Category: Bombs and rockets

Military matters and state security: the hard-edged kind of international relations

Threats from war and climate change

Bridge undercarriage, Ottawa

Some threats to society strike people as so severe they justify employing large numbers of people, at taxpayer expense, to mitigate them. Chief among these is probably the danger that foreigners will try to kill us. Largely to combat this, Canadians pay for 65,251 active military personnel and 24,300 reservists. We also contribute a bit more than 1% of our gross domestic product.

At best, the operation of these institutions will leave us as well off as we are now. The money spent on bombs and military vehicles is primarily expended so as to minimize the risks associated with being attacked (though domestic industry and humanitarian concern are also factors).

Now consider climate change: probably the greatest threat facing humanity in the foreseeable future. I can’t tell you exactly how many taxpayer-funded agents are working on the problem, but it is certainly a very small fraction of the armed forces total. Should that number not be increased, so as to bring the allocation of resources more closely in line with the suite of threats we face? The case becomes even stronger when you recognize that climate change workers (say, people performing free building retrofits) have all the advantages of soldiers, plus additional benefits. Climate change mitigation is a humanitarian activity – the faster we bring emissions down to a sustainable level, the less suffering will occur in future generations worldwide due to the effects of climate change. Climate change mitigation and adaptation can have domestic economic benefits: not only do efficient buildings have lower year-on-year costs for heating, cooling, and lighting but they may also make those who live and work in them happier and more productive.

The idea of employing, say, 10% as many people to fight climate change as to fight foreigners is not entirely unproblematic. Providing free retrofits might undercut the businesses that perform such operations for profit now. That being said, I am sure careful policy design could minimize such problems. The biggest hurdle to overcome is the psychological block between facing the threat of climate change and employing people to combat it. Actually, rather than a block it might be more accurately referred to as the absence of a connection, between where our likely societal problems lie and where our societal resources are being directed.

Admittedly, you could achieve many of the same outcomes through market liberal climate strategies, such as carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes. The potential advantage of doing it through government labour is that the market liberal policies are hard to implement: firms often oppose them tooth-and-nail and convince voters that they will cause economic harm to them personally. Given the strength of entrenched interests, it would take remarkable political will to deploy the kind of market mechanism that would produce the required change at an acceptable pace.

Some outstanding questions jump to mind. Would a public climate change service be sensible or useful? What would such a service do? How could unfair competition with the private sector be addressed? Is there a politically feasible way to achieve the same outcomes with fewer problems or lower costs? All of these seem worth debating.

Note also that if you extend the 10% logic to the United States and China, you are talking about huge numbers of mitigation workers. The American armed forces comprise about 1.5 million people, with that many again in reserves. The US spends more than 4% of GDP on them. China has 2.25 million active personnel and 800,000 reservists. They spend about 1.7% of their GDP on them.

Rebuild the Orbiting Carbon Observatory

Morty and a blue wine glass

A week ago, NASA’s carbon dioxide (CO2) tracking satellite was destroyed en route to space by a faulty booster. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was intended to produce large numbers of measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide in different parts of the atmosphere. In so doing, it would have helped to identify major CO2 sources and sinks – deepening our understanding of the carbon cycle under human influence. Given the destruction of the original instrument, I think the only sensible course of action is to rebuild it as quickly as can be managed and place it into orbit.

The original mission cost about US$280 million and took about nine years to reach a launch attempt. That being said, it stands to reason that building a second unit would cost less, given that the design and concept testing has already been done. We might also hope that a second unit could be assembled, tested, and launched more quickly. Even if a replacement would cost as much as the original, it would be less than $1 per American, far less per human being, and some tiny fraction of the cost of wars and bank bailouts.

As IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri has said: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Satellite images of the ozone hole helped to propel international action to restrict the emission of CFCs. There is reason to hope that similar data on greenhouse gasses might generate an equivalent political push. Even if it doesn’t, and the data from the OCO remains under the exclusive scrutiny of geeks, it should give us a deeper understanding of how the basic chemical, physical, and biological systems of the planet function – and how human beings are researching them. That is information worth $280 million.

One could do as some have and point to the US$$400 million that NASA was granted in the American stimulus package, specifically for climate change research. One could also point to the fundamental wastefulness and irrelevance of manned spaceflight, given our current problems. Either way, the United States should scrape together the cash for a new satellite, and put it on a more reliable rocket this time.

Dealing with space junk

O-Train end station, Ottawa

Junk in space is an increasingly severe problem, as both the quantity of useless debris and the number of useful satellites increases. Aside from international censure, there isn’t especially much that can be done at present to punish those who make the problem worse, as China did when they blew up one of their satellites in 2007.

A good international approach to mitigating the problem might resemble the following: an international agreement among space-faring states to avoid the production of such debris, coupled with a penalty system for situations in which it occurs. The money from the fines could be put into an insurance fund. Then, when collisions take place between unmanned satellites or manned space vehicles, some level of compensation could be paid out of that fund.

Setting up such a system would require the support and goodwill of quite a number of states. Nonetheless, it might help make the regions of space closest to our planet somewhat more orderly and well-governed.

Hiding Nobel Prize medals

Recently, I came across an interesting anecdote about the history of Nobel prizes: specifically, those that were awarded to James Franck (for work on quantum physics) and Max von Laue (for discovering x-ray crystal diffraction). Fearful of confiscation by the Nazis, both scientists illegally sent their medals to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, for safe keeping. Franck then fled from Germany to America, prior to the Nazi invasion of Denmark in 1940.

At the time, sending the medals out of Germany was a very serious crime and, since they were engraved with the names of their recipients, Bohr feared what would happen to them if the medals were found by the occupying army. Fearful that the invaders would find and confiscate the medals, Bohr eventually passed the medals to the chemist George de Hevesy, who subsequently dissolved both Franck and von Laue’s medals in acid (aqua regia, specifically). He was able to hide the resulting black solution from the Nazi invaders and, after the war, the gold was precipitated out of the solution and sent to Stockholm to be re-forged into medals by the Swedish Academy. Bohr had previously sold his own medal at a charitable auction earlier that year.

In 1943, de Hevesy himself won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for work on using isotopes to trace chemical processes.

NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory

Trees and deep blue sky

Later this month, NASA will be launching the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO): the first satellite designed to make precise measurements of carbon dioxide release and absorption around the world. This should provide important new information about how carbon dioxide is being emitted from human activities and degraded sources (such as decaying forests), as well as the operation of those natural sinks that continue to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The OCO will work using three parallel high-resolution spectrometers, being fed light by a common telescope. They will simultaneously measure concentrations of CO2 and molecular oxygen.

The new satellite will be placed at the front of a string of satellites in the same orbit: the Earth Observing System Afternoon Constellation, known more informally as the A-train. By having the satellites all look at the same areas in quick succession, the data from their various instruments can be assembled into a single high-quality, three-dimensional dataset. Five satellites are already in orbit, with two planned, including the OCO.

If all goes well, the OCO should be in orbit on February 24th.

[Update: 24 February 2009] It seems the launch has failed and the satellite has been destroyed. This is very disappointing: a blow to climate science, and to our chances of avoiding dangerous climate change. Hopefully, NASA will rebuild the satellite and try launching it again.

That would be a much better expenditure of resources than adding to the ISS or flying shuttles.

NGOs and armed actors

OC Transpo bus

One of the more regrettable developments in international relations in recent years has been the intentional targeting of humanitarian relief organizations, and all the complexities that derive from that. Sometimes, aid groups are presented with difficult choices between accepting protection from an army – and, in so doing, losing part of their claim to neutrality – or disengaging from a conflict zone in which they could otherwise do a lot of good.

Edwina Thompson, a friend of mine from Oxford, has written a report on the problem for World Vision International: Principled Pragmatism: NGO engagement with armed actors. To those interested in armed conflict and humanitarian assistance, it is worth taking a look at.

In the concluding section, the report identifies existing gaps in efforts to manage civilian-military relations. It also provides recommendations to the international community, donors, and NGOs.

Three passages from Payback

There are three further elements of Margaret Atwood’s Payback that seem in keeping with the themes of this blog, and the current conversations here. I am not going to comment on them excessively, since I think they provoke enough thinking in themselves.

The first is her list of possible responses to major crises. You can “Protect Yourself, Give Up and Party, Help Others, Blame, Bear Witness, and Go About Your Life.” In the context of climate change, it seems like we are all engaging in a particular combination of these behaviours. It is worth contemplating if it is the right one. She doesn’t really discuss how there is a prisoner’s dilemma at work here. If nobody else addresses problems, protecting yourself or partying are your best options. If you can convince others to cooperate, you can help others and get on with your life.

The second is her description of an international approach to climate change mitigation:

[G]lobal warming has been dealt with at a global summit during which world leaders gave up paranoia, envy, rivalry, power-hunger, greed, and debate over who should start cutting down the carbon footprint first and rolled up their sleeves and got with it.

While that is a very appealing vision for how developed and rapidly developing states might behave, it does seem appropriate to recall that, in many places, the reduction of extreme poverty and insecurity is a more urgent task. Let Canada, China, and the United States learn how to run a zero carbon society, before calling on Sudan or Afghanistan to do so.

The third is a hypothetical response the American president could have given to the September 11th attacks:

We have suffered a grievous loss – a blow has been struck at us that was motivated by an obsessive desire to harm us. We realize that this was the work of a small group of fanatics. Other nations might bomb the stuffing out of the civilian population where those fanatics are at present located, but we recognize the futility of such an action. Nor will we accuse any bystander nation of having been involved. We realize that acts of vengeance recoil upon the heads of the inventors, and we do not wish to perpetuate a chain reaction of revenge. Therefore we will forgive.

The quote is an interesting one. For me, the last sentence somewhat clashes with the rest. It is one thing to say: “We will not take this fight to those who did not start it.” It is quite another to say that we will not respond directly to those who did, while being careful to spare the innocent. While it is on the fringe of what is imaginable that the United States might have responded to Al Qaeda through international cooperation and the vigorous efforts of law enforcement and the courts, it doesn’t seem either moral or believable that they would not respond in some way to those who were directly involved.

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

Baby hand

This series of lectures, published in book form, shows Margaret Atwood at her lively best. It is reminiscent of James Burke’s series ‘Connections,’ in which he traces a seemingly random path through history, choosing the most interesting and unexpected road at every juncture. In some ways, Atwood’s consideration of debt occurs in an even richer world, since it includes literature, mythology, and religion among the kind of paths that can be followed.

The first section of the book examines debt in a historical and conceptual way: considering different kinds of debt (financial, moral, spiritual, etc) as well as different modes of repayment. It considers the ethics of being a borrower and a lender, as well as the consequences that can arise for those who happen to be near either. Atwood’s examination highlights how lenders can err both in being too harsh on their debtors and in being too stingy with their money – both the vicious loan shark and the penny-pinching miser are culpable. The book discusses revenge as a special form of debt repayment, as well as the complexities that arise when debts are being incurred by states and princes. All this is made quite entertaining by the cleverness of the connections being identified, and the teasing and humorous tone of the narration.

The second section is an exposition of our current state of deep indebtedness, and a recognition that the greatest and most threatening of those debts are ecological. While Atwood’s updated Scrooge story includes asides on the unjustness of the World Bank and IMF, as well as the risks associated with fiat currencies, her primary concern is with the wanton destruction of the natural world that has been accelerating since the industrial revolution. She singles out overfishing, biofuels, deforestation, overpopulation, soil depletion, and climate change as examples, painting a general picture of extreme human recklessness. The redemptive vision is one based around neo-hippie victory: renewable power, an international agreement to stop climate change, and organic food for all.

The concluding story feels a bit trite, really. Any corporate baron paying the slightest bit of attention would already be jaded about the messages from the ghosts Atwood’s Scrooge Nouveau receives. That said, and while the literary merits of the first section exceed those of the second, it is appealing that this is a book of action as well as contemplation. It is hard not to agree with the thrust of Atwood’s argument. By all means, let’s increase the fairness of the global financial system and curb humanity’s self-destructive ways. This book contributes to that project by provoking a great deal of thought about the symbolism and meanings of debt. We will need to look beyond it for concrete ideas about how to overthrow or convert those who favour the status quo and thus bring about a sustainable (appropriately indebted) new order.

I say ‘appropriately indebted’ because the book makes a strong case that we can never really be out of debt. As social entities, there are always tallies of obligation between us, and nobody can ever be said to be sitting perfectly at the balance point of these transactions. Indeed, given the way they are denominated in different currencies (honour, favours, wealth), seeking such an outcome is hopeless. What we can attain is the position of borrowing and lending rightly, with forgiveness and an awareness and concern about the consequences for those around us and the wider world.

In any case, the book is highly topical, informative, and makes for a quick and rewarding read. It is telling that, while other books have been sitting around my apartment for months, I received this one in the mail yesterday and finished it today.

Some security related reading

Shadow outline on buildings

Here are a few interesting and long security related documents which have recently become available. They are all in PDF format:

I will post something more original as soon as possible.

Obama and Israel-Palestine

Einstein doll

Expectations of the Obama administration could hardly be higher: both in terms of domestic promises (fixing health care, etc) and international ones (fixing climate change, etc). Successfully addressing a good number of the pressing issues facing the United States would make for a very successful presidency. That being said, it may be overly optimistic to hope for progress on all fronts. There is only a limited amount of time even the most energetic and capable administration has, and there is always the need to negotiate with other actors, most importantly the US Congress. In the end, it is better to make strong and durable progress on a smaller subset of issues than to make a weak and easily reversible advance on many more.

It seems to me that one area where Obama should consider limiting his engagement is the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The region is undeniably in crisis, and there is most definitely both severe human suffering and considerable injustice ongoing. That being said, it is not clear that Obama could contribute usefully to reducing either, and it is clear that attempts to do so are time consuming and costly, in terms of political capital and energy. In order to get a sense of that, one need only look at the amount of effort some past presidents have put into the region (Clinton and Carter, for instance) and the very limited long-term results from them doing so.

If anything, the current situation in Israel and Palestine is even more fractured, unstable, and volatile than has been the norm in recent decades. In addition, the political leadership of the Palestinians is fractured in two, with Hamas openly advocating a second Holocaust. Given the absence of a situation conducive to negotiations, the prospects to do anything more than somewhat reduce the level of violence are very limited. With that in mind, perhaps the best course for Obama to take would be to send a respected special envoy to the region to try and contribute positively, while devoting his own time and attention elsewhere. Certainly, it makes sense to reiterate the most important points for an eventual resolution (a two state solution, demolishment of many settlements, an end to violence, etc), but pushing to achieve these things within the next four years seems far more likely to be a distraction than a path to accomplishment.

To those who will disagree, I ask what specifically Obama should do to produce outcomes that are better than those that would be achieved through the approach above.