Posts tagged foreignpolicy

From Sunday’s NYT. They’ve been doing this for years. Take a moment to reflect.  A Year in Iraq and Afghanistan By IAN LIVINGSTON, ALICIA CHENG and SARAH GEPHART IN 2010, the United States and its allies continued to shift the military focus from Iraq and to Afghanistan. American troop levels in Iraq fell by half, from more than 100,000 troops in January to under 50,000. In Afghanistan, a surge of mainly United States troops brought numbers to roughly 140,000, from near 100,000 at the beginning of the year. As shown in the chart (based on data from the Pentagon, icasualties.organd American allies), in 2010 there were 696 fatalities in Afghanistan and 56 in Iraq. The death total in Iraq was the lowest of any year in the war by a significant margin, down by 85 from 2009. Nearly two-thirds of the deaths there were not related to combat, and most of the hostile deaths occurred in isolated incidents. Though overall violence levels in Iraq have not improved markedly over the last year, they at least seem fairly stable as Iraqi security forces take on more of the burden. The fighting in parts of Afghanistan was intense, and 198 more allied troops died there than in 2009. Many of the fatalities occurred in Helmand Province, where some 15,000 American and NATO troops began a major offensive in February; homemade bombs and small-arms fire caused the vast majority of the casualties. While 2010 finished as the deadliest year of the war effort thus far, there is no question that Afghan and Western troops have made great strides in stabilizing the insecure provinces in the south and east of the country. Ian Livingston is a senior research assistant at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Alicia Cheng and Sarah Gephart are partners at mgmt. design in Brooklyn.

From Sunday’s NYT. They’ve been doing this for years. Take a moment to reflect. 

A Year in Iraq and Afghanistan

By IAN LIVINGSTON, ALICIA CHENG and SARAH GEPHART

IN 2010, the United States and its allies continued to shift the military focus from Iraq and to Afghanistan. American troop levels in Iraq fell by half, from more than 100,000 troops in January to under 50,000. In Afghanistan, a surge of mainly United States troops brought numbers to roughly 140,000, from near 100,000 at the beginning of the year. As shown in the chart (based on data from the Pentagon, icasualties.organd American allies), in 2010 there were 696 fatalities in Afghanistan and 56 in Iraq.

The death total in Iraq was the lowest of any year in the war by a significant margin, down by 85 from 2009. Nearly two-thirds of the deaths there were not related to combat, and most of the hostile deaths occurred in isolated incidents. Though overall violence levels in Iraq have not improved markedly over the last year, they at least seem fairly stable as Iraqi security forces take on more of the burden.

The fighting in parts of Afghanistan was intense, and 198 more allied troops died there than in 2009. Many of the fatalities occurred in Helmand Province, where some 15,000 American and NATO troops began a major offensive in February; homemade bombs and small-arms fire caused the vast majority of the casualties. While 2010 finished as the deadliest year of the war effort thus far, there is no question that Afghan and Western troops have made great strides in stabilizing the insecure provinces in the south and east of the country.

Ian Livingston is a senior research assistant at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Alicia Cheng and Sarah Gephart are partners at mgmt. design in Brooklyn.

nyti.ms

The Consumption Gap

They thought Asia would save the world economy. They were wrong.

Stephen Roach offers his thoughts in a piece for Foreign Policy. Hmm.

Global rebalancing has not gone according to script. It was 10 years ago this summer when, as chief economist for the investment bank Morgan Stanley, I first argued that an unbalanced world was in need of major realignment. Back then, America was the New Economy that others could only dream of. Japan was about to enter its second lost decade. Developing Asia was reeling after a devastating crisis. And the lingering symptoms of Euro-sclerosis were painfully evident.

Sure, the United States had hit a bump in the road. The dot-com bubble had burst and the U.S. economy had entered a mild post-bubble recession. But that was widely shrugged off as a minor detail. There was a strong sense that the world was aspiring to be more like the United States — harnessing new information technologies, boosting productivity, and taking bold business risks. Moreover, most thought other countries would swing America’s way — ushering in the powerful convergence of a new globalization.
NYTMag Preview. It drops sunday, read it here now. DIGITAL DIPLOMACY Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, two young members of the State Department, are hoping to nudge diplomacy into the 21st century, one Twitter post at a time. On Twitter, Cohen, who is 28, and Ross, who is 38, are among the most followed of anyone working for the U.S. government, coming in third and fourth after Barack Obama and John McCain. This didn’t happen by chance. Their Twitter posts have become an integral part of a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age, by using widely available technologies to reach out to citizens, companies and other nonstate actors. Ross and Cohen’s style of engagement — perhaps best described as a cross between social-networking culture and foreign-policy arcana — reflects the hybrid nature of this approach. Two of Cohen’s recent posts were, in order: “Guinea holds first free election since 1958” and “Yes, the season premier [sic] of Entourage is tonight, soooo excited!” This offhand mix of pop and politics has on occasion raised eyebrows and a few hackles (writing about a frappucino during a rare diplomatic mission to Syria; a trip with Ashton Kutcher to Russia in February), yet, together, Ross and Cohen have formed an unlikely and unprecedented team in the State Department. They are the public face of a cause with an important-sounding name: 21st-century statecraft. To hear Ross and Cohen tell it, even last year, in this age of rampant peer-to-peer connectivity, the State Department was still boxed into the world of communiqués, diplomatic cables and slow government-to-government negotiations, what Ross likes to call “white guys with white shirts and red ties talking to other white guys with white shirts and red ties, with flags in the background, determining the relationships.” And then Hillary Clinton arrived. “The secretary is the one who unleashed us,” Ross says. “She’s the godmother of 21st-century statecraft.” Traditional forms of diplomacy still dominate, but 21st-century statecraft is not mere corporate rebranding — swapping tweets for broadcasts. It represents a shift in form and in strategy — a way to amplify traditional diplomatic efforts, develop tech-based policy solutions and encourage cyberactivism. Diplomacy may now include such open-ended efforts as the short-message-service (S.M.S.) social-networking program the State Department set up in Pakistan last fall. “A lot of the 21st-century dynamics are less about, Do you comport politically along traditional liberal-conservative ideological lines?” Ross says. “Today it is — at least in the spaces we engage in — Is it open or is it closed?”

NYTMag Preview. It drops sunday, read it here now.

DIGITAL DIPLOMACY

Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, two young members of the State Department, are hoping to nudge diplomacy into the 21st century, one Twitter post at a time.

On Twitter, Cohen, who is 28, and Ross, who is 38, are among the most followed of anyone working for the U.S. government, coming in third and fourth after Barack Obama and John McCain. This didn’t happen by chance. Their Twitter posts have become an integral part of a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age, by using widely available technologies to reach out to citizens, companies and other nonstate actors. Ross and Cohen’s style of engagement — perhaps best described as a cross between social-networking culture and foreign-policy arcana — reflects the hybrid nature of this approach. Two of Cohen’s recent posts were, in order: “Guinea holds first free election since 1958” and “Yes, the season premier [sic] of Entourage is tonight, soooo excited!” This offhand mix of pop and politics has on occasion raised eyebrows and a few hackles (writing about a frappucino during a rare diplomatic mission to Syria; a trip with Ashton Kutcher to Russia in February), yet, together, Ross and Cohen have formed an unlikely and unprecedented team in the State Department. They are the public face of a cause with an important-sounding name: 21st-century statecraft.

To hear Ross and Cohen tell it, even last year, in this age of rampant peer-to-peer connectivity, the State Department was still boxed into the world of communiqués, diplomatic cables and slow government-to-government negotiations, what Ross likes to call “white guys with white shirts and red ties talking to other white guys with white shirts and red ties, with flags in the background, determining the relationships.” And then Hillary Clinton arrived. “The secretary is the one who unleashed us,” Ross says. “She’s the godmother of 21st-century statecraft.”

Traditional forms of diplomacy still dominate, but 21st-century statecraft is not mere corporate rebranding — swapping tweets for broadcasts. It represents a shift in form and in strategy — a way to amplify traditional diplomatic efforts, develop tech-based policy solutions and encourage cyberactivism. Diplomacy may now include such open-ended efforts as the short-message-service (S.M.S.) social-networking program the State Department set up in Pakistan last fall. “A lot of the 21st-century dynamics are less about, Do you comport politically along traditional liberal-conservative ideological lines?” Ross says. “Today it is — at least in the spaces we engage in — Is it open or is it closed?”

Postcards from Hell. Images from the world’s most failed states. Heart-wrenching.

Postcards from Hell.

Images from the world’s most failed states.

Heart-wrenching.