Prof. Swaran Singh on BASIC and climate negotiations

Prof. Swaran Singh has a new article in livemint on the BASIC countries and climate change . . .



He argues that BASIC is taking the lead in climate negotiations, partly because of their better coordination.
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Prof. Swaran Singh on BASIC and Climate Change

Prof. Swaran Singh has a new essay in the Global Times on the BASIC Group and global climate change negotiations . . .



He argues that the BASIC countries show strong potential in leading the climate change negotiations. As he puts it "BASIC seems to be the only group that shows the promise to sustain this momentum and the capacity to expand consensus on mitigation efforts." You can read the full essay here.
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Prof. Mattoo for 'grand reconciliation' between India and Pakistan

Prof. Mattoo has a new essay in Thursday's Times of India about the need for a 'grand reconciliation between India and Pakistan . . .


He argues that the conflict is complex and rejects monocausal explanations for the conflict. He goes on to argue that the solution also has to be sought at multiple levels simultaneously, hence a 'grand reconciliation'. You can read his full essay by following the Times of India link above or here.
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CIPOD Alumnus Dr. C. Raja Mohan Named as Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers

Dr. C. Raja Mohan, a CIPOD alumnus, has been named as one of Foreign Policy magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2009 "for his forceful advocacy of India's rise to great-power status". . .


According to Foreign Policy:

"With India on the verge of achieving its potential as a regional power, Mohan is one of the leading theorists pushing the world's largest democracy to abandon its traditional aloofness and seek full integration with the West. A strong U.S.-India partnership, Mohan argues in his influential columns for the Indian Express and The Hindu, will assist India in its continued economic rise -- and give the United States an ally in Asia that could provide vital assistance in halting the rise of radical Islam and checking China's rising power. Mohan praised George W. Bush's administration for its outreach to India, but urges the United States to husband its power more carefully and realize that it 'cannot play God by resolving every single problem in the world'."

Dr. C. Raja Mohan is currently the Henry Alfred Kissinger Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C
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Rajagopalan at the NIDS Conference on Major Powers' Nuclear Policies

Cross-posted from Rajesh Rajagopalan blog, The Real World.


I attended a conference on "Major Powers' Nuclear Policies and International Order in the 21st Century", organized by the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Tokyo, on November 18, 2009.


It was an enjoyable and very informative couple of days. The conference included two excellent key note presentation. Morton Halperin ("The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century") had a somewhat optimistic presentation about where we are headed while Ambassador Yukio Satoh ("Nuclear Disarmament and Japan's Security"), gave a blunt lecture about the troubles facing Japan, especially the consequences of radical nuclear arms control/disarmament on extended deterrence, though his audience seemed to be the new government in Tokyo much more than the outside world. We had presentations about the nuclear policies of each of the N-5, plus India: Elaine Bunn (who, I realised belatedly, has been on all Nuclear Posture Reviews, including the current one!) on the U.S. , Yuri Fedorov on Russia, Xia Liping on China, John Simpson on Britain and Bruno Tertrais on France (and me on India).

I could not get over the sense that Japan is much more worried about the direction of US policy and the general international trends than we realise. In addition to Ambassador Satoh's keynote address, we also had discussions with a couple of senior bureaucrats from MOFA and MOD, and they more or less echoed Amb. Sato's tone too. Maybe it is that I have only passing familiarity with Japan; moreover, alliance angst among American allies is hardly news. Am I over-reading this? Maybe, but it is also possible that others are taking Japan a bit too much for granted too.
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Dr. Archana Negi on the Copenhagen Summit

Dr. Archana Negi, who recently made a presentation about the climate change negotiations and Copenhagen, at the CIPOD Wednesday seminar series, has written up her presentation. The essay, "Countdown to Copenhagen: State of Play of the Climate Change Negotiations," is to be published by Think India. You can read the early copy here . . .

‘Countdown to Copenhagen’: State of Play of

Climate Change Negotiations

Archna Negi

On the official website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), a ticking clock marks time to the second accompanied with the words ‘Countdown to Copenhagen’. The ticking seconds convey a sense of urgency; viewed positively, they seem to suggest that as the clock stops ticking, the world will find its solution to the problem of climate change (at Copenhagen); viewed in a more pessimistic light, the clock conveys that we have only so much time left to find a solution to global warming (at Copenhagen) and that time is running out. Whatever it is that the clock is meant to convey, it is a foregone conclusion now that the clock will have to be reset.

At the 13th Conference of Parties (COP 13) of the UNFCCC held at Bali in 2007, consensus had been forged to reach an ‘agreed outcome’ by the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15), scheduled to be held at Copenhagen, Denmark between the 7th and 18th of December this year. Representatives of over 170 governments will converge in the Danish city of Copenhagen, carrying on their shoulders the weight of the world’s expectations that they will come out with the magic solution to the single most pervasive problem of a planetary scale – climate change. They will be closely and keenly watched by thousands of representatives of the nongovernmental sector and the media present at the event, and through transmission and reporting, by the world at large. Copenhagen, after all, was the chosen birthplace of the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the current legal device to address climate change, which will reach the end of its life in the year 2012.

It is worthwhile to recall briefly the journey till this point in time where the second phase of legal protections against climate change is being worked out. Recognition of the need for international cooperation and global action on the issue of climate change was first embodied in the UNFCCC, adopted at the mother of all summits – the Rio Earth Summit of 1992. The Framework Convention established for itself the twin goals of stabilizing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere to a safe level (mitigation) and coping with temperature rise (adaptation).

Although the gentle provisions of the mother convention (UNFCCC) proved to be widely acceptable and led to a near universal membership, which currently stands at 192, the notorious child (Kyoto Protocol) proved to be far more controversial. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 contained specific obligations to be undertaken by parties, including binding emission reduction targets that were imposed on some (Annex I) parties. Of the 184 parties to the Protocol, 37 industrialized states and the European Communities committed to reduce GHG emissions [by an average of 5% against 1990 levels over the 5-year period (2008-2012)]. The defining feature of the Kyoto Protocol (also what makes it most controversial) is that it is based on the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’, i.e. it recognizes that the developed countries are principally responsible for current GHG stock in the atmosphere (emitted in 150-200 years of industrial activity) and therefore places a higher burden on them. While industrial countries are to meet their reduction targets first and foremost by taking domestic action, the Protocol allows the meeting of emission reduction commitments abroad through market based ‘Kyoto mechanisms’.

The Kyoto mechanisms – Emissions Trading, Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanism – allow for flexibility in meeting emission reduction commitments if they cannot be met purely by domestic action. As part of the ‘carbon market’ set up under the Emissions Trading mechanism (Article 17), parties with emission reduction commitments are assigned targets for the 2008-2012 commitment period and if countries have spare emission units, they can sell their excess units to other committed countries that are likely to cross their target. A country with emission reduction targets may earn emission reduction units by implementing emission-reduction projects in other countries – it can do so in another Annex I country [Joint Implementation (Article 6)] or in a developing country [Clean Development Mechanism (Article 12)].

The entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol was not smooth because the emission reductions that it mandated were viewed as a curtailment of development activities. The biggest carbon emitter remained notably absent from the Kyoto regime, refusing to be bound by the commitments imposed by the Protocol. The US administration made it clear that it would not be signatory to any protocol that (i) did not include binding targets and timetables for developing countries as well or (ii) that would result in ‘serious harm’ to the American economy. Despite the non-participation of the largest emitter, the Kyoto Protocol entered into force in 2005 when Russia ratified it, fulfilling the legal requirements for entry into force. While Australia – the other major long-time non-member – came on board in December 2007 (ratification of the Kyoto Protocol was the first official act of the new Kevin Rudd government), the US continues to remain outside the sphere of operation of the Protocol.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) brought out its Fourth Assessment Report, stressing the anthropogenic contribution to climate change and indicating firmly that the world could not afford climate change of more than 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era. The renewed sense of urgency imparted by this report coupled with the natural progression of the Kyoto Protocol towards its demise, led to the adoption of the Bali Action Plan during COP 13 held in Bali in December 2007. The Action Plan set out a framework for negotiating a second phase of Kyoto, focusing on four main issues – mitigation; adaptation; technology development and transfer; and financial resources and investment. More importantly, countries agreed to reach an ‘agreed outcome’ – in all likelihood a legally binding treaty to be christened ‘Copenhagen Protocol’ to replace the Kyoto Protocol – by the end of 2009 at Copenhagen.

Although climate change negotiators have been working continuously at achieving this outcome, it has proved to be no mean task. Some symbolic progress was made at Poznan, Poland during COP 14 in 2008 when parties agreed to shift into full negotiating mode in 2009 and to draft a concrete negotiating text. Indeed, a negotiating text was available by the time of the Bonn meeting in June 2009. But there were many sticking points: By how much were the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions by 2020 (mid-term commitments)? What steps were the developing countries (in particular, the large emerging economies like India and China) willing to take to limit growth of their emissions? To what amount and mode of financing for adaptation and mitigation were the developed countries willing to commit? What commitments relating to technology development and transfer were achievable? Although a range of options was thrown up for discussion in relation to these questions, divergences remained both on broad principle as well as on specific detail.

At the Bangkok meeting in October 2009, the controversial ‘Australian proposal’ attracted substantial reaction as well as media attention. The proposal, backed by the EU and US, floats the idea of a single listing of all countries and similar commitments though of varying degrees and does not carry a contingent guarantee of technology or finance. Termed the “murder of the Kyoto Protocol” by India, the proposal was criticized for running counter to the very spirit of the Kyoto Protocol by putting the knife of ‘single listing’ through the heart of the principle of common but differentiated responsibility. This principle is at the core of India’s negotiating position on climate change.

India has ratified the UNFCCC (1 November 1993) as well as the Kyoto Protocol (26 August 2002). Its prominence in the climate change negotiations increased after the US made its subscription to the Kyoto regime contingent upon binding emission reduction commitments by countries like India. India’s negotiating position in the climate regime has largely been defined by its response to this argument of the US. The central feature of India’s position has been an absolute refusal to be bound by legally binding emission reduction commitments for at least two reasons. As a first justification, India invokes the ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ principle that is central to the architecture of the current climate regime. A second defense of its stand comes from a stress on convergence of ‘per capita emissions’ of developing and developed countries. With the US at roughly 19 and India at only 1.3 (US Department of Energy) in terms of per capita emissions, the Indian Prime Minister could assert confidently, as he did at the G8 Summit at Heiligendamm, Germany in 2007 that India’s per capita emission would never exceed that of the developed countries.

At Bangkok, India stressed that a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol along with deep cuts by the developed countries was non-negotiable. It further stressed that immediate and deep cuts in GHG emissions to be undertaken by the developed countries should be accompanied with specific mid-term targets. On its part, India proposed country-specific ‘nationally appropriate mitigation actions’ that could be supported with finance and technology and verified. However, it was made clear that India would not agree to any international review (measurement, reporting and verification) of its unilateral and unsupported domestic actions. Another issue argued by the developing countries is that of technology transfer and financing as a repayment of the carbon debt by the developed countries.

India has been proactively involved in the climate negotiations at various fora. At the Major Economies Forum (G8 + G5 + Australia + EU + Indonesia + South Korea), when India endorsed the “… scientific view that increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees Celsius”, there was widespread media criticism as this was seen as an admission on an emissions cap. But according to Indian negotiators, this was only a ‘political statement of intent’ and not an ‘arithmetical binding target’. India has shown a keenness to be seen as a proactive participant of the climate regime, not an excessively defensive ‘deal-breaker’. As evidence of its increased commitment to the cause of climate change, it has accelerated domestic action viz. by finalizing the National Action Plan on Climate Change in June 2008, which envisages voluntary mitigation measures by 2020. The Plan includes eight national missions: solar; enhanced energy efficiency; sustainable habitat; water; sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem; ‘Green India’; sustainable agriculture and strategic knowledge for climate change.

The theme of India’s keenness to be accommodative was captured in a controversial letter by the Indian Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, to the Prime Minister dated 13 October 2009, in which the minister seems to reverse India’s negotiating stance. As per the version made public by the media, the letter expresses concern about India being seen as a ‘deal-breaker’. It dilutes India’s stance demanding finance and technology as compensation from developed countries and underscores that “… we need to mitigate in self-interest”. It suggests that India allow scrutiny of even those emissions control steps that it takes under its own legislation and at its cost (like IMF surveillance and WTO TPRM). The letter also asserts that the Australian proposal will cause no harm to India as long as it recognizes differences in obligations. Needless to say, the Minister’s letter stirred up a hornet’s nest, although he later claimed that his communication had been totally distorted and the Prime Minister’s Office also clarified that there was to be no shift in the Indian negotiating stance. However, the letter did raise widespread concern over whether the Indian government was clear about what remains non-negotiable at Copenhagen.

Many differences remain to be sorted out at Copenhagen. As far as setting a threshold for maximum temperature rise is concerned, the 2 degree Celsius objective adopted at the MEF will probably constitute the agreed threshold, although in terms of carbon content, there are several figures in consideration. The issue of mitigation remains the farthest from agreement, with the developed countries refusing to put down hard numbers for mid-term reductions under the second phase of Kyoto and the developing countries refusing to be bound by emission reduction commitments. On adaptation, the contentious point relates to the amount of financing the rich countries are willing to commit to for the developing countries to adapt. In principle, there is agreement over the need for the developed countries to provide financing and technology, but wide divergences remain over amounts in figures. Also under consideration will be the issue of how the Kyoto mechanisms can be strengthened and expanded. There is also a move to make the developing countries upgrade their individual domestic commitments relating to climate change and make them part of international commitments. As the American Special Envoy on climate change, Todd Stern put it at the Major Economies Forum meet in London in October 2009, “What we need to have happen is for China and India and Brazil and South Africa and others to be willing to take what they’re doing in terms of emission cuts, boost it up some, and then be willing to put it into an international agreement”.

It is highly unlikely that countries like India will allow international monitoring of their domestic commitments, considering their clearly stated objection to binding commitments. Can the deadlock facing Copenhagen, especially in relation to mitigation commitments be broken, so that there is a chance for the negotiations to move forward? Some alternative views have been offered outside the formal negotiating fora, which merit attention. Noted economist, Jagdish Bhagwati, draws attention to the fact that while the ‘stock problem’ (80% of carbon accumulated in the atmosphere has come from the West) has been the point of reference in the climate negotiations, we cannot ignore the ‘flow problem’ (more than half the current carbon discharge into atmosphere is from the developing countries). He suggests that countries such as China and India should assume flow obligations although these would depend on the fulfillment of stock obligations by the developed countries. He also suggests that acceptance of current obligations would be contingent upon payment for past damages. Acceptance of flow obligations on the part of developing countries is impossible to imagine in the current state of negotiations but if it did come about at some point in time, it would represent a huge turning point in the climate change negotiations.
Another alternative to help break the deadlock by modifying the negotiating position of India is provided by Raghunandan, Purkayastha and Jayaraman, who suggest that India should announce non-binding but self-declared targets to restrict emissions to 25% below projected emissions by 2030 (rather than an absolute cut in emissions) conditional upon: (i) Annex I parties meeting binding targets of reducing emissions by 50% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 90% by 2050 (deep cuts through actual reductions not offset through trade measures); (ii) Annex I countries pay into a climate fund a sum equivalent to deficit in target achievement (iii) emission reduction technologies to be placed in public domain. This suggested solution also seeks to acknowledge current responsibility and to include action on the part of developing countries. But the inclusion of developing countries would be contingent on a continued stress on historical responsibility and meaningful action in that direction by the developed countries.

The role of the United States will be crucial is determining the future of the climate regimes. A recent poll showed that the American public is not convinced of the reality of the threat of global warming. US has resisted mandatory carbon emission limits previously and draft US legislation on climate change is still not ready for approval. Adoption of new US legislation will have direct implications for the adoption of a global agreement on climate change.

Regarding Copenhagen, the key question till recently was, “Will they ‘seal the deal’ at Copenhagen? Optimism on this front has waned steadily. The negotiating draft has been described as “long, confusing and contradictory” with a “…feast of alternative options” and “…a forest of square brackets”. The United Nations has officially lowered expectations for reaching a legally binding agreement at Copenhagen, with the UN Secretary General already planning “post-Copenhagen talks”, indicating that the talking will not be over in Copenhagen as was previously expected. Janos Pasztoe, the climate advisor to the UN Secretary General stated recently, “Climate Change is not going to be resolved in Copenhagen ….Copenhagen has to be a milestone”. So the most one can expect from Copenhagen is a non-binding political declaration. Although in the Barcelona meeting in the first week of November, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary spoke of the importance of achieving verifiable commitments at Copenhagen, he also referred to Copenhagen as the “turning point”, indicating thus that the negotiations would need to go on post Copenhagen.

The state of play of the climate change negotiations clearly indicates that Copenhagen will not achieve the results that were expected from it. The time has already run out to reach a detailed international agreement (i.e. to “seal the deal”). But according to some, that should not constitute a cause for worry. Jeffrey Sachs asserts that “… failure to reach an agreement need not be a cataclysm”. He points to the magnitude and complexity of the climate problem and asserts that a continued progress in taking small, practical steps would turn out to be much more meaningful than arriving hastily at a toothless agreement. According to Sachs, an “interim agreement on general principles” coupled with a “series of practical steps to tilt the trajectory on emissions” would be a good enough outcome of Copenhagen.

Climate change is but one manifestation of the deadlocked multilateralism that is evident in several other issue areas such as forests, trade, disarmament, etc. There are several reasons that make the climate negotiations more difficult than others. One reason can be drawn from the comment of Nobel Prize winning economist Elinor Olstrom, “…we do not have clear predictions for beating the tragedy of the commons at a global level”. Because the climate represents the ‘global commons’, and because taking action to control climate change, i.e. reducing GHG emissions, has different implications across countries, agreement on meaningful global action remains elusive. The commercial implications of action taken for climate control, i.e. the impact of emission reductions on development, is another aspect that comes in the way of agreement. The mismatch between the global nature of the problem of climate change and the state-centric negotiating strategies of states at the international level is a key factor in the lack of progress is the negotiations.

For now, it is certain that the ‘countdown’ must be reset to go beyond Copenhagen. There will be no legally binding agreement at Copenhagen and the focus of negotiation-watchers has to move to the road ahead of Copenhagen. Till the time that an internationally negotiated solution is agreed upon, it can only be hoped that action taken at the domestic level by individual states continues to add up to serve the cause of climate change control.


- November 2009

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Happymon Jacob to be Visiting Fellow at Hokkaido University

Happymon Jacob will be Visiting Fellow at Hokkaido University from December 10. He explains:

I will be on leave from JNU from 10 December to 28 March and will be in residence at the Slavic Research Center of the Hokkaido University, Japan as a Visiting Fellow. As a Visiting Fellow I will conduct research on: "India’s Search for Great Power Status: Structural Incentives and Domestic Constraints". I will be part of a project on “Comparative Research on Major Regional Powers in Eurasia” funded by the by the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science.




The project that I will be part of will conduct a comprehensive and systematic comparison of major regional powers in Eurasia, including Russia, China and India, and analyze the sustainability of these countries as regional powers. In addition, the comparative analysis will take into account the historical background of these powers as Empires. The objective of the research project is to explore and identify pressing issues in contemporary Eurasia and beyond, such as security, ethnic conflict, religious confrontations, environmental problems and poverty, by paying special attention to the role of these regional powers in the world order.



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Happymon Jacob at Griffith University Conference on Pakistan

Happymon Jacob recenty participated in an international conference on Pakistan's chronic instability, organized by the Griffith Asia Institute of the Griffith University, in Brisbane, Australia, 25-26 November, 2009.

Happymon presented a paper on the India-Pakistan peace process (such as it is).
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A.Q. Khan on Pakistan-China nuclear links

This is cross-posted from Rajesh Rajagopalan's blog, The Real World. Actually, this has been in the draft folder for some time. Apologies for the late post.


The Washington Post has an important story about A.Q. Khan, the nuclear blackmarketeer, and his dealings with China. But what is most critical is not what A.Q. Khan and the Pakistanis did, but what China did, and their motivations. As Hans Kristensen notes in the article, this is the only known case where a nuclear weapon state has transferred HEU to a non nuclear-weapon state for the explicit purpose of building nuclear weapons.

A.Q.Khan claims that the quid pro quo was the centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment that A.Q.Khan had stolen earlier from the URENCO facility in the Netherlands.

In 1994, Seymour Hersh had written about another deal: why the US bought at face value the absurd Pakistani government claim that the A.Q. Khan episode was a 'rogue operation' not sanctioned by the Pakistani government. Hersh had then reported that the deal was that in return for accepting the nonsensical story about A.Q. Khan, Pakistan would help the US in capturing Osama bin Laden. That sure worked out well.

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Prof. Mattoo argues the need for a new nuclear architecture

Prof. Amitabh Mattoo has a new opinion piece on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the Telegraph.

Prof. Mattoo notes that all three legs of the current NPT structure -- non-proliferation, civil nuclear energy cooperation, and nuclear disarmament -- are at the point of collapsing. He argues that India must help set up a new nuclear architecture. You can read his complete essay here.
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Jacob says India should start talking to Pakistan, "Now".

Happymon Jacob has written a new essay in Greater Kashmir arguing that India should start talking to Pakistan, now.

Jacob argues that India has been overusing coercive diplomacy and that New Delhi has reaped all the possible benefits it can out of refusing to talk to Pakistan.

Read his full essay in the link above or here.


Edited 15/10/2009 late evening: Hmm . . . the Greater Kashmir website seems rather uncooperative. The link to the essay keeps going to the wrong op ed section, so please read the essay directly from Happy's blog archive here.
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Patrick Bratton on 'Coercive Signalling'

Patrick Bratton gave an interesting talk at CIPOD on September 30, 2009 on 'the effects of governmental structure on coercive signalling'.


Bratton is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Program Chair for Political Science and International Relations at Hawaii Pacific University. He has done a considerable amount of work on coercion in international politics. He provided the abstract of the presentation pasted below:

The Effecs of Governmental Structure on Coercive Signalling

How does governmental structure affect the ability of a state to send clear coercive messages and to orchestrate those signals into coherent messages? This presentation shall review the concept of coercion and previous studies done by the author and his collaborator on the effects of governmental structures on coercion. Several studies indicate that democracies, in particular presidential democracies with a division of powers like the United States, are poor at sending clear signals and orchestrating those signals into coherent messages. There has been an assumption that both authoritarian and parliamentary governments are more effective. The presentation will compare the effects of these three types of governments on signaling and orchestration: (1) Presidential divided/shared powers systems; (2) Westminster parliamentary democracies; and (3) authoritarian governments. It uses examples from: the US War with Vietnam, the 1982 Falklands War, and the 1995-96 Taiwan Straits Crisis.

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More needless hand-wringing over the NPT/US-India nuclear deal

Cross-posted from The Real World.


Are'nt we done with this yet??

Apparently not. The generic UNSC resolution 1887 (click here if the previous link does not open) about nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation (press statement including discussions here) has set-off yet more paranoid worrying in New Delhi that India will be targeted. Only the Indian Express seems to have taken a more sober line.

As if it needed reiteration, the MEA, MoS Tharoor and even PM Manmohan Singh had to step-up to state India's position on the NPT for the umpteenth time and reassure the TV pundits that the UNSC resolution was not directed at India and that the US was not backing out on the nuclear deal (further reiterated by Clinton).

That the UNSC resolution would get tied up with the nuclear deal is even more surprising. To reiterate what I have said before, the US-India nuclear deal is really a deal between India and the international community, not just the US. And the benefits are already visible: here, here, here, here, here, here and here, with more to come. Even if the US were to balk at this stage, it matters little because the gate is already open for nuclear commerce with the rest of the world.

A lot of recent debate in the US about the paranoid style of American politics; it may be time consider seriously hypotheses about the paranoid style of Indian politics . . .
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Prof. Mattoo reviews Gretchen Peters' Seeds of Terror

Prof. Amitabh Mattoo has published an excellent review in the India Today of the new book by Gretchen Peters, an ABC News reporter, about the link between drug trafficking and terrorists in Afghanistan.


The review, which is generally favourable, can be found here. As always comments are welcome, on either the review or the book.


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Rajesh Rajagopalan at the SAIIA 75th Anniversary Conference

Cross-posted from The Real World.


I attended the South African Institute of International Affairs' 75th Anniversary conference, 'Africa in a New World: Geopolitics, interdependence and leverage', 17-18 September in Johannesburg and made a presentation on 'Moving the Center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific'.

I did not have a written paper but my notes are posted below.

Introduction
Is the center of gravity of global politics moving from Atlantic to the Pacific? Is there also a power transition away from the US? I suppose the answer is yes to both, though the first shift is much more prominent and relevant than the second.

Shifting from Atlantic to Pacific
Since US both an Atlantic and a Pacific power, the shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific does not hurt the US. Can the shift to Pacific or Asia-Pacific lead to a different type of international politics, different from a European style of international politics? In other words, would Asia’s rise lead to a new (more harmonious?) international political culture or would Asia’s future be Europe’s past? But little sign of any dramatic change in Asian int’l politics. Insecurity and the consequences of insecurity no different in Asia. US presence/alliances keeps lid on more extreme insecurities

Nature of current international order
Is the curret system unipolar, multipolar or what? Unipolar-in purely material terms, because difference in wealth and power between dominant power and everybody else is greater than at anytime since end of the Roman Empire. But does this disparity lead to greater American control?

Not necessarily; being a GP ain’t what it used to be because:
• Ideology of nationalism
• Norms (legitimacy) of resistance
• Democratisation of firepower makes conquest difficult
• Nuke allow even small/weak states (NKorea) to counter US

Nevertheless, US capacity to control still immense. Example: US-Ind nuke deal; US changed global rules for just one country, demonstrates what power can do. So though US can’t get its way always, US dominance should not be underestimated

Moving towards multipolarity?
Obviously, US declining in relative terms since 1945, but not against the same power:
1940-1960s vis-à-vis Europe
• 1960-80s vis-à-vis Japan/southeast Asia
• 1980s-current vis-à-vis China, India
• This suggests that current challengers might not displace US

History of rise/fall of GPs illustrate that these are mostly internally determined; so difficult to predict; three lessons, however:
• GPs/hegemonies/empires last long, maybe hundreds of years
• Have not usually been balanced by other power (Roman, Chinese, Mughal etc, not balanced by others)
• GPs have usually declined for domestic/economic reasons, not because of other GPs
So US decline inevitable, but when, how impossible to predict. Assumption that US would quickly decline not valid.

What if multipolarity happens? Speculations about the future:
• Multipolarity may lead to greater insecurity and war
• Major players could become regional hegemons, dominating neighborhoods
Could lead to more insecurity
• Nevertheless, nukes likely to prevent direct combat between nuke powers, as in bipolarity
• But, as in bipolarity, it could lead to proxy wars, support for insurgents etc, because nuke war no longer possible
• Global norms/institutions could potentially suffer with no one (GP) to care for them.

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