Mauro De Lorenzo writes on TPM Cafe that China's "charm offensive" in Africa and other regions in the developing world will change the way Western powers engage those areas. This subject fascinates me; because the Chinese see their foreign policy very differently than Americans do, their engagement with Africa reminds us of a (supposedly) bygone era. For better or worse, De Lorenzo notes that it comes out looking a lot like U.S. Cold War policy.

China is expanding into the interstices left by the retreat of the United States from areas of the globe that stopped being strategic after 1991. Chinese firms do business where no one else can afford to because of Chinese government loan and incentive programs that are often miscategorized as "aid", and which the U.S. is barred from providing under OECD rules which it is bound by, but which China isn't. So Chinese companies underbid their competitors, often dramatically, and gain market share and increased influence...

There are some interesting angles to this approach that De Lorenzo hints at. First, he notes that "U.S. aid programs are obsessed with health and welfare (which account for more than 80% of U.S. aid spending) -- not the infrastructure needs that African leaders prioritize." There's lot of talk about partnership in Western aid agencies, but the Chinese play for strategic influence simply makes African leaders feel powerful again. Western aid packages cannot compete with that.

Those governments do like being taken seriously -- not being "treated like children", in the words of the Senegalese foreign minister. They are also keenly aware that China's interest in Africa has made Africa objectively more important in world affairs: for the first time in a generation Africa is a place where people see opportunities to be seized, and not just problems to be solved by outsiders.

De Lorenzo, writing from Africa, notes that African leaders have no illusions that China is seeking anything but its own self-interest. But he cautions that, once again, Africa may be getting the short end of the stick: "African governments have proven to be lousy at negotiating the terms of contracts. It is China's most important point of entry into, and leverage over, poor governments. Nothing charming about it, really."

Sounds a lot like accusations aimed at the U.S. from its Cold War days, no? I'd like to think that Western aid agencies have been pursuing a more worthy agenda since then -- that we should be proud of a greater focus on welfare.

But De Lorenzo reminds us that strategic engagement -- rather than ad hoc acts of compassion -- matters; whether or not Americans think national interest should factor into development aid, it simply does. Let's hope that competition from China will force the paternalistic aspects of aid to change without damaging the long-term goal of helping countries grow beyond poverty.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Senator Lugar's effort to drive home the point that the U.S. Armed Forces are a valuable, finite resource is well taken. The military can be a more valuable and flexible resource than we imagine, perhaps.

This weekend I met a co-founder of Give to the World, an NGO with a simple mission: "provide for families who need even the most basic human services and infrastructure for daily survival." This is perhaps not the area where one imagines a Marine and counter-insurgency specialist spending his time. But as I talked through Give to the World's mission with him, there was no doubt about his passion for meeting basic needs as an end in itself. What's particularly interesting is the organization's distribution network: the military.

In many areas of the world, it is too hostile for traditional Non-Governmental Organizations to assist the local populace. Give to the World is directly linking charitable contributions stateside with the men and women of the US and NATO Armed Forces serving overseas. From the hills of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq, your donation to Give to the World will defray the costs of shipping these goods to the people who truly need your assistance through the hands of the women and men in uniform serving on the ground.

Our mission also extends beyond these war-torn regions to other susceptible areas of the world where prosperity is fleeting and the opportunity to make a difference is enormous… before their situation also becomes one of complete desperation.

That last paragraph suggests the military's work in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere to preventively tamp down on the factors that give rise to militant threats. Let's be clear that that argument is nowhere an explicit driver for Give to the World's work on its site. But we have an interesting confluence of worlds here: private donations -- given strictly to ease the plight of the poor -- distributed by men in uniform, who happen to be located in the most dangerous and problematic areas of the world.

Welcome to foreign aid in the 21st century.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the midst of all the political positioning surrounding funding for the war, Republicans are having a tough time saying what needs to be said about Iraq: we hope the "surge" will work, but it probably will not. It seems that yesterday Senator Lugar found the words. Lugar says what most Iraq-watchers suspect: the surge has produced some positives, but these positives fall far short of what we need to make Iraq livable. We can only serve our "vital national interests" -- among them the interests of our military -- by placing "much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options."

Excerpts from Senator Lugar's speech yesterday:

Commentators frequently suggest that the United States has no good options in Iraq. That may be true from a certain perspective. But I believe that we do have viable options that could strengthen our position in the Middle East, and reduce the prospect of terrorism, regional war, and other calamities. But seizing these opportunities will require the President to downsize the U.S. military’s role in Iraq and place much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options. It will also require members of Congress to be receptive to overtures by the President to construct a new policy outside the binary choice of surge versus withdrawal. We don’t owe the President our unquestioning agreement, but we do owe him and the American people our constructive engagement...

---

I suspect that for some Americans, benchmarks are a means of justifying a withdrawal by demonstrating that Iraq is irredeemable. For others, benchmarks represent an attempt to validate our military presence by showing progress against a low fixed standard. But in neither case are benchmark tests addressing our broader national security interests.

Equally unproven is the theory voiced by some supporters of a withdrawal that removing American troops from Iraq would stimulate a grand compromise between Iraqi factions. Some Iraqi leaders may react this way. But most assume that we will soon begin to withdraw troops, and they are preparing to carry on or accelerate the fight in the absence of American forces. Iraqi militias have shown an ability to adapt to conditions on the ground, expanding or contracting their operations as security imperatives warrant.

American strategy must adjust to the reality that sectarian factionalism will not abate anytime soon and probably cannot be controlled from the top...

---

The U.S. military remains the strongest fighting force in the world, but we have to be mindful that it is not indestructible. Before the next conflict, we have much to do to repair this invaluable instrument. This repair cannot begin until we move to a more sustainable Iraq policy.

---

The President and some of his advisors may be tempted to pursue the surge strategy to the end of his administration, but such a course contains extreme risks for U.S. national security. It would require the President to fight a political rear-guard holding action for more than a year and a half against Congressional attempts to limit, modify, or end military operations in Iraq. The resulting contentiousness would make cooperation on national security issues nearly impossible. It would greatly increase the chances for a poorly planned withdrawal from Iraq or possibly the broader Middle East region that could damage U.S. interests for decades.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not to keep harping on it, but it doesn't seem that anyone running for office can resist the temptation to trumpet the promise of coal as crucial to the supply of future U.S. energy. The Washington Post chronicles Barack Obama's shifting positions on new-wave liquefied coal in a story today. At least the Post (and, perhaps to a lesser degree, Obama himself) is clear that there is a tradeoff involved between addressing climate change and the false ideal of energy independence.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't know about you, but when I think of Cape Verde (which is not very often) I picture a quiet African island. Reading The New York Times' profile of the country is eye-opening: it turns out to be a swirling way-point, a modern take on Ellis Island in the grand story of global migration. It is, to quote the story's author Jason DeParle, "a microcosm of the forces straining American politics and remaking societies across the globe."

Cape Verde depends on migration for its independence, its income, even its cultural identity, says DeParle. It's been that way for many years, but the dynamic is changing as receiving countries tighten their borders.

The tensions abound. Migration reduces poverty. But it increases inequality between migrants and others back home. Migration can express family devotion. It can also strain family bonds.

And while migration may be at record levels, so is the frustration of people who want to migrate but cannot. That is because as migration grows, the desire to experience its economic rewards grows even faster.

“Migration is probably more important to more people than it has ever been,” said Dr. Carling of the International Peace Research Institute, a nonprofit group in Oslo. “But what characterizes the world today is also the feeling of involuntary immobility.”

An interactive global map of the effects of migration on sending and receiving countries accompanies DeParle's article. The sheer numbers involved are remarkable. Witness the map's tab that displays visually money sent home as a share of GDP.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It used to be a purely theoretical question to sit back wonder what the average person in China (or Brazil or any number of other places) would think about something. More and more, publicly-available answers to that question are proliferating.

World Public Opinion is breaking new ground as it surveys a wide swath of the world's public on questions we have in common. It's remarkable to hear a collective public voice emerge on topics like globalization, China, the U.S., climate change and the UN.

There is a cottage industry within the IR field that explores the differences between leaders' official positions and opinions -- which traditionally form the basis of international politics -- and popular views, which often enter the equation only indirectly depending on a country's political process.

Global public opinion seems to be more novelty than political heavyweight at this point. But as it gathers steam, it may begin to loom larger as a political factor, just as the 24-hour news cycle has done with its CNN effect.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm what you might call a reformed practitioner of the doom and gloom message. In the heady days of the 1990s through the early years of the Bush presidency, I was down in the trenches of Washington's NGO warzone, lobbing rhetorical bombshells at innocent citizens and (less innocent) reporters with reckless abandon. Every development was surely the one that would spell the end of the Clean Air Act or the New Deal or the Great Society or whatever. Hyperbole ruled the day.

Since then I've seen the light. As my ability and the ability of my peers to energize the public and interest journalists waned, I learned the hard way that maybe it's time to start talking about solutions rather than problems and working together rather than working up a lather.

So I don't write to defend Al Gore from Emily Yoffe's mostly accurate if a little lazy op-ed this morning in the Post. It's easy to judge Gore's efforts on behalf of climate change awareness as employing doom and gloom, and even to call them scare tactics.

And environment issues certainly aren't immune from the ill-effects of such tactics. If the dire end I predicted every time I sent out a press release or an action alert in my former life came to pass, we'd be living on an airless, waterless, smoldering, radioactive nightmare-scape.

That said, environmentalism was at loose ends just a few years ago. As documented in the slightly-dated feeling (but charmingly so) Death of Environmentalism (caution: PDF), tree-hugging, sandal-wearing and eight years of benign neglect under the Clinton administration had brought environmentalism to an unhappy crossroads.

The Bush administration's energetic (pun intended) efforts to undermine past progress certainly helped revitalize the movement and return the issue to prominence, but that return coincides with the rhetorical grenade-throwing efforts of Mr. Gore, as well. Up to that point, environmentalists lamented the fact that well-funded efforts to blinker the overwhelming scientific consensus had begun to take root, planting doubt about climate change in the minds of millions of devotees of conservative talk radio, right-wing blogs and former Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe.

Gore's efforts, and some convenient but more tangential evidence thrown in by Mother Nature, seem to have helped move the needle in the mind of the public. Most polling bears this out, though polling is considerably less scientific than, say, tracking ocean temperatures and whatnot.

Yoffe can't resist taking a page from those anti-climate change talking points and throwing in an Inhofe-esque blurb about the unfinished science on climate change and the relationship between climate and hurricanes, allowing to thrive once again the smirky meme that this whole thing is hokum cooked up by Gore to sell books. (To read shockingly clear and wonderfully frank scientists discussing climate and hurricanes, visit RealClimate.org's page on that category.)

Gore can't take credit for the increased interest in climate change. Yoffe's assertions -- as unscientific as anything she accuses Gore of -- that children and her friends are scared of climate change and jarringly warm weather in the dead of winter and the big bad vice president and his slide show do make me wonder about what Gore wants out of his campaign. Yoffe doesn't bother with this. She doesn't even dabble in the question of whether Gore's scare tactics will lead to action -- or possibly is doing so right now. But I'll venture a guess. For sure, the initial blustering doom and gloom of "An Inconvenient Truth" was a response to years of shockingly bad public policy on the issue. It was also a polemic response to the fact that the debate had hit a brick wall in a blind alley: politicians interested in addressing climate change weren't in a position to do anything about it. Helplessness makes us lash out, and few people have earned a ration of feeling helpless like the man who won the popular vote in the 2000 election.

Perhaps, then, it is time for the message to be repositioned somewhat. We're all scared, for sure, but now there are policymakers willing to listen to our concerns (though I'd steer clear of NASA). Maybe all Yoffe wanted was to point out it's time to stop scaring the children and maybe time to start working on the solution. She never gets there, sadly. Instead, Yoffe -- while accusing Gore of using scare tactics and pointing out the irony of Gore decrying the politics of fear -- is content to settle for scare tactics herself.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's common practice for nonprofits to trumpet their low overhead ("95% of all donations go directly to needy children!") as a badge of honor. In principle, foundations understand that overhead is necessary -- ambitious goals need a long-term home. But in practice it seems that foundations are often reluctant to fund the "core costs" of a nonprofit, even when they are more than willing to fund particular projects.

On the SSIR blog, Paul Shoemaker, executive director of Social Venture Partners Seattle, thinks through the dangers of skimping on core costs:

Funding is a significant influence on the behavior and priorities of nonprofits. By putting such a priority on overhead as a criterion for success, we are telling grantees to focus on the means, not the ends. If we told them that social outcomes were the priority, they would focus more on that.

There has to be accountability, but to what? By using overhead expense to measure effectiveness, we are not connecting funding to social goals or impact! Program spending is trackable (in theory), but it tells us little about impact.

A thoughtful comment from Kate Cochran follows Shoemaker's blog post:

In the very real and valid pursuit of giving money where it will do the most good, funders are afraid of general support. Whether they mean to or not, this implies a distrust in the management of the organization. I think it’s more expensive--from an impact perspective—to run an organization on a shoestring and to not be able to invest in productivity-enhancing technology and talent. Ironically, this often translates into the organization’s inability to really track their impact as well--which are the outcome measures donors should be looking at. It’s natural to gravitate toward the most track-able data, like overhead expense, but what does it matter if an organization can run things very lean but not make a dent in the problem they’re addressing?

There are differences, but I found myself wondering what investor would want to invest in a business that prides itself on trying to sell the most services or products without worrying about R&D or talent? I admire foundations and nonprofits that try to work themselves out of business. (The Gates Foundation plans to spend its entire endowment down within 50 years of the death of its founders.) But as long as you're in business, it makes more sense to run a robust, fully-fledged organization rather than an anemic one.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

But you should allow it to almost lapse, because TNR will send you a notice that reads the following:

Unless I hear from you immediately, the game is over. The train leaves the station. Without you...

Without the lucid, critical insights of The New Republic, there's nothing between you and the dullness of common minds, conventional journalism, and the triumph of hype, spin, and sound bites.

I'm on my way to the mailbox... (but if I wait a little longer, will TNR send me an even more memorable letter?)

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a registered Independent, I have ample cause to loathe the constant partisan bickering that pervades discussion of so many issues in Congress that, substance-wise, have nothing to do with ideological differences. As a result, I am more than sympathetic to the cause of bipartisanship, the central tenet of the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA).

But it turns out that even ideas getting wide bipartisan support can be bad ideas. Case in point: energy independence.

I give PSA full credit for organizing today's Hill briefing on "A New Energy 'Manhattan Project.'" An organization dedicated to breakthrough bipartisan initiatives would be foolish to ignore the opportunity that energy policy presents. And the event was full of good ideas about how to structure incentives to help the energy market innovate.

But right from the get-go, as the impressive roster of speakers (including former Reagan Administration National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, former Senator Gary Hart and Represenatives Steve Israel and Roscoe Bartlett) decried the lack of political leadership on energy ("half-steps, missteps and backsteps," Rep. Israel was fond of saying) for the last 30 years, they presented the solution as energy independence. Mr. McFarlane used the phrase, "Here is what we need to do so that we won't need a drop of foreign oil in 20 years," several times.

This idea is a fiction, a throw-away line that amounts to political candy. This quickly becomes apparent upon entering actual discussion on the topic. Sure enough, the first questioner asked how we should deal with the countries that now supply the U.S. -- which uses one quarter of the world's energy -- once we have become "independent."

And sure enough, Mr. McFarlane and Senator Hart hastened to clarify that of course the U.S. cannot make itself totally independent from the global energy market. Rather, we need to be sufficiently independent of unstable supplies in the Middle East and elsewhere so that the U.S. maintains its economy in the event of a massive disruption of supply. As Senator Hart pointed out, we make that disruption far more likely by "financing our own destruction" -- he quoted intelligence estimates that 1% of the $300 billion the U.S. spends a year on oil from the Middle East ends up in hostile hands.

Indeed, added the speakers, our allies around the world hold many of the solutions. Rep. Bartlett noted that corn prices (and consequently, everything from eggs to beef) are rising, hurting rich and poor alike because the U.S. insists on home-grown, corn-based ethanol rather than importing Brazil's far more efficient sugar cane ethanol. Huge sugar processing plants in Africa could be selling us cheap ethanol too. And oil from around the world does not go away, even if the U.S. could provide enough energy to meet its needs. Oil will always be an option for companies and consumers so long as it is priced attractively (and it will be when significant alternatives force it to compete), no matter where it comes from. (See Citizens for Global Solutions' excellent primer on the subject, Energy 101.)

Important points, all. But it doesn't sound much like energy independence to me. My question to today's speakers: why dangle the meaningless promise of energy independence, only to retract it when pressed on the realities of energy policy? Rep. Israel said that the only bipartisan aspect to energy policy over the past 30 years is that everyone, from both parties, has screwed it up. Could it be that despite bipartisan consensus on energy independence, our failure of political leadership persists?

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jono Smith blogging at Katya Andresen's Non Profit Marketing blog offers an interesting example of "building trust with their audience through transparency." He writes:

Save the Children UK does a fantastic job of building trust with prospective donors right on their fundraising page by being crystal clear about exactly where donations go, and how they impact the beneficiaries on an individual level.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amongst all the discussion swirling about what sort of policy instrument presidential candidates will favor to curb climate change, the consensus seems to be that in the two-way contest between cap-and-trade and a carbon tax, the tax would actually be the most effective instrument while cap-and-trade is the most politically feasible.

What candidate is going to shoot themselves in the foot by charging into the presidential race trumpeting a new tax, even if it is the most effective policy tool on climate change? Meanwhile, cap-and-trade systems have all kinds of problems, as Europe has demonstrated. Former Secretary of Labor and current University of California at Berkeley professor Robert Reich is pushing a third option: a carbon auction. This sounds like cap-and-trade at first, but it involves an element that is oh-so much more politically attractive -- dividend checks.

Companies would have to bid for the right to pollute. And, most ingeniously, the money raised in the auction would be shared equally by all citizens in the form of yearly dividend checks – just like the residents of Alaska now get yearly dividends for their share of the state’s oil revenues.

I'm surprised we haven't heard more about this option. With the exception of Reich, I can't find any commentary on it. Look for it in the months to come.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Nightmare scenarios unfolding in Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea fuel obvious concerns when an African country discovers oil just off its shores. News that Ghana had found significant (for Ghana) oil stores yesterday prompted an interesting rundown of potential outcomes from Ethan Zuckerman. He has reason to believe Ghana can confound the 'resource curse' that has plagued other African countries:

There’s reasons to think the Ghanaian government will be able to avoid some of the traps other nations have fallen into. Ghana is in excellent economic shape in comparison to its neighbors. It’s one of the very few nations in West Africa on pace to meet its millenium development goals and to halve poverty by 2015 - the percentage of Ghanaians living in poverty has dropped from 52% in 1992 to 35% by 2003. Economic growth has averaged 4.5% a year since 1983, and has been at or above 6% the last three years. This growth has had some connection to natural resources and commidities, including gold and cocoa, but has also included growth in tourism and service outsourcing. A stable, investment-friendly government has encouraged many diaspora Ghanaians to return home and start businesses. Friends from around the continent report a sense of excitement in visiting Accra and Kumasi, and a sense that the country is going through an economic revolution.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last month I profiled Global Giving's effort to transform donors into storytellers by enlisting supporters to make films that connect donors to those served by the grassroots development projects that they fund.

Global Giving gathered raw footage (photos and video) from more than twenty high-impact projects around the world. As of today -- and until June 29 -- you can view films created by fourteen finalists and vote for the one that does the best job of telling the project’s story, ideally helping to connect it with further support.

I haven't had a chance to watch them all, but I love the context and personality in the video about Reforestation and Clean Water in Haiti.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been chewing on the off-hand question of whether Bono has too much power since posting yesterday. Then today, I came across a little more discussion about Bono's address to the TED conference in Arusha and then via PSD Blog I read Andrew Rugasira's Financial Times op-ed headlined "Please Bono, Stop Heckling and Just Listen."

Rugasira attacks Bono for what he calls the Irish rock star's "expletive laden" interruptions of foreign aid critic Andrew Mwenda before launching into a fairly standard-issue critique of foreign aid. Mwenda and Rugasira both believe that aid causes more problems than it solves. Rugasira writes:

Giving aid to poor countries and working exclusively through their government agencies makes accountability worse rather than better. It makes the governments more accountable to foreign donors than to their own people. Also, the notion that the donor-recipient relationship is a collaborative partnership is false. It is false because power and resources determine negotiating edge, especially when one party is giving the money and the other receiving.

I don't believe that. But I come away from this piece with two conclusions. First, I don't believe that the effects of aid are as poisonous as Rugasira asserts. I do think that aid has done a lot of harm in its time, but I believe that has been and will still be a lot of good done with aid dollars. I don't find Rugsira's suggestion to open markets incompatible with the demands of aid-celebrities like Bono for more and deeper commitments of foreign assistance. Indeed, the ideal is still possible: aid can help a country turn its attention to building its own capabilities while donor dollars stand in the gap on health and infrastructure matters, for instance.

Second, I have more concerns about the fact that I'm discussing an open dialogue between a rock star and the CEO of an African coffee company than about the content, in some ways. Where are the real leaders on this? Why aren't African leaders better spokespeople than their businessmen or our pop icons? Why aren't passionate US politicians seeing the power of any kind of pro-African message (trade or aid)?

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Opining yesterday about the "aid v. tech/entrepreneurship" friction that emerged from TED and other discussions about what will really do the most to end poverty, I noted that a lot has to do with what we expect of the poor themselves.

The GII has long urged advocates and reporters to tell more stories about low-income people living productive lives (not just destitute ones). Jason Pontin, reporting on TED for the New York Times, said he couldn't help but notice how poor the area around his lodging was, an observation that I'm sure influenced his view of the conference. On the other hand, the Washington Post ran a piece today that was shocking in its ordinariness -- a story about fierce competition among home-buyers in suburban Nairobi that sounded a lot like my neighborhood in Washington, DC.

To be sure, Kenya is not the Congo -- we can't expect this sort of story from everywhere. But that's okay. It certainly helps Americans differentiate in the midst the overwhelming challenge in our minds to help "the poor" by calling attention to lives a lot like our own.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Walter Pincus reports in today's Washington Post that Congress is "demanding the development of a comprehensive post-Sept. 11, 2001, nuclear strategy before it approves funding a new generation of warheads." Pincus quotes a report that the House Appropriations Committee released last week on the subject: "Currently there exists no convincing rationale for maintaining the large number of existing Cold War nuclear weapons, much less producing additional warheads."

There are plenty of opportunities to take Congress to task for inaction, but in this instance Congress seems to be providing a long-needed check against spending that neither makes the U.S. safer (since current nuclear programs are based on outdated threats) nor helps our diplomatic efforts. The Appropriations Committee report goes on:

These multi-billion dollar initiatives are being proposed in a policy vacuum without any administration statement on the national security environment that the future nuclear deterrent is designed to address. It is premature to proceed with further development of the RRW [reliable replacement warhead] or a significant nuclear complex modernization plan.

Pincus' sources predict that (unfortunately) a U.S. nuclear strategy will have to wait for a new administration, since this one is preoccupied elsewhere. While progress now would be the best option, at least it looks like Congress is working to stop funding for steps in the wrong direction while we wait. Reports Pincus, "The Senate subcommittee is expected to provide limited funds for the program so we have a couple of years to gather information while the next administration lays out future requirements."

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although in the spirit of levity, Foreign Policy's Passport Blog wonders if Bono has become too powerful after polls (taken since Canadian PM Stephen Harper spurned the rock star's overtures during the recent G8 summit) show the Canadian public believes the U2's frontman assertion that Canada is blocking progress on helping Africa. 48% think Bono is right and Canada is standing in the way; 28% think Harper is right that Canada is doing all it can. 60% agree with Bono that Harper is out of sync with the country.

This is interesting, not because Irish rock stars (or economist rock stars like Jeffrey Sachs) are taking over the discussion on global development. Rather, this is a good demonstration of how far down along the rock star-global development axis has traveled. Harper is, as FP asserts, paying the price for ignoring this spokesperson for a major cause for which a lot of younger people around the developed world care deeply. Harper misread the cues and thought a meeting with Bono was a publicity stunt. It could be a grave error.

The mainstream political folks who qualify for the role of spokesperson to the west for Africa have all passed on the job. Neither a Democratic or Republican lawmaker was available to take on this challenge in the last decade, and instead we have Sachs, Bono, Angelina Jolie and in a different way Bill Gates as the celebrity/big money spokespeople for these causes. They have crashed the party in a way, frustrating the old rules of diplomacy and exploiting their own celebrity for good. But I can't cast blame, because it's certainly not as if any prominent world or U.S. leaders were doing such a bang-up job on this issue themselves.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I don't link to the White Courtesy Telephone blog often enough. Last week Albert
Ruesga wrote a solid post of knowledge everyone should have: Five Tips for Building Stronger Relationships With Foundations. My favorite is number three:

3. Focus on the so what. If you’re given a site visit, try to schedule it at a time when your program officer will see children being cared for, people being fed, families being housed. When you make your pitch, focus less on the what than on the so what. Are you the first, the largest, the best, the only …? What’s important about your work beyond what your program officer can see?

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how TED (the high-powered conference on technology, entertainment and design) had picked up from its native Silicon Valley and moved for a couple of weeks to rural Tanzania. Yesterday, New York Times reporter Jason Pontin reflected on the organizer's proclaimed goal, that "TED Global 2007 would present an Africa that was newly entrepreneurial, increasingly wealthy and tech savvy, and largely politically stable."

But beyond this Panglossian message, however much a corrective to the common images of African misery and however flattering to the pride of TED’s African attendees, was something that everyone at the conference knew (and which I saw every morning on my runs). Whether measured by per capita income or by the gross domestic product of its nations, Africa is the poorest place on earth. The question that the conference was really exploring was this: How can we make every African family richer?

It seems to me that this is Pontin's most important observation: not a question of "What Does Africa Need Most: Technology or Aid?" as the title of his article suggests, but rather what do we expect of each? When advocates speak of the need for aid, are they clear about what they expect to accomplish with it? I suspect a lot of confusion persists among supporters of aid, which leads to confusion and disappointment when aid does not deliver the poor from long-term poverty. As Andrew Mwenda -- an Ugandan journalist and social worker -- asked at the conference, “What man has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?”

Pontin circles around this point:

In truth, Africa will need both investment in entrepreneurialism and aid, intelligently directed toward education, health and food.

Herman Chinery-Hesse, the founder of Softtribe, a software development company in Ghana, expressed this thought more personally than I could. “I think this choice between aid and entrepreneurship is false,” he told TED’s attendees. “If we wait for trade, it will take generations, and people need help now. On the other hand, only entrepreneurship can make us rich.”

Africa has tremendous potential (evidenced by the article's story of Alieu Conteh, the chairman of Vodacom Congo) for creating wealth for the future, but it remains in many ways a troubled place, deserving of charity. Those stories must be told, and those needs must be met. But they will not do for Africa in the long run what it can do for itself, slowly, one visionary at a time. That story needs to be told too.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

To my mind, it's hard to imagine a more compelling expression of the raison d'etre that animates the Global Interdependence Initiative than these sentences from the essay Tony Blair wrote for The Economist, titled "What I've Learned."

In this age, foreign policy is not an interesting distraction from the hard slog of domestic reform. It is the element that describes a nation's face to the world at large, forms the perceptions of others to it and, in part, its perception of itself.

We all talk of interdependence being the defining characteristic of the modern world. But often we fail to see the fundamental implications of such a statement. It means we have a clear self-interest as a nation in what happens the world over. And because mass media and communication convey powerful images in an instant across the globe, it dictates that struggles are fought as much through propaganda, ideas and values as through conventional means, military or diplomatic.

If you've ever caught a snippet of Tony Blair in the throes of interpellation -- the hair-raising, bench-pounding question time to which the British parliament subjects its prime ministers -- it's obvious that he is masterfully articulate. But I was surprised where his strong beliefs about interdependence lead him -- in some cases to positions that look very different than either side of the political debate in London (or Washington). Blair's long experience and independent mind make for a thought-provoking tour of the global issues landscape.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Gerson is a thoughtful, eloquent and deeply religious man. Over several years as a speechwriter for President Bush, he helped the President voice convictions that Mr. Bush manifestly cannot articulate on his own. Mr. Gerson's own words, given print today by the Washington Post, express the same deep commitment to human rights, democracy and the rule of law that he helped Mr. Bush express so stirringly in his second inaugural address. In today's op-ed in the Post, Mr. Gerson condemns Robert Mugabe's looting of once-prosperous Zimbabwe and his descent from authentic liberation leader to repressive and monomaniacal dictator. Then Mr. Gerson goes on to decry the failure of African regional bodies, and especially the government of South Africa, to pressure Mugabe to leave office peacefully.

After the recent round of beatings and arrests, a summit of the Southern African Development Community -- a 14-country regional organization -- appointed South African President Thabo Mbeki to mediate the political conflict in Zimbabwe. Yet the summit's participants refused to clearly criticize the regime's human rights violations. "We got full backing," boasted Mugabe. "Not even one criticized our actions." South African diplomats tell American officials that there is no serious alternative to the regime -- that the opposition is weak and divided.

Mr. Gerson has little patience for these excuses. And no true believer in the principle of universal human worth and dignity should. He goes on:

The precondition for mediation is an end to beatings and torture on Mugabe's part -- and the South Africans should insist on it. They should also start considering more muscular options if Mugabe continues on his current path.

Perhaps other readers had the same reaction I did: Mr. Gerson once used his eloquence and influence to help the President articulate an admirable commitment to universal democratic values. Mr. Bush brooked no exceptions, not even among traditional allies in the Middle East. Only two years later, of course, that commitment has fallen foul of, well, the reality of declining U.S. influence in the region. Where is Mr. Gerson's call for stronger US responses to the oppression of key opposition figures in Egypt? Mr. Gerson will know well this challenge attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

But as a Unitarian Universalist and an Aspen Institute mullah of moderation, let me respond for Mr. Gerson in the words of Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Perhaps we should praise Mr. Gerson's broad-mindedness. Okay, maybe not.

But let us accept that inconsistency is inevitable, at least for those still in power. Some years ago our project was actively working to identify core values that Americans expect this country to express in our foreign policy. I proposed "consistency." A colleague whose career included many years in senior diplomatic posts smiled ruefully: "that is the one thing we can never promise."

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Martin Indyk's "A 'Two-State Solution,' Palestinian-Style" in this morning's Washington Post will be interesting to close watchers of the Palestinian conflict. Indyk argues that Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas essentially was shooting the moon and gambling away Gaza to retain control over West Bank and force a sharp contrast between the intractable leadership of Hamas and his own slightly more functional -- and able to negotiate with Israel -- Palestinian Authority leadership.

That's all well and good, and we shall see how it turns out. Indyk has some compelling predictions. But I was struck by a photo rotating on and off the front page of Washingtonpost.com which I've included above. This is presumably a Hamas fighter who is part of a group raiding the Palestinian Legislative Council building in Nablus. Maybe they are celebrating their victory, or maybe they hate printers, but what's happening here is pretty disturbing. For years indirectly and for a brief period directly to the Palestinian Authority, U.S. taxpayers have been devoting millions of dollars to the cause of Palestinian self-determination. Much of this ran to "water pipelines, sewage treatment plants, public libraries and roads," and I imagine some of it was the infrastructure of government: computers, phones, and printers, like this one, flying out of a window.

We have worked with partners to establish thoughtful ways to respond to accusations that aid dollars are wasted. Indyk does note that whether or not Abbas was ceding Gaza to Hamas, the decline of that tiny strip into a terrorist state disconnected by necessity from the peace process is a blow to the US government and the State Department's efforts for peace in the occupied territories. It feels to me we'll also have to deal with the sting of this failure: we've seen money go out the window, we've staked our reputation on an democratic election which triggered a civil war, and we can't even calculate the impact between this disaster and others in the region.

Unfortunately, we're chastened by these failures and the diplomatic credentials of this administration may be damaged beyond repair. Palestine may need to wait 19 months until the next administration gets a chance to take on this challenge.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm going to be spending some time with the new Vanity Fair issue on Africa as stories come online.

The first story I turned my attention to Alex Shoumatoff's piece entitled"The Lazarus Effect." Visually, the piece hits you with a stark contrast. One photo features a person with AIDS peering into the camera, sunken-cheeked and half-dead. Then the same person is pictured, vibrant and full of life after receiving anti-retroviral drug treatment for only 40 days. This frames the piece in a powerful way.

Shoumatoff then weaves the remarkable turnaround possible for AIDS victims using ARVs into a story about the efforts of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the interaction between Bono's Product (Red) campaign and the fund:

This medicinal miracle wouldn't be possible without the efforts of foundations such as the Global Fund, which began distributing free ARVs in Rwanda in 2004. The Global Fund gets most of its financing from world governments, but a growing proportion ($25 million by the end of 2006) comes from an altogether unlikely set of benefactors: Western retailers and the shoppers who can't resist them.

I admit to having been skeptical at first about the concept behind (Red). Buy a $170 pair of sunglasses and save the world? Give me a break. Not until I met Bono, the U2 singer, activist, and guest editor of this issue, did I understand what a fiendishly ingenious concept it is. "To change the world we need consumer power; idealists and activists alone will not get the job done," Bono told me. "(Red) is a gateway drug into a bigger movement."

Shoumatoff doesn't carry the discussion anywhere specific. He profiles Rwanda's success stories featuring ARVs and in my opinion maybe plays up the power of Product (Red) a little more than necessary. But his conclusion rings true:

Naturally, the campaign still has its share of skeptics. I spoke to one woman from Montreal who works at Mother Teresa's orphanage in Kigali and is trying to set up housing for child-headed families orphaned by aids. "Isn't it pathetic," she reflected, "that to get money out of the rich you have to get them to buy something?" But then there's the view expressed by a Rwandan-exile friend of mine, who recently moved back to Kigali: "Whatever works."

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Researchers at the University of Tokyo developed a strain of rice that vaccinates against cholera, reports the MIT Technology Review. Global health advocacy talking point number one this is not, but it's a great little tidbit to bring home how reasonable large vaccination programs that would save thousands -- maybe millions -- of lives are becoming, even in the absence of accessible health clinics.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today's Progress Report from the Center for American Progress notes an important addition to the Live Earth concert lineup:

Live Earth Antarctica has been announced, living up to the extravaganza's promise to hold concerts on all seven continents. The indie rock band Nunatak -- which is "made up of five scientists aged 22 to 28 who are stationed on the generally unpopulated continent" -- will be the sole performer. Nunatak will be playing to the smallest Live Earth audience -- just 17 people -- but will be broadcast to approximately 2 billion people.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new initiative was launched this week spanning the computer industry (and some friends of the industry) and seeking common-sense reductions in energy consumption through technology with an eye on reducing emissions. The Climate Saves Computing Initiative "brings together industry, consumers and conservation organizations to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers."

I've thought about this a lot, mostly because I think about the different successful and unsuccessful ways people try to frame small-scale behavior changes as a way to confront global warming. I usually think about this as I ride my bike along side dozens of cars with no passengers, or when I walk through the office and computers run silently all around me even though their owners are away. The framing challenge is dangerous because it's one of the easiest ways to dismiss environmentalism, and to push it back to the disposable niche (pdf) it once filled.

How? I think it was a framing victory and a little Jiu-Jitsu by opponents of climate change action. Make no mistake, environmentalism was primed for a revision, and it's good that it happened. But what exactly transpired was an important maneuver: environmental action opponents, including the Bush administration and other opponents in congress, had created a situation where any real change was impossible. Consideration of such action was laughable. Serious environmentalism had come to a dead end and while re-thinking was taking place, what was left were the vague, mushy, and at times possibly ineffectual notions that make environmentalism easy to brush off.

I recently got around to reading Elizabeth Kolbert's profile of Amory Lovins and it had me thinking again about small-scale behavior changes as a way to confront global warming. Lovins argues that policy change isn't where the shift can happen, but rather in small changes taken to a grand level. His vision is to tote up all the waste from all the incandescent light bulbs, energy-spilling building wires, humming fans and heat sinks on every computer and server, and cut it out in a massive spasm of efficiency.

Which brings me back to the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Started by Google and Intel, and with the backing of tons and tons big computer manufacturers, this thing could push everyone to add some efficiencies into their machines in the future. But it also makes promises to the common man:

There are many ways for you to participate in the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. If you’re planning on buying new computing equipment any time soon, make sure it meets the Initiative’s specifications.

You can look for the Energy Star logo to identify energy-efficient equipment, as PCs need to meet the Energy Star standard during the Initiative’s first year. In the future, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative will provide a way to identify energy-efficient computers from participating companies.

If a new PC purchase isn’t in the cards right away, you can still participate in the Initiative by tuning your power management settings to take advantage of existing features on your current PC. Power management improvements actually represent the single most impactful change to PC usage in ensuring efficiency.

Check back soon for a listing of free w