Day: November 11, 2011
Water, food, oil, gas: many problems, or one?
Last week, the Transatlantic Academy gathered a plethora of academics and policy makers to discuss the global competition for natural resources. Among several pressing issues, the panel placed particular emphasis on the interaction between different resources and the political and economic outcomes emerging from that “nexus.”
Particularly in the raw materials industry, resources are used in abundance to extract others, or in some cases to create new ones. Water is used to extract oil and gas. These three resources are used to raise corn, which itself is used to produce ethanol. And all the aforementioned resources are used to extract minerals. The web is obviously larger, but even this small picture illustrates what scholars and policy makers have come to label a “nexus of resources.”
In a world where resources are scarce, this interconnectivity presents problems for the global economy and creates political complications. Spikes in oil or food prices have ripple effects, and for this reason it is no longer appropriate to analyze resource markets in isolation. A nexus-driven approach must now be the standard.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the market for food, particularly agricultural goods. As the situation stands today, food production rates must increase dramatically to keep pace with projected population growth and dietary changes related to the rise of the middle class. And yet, for years, as Julie Howard from USAID points out, large fluctuations in food prices failed to capture the attention of policy makers as important political events. Only with the onset of the 2008-09 price spikes did governments begin to truly appreciate the impact of food security on international and intra-state politics.
Numerous factors account for the recent spikes in food prices, but several reports emphasize the role of the biofuels industry in particular. Paul Faeth, a fellow at CNA Corporation, points out that the amount of corn available for consumption compared to that used for ethanol production has decreased by 15% in the last ten years. Increasing demand for corn in the U.S. ethanol industry has contributed to global food shortages, and a recent UN report tacitly implicates this practice in the price spikes many associate with uprisings in the Arab world. Leaving the efficacy of biofuels aside, Howard insists this reality nonetheless begs for the elevation of food security to a higher rung on governments’ list of international assistance priorities.
Food security is also closely related to water supplies. Especially in arid regions such as the Middle East and North Africa, heavy agricultural irrigation can create what Andrew Martin of the New York Times called a twisted “quandary, as [countries] are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.” As a result, MENA countries have become dependent on food imports, exposing citizens to cruel scenarios in the event of sudden global food price increases.
Another high usage area for water is in oil and gas extraction. With the recent developments in fracking technology used in the shale gas industry, water footprints are expanding. The issue here, as Robert Kleinberg of Schlumberger-Doll points out, isn’t waste necessarily, since 100% of the water taken out of the ground after fracking can be sanitized and reused, although Kleinberg does mention that only 1/3 of water put in the ground is actually recoverable.
But as far as water waste goes, the natural gas industry pales in comparison to agriculture. The real problems with fracking are the environmental hazards associated with the process of extraction. Trucks spewing emissions transport water to extraction sites, which themselves suffer surface erosion. And, fracking leaves highly saline and often radioactive water in the ground, which can cycle into farm irrigation systems and other water supplies. For these reasons, as both Faeth and Kleinberg seem to accept, the astronomical potential of natural gas as a profitable and clean(er) fossil fuel must be harnessed to a regulatory scheme that requires producers to meet environmental standards, or else pay for the negative externalities.
Though I missed the final session on the geopolitics of energy, I can imagine that Faeth and Kleinberg also recognize shale’s strategic potential given the large reserves in the U.S. They seem to agree that energy independence is less important that efficiency, but domestic natural gas production could address both these issues.
Strategic considerations also abound when it comes to food security and regime stability in the Arab world. For all the concern about ethnic and sectarian tensions in MENA—undoubtedly fundamental sources of conflict in the region—perhaps Mathew Burrows from the National Intelligence Council is correct to argue that resource scarcity could be the deciding factor, tipping these frictions in the wrong direction.
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Context matters, and so does U.S. support
I gave a talk yesterday at West Virginia University’s Law School on U.S. policy towards democracy-seeking rebellions. The star attraction at the conference was Erica Chenoweth, co-author of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Some of you will have seen my tweets summarizing her talk, which I won’t try to reproduce here. Suffice it to say that she provides hard statistical evidence that nonviolent civil resistance really does work, even against the most repressive regimes, and she gives a coherent rationale for why. She also notes that foreign monetary assistance does not appear to work well.
I was asked to address the U.S. policy response, in particular to the Arab Spring. Here are my speaking notes, which of course do not represent exactly what I said:
West Virginia University
November 10, 2011
1. While I am an admirer of Dr. Chenoweth’s quantitative methodology, I am going to rely today on the much less impressive techniques of the historian and diplomat: stories, I would call them, rather than “cases.”
2. Arab spring is far from over yet, but I’ll try to focus on the transition phase: that is, the phase after a regime falls and before a new one has yet emerged.
3. I am thoroughly convinced of the efficacy of what Dr. Chenoweth calls civic resistance in the earlier phase.
4. But things get much more complicated when that resistance has to turn into something more constructive.
5. There are three cases already in the transition phase, more or less: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Each is quite different.
6. In Tunisia, the autocrat left the scene quickly and the regime was pushed aside fairly easily. First elections have already been held and there is a clear roadmap ahead. A classic, fairly smooth case, with no sign of counter-revolution on the horizon. Good chance of consolidating a democratic regime.
7. In Egypt, the autocrat also left pretty quickly, but the regime was not pushed aside easily and the protesters called on the army to manage the transition. It is doing so, but in a way that consolidates its control over some aspects of governance (security, foreign policy) and a big piece of the economy. I’d say much less likelihood of success in the transition. Might be rather like Serbia, where a similar deal was made with the security forces and the transition has been slow and halting as a result.
8. In Libya, there was a violent revolution that has the advantage of having swept the old regime away completely, with foreign help. There has been good leadership, decent planning and ample resources. I give the Libyans a decent chance at success in consolidating a democracy, albeit less probability than Tunisia.
9. What of Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, all of which are still in progress?
10. Yemen has turned violent, even if the protesters themselves have stuck with nonviolence. The odds of successful transition to democracy seem to be small, because the opposition to Saleh most likely to take power is the violent one, which is no more inclined to democracy than he is.
11. Syria could be headed in the same direction, though there is still some hope of keeping it on a nonviolent course. That’s vital for success. Violence will lead to sectarian and ethnic breakdown (similar to Iraq) that will be difficult to overcome.
12. Bahrain is an odd case. The protesters have been nonviolent, but the crackdown was effective, unlike Syria and Yemen. A lot depends on the Bassiouni commission report: will it revive nonviolent resistance, or will the regime be able to keep the lid on?
13. What of the other monarchies: Morocco and Jordan? Saudi Arabia and Oman?
14. These four, each in its own way, is attempting to preempt resistance with reform, albeit minimal reform in the case of Riyadh. So far, they are largely succeeding.
15. I do think the monarchies have some advantage in this respect: not because they are somehow nicer, but because their legitimacy is understood not to derive from elections but rather from heredity.
16. It is much harder for a republic to claim that there is no need to change who is in power in order to reform the system.
17. But that does not mean the monarchies will succeed forever. The fact that all Saudi Arabia experts agree that it can’t happen there, that the succession is ensured, is a clear earlier indicator that it may well happen there.
18. If I were advising the Saudis and the other monarchies, I would suggest they get ahead of the curve and stay ahead, by taking truly meaningful steps to redistribute power and ensure that their security services are shifting from protecting the rulers to protecting the ruled.
19. If there is one mistake common to all the Arab Spring successes so far—and also to those places where rebellion is still in progress—it is the use of regime violence against the population.
20. These guys need to learn that legitimacy comes from the people, who will be much more inclined to confer it on those who protect them than on those who attack them.
21. We should also be thinking about how we can encourage security sector reform in advance of rebellion and revolution—it would be far cheaper and more effective than doing it after the fact.
22. America should certainly be supporting those who demonstrate nonviolently for their rights, but I confess to doubts that it should be done through embassies.
23. Robert Ford, our ambassador in Syria who has bravely gone to “observe” demonstrations, is the exception that proves the rule.
24. The rule is that embassies need to stay on good terms with the host government, even if it is an autocracy. They cannot be implicated in support to revolutionaries.
25. Assistance to democracy and human rights advocates should flow not through embassies but through nongovernmental organizations, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute as well as non-American counterparts.
26. The more these can be made distinct from our official representation, the better.
27. America is condemned to spreading democracy. If you really believe that all people are created equal, you have no choice but to sympathize with those who claim their rights. But the specific modalities for when and how to do it depend a great deal on context.
PS: In answer to a question, I said yes it can happen in Iran, but American efforts to support it there are problematic because of our fraught relationship with Tehran, which includes both concern about nuclear weapons and attempts to foment ethnic strife inside Iran. In the end, I think Obama got the reaction to the Green Movement about right in the end: rhetorical support without repainting it red, white and blue.
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No no-brainer
Eric Edelman, Andrew Krepinevich, and Evan Braden Montgomery argue that President Obama should “take out” Iran’s nuclear program:
The closer Iran gets to acquiring nuclear weapons, the fewer options will be available to stop its progress. At the same time, Iran’s incentives to back down will only decrease as it approaches the nuclear threshold.
This is an argument to be taken seriously, as it is surely also being made inside the United States government. Dismissing it summarily, as commenters on the Foreign Affairs website have done so far, is foolish.
There are two propositions here: 1) fewer options in the future to stop Iran’s progress; 2) Iran’s incentives to back down only decrease as it approaches the nuclear threshold. There are problems with both.
Even after Iran develops and deploys nuclear weapons, we would have the option of striking their key nuclear facilities and as many of their nuclear weapons as we could find. The difficulty with doing this is that it invites a nuclear counter-strike with any surviving weapons, at Israel if not at the U.S. But even if we strike now, we are unlikely to be 100% successful, and we would be giving Iran an enormous incentive to accelerate their nuclear program as best they could with whatever facilities they had remaining. The danger of an Iranian counter-strike might not be immediate, but it would be just as real. This takes us down the road of repeated strikes on Iran. I’d like to discuss the regional consequences of that before assuming it is preferable to strike now.
As for Iran’s incentives, I think it likely they can achieve as much or more of what they want by approaching the nuclear threshold but not going over it, which in effect is what they say they are doing. Having the material and technology to produce nuclear weapons will give Iran regional prestige and clout without necessarily setting off the regional arms race that Edelman, Krepinevich and Montgomery fear. Going over the threshold will not only precipitate nuclear programs by far richer countries, it will also cause the U.S. to target Iran with nuclear weapons (let’s assume Israel already does), vastly increasing Tehran’s uncertainty about what might happen.
Edelman et. al. put the bottom line this way:
Given these trends, the United States faces the difficult decision of using military force soon to prevent Iran from going nuclear, or living with a nuclear Iran and the regional fallout.
Even in this formulation, the answer is by no means self-evident. But to imply that there will not be regional fallout from using military force is clearly wrong. I might reformulate it this way:
The United States faces the difficult decision of using military force soon and repeatedly to prevent Iran from going nuclear, or continuing to ratchet up sanctions, cyberattacks and other efforts in convince the Iranians that crossing the nuclear threshold will be injurious and not beneficial to their national security.
We are going to have to live with regional fallout, which will be different but substantial whichever choice we make. This is not a no brainer.
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