No land in sight on a sea of uncertainty

The speed at which international affairs develop these days is breathtaking. Politicians, diplomats and commentators are being left behind.

The previous norms by which events were judged no longer apply. We cannot say with any certainty what will happen next month, let along plan for a world in which future generations will survive.

The United States and North Korea were at each other’s throats, each threatening the other with nuclear annihilation; then it was all smiles with a summit in the planning stages and suggestions that US President Donald Trump could be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize; now the talks may be called off as North Korean President Kim Jong-un sets new conditions.

Similarly in the Middle East, where Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem has upset decades of careful (if unsuccessful) diplomacy. His withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is another savage blow to the status quo.

Veteran observers say it is like being cast adrift in an open boat with no rudder or sails. The old certainties no longer exist. Anything could happen.

There are many in the Trump camp who applaud this. They say the old order had failed to bring results; that the president is a disrupter forcing those who had been comfortable behind the barricades of their beliefs to face new realities.

The problem with this reasoning is that throws into the dustbin decades of knowledge and experience built up by thousands of foreign affairs specialists. Their expertise is rendered useless. Diplomacy becomes a guessing game, a series of gambles in a world where gambling can be very dangerous and consequences unknown.

I have written before about the dangers of a Trump-Kim summit, mainly because for all his tough talk the US president is desperate for a deal to burnish his image and to flip a Twitter-finger at all his detractors.

Trump’s track record shows he has no patience with the niceties of negotiation. To put him in the ring with Kim and his team at this time could easily lead to catastrophe.

Similarly with his decision to come down heavily on the side of Israel in the Middle East, which is having the effect of rekindling enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause among neighbour nations that might have been leaning towards putting pressure on Hamas to be more reasonable.

There is no hope of the US regaining its position as a neutral umpire in efforts to solve the impasse, even if a future US President tries to do so. Arabs have long memories.

There is very real danger in cutting loose from the Iran nuclear deal. Here we are dealing with a sophisticated nation of some 80 million; a country that had successfully repelled the better armed and Western backed forces of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during eight years of war.

President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate by Iranian standards, caught flack for even treating with the Great Satan. This rebuff holds the danger of driving the Government into the hands of extremists who might well want to develop the nuclear bomb to annihilate Israel (and probably Saudi Arabia for good measure).  

To be fair, the world that Trump inherited in January 2017 was already fraught with risks and uncertainties. What he has done is increase these dangers without having any kind of containment strategy. Worse, he has abandoned or alienated all those who might have been able to point a way out of the mess.

I believe Trump sees the world outside the borders of the US as an annoying sideshow, but his crash-though-or burn-attitude to international problems has us gripping the sides of our seats. What comes next? Who knows?   

The US needs a Leader of the Opposition

During a career in which I have been able to observe political systems around the world, I always harboured a special affection for that of the United States.

It seemed that the checks and balances built in by the framers of the US Constitution back in the 18^th century and its subsequent amendments were as near a perfect design for the stable and harmonious workings of a democratic system that humankind could devise.

How wrong I was.

I had fallen into the trap of thinking that the system was all powerful, imposing restraints and boundaries upon those who operated within it. It had, after all, resisted invasions, a civil war, two bloody all-encompassing 20^th century conflicts and a host of smaller, but no less vicious foreign adventures as well as the Great Depression.

It has taken the headlong sprint of technology and the Trump White House to reveal that the system is, in fact, a fragile thing, dependent on the good character of generations of people of goodwill for it to function smoothly. Today its faults are revealed by those who refuse to operate it as it has been operated in the past; in some cases to even acknowledge its existence.

What is needed in the US today, and what it patently lacks, is a cohesive political opposition. There is no one figure in the party currently out of power, the Democrats, under whom it can mount a cohesive alternative to the president. There is no leader of the opposition.

The defeated Democrat Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, is on the lecture circuit; of the figures in office that might perform this role, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his House of Representative counterpart Nancy Pelosi, are ageing and uninspiring.

Presumably newcomers will emerge in a general flexing of muscles as the 2020 election season nears, but that is still many months away, and anyway the candidates will spend most of the time fighting each other before a clear front-runner emerges.

It has fallen to the media to perform the role of opposition and critic to the Trump White House, but journalists are always susceptible to the criticism of “power without responsibility”, or to frame it in the president’s more simple language, purveyors of “fake news”.

An example of how desperate the situation has become can be seen in the increasing numbers of Republicans who have become critical of their own president. Chief among them is former presidential candidate John McCain whose attempts to provide an alternative to Trump’s barrage of anger and spite has drawn derision and in the case of the nominee to head the CIA, Gina Haspel a comment which has quite rightly been described as “insanely despicable”.

American constitutional government worked well when it was respected by those who used it, when liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats could cooperate with each other on the presidential agenda of whoever happened to hold the White House.

Today the flood of executive orders; of hirings and firings; of direct appeals to the mob over the heads of lawmakers, has demonstrated fundamental flaws in the body politic.

The much maligned Westminster Parliamentary system is often messy and chaotic, but at least those in power must meet their critics face-to-face a few metres apart in the debating chamber, where the alternative Government and those who might lead it, are on display every day.

Perhaps there are other better ways of conducting democracy, but in the days of the Trump White House, I have no idea what they might be. Answers must be found because the alternatives on show in many nations around the world are unthinkable.

Northern Ireland border plans ‘unworkable’

The United Kingdom Government has been given a sober and realistic warning of the dangers of failing to address Northern Ireland’s border issues during its negotiations on leaving the European Union.

It is no coincidence that the warning came from a Government of Northern Ireland in the hands of senior Public Servants rather than politicians with their many and varied axes to grind.

David Sterling, who for his sins has run the Province for more than a year following the collapse of the power sharing Executive, wrote privately some months ago to the then Permanent Secretary of the Department for Exiting the European Union, Oliver Robbins, saying that its plans to deal with the problem were unworkable.

That the letter was leaked, causing great glee in Brussels which has been saying the same thing about the UK’s position for months, is hardly Sterling’s concern. He had simply been providing the frank, free and fearless advice that as a Public Servant he has a duty to do.

No doubt he found it liberating that he was able to write free of the restraining hand of Northern Ireland Ministers who would almost certainly never have allowed his letter to be sent in this form.

That freedom allowed him to state that the UK’s negotiators might have made better use of local officials before drawing up their policy options. “We would like to see a more intensive and open engagement between Whitehall and Northern Ireland Civil Service officials,” he wrote.   

He then went on to gently remind Robbins of a number of areas where the input of local knowledge might have been of some use such as on the Good Friday Agreement, cooperation between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, and trade.

The UK currently has two options on the table in the negotiations. One is what it describes as a ‘customs partnership’, under which London would collect customs duties on the EU’s behalf. The second relies on a technological solution that would assess duties remotely, avoiding a return to highly sensitive checks on a reinstated hard border.

Both have been rejected as “magical thinking” by the EU side and some MPs are saying the proposals are so preposterous they have been put forward simply to fail.

The European proposal is that the customs border be removed from the island of Ireland to the Irish Sea, but that has been firmly rejected by members of the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party who prop up Prime Minister Theresa May’s Government in Westminster.

The problem would be solved if the UK stayed within the European Customs Union after leaving the EU, but that is anathema to hardliners who want a complete break.

None of this really matters to Sterling and his Government of officials. In the absence of political leadership they continue do their job, setting out the problems and the roadblocks. The next move is up to the politicians.

Robbins, now serving as Brexit adviser to Ms May, says the two UK border proposals remain its basis for negotiation. Further talks are planned. He hopes to have a resolution by October.

His chances look slim and meanwhile the people of Northern Ireland, who voted substantially to remain in the EU in the June 2016 referendum, are left wondering what their future will be.

Quota abolition pleases no one

Protesting Bangladeshi students appeared to have scored a victory with the announcement by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that a decades old quota system governing more than half the places in the country’s Public Service would be abolished.

Now it seems, they may have got more than they asked for.

The students’ main target was the 30 per cent of places reserved for the “children of freedom fighters” — descendants of those who fought successfully to detach the country from Pakistan in the 1971 war of independence.

This large block was originally provided as a reward for those who had put their lives on the line in the bloody conflict in which 300,000 died and millions more were forced into temporary exile.

However, as the years went by the quota became increasingly contentious as descendants born after the war gained easy entry into secure and potentially lucrative positions while unemployment among students without that access rose to almost 50 per cent.

While politicians still talk of the “children of freedom fighters”, most of these children are now in their 40s and it is the grandchildren who are benefitting.

Matters came to a head with widespread rioting led by students claiming the quotas were archaic and unfair, followed by Ms Hasina’s unexpected capitulation, when she told Parliament: “The quota system will be scrapped. There is no need for it and the students do not want it”.

Suddenly she was assailed from all sides. Members of her own party rallied to the defence of quotas with Minister for Agriculture, Matia Chowdhury saying the successors of those who risked their lives to fight for independence had a right to be given priority for Government jobs.

At a demonstration in the capital, Dhaka, a delegation of freedom fighters’ descendants put forward a series of demands that included eternal preservation of their quota and constitutional recognition of their status.

Even the students were critical. One of the movement’s leaders, Rashed Khan saying they had been calling for quota reform, not abolishment.

Ms Hasina’s decree does seem ill thought out. By abolishing all quotas she has also removed the 10 per cent reserved for women, 10 per cent for poor people from the regions, five per cent for ethnic minorities and one per cent for people with disabilities.

The controversy has also revealed a darker side to Bangladeshi society, with the freedom fighters group describing the students as the descendants of Razakars, the name given to collaborationists during the 1971 war, and demanding that they be permanently barred from Government positions.  

Bangladesh is beset with problems — the Rohingya refugee crisis has yet to be resolved; large sections of the population are poor and illiterate; violence against women and children is on the rise and corruption is rife.

The last thing this country needs is a return to the disruptions and divisions of the last century and a repeat of conflicts fought out in a long-ago war.   

Iran must be part of the Mid-East solution

Wherever we look in the crisis-torn Middle East today we see Iran.

In Yemen it is backing the Houthi rebel side against a Government supported by its foe, Saudi Arabia; its presence in Syria was the initial factor in turning the tide of civil war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad. It supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories. Israel repeatedly describes Iran as its biggest threat in the region.

Iran’s rise as a major regional power has upset the balance in the Middle East. Since successfully repelling the Western-armed forces of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1980-88 war, it has been gradually spreading its military and economic influence.

In this it was hugely assisted by the 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq that finally removed Saddam and brought Iraq into the Iranian sphere of influence.

One only has to look at the map to see how will placed Iran is to promote its cause. It shares borders with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Turkey. It is within striking range of Saudi Arabia and the other Arab States across the Persian Gulf.

The fear in Middle Eastern capitals and in Washington is that it is determined to be the region’s hegemonic power – a proposition that is intolerable among its rivals for religious and strategic reasons.

Yet in Teheran this development is seen as breaking out of the isolation forced on it by the Western powers and its Sunni Muslim neighbours in the wake of the 1979 Islamic  Revolution — a perfectly reasonable attempt to regain some of the prestige lost by the old Persian Empire.

Its investment in nuclear power, which Israel constantly reminds the world could lead to the development of nuclear weapons, along with the development of a ballistic missile program, are major planks in a strategy to ensure the integrity of the Islamic State is never again threatened either by its neighbours or the West.

Iran’s intervention in the Syrian Civil War to support a major ally in the region was an inevitable result of this strategy, and its success in halting what seemed to be an inevitable rebel victory would have been one of the factors that inspired Russian President Vladimir Putin, also short of allies in this part of the world, to throw his cap into the ring in support of Assad.        

Internally, Iran experiments with a form of democracy, however flawed, and has a limited acceptance of dissent, in contrast to the strictly autocratic regimes of other nations in its neighbourhood, most notably Washington’s staunch ally, Saudi Arabia.

If stability is ever to come to the Middle East there has to be acceptance of Iran as one of the region’s major players; that it has a right to a peaceful nuclear program and to pursue development that will increase the living standards of its 80 million people.

However, there must also be recognition from Tehran that its actions – which it sees as purely defensive – are perceived by its neighbours and the United States as threatening and aggressive. Fundamentally, it must accept that Israel is part of the region and will not be going away.

It is time for all parties to recognise that Iran cannot be dismissed as just one more Middle East problem. It has to be part of the solution.

Is a Trump-Kim summit worth the risk?

Should the summit between United States President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un take place?

It’s a question that is increasingly being asked by journalists and diplomats around the world as they try to fathom the next move between two of the most erratic and unpredictable men who have occupied positions of power in the modern era.

It is usually easy to get a handle on the presidents, prime ministers, secretaries and chairmen who lead their various countries around the world. Some are out-and-out autocrats — dictators whose sole purpose is to cling to power, soaking as much money as possible out of their economies, to be shifted only by death or revolution.

Then there are the democrats, subject to the will of the people at regular elections who come and go with often just the self-serving memoire to mark their passing.

Between the two extremes is a great deal of grey area: Dictators who pretended to be democrats by holding sham or rigged elections; democrats elected in a free vote that get a taste for the perks of the job and decide they will remove any barriers to keeping it by becoming dictators.

The latter group is sometimes a bit more difficult to pick, but that’s why we have diplomats and foreign policy experts to help us get it right.

But in Kim and Trump we have two men who should be easy to categorise, but are in fact giving governments around the world nightmares.

Is Kim softening his role as the absolute autocrat who threatens nuclear annihilation and is willing to slaughter members of his own family who he perceives as threats to his position? Absolutely not.

Yet he has suddenly gone on a charm offensive, sending a team to the South Korean Winter Olympics, travelling to China to meet President Xi Jinping, and preparing for a summit with South Korea’s Moon Jae-in.

And despite one of his famous tweets which expressed admiration for Xi’s recent conversion into a potential president for life, Trump remains, for better or for worse, the elected leader of the most powerful democracy on earth. That isn’t going to change.

Associate Professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, Robert Kelly, is one North Korea expert who believes that a meeting between Kim and Trump is not worth the risk. 

“Trump doesn’t know a great deal about Korea — we know he doesn’t read much, relying on television, and his national security staff is in chaos,” Kelly says, noting that John Bolton, who is said to be in favour of a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, is now the president’s National Security Adviser.

“In contrast, the North Koreans have been working on this stuff for a long time so they are going to come in knowing every detail and they are ready to negotiate down deep into the weeds.”

He believes Kim will initially try to steer away from denuclearisation with lengthy diatribes demanding reparations for US war crimes going back to the Korean War in the 1950s. Something which is bound to test Trump’s notoriously short attention span.

Among Kim’s likely demands once serious negotiations get under way is a total withdrawal of US forces from the Korean Peninsula — bound to send waves of apprehensive though the Government in Seoul.

Perhaps most worrying is Trump’s belief in himself as a deal-maker, possibly leading him to make an off-the-cuff offer “just to get the job done”, which might be totally unacceptable to South Korea and other US allies.

As yet there are no concrete details as to where and when this summit will take place. It is too big a deal to be quietly forgotten, but perhaps an indefinite postponement with lesser officials left to “work on the details” would be best for all.

Africa heads down the path of free trade

The creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) in the Rwandan capital of Kigali last month could be the most significant development in global economic affairs since the Treaty of Rome set European nations on the same path 62 years ago.

Or it could be an embarrassing failure.

To begin with, let’s look on the bright side.

CFTA aims to bring together all African countries, comprising 1.2 billion people with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of more than $4 trillion, into one continental market for goods and services.

This would lead to the free movement of business and money across borders and a massive expansion of intra-African trade.

By conservative estimates the CFTA would add two per cent to Africa’s GDP growth in the largest free trade area (in terms of member States) in the world.

The CFTA is a logical progression from the 17-year-old African Union, whose stated aim is to accelerate the political and socio-economic integration of the continent, with the ambition of eventually developing a customs union, a common market and even a single currency.

Now for a reality check.

Eleven of the continent’s 55 nations have yet to sign up to the deal. Significantly, absentees include South Africa and Nigeria, which together represent 50 per cent of sub-Saharan GDP. Without them the CFTA is dead in the water.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was initially a supporter, but pulled out of the summit at the last moment citing a need for further consultations with trade unions and business.

South Africa’s Minister for Trade and Industry, Rob Davies, said his country supported CFTA but did not sign immediately “for technical reasons”.

So, both might still come to the party.

There is also the question of government capacity. Many of the nations that signed up to CFTA are operating with extremely weak bureaucracies. Corruption is rife in a number of jurisdictions while others suffer from lack of proper training plans and poor leadership.

Even so, in a world where protectionism is on the rise, there are huge benefits for opening up intra-African trade which currently accounts for just 10 per cent of all commerce on the continent — compare this to 70 per cent for Europe and 25 per cent for South-East Asia.

Whether the Treaty of Kigali will one day rank alongside the Treaty of Rome, or whether it will be remembered as a hopelessly utopian project that was quickly discarded only history can judge.

However, a continent that has been fought over, exploited and parcelled up by outsiders, is taking its future into its own hands — and that is a hopeful sign.