Harvard Kennedy School debate

Monica Duffy Toft: Financial Insecurity and Global Conflict

The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily represent the views of the British Government.

What are the connections between the global financial crisis and violent conflict? First, the crisis poses the chance of an increase in the number of new civil wars. Civil wars, compared to other types of armed conflict, are particularly brutish and violent. They last an average of seven years and have been responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people since the end of World War II. Moreover, they are fought disproportionately in poor, resource-dependent countries. According to one estimate, the average GDP per capita for countries that experienced civil war within five years was about $2,200. The troubles in Northern Ireland and former Yugoslavia were exceptional in this regard, while those in Afghanistan and Sudan are not. The financial crisis can only bring downward pressure on global GDP and with it the likelihood that more countries will slip below this economic threshold. In addition to poverty, states suffering from civil war often suffer from endemic corruption and ineffective institutions of governance. Somalia is the most obvious example, but Congo and Sudan are not far behind.

Additionally, today’s world leaders rightly hold in the forefront of their minds the impact of the Great Depression on the political developments in Europe and the emergence of ideologies and foreign policies that led directly to the Second World War. Today, the arc of instability is no longer connected to rigid geopolitical borders. Rather, money, people, and ideas flow much more freely from north to south and from south to north. The world is more interconnected, which means that the effects of state collapse and related violence are no longer isolated in distant lands.

Four HKS students have partnered with the British Consulate in Boston to produce two Policy Analysis Exercises (PAE) that underscore the interconnectedness of the global financial crisis, conflict, and insecurity. Ylli Bajrakatri and Peter Roady’s paper  rightly calls for changing the frame in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. This paper clearly spells out the stakes involved for the international community and shows how a concerted and sustained effort on the part of local, national and international actors could help to change the dynamics to avert further instability, violence and terrorism, resulting in a stabilized Afghanistan and region. The reasoning is sound and the call is clear. Despite having been engaged for just over eight years, the international community, especially NATO, has little to show for its efforts. A clear purpose, sufficient resources, coordinated action, and a shared set of objectives over the next 20 years are needed to stabilize Afghanistan. A continued piecemeal approach will only lead to further instability and violence, which will not stayed contained within Afghanistan’s, or even the region’s, borders.

Claire Applegarth and Andrew Block’s PAE advances similar notions about the need for better coordination of global and international efforts to stabilize states and work to protect the rights and provide for the needs of some of the world’s suffering populations. Their PAE assesses the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P), a doctrine that has at its core the notion that states have an obligation to serve their citizens, and that those states that fail to do so will be subject to international sanction. R2P is considered a landmark policy in that it challenged one of the core principles of the international system: the inviolability of states’ borders. No longer does the international community have the “right to intervene,” but the “responsibility to protect.” Coming on the heels of a civil war, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda served as a clarion call and helped to get the thinking for this policy off the ground; it was officially recognized at the 2005 United Nations Summit by all 191 member states. Nevertheless, the meaning of R2P, what it is supposed to achieve, and how to achieve those elusive objectives, remains mired in a diplomatic and discursive haze. Applegarth and Block take on the unenviable task of sorting through the different meanings and interpretations of R2P as a way to move the diplomatic discourse and action forward. They highlight the mains points of agreement and disagreement and provide a strategy for how R2P can be more effectively deployed in line with its original purpose, a purpose which was, and remains, to protect lives. How to get there is a challenge, but they offer a sharp and analytic set of recommendations.

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has a dual mission: (1) to provide leadership in advancing policy-relevant knowledge about the most important challenges of international security and other critical issues where science, technology, environmental policy, and international affairs intersect; and (2) to prepare future generations of leaders for these arenas. Clearly, our partnership with the British Consulate in Boston is the model of collaboration at mutual education, and I am pleased that we could do our part to help shed light on the seminal challenge facing leaders at this week’s G-20 meeting.

Monica Duffy Toft

Monica is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director, Initiative on Religion in International Affairs, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Her latest examination on issues associated with conflict and the new challenges being faced by the international community today can be found at http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10694

Posted at 16:49 27 March 2009 by London Summit  |  Comments[0]