Month: June 2021
Stevenson’s army, June 30
WSJ says China wants to “tame” wolf warrior image.
Gen Miller warns of deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
NYT says Kabul airport is key, explains role of Turkey.
Journalist says US defeat in Afghanistan was foreseeable.
The House voted Tuesday repeal both the 1991 Gulf war AUMF and the 1957 authorization for troops in the Middle East to fight communism.
The 1957 measure, part of the “Eisenhower Doctrine,” was the subject of my Harvard senior thesis, so attention must be paid.
SAIS prof Frank Gavin discusses the tensions between economic and security policies.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Oil and gas have an important role to play in getting to net zero
The Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council hosted The Role of Gas and Oil in Net-Zero on June 28 to discuss the role of hydrocarbons and international energy companies in reaching the goal of net-zero by 2050. In his opening remarks, the founding chairman, Richard Morningstar, emphasized the need for a public-private partnership to reach the goal in a timely manner. The speakers of the event were:
Ambassador Richard Morningstar
Founding Chairman, Global Energy Center Atlantic Council
Al Cook
Executive Vice President, Exploration and Production International Equinor
Juliana Garaizar
Vice President of Innovation, Greentown Labs
Greg Sharenow
Portfoli Manager, Real Assets, PIMCO
Helima Croft (moderator)
Managing and Global Head of Commodity Strategy, RBC Capital Markets; Board of Directors member, Global Energy Center Atlantic Council
In his keynote speech, Cook emphasized net-zero as the future of the energy industry. The means of producing energy must become more conscious of the resulting carbon emissions. 80% of the world’s energy is supplied by fossil fuels. This 80% must fall, despite the growing demand for coal – a demand expected to continue to rise through the upcoming decades.
Cook referenced the latest report by the International Energy Agency that suggested no new oil and gas projects globally after 2021. He believes this is essential, though it does not align with current government policies. Cook believes there must be a decrease by 50% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and energy companies must provide the 50% of people who lack access to electricity with renewable and affordable solutions. To accomplish these goals, Cook proposed three objectives for the energy industry:
- The amount of carbon dioxide produced with each barrel of oil must be decreased. On average, today the production of 1 barrel of oil produces 17-18 kg of carbon dioxide. Equinor has harnessed developing technology to decrease this to 8 kg of carbon dioxide per barrel. Equinor employs a combination of carbon capture and storage (with burial underground) and electrification of offshore operations to drastically decrease emissions.
- Energy production companies should reinvest revenues and capital in renewable energy. Cook suggested investment in offshore windfarms. Equinor is currently constructing the world’s largest offshore wind farm – Dogger Bank – off the UK coastline and partnering to build a windfarm off the shores of New York called Empire Wind, which will produce 15% of the renewable energy target set by the Biden Administration.
- At its current rate, renewable energy cannot immediately solve the world’s need for energy. Due to its combination of low intensity and intermittency, Cook emphasized the need to continue using fossil fuels. We must acknowledge the future demand for oil and gas and take this into account in future.
Reactions to the IEA Report: what do you take from the report? What is doable and what is necessary?
Cook emphasized the need for its severity. He claimed that for too long, too many reports have underestimated the importance of renewable energy. Fatty Burrel, the author of the IEA report, argues the world cannot wait until 2050 to reach these targets, the energy industry and its supporting governments must enact change today.
Garaizar and Sharenow echoed Cook’s response, stating this report is a wake-up call for investors as well as policy makers. While Sharenow argued the proposal is an aspiration, it will provide clarity and foster greater steps in building confidence for investors in renewable energy.
What are the policy changes that need to happen to enact change?
Sharenow argued for implementation of stricter carbon prices, taxes, and complementary policies to address carbon emissions. Carbon policies can be a positive tool for companies to redistribute their investments and provide incentive for future movement towards renewable energy. Sharenow also emphasized the need for collective action, as more opportunities can be offered to the world, especially those in areas without consistent access to electricity, if this pursuit is undertaken as a communal effort.
Garizar agreed with Sharenow and asserted the need for developing innovative business models to make up for the lack of political structure in some countries. Instead of promoting change within political systems, it is the responsibility of international energy companies to create and promote new models that accommodate differing political structures in promoting consistent and affordable access to renewable energy.
To conclude, Cook, reaffirmed his previous arguments, acknowledging the need for consistency and long-term policies to streamline the promotion of decreased carbon regulations around the world.
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World Refugee Day: resilient women
In celebration of World Refugee Day the Atlantic Council hosted Stories of Resilient Women with the support of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center to recognize global factors that force movement and create a more robust understanding in host countries of how to shape future generations with policies that support social, economic and political inclusion. Through the discussion of individual experiences, the event highlighted the resilience of refugee women around the world. The speakers were:
Reena Ninan (moderator)
Journalist and International Correspondent
Suzana Vuk
Account Executive, Zoom Video Communications
Priyali Sur
Founder & Managing Director, The Azadi Project
José Felix Rodriguez
Regional Coordinator of Migration, Social Inclusion and Non-Violence (Americas Region), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Lilia
Interviewed by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Sedighe
Interviewed by the Azadi Project
Masouma
Interviewed by the Azadi Project
Rebecca Scheurer (closing remarks)
Director, Humanitarian Initiatives, Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, Atlantic Council
Suzana Vuk:
Vuk’s family arrived in San Francisco from Bosnia in 1993 after her father survived persecution and torture in a concentration camp due to his Muslim identity. In June 1992, he was captured by the Bosnian Serb Army and sent to a concentration camp near their home. Her mother communicated with offices in Croatia to secure travel visas for the entirety of their family. In 1993, as refugees, Vuk’s family was offered free housing at a camp in Croatia, and her mother was able to feign a Croatian identity. Vuk’s mother gathered the proper resources and contacts to get visas for their family and secure the family passage to Italy, then the United States.
Vuk explained how her refugee background shaped her life in the United States, as it instilled values of family, hard-work, and gratitude into her daily life. As an adult working in the field of developing digital technologies, she feels she has been offered more opportunities and independence than her parents in Bosnia and Croatia. While she feels a sense of familial pressure and debt to her parents for giving her this life, Vuk reminds herself, and those around her, that she is fortunate and grateful for where she is today.
International Red Cross:
A representative from the International Red Cross, Rodriguez, discussed an initiative that offers humanitarian services and neutral spaces along migratory routes, primarily in South and Central America. These spaces are constituted as friendly environments for migrants who are in need of international support. Entitled Human Service Points, they can be either fixed or mobile stations, where migrant people and refugees access different Red Cross services provided. Their primary objective is to contribute to the security, dignity, and protection of migrants in vulnerable situations during all the steps of their journey as well as promote individual resiliency.
Past programs, Rodriguez explained, aimed to reach 400 people daily, but could peak with interactions with 4,000 people in one day. The International Red Cross decided to expand the Humanitarian Service Points to different countries and border areas like Colombia-Venezuela and Panama-Colombia.
One woman, Lila, expressed her gratitude to these programs in her recounting of the strenuous migration from Venezuela through Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. She traveled through Colombia, spending 12 days in the jungle, facing death daily and now living with extreme trauma and fear. However, she recognized the importance of leaving and the barriers to life for not only her, but the rest of her family, in Venezuela.
Priyali Sur :
Sur’s project, the Azadi Project works with refugee women to provide safe spaces where women can discuss and process their experiences and trauma within a community. As there exists an intersectional bias towards against refugee women, specifically women of color and women from regions subject to explicit bias, Sur emphasized the importance of creating a space for a targeted and vulnerable population.
While her program began by hosting workshops that developed storytelling skills, that could later transform into digital storytelling and fostering employable skills through digital empowerment. The community shifted towards psycho-social support. Organically, through time, the space transformed from a workshop to create and market female empowerment through employable skills to a community where women could gain empowerment and exposure to safe spaces and support.
Conclusion:
While unique in experience, each of these stories emphasize the power of female empowerment within the refugee community and the importance of support, through NGOs, policy, or volunteer work. While over 80 million people have been forced to leave their homes around the world, the resilience of individuals and organizations fosters success.
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Stevenson’s army, June 29
FP explains Iran’s growing drone threat.
President Biden defended his retaliatory strikes.
Sen. WIcker [R-MS] is using a hold to try to get more ships built in MS.
Members of Congress are spending much more in personal security.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Between Father’s Day and 76: lifetime lessons learned
I’m at a fine moment: on the verge of celebrating my 76th birthday, both elder son Jared and younger son Adam are enjoying professional and personal success. I thought I might take the moment to reflect, not so much on them as on what I learned from them over the past 45 years. I hope they’ll excuse the indulgence.
Both sons chose markedly different but competitive professions. Architects either win contracts or they don’t. Journalists either get recognized or they don’t. Jared works now in Atlanta for Perkins and Will, a big international architectural firm, mainly designing academic buildings. Here is the Camp Southern Ground dining hall he designed outside Atlanta:
Here is Adam, who works at The Atlantic, yesterday afternoon on NPR’s All Things Considered, two days before his first book, The Cruelty Is the Point: the Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, is published:
Jackie and I are enormously proud of them both. I suppose we contributed, if only by setting an example of working hard for long hours.
But they both achieved their successes despite me. I was a middle child who thought he always had to strive for equal treatment with an older brother and a younger one. So when I became a father I thought I could do better than my parents and cure the world by treating my two sons the same way.
That was a big mistake. Different children have different needs, not only because of their placement in the family order but also because of their dramatically different talents and preferences. This has been a big challenge in my teaching life as well: I need to treat all the students fairly, but what that means can differ because of their diverse backgrounds and preparation, not to mention intellect, career amibitions, ideology, maturity, and the rest.
Jared has a terrific visual and spatial imagination. He can picture how things will look before drawing them, the way a composer can hear how things will sound even before writing down the notes. Adam has a literary and theatrical imagination. He started beating us all at Scrabble around the age of 14. He knows how to use written and spoken words eloquently and dramatically to make a point. I had no idea when they were growing up that two people who shared the same genetic origins could be so different.
Adam got the shorter stick, as my habits were formed first with his brother. I expected that Adam would behave and think like Jared. I saw any deviance from the established pattern as potentially problematic. He naturally rebelled, causing no end of friction as a teenager that I had not experienced with his elder brother, who was much more careful to hide his divergence from expectations. I didn’t learn until recently about Jared’s teenage excursions with friends in Rome on their motor scooters, despite a (well-founded) parental prohibition. Adam made sure I knew he was smoking as a teen, despite an even stronger (and equally well-founded) parental prohibition.
There are silver linings: Adam’s willingness to defy and critique authority has been an important aspect of his journalistic career. Jared’s ability to maintain his unique perspective while working within an established system has allowed his creative impulses to find expression in glorious buildings.
Now both Jared and Adam have strikingly accomplished wives and delicious children. Jared’s two boys are rambunctious. I’ve learned not to try to squeeze either of them into a pre-determined shape. Adam’s less than two-year-old daughter is less rowdy, at least for now, but definitely knows her own mind. I hope she will remain that way. It is difficult to know where to draw lines: should she be free, as her parents prefer, to choose whatever snacks she pleases from the pantry, or should there be some limits? The former might develop some self-discipline, while I imagine the latter encourages challenging restrictions. Which is better?
I don’t know is the short answer. All I know is that how we deal with others has a lot to do with our own treatment growing up. It’s best to be aware of the internal impulses, but to react mainly to the external stimuli. Right now that means enjoying my small but precious family and trying not to impose my preferences on their thriving lives. They are all looking good to me right now, as I approach old age. That is a great satisfaction. I hope it stays that way, even though I know there are challenges ahead. No one escapes those.
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Stevenson’s army, June 28
US air strikes in Iraq and Syria against Iranian-linked militias. NYT background. Official release.
UN told Russian mercenaries commit war crimes in Africa.
Bruce Riedel remembers the Khobar Towers bombing 25 years ago. He notes how US retaliated against Iran. The incident also led to a civ-mil clash when SecDef Cohen wanted to punish senior officers and USAF Chief of Staff wanted to punish only those immediately responsible. The chief retired early in quiet protest. For me it was a clash between the Navy and Air Force approaches to command responsibility.
Fred Kaplan reviews West Point’s long history of teaching about race.
Tucker Carlson attacks Gen.Milley.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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