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CIAO DATE: 05/05
March 2005
Sub-Saharan Africa
Introduction Christopher Clapham
British government policy in sub-Saharan Africa under New Labour Tom Porteous
British government policy in Africa under Labour has been motivated by a combination of humanitarianism and self-interest. The policy has been shaped principally by the Department for International Development (DFID), but also by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and by Prime Minister Tony Blair himself, as he has become more interested in Africa issues. The main focus of the policy has been on poverty reduction and development. The approach has been multi-dimensional, aiming to tackle the principal obstacles to development such as conflict, HIV, debt, governance and trade barriers. The UK has sought to increase its leverage in Africa by working multilaterally with its allies and through the UN, the World Bank and the EU. But the policy has been hampered by the inherent difficulty of promoting sound development policies in weak states, by a lack of UK leverage to affect change, and by a UK preference for statist solutions. Strategic and commercial objectives pursued by the FCO and the prime minister have sometimes appeared as being at odds with the developmental objectives of DFID. Post-9/11 concerns have reinforced the UK's motivation for dealing with Africa's problems, particularly the problems of weak and failed states. But western policies related to the war on terror may give rise to new contradictions and complicate the UK's developmental efforts in Africa.
'Advice is judged by results, not by intentions': why Gordon Brown is wrong about Africa Ian Taylor
Chancellor Gordon Brown has declared that 2005 will be a milestone in the United Kingdom's campaign to meet the UN Millennium Goals. Owing to Britain's chairmanship of both the G8 and the European Union in 2005, Brown believes that an opportunity to raise the continent's star in global politics presents itself. This comes after the launch in 2004 of the Blair Commission for Africa and a recent spate of high profile interventions by assorted politicians and famous musicians. It also follows a trend begun at the G8 meetings where Africa is placed on the G8 agenda. Such an interest in the continent is to be welcomed. Yet this article contends that Gordon Brown's assumptions regarding Africa's troubles, and the ingredients found within his proposals, are mistaken and need rethinking. The article argues that Brown's approach to Africa's problems is based on incomplete information or a misreading of the situation, and by default may serve to prolong Africa's crises rather than alleviate them.
New approaches to volatility: dealing with the 'resource curse' in sub-Saharan Africa Nicholas Shaxson
Much attention has been given in recent years to the paradoxical fact that huge flows of money from petroleum appear not to have brought prosperity to the African countries that produce it, but may instead have helped cause poverty, economic decline and conflict. Issues such as human rights abuses near oil installations and environmental damage have often captured the headlines, but these, while important, are peripheral to the main problems: the Dutch Disease, whereby an influx of oil money causes real exchange rates to appreciate, making local industry and agriculture uncompetitive; the damage that petroleum money causes to institutions, incentives and overall governance; and the volatility of oil prices and revenues. This article will look at the volatility problem, and how oil contracts tend to make matters even worse. They are like this for long-established technical, political and historical reasons, and there is consequently a widespread belief in the industry that change is not possible. This defeatist attitude needs to be vigorously challenged.
Enhancing African peace and security capacity: a useful role for the UK and the G8? Alex Ramsbotham, Alhaji M. S. Bah, Fanny Calder
This article reviews western donor support for building African peace and security architecture, specifically in relation to G8 efforts to engage in the capacity-building process in line with commitments made in the Joint Africa/G8 Plan to Enhance African Capabilities to Undertake Peace Operations (the Joint Plan)agreed between G8 and key African leaders at the G8 Summit in Evian in 2003. It describes a project by the New Security Issues Programme at Chatham House, carried out jointly with the Peace and Security Programme at the United Nations Association-UK and the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, to provide strategic input into implementing the Joint Plan. The article outlines the background to western involvement in peace and security capacity-building in Africa, the nature and current status of the African peace and security architecture and some key challenges to the G8/Africa capacitybuilding processparticularly African institutional human resource capacity and coordination among the various players involved. Finally, it maps out potential priorities for future progress in taking the capacity-building process forward.
Combating light weapons proliferation in West Africa Alex Vines
Light weapons proliferation is a serious problem in West Africa. A regional moratorium on imports of small arms and light weapons has not worked and UN arms embargoes on Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire have had limited impact. The Economic Community of West African States is currently drafting a new binding legal instrument aimed at controlling flows in West Africa but this will only succeed if the heads of state and government seriously adopt it. This needs to include greater compliance of UN sanctions, international reform of the End User Certificate system, mapping the spread of artisan production and an examination of ammunition imports to West Africa. Better control of ammunition imports in particular may assist the combat of light weapons proliferation as well as the comprehensive destruction of weapons from disarmament efforts. The illicit weapons trade in West Africa is increasingly transnational and it requires regional and international cooperation and support to combat it.
Consistency and inconsistencies in South African foreign policy Laurie Nathan
South Africa's foreign policy, conducted in an ad hoc and haphazard fashion under President Nelson Mandela, has been consolidated under the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. This article first outlines five consistent policy themes: Africa and Africanist; democracy and respect for human rights; a holistic understanding of security; a pacific approach to conflict resolution; and multilateralism. The article then identifies and attempts to explain a number of significant inconsistencies in relation to these themes, including Mbeki's 'quiet diplomacy' on Zimbabwe; his denialist position on HIV/AIDS; South Africa's controversial arms procurement programme; and its domestic xenophobia. Some of these inconsistencies have undermined the country's international credibility and at times overhshadowed its considerable achievements.
Lord Castlereagh's return: the significance of Kofi Annan's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change Gwyn Prins
This article suggests that the Annan High Level Panel that reported in December 2004 has produced the most important strategic document to be published by the UN since 1945, eclipsing the now distinctly dated Millennium Development Goals. It documents how it is unusually cogent and candid for a Blue Ribbon exercise. This article starts by describing both the long wave and the immediate events within which the Panel's work exists. The world is now plainly moving through the biggest change of course since the late eighteenth century, which the Panel also discusses, and which was punctuated in 20023 by a specific crisis over Iraq. The aftermath of that crisis was the occasion for the secretary-general of the United Nations to establish a High Level Panel with a wide mandate, to describe the new environment of international peace and security and to recommend changes to refurbish the United Nations in order to face new threats, challenges and change. The article analyses the Panel's strategy to obtain action on its key recommendations. These are to make routine the exercise of the responsibility to protect individuals at risk in failed or collapsed states by 'full spectrum' UN interventions embracing peace-enforcement, -keeping, -making and -building. The mechanisms recommended are described and the judgement made that the shrewd presentation of the brokerage of different interests gives a modest but real chance of success. The Panel also addresses the matter of membership of the Security Council but in a way which will enable the likely deadlock over that question later this year to be contained so as not to impede action on other matters. In sum, the High Level Panel promises to be Kofi Annan's best legacy.
The shifting politics of foreign aid Ngaire Woods
The war on terror and the war in Iraq pose three challenges for foreign aid. The first concern is that donors may hijack foreign aid to pursue their own security objectives rather than development and the alleviation of poverty. The second concern is that the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the wider war on terror will gobble up aid budgets. The third concern is that major donors are continuing to impose competing and sometimes clashing priorities on aid recipients and this erodes rather than builds the capacity of some of the world's neediest governments. This article assesses the emerging aid policies of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union and proposes practical measures that could bolster an effective development-led foreign aid system.
Collateral damage: human rights consequences of counterterrorist action in the Asia-Pacific Rosemary Foot
A number of states in the Asia-Pacific region have long been recognized to be indifferent or even hostile to the international human rights regime and to have rather poor records when it comes to protection of the right to personal integrity. Since 9/11 many of these same states have become closely involved in the US-led anti-terrorist campaign, and in the course of that involvement have been identified with the serious abuse of the personal security rights of those held in detention as terrorist suspects. This article uncovers some of the bases for that indifference to human rights treaties and why the human rights records of some of these states have become of even greater concern, particularly to domestic and transnational NGOs, in the contemporary anti-terrorist era. It argues that long-standing factors associated with intra-state armed conflict and separatist rebellions, the governmental tendency to accuse domestic NGOS of following a western rights agenda, and strong attachment to the non-interference norm have undercut official governmental concerns about the abuse of the right to personal security. More recently, emulation of the worst aspects of US anti-terrorist behaviour has given rise to a sense of impunity in some cases, and has justified a militarized response to political and religious unrest in others. Finally, the difficulties that the local human rights NGOs have had in making their case to the wider domestic populations have been compounded in a climate where many of their fellow citizens are fearful of the apparent rise in support for terrorist causes and methods.
The dark side of human rights Onora O'Neill
Edmund Burke argued that abstract or universal rights to food and medicine were less valuable than the aid of 'the farmer and the physician'. His point remains unanswered. Human rights receive universal lip service, but their status and justification remain murky. From one view they are universal requirements matched by counterpart universal obligations: but if so they cannot be defined or created by international Covenants. From another view they are defined by convention and have force only when states ratify international Covenants: but if so, they are not universal. This matters particularly for rights to goods and services, such as rights to food and health care. These rights require the active collaboration of those who are to deliver needed goods and services: yet this active engagement is endangered by imposing overly complex requirements in the name of compliance with human rights. Excessive demands for compliance, and excessive emphasis on complaint, compensation and blame as remedies for non-compliance, endanger the effective contribution of the farmer and the physician, and of others on whom the provision of needed goods and services most depends.
Book Reviews: Online publication date: April 2005
International Relations theory
Handbook of political theory. Edited by Gerald F. Gaus and Chandran Kukathas.
What is political theory? Edited by Stephen K. White and J. Donald Moon.
International ethics
In the shadow of 'just wars'. Edited by Fabrice Weissman.
Foreign relations
Parting ways: the crisis in GermanAmerican relations. By Stephen F. Szabo.
Engaging India: diplomacy, democracy, and the bomb. By Strobe Talbott.
Conflict, security and armed forces
Men, militarism and UN peacekeeping: a gendered analysis. By Sandra Whitworth.
Politics, democracy and social affairs
Out of evil: new international politics and old doctrines of war. By Stephen Chan.
The United States and the Great Powers: world politics in the twenty-first century. By Barry Buzan.
World cities beyond the West: globalization, development and inequality. Edited by Josef Gugler.
Ethnicity and cultural politics
The ethics of identity. By Kwame Anthony Appiah.
International and national political economy, economics and development
World trade governance and developing countries: the GATT/WTO code committee system. By Kofi Oteng Kufuor.
Energy and environment
The international climate change regime: a guide to rules, institutions and procedures. By Farhana Yamin and Joanna Depledge.
History
Caught in the Middle East: US policy toward the ArabIsraeli conflict, 194561. By Peter L. Hahn.
Support any friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the making of the USIsraeli alliance. By Warren Bass.
Armies without nations: public violence and state formation in Central America 18211960. By Robert H. Holden.
Europe
Reinvigorating European elections: the implications of electing the European Commission. By Julie Smith.
Himself alone: David Trimble and the ordeal of unionism. By Dean Godson.
David Trimble: the price of peace. By Frank Millar.
The myth of ethnic war: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. By V. P. Gagnon, Jr.
Cyprus: the search for a solution. By David Hannay.
The Turks today. By Andrew Mango.
Russia and the former Soviet republics
Russia's engagement with the West: transformation and integration in the twenty-first century. Edited by Alexander J. Motyl, Blair A. Ruble and Lilia Shevtsova.
The Russian military: power and policy. By Steven E. Miller and Dmitri Trenin.
Reforging the weakest link: global political economy and post-Soviet change in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Edited by Neil Robinson.
Middle East and North Africa
Cradle of Islam: the Hijaz and the quest for an Arabian identity. By Mai Yamani.
Checkpoint syndrome. By Liran Ron Furer.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Africa unchained: the blueprint for Africa's future. By George Ayittey.
Durable peace: challenges for peacebuilding in Africa. Edited by Tasier M. Ali and Robert O. Matthews.
The political economy of AIDS in Africa. Edited by Nana K. Poku and Alan Whiteside.
Africa in international politics: external involvement on the continent. Edited by Ian Taylor and Paul Williams.
Africa at the crossroads: between regionalism and globalization. Edited by John Mukum Mbaku and Suresh Chandra Saxena.
Designing West Africa: prelude to 21st century calamity. By Peter Schwab.
Islamism and its enemies in the Horn of Africa. Edited by Alex de Waal.
Rethinking the rise and fall of apartheid. By Adrian Guelke.
Engaging Africa: Washington and the fall of Portugal's colonial empire. By Witney W. Schneidman.
Asia and Pacific
Modern Afghanistan: a history of struggle and survival. By Amin Saikal.
The idea of Pakistan. By Stephen Philip Cohen.
Pakistan's drift into extremism: Allah, the army, and America's war on terror. By Hassan Abbas.
State and society in 21st-century China: crisis, contention, and legitimation. Edited by Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen.
China's new order: society, politics, and economy in transition. By Wang Hui.
The river runs black: the environmental challenge to China's future. By Elizabeth C. Economy.
North America
America right or wrong: an anatomy of American nationalism. By Anatol Lieven.
American power in the 21st century. Edited by David Held and Matthias Koenig-Archibugi.
The sorrows of empire: militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic. By Chalmers Johnson.
Latin America and Caribbean
Cuba: a new history. By Richard Gott.
Mercosur: between integration and democracy. Edited by Francisco Domínguez and Marcos Guedes de Oliveira.
Other books received
Books reviewed March 2005