clausewitz

On Sustainment

(above: Carl Phillipp Gottfried von Clausewitz)

 

On Sustainment

 

By Jamie Arbuckle, for Peacehawks

 

A major factor in the planning, the development and the conduct of operations is sustainment: keeping it up, staying in the fight, absorbing the losses, and then absorbing more losses.

As the Duke of Wellington said as the Battle of Waterloo developed, „Hard pounding, gentlemen, let’s see who pounds the longest.“

Sustainment might be, after the traditional ten, the eleventh principle of war.

What follows here is the gleaning of an amateur researcher from fifteen minutes on the Internet.

Russia-Ukraine

What does this mean in the Ukraine today?

Ukrainian casualties to date are approximately 120,000 killed, and 170,000 wounded.  In a country of almost 50 million, that is probably marginally acceptable. If it is not, then perhaps the Ukrainian government might take more interest in the estimated 250,000 males of military age currently living in Germany and, of course, the many, many more of their “refugee” brethren the world over.

Total Russian casualties (killed and wounded) in the past two years have been, according to US estimates, 325,000 or, as estimated by the Ukrainians, 635,000. *  In a country of almost 150 million, the lower figure might be acceptable; the higher would probably not be. And Ukrainians know what they are fighting for, while the Russians almost certainly do not – witness the thousands of deserters from the Russian army formations in and around Ukraine.

By contrast, the Americans lost in Vietnam 58,220 killed – in 20 years (1955-75).  In a nation of (then) just over 200 million, that was not sustainable.

If we take the more conservative American estimates of Russian casualties (above), and if we assume that 1/3 of that total were killed,  then the Russians have lost in two years over 100,000 killed, almost twice as many as the Americans lost in 20 years in Vietnam. And, as with the American forces in Vietnam in the 60s, Russian forces today may be very much on, certainly close to, an edge.

Israel

Israel has a population of 9.5 million. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) consists of 169,000 regular forces, and 495,000 reserves. That is nearly 700,000, which is almost 8% of the population.

The Israeli defense budget for 2024 is USD 30.5 billion, which is 4.5% of the Israeli economy, and which is the highest in the OECD; it is 12.4% of the total budget of Israel.  It is generally reckoned that a highly sophisticated, post-industrial nation can for limited periods expend 10% of its budget on defense.

Since 1948, Israel has received USD158 billion, the largest aid granted in US history. US military aid to Israel in 2023 was nearly 4 billion USD, which is more than 10% of the total defense budget (for 2024).

In 2023 the Israeli defense budget was overspent by 32%, and in 2024 the budget was increased by 87%.

Iron Dome, the anti-missile missile system, was provided to Israel by the US at a cost of USD1 billion.

Fighting on three fronts -or is it now four? – and dependent on external aid, Israel and the IDF must also be very much on edge.

Conclusion

 

Sustainment will be a very large elephant in any room where war is discussed, yet there has been no speculation about nor any media coverage of this issue in either of the two wars discussed here. Be in no doubt that everyone involved, whether American, Israeli or Palestinian, Russian or Ukrainian, carries this with them – everywhere and always.

It must also be self-evident that neither the Russian nor the Israeli leadership has had any idea they might find themselves in this position at this time, and it will also be abundantly clear that neither has ever had the slightest idea of what to do about it.

Pounding harder might not be the best thing to do.

  • The higher figures for Russian casualties arise partly because they had many more troops deployed in the area, plus the fact that attacking troops will commonly suffer up to three times as many casualties as the defenders.
ColdPeace

FROM COLD PEACE TO COLD WAR

 By Ingrid Lehmann and Jamie Arbuckle

The book Cold Peace, by Helena P. Schrader[1], was an eye opener for Ingrid, who was born in Spandau in June 1948, just as the Soviet blockade of West Berlin was beginning.

The author manages to combine the rigor and the skills of an historian with the imagination and the flair of a novelist, to bring that troubled time vividly to the reader. For anyone interested in the Cold War which developed out of these times, this tale of the Luftbrücke is a must read.

As Ms. Schrader has pointed out to Ingrid in private correspondence, China might well decide that a blockade of Taiwan is preferable to invasion.  Also, Germans who are today divided in their support for Ukraine are mostly the grandchildren of those whose very existence was, in the time frame of this book, severely threated by the Soviet Union; read: Russia.  Then, western support for Germany was vital, and was strenuously assured by the erstwhile conquerors who became, and remain today, staunch allies.

It is thus timely to revisit that blockade and the immense efforts undertaken by the British and American military, especially the air and ground crews and their families.  Their extraordinary achievement must be appreciated in the context of men and women who certainly thought their war was over, but found themselves impelled into the opening round of the Cold War. And indeed, there were to occur in the airlift 101 fatalities, among them 40 British and 31 Americans in 25 air accidents, but it is reliably estimated that the Air Bridge delivered 2 million Berliners from the imminent threat of starvation.

We look forward to reading Part 2 of the trilogy by this renowned author.

However, to ease the wait, you might want to read Ms. Schrader’s novel Where Eagles Never Flew: A Battle of Britain Novel.  Here you will meet almost the entire cast of Cold Peace  at the start of their careers. And, if you’re then still waiting, try her trilogy, Leonidas of Sparta, also one of the best historical novels we’ve read.

[1] Schrader, Helena P., Cold Peace, Vol 1 of Bridge to Tomorrow (a trilogy), Cross Sea Press, Blue Hill, ME, 2023

IMG_3691

November 1942: The End of the Beginning?

A review of “November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of WW II“, by Peter Englund, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2023. Trans Peter Graves)

by Jamie Arbuckle, for Peacehawks

This excellent book summarizes the several major events of that epic month, inter alia: the battles of Guadalcanal (in the Solomom Islands in Pacific), Stalingrad, el-Alamein (in North Africa), the North Atlantic. Given those outcomes, by the end of that month it was clear to many at that time that The Axis would not – it could not – prevail.

The author sub-titles his work an intimate history as “… the complexity of events emerges most clearly at the level of the individual”. These individual stories are those of 40 individuals; among them: a Russian private, a British fascist, a French university student, a Royal Air Force tail-gunner, an Italian paratroop major, a German soldier on the Eastern Front, a British tank troop leader, an Australian army medical officer, a Japanese destroyer commander, a Korean comfort woman, a USN dive-bomber pilot, Ernst Jaeger, Vera Britain, Sophie Scholl, Albert Camus.  The highly engaging method is to tell briefly and approximately chronologically, usually in several paragraphs, the personal experiences and perceptions of the characters, framed by the larger events as they occurred.

This structure is reminiscent of the French Annales school of historiography, and the works of Emanuel Leroy Ladurie, who re-created the lives of the peasantry of mediaeval France by enumerating in detail the recorded facts of their lives. In his works he juxtaposed the material and the mental worlds of the common people of those times.

Englund thus gives us the most intimate details of the lives in that month of a cast of characters as racially, geographically and culturally diverse as the events he features in this “turning point.” In so doing. he gives us the larger history through which his cast members lived, as he illuminates and links for us the people and the events, unforgettably.

The pity is that, despite the optimism of the Allies at the end of that month (Churchill called it “the end of the beginning”) the German occupation of most of Europe would only really begin to end more than one-and-a-half years later on 6 June 1944, which would also be the bloodiest day in American military history. And one week after that London would again be under terrifying aerial attacks, this time by the V-1and V-2 rockets.

The end of several things November 1942 certainly was but, as Churchill said, it was nevertheless far from the beginning of the end. VE Day, the victory in Europe, did not come until 8 May 1945. Still ahead were Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the war in the Pacific did not end until 2 September: VJ Day.

WWII did not finally end until nearly three years after November 1942.

MGfrontispiece

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: THE ART OF MARY GLADSTONE

 

 

  • An appreciation, by Ingrid Lehmann and Jamie Arbuckle, for Peacehawks

 

 INTRODUCTION

 

Since the inception of Peacehawks in January of 2010, we have posted 41 articles, essays and reviews, all on the subject of the enforcement of international peace and security.  Recent events: the pandemic, war in Ukraine, Jamie’s 80th  –  have summoned us to an accounting. Our balance is showing us that we have written not about peace and security, but rather too frequently have we been concerned with the exceptions which prove the misrule: unrest and insecurity.  Traffic and parking regulations are enforceable and are usually enforced world-wide, while genocide is not preventable and is rarely punished – world-wide.  A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council is rampaging over the rubble it has created in a neighboring country; their head of government has been indicted for war crimes.  As seemingly powerless as the international community is to deal with interstate conflict, it is no better able to manage intrastate conflict, witness the more or less constant uproar in Sudan, as protracted and murderous as it is pointless – and to us, so far, unmanageable.

 

As the late Amitai Etzioni, the founder of Communitarianism, wrote:

 

… despite my confidence that the message I have hammered out would do the world a lot of good—no one seems to be listening.[1]

 

We think it time we wrote about something completely different – what about peace?

 

And, thinking thus, we encountered the art of Mary Gladstone.

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Cairo

THE CAIRO CONFERENCE 1921: THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST GETS BORN

 

 

A review essay, based on the book, Cairo 1921: Ten Days that Made the Middle East, by C. Brad Faught[1]

- by Jamie Arbuckle for Peacehawks.

 

 

There is a tide in the affairs of men …

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 4/3, 218-224

 

INTRODUCTION

 The First World War might be called the War to End All Empires: The German, the Hapsburg, the Czarist and the Ottoman Empires were all utterly in ruins; the tattered British and French Empires were to stagger on through (but not far beyond) the next World War.  Those two remaining empires thought to see to the re-ordering of the world left by those expired empires, principally in Europe and the Middle East. The former had been the focus of the Versailles Treaties; the latter was to be undertaken by the British and the French.  We have now lived over a century with the failures of both.

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geloebnis_bild

GERMANY AWAKES: FORCE STRUCTURING DONE RIGHT

 

By Jamie Arbuckle for Peacehawks

 

INTRODUCTION

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced that Germany will increase defence spending by Euro 100 billion, raising the German defence budget from 1.5 to over 2% of GDP.  Canada, Sweden and Denmark have also announced similar increases to their defence budgets.

Unfortunately, throwing out numbers and then setting the fiefdoms to struggle for their shares  is precisely the wrong way to go about structuring a defence establishment, and its personnel and equipment programmes. This is how it is commonly done, numbers first, then programmes. But this usually results in the wrong equipment in the wrong numbers and there for all the wrong reasons. There will then follow a generation of complaints about equipment not needed or unaffordable or non-deployable – or all of the above.

For example: At the time of my retirement from the Canadian Forces in 1995, we had as many officers as we had corporals, we had more military policemen than infantrymen, and the army’s armoured personnel carriers and medium howitzers mostly dated from around 1965; the main battle tanks had come into service in the 1970s. Nevertheless, and despite the ageing-out of the Army’s major equipments, in that year the Army was awarded just 17% of the capital equipment budget for the Canadian Forces.  That was a reflection neither of any considered requirements nor of any logical structure, it simply showed how poorly the Canadian Army staff had fared in the competition for resources.

The present need is too great, and the stakes are too high, for this sort of misdirection to occur now in Germany. As a Canadian analyst for the (Toronto) Globe and Mail has put it, “That we need to spend more is self-evident, even more urgently, we need to spend better.”[1]

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Guernica, Ruinen

WHERE: WERE WE? ARE WE? GO WE? THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY IS COMING OF AGE

Pictured above: Guernica, 1937

- by Jamie Arbuckle for Peacehawks
13 March 2022

Show us a vision of a world made new.

- Eleanor Roosevelt (1)

INTRODUCTION

Not so very long ago – mere weeks I think – we thought the Covid pandemic was one of the worst things to have befallen us in this still-young century. If we could just hang on long enough to survive that, we’d never worry again. And, earlier this year, it did seem we had turned some sort of corner, and we could relax just a bit. We still needed to continue to be careful, optimistic and grateful, but still …

How wrong we were. Now we find ourselves involved, peripherally or directly, in the worst humanitarian emergency in Europe since WWII.

Russia has again invaded Ukraine, West Europeans are scrambling with outdated and under strength defense establishments and our modern world seems paralyzed and frightened. The very fabric of a modern grouping of liberal democracies is directly threatened as never before in most of our lifetimes.

It is time for a brief stocktaking before we jump onto too many horses and try to ride off on all of them.

In this brief article, we will look at just two aspects of the current situation:

• We will review the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which established the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine; and
• We will look at the strategy and the effects of air wars.

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Scan

The Greek War of Independence 1821-1829: The Birth of International Humanitarian Intervention

 

A book  review essay based on The Greek Revolution 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe, by Mark Mazower, pub. Allen Lane, 2021.

 Jamie Arbuckle for Peacehawks

Introduction

Last year was the bicentenary of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. As the war lasted until 1829, we will be observing many more such anniversaries in the next few years and, as though we were able to witness the birth of an ancient star, so we will, if we are looking closely, be able to revisit the birth of modern Europe. But if we look still more closely at that decade of two hundred years ago, we may see much more: the emergence of public opinion as a force in political affairs, and we will see also the birth of humanitarian  relief agencies as significant actors.  Moreover we may see how such intervention became a major contribution to conflict management in our times.

Mark Mazower has written an outstanding book of near contemporary history. The book is highly and meticulously detailed, and is yet an enjoyable read.  Those new to this material will be engaged and challenged; those with some familiarity with Greece will be delighted and refreshed by this book.

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Beirutcity

The Fogs of War and Peace

 

 

A review essay for Peacehawks, by Jamie Arbuckle

 

if you want peace, prepare  for peace.

-Hans Blix

 

Being a review of the book The Fog of Peace – How to Prevent War,  by Gabrielle Rifkind and Giandomenico Picco,[1]

and

of the Zoom conference,  Honouring Giandomenico Picco: A Conversation About Negotiation and Diplomacy,narr Christine Amanpour and Sulome Anderson[2]

 

Introduction

 

Gabrielle Rifkind is Director of the Middle East programme at Oxford Research Group, and a group analyst dealing principally with the politics of the Middle East. Giandomenico Picco was for 20 years a UN Secretariat officer and was prominent as a negotiator with focus on Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.  In 1991 he was able to secure the release of a number of hostages from long-term captivity by the Hezbollah; best known among them were Terry Anderson and Terry Waite.  Rifkind and Picco have co-authored this important and highly readable book, which is amplified by the Zoom conference, co-hosted by Amanpour and the daughter of Terry Anderson.

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Ksgr illus (1)

Henry Kissinger:  Where it All Went Wrong

 

 

A book review essay for Peacehawks, based on The Inevitability of Tragedy:  Henry Kissinger and His World, by Barry Gewen.[1]

 

by Jamie Arbuckle, November 2020

 

 

Idealism, which has been won from human experience, is far more realistic than ideology – not to mention cynicism or resignation.

 

Sir Brian Urquhart,  A Life

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Barry Gewen attempts in this very useful biography of Henry Kissinger to avoid hagiography, but he can’t quite. In a conversation with a ” friend”, which serves as  his introduction, he states his own views as “Realpolitik “, reaching “conclusions based on … power relationships … to distinguish what was true – Realism – from what one wished to be true”.  His friend, on the other hand, “put more emphasis on the place of ethics in foreign policy … without a moral component international affairs would degenerate into a Hobbesian world of all against all, … and only  bullies and gangsters would prevail”.[2]

 

Gewen attempts to see, or at least to present fairly, both sides of the Kant-Hobbes dichotomy, but he is firmly on the side of the decidedly Hobbesian Henry Kissinger:

 

… we dismiss or ignore him at our peril. … He is a philosopher of international relations who has much to teach us about how the modern world works – and often doesn’t. His arguments for his brand of Realism – thinking in terms of national interest and a balance of power – offer the possibility of rationality, coherence, and a necessary long-term perspective at a time when all three of these qualities seem to be in short supply. [3]

 

And that, as this book cannot avoid showing us, was Kissinger leading his country, under a succession of Presidents, stumbling into a series  of diplomatic disasters with which we all have had to live ever since.  The worst of these were: the Domino Theory, especially as it was applied in Latin America and in South-East Asia for almost 25 years; the U.S. intervention in Chile in the 1970s; these culminating in the bombing and invasion of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the eventual humiliation and expulsion of the U.S. from Vietnam.

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Oryx over shdr

Namibia – an African success story with a blemish

by Ingrid Lehmann, 20 January 2020

 

 

1. A peace process with many hurdles

I was 30 years old, working as a junior officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in New York. In August 1978, I was happy to take time off and joined a journalist friend in the beautiful archipelago near Stockholm, Sweden.

The vacation ended unexpectedly when the Chief of Cabinet of the Secretary-General called me and asked that I return to New York as soon as possible to join the first UN survey mission leaving for Southwest Africa, a territory then still illegally administered by South Africa. I was intrigued as I had followed the negotiations since the mid-1970s, and broke off my holiday to fly to New York, get very brief instructions from my boss and get on another plane with colleagues leaving for Namibia the next day. The plane was a C-130 cargo plane, lent to us by the United States, which was a strong supporter of the UN’s efforts in Southern Africa under President Carter. The then US-Ambassador to the UN, Don McHenry, personally saw us off.

At that time, I was still able to sleep in cargo planes without problems and woke up on arrival to find out that I really had no function in this survey mission except to assuage the German Foreign Office. They had wanted to send one of their own diplomats, a request that was refused by the head of the UN mission, Martti Ahtisaari. Sitting by the pool in the Safari motel in Windhoek doing nothing was not my thing; when the mission split up into various civilian and military components, the only people who agreed to have me along were the small group of UN military officers. The civilians apparently considered me a spy from the Secretary-General’s office and saw no useful function for me, while the UN force commander designate considered me an ally with political know-how.

 

HeliIng

Travelling with the military turned out to be an advantage, as the South Africans, in 1978, had decided to go along with the UN’s plan for the independence of Namibia and treated us as honored guests. I thus saw much of the country (which is half as large as Western Europe), hopping on military planes and helicopters and sleeping in tents. I fell in love with the vast beautiful country and met some impressive locals, with whom I would stay friends for years to come. We returned to New York full of optimism that the Western settlement plan would work out and would be implemented shortly, but then South Africa reneged on the agreement and the peace plan “435” (named after the Security Council resolution) went on hold for another 11 years.

During the next decade, I thought about Namibia often, followed the negotiations from afar, went on another peacekeeping mission (Cyprus) and joined two other UN Departments as Political and Information Officer. In 1988, there was a thawing of positions between SWAPO (South-West African People’s Organization), and the South Africans, as numerous cold war conflicts came to a close. Agreements were signed and our old plans for the independence process were pulled out of drawers as implementation this time seemed to be for real.

In 1989 I was fortunate to be seconded to the new UN survey mission to prepare for the independence process which was to start on 1 April. We were back at the same pool in the Safari Motel outside Windhoek when SWAPO’s military wing, in violation of the cease-fire agreement, led an incursion in the North of the country. We feared the worst, as South Africa threatened to throw us out of the country. I started calculating how long it would take to drive to Botswana to escape the threatening war, and began to hoard fuel in jerry cans. But crisis talks conducted by UN diplomats in Angola were successful, and the mission could finally begin its work in earnest.

I became head of a small district office of the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) and stayed there throughout the registration of voters and the campaigning of parties, watching over a political “code of conduct”. Prior to the elections in November 1989 I became head of the whole Windhoek electoral district which ranged from east of the capital to Solitaire in the west, nearly 350 km away on unpaved roads. It was a good year of very hard work, some political turmoil, as well as physical attacks on members of the UN mission, but our work was crowned when the first free and fair elections took place in Namibia under UN surveillance. A strong Constitution was worked out with the help of UN and other international legal experts, and the country celebrated its independence in April 1990.

Ing Gokagana

Voter registration, 1989

Lesson 1: An international peace process following protracted civil war is rarely a smooth linear affair, but often entails setbacks and may take decades to come to fruition. Patience and a strong will by the international community including the superpowers are required to see fruition. The Namibian civil war, in other words, in 1989/90, was “ripe” for settlement.

2. Namibia – independent and democratic

The country had a good start, plenty of good will internationally, material support and training assistance. Its leaders had been well educated during their time in exile abroad, and had matured through the long liberation struggle. Western Europe, predominantly Germany as a former colonial power with many residents with German passports, maintained a keen interest for years to come and provided generous aid. The memory of the brief but brutal German colonial dominance in South-West Africa (1884-1915) stays vivid among the Herero and Nama people in Namibia until today, but resentment against the whites never flared up as it did in Zimbabwe or South Africa itself.

When my husband and I visited Namibia in April 2005 we were both impressed by how well the country was doing and the feeling of good will which persisted among all major ethnic groups. Blacks had advanced politically and economically with independence, and primary and secondary education were generally available. Opportunities  were created for hard-working talents to advance to management positions. Training institutes prepared young people to become involved in the booming tourism industry. English was the official language, even though the 10+ ethnic languages were cherished and considered part of the country’s cultural heritage. Racism was not eliminated, but racial equality was enshrined in the constitution. There was a growing middle class among mixed-race and black groups, even though large percentages of blacks still lived in poverty. The former townships, a result of forcible relocation by the South Africans under Apartheid, had some paved roads, and cardboard shacks were increasingly replaced by concrete houses.

Of great significance was the development in South Africa itself. Nelson Mandela was freed in early 1990 and negotiations (also with several setbacks) resulted in the end of Apartheid in South Africa, and the conduct of free and fair elections in 1994 led to a black majority government. Many whites threatened to leave the country, but the reconciliation process was, under Mandela, a tool of healing. As far as Namibia was concerned, Walvis Bay, the second largest port in Southern Africa, was finally, after protracted negotiations, returned to the country by South Africa. Namibia’s regional neighborhood thus became increasingly peaceful, with Botswana, a stable democracy in the East, and Angola and Zambia in the North.

During our visit in 2005 we noticed the friendliness and kindness of locals, in the North of the country as well as in the coastal towns. There was, compared to South Africa, a relatively low crime rate, but it was noticeable that the approximately 5 percent whites (both German Namibians and Afrikaaners, i.e. descendents of Boers) held about two thirds of the farmlands. This fact continues to be a source of friction with largely landless black poor.

We were again struck by the beauty and variety of scenery in the thinly settled country. And we visited our German-Namibian friends now living in Swakopmund who complained about the government and the privileges the black elite accorded itself, but led pretty comfortable lives in the German cultural center. German was still widely spoken in Swakopmund and those traditions were preserved.

 

Red Dunes

Lesson 2: Continuous long-term democratic governance is a benefit for the economic and social development in a country. Changes in landownership are slow and continue to be a source of dissatisfaction for the largely black landless population. Multi-racial society is slow in establishing itself after decades of suffering under the system of Apartheid.

 3The observers return – 2019-2020

Last year, my husband and I decided to revisit Namibia. We spent four weeks this December/ January in the country, following our own favorite paths by avoiding the major tourist sites, such as the Etosha pan and the famous Sossusvlei dunes, “counter-programming” as much as possible.

In our first stop, the capital Windhoek, we immediately discovered how much building had taken place: boutique hotels, where none were before, large, clean shopping centers with restaurants and open spaces to sit and eat. It made our own shopping mall in Salzburg look crowded and pushy. The population of Windhoek had grown significantly, and a few sites of the German colonial days had disappeared, but some of our favorite places, such as the Craft Café in the Namibian Arts and Crafts Center, were still functioning and serving healthy food. Tourists were much less visible here: it was a week before Christmas.

In Swakopmund we found a different situation: groups of tourists, both from within the country and from abroad milled around everywhere, restaurants nearly all required reservations and one had to be early to book popular tours, such as a new “fat-bike tour” through the center of town, the black township Mondesa and the dunes. Our personal guide, a young German Namibian university graduate called Chris, took us on one of the most memorable bike tours of my life.

Fatbike in dunes

There seemed to be a recent influx of young whites into Swakopmund, as it clearly is the most popular town with a high quality of life and a multitude of outdoor activities, such as ocean swimming, kayaking, surfing, dune riding and biking. The heat of the inland was not felt here, as cool breezes from the South Atlantic combined with morning fog to make the weather very comfortable.

However, the tour through Mondesa showed us that the majority of the black population still lives in abject poverty: There were few paved roads, problems with garbage removal and heating with scarce wood, which made the air difficult to breathe. The unemployment rate overall is 33 % in the country, but in the townships it is much higher. As in many African countries, HIV continues to be a problem in Namibia: the infection rate is high with 12 percent. While literacy is high with over 90 percent, only 20 % of Namibians had access to the internet in 2016.

While the overall population of Namibia has increased from 1,4 million in 1991 to 2,3 million in 2016, its population density is still one of the lowest in the world: 2.8 people per square km. The large open spaces and beautiful deserts in the National Parks of the Namib Rand and the Namib Naukluft attract predominantly individual travelers and smaller groups; rarely does one see the large tour buses that are a traversing Europe in ever-increasing numbers. While it was often quite hot in the middle of the day in December, when we measured at times 43 degrees celsius, hardy bicyclists on loaded touring bikes were occasionally seen struggling along on windy, dusty roads.

Distant Oryx

Tourism is one of the main sources of income now, but it has not (yet) led to the “overtourism” seen in other popular destinations in Europe and the Americas. There continues to be an ecological consciousness among hosts and their guests, with many farms and lodges taking only smaller groups and supplying themselves through their own wells and solar energy. A major problem from the point of view of locals and travelers is that access to some of the main tourist sites is still on gravel roads that, due to high traffic have turned into washboard-like surfaces. Traffic accidents continue to be one of the major causes of death in the country.

P1010684

15 years ago we did something like this – for three days!

In addition to staying in two remote lodges over Christmas and New Years we revisited an environmental training Centre called NaDEET (Namib Desert Environmental Education Trust) which has, since its inception in the late 1980s, trained tens of thousands of Namibian secondary school children in conservation, sanitation and ecological issues. We were very impressed by how this training center has maintained itself in a remote location of the Namib desert, and how it has expanded its activities since we last visited 15 years ago. See www.nadeet.org.

 

NaDEET

NaDEET camp site

 

Lesson 3: Education and job training are a powerful force for social and economic advancement among people from poor backgrounds. The middle managers in two lodges and one hotel were self-made people with excellent English, whose work, morale and professional demeanor would be a credit to tourist service establishment anywhere in the world.

 

4. Notes on a scandal

As far as politics was concerned, every other person we talked to during our four weeks in the country expressed outrage at the latest (and most shocking) governmental corruption scandal, the so-called “fishrot- scandal” which involved selling Namibian fishing rights to an Icelandic- based multinational company called SAMHERJI, which is now the biggest recipient of fishing quotas off the Namib coast. Two ministers (including the Ministers of Fisheries and the Minister of Justice!) have reportedly been bribed; they and three of their associates were in jail awaiting trial in January. This scandal was uncovered initially by Wikileaks which received detailed information about the bribes from a whistle-blower, a former manager of SAMHERJI with first-hand knowledge. It was also picked up by the newspaper The Namibian and other local papers. The scandal was further analyzed in-depth by Al-Jazeera which produced a striking documentary “Anatomy of a Bribe” (https:Aljazeera.com.anatomy).

The people we spoke to in Namibia were outraged and complained that this wide-spread corrupt sell-out led to the bankruptcy of local companies and caused large-scale loss of jobs among Namibians. The Icelandic company was supposed to pay for infrastructure projects in Namibia which never materialized.

While this scandal received nearly no international attention other than in Iceland and on Al-Jazeera, Namibian newspapers covered it. People apparently demonstrated in front of the Namibian Anti-Corruption Agency which was founded in 2006, forcing the hands of the prosecutors and police. The scandal overshadowed the presidential elections in November 2019, where Swapo, for the first time, lost its absolute majority.

Lesson 4: It is not enough to have regular democratic elections in a country, when the large majority of the population does not have access to the internet or other unbiased information. It is important to strengthen the independent media and watch-dogs such an anti-corruption agency separate and independent from the ruling government. International NGOs such as “Transparency International” need to be engaged in Southern Africa.

5. Summary and outlook 

My long engagement with Namibia has made it possible and instructive to look at the development of  Namibia over four decades, which have spanned the gestation, birth and the coming of  age of independence in Namibia . This retrospective combined with current political analysis showed me that

.    1)  The engagement of Western countries in Southern Africa has significantly deteriorated since the 1970s/1980s. Economically speaking, China is more active in this region than Europe, building desalination plants which are critical to Namibia’s future development, equally much-needed water conduit pipelines, and a new uranium mine. Europe’s absorption with itself and the conflicts in Northern Africa and the Middle East has led it to ignore large parts of Africa which could have been used as examples for the sort of development wished for conflict areas, such as the Sahel.

.    2)  When we look at the involvement of the United States in Southern Africa in the 1970s, under President Carter, the contrast to President Trump, who called African cities “shit-hole towns”, is striking. The United States has clearly shifted its attention to areas of the world where there is little tradition of peaceful resolution of conflicts, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

.    3)  The future of tourism in Namibia will be at a crossroads when larger groups seek access to remote national parks, surpassing the capacity of this fragile country to absorb these groups without major damage to its environment. Careful planning and continued training in ecology and conservation will be needed, particularly when faced with climate change (drought).

.                We were largely positively impressed by Namibia today.  The apparent state of governance, despite or perhaps because two former government ministers are at present behind bars accused of massive corruption, is impressive. There are states in Europe and in America which are not better governed. We venture to say that, if the rest of Africa were as well managed as Namibia, the entire world could breathe a sigh of relief.

.                We can’t wait to go back!

 

Farewell

.

.

 

 

Power illus

In the Corridors of Samantha Power: A Realist View of Values in International Affairs

a book review essay of The Education of an Idealist, by Samantha Power

 

by Jamie Arbuckle for Peacehawks

 

… the Furies might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her brain …

- Edith Wharton,  The Reef,  (1912)

 Introduction

 

Since the publication in 2002 of her Pulitzer Prize winning book  A Problem from Hell,  which explored American actions and inaction in responding to genocides from Armenia to Kosovo, Samantha Power has been one of the world’s foremost and effective chroniclers of human rights.  In her journalism, in her several books, in her teaching and in her work, she has tirelessly and courageously exposed the deeds and misdeeds of those, mostly governments, who abuse and persecute, mostly their own people.  This, after having devoted so much of her life and her career to the stories of others, is finally her story, and it is well worth reading.

 

This book is, before everything, an autobiography, and that is in a sense a pity. Peacehawks is generally more interested in events than in personalities; we care more about what happened and why than we care about who was there, still less who is to blame. That is not to say those latter are of no consequence, but they are not our primary interest. The presence and the actions of Richard Holbrooke are of lesser consequence to the Dayton Accords which ended the war –  but not the conflict – in Bosnia Hercegovina.  We say it is a pity that this excellent book is so personally autobiographical, because it might otherwise have been a splendid vehicle to educate in more depth about the circumstances and the agencies, the stakeholders and the players in those years preamble to and beginning our young and already-tattered century.

 

We will first review the book she did write – and then we’ll discuss the book we hope she still might write.

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Gorbachev and Reagan signing INF Accord, the White House, 08.12.1987

NUCLEAR FIRST USE: UNLEARNING OUR HISTORY

 

 

- by Jamie Arbuckle, for Peacehawks

 

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.

 

-  Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel

 

When Mikhail S. Gorbachev (1931-) became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, he launched his nation on a dramatic new course. His dual program of “perestroika” (“restructuring”) and “glasnost” (“openness”)[1]introduced profound changes in economic practice, internal affairs and international relations. Within five years, Gorbachev’s revolutionary program swept communist governments throughout Eastern Europe from power.

This transformation also brought an end to the Cold War, which had dominated the affairs of the North Atlantic alliance and of the Warsaw Pact for nearly  two generations. Along that way he successfully negotiated with Ronald Reagan the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty, which  intended to eliminate short, medium and intermediate range (500-3420 kms) nuclear weapons from Europe[2].  By 1991, almost 3000 weapons had been removed, and there followed 10 years of verifications.

 

Now the US government has announced that it will abrogate that treaty.  Russia, which denies accusations of non-compliance, has in its turn announced that they will as well cease to be constrained by the Treaty. And while the Europeans recognize the likelihood of Russian “cheating” on the accord, their preference to negotiate compliance – “trust but verify”[3]- is likely to fall on deaf ears in Washington and in the Kremlin.

 

The seemingly preferred American alternative to the INF, a wider treaty embraced by all nuclear powers (the current treaty involves only the US and Russia), has scant future.  China, a negligible world power in 1987, now has quite different ambitions and senses much greater opportunities[4], while India is very much on the defensive in respect of China’s growing power, and ditto Pakistan of India, and so it will go – or more likely, comprehensive nuclear weapons policy will go as it has always gone: nowhere.  And Russia has already tried that in 2007.  Chafing under a threat largely of his own imagining from the other nuclear states unconstrained by treaty, Vladimir Putin called the INF a Cold War “relic”, and proposed a “global” INF Treaty to the 2008 Conference on Disarmament.

 

During the Cold War the U.S. refused to pledge no first use of nuclear weapons.  In 1961 the Kennedy Administration considered launching a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, if Khrushchev followed through on his threat of a Soviet takeover of West Berlin. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had determined that West Berlin could not be defended by conventional weapons alone.[5]  Then and since,US strategic policy has been that tactical nuclear weapons would be a potential response to an overwhelming conventional attack. The policy of first use is already being informally cited as essential to the western defense of the Baltics.[6]

 

In 1993 Russia renounced a long-standing Soviet policy which had pledged no first use of nuclear weapons.[7]  This policy reversal in fact brings Russia into line with other nuclear states.

As a 2016 report by the Carnegie Institute put it, “In the eyes of nuclear-weapon states such as the United States and Russia, and even the United Kingdom and France, nuclear weapons are not qualitatively different from conventional weapons. Despite the massive destructive power and lethality of nuclear weapons, they are considered to be usable in ways similar to conventional weapons. …”[8] Indeed, according to a 1978 report by an American assistant secretary of defense, “It is generally acknowledged that atomic weapons are rapidly achieving a conventional status in military planning for national and allied defenses.” And a 1957 book by Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, helped to present a case for limited nuclear war. By 1971, American Army medium artillery (155 mm) batteries were nuclear-capable.[9]

It is reasonably to be expected that the arms race will now be renewed.  It may further be expected that Europeans – principally of course the Germans – will as a result of this again be asked to accept American nuclear weapons on their soil, with the accompanying complete control of those weapons by US custodians. As this is being written, a NATO summit in Brussels is considering the re-introduction of nuclear weapons in Europe; the Secretary General and at least the defense ministers of Great Britain and of Germany have said that this option must be given full consideration.[10]

 

If there is indeed to be a return to the Cold War nuclear face-off in Europe, it will potentially be even more dangerous than before, as both the major protagonists clearly  believe and have publicly stated that the first use of nuclear weapons is an accepted strategy.

 

The Europeans must not accept this renewal of military tensions in Europe. Germany especially must not again become a repository of nuclear weapons of which they have scant knowledge and over which they have little control. The American military colonization of Europe – particularly of Germany – is not to be repeated. This point is perhaps not lost on the Germans: as recently reported  in our local newspaper, of those polled in Germany as to their perceptions of the greatest threat to their security, 56% identified the United States; North Korea was a distant second.[11]  Euphemisms such as “sub-strategic”, “tactical” and “limited” must be seen through; veiled speech must not be allowed to mask the enormity of what is here contemplated – again.  The Poles in their eagerness to build Fort Trump[12]must be restrained by a centre which – this time – just has to hold.

 

We have studied our history, and we will not be condemned to repeat it.

[1]Seehttp://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/perestroika-and-glasnost (accessed 02.02.2019)

[2]  Gorbachev’s actions also inadvertently set the stage for the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which dissolved into 15 individual republics. Gorbachev resigned from office on December 25, 1991.

[3]This is a Russian proverb, to which Ronald Reagan was introduced by the American writer Susanne Massie. “The proverb was adopted as a signature phrase by Reagan, who subsequently used it frequently when discussing U.S. relations with the Soviet Union.”  See wikepedia, “trust but verify” (accessed 03.02.2019)

[4]  China’s No First Use of Nuclear Weapons,  by Zhenqiang, Pan, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – Reports, 28 Oct 2016 (https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-4285520441/china-s-no-first-use-of-nuclear-weapons, accessed 02.02.2019). China has from its earliest acquisition of nuclear weapons systems in 1964 steadfastly renounced first use against any no-nuclear nation or nuclear-free zone.  This article seems to conflate “first use” and “first strike.”  They are not the same thing.  Briefly, first use is a response and is defensivein nature and intent; first strike may be pre-emptive and is thus offensive in nature and intent.

[5]”JFK’s First Strike Plan”, by Fed Kaplan, The Atlantic Monthly, October 2001, www.atlantic.com (accessed 02.02.2019)

[6]”One way to convince Russia of NATO’s resolve and readiness would be, perhaps, to tighten the link between NATO’s conventional and nuclear forces by integrating both elements in exercises—as NATO did during the Cold War.” “NATO’s Options”, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 28 March 2018 (carnegieendowment.org, accessed 13 February 2019).  Other discussants variously note the current inadequacy of NATO conventional forces in the Baltic, from which conventional wisdom will infer the necessity for “non-strategic” nuclear deterrent, which in turn implies first use.

[7]Russia Drops No-First-Use Pledge on Its Nuclear Weapons,By Daniel Sneider, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor November 4, 1993, (https://www.csmonitor.com/1993/1104/04011x.html, accessed 02.02.2019)

[8] Zhenqiang, Pan, op cit

[9]The History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons from July 1945 through September 1974, by the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), February 1978

[10]See zdf.de, “Raketen ohne Kontrolle”, 13 February 2019.

[11]Salzburger Nachrichten, “Deutsche sehen USA als die größte Gefahr”, 14 February 2019

[12]”Speaking with Trump and reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, told Trump that he’d like the U.S. to create a permanent military base with that name in Poland — and that Poland would pay more than $2 billion for the project.”  See foxnews.com, 18 September 2018 (accessed 13 February 2019).

Dag Hammarskjold – a Life Retold

Hammarskjold 

A review essay, based on Dag Hammarskjold: Markings of his Life, by Henrik Berggren

 

Reviewed for Peacehawks by Jamie Arbuckle

 

 

You asked for burdens to carry – And howled  when they were placed on your shoulders.

Dag Hammarskjold, Markings

 

 

Introduction

 

On 4 November 1956 the General Assembly of the United Nations requested the Secretary General, who was then Dag Hammarskjold, “to submit a plan for … an emergency international United Nations force to secure and supervise the cessation of hostilities” in the Middle East. Peacekeeping had been born. It was five days before my sixteenth birthday, and I was already a voracious reader and a heavy consumer of news. I said to my father, “I have seen the future, and it has to work.”  My father, who had lived through two World Wars, the Great Depression and the Korean Conflict, was in my memory of those distant days, reserved in his reaction.  But this was to be my world, not his – his work was largely done. Here was the beginning of my adulthood and the grounding in me of my vocation: I was to be a soldier for peace.

 

So for me any talk or remembrance of Dag Hammarskjold is intensely personal, sending me back  to my earliest beginnings, and spanning much of the rest of my professional life, and beyond. The real prime mover of the birth of peacekeeping was Lester B. Pearson, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts (so was Hammarskjold, posthumously), and was later Prime Minister of Canada as my adopted country became one of the leaders of international peacekeeping operations. Shortly after my retirement from the Canadian Army, I met my wife as we both worked at the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Nova Scotia. Today on our shelves we each have our heavily annotated copies of Markings,  which we have each carried for  over 50 years.

 

Henrik Berggren’s book Dag Hammarskjold – Markings of his Life is a skilful, entertaining and entirely useful re-telling of the more personal aspects of the life. It is especially important that it is retold afresh in and for this generation, from whom these important events might otherwise slip away.  The book is generously illustrated, affording us a real feel for the personalities and the times.

 

This book might easily be dismissed as hagiography, but Hammarskjold’s was in many respects an exemplary life, and hagiography does not imply inaccuracy. In these days of baseness of aims and personalities, and the almost total absence of international statesmen of character, there is certainly much to be gained from a review of such a strongly moral character, who also got things done, who also delivered on promises.  That the book is so strongly personal in  its scope does suggest to me a mild corrective in relating in somewhat more detail what I regard as the most important events of Hammarskjold’s all-too-brief time, his eight-year ministry (1953-1961). These were, firstly, the events of 1956, when peacekeeping was born, and Hammarskjold defined himself and his job, “for succeeding generations”.  Then we will have more to say on the subject of the birth of peace enforcement operations in the (former Belgian) Congo in 1961, and then their near-disappearance from the UN’s tool kit, for the next more-than 30 years.

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Gorbachev

GORBACHEV:  HIS LIFE; OUR TIMES

 

 

A review essay for Peacehawks, based on Gorbachev – His Life and Times, by William Taubman

by Jamie Arbuckle

 

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.

- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Mikhail S. Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 11 March 1985. He was 53 years of age.  In the previous three years his three predecessors had died in office, aged 76, 80 and 79 (respectively). The 12-Member Politburo, when he first joined it in 1980, averaged over 70 years of age.  The winds of change were blowing, and Gorbachev was to be of that wind.

With his inaugural acceptance speech he launched his nation on a dual program of “perestroika” (restructuring) and “glasnost” (openness).  These two concepts, long debated and refined among his closest advisors, introduced profound changes in the governance of the Soviet Union. Among the entirely unintended consequences of this were that, within five years, communist governments throughout Eastern Europe were swept from power.  The Paris Summit of the Conference on Cooperation and Security in Europe (19-21 November 1990) adopted the Charter of Paris for a New Europe and drew the Cold War, which had against all odds remained cold for forty-four years, to a peaceful close.[1] The Soviet Union imploded into 15 individual republics.

This story, which will be broadly familiar to most of you who lived it, is well and skillfully told in Taubman’s book. But we are learning that it is not enough that we tribal elders know the history of our times; it is worthwhile, indeed necessary, that such stories are retold in each generation, so that they not slip away from us under pressure of no less alarming and urgent events of these succeeding days.

I joined the army as the missile gap was being touted and dire warnings sounded; I became a non-commissioned officer in the year of the Berlin Wall; I was commissioned an officer in the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Like many of you, I lived those times, and I can never forget.  But our succeeding generations must not be condemned to relive our times. The key for their future is knowledge: of what happened, the whys, what worked, what didn’t, what might have been avoidable, and what probably wasn’t.  Theirs is an age of clear and present dangers, and knowledge is the only thing that might deliver the society of your children, and your grandchildren, from a repetition of our past mistakes and failures.

The Cold War lasted from 1946 to 1990, and dominated the world as did the two World Wars which preceded it.  And what are our successors to make of all this? More importantly: what are the Trumps and the Putins, products of as well as successors to those times, making of them now? It seems to us that sabre-rattling has replaced diplomacy, and zero-sum games have replaced negotiations.  So books like this are important, and this one is a particularly well written record of what we must not forget, for “those who do not study history are condemned to relive it.”

But I want in this review essay to get beyond an appraisal of this book, excellent as it is.

The striking thing about Gorbachev’s “challenge” (as Time called it in their issue of December 19, 1988) was not that it was not welcomed by the audience for which it was intended- that was natural and was foreseen, but rather how negatively it was greeted in the West, whose fondest hopes for a peaceful end to the Cold War were being realized. And it is this reception of glasnost in the US, in NATO and generally by western analysts, on which I want to focus this article.

Western defense strategy was based on two pillars: the missile gap, and the conventional force gap. Because of these mythical gaps, western defenses were to be for a  half-century based on a threat of first use of nuclear weapons by NATO.  This highly dangerous policy is still in place today, but the bases for it, the famous gaps, were never more than worst-case imaginings, and they are even less valid today.

We now need to mind those gaps.

 

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ONCE MORE ON THE SHOULDERS OF A GIANT: THE PEACE GUERILLA HANDBOOK*

- a review of a book by Ben Hoffman,

reviewed for Peacehawks  by Jamie Arbuckle

 

Introduction

In my intermittent “tours” as a peacekeeper, I learned little of substance about peacekeeping. I had never opened the UN Charter, I knew nothing of the UN, and I neither understood nor thought much about peace. It was like the weather: if it was nice I enjoyed it, but I was preparing for storms. I became an NCO as the Berlin Wall was being built; I became an officer during the Cuban Missile Crisis – I thought my concerns well placed.  If I had any knowledge of the principles of peacekeeping (and I knew a lot about the principles of war), my knowledge was limited to some self-evident truths, like

  1. Less is less;
  2. Missions creep;
  3. Nothing is impossible if someone else is doing it.

That complacency in ignorance was pretty typical of my generation of military officers – none of it was wrong, no one to my knowledge had any more mature principles to offer; peacekeeping was, after all, “no job for a soldier.”

Then, out of uniform for the first time since my teens, I went to work at the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre (the PPC), where the scales were gently but firmly struck from my eyes.

In my first experience there, I worked with Ben Hoffman on a course on mediation and negotiations for peacekeepers. I had, like most of us at that time, and not just those of us in uniform, been engaged in this sort of thing almost throughout my career – and, throughout my career, remained nearly totally ignorant of what I was doing, and how to set about doing it.  In the next five years, mostly at the PPC and often working with Ben Hoffman, I learned more about peace than I had learned in the past nearly 40 years in uniform. Well, they say the first 50 years are always the hardest.

Just the sort of thing which should have been available to all of us in peace operations, is exemplified in this very small book by Ben Hoffman, The Peace Guerilla Handbook.

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SAVING SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS

Nolde's Soldiers 

“Soldaten”, Emil Nolde, 1913

 

 

Introduction

 We have received the following bulletin from the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Vienna, entitled “Message on International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers”, issued by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gueterres, and we want to share it with you.

Following the bulletin, we will have some  comments on some of the points made by the Secretary-General.

The Bulletin

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Fog of Peace

The Fog of Peace: A Memoir of International Peacekeeping in the 21st Century

 

by Jean-Marie Guehenno[1]

 

Reviewed by James V. Arbuckle, for Peacehawks

 

Introduction

 

Jean-Marie Guehenno was appointed United Nations Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations (USG PKO) in 2000, and held that position until 2008.  A “scholar-diplomat”, as one blurbist has characterized him, he was until  his appointment without direct experience of the United Nations.

 

The Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) was created in 1992 from the Department of Special Political Affairs, which had been responsible for PKOs since their inception in 1948.  The then USG for that Department, Marrack Goulding, assumed the leadership of the new DPKO until he was succeeded by Kofi Annan in 1993. Annan was replaced by Bernard Miyet of France in 1997 when Annan  became Secretary-General[2].  Since then all DPKO USGs have been French, and on 1 April  of this year Jean-Pierre Lacroix will replace Herve Ladsus.

 

The book is engagingly written, and conveys well the feel of the immediacy of high diplomacy, but careful readers may find some things missing.

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stones in Brazil
Video

CHINA GOES MODERN – BUT MIND THE GAPS

 

 

a book review essay for Peacehawks, by James V. Arbuckle

 

The books reviewed in this essay are:

The Man from Beijing, by Henning Mankell, Harvill Secker, London, 2008

Lost in Translation, by Nicole Mones, Delta, New York, 1998

Forbidden Fruit – 1980 Beijing (A Memoir), by Gail Pellett, Van Dam, New York, 2016

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The three books discussed here, two novels and a memoir, give us differing but intersecting views of the colossus of our age: China.  The two works of fiction, one a crime novel and the other a romance, are in fact both historical novels: both are closely linked to facts, but both provide a degree of intimacy and insight that  straight historical work usually cannot.  However, as we will note later, the ever-engaging Gail Pellett achieves a novelistic immediacy and intimacy in her Memoir.

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Caught?

Still caught in the crossfire? UN peace operations and their information capacities

  by Ingrid A. Lehmann

(Editor’s Note: This article is a version of a chapter in the book, Communication and Peace: Managing an emerging field, Eds. Hoffmann and Hawkins, Routledge, London, 2015)

Introduction

When the United Nations launched its first peacekeeping operations in the 1950s, the concept of using third party military units to create conditions for peace was in its infancy. Inevitably, media reporting of those first peace operations was scanty. Public impressions of these efforts at conflict resolution were covered by relatively few print media and only some television news programs.

However, conflicts in the 1990s in the Balkans, in Somalia and in Rwanda occurred nearly simultaneously and attracted 24/7 instant news coverage around the world. UN peace operations which were enmeshed in these new wars were thus propelled into the limelight. The media was systematically used by parties to the conflict to propagate hatred and violence, putting international peacekeepers increasingly on the defensive. Consequently, UN operations deployed in these conflicts received much unfavorable publicity and were, in more ways than one, caught in the crossfire (Lehmann 1999, 2009; Alleyne 2003; Loewenberg 2006; Lindley 2007; Abusaad 2008; Egleder 2012).

Finally, the United Nations itself had to recognize the power of communication as a critical support for its peacekeeping operations. Beginning in 2000 a new peacekeeping doctrine evolved following the issue of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations – the so-called “Brahimi Report” – which also addressed the question of public information capacity. Simultaneously, substantial reforms of the UN’s own Information Department (DPI) were undertaken by senior management under Secretary-General Kofi Annan. These reforms resulted in a series of policy papers and guidance notes which established a strategic approach to managing information during peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding. Throughout this process, which lasted several years, strategic communication was the declared goal of the UN in which the concept of peace communication  was implicit rather than explicit.

In order to analyze the effectiveness of the new communication policy this chapter will look at three peacekeeping operations where the UN’s ability to build public support and respond to criticism was tested:

1.   The UN operation in Kosovo: “Peace Journalism” at work?

2. The UN’s role in the cholera crisis in Haiti (2010–2013): failed scandal- 
management; and

3.  Sexual abuse and exploitation by UN peacekeepers in the Congo.

The comparative brevity of this article will not allow a comprehensive analysis of the public dimensions of those peacekeeping operations. By selecting critical incidents or crises for the missions concerned we will look at how these challenging situations were handled, and to what effect.

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Peaceweaving

Weaving a Peace?

PEACEWEAVING – Shamanistic insights into mediating the transformation of power, by Ben Hoffman, January 2013 – a review for Peacehawks, by Neil Patton

Peaceweaving is not your typical book on mediation. And Ben Hoffman is not your typical mediator. Hoffman has mediated a wide range of conflicts. From commercial agreements to prison hostage situations to disputes between violent African Warlords, his career has taken him from posh boardrooms to the naked risks of undisclosed jungle encampments.

Hoffman provides a thorough overview of the classic and de rigeur tools and tactics of the mediation trade, but his unique addition to the discipline is where he seeks to elevate it to a level on par with Maslowian self-actualization. Peaceweaving is an impressive and an intensely personal marrying of two concepts that just don’t normally roll off the tongue in any natural sequence: mediation and shamanism. Yes, shamanism. Not your typical mediation book. Not your typical mediator.

Hoffman’s is a very personal narrative of his journey through a vast mediation career which parallels his own evolution into “Shaman cum Mediator”. Yes, a shaman as mediator. Seems a bit far out there, but it is authentic, and it does have value for the profession.

For most practitioners in the conflict resolution field this might seem a bit of a reach, even implausible. For the hard core realists, this will be seen as pure flakiness, naivety wrapped in new age crystals and prayer flags. He speaks freely of his role as a mediator to eliminate negative energies and to move the conflicted parties’ relationships towards one of “power with” the other party and away from “power over” the other party.

Hoffman is aspirational, unbelievably aspirational. But this is an approach that seeks to be transformational, not just adding a new tactical process to the conflict resolution field. Hoffman’s career has led him to great challenges. This book is not so much about labour disputes and trade deals. Hoffman seeks to bring a new way of thinking to the most violent and protracted disputes of our times, and the ones just around the corner. This is a man who has looked straight into the eyes of African war lords who were responsible for mass killings, abducting children, and child soldiers, and he didn’t blink (though he does admit to suffering from intense internal anxiety from time-to-time).

What will be comforting to traditionalists and realists who dare to read deeply enough into Hoffman’s approach is that he understands that power is at the core of all conflict, and that failure to understand this is a critical error for any mediator at any level. It is all about power, but for Hoffman it is also about transforming how the parties relate to and use their power. Hoffman’s view is that the greatest challenge is to transform the parties and their relationship with their power and the power dynamics in the conflict. This is where he seeks to transform the art of mediation. In this regard Hoffman’s understanding of the challenges in mediation is spot on. He gets it: it is all about power and the parties’ own beliefs about their relative power. He is no naïf in this regard.

Ultimately, Hoffman asks: what is my role as mediator? For him it can be as ambitious as seeking to alter and transform the core values of the parties in conflict. Pretty aspirational stuff (US foreign policy has been known to try the same). In Hoffman’s view not all mediators will answer this question the same. Most will not likely answer like Hoffman. After all, he seeks to weave peace in the great violent conflicts of our times. The challenge of a commercial dispute does not raise the same transformational goal for him, nor should it. That’s about commerce, not peace. Hoffman is dealing in human lives, human dignity, and transforming parties upward from years and decades of violence.

His proposal that mediators elevate their role to that of a shaman is indeed daring, bold, and even unthinkable. But that’s what true visionaries and innovators do. A man on the moon in 1940? Unthinkable. The Berlin wall coming down in 1970? Unthinkable. Film clips and photos sent from mobile phone to mobile phone in 1980? Unthinkable. Mediator as Shaman? …unthinkable…?

 

Neil Patton is the co-founder and proprietor of Pre-think Inc. (see http://www.pre-think.com). Neil has worked in negotiations for over 20 years. He has been a chief negotiator, strategist, coach, and trainer. His practice covers a variety of negotiations (collective bargaining, procurement, sales/marketing, commercial contracts) and sectors (utilities, telecoms, health care, education, mining, military, social services, retail, land development).
Ben Hoffman co-founded the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation in 1992 (see http://www.ciian.org). CIIAN is dedicated to the prevention and resolution of destructive conflict and to building sustainable peace at local, national, and international levels. Ben is the author of several important books on the subjects of negotiation and mediation. Ben has been, if not the official Peacehawks shaman, certainly our guru for as long as we’ve known him – and each other.
Question of Peace

GIVING PEACE LITERATURE A CHANCE: a book review

The Question of Peace in Modern Political Thought, Toivo Koivukoski and Edward Tabachnick, eds.. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ontario, 2015

- by Jamie Arbuckle

Introduction

At a very early stage in my career as a soldier, I had amassed a very comprehensive collection of classical war literature: Sun Tzu, du Picq, the Brodies, Ropp, Earle, Liddell-Hart, Keegan, Taylor, and more, spanning more than two-and-one-half millenia. I thought I knew what war had been, was now and might  be.  Nearly half a century later, I have them all still on my shelves, and have often referred to several of them in these pages.

I have never read a book about peace, and I don’t actually know much about it. So the arrival of this book for this review was, for me, timely. Perhaps for you as  well?

What is peace? Is it merely the absence of war? Or is it the absence of violent conflict? Was the period between the two World Wars a peace? Is scale involved, that is to say, was the NATO-led action in Serbia and in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1999 a war (it is commonly called one)? Can we have peace without justice, or must those responsible for unjust wars be pursued beyond the cessation of hostilities?  And is there such a thing as a just war?

I think we need some answers to these questions and more, and I hoped this book would help me to understand peace at least as well as I once thought I understood war.

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Media Strategy in Peace Processes

- by Ingrid Lehmann

Introduction

Many diplomats and others involved in the mediation of international conflicts tend to be reluctant to publicize details of their work and may prefer to stay entirely out of the media’s limelight. While this approach has its merits during some negotiations, particularly in the early stages, in today’s 24/7 information environment nothing stays confidential for long. It only is a matter of time before information leaks, sometimes at the initiative of the parties themselves. Increasingly, mediators find that an active media strategy becomes an essential element of their work. Such a public-information strategy will aim to build public support for the peace process, shape the public image of the international negotiator and avoid negative fallout from uncontrolled and misleading public exposure.

In 21st-century conflicts, there are not only professional reporters covering a conflict or emerging crisis, but countless interested observers. Some may be citizens ‘bearing witness’, who can create a ‘story’ through a short message, photo or video posted on the internet. Such news items can be picked up by the traditional media and may rapidly take on a life of their own. (1) For mediators it thus becomes vital to monitor relevant information channels and attempt to manage the news flow about their work in a proactive way. Seeking the ‘information high ground’, as in defining and enunciating the basic issues in the negotiations and avoiding unnecessary and contentious details, ought to become one of the goals of all active mediators.

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UN Charter
Aside

The Charter of the United Nations: A Primer

 

Introduction

In the course of a 37-year military career, which included UN peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia, I never once read or even saw a copy of the Charter of the United Nations. I don’t know of any other officers who did, nor did I ever even hear it discussed. And, as for our understanding of our employment and of our missions, that was pretty much it for my generation of officers. And still it seems today that much current debate, even at very high levels, is little better informed and no less careless of details than were my generation.

This is just not good enough. Ill informed debate is not useful discussion, and we have learned the hard way that unrealistic expectations produce ill judgement, which can and often does lead to self-fulfilling prophecies of failure.

To the extent that the United Nations is the pre-eminent system and authority for, inter-alia, the maintenance of international peace and security, and to the extent that we really do care about these issues, we need to know the Organization better, and there is no better way to know this Organization than through familiarity with its mighty Charter. (As you can see from the illustration above, I have since put a lot of miles on my copy of the Charter, even, as you can also see, while I was in fact working Chapter VIII.)

The Charter of the UN is a remarkable document. Drafted in 1945, and entering into force just six months after the drafting, it has been amended on only four occasions, the last over 40 years ago.

We will in this article describe and explore the following Chapters of the Charter of the United Nations:

Chapter I: Purposes and Principles
Chapter III:  Organs
Chapter IV: The General  Assembly
Chapter V: The Security Council
Chapter VI: Pacific Settlement of Disputes
Chapter VII: Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression
Chapter VIII: Regional Arrangements

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