential book The End of History, suggested a theory as to why in a recent visit to Harvard.

Typically, leaders of developing nations are keen to trumpet the value of economic growth and liberal governance.

Fukuyama suggests that democracy is

“Immigrants flock to Europe not because it is changing in remarkable ways, but because it already has so much.” performance, migrants remain determined to travel from these regions to Europe, a phenomenon that suggests that something beyond economics is at play.

If the economic outlook for Europe’s future is weak, the social outlook for immigrants to Europe is worse.

David Cameron, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, bowed to pressure from the political right and made a highly publicized commitment to expand deportations of jobless immigrants and restrict opportunities to immigrate to the United Kingdom and collect benefits. David Cameron made this commitment following the highprofile defection of Mark Reckless, MP, to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a party that wishes to leave the European Union in part because of the immigration policies it imposes on the United Kingdom from Brussels, which it sees as overly liberal.

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has something better to offer citizens than the country from which they emigrate. In Europe, this is certainly true for substantial segments of the immigrant population. Wealthy Chinese face increasing scrutiny into the origin of their wealth, highlighted by the recent public trials of several corrupt businessmen and communist officials.

This anti-corruption drive is combined with renewed pressures from the Chinese communist party for a modest lifestyle, forcing those who wish to live large to look west. Refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq have also sought to travel to Europe to escape the wars that have consumed their countries and find economic stability in Europe. Even US corporations have seen the draw of Europe and have recently sought to move their headquarters across the Atlantic to take advantage of Europe’s lower tax rates.

But there is something more. Many

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an incorrect criterion through which to evaluate governments, and should be replaced with the criterion of civic virtue. The benefits of evaluating nations by their adherence to the principles of good governance become clear when applied to Europe. The political climate is turbulent, but rests on a bedrock of the rule of law that most countries simply lack. Extending Fukuyama’s approach, the economy is growing slowly, but the standard of living in Europe remains high. Increasingly, Europe seems to lack both a predictable political climate and GDP growth , yet the foundations of wealth and civic virtue are so strong that failure to bend to these hackneyed goals has not been particularly problematic for Europeans.

Immigrants flock to Europe not because it is changing in remarkable ways, but because it already has so much. Maybe history has ended in Europe after all.

GLOBAL NOTEBOOK

Shanghai 2020

CHINA

Understanding the Cautious Pace of Reform

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n the spring of 2009, China’s State Council announced its plans to t r a n s fo r m S h a n g h a i i n t o a n international financial center by 2020.

This announcement recalled the historic establishment of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Shenzhen three decades ago that transformed the city from a small fishing village into a bustling metropolis that is now one of the world’s fastest growing cities.

Shenzhen’s success is testament to the fact that Deng Xiaoping was on the right side of history; but will China be able to pull off the same strategy twice in a row?

The Shanghai Free Trade Zone (SFTZ) was designed as a preliminary trial to experiment with the financial reforms that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considered necessary for Shanghai’s 2020 transformation. Unfortunately, the SFTZ has so far failed to live up to its original ambition.

Reforms to the financial services sector have been few and far in between; instead, change has been concentrated in less controversial sectors, such as manufacturing. The list of prohibited commercial activities continues to be much too long. Finally, Shanghai’s businesspeople have expressed confusion with the rules of the new Zone, and the question of what exactly is allowed continues to elude many.

So why has the pace of reform been so cautious? Ultimately, the main factor inhibiting the necessary reforms is the Party’s fear of losing control of over economic—and therefore social—stability.

This fear is founded upon the outcomeoriented nature of the social contract the Party itself wrote and promoted.

In 2004, the Chinese White Paper on human rights declared that “the Chinese government continues to put the safeguarding and promotion of the people’s right to subsistence and development at the top of its agenda.”

staff writer HANSEN SHI In interpreting the White Paper, theorists such as Elizabeth Perry have long argued that the legitimacy of the CCP is contingent upon not only the maintenance of a minimum standard of life, but also the constant elevation of that standard; in the event that the state fails to carry out these two basic tasks of governance, regime legitimacy is severely compromised.

The internationalization of Shanghai as a financial center poses this very threat. Recent history has demonstrated to dramatic effect the reality that greater integration into the international financial order comes with a serious set of macroeconomic risks. These risks apply to all states, but some are better at sustaining it—at least politically— than others. A report from the Centre for European Policy Studies concluded that while European citizens’ trust in EU institutions fell significantly after the 2008 financial crisis, confidence in national governments has actually risen. Because the CCP has staked its credibility on outcomes, however, Chinese citizens are unlikely to give their government the same benefit of the doubt. For this reason, the CCP has historically striven to maintain a certain degree of economic autonomy through risk-averse international policies, an attitude that has sometimes served it quite well. Because its financial services industry was closed to the world, China had only limited exposure to the subprime mortgage assets that led to the fall-out that plagued much of the global financial order in 2008. This policy of caution has strongly characterized official CCP opinion, as Liu Mingkang, the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission once wrote, “In an increasingly interconnected world, financial risks now spread like pandemics. One of the effective ways to prevent risk contagion is to set up firewalls between banking and capital markets.”

Liu’s rhetorical characterization of financial risks as disease is compelling; in this view, to support political processes that strengthen Shanghai’s ties with the rest of the financial world is to deliberately expose its economy to uncontrollable risk and to bring the contagion inside of China’s borders.

Shanghai 2020 and its closest historical parallel, the establishment of the SEZ in Shenzhen, shared many of the same fundamental goals. Yet in other ways, Shanghai 2020 threatens the core tenets of what Deng Xiaoping passed off in Shenzhen as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The nature of the CCP’s challenges has changed drastically since Shenzhen. Deng Xiaoping was able to pursue market capitalism in Shenzhen while simultaneously shielding authoritarianism—and thereby Party security—from liberalization; unfortunately for the CCP this strategy will not work a second time. In the modern economy, capital flows to the most predictable regulatory environment.

An essential part of the strategy for Shanghai 2020 must therefore by the adaptation of China’s legal and regulatory system to international standards.

The South China Morning Post put it most aptly: “China will be left behind if it does not change with the times.”

If this is the case, then the erosion of “Chinese characteristics” appears to be a necessary part of reform.

Forty years ago, the notion of an international financial center in Shanghai would have been not only absurd, but counterrevolutionary. Similarly, at the time it was announced, the Special Economic Zone in Shenzhen incited intense disagreement on both sides of the CCP leadership. During his now-legendary Southern Tour, Deng Xiaoping inspired his countrymen, then mired in factional inertia, to action, “We should be bolder in carrying out reforms and opening up to the outside world and in making experimentation...We should not act like a woman with bound feet.

For what we regard as correct, just try it and go ahead daringly.” To bring the vision of Shanghai 2020 into reality, CCP leaders must do away with the fear of instability and act with equal conviction.

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PERSPECTIVES

Have US Priorities in Africa Changed?

Do Security Concerns Trump Others?

STEVE MCDONALD has over 40 years of experience in international affairs, primarily focused on Africa. He served as the Director of the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center from 2010 to 2013.

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t the end of the first ever US-Africa Leaders Summit on August 7, 2014, President Obama declared that it had been an “extraordinary event,” citing the accomplishments of the summit in terms of trade, investment, and security cooperation. Included in the latter category was a commitment to peacekeeping and the need to address corruption and bad governance in the continent.

Had the summit broken new ground in terms of US policy and priorities? If the answer was “no,” then what did the status quo mean? More of the same was more of what?

Prior to the summit and Obama’s August 2013 trip to Africa, US policy on Africa had been most succinctly outlined on June 14, 2012, when President Obama signed a Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) on Sub-Saharan Africa meant to clarify new directions under his administration. The PPD was a policy document that had four core components and strategic priorities: strengthening democratic institutions; spurring economic growth, trade, and investment; advancing peace and security; and promoting opportunity and development.

Most knowledgeable observers stifled a yawn. These were the same four pillars put forward in 2008 by the first Obama candidacy, and had been the ruling doctrine informing African policy since then. In fact, there was very little 18

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change in the broad outline of policy since the Clinton and Bush administrations. These were principles around which all Americans could agree on and around which a bipartisan coalition could be built between and within Congress and the Obama administration. It was a bit like the old adage where “mother and apple pie” are the policy, and who can say “no” to that? We all want democratic institutions, peace, security, opportunity, development, and economic growth for Africa.

While support in all of these “core components” is warranted and should continue to be given, the questions we need to ask ourselves are where are US strategic interests best served, what really matters to the United States, and where can we really have an impact, for us and for Africa? Are these ideals responding to Africa’s needs? Are they the “right” ones?

The focus on trade and investment at the summit and in earlier policy pronouncements is understandable; but there are security issues linked to international terrorism that need to be addressed as well, along with emerging democracies that need to be strengthened, infrastructure that needs to be built, and conflicts and humanitarian crises that need to be addressed.

Is the US policy community asking itself these questions?

Can these policy streams be kept in balance and are these the directions that the United States seems to be taking?

Photos Courtesy Reuters

PERSPECTIVES Whither Democracy in Africa?

Africa has always had an economic potential that should have made it important to the United States no matter what angle was considered: economic, political, or security. The inhibiting factors for a vibrant economic relationship in past years were conflict and corrupt governance in Africa. While high profile conflicts still exist in the Central African Republic, Somalia, South Sudan, Mali, and the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the era of constant conflict and instability is gone. However, the growth of democracy in Africa has been a slow process. The first 30 years or so of “independence” in Africa, from roughly 1958 to 1990, showed few tendencies towards democracy as the West would define it. Sure, the West paid lip service to promoting democracy, but even Africans made few pretenses that they shared that goal. One needs to look no further than at the Organization of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963, which carried in its charter a sacrosanct codicil that no African country could broach the sovereignty of another, for whatever reason, including oppression and massacre of their citizens. It was, therefore, not just that internal politics, the succession of leadership, and the sharing of the perks of power were not monitored, but the treatment of people, however brutal, was considered the sovereign responsibility of the country, and not that of its neighbors.

One can take little comfort in the history of democracy in Africa prior to 1990. There was no “culture” of democracy, as some scholars call it. But, dramatic things were about to happen. Long before Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya felt it, an “Africa Spring” swept the continent in the 1990s. When the Berlin Wall came down, the international support that existed for any leader who was willing to sell his loyalty for a price began to disappear. No longer did Cold War allegiances dictate the development and economic policies of the major powers.

The stirrings of democratic trends began to be apparent early on. South Africa had already shown signs of the monolith breaking, as it helped broker the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe and allowed South-West Africa to become an independent Namibia. Both had been on the frontline of advancing communism prior to that. In 1990, South Africa was to lift the ban on the liberation parties, release political prisoners—Nelson Mandela included—and voluntarily take part in a Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), where all parties negotiated a settlement, agreed to rewrite the constitution, and set a date for the first ever all-inclusive elections. This came at about the same time as the other great bastion of non-democracy, the Soviet Union, was beginning to disappear, and the connection may not be coincidental.

Africa noticed the unraveling of the Soviet Union, and the call for national conventions, new constitutions, responsible governance, and empowerment of people began to reverberate throughout the continent. Under great public pressures, facing the unprecedented growth of civil society organizations, and suddenly facing international donors no longer willing to fund them, autocratic governments in Africa began to respond, scheduling elections, and showing the institutional face of democracy by writing constitutions and Photos Courtesy Reuters

setting up supposedly independent judiciaries. The 1990s saw a rash of multiparty elections and new constitutions, a trend that has continued to this day. But at the same time, the “big men” were not ready to give up easily, and they manipulated the elections, put off constitutional conventions, bought off or intimidated opposition, sometimes just ignored the results of elections, and hoped the West would be a bit more interested in stability than in true democracy. For instance, Kenya declared multiparty elections in 1992, and every election since has had violence, intimidation, and predictable results. However, because the country was important to the West in security and economic terms and things held together relatively well after the elections, the results were accepted each time by the international community, including the 2007 elections which caused an International Criminal

Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde and Senegalese President Macky Sall after a recent meeting over economic issues.

Court intervention over the levels of violence they spurred.

The same happened in Nigeria over its past two elections, as in Gabon, Madagascar, Benin, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, and almost every African country that has had elections since 1990. These elections did little to change anything in terms of the empowerment of people, of real and legitimate oppositions emerging, and of Western democracy taking root.

Manipulation was the operative word for ruling parties, and settling was the operative word for the watching world, as in settling “for a substantially free and fair election that was procedurally correct.”

Another element began to come into play in pressuring governments to move to democratic processes: Official Development Assistance (ODA) had to be tied to performance.

The term used by the US government was “conditionality,”

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PERSPECTIVES meaning aid was conditioned on a country’s progress in raising living standards for its population, having open, free, and fair elections, and opening opportunities for all in education, employment, and development. The principle of conditionality was a basis of World Bank and IMF policy in the 1980s and is now commonplace. It is enshrined in the United States’ approach to giving countries billions of dollars from its Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), started in 2004. To do so, countries have to commit to “good policies,” which the corporation defines as “ruling justly, encouraging economic freedom, and investing in people.” The MCC website emphasizes that those countries must enact market-oriented measures designed to open economies to competition, fight corruption, and encourage transparent business dealings. In addition, governments must invest in their citizens’ health care and education. There has been much criticism of the MCC approach, as there was of the World Bank’s structural adjustment, but this criticism revolves more around implementation rather than the principle of conditionality.

A band of vigilantes composed of a group of Nigerian traditional hunters pose as they hunt for Boko Haram. Such instability on the continent still poses grave issues for economic development.

With all this pressure, domestically and internationally, for the establishment of democracy in Africa and the demise of the Cold War, Africa has begun to change. Since 1990, despite all the resistance from entrenched political elites, there have been repeated multi-party elections where sitting presidents lost and stepped down peacefully. This has happened in Mauritius, Ghana, Somalia, Zambia, Cape Verde, Benin, São Tomé and Principe, Botswana, Senegal, Namibia, and elsewhere. Sometimes, the elections have even seen a change of the ruling political party. Even where old leaders try to hang on through extra-constitutional means, it does not happen without a challenge anymore. As has been seen in Kenya, Senegal, Ethiopia, and more recently Burkina Faso, 20

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this challenge comes from the people as well as the international community. Even the African Union (AU), the body that replaced the OAU in 1999, has changed the non-interference codicil, created the Peer Review Mechanism to monitor democratic progress, and refused to recognize governments that come to power by a coup.

This begins to mount up as evidence that democracy is taking root, and that multi-party rule and stability are becoming the norm. Freedom House, in its 2012 Freedom Index, lists 27 out of 49 sub-Saharan African countries as “free” or “partly free.” The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which uses a different set of criteria, had 21 African countries listed as “full” or “flawed” democracies, or hybrid regimes. 23 are listed as autocratic. The EIU states in the narrative of its Democracy Index that “the number of elections held annually in recent years has increased; since 2000 between 15 and 20 elections have been held each year. African democracy appears to have flourished and the holding of elections has become commonplace, but not all ballots pass the test of being ‘free and fair’ and many have been charades held by regimes clinging on to power. Similarly, coups d’état have become more infrequent, although conflict, failed governments, and human rights abuses remain too widespread. For every two steps forward over the past 20 years there has been at least one step back, but the overall trend appears to be in the right direction.” Not a ringing endorsement, of course, but it certainly recognizes that the movement is forward and points out that the coups which flourished from independence through the 1990s at about 20 per decade, have diminished so there have been only seven since 2000, and one of those, in Guinea Bissau, has resulted in the coup makers holding democratic elections. Hopefully, that will be the case in Burkina Faso in the near future.

The trends certainly seem to be pointing towards an Africa with a “culture” of democracy beginning to take root.

Certainly democracy remains fragile, as coming elections in Burundi, the Central African Republic, and Mali show us. Single parties still dominate the landscape and militaries are still liable to intervene. However, citizen demands for immediate elections after the forcing out of President Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso a few months ago or the ongoing popular pressures for the end of long term presidencies in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon show that civil society has changed and democracy is demanded by the new, young, educated, information technology savvy, and activist Africans who now make up the majority of the population of the continent of one billion people. That is about as safe for democracy as it can be.

Is it the Economy?

Due to Africa’s vast economic potential, relative stability, burgeoning democracies, along with an increasingly modern, sophisticated, urbanized market and professional and entrepreneurial class, investors from EU and OECD countries like India, Japan, Brazil, and Turkey, as well as China have increasingly begun to move into the continent. The US private sector is catching on, and the US government is helping to encourPhotos Courtesy Reuters

PERSPECTIVES age this through instruments like the Private Capital Group for Africa, a group of high end capital investment firms with whom the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is partnering to foster “greater investment that supports key development objectives in Africa,” according to USAID. This is laudable, as are trade promotion activities by the Office of the US Trade Representative for Africa and private sector initiatives by the Corporate Council on Africa.

For the United States, its major instruments of economic outreach, the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) and the Millennium Development Goals come up for renewal or replacement in 2015, and a new administration and Congress will begin to look at opportunities for policy priorities.

The seminal question is: “should the African economy through trade and investment be the priority for US policy?” There is little doubt that the United States needs to fashion a comprehensive, coordinated economic policy on Africa. Working with the AU, the UN Economic Commission on Africa, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank, as well as African and US government and private sector stakeholders, there could be no more positive or profitable nail to hang the US policy hat on, a true win-win situation for all stakeholders. And it would bring the United States in line with China, Europe, and other investing nations to help create a level playing field between the United States and other global emerging powers. The United States must not live in the past. Today, entrepreneurs from Brisbane to São Paulo, Seoul, and Beijing

ful economic policy.

But is the economy the centerpiece in US-African policy?

If not, should it be?

Or is it Terrorism and National Security?

There is little doubt that the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit was historic. There were about 40 heads of state, including royalty, and never before has a US administration engaged such a senior African leadership group at such a high level.

On the trade and investment side, the summit resulted in some serious and significant commitments although very little that was new money or policy from the US government side. The only new inputs came from the private side. By my count, there were new commitments in the neighborhood of US$50 billion from the business community and only US$15 billion from the US government. All of this is welcome, but does not represent a major change in policy direction or magnitude as far as government is concerned. The most positive trend here is the realization by the US business and risk capital investment communities of Africa’s potential. It is, after all, the private sector that will have to drive sustainable development. Government can only do so much.

On the security and peacekeeping side, while the United States was not excessive in its commitments at the summit, the ones it made show where its priority is now being placed, if it was not already there. Obama announced the Security Governance Initiative and committed US$65 million to sup-

“Due to Africa’s vast economic potential ... investors from EU and OECD countries like India, Japan, Brazil, and Turkey, as well as China have increasingly begun to move into the continent.” reap super profits from their African ventures, in fact the highest return on investment in the world.

From this standpoint, those advocating simple continuity of AGOA or pushing for reform independent of the bigger picture may actually be undermining a more progressive US policy toward Africa—even more dangerous to US progress than traditional protectionist and isolationist views. Now may be just the right time and right environment for the United States to craft a more expansive program and economic initiative for Africa—an enhanced AGOA. Instructively, as the United States’ most significant Africa program, AGOA does, indeed, present a baseline for a more equitably beneficial partnership. While we now have or are seeking comprehensive policies like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, there is no such animal for Africa. We need that animal. We need coordination and consultation across the spectrum of stakeholders—the White House, private sector, Congress, State Department, Department of Commerce, and all the specific agencies taxed with trade policy—and with African governments and private sector to fashion a meaning-

port it. It will include six select countries: Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Tunisia. The initiative will focus on building institutions of good governance and the capacities of security sectors, including civilian ministries, police, and military, depending on the needs of each country. It mandates close consultation and cooperation with the host governments.

On peacekeeping, President Obama announced the African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership and committed US$110 million per year for three to five years to build the capacity of African militaries to rapidly deploy peacekeepers in response to emerging conflict. This effort will be in partnership with the following countries: Senegal, Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. While this is only about a US$600 million in total—not much in the context—it is building on longer-term security commitments made in past years.

Security, it could be argued, was the focus of Cold War era policy of the United States and certainly has remained so, probably taking on a more prominent place in the last two decades, even before the introduction of AFRICOM in 2007.

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PERSPECTIVES relief situations, it was easy to subordinate other policy considerations. However, the rationale that prioritizes security as the leading consideration in US policy since the 1990s is less clear and leaves the observer to find his or her own conclusion that Africa in general is not a high priority except where it intersects with national global security concerns and the “war on terror.”

It then takes on a deeper concern and greater commitment of resources. Just a brief review of current Africa-based “terror” concerns paints a pretty frightening picture. Al Shabaab, while losing ground to Kenyan-reinforced AU troops, still operates in many parts of Somalia and has, in the last two years, exported terror attacks to Uganda and Kenya.

Boko Haram runs rampant in northern Nigeria, kidnapping, raping, and killing on a daily basis in a rebellion originally prompted by legitimate grievances of neglect and exclusion by the central government but now fueled by regional and international linkages with radical Islamists. Northern Mali, Niger, and the Sahel region are still combating, with French assistance, rebel Islamist groups that include Ansar al-Dine, MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad), Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in Africa, and some other Tuareg nationalist movements which also had land and marginalization issues but have now come under outside Islamist influence. Recently, existing tensions around political contestations in the Central African Republic have blossomed into a conflict that has taken on a ChristianIslam split as Islamist influences from Chad and elsewhere forced terrified Central Africans to choose sides. Furthermore, there has been serious talk by Islamists like the Al-Minbar Jihadi Media Network, an Islamist website, of creating a “belt” across the Maghreb from West to East Africa.

The US policy response has been predictable. Early efforts have included the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) of 2002 to 2004 in Mali, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania, a counterterrorism effort; and the Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI), (2005 to 2008), which replaced PSI and was an interagency plan for 11 countries. In that time frame, there were at least four other security and counterintelligence programs targeting Africa. More recently, there has been the special training of elite anti-terror forces in the Sahel region, the deployment of Special Forces in Uganda and the Central African Republic in support of the battle against the Lord’s Resistance Army, and the use of US drones for surveillance in Niger and in at least two cases, possibly more, for striking an Al Shabaab target in Somalia.

While funding for these programs is hidden amongst a myriad of Department of Defense (DoD) and State Department budget lines, making totals almost impossible to ascertain, we know the following: the TSCTI had an original authorization from Congress for US$500 million, and there are plans to fund the Security Partnership Initiative, referred to above, at US$5 billion. Add to that recent creations like the Partnership for Regional East African Counterterrorism (PREACT), which includes 12 countries. While PREACT is run through the State Department’s Africa Bureau since its establishment in 2008, the creation of AFRICOM has resulted 22

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in most of these programs being folded under its auspices, including the TSCTI. AFRICOM’s core budget is US$280 million this year, a relatively modest amount, but one must remember the six separate commands that fall under it, some in Europe and some in Africa, like the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa engagement of the Special Operations Forces in Djibouti. Adding up these command budgets, along with expenditures on International Military Education and Training funds and foreign military sales, the total could amount to US$7 billion or more. This estimate does not seem extreme in light of the 2013 study authorized by the Department of Defense for the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), which says that up to US$9 billion may make it into Africa through the various budget lines from which funds are drawn.

(The calculation that the ISAB used was that US$25 billion is set aside worldwide for security assistance, of which about US$16 billion goes to Israel, Egypt, other Middle East countries, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the remainder being split up around the rest of the world.)

If we follow the money “trail,” as law enforcement tends to do when tracking organized crime, we must conclude that the priority of US strategic interests is in security and not economic or infrastructure development, trade, or investment and that this has been US policy on Africa at least since 1992 and probably long before. Whether this is shortsighted on the US side or not, only time will provide the answer. We cannot know what the future will hold or what trends will continue and which ones will disappear, and whether the focus on security shall remain supreme.

There is one directive spelled out by the president at the August 2014 summit that gives hope that policy will match reality. The hope lies in the fact that President Obama, in his closing remarks at the summit, set the stage for continued consultations at the highest level on all these issues and policy considerations. He said: “Given the success that we’ve had this week, we agreed that summits like this can be a critical part of our work together going forward, a forcing mechanism for decisions and action. So we agreed that the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit will be a recurring event to hold ourselves accountable for our commitments and to sustain our momentum.

And I’ll strongly encourage my successor to carry on this work, because Africa must know that they will always have a strong and reliable partner in the United States of America.”

This ongoing dialogue will allow for a reexamination of strategic priorities, including moving from a focus on security to one on a comprehensive, coordinated economic plan for US involvement in Africa. That would help create jobs and profits for Americans, assist Africa in its own economic progress across the board (essential for stability, peace, and development), and, in the end, might be the only issue around which international partnerships, or at least cooperation, can be formed. Better yet, this area of trade and investment is one of the few around which bipartisan coalitions can be formed in our current polarized political atmosphere.

PERSPECTIVES

Europe’s Economic Policy Conundrum LORENZO BINI SMAGHI is a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Previously, he was a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Affairs.

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he Eurozone economy is stalling. Growth forecasts have been revised down. Inflation is falling, well below the level consistent with the definition of price stability (two percent). Unemployment remains high. Divergences between the members of the monetary union have not shrank, with northern countries recording large and increasing surpluses in their current accounts, while the deficits in the south have largely been cut through sharp contractions in domestic demand and imports.

What needs to be done to put the Eurozone on a more sustainable growth path is clear. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), restated it recently in Jackson Hole at the yearly conference organized by the Federal Reserve. It concerns three main policy areas.

First, Europe needs structural reforms to increase its growth potential and raise productivity growth. These reforms are particularly important in countries like France and Italy, which have lost competitiveness over the past few years.

Second, aggregate demand needs to be boosted through concerted action at the European level to reduce the slack in the economy. Third, monetary policy needs to become more expansionary to counter the risks of deflation, which have emerged over the recent past.

The implementation of these policies is much more complicated and faces a series of political and institutional

Photos Courtesy Reuters

difficulties, some of which are common to the advanced economies, others that are specific to the Eurozone. This explains why Europe lags behind and may continue to muddle through in the near future.

Let us start with structural reforms. The European difficulties are not that different from those experienced in other parts of the world, notably Japan. Reforms are hard to implement because they lead to a redistribution of rights and income across different groups in society. Those that are affected negatively by the reforms tend to oppose them very strongly, given their vested interests. When these interest groups are well organized, for instance in unions and corporative interests, they are able to get the support of the public, making it hard for governments to implement the reform.

Reforms tend to be implemented when the economic situation is so dire that a growing majority of citizens understands that there is no alternative to change. Germany started implementing its structural reforms in the early 2000s, in the face of a record unemployment rate since World War II. Germany was considered “the sick man of Europe.” Reforms could get approved since people finally realized that the future of the German social and economic system was at stake.

Nevertheless, it required harsh political fights and ultimately cost Gehrard Schroeder, the German chancellor, reelection.

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PERSPECTIVES putting the country’s social cohesion at risk.

Countries that have not experienced such dramatic deteriorations, like France and Italy, face even greater difficulties when implementing reforms. Citizens do not seem to understand how grave the situation is and may still live under the illusion that the economy can recover without major changes.

Italy nevertheless adopted one of the most far-reaching pension reforms in 2012, but this was only possible because financial stability was at risk. This suggests that in order for reforms to be implemented throughout the Eurozone, the economy may have to get worse.

This raises an additional problem: it takes time before people can actually see the effects of structural reforms on economic growth. Some of these reforms may even produce negative effects in the short term, especially on employment and budget accounts. It is therefore politically difficult to implement reforms while pursuing other restrictive policies, particularly fiscal consolidation. The paradox is that in principle, it is better to pursue structural reforms during “good times,” but the political incentive to do so arises only during “bad times.”

This brings us to the second policy area, fiscal policy.

Given the slowdown of aggregate demand in the Eurozone, fiscal policy should be somewhat relaxed. However, there is no single fiscal policy in the union, as the member states retain responsibility for their own budgets. Furthermore, member states have limited room to maneuver, given the high debt levels recorded in some countries. The financial market instability experienced in 2010 to 2012 has shown that countries with high deficits and debts have very little margin for loosening policies and need to continue their consolidation efforts.

Many observers tend to blame the European institutional framework, in particular the Stability and Growth Pact which limits deficits to three percent of GDP, for the austerity policies implemented over the past few years. However, the major restraints on the ability to relax budget policies ultimately came from financial markets. The debt sustainability of Italy, Spain, and Ireland—not to talk about Greece—requires that they continue to pursue medium term consolidation.

A key question is whether the pace of consolidation can be relaxed, at least in the short term. This requires that financial markets agree to finance a slower pace of adjustment, which ultimately depends on the credibility of the adjustment itself. This raises the issue of the complementarity between structural reforms and fiscal consolidation. The more a country embarks on structural reforms, the stronger its growth potential will be, and thus the sustainability of its public debt. Therefore, a country implementing structural reforms should in principle be able to afford a more gradual—and more effective—pace of fiscal adjustment. This is precisely what the European policy authorities would like to achieve, given the difficulty to implement structural reforms and fiscal consolidation at the same time.

In fact, the trade-off between structural reforms and fiscal consolidation is consistent with the way in which the Stability and Growth Pact has been applied over time. In 2003, while Germany experienced a budget deficit higher than three 24

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percent, the fiscal correction was diluted over several years in order to allow the country to implement a series of important reforms that would over time transform the “sick man of Europe” into one of the best performing economies in the world.

Recently, Spain and France have also been given more time to reduce their deficits below the three percent benchmark in light of the reforms that they were implementing.

The problem with such a trade-off is time consistency.

It takes time for reforms to be fully implemented and affect growth and employment, while budgetary measures have a much more direct impact. Ideally, the fiscal policy leeway should be granted before, or at the same time when structural reforms are being implemented, so as to create a favorable

The former currency of Greece, the Drachma, sits next to its current currency, the Euro, on a European Union flag. Greek debt has been a major concern for the Eurozone in recent years.

political environment for the latter. However, there is a risk that once the fiscal space is created, and used, policy makers will have little incentive to complete the part of the package related to the reforms. This would lead to a loss of credibility and a deterioration of the mutual trust between European policymakers.

The policy debate in Europe has been stuck on this issue, about whether the room to maneuver for fiscal policy adjustment—the so-called flexibility—should be provided before or after the implementation of structural reforms, and about which reforms are needed in order to use the required flexibility. This is clearly an issue of coordination failure, which needs to be addressed by a common institution, ideally the European Commission.

The mandate of the previous European Commission just expired in October 2014, and the new commission, chaired

by Jean-Claude Juncker started immediately after. In his July speech to the European Parliament, Juncker recognized the need to re-launch demand in Europe. He proposed a plan for public investments in the order of 300 billion euro over several years. While Europe certainly needs large infrastruc-

Photos Courtesy Reuters

PERSPECTIVES ture projects, these investments generally take time before they are executed and take time to produce a stimulus effect on the economy. Juncker has also underlined the need to give new impetus to the internal market, further reducing barriers to trade in goods and services. However, this will not be politically easy, as several countries have in the past opposed moves towards further integration. The success of Eurosceptic parties in the last European election builds on the request to restore barriers to the mobility of people and goods in the union.

Countries with sound fiscal positions, like Germany, which recorded a budget surplus in 2014 and a rapidly falling debt, would have room for some policy expansion. However, these countries do not have an incentive to relax their budgets, given that their economies perform relatively well and are close to full employment. Furthermore, the rules of the fiscal compact and the internal constitutional procedures require countries to adopt restrictive policies in “good times,” to create the room for maneuver in “bad times”. Finally, it is doubtful that an expansionary fiscal policy in a few countries in the European Union can produce large spillover effects for the other countries.

Ideally, countries that have to pursue fiscal consolidation should take into account the cyclical slowdown and the implementation of structural reforms, while countries that have sound budgetary positions should embark on a tem-

rate and depreciate the currency to ease the adjustment and make the debt sustainable. In a monetary union instead, the interest rate and exchange rate are determined on the basis of the area as a whole. As a result, an asymmetric shock hitting one or a few countries does not necessarily lead to an interest and exchange rate change, which makes the adjustment more painful and potentially destabilizing. The risk of multiple equilibrium in the price of government bonds may arise, leading to self-fulfilling expectations, including the potential exit of the country.

The Eurozone experienced these perverse dynamics during the crisis, until the ECB made it clear that it would do “whatever it takes” to avoid countries leaving the euro, provided that they adopted an adjustment program that the European Union approved. The ECB would thus stand ready to buy unlimited amounts of any country’s assets that would be sold for fear that that country would leave the euro. Such an announcement helped to calm the markets in the summer of 2012.

This brings us to monetary policy. In a monetary union there can be only one monetary policy, which means a single representative interest rate. For monetary policy to operate efficiently, however, money has to be able to flow easily from one part of the union to the other, without major impediments. It should not really matter how and where the central bank intervenes to inject or withdraw liquidity in the markets,

“The Eurozone experienced ... perverse dynamics during the crisis, until the ECB made it clear that it would do ‘whatever it takes’ to avoid countries leaving the euro.” porary expansion without jeopardizing the medium-term soundness of their public finances. However, it is very difficult to coordinate fiscal policy in Europe due to the different initial conditions, the diverse cyclical positions of the member states, and the still incomplete institutional framework.

An additional complication comes from the full separation between monetary and fiscal policy in the Eurozone. De facto, monetary policy is outside the control of the member states, and the central bank pursues the primary objective of price stability in the Eurozone as a whole. Such a separation is beneficial in good times because it prohibits governments from interfering with the conduct of monetary policy and from using inflation as a tax to finance public expenditure.

In the midst of financial turmoil, however, the full separation between the central bank and the treasury may make it more difficult for financial markets to price the government bonds of the different countries in an efficient way. European governments de facto issue debt that is denominated in a “foreign” currency. When the debt is denominated in the national currency, a default is much more difficult to occur.

For instance, a country that is hit by a negative shock, which raises its budget deficit and debt, may reduce the interest

because the free flow of funds within the system should evenly distribute the liquidity across the union.

The financial crisis has put an end to these ideal conditions, as financial markets partly renationalize. Credit spreads started to be charged again for cross-border flows, in fear of sovereign or bank risks, which became increasingly correlated. Given that European banks are heavily invested in domestic government bonds, an increase in sovereign debt immediately translates into higher banking risk. Vice versa, an increase in banks’ credit risks raises sovereign risk, given that banks’ failures end up raising the national public debt.

The fragmentation of the financial market reduced the effectiveness and homogeneity of monetary policy throughout the union. Monetary conditions became relatively tighter in the part of the union that needed more accommodative conditions, and vice versa. The ECB tried to intervene to correct the differential in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy, but as a consequence raised fundamental questions about the role of monetary policy. In particular, the ECB intervened by purchasing government bonds from Greece, Portugal, and Ireland and subsequently from Italy and Spain, to try to avoid the spiraling of banks’ funding costs that Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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PERSPECTIVES was unduly tightening monetary conditions. However, such interventions led to the direct assumption of sovereign risk by the ECB, which could lead to a redistribution of income in case the sovereign risk would effectively materialize and lead to capital losses for the ECB.

into the markets in exchange for liquidity. Financial institutions would then use that liquidity to purchase other—more risky—assets or to lend to the private sector. This is broadly the same instrument that has been implemented by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England, under the name of quantitative easing.

The key question about such a policy is what type of assets the central bank should buy. The risk associated with such a policy is that it interferes with the market pricing system and it absorbs risks from the private sector, which, if they materialize, would lead—as mentioned previously—to a redistribution of income across ECB shareholders, the taxpayers of the different countries. For instance, if the ECB buys government bonds from a country whose debt is later restructured, with a capital loss for the central bank, the loss will be shared by all the ECB’s shareholders, and thus all countries. This is the reason why there are strong reservations within the ECB to purchase government bonds. On the other hand, government bonds are the most widespread and liquid assets in European financial markets. If the central bank wants to intervene in a quantitatively meaningful way it cannot rely only French President François Hollande at the latest meeting of the World on private paper.

Economic Forum. The recent bond buying efforts of the ECB and the surge This problem would not arise if there was a single of the Swiss Franc were discussed. treasury in the Eurozone, or a single debt instrument like a Eurobond, issued under a joint guarantee by An additional problem is that the ECB’s interventions reduced countries’ incentives to adopt appropriate fiscal the member states. However, this would require shifting to and structural policies. Given that political authorities have a fiscal union, with the transfer of powers in the budgetary the incentive to act only when they feel the pressure of the field from the national parliaments and governments to the markets, they tend to relax the intensity of their policy ef- European Union. We are not there yet, and unlikely to make forts as soon as market tensions appease. By intervening in such a move in the near future.

The ECB is nevertheless bound by its mandate, which financial markets, the central bank thus risks taking away the pressure on the other policymakers to implement their part sets price stability as its primary objective. If inflation does of the adjustment. This is not unique to the Eurozone, but not move back to the two percent level, the central bank will has been quite evident in several European countries over have to step up its interventions, adding even more liquidity eventually through government bond purchases. If the ECB the last few years.

The debate about the role of monetary policy has be- systematically fails to meet its objective, it risks losing its come more acute as inflation gradually fell below the level independence, as it happened to the Bank of Japan when consistent with the definition of price stability, which is “less it allowed deflation to become entrenched in the Japanese than but close to two percent.” The traditional instrument economy.

Monetary policy can achieve price stability, which is a through which the central bank injects liquidity in the markets has become ineffective. The ECB provides liquidity mainly necessary pre-condition for growth and job creation, but it through refinancing operations with the banking system, cannot replace other policies, in particular structural reforms, against collateral. The conditions have been gradually relaxed, in strengthening the economy’s potential. Without structural in particular through close to zero interest rates and unlimited reforms, the Eurozone will continue to underperform comsupply. The problem with such a procedure is that the quantity pared to the other major economic areas. There is even the of liquidity injected in the markets ultimately depends on the danger, as pointed out above, that monetary policy takes demand from the banking system. If the demand for credit away the incentive for politicians to implement reforms.

To sum up, Europe needs a package of policies to tackle is weak and banks are concerned for their capital adequacy, the demand for central bank liquidity tends to drop. This the cyclical and structural components of its economic slowresults in a decrease in the size of the balance sheet—and down. But each of the policies faces specific institutional conthus a tightening of monetary conditions—at a time when straints and may create disincentives for other policymakers to do their part. Although this issue is not unique to Europe, the economy slows down.

Consequently, the ECB had to change its policy instru- Europe’s incomplete institutional setup makes it more difficult ment. Instead of standing ready to lend money to banks, the for the continent to overcome the dilemma. central bank decided that it would purchase assets directly 26

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Photos Courtesy Reuters

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Korean Unification:

A New Kind of Peacebuilding Project PROFESSOR MYOUNG-KYU PARK is the current director of the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University.

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n January 2014, South Korean President Park Geunhye’s reference to the unification of the two Koreas as a potential “economic bonanza” caused a resurgence of interest in the unification dialogue. Subsequently, in May and June of 2014, President Park brought up the topic of unification as a major agenda item for South Korea, toward which both US President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed approval. The North Korean regime, however, evinced a strong negative reaction to these statements, and the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Worker’s Party of Korea, Rodong Sinmun, made its stance explicit in arguing that the international community’s confrontational maneuvers “injure [the North Korean] ideology and system.” Countries neighboring the Korean peninsula have also tended to accept unification as an elusive vision for the future rather than as an immediate possibility. To what extent, then, are the theories of peaceful unifaction feasible initiatives, and how can they contribute to peacebuilding in northeast Asia and the international community?

The Internationalization of the North Korean Issue

In modern society, North Korea poses a number of complex risks. North Korea’s development of a nuclear weapons program is a subject of particular concern to the international community. Since 2006, North Korea has publicly conducted nuclear tests amidst suspicion and surveillance—and dePhotos Courtesy Reuters

spite the international community’s attempts to contain the situation. North Korea’s development and testing of nuclear weapons is targeted at undermining principles of nonproliferation, and such jeopardization of the world order established post-World War II is one of the major challenges confronting international politics today. The United States, China, Russia, and Japan, alongside South Korea, launched the Six-Party Talks with North Korea in 2003 in order to address the denuclearization of the country, but the dialogue has been suspended since 2008.

Moreover, in 2009 and 2013, North Korea’s de facto government conducted nuclear tests, effectively establishing itself as a nuclear power. In addition to the continuation of missile tests, North Korea’s successful launch of the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite in 2012 established its status of having achieved substantial abilities in intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) technology. After North Korea’s first and second nuclear tests, the United Nations subsequently adopted Resolutions 1718 and 1874. It additionally adopted Resolution 2087 after the 2012 satellite launch, and finally, Resolution 2094 after its third nuclear test, which imposed a variety of sanctions on North Korea.

Recently, however, North Korea has drawn the world’s attention in areas other than its nuclear program. On November 24, 2014, the US film studio Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked in light of its production of the movie The Interview, a caricature of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. President Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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PERSPECTIVES Obama attributed it to the work of North Korean hackers. Following the development of nuclear and missile technology, North Korea has reportedly attained technological capabilities for cyberterrorism to a degree that is once again a cause for concern. Additionally, the North’s harsh and systematic human rights abuses captured the attention of the world. In February 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s adoption of the North Korea Human Rights Resolution (based on a report published by the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) established that the North Korean government should be held responsible for crimes against humanity. The Commission of Inquiry’s report stated that top North Korean leadership would be liable to prosecution by the International Criminal Court, and the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution on November 18, 2014 by an overwhelming majority.

The perils and the urgency of dealing with North Korea have been amplified by the ascendancy of Kim Jong-un to his current position. Any expectations for advancements that Kim Jong-un, the First Chairman of the National Defense Commission who has studied abroad in Switzerland, could have promoted have all but dwindled; instead, a harsh and overbearing image of the young political leader has taken root. In 2013, Kim Jong-un revised the Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to reinforce the nation’s dual ambitions of nuclearization and economic development. Nuclear power was hailed as the pride of the nation and framed as an important asset for maintaining the systems of the North Korean state. It has been difficult to predict the inner workings of the North Korean government, and the world watched in shock when Kim Jong-un executed Jang Sung-taek, his uncle and a leading figure in government, in December 2013. Therefore, the possibility of the liberalization of North Korea under Kim Jong-un’s rule has ultimately become increasingly slim.

The destabilization of North Korea poses a further threat to its border regions, particularly with China. There is a largescale movement of refugees across the border into China, which has the potential to cause unrest in the East Asian region. North Korea has retained a large number of its conventional weapons, and its commitment to militaristic values and practices also amplifies the potential for military unrest in the region. Furthermore, sudden instability in the state system of Northeast Asia may aggravate hostilities between the United States and China. While North Korea’s problems are compounded by the possibility of greater cooperation between the United States and China, in reality, the tension between the two powers is exacerbated by their dealings with North Korea. China and the United States have consistently adopted opposing stances in the six-party discussions of international sanctions against North Korea and internationalizing human rights issues in North Korea. In particular, while the annual large-scale US-South Korean joint military exercises threaten North Korea, they are more likely to conflict with China’s security interests.

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The Korean Peninsula’s Post-Cold War Lag

The structural division of the Korean peninsula and North Korea’s response to the end of the Cold War are, from a historical standpoint, at the root of the problems beleaguering North Korea. During the second half of the 20th century, the global Cold War ideological faction opposed to the axis, coupled with the deep wounds of war, locked the North and South into hostile relations. However, the impact of the end of the Cold War was limited. While the Soviet Union was dismantled and Eastern Europe transitioned into a reunified German regime, the structural divide of the Korean peninsula has since remained unchanged. The post-Cold War era of globalization even impacted the Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East, but the impeded flow of people and materials across the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea persists.

Certainly, this is not to say that the end of the Cold War did not have an effect on the Korean Peninsula. The South Korean government, in the wake of the Cold War, was able to expand exchanges with former communist countries and was also able to deepen economic engagement with China. South Korean President Roh Tae-woo’s 1988 “July 7 Declaration,” born of his perception of North Korea not as a hostile country but as a potential partner, further enabled large-scale progress on the Korean peninsula after the end of the Cold War. In 1992, the adoption of a basic agreement on the commitment to cooperation and the joint declaration on denuclearization, as well as summit meetings conducted by Kim Il-sung in the North and Kim Young-sam in the South, were steps toward resolving the Cold War’s imposition of the geographic divide on the Korean peninsula.

“The question that remains is ... peace through division or peace through unification.”

This trend toward cooperation, though dampened by the sudden death of Kim Il-sung, was revived with the advent of the Kim Dae-jung administration and the first ever inter-Korean summit in 2000. The official exchanges and cooperation under the governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun demonstrated an earnest attempt to pursue an institutionalized peace agreement. However, these attempts to change the Cold War structure imposed on the Korean peninsula ultimately failed. In the wake of North Korea’s nuclear test in 2006, the nature of inter-Korean relations reverted back to being laced with hostility and opposition.

The resulting delays in post-Cold War reconciliation greatly intensified the asymmetries and imbalances between North and South Korea, giving North Korea further latitude to adopt a more passive stance toward South Korea. South Korea, China, Russia, and Eastern Europe have largely normalized relations, and yet North Korea has failed to normalize relations with the United States, Japan, and the West. North

PERSPECTIVES Korea has always denounced the “United States’ anti-North Korea policies,” and for this reason, the relationship between the two countries has not transitioned beyond that of a cease-fire type agreement based on fundamentally militaristic considerations.

Furthermore, the protracted end of the Cold War deepened the consequences of the so-called “Asian Paradox” in Northeast Asia. While the end of the Cold War contributed significantly to expanding economic exchange and greater regional market integration, the dialogue over shared values vis-à-vis human rights and establishing a common security system like the Helsinki Process did not make the same headway. Since the end of the Cold War, despite the rapid economic

emphasis of each agreement forms a consensus around three main points. The first point is to respect the other’s existence in order to recognize and protect the political principle of non-intervention. Second, use of force is prohibited in favor of establishing and promoting a common goal of peaceful unification. Third, the relationship between South and North in terms of a unified ethnic community is distinct from international relations and must thus be solved independently. These principles are central to the two Koreas when dealing with common issues. This relationship is defined, conceptually, as a “provisional special relationship formed in the process of pursuing unification.”

However, these agreements have not established norms

“...democratic values, human rights, freedom, communication, tolerance, and diversity will shape the task of constructing a comprehensive, future-oriented reunification vision...” growth of China and the Northeast Asian region, international tensions and conflicts over political orientation were not alleviated. The peace regime that had briefly appeared on the Korean peninsula vanished into thin air, ultimately with limited effect. Consequently, due to the delayed resolution of the Cold War, the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia are confronted by major obstacles in forging a new community through mutual communication and trust-building. The structure and division of the Korean peninsula still to this day constitute the core of this disorder.

A Provisional State of Stability and Instability

The delay between the end of the Cold War and the rise of globalization resulted in impeding the two Koreas’ formation of an orderly coexistence. Having been divided for 70 years, long since the end of the Cold War, there is no strategic framework for interaction and mutual understanding between the two Koreas.

The relationship between North and South Korea remains suspended in a precarious state—not quite war-torn, though certainly not peaceful—compounded by the existence of the emotional considerations reminiscent of an ethnic community once bonded by nationhood and brotherhood. While families separated between North and South embrace each other warmly when they have occasion to be reunited at the Demilitarized Zone, the residents of the North and South must brand one another as the enemy. The meeting of North and South Koreans can thus be defined as either lawful and or unlawful, depending on the situation.

Certainly, the authorities of North and South Korea have drawn up a number of agreements for pairing with each other, including the July 4 North-South Joint Statement of 1972, the Basic Agreement of 1992, the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration of 2000, and the October 4 Declaration of 2007.

While the existing agreements differ in terms of content, the

that broadly regulate the relationship between the two Koreas. The basic agreements did not even attain legal status through ratification by the South Korean National Assembly.

Declaration 6.15, upon which North Korea places special emphasis, underscores the importance of a common and unified plan of cooperation, but it is limited in its function as an official strategic principle, as it is not equipped with the status of a legal norm. There have since been numerous meetings, negotiations, agreements, promises, two summit talks, and international conferences on the inter-Korean relationship, but the framework for lasting peace yet remains incomplete.

Unlike the case of East and West Germany, North and South Korea find it more difficult to accept each other as political entities because the separate political systems and national division were imposed upon them by foreign powers.

The collective trauma and hostility that the Korean War left behind has intensified this tendency. Therefore, it is difficult for Koreans to accept the division of the peninsula as mere political reality, and mixed, contradictory attitudes persist amongst both populaces. For example, 60 percent of South Koreans express strong distrust of and resistance to the Kim Jong-un regime. In light of this situation, the two Koreas will find it difficult to engage one another in dialogue and this impedes the possibility of open debate and normalized negotiations.

Planning for Peaceful Unification

The majority of South Koreans believe that the complete resolution of the North Korean issue will bring structured peace to the region. In this regard, the unification of the two Koreas forms the core of the Northeast Asian Peace Initiative.

But the pursuit of unification in the divided Korean peninsula could potentially also exacerbate the instability of the region.

The question that remains is then either the pursuit of peace through division or peace through unification.

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PERSPECTIVES In reality, the relationship between peace and unification is a rather ambivalent one. Unification is brought about through dialogue and discussion, but it also unearths an ideological battle. The two Koreas released at least three official documents regarding unification. The so-called “7.4 Joint Statement” of 1972 pledged that the two Koreas would pursue peaceful unification through three principles. Since then, these principles have been repeatedly emphasized. In 1992, the two Koreas signed the “Basic Agreement” based on employing nonaggression and cooperation in the gradual, step-by-step pursuit of unification. During the first ever interKorean summit of 2000, the so-called “June 15 Declaration” was adopted, and the two sides acknowledged that there could be common ground between the South’s conception of a confederate political system and the North’s formula for a loose federation. The North and the South agreed to use this common ground as a basis for promoting unification.

However, the two sides diverge in their interpretation of the principles of unification. North Korea regards principles of national independence as a US issue, and therefore considers the withdrawal of US troops from Korea as a prerequisite for broaching the issue of unification. They understand the principles of peace to be predicated on the dissolution of the North American armistice system. South Korea, on the other hand, seeks to establish principles of peace by prioritizing civil consensus between North and South Korea over the United States-South Korean alliance. However, South Korea’s overall policy choices for establishing national peace means that there is a focus on non-violent and non-military approaches, as well as various approaches featuring humanitarian access.

It is also important to note that there are no substitutes for international cooperation and the South Korean alliance with the United States. We must achieve unification through international cooperation.

There are two major dimensions to the unification of the Koreas. In other words, our approach to unification can either prioritize political and military dimensions, or it can prioritize building trust through social and cultural channels.

North Korea has continued to seek normalization of relations with regards to political and military issues, demanding an end to US-South Korean joint military exercises. Meanwhile, the South has entertained solutions to humanitarian issues under the principle that trust and cooperation can be cultivated through infrastructure development, economic cooperation, and the recovery of cultural homogeneity. In addition, South Korea and the United States have deemed North Korea’s nuclear disarmament a top priority objective, as North Korea’s nuclear program is considered the greatest threat to peace in the region. It is clear that if peace is to be achieved at the political and military level, both sides need to simultaneously promote the process of unification through the lens of promoting a comprehensive and interconnected social and cultural value system between the nations.

At this point, the unification initiative must be oriented around building a relationship of trust between the North and the South, particularly at the regional level. Unification is no longer about pursuing a nationalistic agenda or ad30

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dressing the psychological wounds that both sides incurred during the Korean War. Unification is also not about building a unified nation state in the increasingly modern world of the 21st century. If unification is used as a means of mobilizing nationalist sentiment in Korea, then it is not necessarily even desirable. Now, unification and peacebuilding calls for building a comprehensive, global context. Unification is not only the wish of the South Korean nation, but it also needs to be at the core of a regional strategy that features cooperation with the United States, China, Russia, and Japan.

Soft Power and Preparations for Unification

President Park Geun-hye’s government has stressed the need for preparing for unification. The phrase “unification preparation,” however, does not refer to the immediate realization of unification, but rather to more long-term vision and preparation. In fact, the very low level of inter-Korea exchanges and cooperation, as well as the low level of trust, makes it difficult to anticipate the unification process at this point. What is important is that the people of the Korean peninsula cultivate a future-oriented conception of a unified nation and comprehensively prepare to achieve it.

In the 21st century, the Korean peninsula will need to rely on unprecedented levels of cooperation and cultivate a collective vision of unification. A survey conducted by Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies suggests that the current orientation or attitude of the South Korean people toward unification is quite heterogeneous; according to the survey, approximately 60 percent of the respondents agree with the need for a unification vision, but they also see it as a long-term task that will take at least 20 to 30 years. In other words, there are not very many people who believe that unification is likely, at least in the near future. Moreover, the unity within South Korea itself may be weakening. The South and the North may claim that they are achieving unification through their own independent efforts, but in fact, the differences in underlying ethnic categories have changed significantly. There are substantial differences separating the political forces in the debate about unification issues. Progressives recognize North Korea as an independent political entity and thus believe that unification must be a voluntary decision on both sides. Conservatives, in contrast, highlight the qualitative change of the current North Korean regime as a precondition for achieving liberal democratic unity.

Therefore, in the 21st century, democratic values, human rights, freedom, communication, tolerance, and diversity will shape the task of constructing a comprehensive, futureoriented unification vision for the two Koreas. At the same time, in order to fully achieve unification, it will be important to strengthen soft power channels between the countries.

Democratic advancements through the expansion of civil society, channels of communication, and a culture of tolerance, as well as respect for diversity and human rights are what will create momentum for and prepare the Korean peninsula for unification. In this sense, unification is a northeast Asian, and ultimately global, mission and endeavor for peace.

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The Dash for Gas

How Iran’s Gas Supply Can Change the Course of Nuclear Negotiations TARA SHIRVANI currently works for the Energy and Transport Unit of the World Bank Group, with a focus on low-carbon energy projects in developing countries. She has worked at the Climate Policy Unit of the World Bank, the United Nations office in Iran, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank. In 2012 she was nominated as a World Economic Forum Young Global Shaper in the field of energy policy and sustainability.

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t the end of the 19th century, Lord Curzon, then the British Viceroy of India, described Iran and its neighboring Arab countries as “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the domination of the world.” Fastforward to the 21st century and not much has changed, as the ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West have started to show implications well beyond the Middle East peacemaking process, even spilling over into the European Union’s strategic decisions on how to consciously uncouple from Russia’s gas supply monopoly. So far, while Iran reached an interim one year deal with the West in early 2013 to freeze all nuclear activities on the condition of being provided with a temporary easing of some sanctions, the pace of progress remains slow. For now, the West is failing to propose an attractive offer that would alter the intransigent stand of the Iranians. Meanwhile, Europen-Russian relations have taken a turn for the worse with the illegal annexation of Crimea, the deliberate destabilization of Ukraine by Russia,

Photo Courtesy Reuters

and the imposition of restrictive EU measures against the Russian Federation. While the political standoff has many economic implications for Europe, the most stifling aspect is Russia’s tightening monopoly over the European Union’s energy supply. Moreover, with Germany’s decision to stop all domestic nuclear energy production after the environmental backlash experienced after the Fukushima incident, the Eurpean Union is likely to substitute even more of its energy demand with natural gas from Russia rather than polluting coal from Eastern Europe. If the European Union intends to speak with one voice vis-à-vis Russia and not remain politically influenced by a Russian monopoly on its gas supply, it will have to start diversifying its energy supply.

Realistically, Europe must pursue a win-win strategy with Iran where an easing of sanctions would entail a reciprocated offer of game-changing magnitude, able to address its main energy supply dilemma. The long-term substitution of Russian gas with supply from Iran is one potential solution. For Iran, replacing Russia as the EU’s long-term gas supplier is a highly lucrative avenue worth exploring, particularly as the Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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Source: The Economist

recent drops in oil prices have started to impact the government’s federal budget. As a result, the implications for the relationship between Iran and Russia will have to be carefully addressed; where, in recent years they have developed closer economic ties but historically have maintained more of a tense relationship. While there is no complete pipeline network in place that fully connects Iran’s gas grid to Europe, the country is already connected to Turkey via the TabrizAnkara pipeline—a prospective solution. The success and political repercussions of such a proposed deal can, however, only be approximated. Still it remains crucial to do so as only then will policy makers be able to offer and negotiate concessions directly addressing deeply intertwined global systemic developments.

Europe’s Energy Security: Gasping for Russian Gas

The annexation of Crimea and the consequent threats of gas supply shut-offs by Russia have been a crude awakening for Europe and its energy dependency. The Ukrainian crisis has led to the reiteration of an inconvenient truth: when it comes to political negotiation power, Europe will always remain strongly influenced by its single dependency on Russian gas supply. According to studies by the European Parliament, in 2013 Russia provided 43.2 percent of the European Union’s gas imports, 31.38 percent of its oil imports, and 26.7 percent of its coal imports. As oil and gas exports to Europe account for almost 52 percent of Russia’s federal budget income (US$515 billion), the Euroepan Union acts not only as crucial trade partner for Russia but also as vital economic crutch to its rather fragile real economy. The magnitude of the EU-Russia energy 32

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dependency becomes ever more apparent when analyzed on a per country basis (see figure above).

Several eastern and northern EU member states, including Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, rely on a single Russian supplier and single pipeline route for up to 80-100 percent of their annual gas supply. Other EU members have managed to hold a relatively diversified energy portfolio where Russian imports, nevertheless, hold a dominant share; Germany, for instance, sources up to 40 percent of natural gas from Russia. With Gazprom owning most of the pipeline network into the European Union, it is able to charge member countries different gas prices and leverage its dominant position in the market. As 50 percent of Russian gas imports transit through Ukraine to provide these countries with about 16 percent of gas consumption, a Ukrainian transit halt scenario would mean an imminent EU security threat.

The European Parliament has stated that in this scenario, up to 86 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year would have to be reallocated. As a result, Italy, Turkey, Germany, Czech Republic, and Hungary would feel the economic pinch most severely. According to research by the University of Cologne analyzing the available gas reserves of EU member states, the consequences of a complete Russian gas embargo would be first felt by Finland after one month, Bulgaria and Poland after three months, and by Greece, Estonia, Hungary, Cyprus, Slovenia, and Austria after six. Germany, Italy and France would fall within a nine-month grace period before gas storages are fully depleted.

At first glance, the last rounds of sanctions by the European Union imposed onto Moscow seem considerable

PERSPECTIVES enough to alter Russia’s political stance and force the Eurpean Union to rethink its energy policy. However, with the latest sanction package only intending to target the Russian oil industry and its access to credit, the decision to exclude the gas trade will in many ways be less economically stifling for the Union. Crude oil, a commodity which is regularly traded on the international markets, is simple to store and transport, and can easily be sourced and sold by both partners elsewhere.

On the contrary, natural gas is mostly sold as part of longterm contracts to offset the cost of a pre-existing and highly expensive pipeline network system. Still, prices will always be influenced by political instability in transit countries like Ukraine or Belarus.

With the widening rift between the European Union and Russia over the political situation in Ukraine and Syria, Vladimir Putin began to give Europe the cold shoulder and rebalance gas supplies eastward. Consequently, Moscow recently signed the single largest deal in the history of the former USSR: a US$400 billion gas contract with Beijing, providing China with 30 years of energy supply. Likewise, Putin’s abrupt abandonment of the South Stream pipeline project, intended to ship Russian gas via the Black Sea to Bulgaria by circumventing Ukraine, proves that Russia is not willing to cave anytime soon unless the Union drops its opposition to Russian meddling in Ukraine. As a result, European energy companies have a strong vested interest in developing alternative pipeline routes and finding new gas suppliers, and as such, have started to lobby for alternatives. The shift of natural gas supply from Russia to supply from Qatar, Algeria, or Norway is an avenue worth exploring, if the European Union is willing to accept a substantially higher energy bill. Still, one should note that due to the current fragile economy of several EU member states, a higher national energy bill not phased in over the long-term can lead to higher levels of inflation and possibly a prolonged period of recession.

North Dome field, situated in the Persian Gulf with Qatar which holds an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war, the country suffered from a notorious lack of sufficient refinery capacity which diminished its total production volume for natural gas to 166.6bcm, of which it currently only exports 9.4bcm. The European Parliament has highlighted Iran’s total export capacity to be more than 150bcm per year, which in the future, could easily rival current Gazprom’s export volumes of 140bcm to the European Union.

The Tabriz-Ankara pipeline running from Iran to Turkey transports gas from the South Pars gas field to the city of Bazargan at the border of Turkey. Iran is strongly bidding for the continuation of the pipeline network with the construction of the “Persian Pipeline:” A 3,300km network system which crosses Turkey before reaching Italy. Here it splits into a northern and southern section, transporting gas to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Spain. The capacity of the Persian Pipeline is estimated at about 37 to 40bcm per year and would require foreign investments of around US$7billion.

This route would bypass Russian territory and allow the EU to import 25 to 30bcm per year—equal to the total Russian gas export to Italy and Germany in 2013. Another long-term energy delivery option for Iran to Europe would be via Lique-

Iranian Gas: Europe’s Long-Term Saving Grace

While the European Union is not importing any oil and gas from Iran to date, the long-term potential of opening and stabilizing trade patterns with the energy-rich country should be carefully considered.

This is especially important given that alternative energy suppliers on par with Russian gas exports are few and an EU increase in energy efficiency measures and renewable energy sources remains incomparable in scale and impact. With oil prices currently falling below the benchmark price required for the Iranian government to balance its federal budget, a window of opportunity has opened up for the two counterparties to find a way out of their impasse.

From a supply perspective, Iran’s gas production volumes are more than promising. According to recent BP statistical reports, Iran holds the secondlargest natural gas reserves after Russia—equivalent to 15.8 percent of global total gas reserves. It shares the world’s largest offshore gas field, the South Pars/ Photo Courtesy Reuters

President Vladamir Putin of Russia and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran shake hands at the summit of Caspian Sea regional leaders conference. Potential competition between the two countries over the EU gas market could lead to a shift in the balance of power for both countries.

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PERSPECTIVES fied Natural Gas (LNG) at an estimated export capacity of up to 10bcm per year by the year 2017. The gas supply would be transported via a pipeline system to the Omani LNG hub and then shipped via cargos to the Mediterranean seaports.

With the trade-offs in the previous rounds of nuclear negotiations not having been attractive enough for the decision makers to sway their positions, there is now a possibility to expand the pie. Europe’s desire to decouple its gas dependency from Russia provides an opportunity for Iran to negotiate better terms with the Union, now potentially more willing to compromise as part of the nuclear talks. Finding a comprehensive solution as part of such a long-term quidpro-quo strategy could develop a trickle-down effect that can greatly affect the peacemaking process both in Ukraine and Syria. This linkage strategy between Iran and Europe will require long-term concessions from both parties. Herein the European Union vouches to reach a more substantial long-term deal on gas shipments from Iran, which includes investments in upgrading Iran’s refining capacity and the completion of the Persian Pipeline project. In return, the European Union would require Tehran to be more compromising as part of the nuclear negotiations and ask Iran to show a sign of goodwill now to get the deal done in time. If for nothing else, the Iranians have an incentive to provide oil and gas to an energy-starved European market to gain a larger leverage as part of its nuclear talks.

With Iran’s consent of this request from the European Union, Moscow will realize that its leverage over EU member countries would wane down in the medium to long-term future. Once Iran has “opened up” and its relationship with the West has normalized, it is likely for the country to be competing with Russia for a larger share of the EU gas market. With a new gas rival on the block, Russia may try to save as much of its grip over Europe as possible. An option would be to strike a deal over Ukraine in an attempt to save one of its main gas transfer countries to the European Union—its largest gas market for the foreseeable future.

Despite this potential competition, the relationship between Iran and Russia—developed since the Islamic Revolution in 1979—could seem like a cozy one. Especially since, in recent years, Moscow and Beijing have been avid supporters of Iran in situations of striking nuclear deals, even now with Moscow and Tehran recently negotiating a deal for Russia to construct eight new nuclear reactors, an addition to the existing Russian-built plant in Bushehr. However, it is important to note that nations are mainly driven by selfinterest and coalitions are formed as part of aligned interests which are subject to modifications at any point in time. The Russo-Iranian rapprochement is a direct consequence of the current global balance of power. While they have currently developed closer economic and political ties, their relations have historically been far from ideal and warm.

Ever since the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813 and the Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828, the relationship between Russia and Iran has been tense. Following the military victory of Russia over Iran, Crown Prince Abbas Mirza surrendered control of several considerable territories in the Southern 34

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Caucasus, which include present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Iranians today still refer to the Russian annexation of land owned by the Persian Empire as the historical origin of their uneasy relationship. The Russo-Persian liaison has deteriorated even further after being unable to agree on the status and ownership of the Caspian Sea together with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Russia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan all advance the division of the seabed and its underground resources along the median line. Such a proposed deal would allow the three states 64 percent ownership of the underwater area of the Caspian Sea and its resources.

Iran does not acknowledge such bilateral agreements as this would leave the country with only 11 to 14 percent ownership of the Caspian Sea. Instead, Iran advocates the transformation of the Caspian seabed into a joint-ownership model, which would divide the seabed into five equal national shares of 20 percent each.

The final ownership model is of paramount importance for the construction of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan along the bottom of the sea. Russia and Iran fail to see eye-to-eye on the final framework and the pipeline deal would require the agreement of all five Caspian countries to go ahead.

As such, Tehran is not cultivating closer ties with Moscow because it believes it to be a viable and trustworthy partner; rather, it found itself with limited options, as its interests today, as in the past, are overlapping more with the West. After all, a surge in Iranian oil exports to Europe after the lifting of sanctions could lower oil prices even further and negatively influence Russia’s growing budgetary pressures. This in fact may encourage Russia to negatively influence Iran from entering the market in the long-term.

Regardless of Iran’s potential for considerable gas exports in the future, the current spare capacity of Russia’s pipeline network system will shape the nation as the dominant energy supplier of the European Union for the foreseeable future.

Iran is well-advised to continue reforming its domestic energy sector, fortify its efforts of normalizing relationships with the West, and shape up to be the credible energy provider of choice for the European Union in the midterm future.

One should note the possibility that an imminent EURussian-Iranian rapprochement, based on the above outlined long-term strategy, also has the potential to be transposed onto the peacemaking process in Syria. A more compromising Iran, Russia, and European Union will send a strong signal to the conflicting parties: that the international community is addressing this conflict from a single voice, ultimately reducing the possibility for forum shopping. Yet, it is important that the European Union, Russia, and Iran realize that newly negotiated order is in their best interests. Ultimately, Iranian gas supply to the European Union can be the crucial building block in that direction. *Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not express the views of the World Bank, its board of executive directors, or the governments they represent.

INTERVIEW

Towards an Equitable and Effective Climate Deal An Interview with Mary Robinson

AN INTERVIEW BY

KATE YOON MARY ROBINSON served as the first female president of Ireland from 1990-1994 and as the UN high commissioner for human rights from 1997-2002. In 2014, she was appointed special envoy on climate change by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

After a career as the first female president of Ireland and then as the UN high commissioner for human rights, you started the Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice. What is climate justice, and why is it an important cause for you?

evaluate the outcome of the December 2014 climate negotiations in Lima? What do you think this means for the Paris negotiations?

Climate change disproportionately affects women because it undermines livelihoods. It undermines food security, and this impacts the large number of women who are responsible for putting food on the table and who are the farmers in developing countries. Women are also more vulnerable when there are migrations caused by climate disasters. There is evidence that women are likely to be injured and killed in larger numbers, partly because they try to protect their children.

There was significant momentum created before Lima— at the Climate Summit and particularly by the EU countries—to agree to a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and to make targets on energy efficiency and renewables. This created a certain optimism for the first day or so in Lima. However, as the negotiations continued, it became clear that it would be difficult to make progress.

At the end, not enough progress was made, particularly on a draft text for Paris. That is what we need to work on in the next round in Geneva—from February 8 to 13, 2015—so that we have a negotiation text for Paris itself. There are still a lot of issues that have not been negotiated and decided upon. One of them is climate finance. In total, countries have pledged just over US$10 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which was the minimum target set by the United Nations. We still need to find pathways to the commitment made in Copenhagen, which was US$100 billion a year by 2020, in public finance or public leveraged finance. That is essential because most climate action will have to take place in developing countries with emerging economies, because these countries need the infrastructure, the buildings, the roads, etc. If they are forced to use fossil fuels in developing, then we have no chance of staying below the warming limit of two degrees above preindustrial standards, which was agreed upon in Cancún. It is very important that we seek commitment on climate finance in particular, and on the concerns of the poorest countries, to ensure that their voices will be heard.

Shifting the focus to more recent events, how do you

What are some concrete ways in which we can increase

In the Foundation, we define climate justice as follows: climate justice links human rights and development to achieve a human-centered approach, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable, and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its resolution equitably and fairly. We begin with the injustice of climate change, which is that human-induced climate change from greenhouse gas emissions is affecting the poorest countries and communities most severely, but the poorest are the least responsible. Therefore, we must address the problem by prioritizing access for the poorest to the benefits of a renewable energy economy.

Almost three billion people do not have access to electricity and cook on traditional stoves that have big health dangers, particularly for women and children.

Please tell us more about how climate change disproportionately affects women.

Photo Courtesy World Economic Forum CC BY-SA 2.0, accessed via Wikimedia Commons

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INTERVIEW the input of the marginalized in the coming negotiations? Are there any cases from the past?

I think it is important to recognize that the process for a climate agreement involves 193 countries, and all of them can affect the result. The Small Island States, the Least Developed Countries, and the African Group constitute a significant number of countries. We can learn from the talks in Durban, where countries were seeking to prepare the way for the Paris agreement and to agree on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. In the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, for the first time it was agreed that every country had to do more on climate. This was to say that now, the urgency requires that all countries act, but of course the countries with historical responsibility should act quicker and do more. It was only possible to reach an agreement on this platform through the Durban Alliance, which was a coalition that wanted a bigger

that of cost, transfer of technology, or lack of investment in green infrastructure. That’s why innovative climate finance is important—it takes the risk out of developing. Most of the climate action that will give us a safe world will take place in developing countries. They need infrastructure for development, and they will insist on developing with dirty fuels if it is not possible to do so with clean energy. Many heads of state in developing countries have told me that they want to achieve development with renewable energy, but that they need the investment and technology from richer parts of the world in order to do that. So we are interconnected; in effect, we have a human solidarity.

So you think that it’s possible to achieve development and solve the problem of climate change at the same time.

Yes, very much so.

“Most of the climate action that will give us a safe world will take place in developing countries. They need infrastructure for development, and they will insist on developing with dirty fuels if it is not possible to do so with clean energy.” binding agreement in Paris. This group included the European Union, the Small Island States, the Least Developed Countries, and the African Group. When they had about 140 countries, finally all the countries—including China and the United States—accepted this platform. I hope that we can reach a consensus using a similar process on the road to Paris. The smaller countries that are desperate to get a climate agreement can work with the EU and other big groups. That would be a way in which the voices of the marginalized would be heard.

On the topic of developing countries, you’ve said previously that developing countries need “access to energy, not emissions.” What is the difference between the two, and how can we make this transition feasible?

We have a tendency to think about energy in terms of fossil fuels such as oil, gas, or fuel. I think we need to break that connection. Yes, poor developing countries need energy for their development, and they have a right to develop, but it doesn’t have to be fossil fuels. I’m very encouraged by the number of countries that are beginning to commit to the goal of zero carbon by 2050 or even much earlier—some are committing to zero carbon by 2020. The whole world needs to go zero carbon by 2050, and to do it in a fair climate justice way, if we want to stay below two degrees Celsius of warming. So it’s very important that emerging economies have access to renewable energy, but there are problems such as 36

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Recently, there has been a lot of action on the ground, as we have seen in events such as the People’s Climate March. It seems that people all over the world are calling for a binding, ambitious climate deal this year in Paris. How can we best translate this action into climate policy?

I very much welcome the increasing mobilization; I myself took part in the Climate March in New York. It was a wonderful moment of human solidarity. In 2015, we need to see a climate movement that is as broad-based as possible.

That includes civil society and social movements, progressive business and state-based groups, academics and women, and religion; the pope is giving very good leadership. We especially need to see the involvement of youth, because there is a key dimension of intergenerational injustice in climate. It is my grandchildren, who will be in their forties in 2050, who may bear the brunt of the fact that my generation is not doing enough. Young people are particularly important. I know from my own experience, as somebody that has held political office, that politicians respond to broad public pressure. The Climate March in New York did have an impact on discussions in the Climate Summit. If we can mobilize so that the world’s attention is on every climate meeting in 2015—for example on social media—and many people who are insistent on the need for a fair, robust, legally binding agreement in Paris speak up, then we have a much better chance of getting it.

INTERVIEW So you’re optimistic?

I always answer that question by saying that I borrow from my friend the Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I am a prisoner of hope.

Who are the global leaders that citizens have to look up to at a time of crisis such as this, and what do you think the role of global leadership is?

civil society. I will soon moderate a meeting between business leaders and civil society leaders so that there can be a joint agreement in time. You probably know that that is quite unusual—civil society and business are not always close. But there is a common ground of realization that we are running out of time and that we need to work together. A lot of the action will be by investment and the building of infrastructure and technology in developing countries, and that is the role that business has to play.

“Civil society and business are not always close. But there is a common ground of realization that we’re running out of time ...

A lot of the action will be by investment and the building of infrastructure and technology in developing countries, and that’s the role that business has to play.”

I think that there’s a moral dimension to this issue. It’s a political issue, it’s a development issue, it’s an environmental issue, but it’s also a moral issue. That’s where I think moral leadership can be important. The group that I belong to, brought together by Nelson Mandela, the Elders, has decided to prioritize climate change during 2015, and link it to the post-2015 development agenda. Kofi Annan (our chair), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (our honorary chair), Graça Machel, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Lakhdar Brahimi, Fernando Cardoso—we will all be speaking out very loudly on this issue. Al Gore has also been a very good leader on this issue. There will be very many other voices, and I hope there will be young voices. Malala Yousafzai, using her Nobel Peace Prize as an opportunity, has talked about galvanizing youth, and that’s a good example of leadership.

Speaking of different actors in climate change, how can we push the private sector to take action?

I believe that the private sector is very important, and there are progressive voices in the private sector that completely understand the need for business to give good leadership. The problem is that a component of business is the fossil fuel sector, so there is a divide. In fact, I am going to Davos tomorrow, and I will be working with a lot of business groups. In particular, I will be working with what is called the “B Team,” a group of leaders that includes Richard Branson, Mo Ibrahim, and a number of others. The B Team says that business has been responsible for the problem in the past, and companies must now take responsibility for their own operations, but must also talk to politicians and link with

Finally, even outside of the realm of climate change, you have done a lot of work related to refugees and human rights.

What can ordinary citizens do for human rights? What do you encourage readers to do?

I have been focused on the link between climate change and human rights because I have recognized that climate change has a terrible negative impact on human rights. I would encourage that people first of all just look up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Google, and read it, maybe read it again. It is a wonderful document; the first article begins “all human beings are born equal in dignity and rights.” And when I talk about human rights, I often point out that dignity comes before human rights, and dignity is all about that sense of self worth, of being respected, of having a voice. These are all human rights issues. The focus should be on the local, as human rights are better talked about and fought for at the local level. We can all be good consumers—we can buy fair trade, refrain from buying goods that are environmentally degrading, and be conscious of our climate footprint. We need to do our part in making the world safe, because it is the biggest human rights challenge of our century.

On bigger human rights issues, we can support organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, or locally based organizations. Most of them have local branches and it is quite easy now to support them. And when people do get involved, they will feel enriched. In a way, that is what is captured in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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The Case for Shared Growth and Economic Democracy in South Korea An Interview with Chung Un-chan

AN INTERVIEW BY

KATE YOON DR. CHUNG UN-CHAN is a former prime minister of South Korea. Before going into political office, he was a professor of economics at Seoul National University, eventually serving as president of the university from 2002 to 2006.

After a career as an academic, the president of Seoul National University, and then as the prime minister of Korea, you started the Korea Institute for Shared Growth. How did you come up with the idea for this?

During my service as the prime minister of Korea, I witnessed the gap between conglomerates and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) widening. I listened to concerns raised by SME executives regarding the polarization of wealth in Korea. In response, my office conducted research on the ecosystem of SMEs and received alarming reports. The chronic problem of conglomerates exerting undue power over SMEs was exacerbated to the point where it endangered the health of the market economy and could not be tolerated any longer.

I immediately brought the president’s attention to the issue and advised that Korea’s economy would suffer grave consequences should we fail to stop conglomerates’ reign over the market. As a result, the Commission for Cooperative Growth was established, and I served as the first commissioner from December 2010 to March 2012. The Commission strived—and still does—to restore economic justice. After I stepped down from leadership at the commission, I saw the need for a more long-term and systematic approach toward shared growth and decided to start the Korea Institute for Shared Growth, a privately funded research institute. My work at the Korea Institute for Shared Growth deals with the concept of shared growth in a broader spectrum of societal issues, and not just in terms of businesses.

Can you tell us more about this concept of “shared growth”?

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the concept of shared value, proposed by Michael Porter in “Creating Shared Value,” which was published in the Harvard Business Review in 2011. Porter suggested the possibility of integrating corporations’ for-profit economic activities with social responsibility. On a deeper level, shared growth also takes into account Korea’s unique economic situation of conglomerate-led super-speed economic growth. In addition to the economic problems Porter lays out, Korea has more specific issues of polarization—especially between conglomerates and SMEs, the wealthy and the poor, cities and rural areas, the south and the north—which are getting worse at an accelerated rate and are causing conflicts in Korea’s mechanism for economic growth. A common misconception people have about shared growth is that shared growth is achieved by taking wealth from the wealthy and distributing it to the poor.

This is not how shared growth is achieved. Shared growth aims to foster an environment where different groups grow together, instead of taking something from one group and giving it to another. When we work together to make the pie bigger, the growth should be distributed among contributors justly. Shared growth is about securing justice in the process of distributing the fruits of growth.

You are challenging the trickle-down, big business-led economic development strategies that have been taken for granted for decades in Korea—in fact, the successful, rapid development of Korea has been attributed to these strategies. Please tell us more about the economic justification for your ideas.

I do not mean to argue that conglomerate-led, exportbased strategy for economic growth is wrong. What I do argue is that serious social division and polarization is an innate Photo Courtesy Author

INTERVIEW problem of such a strategy. The current economic polarization in Korea was predicted even decades ago. For example, back in 1990, I published a paper, “For Democracy in the Korean Economy,” in which I tried to raise concerns regarding polarization of wealth and economic sustainability in relation to economic democracy.

Can you tell us of some successful cases where this “shared growth” model has been implemented?

Although we are seeing great potential for success, it is still too early to tell if there are cases where shared growth is successfully implemented. Currently, the methods that the government and conglomerates use to achieve shared growth are mainly limited to providing funds. This method of supporting SMEs through monetary aid has always existed.

In addition to financial aid, comprehensive policies such as

the eldest children used the family’s support to gain wealth and fame; in the same way, the governmental assistance helped turn Korean corporations into global enterprises. All of this was possible because the Korean people have a strong sense of community. But what happens when the eldest child refuses to give back to the family who sacrificed everything they had for their success? Korean people are increasingly dissatisfied with the entitled behavior of chaebols and harsh economic conditions because they are not getting back what they had sacrificed for the success of selected businesses.

Ironically, dissatisfaction and disappointment from conglomerates is raising awareness of shared growth. In search of ways to alleviate polarization of wealth and unfair competition, more people are turning to shared growth for an answer.

As people become more aware and agree with the value of shared growth, current dissatisfaction of Korean people will gather enough momentum to produce a significant change.

“Although chaebols [business conglomerates] like Samsung have done a lot for the society, from providing financial support to educational institutions to building museums, they can still take a bigger role. I hope that the super-rich of Korea will realize that their success cannot last without the market and consumers.” increasing the influx of talent, improving education, supporting exports, and protecting fair trade in favor of SMEs should be implemented. More importantly, leaders of conglomerates should actively take leading roles in achieving shared growth instead of reluctantly meeting the bare minimum. What is more important than monetary aid, indeed, is the paradigm shift within the leaders of conglomerates.

In the context of Korea, there has been increasing dissatisfaction with underemployment and unstable labor, as well as, more recently, the entitled behavior of chaebols [a South Korean form of business conglomerate]. What do you think is the reason for the increasing sense of inequality?

To answer this question, I would like to share an analogy I heard between chaebols and poor families. Before Korea’s economic growth, it was nearly impossible for families to afford education for each of their children. At the same time, education was the only way to exit poverty. So a common strategy was pull together all of the family’s resources to invest in the eldest child’s education for his success. Similarly, the Korean government supported promising businesses to lead the nation’s economic growth when the nation’s resources were limited. This method was successful because many of

Business leaders in Korea—and elsewhere in the world— have the political leverage necessary to change policies and laws. How do you think it is possible to enlist the support of business leaders?

Ralph Nader’s book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us , depicts how billionaires like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and George Soros can change the world we live in. Surely, these super-rich people cannot solve every single problem we face today. But I do agree that their wealth, connections, and insights can significantly make a difference. If you apply the same reasoning to Korea, the Korean super-rich have so much to offer for Korea. Although chaebols like Samsung have done a lot for the society, from providing financial support to educational institutions to building museums, they can still take a bigger role. I hope that the super-rich of Korea will realize that their success cannot last without the market and consumers. Clarifying this seemingly obvious fact is the first step in enlisting their help.

Advocates of a completely free market, as well as industry leaders such as chairman of the Samsung group Lee Kun-hee, have criticzed this approach, saying it is “socialist” and defies market principles. What is your response?

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INTERVIEW Anti-trust legislation in the United States, when first introduced, faced strong-armed opposition. President Roosevelt’s New Deal was criticized for being “socialist” and “anti-market.” John Maynard Keynes was also criticized for being “communist,” as Roosevelt’s New Deal was based on Keynesian theories. When I, during my presidency of Seoul National University, established a quota for students from rural or relatively impoverished areas, I faced opposition myself as well, but this policy has become widely accepted now. Today, these opposing arguments almost sound absurd.

Let us take China as an example. China, externally, has had continued, rapid economic growth to become one of the economic superpowers in the world. Internally, however, China is suffering from polarization of wealth and coastal-inland income inequality. Although the value of shared growth started to draw attention after Korea suffered a grave financial crisis in 1997, China can prevent such a crisis by adopting shared growth policies early in its development stage. China’s responsible actions to alleviate the polarization of wealth within its borders will contribute significantly to the stability of the

“China’s responsible actions to alleviate the polarization of wealth within its borders will contribute significantly to the stability of the global economy. In other words, developing nations will be able to avoid ramifications of fast growth by applying shared growth policies early in their development stage.”

In my opinion, resistance to shared growth shares the fate of those who opposed anti-trust or the New Deal.

What are your predictions for the South Korean economy?

Recently, The Economist published a feature article on Korea, which was titled surprisingly—and rightfully—“Parallel Worlds.” Korea, in addition to being a divided nation, suffers from the burden of social and cultural division. Not only that, Korea also suffers from internal division between conglomerates and SMEs, the young and the old, etc. For example, while Samsung is worried about how to maintain its position as the world’s leading electronics company, SMEs are barely sustaining themselves. The gap between the conglomerates and SMEs is growing day by day and it is becoming increasingly difficult to unite the society. This is why some refer to Korea as the “stalled miracle.” Under these harsh conditions, Korea also needs to prepare for reunification, which is projected to impose an unimaginable financial burden on South Korea. Korean leaders must be on alert for these difficult hurdles, which are approaching fast. And those hurdles underscore the need for implementation of policies to strengthen shared growth.

Many East Asian countries have followed, or are set to follow, a trajectory similar to that of Korea, with development led by a few major companies supported by the government.

Do you think that the same problems Korea has faced apply elsewhere as well? So far you have advocated shared growth specifically in the context of Korea. Should shared growth only be a priority after a certain level of growth, or it is a concept that is applicable to all stages of development?

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global economy. In other words, developing nations will be able to avoid ramifications of fast growth by applying shared growth policies early in their development stage.

Drawing from your experiences at Seoul National University, what do you think is the role of higher education in promoting sustainable growth?

Education is one of the most effective ways to spark a paradigm shift in our society. By encouraging active discussions among students on the importance of shared growth and sustainable economy, shared growth will gather enough energy to break free from outdated economic beliefs. Moreover, higher education is the place where students should be encouraged to follow their passion and be creative. Universities must share growth with the local community and serve as the source of energy for creativity.

Do you have any goals in the near future?

At the moment, I am focusing my energy into raising awareness for shared growth. As with the acceptance of any new idea, the introduction of shared growth into Korean society requires devotion and persistence. I plan to devote myself to promoting shared growth in Korea and restoring economic democracy.

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Anecdotes from the Arctic from 1986 to Today

BY BASIA ROSENBAUM Can you give a brief background of your exploration in the Arctic?

It really started back in—well, I hate to illuminate how old I am, but—1986 when I had a chance to join an international expedition that was going to be dogsledding to the North Pole with the goal of being unsupported, to feel what it must have felt like to be those earlier explorers that came before us. So I joined the Steger International Polar Expedition. I was an elementary school teacher at the time, and an outdoor mountaineer, skier, camper, etc. The team consisted of seven guys, myself, and 49 male dogs. I took a leave of absence from my teaching in 1985. We trained in Northern Minnesota for some of the early months and then we moved onto Baffin Island for the final 2 months of our training. From there, we would continue north to the top of Canada, Ellesmere Island, where we would launch our two-month expedition to try to get to the top of the world across the sea ice.

That was the beginning of everything. I thought at the time that that would be my only big public expedition, that I would go back to teaching, and that life would resume as it Photo Courtesy Reuters

ANN BANCROFT is one of the most prominent female polar explorers and an influential author and educator. had been with both teaching and outdoor life, see-sawing back and forth. My world was turned upside down after that trip because people were making a big stink about the first known woman to the top of the world. There were a lot of new demands on my life that I wasn’t necessarily equipped for or ready for. But I eventually adjusted and realized that I had this new platform, if you will, to speak from. I was asked to speak in front of a lot of groups and certainly felt most comfortable in front of kids. I thought that I really needed to pay attention to this opportunity and not squander it.

And so as I started to think about my next expedition and started to figure out a way to make it less about my own personal ambition, which the North Pole trip had been. The only way I knew how to demonstrate something larger than me was through education. So, with the help of teachers from around the country, we wrote a curriculum so that we could engage kids around the United States with what we Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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An Interview with Ann Bancroft

were doing and utilize the expedition to talk about bigger things, or more things. I led a team of women in 1992 across the Greenland ice caps east to west. From there we went south: we went off the coast of Chile and down to Antarctica—we skied from the edge to the South Pole. We were the first all women’s group to do that. We had no dogs on this trip so we pulled 250-pound sleds each from sea level up to the Pole. With the help of all of these educators and students, we pulled our way and tried to write women into polar history a little further, a little deeper.

I came home from that and still did not get it out of my system. I had scribbled in my journal at the South Pole in 1993 about an idea that I had had when I was a young girl (because of Ernest Shackleton and his great book, The Endurance). I had thought that I would love to cross the continent, and I now scribbled a sketch of a plan having seen the Antarctic ice and the differences between the Antarctic and the Arctic. Of course, these things take years to percolate and plan for and raise money for. So in the process of this, my plan was to bring just one other person

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the trip together. So we did that pulling sleds—our sleds were about 267 pounds apiece—and we employed a new technology to polar travel, the ski sails. We thought, well we are never going to get across this continent just by pulling the sleds, as we do not go fast enough—they go about one mile per hour. We worked with a sailmaker in Norway who made sails for traditional sailing boats. We tried one design after another, trying different winds; it was just a trial by fire, learning how to sail and to ski with a very heavy sled bouncing behind us. We took four different sized sails with us and we skied and pulled. When the wind did not show up on the windiest continent on the globe, we pulled some more. When it was in our direction for a manageable speed, we would sail. That was our plan for moving huge amounts of miles in a short period of time, about 100 days.

We did that from 2000 to 2001. That was the trip that sealed our partnership.

We returned to Antarctica a year later in kayaks, and kayaked along the peninsula where the wildlife is bountiful.

From there we switched gears slightly and did a kayaking

“My world was turned upside down after that trip because people were making a big stink about the first known woman to the top of the world, so there were a lot of new demands on my life that I wasn’t necessarily equipped for or ready for.”

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with me. You can go pretty fast and furious if you do not have a group that is going up and down in terms of the psychology of personalities and decision-making—you can be a little more nimble with just a couple of people.

In the course of doing the first Antarctic trip, I started corresponding with a Norwegian woman who, the following year, went all by herself to the South Pole on virtually the same route that we had taken. We shared information before her trip about what I had seen and learned—wind direction and those kinds of things. And so, from afar, I watched her complete a beautiful expedition by herself and I thought, well that is the person that I want. She was not very keen about going back to Antarctica—she had had a beautiful expedition. But what really linked us was the fact that she was a former high school teacher and I was an elementary teacher. Additionally, after that expedition, she too felt that people were making a big deal about being the first solo woman to a Pole and what she would do with that. She too did not want to squander this opportunity.

That really tipped her over to thinking about crossing Antarctica with a crazy American and we joined forces. And we have been working together ever since.

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trip beginning in Northern Minnesota.

In 2005 we started focusing back on the Arctic. 2005 was really a hotbed time for the polar region, as all the global scientists were coalescing their research on global warming and climate change. Therefore we thought that we would return to the Arctic, pull our sleds and talk about what we were seeing. We were not scientists, we were educators, but we had an opportunity to be eyewitnesses to what was out there, and I got to reflect on what I was seeing and if there were any differences from 1986 to 2005.

The Russians pulled us off in 2005. We had been out on the ice for three weeks, pulling our sleds and working our way to the North Pole. It was a bizarre situation: there was no negotiation and it was devastating. We came home and regrouped, and in 2007 we decided to return to the Arctic and try again, but due to the politics in Russia we decided not to risk the same sort of scenario. Instead of ending in Canada, we decided to start in Canada and end in Russia.

It was really exciting for me because I was starting in the exact same spot where I had started in 1986. Oh, the flood of memories when you fly into the end of the Elsnor Island mountains, where they meet the ocean that just goes off into oblivion!

We traveled for one week and Liv froze her feet. We

How do your passions for exploration and female empowerment align?

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So they asked the indigenous people to find them. And because they had been totally preserved and refrigerated, some people were eating them. You got this real sense of rapid change in a way that was just chilling. I was not ready for that kind of witness.

Getting to firm ice was our first challenge. Our second challenge, and we had talked to a lot of people about it beforehand, was polar bears. In 1986, they followed us but they never bothered us. In fact, we never even really saw them, partly because we had dogs. In 2005 and 2007, our eyes were wide open and we were seeing polar bears on almost a daily basis. It was very unnerving. The polar bear used to be known as an unpredictable animal to encounter, but typically people would find that they were uninterested in humans; they usually went the other way. But we were seeing them all the time and they certainly did not seem too nervous about us and in fact, they felt much more agitated.

And some of that is that we were just two people and there were no dogs and all of that commotion. And the scientists told us that they were going further and further out onto the ice cap because the ice was becoming less stable. This forces us to change our behavior. We wear a gun, something that we do not normally do, as a necessary last ditch effort.

to

There were dramatic changes. And again, I always preface this with the fact that I am not a scientist. It is simply an eyewitness account. When we went in 2005, it was pretty dramatic. There were two things.

First, we were talking with other scientists and other expeditions who had gone before us. Our preparation changed dramatically before we ever got to the Arctic. One of the most dramatic things that you see is the design of our sleds. The Antarctic sled is not waterproof, but we had to make the Arctic almost like a canoe so that it could float and go across open expanses of water called leeds. We did not think about that in 1986; we did not think about anything getting wet.

The second big thing is that we worked with Helly Hansen to come up with a suit that looks almost like a survival suit. Basically it is a glorified dry suit. The idea is that when we came to an open expanse of water, we would zip the suit over our ski boots, our Gortex, and everything we were wearing, and then we would be able to swim across the open leeds and pull our waterproof sleds behind us. This was a huge departure from the way anyone ever thought about going to the North Pole; no one ever thought about swimming. This was a new approach because of the thinning of the ice and the appearance of more leeds; you can use these suits to travel more safely and make more progress. So the Arctic is a very exciting environment to travel in

1986

What have been some of the environmental changes you have seen in the Arctic?

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“We were not scientists, we were educators, but we had an opportunity to be eyewitnesses to what was out there, and I got to reflect on what I was seeing and if there were any differences from 1986 to 2005.”

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because it is alive and it is changing every day. But what we understood as we approached 2005 is that there was going to be a lot more bad ice, a lot more thin ice. Even with skis that displace your weight, it would be difficult to travel on.

When we go up to Russia, we stay in what start out as cities but get smaller and smaller. We found that everything was fueled by coal. The snow, which of course is everywhere because you are in the Arctic, is all grey or black. The air was putrid. And since they were forcing all this great heat from the coal, and the stack is always pumping in town, the buildings themselves were heaving and cracking.

We were stuck in a small village when someone took us to an ice cave on the coast of this lake. They had been collecting mammoth’s bones and skulls and tusks and, in some cases, hair. They realized that as the permafrost from the years before was melting these mammoths appeared.

from the

decided that it would be irresponsible to continue. I think we had 10 million kids following us through the curriculum in the world at that point. So we decided to walk out and see if we could rectify the situation and save her toes. We pride ourselves on the fact that we have the temperament to turn around if something goes wrong. We are not out there to die or to have permanent injury. We walked back; she did lose her big toe, but she is healthy and still able to live her life. And the kids were fantastic: our website was crushed with messages from kids all over the world. Instead of us teaching them, they were teaching us. They were saying things like ‘at least you tried’, ‘no one ever tries,’ and I was thinking that that is what we wanted to teach them. Our curriculum had a lot to do with conflict resolution more than anything, even though we were talking a lot about climate change.

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Liv Arnesen, Bancroft’s partner in her expeditions.

do. And this has just been what I wanted to do since I was a kid. I did not understand when people said ‘we cannot fund you because you are 5-foot-4, you cannot pull a sled’ and I said, ‘yes I can, I pulled one across Greenland.’ There is no basis for some of the thought patterns. I am competitive and there is a certain enjoyment to proving people wrong when they say you cannot do something. In my heart of

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Our next trip (I am still working with Liv Arnesen from Norway) is a series of initiatives—every two years we will go to a different continent. In particular, we are talking about fresh water issues.

Our first trip is in the fall of 2015, when we will be going down the Ganges.

We have a team of women, including a woman from every continent that we are hosting, with the exception of Antarctica. Two years from then we will be in Africa.

We are talking to approximately 50 million kids about fresh water issues. We are trying to incite some advocacy for these waterways. For me, for instance, the Mississippi is right in my backyard. It involves everything from recreation to industry to farming, and the challenges and stresses of that waterway are very similar to those of the Ganges. We do not do cremation, but everything else is very similar. We have

“I did not understand when people said ‘we cannot fund you because you are 5-foot-4, you cannot pull a sled’ and I said, ‘yes I can, I pulled one across Greenland.’ ”

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What is your next trip?

hearts, this is what I do best.

I thought that if I was going to go to Antarctica, I had some work to do in terms of this issue of gender. Women did not yet have a strong presence in Antarctica in the 1990s.

That has radically, radically changed. I strongly felt that we just needed to shake things up a little bit. That is why I started with all women on that expedition. Unfortunately, I have to say that that work needs to continue. So when I am in schools, it is as important that young girls see that they can do this if they wish—or maybe other things that are traditionally off-limits—but it is also important that boys grow up thinking that this is no big deal. They are just caught up in the adventure at first, and that is a great thing.

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been working for decades to clean up the Mississippi and we have got a long way to go, but it is a pretty good story.

We will make those kinds of comparisons and we will bring in partnerships from all around the world that are working on the behalf of different kinds of fresh water initiatives and illuminate their story.

This will take us until 2026 because we want to return to Antarctica. Our final continent is covered in ice, which involves its own complexities, but it is the largest fresh water body in the world. It seemed like since that is where Liv and I launched our public career, it is a good place for us to finalize this long-term initiative. It is scary and exciting.

Photo Courtesy Reuters

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A Place Apart

A Peaceful Arctic No More?

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he Arctic has always been a place apart.

It is unique for its climate and geography: for natural phenomena such as the midnight sun and the Northern Lights, as well as the creatures and the cultures which have evolved there. Throughout human history, it has been viewed with reverence as a special and mysterious place where unique rules apply.

However, global warming has begun to reveal the secrets of the Arctic, lifting the shroud of ice, which has veiled the region for millennia, and opening it to ever-greater traffic.

That geographical opening has been mirrored by geopolitical changes. Hitherto, the Arctic states have displayed an enviable record of cooperation, dialogue and peaceful resolution of disputes. However, increased access to the region has also brought the risk of increased tensions there.

Russia’s illegal actions in Ukraine have gravely heightened that risk.

Like the ice, which has dominated the Arctic for thousands of years, the regional peace of recent decades can no longer be taken for granted.

This article will examine how that peace was built through the determination of all the Arctic states to avoid

Photo Courtesy Reuters

ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN

ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN was the prime minister of Denmark from 2001 to 2009 and secretary general of NATO from 2009 to 2014. confrontation and promote cooperation. It will identify the main factors that challenge it: Russia’s growing militarization of the region and the increasing danger of disputes from beyond the Arctic being imported into it. Finally, it will suggest a way for the West, and NATO in particular, to respond through the development of an Arctic strategy aimed at deterring military threats.

The Arctic Model: Subject to the Law

Norway and Russia scored a striking diplomatic success in 2010: after 40 years of negotiation, they finally agreed on the delimitation of their maritime boundaries. In light of the current crisis in Ukraine, it is ironic that the Maritime Delimitation Treaty was seen as the herald of a new era of cooperation between the West and Russia. However, the Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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FEATURES agreement exemplifies the painstaking and rules-based approach on which relations in the Arctic have been built.

While Rudyard Kipling once wrote in The Rhyme of the Three Sealers that “there’s never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-Three” degrees north, the modern Arctic has been subjected to international law by the explicit choice of Arctic countries. This is a uniquely Arctic model, and it has been uniquely successful.

That choice is reflected in policy documents, published both by individual nations and multilateral organizations.

On the international level, the five states that share the coastline of the Arctic Ocean—Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States—signed a far-reaching agreement in 2008. Named after the city in Greenland where it was signed, the Ilulissat Declaration committed the Arctic

different fields, ranging from environmental protection to business development, these various organizations have been remarkably successful in keeping the high north an area of low tensions. Throughout practically all of the international disputes of the past two decades, the Arctic has remained at peace.

The Arctic offers an example of how both large and small nations can work together within internationally accepted legal frameworks. It is an example of nations coming together to find common ground in an area of strategic importance, and seeking to strengthen consultative and cooperative mechanisms.

It is a unique and responsible geopolitical model that is now under threat.

“Like the ice, which has dominated the Arctic for thousands of years, the regional peace of recent decades can no longer be taken for granted. ” nations to resolving issues of jurisdiction and sovereignty through existing legal mechanisms based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). On the national level, all five have issued Arctic strategy documents, which reflect a number of basic goals and principles: a. A peaceful, safe, and secure Arctic, including the resolution of maritime boundary disputes in accordance with international law, enhanced maritime safety and surveillance, and enhanced cooperation in the Arctic Council and among the five littoral states. b. Sustainable economic and social development, including the exploitation of new economic opportunities in the Arctic, the extraction of mineral resources under the highest international standards, an increased use of renewable energy sources, the sustainable harvesting of living resources, maintaining a leading international role in research, and promoting Arctic cooperation on human health and social sustainability. c. Environmental protection, including development with respect for the Arctic’s vulnerable climate, environment, and nature and cooperation with international partners on climate change and environmental protection. d. Addressing indigenous peoples’ rights and the needs of indigenous communities e. Maintaining the ability to enforce sovereignty, including through the provision of adequate legal, diplomatic and defence capabilities.

A commitment to peaceful international cooperation is central to all of the diplomatic organizations which deal with Arctic issues: the five littoral states, the Arctic Council—made up of the five plus Finland, Iceland, and Sweden—and the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, which includes the five Nordic countries and Russia. Working in 46

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A Changing Environment

The impact of climate change on the Arctic has been widely discussed. The retreat of pack ice and the opening of new areas to shipping offer potentially enormous economic opportunities. In terms of transport, a shipping route along Russia’s northern coast would shorten the voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific by almost 5,000 nautical miles.

Furthermore, scientific estimates by the US Geological Survey indicate that the region contains approximately 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas deposits, as well as vast quantities of mineral resources including rare earth elements, iron ore, and nickel.

However, the opening of the Arctic comes with fresh risks. The identification of mineral reserves has already led to disputes over who has the right to extract them. In 2007, a Russian-led polar expedition, descending through the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean in a submarine, planted a Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole. Russia declared that the North Pole has always been Russian.

Canada presented a counterclaim. In December 2014, Denmark declared that under UNCLOS, some 900,000 square kilometers of the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland belong to it (Greenland is a self-governing part of Denmark).

Debate has also focused on who has the best claim to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain chain traversing the geographic North Pole, the Beaufort Sea, between the United States and Canada, and the Barents Sea, between Russia and Norway. In each case, a question of geographical boundaries has become a source of political disagreement—with mineral resources worth billions of dollars potentially at stake.

At the same time, states from beyond the Arctic Circle are showing an increased interest in the region. China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Singapore have all gained observer status in the Arctic Council, as have a number of European powers: Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands. Their presence strengthens the Council’s legitimacy in the governance of Arctic issues.

However, as more and more nations look to draw benefits from the Arctic, it brings the concomitant risk that they will import their strategic rivalries into the Arctic.

This is no hypothetical danger: the European Union has already found its bid for permanent observer status to the Arctic Council blocked because of a bilateral dispute with Canada over the European import ban on seal products.

While minor in itself, this incident shows the extent to which disagreements from outside the Arctic can have an impact

in an address to the Defence Ministry Board, Putin ordered an Arctic military build-up, saying that Russia would create forces in the Arctic to ensure military security and protect the country’s national interests in the region. Significantly, he said that “there are [US] submarines there, and they carry missiles. It only takes 15 [to] 16 minutes for US missiles to reach Moscow from the Barents Sea. So should we give away the Arctic? We should on the contrary explore it.” This is a direct challenge to the longstanding consensus that the Arctic should be kept free of military rivalry.

His words have been turned into action. Russia is reopening its military base in the Novosibirsk Archipelago (New Siberian Islands), which had been abandoned in 1993 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The islands “have key meaning for the control of the situation in the entire Arctic region”, Putin declared. Russia has also started

“The Arctic offers an example of how both large and small nations can work together within internationally accepted legal frameworks. It is an example of nations coming together to find common ground in an area of strategic importance, and seeking to strengthen consultative and cooperative mechanisms.” in the region. That is of concern because the tensions caused by Russia’s illegal actions in Ukraine are also reaching into the Arctic, with potentially grave consequences.

Russian Assertiveness, Arctic Instability

While the Arctic today is a region of peaceful cooperation, there are clear indications that the more assertive Russian attitude following the aggression against Ukraine will have implications for the Russian military posture in the Arctic.

Russia has long made clear its desire to enlarge its territory in the Arctic. Given its failure to modernize or diversify its economy, its determination to wring the greatest possible benefit from Arctic resource holdings can only be expected to grow. Russia’s interest in the Arctic is profound.

Much of its territory, and many of its mineral deposits, lie north of the Arctic Circle. The bulk of its fleet of nuclear submarines is home-ported in Arctic waters, and there are expectations in Russia that the Northern Sea Route will bring significant earnings in the future.

As a result, in February 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a strategy to enforce Russia’s sovereignty, and reinforce its military capabilities, in the Arctic. Entitled “The Strategy of Development of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation and ensuring National Security up to 2020,” the document puts a particular stress on national security, emphasizing the need for comprehensive mobile combat readiness in the Arctic. In the December of the same year,

restoring its Arctic airfields, including one called “Temp” on Kotelny Island near the city of Norilsk. The revival of other northern airfields is set to continue, as is the reactivation of docks on the New Siberian Islands and the Franz Josef archipelago. In recent months, observers have seen a major increase in the number of flights by Russian strategic bombers and support aircraft. Just as in the Cold War, the aircraft flew both along the Norwegian coast into the Atlantic, and towards Alaska and Canada. In September 2014, Russia announced it was resuming its permanent Arctic military presence. In a symbolic move, it sent 10 warships and nuclear-powered icebreakers along the Northern Sea Route.

Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu has confirmed that there are plans to create a group of troops and forces to ensure military protection of the Russian Federation’s national interests in the Arctic. Two new so-called “Arctic brigades” will be permanently based in the Arctic region over the next few years, and the joint forces strategic command “North” was formally created in December 2014 to coordinate all Russian military activities in the Arctic region.

The trend is clear: Russia is arming itself in the Arctic.

This is not a situation that the other Arctic states can afford to ignore. They must weigh the implications for their own deterrence and defense. For Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and the United States, that means weighing the implications for NATO.

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When NATO drew up a new Strategic Concept in 2010, Arctic security was not explicitly included. The threat of armed conflict in the Arctic was considered very low and existing cooperation mechanisms, in particular the Arctic Council, were assumed to be sufficient to handle the

Drawing up such a strategy, and implementing it swiftly and fully, would enhance NATO’s credibility as the defender of its security in the Arctic. It would give the alliance a pool of trained and ready troops, improved situational awareness, clear plans, and a reinforced chain of command to deal with any eventuality.

“It is to be hoped that the Arctic model of cooperation, peaceful co-existence, and the rule of law will continue.

However, that model can no longer be taken for granted; it must be defended.” challenges of the region. The Strategic Concept focused on more pressing issues, such as missile defense and Afghanistan.

However, NATO’s duty is clear. Its commitment to defend any ally who is attacked—through Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty—does not stop at the Arctic Circle.

With a number of exceptions linked to allied holdings south of the Tropic of Cancer, the treaty covers all of the territory of the NATO member states, including in the High North.

The Arctic is not “out of area.” It is “in area.”

In essence, NATO is an Arctic alliance, because it has Arctic allies. That being the case, it needs to consider how to deal with any potential threats in the High North. In particular, it needs to develop a strategy to respond to Russia’s ongoing militarization of the Arctic—a strategy which deters potential threats, promotes stability and predictability, and demonstrates resolve.

This would be fully in line with the Strategic Concept, which states that allies will “continue to review NATO’s overall posture in deterring and defending against the full range of threats to the Alliance, taking into account changes to the evolving international security environment.”

It is therefore crucial to ensure that the Alliance has the ability to plan, lead, and execute the collective defence mission in accordance with Article 5. That includes: a. Reinforced training and exercises above the Arctic Circle. The Norwegian-led series of exercises, “Cold Response”, in which troops operate together in icy weather and low temperatures, is an excellent example. Such exercises are vital to ensuring that Alliance forces are prepared to meet potential threats in the Arctic. b. Better surveillance and intelligence-sharing mechanisms, in order to enhance awareness of the strategic situation in the Arctic, and to provide early warning of potential threats. c. Improved contingency planning to ensure that the alliance is ready to perform its core tasks in any part of NATO territory. d. A strengthened regional focus within the NATO command structure, including a focus on Arctic issues.

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As such, it would send a strong diplomatic signal to both Russia and NATO allies. To Russia, it would indicate that the alliance would not tolerate threats to its members anywhere in its area of responsibility—deterring any attempts to solve political disputes through military means. To the members of NATO in the Arctic, it would indicate that the alliance is ready to defend them wherever and whenever is needed—increasing their confidence and their sense of solidarity.

These measures would be defensive, transparent and limited in their military footprint. Taken together, they would give NATO the tools it needs to respond to any threat to allies in the Arctic, without undermining the principle that disputes should be solved by diplomatic means.

Conclusion: Defending the Arctic Model

Over the past two decades, the Arctic has emerged as a model of peaceful international cooperation and dispute resolution. It has done so because every Arctic country— including Russia—has agreed that military force is not an option there.

Russia’s military build-up means that the other Arctic states must change their calculus. Diplomacy should always remain the first choice for the resolution of disputes, but it must now be coupled with credible deterrence. Given that four of the five Arctic littoral states are NATO allies, it means that NATO must draw up an Arctic strategy.

This is not about importing strategic rivalries into the Arctic. Still less does it mean that the opening of the Arctic is itself a reason for more tension and rivalry, or a challenge to established security policy. It is to be hoped that the Arctic model of cooperation, peaceful co-existence and the rule of law will continue. However, that model can no longer be taken for granted; it must be defended. The appropriate way to do so is through careful planning and preparation—including by NATO.

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A Necessary Condition for an Effective Global Climate Agreement

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n the following text, I will demonstrate three things.

First, that humankind is losing the battle against human-induced climate change, the impacts of which are being particularly felt in the Arctic. Second, that the current negotiations are very unlikely to result in the international climate agreement we need to redress the situation. Third, that the way to redirect these negotiations in the right direction would be to introduce into these international discussions the negotiation of a global, harmonized price for the leading greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide (CO2).

I am well placed to know that such an agreement will be very difficult to achieve. As leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in the 2008 election, I was unable to convince Canadians of the need for a made-in-Canada carbon price. Yet I will proposethat if we fail to reach a global agreement on a price for CO2 emissions, we are inexorably headed towards the catastrophic impacts of an excessively warmer climate.

The planet is heating up

The planet is warming up, and warnings are coming from every quarter. The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January to October Photo Courtesy Reuters

STÉPHANE DION

STÉPHANE DION is a member of the House of Commons of Canada. He has also served as the leader of the opposition party as the leader of Liberal Party, and as minster of the environment.

2014 period was “the warmest such period on record.” The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is also increasing, and rose last year at the fastest rate in nearly 30 years.

Despite the efforts made to limit CO2 emissions, they are growing at an increasingly rapid pace. Annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions grew on average by 2.2 percent per year from 2000 to 2010, compared to 1.3 percent per year from 1970 to 2000. In 2014, total annual CO2 emissions rose to 65 percent over its 1990 level, the year international negotiations on the reduction of anthropogenic climate change began.

The negative impacts of global warming are being felt in many areas. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) found climate change to be responsible for 7 percent of the decline in the number of vertebrate species, which has been reduced by half in the last forty years. After overexploitation Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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A World Price for Carbon

and habitat loss, climate change is the third most important threat to species survival.

The impact is particularly clear in the Arctic, where warming is potentially more destructive than in any other region. In this part of the world, the thawing permafrost will increasingly affect the stability of vital infrastructure— buildings, transportation, communications, energy, etc. A decline in certain types of vegetation will disrupt the food chain. Marine fish stocks could be strongly affected by changes in sea surface temperatures or currents. Problems caused by invasive insects and plants, diseases, and forest fires are likely to worsen. It has already been observed that polar bears, seals, walruses, and other Arctic animals are being affected by the melting of sea ice, which they depend on for survival. This also implicates that the Arctic human communities that depend on these ecosystems for their food, culture and lifestyle will also be affected.

Although the Arctic is particularly affected, the impact does not stop there; global warming could reach dangerous levels everywhere on the planet. Climate scientists have agreed that it would be imprudent to allow global warming

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to 2010 emissions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), we must reduce energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by 31.4 percent between 2012 and 2035. If no measures are taken to correct the current trend, these emissions will increase by 36.1 percent Yet, the question remains: what must we do to counter this climate change hazard?

Negotiations on a Global Climate Treaty

Countries have accepted to endorse the GHG reduction targets (the two degree Celsius limit) at the 2009 Copenhagen International Climate Conference—or the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15)—and more officially at the 2010 Cancún Conference (COP 16). Yet, a problem remains: despite the commitments already made, countries will not reach these targets. The IPCC foresees that even if all countries were to meet the GHG emissions reduction targets by the agreed date of 2020, we would still fall short of what is needed.

According to the IEA, the “New Policies Scenario”—the scenario that incorporates all current country commit-

“... it would be imprudent to allow global warming to exceed an average of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. They warn that beyond this tipping point, our planet will become much less hospitable for virtually all forms of life ...”

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to exceed an average of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Farenheit) above pre-industrial levels. They warn that beyond this tipping point, our planet will become much less hospitable for virtually all forms of life, including humans.

In fact, even two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is likely to have serious impacts, according to UN-mandated scientists under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Without effective action, the two degree threshold will be crossed. The global temperature increased by 0.85 degrees Celsius over the period from 1880 to 2012. The IPCC foresees that under current policies, global warming could well exceed four degrees Celsius by the end of the current century: “Baseline scenarios, those without additional mitigation, result in global mean surface temperature increases in 2100 from 3.7 degrees Celsius to 4.8 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.” Such a temperature rise would increase climate disruption, thereby increasing the severity of extreme weather events, sea level rise, ocean acidification, animal and plant extinctions, disruptions in food production and water supply, and damage to infrastructure and settlements. In working to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, the IPCC recommends reducing global GHG emissions by 40 to 70 percent by 2050, relative

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ments—“puts the world on a path consistent with a longterm global average temperature increase of 3.6 degrees” compared with pre-industrial levels.

At the 2011 Durban Conference (COP 17), the countries acknowledged the gap between their commitments and achieving the two degree objective. In the preamble of their joint statement, they expressed “grave concern” and promised to “raise the level of ambition” to bridge this gap.

However, rather than agreeing on a set of actions, they only agreed on a plan to reach an agreement no later than 2015.

The actions to assemble all countries under the same legal system will begin in 2020.

At the Lima Conference (COP 20) in December 2014, the countries reiterated the same “grave concern” about “the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges” and the goal of holding the increase in global average temperature below the 2 degree limit.

In preparation for the crucial 2015 Conference (COP 21), which will be held in Paris, countries have been invited to communicate, as early as the first quarter of 2015, their “intended nationally determined contributions” to the climate agreement. The sum of these national targets will set the course from 2020 to 2030.

The highest GHG-emitting nations have already an-

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nounced what they intend to pledge. The EU committed to reduce its GHG emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. China said that its emissions will peak “around” 2030. US President Barack Obama pledged to cut US emissions by between 26 and 28 percent from the 2005 level by 2025.

At first glance, these announcements, especially the highly-applauded joint climate change announcement of Presidents Obama and Xi, are good news considering the stalemate of international climate negotiations. The US-Chinese deal shows that the national leaders of the highest GHG-emitting countries have not given up on making progress on this issue. For the first time, China is considering absolute carbon emissions stabilization—if not a reduction—instead of a relative, carbon-per-unit of GDP, reduction.

However, these pledges are too weak to be real game changers. Even if these countries will reach their targets, and other developed countries were to match the US pledge to cut their emissions by between 26 and 28 percent by 2025, and that developing countries were to emulate the Chinese commitment to stop increasing emissions by 2030, we are still on a path to over three degree Celsius world.

China’s commitment to peak its emissions “around” 2030 appears to be in line with the current trend: before the US-Chinese agreement was released, the IEA foresaw China’s emissions “peaking soon after 2030.” Furthermore, that means that China, the largest emitter, will peak its emissions “higher than in most other regions”. Already today, with seven tonnes per capita of annual CO2 emissions, China’s emissions are equivalent to that of the EU average.

That means that China is very likely to peak its per capita emissions at a much higher level than all major economies besides the United States, Canada, and Australia.

It also means that if India and other emerging economies were to adopt similar pledges as China’s, their percapita CO2 emissions would only peak well after having Photo Courtesy Reuters

exceeded the current emission levels of several world major economies.

This scenario is assuming that countries will fulfil their climate commitments. However, several countries—including Canada—will not meet their GHG emissions reduction targets for 2020. In the United States, the Republican Party has brought up its plan to derail President Obama’s pledge.

The European Union’s established goal of reducing GHG emissions by 40 percent for 2030 is supported by only non-binding energy-efficiency and renewable-energy targets. Unless we change our approach significantly, the Paris Conference will not deliver the global treaty that the world needs.

The Need for a Global Carbon Price

Governments and businesses are unlikely to realize their climate change goals if they have no definite assurance that their competitors will play by the same rules. To address this stalemate, we need an international agreement that gives them that assurance, one that changes the rules of the game to apply to every player. We need to create a system whereby every decision-maker, public or private, is responsible for taking into account the true cost of global warming, and is secure in the knowledge that the competitors are doing the same.

This explains why more and more experts agree that putting a price on carbon is essential to the success of any serious, comprehensive climate plan. The IMF now recommends it, as does the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develoment (OECD). The World Bank convinced 73 countries, 22 subnational jurisdictions and over 1,000 companies and investors to declare their support for a price on carbon. The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate has also pointed out that a carbon price may be beneficial for the economy.

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The United States and China are among the biggest emitters of GHGs. Though recent talks have ended in China pledging to start reducing emissions by 2030, the world would still be facing a dangerous three degree Celsius increase in mean in surface temperatures if trends continue.

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FEATURES agreement to be reached in Paris. But the main challenge facing us is how to evolve from a hodge-podge of local or national carbon prices to a global, harmonized carbon pricing system. The IPCC recommends a solution: adopting a “single global carbon price.” The price should be high enough to create the necessary incentives to limit global warming to about two degrees Celsius. The IEA recommends that the price of a tonne of CO2 be gradually raised by 2040, to US$140 for developed countries and US$125 for China, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa (at 2013 prices).

According to the IEA, this can be done without harming economic growth.

It is impossible to reach a global carbon price of US$125 or US$140 per tonne of CO2 without first having negotiated an international agreement that can assure all economic agents that their competitors will play by the same climate rules. Indeed, carbon pricing will not reach the desired level as long as individual countries fear that carbon pricesetting within their respective jurisdictions will scare away businesses and investments, sending them off to countries

developed country emissions that their respective GHG emissions represent. The lower a country’s emission level, the lower its share of the financial effort serves as a further incentive for emission reductions.

This international carbon pricing agreement would allow countries to levy border taxes on products from countries that have not established a carbon price signal in accordance with the international standard. That would be a solution of last resort, to be applied after the usual warnings have been issued. In this manner, it will be in each country’s interest to comply with the international agreement, levy a carbon price on its own emissions, and use the resulting revenue as it sees fit.

This international agreement would provide the world with an excellent instrument for sustainable development.

After decades of international stalemate, carbon emitters would have to acknowledge the conspicuous social and environmental cost of pollution. Consumers and manufacturers would have an incentive to choose lower carbon-content goods and services and to invest in new

“... more and more experts agree that putting a price on carbon is essential to the success of any serious, comprehensive climate plan.” where CO2 emissions are cheaper or free of charge.

For some years now, I and others have been arguing for a readjustment of international climate negotiations. The idea is to refocus these international efforts on negotiating a global, harmonized carbon price signal.

The Dion-Laurent plan would call for all countries to make a commitment to introduce, in their respective jurisdictions, a gradually evolving carbon price signal based on a scientifically validated international standard, in order for the world to keep global warming to as close as possible to two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. Countries may levy this price through carbon taxes or emission quotas. Governments would be free to invest, as they see fit, any revenues accruing from carbon emission levies and the corresponding—and necessary—gradual elimination of fossil energy subsidies.

In keeping with the principle of “Common But Differentiated Responsibility,” developed countries would be required to set aside part of their carbon pricing revenues to help developing countries introduce policies to lower their emissions, adapt to climate change impacts and create carbon sinks (through reforestation, for example). This requirement would help fund the yet unsourced US$100 billion annual injection into the Green Climate Fund that was promised to developing countries for 2020 to help them deal with climate change. That amount could even be increased. The contributions of individual developed countries would be set according to the proportion of total 52

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energy-saving and emission-reducing technologies. Governments and legislators would have the tool to achieve the scientific climate targets that they have endorsed.

Conclusion: Is this Plan Realistic?

Negotiating a global harmonized carbon price will be a very difficult task. I am not one to underestimate the political obstacles any government will face when trying to implement an economy-wide price of GHG emissions. As said in my introduction, as leader of the official opposition in the House of Commons of Canada between 2006 and 2008, I developed such a carbon-pricing plan; I was unable to convince Canadians to accept that approach during the 2008 federal electoral campaign. Today in the United States, part of Congress, backed by a majority of the population, is opposed to President Obama’s initiatives to regulate GHG emissions through the Environmental Protection Agency.

And yet, a global carbon price will not be negotiated successfully if North American countries, notably the United States, fail to take a leading role in the matter.

I understand why some would call this plan unrealistic.

But this plan is necessary—more so than ever—to protect humankind against the threat of a three degree Celsius—or more—global warming sequence. Our current initiatives are not without merit but are insufficient. Our world leaders must champion what is needed for a comprehensive and effective climate and energy policy—a worldwide, harmonized carbon price.

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An Interview with William Antholis

to climate action, playing out the two levels of the climate change challenge.

Do you think there is a conflict between energy security and efforts against climate change?

Energy security and efforts against climate change do not necessarily conflict. Countries can pursue energy in a way that regulates and reduces carbon emissions.

The United States can pursue energy in a way that is less dependent on foreign powers for oil and more focused on renewable energies, but this requires challenging political compromises and is a path that the United States has not yet been willing to pursue. There is another path to energy security, which may or may not be carbon efficient. It places a heavy emphasis on the exploration and development of Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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WILLIAM ANTHOLIS is the executive director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and a nonresident fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. He was the former managing director of the Brookings Institution, and has also served as the director of international economic affairs in the White House.

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Considering your expertise in both US foreign policy and climate change, what do you see as the greatest challenge for the US government in addressing climate change?

The challenge is what international relations theorists have long described as the two-level game: one on the level of international diplomacy, and one on the level of domestic legislation and implementation. On the international level, the current administration has chosen to break from the treaty negotiation format, and has moved toward political deals format, which is less legally binding. On the domestic level, they have broken from the mindset that the US Congress was going to pass mandatory climate change budget legislations, and have used the authority under the president to implement regulations. They also need to implement state-level obligations to address climate change, making the effort even more difficult.

It is important for the US to work with the international community in order to move forward on the domestic level.

If other countries, such as India and China, are to take on similar responsibilities in addressing climate change, it will be easier to negotiate with the other branches of the government and make transitions that will have heavy costs.

On the other hand, the recent executive actions that have cut US emissions dramatically also demonstrate to the international community that the United States is committed

BY ALICE HU

F oreign P olicy I mplications

Climate Change and Foreign Policy Implications for Rising Powers

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FEATURES natural gases; natural gas is a much less costly resource than oil and can reduce carbon emissions.

However, finding natural gas, if done in the wrong way, can cause a high amount of emissions to directly enter the air and can more greatly contribute to overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Moreover, if the United States becomes too reliant on natural gases, it could run into a situation where natural gases hinder the development of more carbon-efficient sources of energy and the transition to renewable energies—the United States should perhaps view natural gas as a bridge toward a low-carbon economy if it is to balance energy security and efforts against climate change.

As the author of Inside Out India and China: Local Politics Go Global, you have done extensive on-the-ground research on India and China, and their increasing importance on the global stage. What is the influence of these two nations on international efforts to address climate change?

China and India are critical to long-term efforts to address climate change. Right now, China and India are the world’s number one and number three GHG emitting countries, respectively. China and India have been major contributors to GHG emissions. But in the last fifteen years, with economic development, these two countries have overtaken the rest of the world as the largest emitters of GHGs, along with the United States. Chinese efforts to reduce GHG emissions are therefore perhaps indicative of efforts underway internationally to address climate change.

The recent US-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change, in the context of the 2015 era, is a breakthrough because it indicated that the world’s number one and number two greenhouse emitters would together pledge

UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, the world will be looking to see what stances India takes on climate change and GHG emissions.

The Indian minister of environment recently stated that India will not be cutting its GHG emissions, given that its priorities are poverty alleviation and economic development.

In this sense, India seems to be repeating the path of China.

Do you believe that this type of economic development, which occurs at the cost of environmental protection, is a stage which all countries must go through?

India is planning on using coal as its top source of power. How they burn that coal and what mix of other fuels is added to the coal are both factors that can impact emissions. India could perceivably use coal in a way that minimizes the amount of emissions—this would be more expensive upfront, but the long-term benefits deserve consideration. To this end, India does not have to repeat the trajectory of China in its economic development.

Do you have any final thoughts that you would like to share with us?

A majority leader in the US Senate once described addressing climate change as the most complex undertaking by mankind. Combating climate change involves overcoming complexities including economic policies, political negotiations, and international cooperation. Regulating the climate of the planet requires solutions to be carried out in a dynamic fashion. The GHGs that we put into the atmosphere today will stay there for 50 or more years; the machinery that puts out emissions into the air will have effects that last for decades. So when you think about any

“What is worth keeping in mind is that we are the first generation to truly understand the impact of climate change...” to stop the growth of both of their emissions.

India has GHG emissions that are approximately one quarter of those of China, and one third of those of the United States. On the other hand, India’s economy has been growing rapidly and is likely to continue to grow as rapidly as that of China, if not more so. Eventually, India’s emissions trajectory is likely to be similar to the one that China has experienced over the last twenty years. The growth in emissions from India would negate the reduction of emissions from the United States and China. India can avoid this trajectory; it has the opportunity to not contribute to the growth of global GHG emissions and prevent local air pollution issues, which have begun to plague China.

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action that affects the climate, such as the building of a coal-powered factory, you need to think about the fact that each year’s operation has a 50-year carbon effect, and a 50-year operation would mean a commitment of centuries.

Any international agreement that we make has to take into consideration these long-term consequences. 20 years into the process of grappling with the complexity of climate change as a species, we are trying to design a system that will be sustainable for future generations. What is worth keeping in mind is that we are the first generation to truly understand the impact of climate change, and we are probably the last generation to have the ability to change the direction in which we are moving to prevent catastrophic outcomes. But the future generations will have to remain equally committed.

Frontier Mentality Has No Place in the Arctic YOLANDA KAKABADSE

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ften we hear about the Arctic as a place buffeted by international and regional pressures—pollutants from agriculture, planetary climate impacts, and rising industrial pressures caused by globalized demand. But the Arctic is also a place of bright hope. It is a place where humankind has a unique opportunity to get development right. Getting it right means instead of viewing the region as a resource frontier to be plundered, we view it as place where sustainability can be more than an afterthought, a place where knowledge-based decisions can safeguard Arctic ecosystems for the benefit of Arctic peoples and humanity as a whole. Our biggest challenge in the Arctic is that we may intervene in Arctic systems on an industrial scale before really understanding the workings and functions of those systems, and so unleash a cascade of impacts that will affect us on a local and global scale.

These potential industrial impacts would be added to those already disrupting Arctic systems as a consequence of climate change.

Unique and Fragile Nature in a State of Flux

The Arctic covers more than 32 million square kilome-

Photo Courtesy Reuters

YOLANDA KAKABADSE is the President of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

From 1998 to 2000, she served as the Ecuadorian Minster of the Enviornment. ters, about six percent of the surface of the globe. Various and unique Arctic ecosystems are still natural and less fragmented than most other landscapes in the world. For instance, the Canadian territory of Nunavut covers more than two million square kilometers, but has only 25 communities, none larger than 7,000 people, and no connecting roads. Freshwater is also an important feature; more than 50 percent of the world’s wetlands are in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. Much of this area is still relatively untouched by direct human activity, and the Arctic is home to over 21,000 species of wildlife.

Though direct industrial impacts are still uncommon, the effects of global climate change have led to an unprecedented state of flux. Evidence indicates that Arctic summer temperatures have been higher in the past few decades than at any time in the past 2,000 years.

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The most drastic result of continued warming is the ongoing shrinking of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, in terms of extent, thickness, and volume. The Arctic Ocean is projected to become nearly ice-free in summer within this century, likely within the next 30 to 40 years. Life in the Arctic Ocean is highly adapted to the presence of ice, from polar bears that hunt on the ice, to seals that give birth on the ice, walrus that rest and feed on the ice, and whales that feed and hide from predators amongst the ice. These are just the more visible parts of a whole ecosystem that is driven by pulses of nutrients mediated by the ebb and flow of sea ice.

A change in the timing of nutrient pulses can spell difficulty for both endemic and migratory species. Millions of migratory birds, connecting the Arctic to the rest of the world, including to Australia, Argentina, or South Africa, rely on the pulse of life in the Arctic spring.

Changes in permafrost and snow cover hold consequences for terrestrial species. The warming climate means differences in ground cover that may be less inviting to existing species such as caribou and reindeer. Grazing animals are also affected by increasing freeze-thaw cycles that lock food beneath sheets of ice.

Marine systems are threatened by more than just changes in temperature; they must also adapt to acidification. There is evidence that the Arctic Ocean will likely be particularly prone to rising acidity levels due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. For aquatic species that form shells, a more acidic ocean is a problem. Much of that shellforming sea life in the Arctic is zooplankton, an important part of the food web. However, the 2013 Arctic Council assessment of ocean acidification concluded that more study is required to assess the effects of acidification on Arctic ecosystems.

Home for People

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a home to around four million people. Roughly 10 percent of people in the Arctic are indigenous. In some places, such as Greenland, indigenous peoples are the majority (88 percent) of the population. In others, such as northern Scandinavia, they make up only a small percentage (2.5 percent) of the population.

The Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic, which covered indigenous households in Alaska, Greenland, Canada and Chukotka, found that in two-thirds of the households surveyed, traditional food accounted for half or more of their household’s consumption. Many Arctic residents combine subsistence activities with wages or subsidies, creating a mixed economy. Perhaps the greatest impact of a changing Arctic environment is that changes may restrict people’s access to subsistence resources. This will have not only economic and physical impacts, but also cultural impacts. If access to traditional resources diminishes, Arctic peoples are likely to increasingly look to new industries for support. The key is to ensure that these new industries do not further erode the means of their subsistence.

New Opportunities or Major Threats?

The formal economy of the Arctic revolves largely around resource extraction, predominantly of non-renewable resources. This is an activity that is projected to increase in importance, driven largely by three factors: the increased global demand or price for resources which are growing scarce in more accessible regions, the increased access potentiated by a decrease in sea ice, and political pressures within Arctic states to develop resources. The investment driven by this sector of the economy is likely to increase significantly in the near future. Arctic Opening: Opportunity and Risk in the High North, a report commissioned by the insurance group Lloyds, concludes that “investment in the Arctic could potentially reach US$100 billion or more over the next 10 years, largely in the development of non-renewable natural resources, and in infrastructure construction and renewal.” Some of the activity is driven

by the usual corporate profit objectives, but there is also a political side to it. Some Arctic governments are interested in obtaining more political independence through greater fiscal independence, and others see industrial development as an aspect of asserting sovereignty over those resources.

Mining is currently the most widespread and one of the most economically important of the resource extraction activities taking place in the Arctic. Where mining deposits occur close to the coastline (as in the soon-to-be-opened iron mine in Nunavut, Canada), they are increasingly attractive, especially when they require bulk shipment, as the declining sea ice allows longer access to ship in supplies and ship out ore. Mining is anticipated to be one of the major drivers in the growth of Arctic shipping in the coming decades, according to the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment.

Oil and gas are the most widely discussed and most controversial resource development sectors in the Arctic.

In 2008, the US Geological Survey said, “the total mean undiscovered conventional oil and gas resources of the Arctic are estimated to be approximately 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.” The largest energy source in this estimate is natural gas, representing 30 percent of global undiscovered natural gas (approximately equivalent to Russia’s entire current proven reserves). Much of the undiscovered gas is in Russian territory, while the oil is estimated to be mostly offshore of Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Onshore oil and gas development is already well underway in the Arctic.

Oil development in the offshore waters of the Arctic

The drilling of oil and gas in the Arctic are highly controversial topics in Arctic resource development. Pictured are the Russian Trebs and Titov oil fields situated near the Arctic village of Varandei.

Photo Courtesy Reuters

is the most controversial. Shell has encountered major difficulties (both technical and regulatory) in its efforts to drill in the Alaskan offshore; exploratory drilling in Greenlandic waters in Baffin Bay drew concern from Canadian Arctic residents; and Norway is pushing its oil exploration closer to more ice-covered waters. A few of the sector’s major players (including Total, BP, and Conoco) have announced their withdrawal from oil and gas projects in the high Arctic due to substantial risks and the absence of key technologies and infrastructure to ensure safe operations as well as reasonable economic returns. Volatility in global oil prices can price offshore Arctic production out of the market, as has been demonstrated already by decisions of several oil companies to suspend or abandon Arctic projects.

Shipping in the Arctic has seen a significant increase over the past decade, both in terms of destinational shipping (resupply and cruise) and in terms of transit shipping.

According to the Northern Sea Route Information office, there were 158 transits of the Northern Sea Route through Arctic Russia from 2011 to 2013. Last year, the first bulk carrier went through the Northwest Passage above Canada and Alaska. Most experts expect the Northern Sea Route to become the more travelled of the two routes in the next few decades as a transit route, due to less risky ice conditions, and to Russian investments in infrastructure.

The Arctic already supports four of the ten largest world fisheries, and there is likely room for further growth.

There were 30 fishing ship voyages in the Canadian Arctic in 2005 and 221 in 2010; the Greenlandic shrimp catch has increased by 50 percent over the last decade. The Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas already produce more than 10 percent of global marine fisheries’ catches by weight, and the total catch of wild fish in the Arctic amounts to more than seven million tons per year. Fisheries are essential to local economies: fish products represent 90 percent of the export earnings of Greenland, and 33 percent of those of Iceland.

The challenge to all industries looking to operate in the Arctic is that the region presents conditions not found in any other environment. Ice, extreme cold, and long hours of darkness test equipment and human capabilities, and sparse infrastructure and human capacity means that there are few response options in case of accidents. While industrial development is expanding in the Arctic, serious challenges make its consequences unclear. There are very few reliable technologies designed to work in Arctic conditions; there is very limited infrastructure in most areas (including search and rescue, and response capabilities); few strategic environmental assessments have been done for the Arctic; there are no or very limited strong sectoral Arctic-specific standards, especially in the oil and gas industry; there is minimal knowledge of Arctic ecosystems, their dynamics under climate change, and reactions to new impacts; and there is still no comprehensive regional or international governance regime for ecosystem-based management.

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subsistence and economic options for Arctic peoples, and if we want a healthy Arctic to continue to be a nursery for migratory and other species, these gaps must be filled.

Implementing a Vision for the Arctic

The dominant discourse in policy discussions of the Arctic regards it simply as a resource frontier, as exemplified by the slogan for the international Arctic Forum in Moscow in 2010: “The Arctic: resource base of the 21st century.” A similar approach—considering extractive industries as the only future for the region—was also demonstrated in October 2014 at the meeting of a newly emerging forum, the Arctic Circle. The irony of this frame for the Arctic is that Arctic renewable resources, which are the best basis for sustainable development, are already at risk due to the changing climate. Exploiting oil and gas in the Arctic will magnify the climate risk while simultaneously introducing localized risks to those same renewable resources.

This extractive agenda should not be considered the only viable option for the future of the Arctic. Arctic communities are already beginning to explore alternative solutions. They are looking at local sources of renewable energy, replacing dependence on diesel power, and using education and global communications connections to find

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to protect its existing renewable resources and to sustainably develop them. To move toward such a positive and entirely achievable vision, the following priority areas of intervention need to be supported by the widest possible variety of stakeholders in the Arctic.

1. Fight climate change at all levels. States should agree on strong measures at an international level to mitigate climate change through emission control. With sufficient will, this could be achieved at the coming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Paris. This needs to be supplemented at the regional level by specific actions in all Arctic states and beyond (in particular Arctic Council Observer States) on short-lived climate pollutants. These often locally-generated pollutants include black carbon, more commonly known as soot. Dark particles from industrial fires land on ice and snow, and speed the melting of ice. Countries contributing to this black carbon load need to work out where it is produced, and shut down or clean up sources, including flaring off natural gas from oilfields. The Climate and Clean Air Coalition has already begun some of this work.

2. Stewardship of the Arctic Ocean. All Arctic states should commit to developing a framework for the implementation and monitoring of marine protected areas, in-

“Sustainable development is a central principle enshrined in the founding document of the Arctic Council, ... [nonetheless] the states have not chartered a course to achieve it.”

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new pathways to economic growth. Arctic communities and ecosystems do not need industrial megaprojects. They need investment in sustainable development that benefits communities.

Today the Arctic is desperately lacking buy-in to a coherent long-term vision and plan. Arctic states formed a regional forum in 1996, the Arctic Council, which includes Arctic indigenous peoples’ organizations. Sustainable development is a central principle enshrined in the founding document of the Arctic Council, the Ottawa Declaration.

Nonetheless, while they have agreed to the principle, the states have not charted a course to achieve it. The Arctic Council is making positive adjustments, but with the change of the chair every two years, it follows predominantly two-year cycles without planning for any longer perspective. The Arctic is desperately in need of that longerterm perspective, a vision of how to implement sustainable development, and a plan to implement that vision.

The Way Forward

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cluding concrete timelines, milestones, and results-oriented targets. This will contribute to the global “Aichi” targets set out by the Convention on Biological Diversity, and allow the Arctic to demonstrate global leadership by granting new or enhanced legal protection to specific ecologically and biologically significant marine areas.

As suggested by the United States as incoming Arctic Council chair, it is also timely to advance a Regional Seas Programme for the Arctic Ocean to create a legal framework for Arctic Ocean conservation and management, including restrictions on drilling and fishing industries. This will facilitate coordinated management of development impacts and conservation strategies.

3. Protect biodiversity and enhance provision of ecosystem services. All development plans in the Arctic must integrate ecological, social and economic policies and practices—that is, ecosystem-based management (EBM).

A corollary to this approach is that all industrial sectors operating in the region must respect and support the implementation of a robust and representative pan-Arctic network of specially managed areas that protects primary habitats for focal Arctic species and key resilient features, and halts harmful industrial impacts in significant ecological areas.

Strategic environmental impact assessments—including the analysis of cumulative impacts as well as land and marine use planning processes—represent effective tools and mechanisms to implement ecosystem-based management, and harvest the benefits of development while mitigating environmental impacts.

It is fundamental that all Arctic stakeholders work together to mainstream Arctic ecosystem services into decision-making and financial systems in the Arctic to support responsible development. Doing this will require conscious and sustained efforts from Arctic governments and governments outside the Arctic alike—especially those that house large financial services and insurance sectors, because these are the sectors that support development, but also comprehend risk. Mainstreaming will require multiple angles of approach, working with financial services and insurance providers to promote less risky (and therefore more financially sound) investments, while convincing publics and governments in the Arctic that it is ultimately in their best interests to support more sustainable development plans.

5. Strengthen Arctic communities and improve their economic and living conditions. Arctic peoples need a way forward economically that does not rely on destructive, short-term extractive projects. It is a matter of urgency to initiate development of integrated Arctic-tailored green growth strategies in partnership with all relevant stakeholders. The role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in supporting the wellbeing of Arctic peoples is already well known, but sustaining these must be further researched via Arctic Council projects on Arctic Resilience and the Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic.

6. Regional governance: strengthen the Arctic Council through national implementation and accountability. In 2013, Arctic states at the Kiruna Ministerial meeting pledged to “pursue opportunities to expand the Arctic Council’s roles from policy-shaping into policy-making.”WWF recommends that efforts to achieving this vision focus on three key elements: the development of National Plans of Implementation with clear implementation targets to support national Arctic strategies and decisions of the Arctic Council; government reporting (including the regular publication

“Arctic peoples need a way forward economically that does not rely on destructive, short-term extractive projects.”

4. Address oil pollution and shipping threats. Arctic states should develop a meaningful binding agreement to address the prevention of oil spills in the Arctic marine environment in a broad and holistic manner, including competence, training, management systems, and safety culture; planning and ensuring that oil and gas decisionmaking and shipping occur in the context of ecosystembased management and spatial planning; bonded liability for oil spills, and transparency and public participation in decision-making.

It is also essential to initiate the development of Phase II of the International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code, an international shipping agreement that would cover Polar Regions. Arctic Council member states, permanent participants, and observer states must be mobilized to focus on improving environmental protections that were not covered in phase one of the code’s developments. These protections should include a ban on the use and carriage of heavy fuel oil, restrictions for the emission of black carbon from shipping, prevention of the introduction of non-native or invasive species through ballast water discharges and hull fouling, and the impact on marine mammals of underwater noise. Considering that some major shipping nations just joined the Arctic Council as observers, their support of such provisions would help prove their bona fides as supporters of Arctic environmental protection.

of a State of the Arctic Report) on a periodic basis to the Council and to the public; and cross-boundary cooperation to ensure international actions in order to move from policy recommendations to implementation. Cooperation could be agreed on specific sectors, geographies, or both. There is a precedent already for this, such as the 2011 legally binding Agreement On Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic.

WWF supports the organization of a review of the Arctic Council structure to examine whether it continues to meet its own objectives. This work should include bolstering capacity for implementation of Arctic Council decisions, and strengthening the Council as an institution that takes accountability for implementation of policies and agreements developed under its auspices, including at a national level.

The Arctic provides a fascinating test for humanity. Now that we have removed the icy lid that protected the region for so long, can we resist emptying it out? Can we fill it with policies wiser than those we have pursued in much of the rest of the world, learning from local peoples and global experience? Frontier lands have typically been brutalized and despoiled precisely because they were far away from rules of law. Let us make the Arctic a place where laws, wise and just, govern a sustainable homeland for Arctic peoples and wildlife far into the future.

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Some BRICS in the Arctic Developing Powers Look North

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n an age of rising powers, there remain few purely regional affairs. With ascendant powers eager to assert their growing influence overseas, many national issues have become international ones. It seems that the Arctic is no exception. While the far north was once the domain of a few select Arctic nations, a number of developing nations have now gained influence. Namely, China and India have sought to increase their Arctic presence at the same time that Russia is shoring up its own influence there.

In May 2013, the members of the Arctic Council—the United States, Russia, Canada, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden—voted to install six nations as observer states. China and India were two of the six states welcomed to the Council (the others were Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Italy). While they do not have the ability to vote on matters before the Council, China and India now have their feet in the door. The vote marked an important step in recognizing their roles in Arctic development. Currently, three of the five BRICS (an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as emerging powerhouses) have a seat at the Arctic affairs table. China and India have joined the Council at a time when their BRICS 60

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KEVIN XIE is a staff writer for the Harvard International Review . partner Russia has stirred up aggression in Ukraine, and has also been busy building up its Arctic forces. Its actions have raised the specter of military competition in the Arctic, a prospect that the Arctic Council was set up to avoid. The concern is whether these three nations will act as responsible partners in regional economic and environmental activities, or if they will opt to enter into competition with other regional powers.

There is a clear risk of regional competition and instability. If other Arctic states do not act carefully, recent moves by Russia, China, and India may disrupt decades of effective multilateral partnership in the Arctic. The goal for the United States and its Arctic allies should be to deter further Arctic militarization and resource grabbing, while retaining the Arctic BRICS players as effective partners. The Arctic states must focus on aligning the interests of Russia, China, and India with their own, in order to preserve the Arctic’s diplomatic model.

Photo Courtesy Reuters

Russia

Council and does have a right to access to the region. The trouble will be in reconciling these two truths and in ensuring Russia remains a cooperative Arctic partner.

China

“... a Chinese Navy rear admiral [went] so far as to say that the Arctic ‘belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it’ and that China has a right to a share of the region’s wealth. “ along Russia’s Arctic coast. The military has also started to build new military installations in the region in order to guard its interests along the Northern Sea Route. It has conducted military exercises in the area, and also sought to bolster its nuclear forces there. President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged his country’s newfound military focus on the region, stating that “the Arctic plays a very important role for us with regard to guaranteeing our security—unfortunately that’s the case. The United States’ attack submarines are concentrated there near the Norwegian coast.

I remind you that the flight time to Moscow of rockets from these vessels is 15 to 16 minutes. But our fleet is there. A significant part of our submarine fleet.” This change in Russian behavior poses a risk for Arctic security. Russia’s Arctic militarization creates the risk of strategic miscalculation and could lead other Arctic states into an Arctic arms race. Even absent military competition, Russia’s new Arctic posture will weaken the trust between Arctic nations and challenge the credibility of the Arctic Council. That might make it harder for the Council to reach consensus on a number of different issues, including environmental regulations and the organization of Arctic shipping. However one cannot forget that Russia is still an indispensable part of the Arctic

the construction on a massive gas pipeline—the Power of Siberia—that will connect China to Russia’s far-flung Arctic territories, including its gas-rich Far East. China’s focus on energy is no surprise, as it seeks to ensure an adequate supply of oil and gas to fuel its growing economy while looking beyond traditional Middle Eastern suppliers. However, these oil projects raise the risk of drilling accidents, which would be a disaster for the fragile Arctic environment. China will need to balance its hydrocarbon investments with additional focus on safe extraction.

While China’s energy-based motivation seems clear enough, its actions in the Arctic have aroused the concern of regional players. It has sought to paint itself as a “nearArctic” state. At times, it has ratcheted up the rhetoric, with a Chinese Navy rear admiral going so far as to say that the Arctic “belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it” and that China has a right to a share of the region’s wealth. Statements such as these worry regional powers, especially Russia and Canada, both of which desire to maintain control over their strategic sea routes. Furthermore, some Chinese business transactions have also worried Arctic countries. A Chinese investor’s recent purchase of coastal land in Spitsbergen, one of the Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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China is a relatively new player in the Arctic, but it has wasted no time in attempting to expand its political and economic influence in the North. Even prior to becoming an Arctic Council observer state, it had gone on a charm offensive in Scandinavian countries, seeking to increase trade ties. It has been successful, signing a number of trade and investment agreements with Finland and actively courting regional leaders in countries such as Denmark. Furthermore, it has expanded the scope of other cooperative efforts by investing in scientific polar research and building its first polar icebreaker, the Snow Dragon.

At the same time, China’s other actions in the Arctic reveal its primary motivations for its northern focus. Numerous state-owned firms have entered into deals to explore the Arctic waters for mineral and hydrocarbon deposits.

Mining companies have signed deals with Scandinavian countries to mine iron, gold, and copper. Furthermore, Chinese oil companies have joined Russian oil and gas firms to begin the development of lucrative hydrocarbon projects in the region. Just last fall, Russia and China broke ground on

in the

Russia occupies a unique place in discussions over the Arctic. There is no denying that it is a true Arctic state, with vast territorial holdings in the far north. However, it has many differences with other traditional “Arctic states.”

The other members of the Arctic Council are steadfast allies, linked by various multilateral organizations such as NATO. Russia has been a mercurial, uncertain ally at best.

At the same time, it has usually been willing to leave other disputes at the door and commit to peaceful Arctic development. However, recent events have changed its strategic calculus. The ongoing crisis in Ukraine has brought Russia’s relations with the United States and much of Europe to a low point. Furthermore, now that China and India have become involved in the Arctic dialogue, Russia has become increasingly nervous about the potential loss of land and resources. Finally, while the Russian economy’s dependence on oil and gas is hardly new, it is a major motivator for Moscow to assert itself in the region: the US Geological Service estimated that the region contains about 10 percent of the Earth’s undiscovered oil deposits in addition to up to 30 percent of its untapped natural gas.

As a result of these trends, Russia is now seeking to increase its military presence in the Arctic. Russian military officials have announced plans to reposition ground forces

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FEATURES northernmost islands in Norway, has created suspicion due to his suspected links to the Chinese Communist Party. Many observers suspect that China is attempting to secure a strategic foothold in the region. China has the clear potential to be either a constructive partner or a destabilizing force in the Arctic; which route it will choose remains to be seen.

India

India has not established as large of a presence in the Arctic as China, but it has made strides in recent months to reach similar heights. Late in 2014, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee paid a visit to Scandinavia, signing a bevy of bilateral agreements with Norway and Finland regarding a number of topics including education, military technology development, and nuclear energy. The Arctic is increasingly on India’s radar as it seeks to ensure access to its share of resources in the region. Mukherjee’s visit was intended to build political and business relationships with Arctic countries, in order to give India a regional foothold.

Closer ties to high-tech northern European economies promise great rewards for India in a variety of sectors, in-

There is the possibility that China and India will import their disagreements into the Arctic. Competition between the two would hamper efforts to promote effective, multilateral channels for Arctic development.

BRICS as Responsible Stakeholders

Russia, China and India are certainly committed to further development in the Arctic. There is no doubt that they will continue to pursue their geopolitical and economic interests in the region. The challenge for the United States and its Western allies on the Arctic Council is to welcome these three powers as constructive partners while preventing the development of a new “Great Game” in the North.

In the case of Russia, Western options are somewhat constrained by the ongoing instability in Ukraine. However, Arctic states can work together to deter further militarization. The Arctic Council should hold discussions on the role of militaries as well as the use of force in the region.

While recognizing Russia’s right to peaceful development of its Arctic resources, the other Arctic Council members must make it clear that continued militarization is not an option. At the same time, the United States, Canada, and

“The challenge for the United States and its Western allies ... is to welcome these three powers as constructive partners while preventing the development of a new ‘Great Game’ in the North.” cluding clean energy, communications, and defense. Scandinavian firms have both the requisite capital and technical expertise to aid India’s development. Furthermore, deeper economic and diplomatic ties with countries such as Norway and Denmark would go a long way towards helping India gain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which is a definite goal of the South Asian country.

However, India has also acted to secure its own energy interests in the region. To achieve this purpose, it has often partnered with Russia. Even in the days of India’s previous administration under Manmohan Singh, it has sought to cooperate with Russian oil firms to explore and develop Arctic hydrocarbon deposits. India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has recently entered into agreements with Rosneft, a Russian energy company, to work together to develop Russian hydrocarbon deposits in the Arctic. Gazprom, another large Russian energy firm, has also shown interest in cooperation with India. India’s growing Arctic presence offers a possibility to bridge the gap between the Western Arctic nations and Russia.

However, Indian involvement in the region also raises the risk of competition with China. The two countries have already squared off over resources in other regions. Last October, Vietnam offered India two oil blocks to explore in the South China Sea, in waters that China also claims. China was quick to rebuke this move, raising the risk of escalation.

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the Scandinavian states should demonstrate that they have defense capabilities of their own. They can work together through existing organizations, such as NATO and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a joint aerospace command run by the United States and Canada.

Increasing interoperability through these pre-existing multilateral structures will be essential to presenting a show of resolve to Russia and other potential challengers. The scope of training exercises should also be increased. While the United States has engaged in some joint exercises with Canadian forces, such as in Operation Guerrier Nordique in early 2014, both countries could do more to cooperate with Norwegian, Finnish, and Danish forces.

China and India have not expressed any desires to establish a military presence in the region. However, their growing Arctic presence still raises the risk of great power competition in the North. The existing Arctic states have a heavy interest in maintaining China and India as responsible Arctic stakeholders and keeping them committed to peaceful economic development and environmental protection. Giving China and India permanent observer status was a strong first step in integrating the two countries into existing multilateral channels. However, Arctic states can do more. They can increase the scope of non-military cooperation with both countries, including scientific and cultural exchanges. In particular, China and India could be included

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in research projects regarding climate change. Both nations have populations that are threatened by rising temperatures, and would likely accept more opportunities to contribute to climate research in the Arctic. These exchanges would build trust between participants and provide a basis for dealing with thornier issues such as resource claims. Furthermore, Western Arctic states should cooperate with China and India over resource development, but only if they agree

notably Canada and Russia, have argued that admitting more observers would dilute the power of the current members. While this is a potential risk, it remains a better option than the alternative. Without access to the Arctic Council as a potential dispute-resolution mechanism, future Arctic players may take their claims to other organizations, such as the UN or the International Maritime Organization, thereby weakening the Arctic Council’s authority. As new

“Without access to the Arctic Council as a potential dispute-resolution mechanism, future Arctic players may take their claims to other organizations ... thereby weakening the Arctic Council’s authority.” to projects that are environmentally responsible as well as respectful of Arctic sovereignty claims. Lastly, the United States and its Arctic allies should invite China and India to participate in marine rescue exercises, in order to establish military contacts in the region.

However, China and India will not be the only rising powers to ask for a seat at the Arctic Council’s table. Other major countries, including fellow BRICS member Brazil, have also shown interest in the region for scientific and economic reasons. The Arctic Council should welcome them as observer states. This would allow existing stakeholders to address issues raised by new regional players in a pre-existing, effective multilateral organization. Some existing Council nations, Photo Courtesy Reuters

players such as China and India enter the Arctic while old players such as Russia seek to change the regional balance, it becomes clear that the Arctic should no longer be viewed as the exclusive domain of the traditional “Arctic states.”The rest of the world is increasingly interested in the Arctic. This international attention has the potential to promote effective multilateral policies for economic development and environmental preservation. Left unchecked, it also raises the risk of a new “Great Game” in the far North. The United States and its Arctic allies need to retain traditional Arctic ties while engaging new regional players in order to adapt to the changing geopolitics of the Arctic.

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Former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao attends a meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland. The meeting was part of Wen’s 2012 visit to Iceland, which concluded in deals on energy cooperation and the Arctic between the two nations. Like other BRICS nations, China has been developing ties with northern European countries in order to pursue a wealth of mineral and energy resources in the Arctic.

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Indigenous Rights

The Hidden Cost of Arctic Development

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he delicate environmental and political balance that composes the Arctic has made it one of the most hotly-contested regions in the world. This fragility poses a direct threat to the traditional lifestyles and fundamental human rights of peoples indigenous to the region. While Antarctica is regulated by a strong treaty system, uninhabited, and under international jurisdiction, the Arctic is inhabited by four million people, roughly 10 percent of whom identify as indigenous peoples, and its governance is balanced among the eight countries with territory in the region—the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Russia. Decisions regarding the Arctic undergo a complicated process involving local governments, central governments, indigenous councils, and the Arctic Council— an international forum of Arctic states and interest groups.

With its many levels and stakeholders, the system is far from efficient or effective. A high number of competing interests, including environmentalist groups, industrial sectors, local governments, and indigenous peoples, vie for influence in decisions about the region. As a result, the rights of indigenous groups in the Arctic lag behind those 64

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DARYN FORGERON DARYN FORGERON is a staff writer for the Harvard International Review . of non-indigenous groups in the same country. The Arctic governance system as it stands cannot be left unaltered, as it highly favors states with interests in the region and gives too little political consideration to those indigenous peoples who call the Arctic home.

Layers of Governance

The current system governing the Arctic is state-centric, but contains multiple levels. International law operates in the Arctic under the framework of state territory on all levels of government. All territorial and most maritime boundaries in the Arctic have been firmly established, giving every state the right to its own land and waters in the Arctic. Under international law, each state maintains the right to sovereignty over territory and has an inalienable right to dispose of its natural wealth and resources in accordance with its national interests.

Photo Courtesy Reuters

specific rights in the international system.

Indigenous Rights: A Theory, Not a Reality

“[I]ndigenous rights are respected more on paper than in practice...none of the established systems create a binding effect on the Arctic states to respect indigenous rights or wishes. “ government and denote a high level of recognition for the Sami peoples.

Another complicating factor is the Arctic Council, an international body whose members are the eight Arctic states listed above. The members have final decision-making power within this organization; however, a high number of indigenous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the ICC, have permanent participant status within the council, which includes key groups from all Arctic regions.

This means that the member governments recognize and respect the elevated status of indigenous groups in regard to Arctic politics. Thus, an international forum within which Arctic states and indigenous peoples can interact does exist; this is a dramatic improvement over past decades.

Lastly, tying together these diverse levels of governance is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), finalized and passed in 2007 and used as a basis in courts such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This document is not binding international law, but sets a standard for the rights and wellbeing of indigenous groups, giving them formal and

legal document in place in the Arctic is a treaty regarding polar bears in the wild. All rights given to indigenous populations depend on the state in question, and can be taken away by that state.

Even the UNDRIP, as it was created very recently, has not yet been incorporated into standard international law and human rights courts in the way that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has: though it has widespread support, it must be institutionalized and viewed as legally binding before it has true legal power. Many of the policies regarding the Arctic, both national and international, are therefore shaped by the Arctic states in the way that best suits their interests, whether they be economic or political, and indigenous rights are often a side note in this process.

This is not to imply that the Arctic states have no regard for the rights of their indigenous peoples; it is simply to point out that the states in question have been highly reticent in affording more concrete power to their indigenous populations, and can consider the wishes of indigenous peoples when it suits their interests and ignore them under other circumstances. The rights of indigenous Spring 2015 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W

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Despite this intricate system of legal platforms, indigenous rights are respected more on paper than in practice.

In reality, this complex system of Arctic governance masks a glaringly important fact: none of the established systems create a binding effect on the Arctic states to respect indigenous rights or wishes. Regions heavily populated by indigenous peoples have minimal impact on national policy. NGOs or indigenous local governments have no way to pressure the government into acknowledging their interests, as they have no veto power and minimal international influence, especially in terms of policy formation. For instance, the many indigenous groups who enjoy permanent participant status on the Arctic Council are marginalized in comparison to member states, as permanent participants have only consultation rights, without the power to vote on decisions or the resources to fund their participation.

Even when indigenous groups are able to influence the Arctic Council, their power is heavily diluted by the Arctic Council’s inability to make legally binding decisions to which all Arctic states must comply: its decisions are soft law at best. State membership on the Council is voluntary, meaning that the Council’s decisions are essentially just recommendations to these states, and are determined by the votes of the states themselves. In fact, the only binding

of

National governments then determine environmental laws, economic policies, and the rights of different minority groups such as indigenous peoples within that territory. Depending on the country in question, authority in the region then falls to more local governments, such as provinces or territories in Canada, the state of Alaska in the United States, or republics in Russia. While these regions generally have a locally-elected leader and maintain control over their own populations, national or international interests are determined by the central government. Subnational regions, on the whole, rarely influence more significant decisions such as trading rights or environmental policies in the Arctic—Greenland, under Denmark’s sovereignty, is the only notable exception. As a result, populations directly affected by changes in the Arctic generally have minimal say in the politics of the region. The federal governments of the Arctic states make the majority of a region’s decisions, based on the needs and interests of their nation as a whole rather than those of the Arctic region alone.

This traditional hierarchical system is complicated by several factors. One is the existence of political systems by and for indigenous peoples, such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) in North America and the Sami Parliaments in Scandinavia. These groups are created by and for indigenous groups, with different levels of affiliation with national governments. The Sami Parliaments, for example, are elected constituencies who can advise their national

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The crux of this problem is the question of sovereignty.

Rights such as free, prior, and informed consent on the part of indigenous groups are highly contentious, because they imply veto power for indigenous groups. If an independent group within a territory has veto power, the state no longer has final sovereignty in that area, and the independent group essentially controls its own quasi-state. Similarly, if the state affords indigenous groups full control over natural resources for their own, traditional use, the inalienable right of every state to its own resources, as recognized by international law, is no longer upheld. These issues are highly politicized and sensitive to the governments of the Arctic states, as giving ground on these fronts means sacrificing power and sovereignty as a state. This does not begin to take into account economic interests in the region, as the resource-rich Arctic provides substantial wealth to these states, and few of them are willing to restrict their activities in the area at the behest of small indigenous groups. Because these issues are ones on which nations are unwilling to make dramatic changes, and because the rights and wishes of indigenous peoples in the region are generally at odds with the interests of Arctic states, conflict in the region is often resolved at the cost of the rights of indigenous groups.

Costs to Indigenous Groups

This lack of a concrete foundation of regularly enforced rights has been highly detrimental to indigenous populations. Under UNDRIP, indigenous people are guaranteed the following rights: freedom from discrimination; selfdetermination; autonomy; control over decisions that affect them; use of traditional lands and resources; health and life; practice of cultural traditions; fair redress; mitigation of negative environmental, social, or cultural impacts; and many more.

Nonetheless, Arctic communities have reported numerous failures to uphold these rights. In reality, marginal autonomy is granted in some regions, indigenous groups are often in charge of their own education systems, and some treaties are in place regarding cultural rights (such as the Sami reindeer trade in Scandinavia), but where economic or political incentives conflict with these rights, those other incentives take priority. A major issue that repeatedly arises is that indigenous peoples wish to preserve the environment and develop it sustainably using traditional knowledge, while industrial sectors wish to develop the environment to make a profit. This often leads to a clash between indigenous and other stakeholders.

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petition was eventually dismissed. Specific organizations have also been implicated in indigenous rights cases, such as the World Bank, which has faced multiple charges of failing to obtain consent from indigenous groups affected by economic programs. However, as the charges were informal and led by indigenous protests, no consequences were imposed. There is an unsettling pattern, briefly exposed in the cases above: even where rights are violated, indigenous peoples do not have the power to secure those rights.

Several of these rights are clearly not fulfilled, such as self-determination. Only in Greenland are indigenous Arctic groups close to achieving self-determination. In fact, the entire system of governance is in constant violation of the right to self-determination and autonomy, stated clearly in Articles 3 and 4 of UNDRIP, because its state-centric nature prevents indigenous groups from controlling all decisions that affect them or voting for their own sovereign government.

Self-determination is by no means the only violated right, however. Environmental practices of the Arctic states consistently endanger the cultural traditions of indigenous peoples. As previously mentioned, various indigenous groups have claimed that environmental practices interfere with their culture. For instance, exploitation of natural resources in northern Scandinavia greatly disrupted the Sami reindeer trade before a series of agreements were put into place. Global warming is melting permafrost into impassable swamps or thinning ice sheets to the point that ages-old hunting grounds can no longer be used—many hunters have fallen through the ice in once-safe areas. Even well-intentioned actions, such as the EU ban on the seal trade in the 2000s, negatively impact indigenous peoples, as many Inuit whose occupation was the seal trade fell on hard times, and felt the ban to be an attack on their culture.

To make matters worse, many factors indicate that climate change and resource exploitation in the Arctic will only increase in coming years. A US Geological Survey report predicted that 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas may lie in the Arctic. In addition, Canada’s Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northern Sea Route have recently opened with the melting of sea ice.

The irony is that the people so negatively impacted by Arctic climate change, the indigenous peoples of the north, are among the least polluting groups in the world. To say that the impacts of climate change are non-equitable— especially considering that the United States, an Arctic state, is the world’s second-highest polluter—would be an understatement. Some of the very states that benefit economically from the current system are the ones with sovereignty in the Arctic and voting power on the Arctic Council. Companies have pointed out that this increase in Arctic activity could generate benefits for Arctic inhabitants, as they would profit from the increases in trade associated with more activity, but this argument fails to consider the interests of indigenous groups.

The degradation of the environment, undermining of traditional values, and destruction of homes take an im-

mense psychological and social toll on indigenous groups, as indicated by the rise in rates of substance abuse, depression, and suicide. It is worth noting that while the suicide rates of indigenous populations in several Arctic countries are higher than the national average (in some cases even four times more), the suicide rates of elderly indigenous are often lower than the national average. This suggests that elders, more steeped in the cultural traditions, have a significantly lower risk of suicide. In contrast, the death rate among young indigenous men in the Arctic has been compared to that of an active war zone. Communal hunting, a staple of traditional indigenous activities in which elders pass on societal values to the youth, has also become far more difficult. In addition, the health of many indigenous groups is also declining, as the loss of hunting grounds and the slow extinction of traditional prey cause malnutrition or loss of livelihood.

of the Arctic states. The key issue is sovereignty: many indigenous groups are fully or partially autonomous, but do not hold sovereignty. A change that would ameliorate this situation, without encroaching heavily on the rights of the Arctic states, would be to allow permanent participants to the Arctic Council veto power, or creating a precedent of free, prior, and informed consent. As Arctic Council decisions are not binding, this would not directly threaten state power, but would institutionalize indigenous control and demonstrate high levels of respect for their opinions.

Another solution is demonstrated by Denmark’s approach to Greenland, where there is a level of independence in a territory whose population is 90 percent indigenous.

This option is less attractive to nations such as Sweden, where indigenous people represent 2.5 percent of the population. It also comes into direct conflict with state sovereignty. A more moderate proposal would be to create local indigenous governments, ultimately subjected to the

These indigenous rights are upheld to varying degrees across different Arctic regions. In general, indigenous people enjoy the strongest protection of their rights in North America and Greenland, and the weakest in Russia, with Scandinavia falling in between. In the latter areas, the extreme lack of basic human rights described above is less visible or applicable. Indigenous groups are often more assimilated into local politics, even if they lack a say in the central government or only maintain consultation powers.

Regardless, the fact remains that these indigenous groups lack power over decisions that concern them.

Indigenous peoples across the Arctic have taken action to represent themselves, whether via the ICC or the Sami Parliaments or the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North. Their actions are often unsuccessful because they have few points of leverage to use against large corporations or state governments: they have a minimal role in the traditional global economy and no hard governmental power. In states such as Russia, where economic incentives outweigh the importance of a small minority group, indigenous rights are often entirely ignored. Even in states more willing to compromise, areas that wish to grow their economies come into conflict with indigenous groups. On the whole, indigenous rights are not afforded the respect or legal power that all human rights should merit.

Several potential solutions to this issue do exist, though all would require political shifts or concessions on the part

national government, which maintain significant control over their area.

A third option is to create national park areas, where resource extraction is banned or limited, to maintain the traditional environment of these groups; as the United Nations admits, the cultural survival of these groups depends heavily on their rights to traditional lands and resources. Restricting the development of these areas and their wildlife would grant cultural security to the groups in those regions.

Binding international laws would also ameliorate the situation, rather than volunteer efforts that can be halted at any time. As one scholar eloquently put it, international management “does not pose a threat to sovereignty. Just like states accept other international obligations, the Arctic, too, will be subject to international obligations.”This will be achieved if UNDRIP becomes as institutionalized in international law as the UDHR has, or if all Arctic states sign a binding agreement to respect the rights and lives of their indigenous populations.

A vast array of possible solutions exists, both political and environmental. Whatever the solution, the current situation is in violation of standard international law. Fundamental human and indigenous rights are subjugated to the interests of states, especially economic incentives.

Though the governance of the Arctic and its native peoples is admittedly complicated, and a treaty system like that of Antarctica would never function with eight different states claiming sovereignty in the area, binding international obligations are required to protect these people who have gone without a voice for too long.

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A rctic D evelopment

Addressing the Issue

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“The degradation of indigenous environment, undermining of traditional values, and destruction of homes take an immense psychological and social toll on indigenous groups...”

I ndigenous R ights : T he H idden C ost

FEATURES

BOOKS & REVIEWS

Feuding Nationalism

A Review of Jaime Lluch’s Visions of Sovereignty staff writer

COLE EDICK

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ationhood is complicated. A major threat to large democracies is the presence of multiple nations within their borders that rupture the sanctity of the unified nation-state. Though the nationalism of yesterday is often looked at in terms of majority-nation nationalists and the patriotic picture that they painted for the rest of the world to see; the nationalism of today is minority-nation nationalism, which presents internal challenges for multinational democracies. Today, nationalism manifests itself in referenda of secession rather than rallies for unity. Jaime Lluch confronts these contemporary forms of nationalism and the problems that they present for democracies in his book, Visions of Sovereignty: Nationalism and Accomodation in Multinational Democracies, which examines Catalonia in Spain and Quebec in Canada, both deemed “stateless nations,” with a refined theoretical approach.

The primary objective of Visions of Sovereignty is to present what Lluch calls the “moral polity thesis,” which explains why and in what ways stateless nations seek forms of self-determination. Lluch continues to pursue a novel argument by shattering the standard dualism that presents nationalist visions of sovereignty as either secessionist or non-secessionist. There are two theories formed before Lluch’s that he claims are insufficient: the national consciousness thesis and the materialist thesis.

The national consciousness thesis asserts that variation within national movements and their inclination to seek self-determination depends upon cultural agreements on national identity and values. The research presented in Visions of Sovereignty, though limited to Catalonia and Quebec, persuasively demonstrates that most nationalists, despite disagreement over policy, maintain a national consciousness: all agree on the status of their stateless nation. The theory depends on a homogeneous national consciousness, based on central cultural values, that supposedly guides nationalists. In showing that several national parties in a given country share central cultural values, yet are heterogeneous in political orientation, this theory is insufficient for explaining such variance in national movements. The materialist thesis asserts that economic considerations are the primary motivator for

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the actions of nationalist movements. Yet Lluch’s research shows overwhelmingly that economic considerations are rarely the primary or even secondary focus for nationalist militants, at least in Catalonia and Quebec. Lluch does, however, include several brief examples of similar cases in national movements across the globe, widening his lens to make a crucial point: the economy is rarely the priority for nationalists. His moral polity thesis could be briefly summarized as the political alternative to the above theories, focused on cultural and economic considerations respectively. Lluch’s unique and original theory outlines how, in multinational democracies, nationalists consider themselves as part of “moral polity” wherein stateless nations have expectations of reciprocity, accommodation, and recognition by the central state to which they belong.

As a result, nationalism arises by the perceived dominating, homogenizing, and incompetent rulership of the central state. Nationalists express their discontent in the political pursuit of sovereignty.

However, Lluch continues to argue against the standard dualism that presents nationalist visions of sovereignty as either secessionist or non-secessionist. He argues that nationalism in multinational democracies has three major political orientations: independentism, autonomism, and federalism, each with different visions of sovereignty embodied by their own political parties. Independentists favor secession from the central state, federalists support decentralization, and autonomists stand somewhere between the two, often non-secessionist but seeking special status and privileges. These three orientations present the “nationalists’ trilemma,” a confusing choice for nationalist militants in places like Catalonia and Quebec that leads to a diverse array of opinions among individuals. In his research, Lluch uncovers that, though autonomist parties in Quebec are officially autonomist and have platforms in accordance with such, most of their militants would individually self-describe as independentist. His analysis suggests that the political expression of nationalism is highly dependent upon the agency of its militants rather than labels and categories. Militants exercise their agency not in what they say, but in what they do. Though these militants may call themselves independentist, they vote overwhelmingly in favor of less radical, autonomist policy.

BOOKS & REVIEWS

A pro-independence protestor wearing a placard that reads “My Name is Catalonia” in front of Catalonia’s regional parliament in Barcelona as lawmakers vote on a referendum to break away from Spain on January 16, 2014.

The complexity of this breakdown is well-served by Lluch’s presentation of his research. He presents thorough, qualitative field research conducted in both Catalonia and Quebec across all of the relevant political parties, interviewing party leadership, engaging in focus groups with base-level militants, and distributing a questionnaire. His findings are impeccably organized, displayed in charts, spectrums, and well-divided sections that produce a tight and effective classification of the several nationalist political parties across Catalonia and Quebec. Ironically, it is evident from Llunch’s interviews that most nationalists would reject such a thorough breakdown. One party leader goes so far as to say to Lluch that, “we do not fit into your scheme.” Despite such rejections, the scheme present in Visions of Sovereignty is effective in both demonstrating the complexity of nationalist politics in Catalonia and Quebec, but also demystifying them. The classification is essential for Lluch’s analysis, which is largely comparative.

The tragic weakness of Visions of Sovereignty is that it already feels dated, despite having being published in 2014. Unfortunately for Lluch, several developments have occurred across nationalist movements, especially in his countries of study, but also elsewhere, since his book was written. The autonomist political party Lluch studied in Quebec, Action Démocratique du Québec, no longer exists, having declined and merged with a new party. Catalonia engaged in a failed move for a referendum on selfdetermination. Most notably, the Scottish independence

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referendum on September 18, 2014 failed. All of these events have served to agitate nationalist militants and it is probable that the opinions Lluch documents in his book have changed. He addresses the possible implications of such recent developments on his work in a brief four-page addendum to his conclusion, yet this is insufficient to deal with the magnitude of change national movements have undergone since 2010. However, such changes likely favor Lluch’s moral polity thesis. The denial of the Catalonian referendum by the Spanish central government is a prime example of the non-accommodation by the center that he asserts lies at the heart of nationalists’ grievances.

Despite this specter of change hanging over Visions of Sovereignty, it remains relevant. Lluch writes a compelling case for his moral polity thesis that proves to be far more satisfactory than other explanations that have come before it. It is a more complex and diverse explanation of nationalism as we know it today. Visions of Sovereignty is a reminder of the political problem presented by the nationalism of today, and that its solutions must manifest themselves in terms of politics as well. If multinational democracies are to maintain their reach, they must strive to accommodate minority nations through plural institutions and measures for autonomy. Otherwise, rupture may prove inevitable.

Photos Courtesy Reuters

BOOKS & REVIEWS

Trapped Within Walls A Review of Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall

staff writer

THOMAS WESTBROOK

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nyone who claims to understand the Arab -Israeli conflic t is either badly mistaken or has spent several decades seriously studying the matter. I have not spent several decades of study on this topic, and so will not pretend to understand.

Judging by the monumental undertaking that is The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, however, Avi Shlaim, an Oxford emeritus professor of international relations, has spent the requisite lifetime needed to speak with authority here. In this daunting work of over 800 pages, he attempts to chart out the entire history of Israel’s relationship with the Arab world in the service of a revisionist thesis.

Shlaim’s title refers to a 1923 essay that was highly influential in Revisionist Zionism, which argued for a two-step process in establishing the state of Israel. First, its author argued, Israel must establish an “iron wall” of military strength to safeguard the nation against the inevitable hostility of the Arab world. Then, once the Arab nations resigned themselves to an Israeli presence, the two sides could negotiate peace. Shlaim argues that Israel failed to follow through on the second step of the “iron wall” strategy, and that its leaders missed several critical

opportunities to negotiate peace.

As I previously mentioned, I cannot credibly judge the validity of Shlaim’s historical argument. What I can do is examine the generosity of his history, and on that count Shlaim passes with flying colors. His sketches are not always generous, and it is clear that he intends to defend the memory of some Israeli figures and tarnish that of others. At one point, he openly announces that he intends in the following chapters to critique Israel’s sainted (and hawkish) first Prime Minister David BenGurion, while simultaneously resuscitating the reputation of his dovish successor Moshe Sharett. But his sketches are vivid and lifelike, and while he castigates the mistakes made by different prime ministers, at no point do any of those mistakes appear implausible. Had Shlaim been a bad historian, he would have presented decisions with which he disagreed as moments of spontaneous evil, or simply failed to explain them altogether. But Shlaim is not a bad historian. There is always some kind of explanation, and it is usually a good one.

At least, that is, until the emergence of Israel’s current prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu. If The Iron Wall were Beowulf, Netanyahu would be its dragon: he appears late in the saga, with no character traits besides a love of murdering anyone in his path and the apparent goal of laying waste to the kingdom. There is a significant moment a little over three quarters through the book, in which Shlaim proclaims that “history may ultimately judge” Netanyahu’s early years in a different light. This was a troubling line. Up until this point, it had seemed that The Iron Wall was history, and very good history at that. After Netanyahu’s entrance, that ceases to be the case.

The most recent two decades of Israeli history are depicted through the close-up lens of partisan politics, rather than the more distant lens of the historian. They Iraeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu denounces the use of chemical warfare in Syria feature inflammatory phrases such at a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on August 25, 2013. as a description of the Israelis as

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Photo Courtesy Reuters

BOOKS & REVIEWS

A relative of Palestinians killed by an Israeli airstrike grieves at a hospital in Gaza City on July 31, 2014. Gazan officials estimate that at least 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed with nearly 11,000 wounded during the July conflict.

“colonial overlords” and the somewhat absurd claim that Israel fought Hamas in 2008 only because “[Israel] knew that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, would stand firm in defense of the national rights of the Palestinian people.”

These are not the arguments of a historian. As such, Shlaim’s coverage of the last two decades will be pleasant reading for those who share his political positions and intensely frustrating for those who do not. Particular notice must be given to a truly unnecessary tangent discussing the second Gulf War. Only the most tenuous of speculations can connect Israel directly to this war, but Shlaim does not hesitate to brand the US invasion as an extension of aggressive Zionist policy, in one of the least reasonable explanations for the war this journal has ever seen.

This shift in tone and bias is not entirely Shlaim’s fault.

He was clearly handicapped in the last quarter of the book by a lack of resources. Accounts of international diplomacy are dependent on access to the diplomatic records, and neither Israel nor any of the Arab states will be opening up their archives regarding recent events anytime soon.

As such, it is impossible to write a comprehensive history of Israel’s most recent decades, because the information circulating among the administration at that time is not available to the public. Nevertheless, Shlaim chose to fill in the gaps with excessive speculation and opinion, and as such bears the responsibility for abandoning history for politics.

Does the shift to politics damage the book as history?

Well, somewhat. Nevertheless, the book is still extraor-

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dinarily successful as a work of history, even if Shlaim stumbles a bit near the finish line. His grand conclusion that Israel abandoned the “iron wall” strategy right when it was about to succeed remains extremely effective.

Shlaim presents his thesis very cleverly. In the first half of the book, he gives the impression that he does not support the strategy at all. In the second half, however, when all the Arab nations, even the Palestinians, are willing to negotiate with Israel along the two-state lines the Israelis originally wanted, it becomes clear that the strategy has played out as planned. It is then, and only then, that Shlaim levels his harshest criticism at the hawks who lacked the foresight to emerge from behind the iron wall and negotiate.

Shlaim closes the book with a personal address to the reader. This is far and away the most moving and arresting part, no mean feat in a work that retains the reader’s attention for the entirety of modern Israeli history. He directly states his commitment to Palestinian rights and his belief that Israel’s denial of those rights is not only atrocious but also deeply harmful to its own national character.

In conclusion, this book is a magnificent, clear-sighted history of Israel’s relationship with its neighbors. It may have its own claims to make and axes to grind, and as such probably should not be the only book you read about the subject. That said, no collection of Israeli histories would be complete without The Iron Wall among them.

Photo Courtesy Reuters

ANNIVERSARY BOOK TEASER

US-RUSSIAN RELATIONS IN A POST-COLD WAR WORLD

A

ANALYSIS BY MIGA PUREV-OCHIR

s the 1990s ushered in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the United States as the world’s sole superpower, repercussions of the nuclear arms race perpetuated the mutual distrust between the two nations, despite an end to explicitly hostile motives. The existence of nuclear weapons and continued weapons research put both at heightened alert. In 1999, Joe Biden, at the time a Senator from Delaware and member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote on the topic of what nuclear weapons disarmament and arms control meant for US-Russian relations for the summer edition of the Harvard International Review . Almost a decade later, Biden’s influence on international relations would increase greatly as he assumed the position of vice president of the United States in 2008. This article sheds light on Biden’s stances on bilateral relations with Russia as well as the evolution of the United States’ policies towards strategic arms in response to the War on Terror. This article from the HIR ’s archives a fascinating snapshot of the past, particularly relevant given the heightened tensions of US-Russian relations today, and will appear in an upcoming book to celebrate 35 years of the Harvard International Review .

A Strategic Vision: Mapping a Future for US-Russian Relations

BY JOE BIDEN Eight years after the end of the Cold War, relations between the United States and Russia are in a curious—and surprisingly dangerous—condition.

Because international communism has collapsed as a worldwide threat, neither country has a serious reason to fear an attack by the other. Yet each still maintains enough nuclear weapons to cause mutual devastation. Still worse, both countries seem poised to accept an increased risk of war. Despite the United States’ preponderance of power in our current relationship with Russia, the potential for instability in our strategic arms relationships must be understood and diminished.

The Current Situation

Russia, with its economy shattered and its military in decline, relies increasingly upon its strategic rocket forces as its shield against attack.

When a country has survivable strategic 72

forces and a functioning ballistic-missile early-warning network, reliance upon strategic deterrence can be sensible and cost-effective. A country like the United States can count on its ability to respond to any nuclear attack as it occurs, or even to respond in kind after absorbing an attack. But holes in Russia’s early-warning network, as well as its inability to sustain the high cost of maintaining or replacing its aging missiles and submarines, compromise its deterrent capability. As a result, Russia is being forced into a “launch on warning” posture, with the attendant risk of accidental war caused by overreacting to fragmentary or erroneous warning data.

The United States, for its part, is moving toward a national missile defense that will cost more than US$10 billion over the next six years, yet could actually endanger our national security.

The limited national missile defense that the US Department of Defense is devel-

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oping (and that the US Senate partially endorsed this year) may protect us in the event of attack by a small number of incoming warheads. However, it could also force Russia to rely even more on its aging strategic missiles to maintain nuclear deterrence against the United States and China. There is no way that Russia, in its current economic straits, could match US expenditures on missile defense. Unable to match US defense strategies, Russia would logically turn to offensive missile forces to overwhelm any defense the United States might deploy. Moreover, China may modernize and increase its offensive forces for the same purpose, and Russia might feel compelled to match the Chinese improvements as well.

Given these developments in the United States and Russia, the future of both arms control and crisis stability (a situation in which our strategic forces may be safely held in reserve until at-

ANNIVERSARY BOOK TEASER

tacked) is in question. In the United States, many adherents of national missile defense call for abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

They realize that treaty-compliant missile defenses, or those that might be permitted after negotiations with Russia, will not only be limited, but difficult to expand. But were US missile defenses not so difficult to expand, Russia’s deterrent capability could be seriously threatened.

In Russia, many politicians and retired military officers have called for rejection of START II (the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), or at least for its abrogation should the United States deploy a national missile defense. This 1997 treaty requires that Russia dismantle its land-based multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle (MIRVed) missiles. For the Russians, the inability to produce and deploy enough new SS-27 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to match US force levels in a START II environment is both disturbing and galling. Their collapsed economy is in no shape to maintain current strategic-rocket force levels with or without START II, but the path to dramatically lower numbers of warheads would certainly be more gradual, and less difficult for Russia, if MIRVed ICBMs could be retained.

Even the most limited US national missile defense would further tax Russia’s deterrent capabilities, increasing the temptation to retain MIRVed ICBMs. And as the United States might be driven toward ever more robust missile-defense systems, Russia fears a strategically significant US breakout from ABM Treaty limitations. USRussian strategic arms control agreements, including START II ratification and implementation, are therefore likely to be held hostage to our mutual ability to work out any ABM Treaty concerns as the United States explores missiledefense options against rogue states.

The irony in all this is that both Russia and the United States are probably acting against their own strategic interests. In the case of Russia, one must ask whether concentrating on nuclear deterrence does anything to meet the real military challenges exposed by

Russia’s dismal performance in Afghanistan and more recently in Chechnya.

Continuing instability near Russia’s southern border will be unaffected by the health of its strategic rocket forces.

Inability to restrain ethnic nationalism in Russia also seems to be a much more immediate military concern for Russia than any strategic forces posture. Given Russia’s severely limited resources and consequent failure to maintain top-flight conventional armed forces, the best that strategic weapons can accomplish is to deter other powers from picking up the pieces if Russia should fracture further.

In the case of the United States, it is far from clear that building a national ballistic missile defense will be a cost-effective use of scarce resources.

Our traditional deterrence posture has been highly successful, even against implacably hostile or irrational leaders like Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, and Saddam Hussein. Given that record, the need to improve the readiness of US forces, and the pressing need for theater missile defense to protect US forces overseas, one must ask whether concentrating on national ballistic missile defense in fact makes much sense. Improving our conventional forces (including our capability for preemptive attack on enemy missiles) would be a better use of the many billions of dollars likely to be spent on successive missile defense iterations.

Patient diplomacy may also be an alternative to missile defense. The successful negotiation with North Korea, in which the United States recently secured annual access to a suspect underground nuclear weapons site at Kumchang-ri, suggests strongly that even in foreign relations, we may catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Republican scorn for that agreement illustrates the domestic difficulties, however, for any government that relies upon diplomacy to handle national security challenges.

Former Secretary of State James Baker has called the agreement evidence of “a policy of appeasement.” Similar accusations were hurled by Russian politicians at Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and First Deputy Premier (and Communist Party member) Yuri

Maslyukov when they spoke out in support of START II ratification.

Toward a “Strategic Vision”

What is urgently needed today, both in Russia and in the United States, is a clear and compatible “strategic vision” of the direction our countries should be heading. Clearly stated strategic objectives can be used as criteria by which to evaluate specific policy proposals. If we keep those objectives in the forefront, we are more likely to achieve both a consistent US policy and a consistent “message” as that policy is presented to Congress, to the American public and to the world. If their strategic visions are compatible, moreover, the United States and Russia will be better able to handle specific issues without disrupting our overall relations.

What strategic vision should the United States and Russia adopt toward each other? We should begin by acknowledging that our strategic weapons continue to put both countries at risk, and we should therefore set strategic stability as the most basic and mutual objective in our relations. This term encompasses both crisis stability and stability in the overall balance of strategic forces between the United States and Russia.

A second mutual objective should be prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. Such weapons have the potential of threatening serious harm to both countries, and ominously, Russia and the United States have each already at least been subject to nuclear threats by terrorist groups.

A third mutual objective should focus on Russia’s future. Both countries should work to facilitate Russia’s transition from a remnant of a failed empire to a prosperous, responsible, and democratic power on the world scene.

It is not realistic to envision Russia regaining superpower status for at least a generation, and it would be destabilizing for the United States or Russia to adopt that objective. It is both realistic and essential for world security, however, that both countries accept the objective of securing Russia’s role as a stable and respected power with a role equivalent

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to that of the UK, Germany, or Japan.

Equally important is a shared objective regarding the US role in world affairs over the coming generation. The United States is the world’s only superpower and will remain so for the foreseeable future. That said, the United States possesses neither the resources nor the authority to order the rest of the world as we see fit. Rather, the United States must lead by example and through consensus and coalition building. While recognizing and accepting its singular role in furthering world stability, the United States must share both the rights and the burdens of leadership and must make room in its strategies for the legitimate needs and interests of other states.

What would be the policy implications of adopting the four-part strategic vision outlined above? A vision of where we are going is not the same thing as a fully orchestrated strategy to get there. It does afford, however, a useful set of criteria by which both the United States and Russia may judge their policy options.

Strategic Stability and BMD

Strategic-weapons relationships are clearly central to this strategic vision. A shared interest in preserving strategic stability warrants caution in our unilateral deployment of national ballistic missile defense (BMD). This does not rule out all such deployments, but it does argue in favor of negotiated understandings regarding system characteristics and deployment patterns.

Indeed, if more sophisticated defenses are ever deemed necessary, the revival of earlier proposals for shared technology or jointly operated systems may be required. It would appear risky, however, for the United States to adopt a policy of permitting Russia to build new MIRVed ICBMs, an option that was reportedly under consideration in the Department of Defense. A more promising idea would be Dr. Richard L. Garwin’s suggestion of a joint USRussian boost-phase BMD targeted at North Korea’s missiles. BMD systems targeted at specific rogue states could be much more capable than a limited national BMD while posing less of a 74

threat to US-Russian strategic stability.

A Russian strategy based upon retention of its current MIRVed ICBMs would also be risky. Those missiles will be increasingly expensive to maintain as they degrade in the coming years and will remain, in the meantime, obvious targets for a first-strike attack. Given the holes in its early-warning net, Russia would have to accept the heightened risk of accidental war that comes with employing a “launch-on-warning” doctrine. A better option would be to explore whether the United States and Russia could move a substantial proportion of their strategic forces to a verifiable second-strike reserve status, rendering them ineffectual for a surprise attack. Such a reorientation of our forces might well be a useful element of an agreement allowing a limited national missile defense against attack from a rogue state, if that defense should ever be dispassionately determined necessary and cost-effective.

Arms Reduction

The vision outlined here also argues in favor of maintaining the START momentum toward lower levels of strategic forces. Some observers have suggested that the United States might better forsake arms control and achieve a position of dominance as Russian forces degrade further. But that approach would surely lead Russia to extend the service life of its MIRVed ICBMs as long as possible, and a trend toward significant US dominance could tempt Russia to take bolder military risks in the near term for fear that it would otherwise face a losing war in the future.

The United States has no tactical reason, moreover, to maintain significantly dominant strategic forces. Indeed, the costs of maintaining START I force levels are already squeezing Pentagon planners. The United States is therefore likely to lower its force levels in the coming years even without arms control, beginning as soon as the US Congress permits. But we would be wise to take advantage of the benefits that START treaties offer—most notably in the realm of transparency and verification. Mutual agreement on the nature of our drawdowns in strategic forces enables both

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sides to plan rationally for the future, giving each side baselines for assessing each other’s actions.

The longstanding unwillingness of the Russian Duma to approve ratification of the START II treaty has highlighted Russia’s inability to afford dismantling its MIRVed ICBMs and produce enough new single-warhead ICBMs to match US forces under the treaty. The United States has offered significant and useful dismantlement assistance through the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, and should extend that assistance to START II reductions. The United States and Russia also agreed in the 1997 Helsinki summit to seek a START III treaty with force levels of 2,000 to 2,500 strategic nuclear weapons, so long as Russia first ratified START II. This would preserve and implement the START II ban on MIRVed, land-based missiles, while seeking lower force levels that would limit the number of new missiles Russia would have to deploy in order to maintain rough parity with the United States.

There is nothing sacred, however, about the force levels proposed in 1997.

It should be possible to go down at least to 1,500 weapons without approaching parity with the smaller nuclear powers or changing US reliance upon the triad of ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and airborne weapons. The United States should begin now the formal reanalysis of nuclear targeting that it traditionally undertakes before proposing lower numbers.

Russia, in turn, should ratify START II and not burden its ratification with unrealistically rigid conditions regarding the future of the ABM Treaty.

Russia might understandably choose to preserve its right to withdraw from START II if the United States were to violate or abrogate the ABM Treaty.

Realistically speaking, however, strategic stability would not be served by a provision that purported to bar negotiated adjustments to the ABM Treaty.

The imperative to guard against nuclear proliferation is also relevant to the START process. To the extent that lower force levels are accompanied by the destruction of nuclear weapons and by the safeguarding and downgrading

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of the fissile material in those weapons, they will contribute to non-proliferation as well as to strategic stability. Russia should give priority now to developing a transparent warhead destruction process, and should accept the need to substantially reduce and destroy its tactical nuclear weapons stockpile.

Strategic Stability

From the standpoint of both strategic stability and non-proliferation, US and Russian ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is an immediate imperative.

CTBT would help provide assurance that neither country was building nuclear weapons with radical new designs.

As strategic arms levels are reduced, this would provide extra insurance against a technological breakout that might give one side much improved destructive capabilities. Ratification by the fall of 1999, when the first CTBT review conference will occur, would likely also lead both India and Pakistan to ratify the treaty, thus limiting nuclear weapons development in the region where the risk of nuclear war is the highest (although India’s political turmoil might delay its formal actions).

A shared concern in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has clear implications for both US and Russian policies. It is absolutely imperative to Russia’s interests to cease any and all assistance to Iran’s long-range missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. The idea of using countries like Iran, Iraq, and India as a counterweight to the United States is an utter chimera and a danger to Russia’s security as well as to the rest of the world. Any further cracks in the firewalls against the use of weapons of mass destruction pose a risk to all countries.

Assistance to Iran is especially risky, as a nuclear- or missile-armed Iran could well take the side of ethnic separatists or Muslim fundamentalists both in central Asia and in Russia itself.

For the United States, continued expansion of non-proliferation assistance programs in the former Soviet Union is equally imperative. Non-proliferation cannot be sustained if scientists, firms, and institutes in Russia and elsewhere

remain desperate for foreign jobs or contracts just to put bread on the table.

The Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative proposed by the Clinton administration is a good first step, especially in its significant effort to find alternative employment for Russian biologicalwarfare specialists. Equally important is the Nuclear Cities Initiative—designed to help find new employment for many thousands of scientists and technicians as Russia’s Ministry of Atomic Energy moves to downsize its nuclear weapons complex by 50 percent over the next several years—as well as the expansion of US technical assistance to export-control institutions in the former Soviet Union.

Most US non-proliferation assistance to the former Soviet Union is designed to foster Russian ventures that can gain Western investment and become viable commercial enterprises.

Such enterprises are vital to meeting the long-term need for self-sustained non-military employment, but they may well fail to meet the short-term need to employ thousands of scientists and technicians who possess dangerous expertise. The proposed program to employ biological weapons specialists is pathbreaking in its intention to fund public health research that may never lead to commercial ventures. Similar efforts in other fields also merit support and could reach many weapons experts who will otherwise remain prey to foreign recruitment.

Congress should cease enacting annual bans on US sponsorship of such activities as housing construction and environmental cleanups in the former Soviet Union—a better course would be to require safeguards against corruption in such programs. Housing construction may enable Russia to bring troops back from foreign lands or facilitate the successful operation of facilities associated with Cooperative Threat Reduction Program projects or nascent non-military enterprises. Environmental cleanup efforts could usefully employ former chemical or nuclear weapons specialists and could provide field tests of new approaches that would also be of use in the United States.

A Role for Russia

The nagging question for many Russians may well be, “What do we get out of all this?” There is satisfaction in lessening the risk that weapons of mass destruction will be used somewhere, but Russia has a more immediate need for money and jobs (although highly enriched uranium sales and foreign non-proliferation assistance do make a difference). If Russia’s future does not lie in maintaining its MIRVed ICBMs or in selling mass destruction technology around the world, then just how shall they (and we) facilitate Russia’s transition from a remnant of a failed empire to a responsible and democratic power? In other words, what is the quid for Russia’s quo?

What we must offer the Russian people is nothing less than the freedom and prosperity that passed them by in the 20th century. As it happens, most of the adjustments must be made by the Russians themselves. Some of those adjustments are clear, but painful. Russia must be able to collect taxes and to enforce contracts. It must base its economy upon real output, rather than just printing more money to pay its internal debts. It must afford transparency and tax-free status to international aidgivers and a fair return to international investors, while limiting the depredations of organized crime. To maintain the respect and cooperation of its fellow world powers, Russia must engage them in a cooperative manner and define its national interests in a manner that looks forward to the role that Russia is assuming today, rather than backward to the role that the Soviet Union once played in the world.

The United States and other Western powers must consider how to treat a Russia that was once a superpower and is now in crisis. Russia—by virtue of geographic area, military strength, size and education of its population, and economic potential—should logically be an equal of any world power other than the United States. The West has given Russia assistance as well as a seat at the table, from the G-8 to NATO. This must continue.

But we must do more. Russia needs a place not just at our tables, but also in

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the world economy and in our diplomatic practice. If Russia cannot compete in legitimate marketplaces, it will go the way of the black markets of the world.

We should support the development of robust Russian enterprises that can survive in both domestic and international markets—and not always expect Western firms to provide investment capital in return for major equity positions, as we do in many of our non-proliferation assistance programs. An open, efficient economic system will knit the interests and resources of Russia into the fabric of the international economy and reduce Russia’s dependence upon destabilizing military exports.

Achieving this may take much longer than we have hoped—perhaps a generation. We must realize the depth of the changes needed in Russia and the risks

of demanding more than its precarious balance of economic and political forces can sustain. That means we must keep open lines of assistance to all levels and parts of Russian society. A particularly helpful approach would be to reach directly to the small- and mid-sized firms that will be the building blocks of any future Russian market economy. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has such a program in place. Despite the apparent economic chaos in Russia, this is not the time to cut back on such programs. We must increase our support for exchange and educational programs that reach down to individual Russian citizens.

If we leave Russia out of the search for solutions to the world’s problems, we will forever have to bring it along at the last moment or find it opposed to

R

our ideas. We should consult with Russia in a similar manner to our regular consultation with traditional allies. We should also accept the principle that Russia, too, has reasonable national interests, while countering any imperial designs or ideological “old thinking” on Russia’s part.

Democratic Russia is still young and must still scrape the last Soviet barnacles off the new Russian ship of state. But we can demonstrate by our acts the advantages that Russia will accrue by casting its lot firmly with Europe, rather than seeing itself as a Eurasian counterweight to democracy, capitalism, and international norms of state behavior. In this manner we may bring about a shared vision of strategic stability in US-Russian relations that will truly benefit the coming generation.

eading this article with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the proposals made in Biden’s final paragraph have not been realized. Russia today is indeed characterized in US foreign policy as a “Eurasion counterweight to democracy,” exactly what Biden hoped to reject in 1999. Although the United States and Russia have since come to realize that the biggest threats to their security come not from each other, but from terrorist groups and militant states, the recent Ukraine crisis demonstrates that the two former antagonists have formed an intermittent partnership at best. In response to the attacks of 9/11, the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty and initiated the War on Terror. With priorities constantly changing due to extremist groups and “rogue states”, the United States and Russia share goals to prevent countries like North Korea and Iran from improving their respective nuclear presence. As defined by the Task Force on Russia and US National Interests Report, current priorities for bilateral nuclear nonproliferation include the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons and resources to hostile groups and terrorists. However, US-Russian mutual distrust still threatens to hinder nuclear non-proliferation and strategic arms policies. In 2007, under Putin’s presidency, Russia suspended the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, mainly in response to US plans to create a missile defence system in the Czech Republic and Poland to protect possible attacks from Iran. Moreover, while Biden was optimistic about Russia’s democratization and economic improvement in 1999, his stance changed considerably in 2009, when he commented on Russia’s “withering” economy; similarly Biden has not failed to criticize Moscow for a lack of democratization. Still, Russia’s tremendous nuclear weapons resources and aggressive foreign policy force it to remain a critical concern for the United States. Despite the differences in policy and ideology between Russia and the United States, the position that both nations share in having to defend against numerous foreign threats allow and even compel them to work together, a stance that Biden supports in his article, as well as in his future vice presidency. That said, Biden has not hesitated to strongly condemn Russia’s recent aggressive intervention in post-Soviet states such as Ukraine. In February 2015, he claimed that Ukraine was suffering a “military onslaught” from Russia, and warned that Putin “cannot be allowed to redraw the map of Europe.” The dream for an inclusive alliance between Russia and the West that Biden describes in his 1999 article must not be abandoned. However, it is clear that recent devlopments have only made it harder to achieve.

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