U.S. Diplomacy and Global Energy Policy

Energy policy has been prioritized by the U.S. diplomatic bureaucracy. This much is clear after a dinner I attended last night with Kurt Volker, deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs and soon to be U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Mr. Volker is a well spoken man who seems to have the ability to articulate any topic related to U.S. foreign policy, whether he has any expertise on the subject or not. His capacity to finesse any topic to the point where you want to buy whatever he is selling is uncanny — and admirable. I guess 20 years in the foreign service allows one to make bull shit seem like an infomercial product that you just can't help but buy.

But I didn't buy it all. Ok, just one set of brick slicing knives, but not two. The director of IERES at GW, Hope Harrison, asked him to speak specifically on energy security and Russia. He spoke eloquently on a variety of topics initially — the Bucharest NATO summit, missile defence, relations with Russia, relations with the EU, foreign policy formation in general, President Bush — and I found myself thoroughly convinced that Mr. Volker is brilliant, even though I was cognisant of the fact that he most likely comes from a slightly neo-conservative but definately conservative perspective. He phrased the issues in such a way so that one could not help but agree, and substantiated his views with very pointed, however unverifiable, evidence. And then when it came time to address Russia and energy security, he instead spoke at length on U.S. energy and climate change policy. And this is where I refused to drink the government sponsored kool-aid.

I am not sure how or why he veered the conversation in this direction. Maybe he was testing out his smooth talking abilities. Seeing if he could convince a crowd on an issue in which he has very little, if any, expertise. He started off by defining energy security as one of the two major issues that will remain unresolved for the next few decades (extremism and terrorism being the other). It then turned into somewhat of a rant on the naivety of the European attempts at a carbon emissions trading mechanisms. He seemed to think it useless to set caps for carbon emissions, put a monetary value on emissions, and then trade excess credits to firms that cannot reduce their carbon output. He furthermore ridiculed the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the EU trading scheme. The basis of the CDM is that Western countries can sponsor/fund emissions reduction programs in developing countries and count those reductions towards reducing their own country's emissions. The logic behind it is that it provides a way for developing countries to reduce their CO2 emissions while providing incentive for wealthy countries to fund such projects — and the logic seems sound to me (and every other scientist on the UN IPCC). Mr. Volker did not see it this way. The way he phrased it (and I paraphrase) was that it allows European countries to claim emissions reductions while providing money to countries like China to build more coal-fired, carbon producing power plant.

The whole discussion was a true exercize in bureaucratic diplomacy. His comments, instead of being informed by fact or expertise, were formed by towing the party line (or perhaps by himself who creates the party line). The EU CO2 trading system is a mess, and just short of a total failure up to this point. But this is not what Mr. Volker was saying. He was saying that cap-and-trade systems are inherently a failure. This is a strange position to take seeing as most scientists and inform environmental activists support the use of cap-and-trade schemes. Two other topics lead me to believe that his views are more informed by the administration hierarchy rather than the scientific community or any other legitimate source. First, he touted the contemporary nuclear power revival. I am not opposed to nuclear energy being part of the mix of energy supply, but there are some significant problems with nuclear energy that he somehow failed to address. The second was the complete lack of discussion on international cooperation on climate change, the Kyoto treaty, or a post-Kyoto global agreement. The reason is that the Bush administration, and hence Mr. Volker, have ZERO interest in international cooperation on climate change, unless it is entirely on U.S. terms. The reasoning is becoming increasingly flimsy in the face of international pressure, and came to a head when members of the U.S. delegation to the Bali Climate Change Summit were laughed and booed at.

Let me make my stance on the issue clear. The world needs an international agreement to stem the negative effects of climate change and environmental degradation, and the world needs the United States to lead on this issue. It is a question of who jumps first (because everyone will eventually jump). Europe has jumped, but their global efforts are useless without U.S. support. China and India will not jump first. For both of these reasons, the U.S. must be the first to act radically. For a more elaborate explanation of my opinion, read this article. Cap-and-trade systems and the CDM, if done properly, can be very useful tools for stopping climate change.

By veering too far from his areas of expertise, Mr. Volker exposed himself more than he should have. My respect for him did not turn to contempt, but rather to the sad realization that dogmatism, rather than dynamism, plagues the foreign policy bureaucracy. In the case of Mr. Volker, being as high on the totem pole as he is, it may not be that he is towing the party line, but that he is informing (or misinforming) and creating it.

Summiting NATO and the NATO Summit

Security treaties are not my cup o' tea. They have their purpose and their function, I guess, but I am just not interested in them. Why?

Security policy is a response to a perceived threat. There is no way of creating policy for a threat that is occuring, so one has to make assessments of the surrounding environment and determine what is the best course of action to make the situation as safe as possible. The assessment is not of threats per se, but the calculation, rational or otherwise, that there is something threatening. Those who are looking for threats to security are always going to find them, creating a cycle of threat perception, fear, and more threat perception. I simply choose not to live my life in fear, therefore I do not perceive many threats. My use for a transnational security organization to protect me from threats that I don't believe exist is minimal at best, fear mongering at worst.

But I found reports from the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest rather interesting. The whole thing played out like a game of chess. Or, maybe more like Chutes N' Ladders. Pick your own analogy. Each sound byte, meeting, appearance by a particular president or minister (or lack of appearance), public press conference, and back room deal was a tactical maneuver to gain some leverage or extract some concession from the other country. Favors were bought and sold, political margins were called in, alliances were forged and broken, and feelings were surely hurt (Most of all, probably President Saakashvili of Georgia).

It was realpolitik at its finest. An exercize in realist international relations theory in all its glory. I don't need to summarize the horse-trading and bargaining here. The Wiki article has a pretty good summary of what occured.

My description here seems more appropriate for a gathering of political foes. The forging of the Treaty of Versaille, or the Yalta Summit, would seem to be described here. But this was a meeting of supposed allies who have the same strategic and normative outlook on transnational security (again, supposed).

So if this was a chess match, who check-mated whom? Its hard to say if one country won out. Russia accomplished its goals of keeping Georgia and Ukraine out of NATO for the time being, and it doesn't appear that it had to give up much. If there was one NATO member loser, it seems to be the USA. Not the current administration, but American foreign policy clout in general, and the American people. To get Ukraine and Georgia to send troops to Afghanistan, President Bush essentially promised the leaders of those countries that he and the U.S. would sponsor, if not guarantee, their entrance into NATO. Unfortunately for those two countries, Bush's political capital is spent and he wrote another check that he can't cash. It will be interesting to see if there is any popular backlash in Ukraine and Georgia (the former which is slightly pro-US although anti-NATO, the latter which is a majority pro-US) for not being able to make due with its promises. The summit all but consolidate Bush's lame-duck administration.

The American people lost out because concessions were made to the U.S. by many European countries to support missile defense in the Czech Republic and Poland. Billions more dollars will be spent protecting the American people from a perceived threat that, in this case, most certainly does not exist.

War on Drugs - Is that still going on?

A bout of drug related violence in Baja California was reported on in late December 2007, so this is not a breaking story really. I am only writing on it now because I was going to write a feature on it for my former employer, The Globalist, but it died on the vine because my boss is an ass and opted for some interviews conducted by his 16 year old son. Also because I am considering going down there again during my spring break.

To sum it up, there have been a few cases of surfing going down there and getting violently assaulted and robbed. On top of that, some gangsters wielding assault rifles shot up the Rosarito Beach police station and killed a police officer when they were trying to kill a town's top security official. Read Strategic Forecasting's Mexico security analysis for a rather exhaustive, and chilling, recap of some recent violence in Mexico in general (You have to register, but I recommend giving up your email address for their free content). But in my experience. Baja's coast is a relatively peaceful place, believe it or not. I have gone down there countless times and never encountered so much as a pick pocket. This includes Tijuana.

To say the least I am reconsidering Baja for my vacation. Aside from holiday considerations, the increase in both incidences and the fire power wielded by the drug gangs is concerning because it falls on the heels of the so called "Plan Mexico," a drug enforcement plan akin to the abysmal failure "Plan Columbia." The lengths that drug cartels are willing to go to protect their supply chain and markets is much more than any government agency is capable of preventing.

Drug policy seems to be off the radar for the upcoming presidential elections. It is possible that this will provide the next president to have more room to maneuver and will result in a less draconian approach to narcotics. Most likely, not a lot will change however. We will continue to incarcerate countless non-violent offenders and waste countless dollars because even if the next president has the balls to bring it up on the national agenda, he (or she) will be fighting against 35 years of an entrenched institution. Since Nixon's launched his war on drugs in 1971, no president has attempted to change course and bring reason to the issue, and I don't expect that the next one will.