Lost in the Global Economy

For the last two years, we Canadians have been told numerous times by the Harper government(s) that we have fared comparatively well due to their successful shepherding through the global economic downturn. Admittedly, this has largely been true. While the economy has suffered, we are in a better position, domestically, than many others. That said, how we as a country interact with the rest of the global economy looks to be a little more precarious given recent events.

As Prime Minister Harper noted last month in an interview with Macleans, his view on foreign policy is that "our long-run interests are tied somewhat to our trade, but they're more fundamentally tied to the kind of values we have in the world: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law." This sounds nice and the Harper government has not failed to remind everyone about our principles, but what happens when our like-minded friends are no longer wise to become too invested with economically? After all, Canada needs trading partners to keep the economy running smoothly. So, whom should Canada strive to build strong economic ties with? The easy answer is everyone and that we should never turn away a potential partner. The reality is, however, that with out limited resources it is in our best interests to cultivate strong, strategic relationships rather than try to spread them out too thin.

In the past, discussion on whom Canada should trade with has focused on two major partners, the United States and Europe. But right now, both are in serious economic trouble as they struggle with issues of debt, unemployment and internal political deadlocks. Add to that the standoff between Canada and the EU over the hunting of seals and the sale of seal products and it looks like the traditional partners may not be the best trading partners in the near future.

What about China? Right from the start, Tory governments were heavily critical of China and its human rights record. Whether or not this was the right thing to do is not for me to say, but it did have a cooling effect on any relationship between Canada and the world's fastest growing economy. Now we see the government scrambling to rebuild ties with China in hopes of not becoming collateral damage of the economic repercussions of the US debt woes (Check out the Canadian International Council's new site OpenCanada.org and their recent Rapid Response roundtable about why the government is softening its stance on China). It is more than likely that it will take a few years of sustained effort to repair the previous damage done to the relationship.

Mr. Harper has just wrapped up a trade tour in Latin American in hopes of building up positive trade relations with the region, especially with Brazil. Attempts have been made to trumpet the benefits of the free trade deals recently signed with Honduras and Colombia but the reality is that these markets won't have a huge positive effect on the Canadian economy. The real prize would be to develop a strong economic relationship with rising star in the international arena, Brazil. But once again, our ties with this new power are not exactly the best they could be, thanks in part to neglect and fierce competition in the airline industry.

The Harper government will have to figure out where its priorities lie and work to (re)build the kinds of relationships that will help strengthen our economy and move past our recent economic problems. The question remains, what will the government do if economic gain comes at the expense of dealing with countries who don't share our values? If recent events give any indication, I predict the economy will come out on top (no surprise there!), but only time will tell.


Cross-posted at DMF Insider

Post-Conflict Potter: The Forgotten Aspect

Alright, I'm a couple days late to jump on the Post-Conflict Potter bandwagon but having read some of the better responses to the original article (see responses from The Duck of Minerva , The Monkey Cage and Running Chicken) I've noticed that one factor seems to have been forgotten in all this "analysis" - I'm trying not to think too hard about this, I swear, but I am easily drawn in to these kinds of thought exercises - namely the importance of, to steal from the R2P doctrine, the responsibility to rebuild after the conflict.

All of the responses so far have focused on the need to rebuild following Harry's defeat of Voldemort at the end of the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But everyone seems to have forgotten that the only reason Voldemort was even able to come back to "life" after he failed to kill Harry was that the Death Eaters were never successfully re-integrated into the British wizarding community the first time around. Just look how quickly they were willing to go back to their old ways of terrorizing mixed bloods, muggle-borns and those that held different views than them.

The authors of the original article (Malinowski, Holewinski & Schultz) recognize the importance of transitional justice the second time around, prescribing that,

Surviving Death Eaters will have to be brought to justice or reintegrated into magical society. Long-standing rifts among magical communities that the war widened must be healed. Most of all, we must ensure that the values that triumphed in the final battle -- tolerance, pluralism, and respect for the dignity of all magical and non-magical creatures alike -- are reflected in the institutions and arrangements that emerge from the conflict. What ultimately matters is not just whether something evil was defeated, but whether something good is built in its place.

This time around they have the ability to learn lessons from the past and incorporate them into the rebuilding efforts, but not the lessons from the American muggles in Afghanistan or Iraq, as the authors suggest, rather their own mistakes with the same group of Death Eaters 17 years earlier. They have seen from the events of the last two years, books... and/or corresponding movies, I guess, (Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows) what happens when former combatants are not successfully re-integrated and the human cost incurred. If you are going to rebuild after a conflict, make sure that you are willing to make the commitment that reconstruction requires because doing a poor job will only just postpone the eventual return of violence (*cough**cough**Somalia**cough**cough*).

More Victims of Distraction

Following my previous post on the topic of important events being overshadowed by the crisis in Libya, Foreign Policy magazine has a good slideshow entitled "What Else happened This Week?"
It's definitely worth a read/view.

Distracted by the Arab Spring?

For the last couple of months the world has been paying close attention to the events in the Middle East and North Africa except maybe for the wedding of William and Kate. While the Arab Spring is admittedly a major step in the promotion of democracy, and extremely interesting to those of us interested in international relations, it is starting to appear that the protests (and their respective fallouts) are distracting the world from other major developments around the world (except for the death of Osama Bin Laden).

While this likely does not come as a surprise to some, the severity of this distraction is something I believe is worthwhile to look at. Today, the International Crisis Group sent out an alert that warned of serious trouble between Sudan and its newly separated southern region:

"North and South have deployed forces in and around Abyei in breach of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and subsequent security arrangements, as both seek to control the territory come Southern independence on 9 July. While previous clashes have involved civilians, informal militias, and/or police, last week's involved members of security forces on both sides. Further escalation and additional tit-for-tat deployments risk pushing Abyei beyond the tipping point, endangering lives and the fragile peace in Sudan.

Fighting broke out at a security checkpoint near Todach in the Abyei area on 1 May, after Sudan Armed Forces elements of the Joint Integrated Units (JIU, a largely failed CPA mechanism comprising troops drawn from the Northern and Southern armies) allegedly delivering an authorised weapons shipment were stopped by Southern police forces; fighting erupted leaving some 14 dead. In addition to the immediate threat posed to civilians in and around Abyei, at risk are recent gains of the CPA and the peaceful secession of the South."

The fact that the escalation towards conflict in Sudan has largely been ignored in favour of Libya et al. is interesting AND concerning. Achieving peace in Sudan has been a target of multiple actors in the international community. The Obama administration - including the president, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice - had identified achieving peace in Sudan as a prominent goal of American diplomacy in Africa. In addition, the United Nations and the African Union have sent numerous peacekeepers to the area and facilitated multiple attempts at creating, and sustaining, dialogue between the conflicting parties.

After all the investment that members of the international community have made into resolving Sudan's conflict with its southern region, the mostly peaceful referendum this past January was hailed as a positive sign that peace might be foreseeable in the near future. With this in mind, the fact that the world has largely forgotten/ignored the recent developments in the Abyei region is worrisome.

It is understandable that some may prioritize conflict (Libya) over potential conflict (Sudan), and while it would be completely unrealistic to demand that a western power (history's primary interveners) involve themselves in another conflict (this would be the 4th war "kinetic military action" for the United States), one would think that the various invested actors would try to exert greater diplomatic pressure on the governments in Khartoum and Juba. in the case of the intervention in Libya, the United States has had little investment in Libya, having only re-established diplomatic ties in the last few years. Meanwhile, the United States has been an active supporter of Southern Sudan's independence efforts and vocal about the situation in Sudan's western region of Darfur, or at least until it got distracted by the Arab Spring! Even the UN Security Council has remained, at least officially, silent about the growing likelihood of renewed conflict in Sudan!

It's probably too early to start prognosticating how renewed conflict in this region would unfold, but a number of questions come to mind when considering the lack of response to the increased likelihood of conflict between Sudan and Southern Sudan:

1) has peace in Southern Sudan fallen victim to the hope for democratic reform in the Middle East and North Africa?
2) do fast-moving developments trump long-standing diplomatic investments?
3) for some, is spreading democracy more important than the promotion of peace?
4) is this an example of the media being able to dictate what is important in international affairs?
5) has Sudan become a tired subject in international affairs?

I'll probably think of more questions as time goes on or events proceed, but these are just some of the questions that come to mind when taking a first look at what is happening.

Happy Mother's Day everyone

Back to Blogging/Response to "Xenophobia to the Rescue?"

Okay so I've been meaning to get back to blogging for a while now but I keep letting myself get distracted by other things (job/school work/travel), but I wanted to write up my two cents concerning a question posed by Steve Saideman concerning xenophobia and intervention and was looking for a way to avoid working on an assignment for my economics course.

So Prof. Saideman asks whether or not intervention motivated by xenophobia is a good thing. I guess the first thing is that it seems to me that it would be just as self-interested as any other reason for intervention. Just like an intervention for strategic interests (US in Iraq for oil) or under the umbrella of the R2P doctrine (guilt from inaction during Rwanda), xenophobic intervention has the intervening states' interests at heart and not those of the victims on the ground. I do, however, see a difference in that a state intervening out of fear of an influx of refugees benefits from a sustainable peace being achieved. This would mean remaining involved afterwards to ensure that the country does not fall back into conflict. For example, France and Italy cannot afford to continually hold back the wave of refugees that would accompany sustained conflict in North Africa. A relatively quick end to the fighting and then some amount of peacebuilding assistance would be in their best interests so that a sustainable peace could be achieved and the flow of refugees could be reversed.

The danger, though, is that xenophobic intervention could lead to a focus on the refugees and directing one's efforts to turning away refugees and subjecting them to dangerous conditions. The 1951 Refugees Convention requires states to allow people to apply for asylum once they set foot on their land. By preventing refugees from landing, countries can avoid having to provide shelter to these people (until their status is determined). Such has already been the case as a boat of Tunisian refugees sunk off of the coast of Italy, killing 35, and another boat, carrying 1800 refugees from Libya was turned away and escorted into international waters. There have been other cases, especially in southeast Asia, where boats of asylum seekers have been forced to turn around and brave international waters in vessels (and conditions) that are unsafe and unsanitary.

So to bring it back to the original question, I would suggest that xenophobic intervention directed at tackling the problem(s) at the source of the refugees (conflicts) is "okay" whereas those acts of intervention aimed at preventing refugees from reaching their shores are bad forms of xenophobic intervention. (I do, however, find it distasteful to label some xenophobic actions as "good". I would say that a better term is needed).

... I guess I have to get back to my econ assignment now that I've thrown my two cents in (sigh)...

What Are Test Cases?

W. Andy Knight has an interesting article in The Mark today on the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The quote below I find particularly interesting:

"The international society of states still relies heavily on the Westphalian notion that state sovereignty includes the legal right of non-intervention in the internal affairs of states. This is most clearly evidenced by the lack of action by the 'international community' in areas like the Darfur region of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burma, among others. For R2P to become international law, it would require many more years of not just debate in the UN Security Council and General Assembly, but also testing in actual cases." -- W. Andy Knight

The idea of test cases would require that norms like non-intervention would be removed for certain situations and maintained for others. This raises the question: what qualities make certain situations better than others to be test cases? Not that I am against R2P, but is there not already a problem within the UN of rules applying to some and not others? The problem with test cases is that utilizing them would mean that the international community openly accepts this idea that rules would not apply to some people. Once this happens, how can any rules have effect?

- blenCOWe

Back in the Game

What a semester! I haven't been blogging this past semester but this will change in the new year. The first four months of my master's degree has flown by quickly and with all the weekly preparation and work I decided to take a break from my blogging activities. But now I am back and will be blogging as regularly as possible.

- blenCOWe