The FT is running a live blog commentary of Tony Blair at the Chilcot Inquiry – see it here
It is snowing in Davos. I don’t know why that should surprise me. It is a ski resort, after all. The locals – who apparently do not simply disappear when the World Economic Forum leaves town – are pleased, since it means there will be plenty of snow on the slopes for the school half-term. But for some delegates, the snow seems to be a bit of a downer – adding to the discomfort of Davos. I saw one South African delegate struggling into his heavy coat and gloves and moaning, “this is torture.” The Chinese, however, are pleased. A senior Chinese official claims that there is an old Chinese saying that – “Heavy snow means there will be a good harvest.” This was slightly more interesting than his claim that the nations of the world “have common but differentiated responsibilities” over climate change.
I have spent much of the day in meetings of the Davos “International Media Council” which brings together a group of journalists from all over the world for off-the-record briefings with important people. This is all very flattering – but also slightly frustrating, since I am not allowed to report what they say.
One of the briefings was given by David Cameron. As a British citizen, I was interested to see what a small group of foreign columnists and editors made of the man who is likely to be our next prime minister. Generally, they seemed to be favourably impressed. The Americans were simply astonished to find a conservative who was willing to discuss the idea of tax rises in a calm fashion – and who took “liberal” positions on the environment and gay-rights. “The last time we had conservative leaders like that in the US”, said one, “Eisenhower was in power.”
Jesus drove the money-changers out of the temple. Now the World Economic Forum has driven the wine-tasters out of Davos. In previous years, one of the highlights of the forum was a small but spectacular tasting of fine wines. But last year Klaus Schwab, the forum’s mastermind, decided that guzzling first-growth clarets was an inappropriate way of celebrating the global economic meltdown - and the wine-tasting was cancelled. We all hoped that this was a temporary abberation, but apparently not. The new Puritanism is here to stay – Davos wine-tastings are off the menu until further notice.
But you cannot deter dedicated wine-tasters that easily. Last night a wine-tasting was organised by former Davos employees who have formed a new organisation called the Wine Forum. It took place in a conference room in an airport hotel in Zurich at 6pm – a time and a location that was specifically designed to intercept delegates en route to Davos.
Jancis Robinson of the FT was mistress-of-ceremonies and the wines were provided by Krug, and Chateaus Cheval Blanc and Yquem. One of the malign results of globalisation is that these wines, which were once affordable to the likes of me, are now global brands cherished by the super-rich and so mesmerisingly expensive. I’ve never understood why the anti-globalisation movement doesn’t make more of this issue. The 1959 Chateau Yquem that we tasted last night now sells for about £1600 a bottle – each gulp that I took would have made a small contribution to paying off my mortgage. The Cheval Blanc 1998 is about £400 a bottle.
During the second world war, Britain’s food supplies were threatened by German U-boats and the government responded with posters, urging the public to “dig for victory”, by growing vegetables. You might assume that such concerns were consigned to history. But apparently not. The issue of national food security is back on the agenda.
Earlier this month, Hilary Benn, Britain’s minister for food and rural affairs, gave a speech in which he argued that “the truth is now apparent . . . We cannot take food security for granted any more. Food security is as important to this country’s well-being as energy security”. With energy, even more than with food, the British are beginning to question their reliance on purchasing supplies on the open, world markets. This month, supplies of natural gas ran so low that almost 100 large industrial users were temporarily cut off.
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An interesting shoving match is developing between the Americans and the Chinese over the internet. The Chinese reaction to Hillary Clinton’s speech calling for internet freedom around the world has been predictably fierce. But, equally interesting I think, is the question of why Hillary chose to weigh in on this subject, in a way that was bound to antagonise the Chinese. The Google row made her speech pertinent, of course. But I also know that there has been fretting – even among some Democrats – that a succession of actions by the Obama administration has given the impression of American weakness to the Chinese. So there might be a demand to show a slightly tougher side to US policy.
What are these alleged acts of weakness? Here are some, in no particular order: 1) Hillary Clinton says, early in the administration, that she is not going to let human-rights issues interfere with dialogue on other important issues. This message is re-enforced by Nancy Pelosi’s refusal, around the same time, to present the Chinese with a list of imprisoned dissidents. 2) Hillary Clinton tells the Chinese that she hopes that they keep buying US Treasury bonds. 3) The Obama administration does not make much of a fuss when the president’s town-hall meeting in China is censored on Chinese television. 4) The Americans agree to a communique after the Beijing trip which includes a phrase about China’s “core interests” – language that refers to Taiwan that the US has hitherto resisted. 5) The Obama administration hesitates to announce arms-sales to Taiwan and does not make much fuss, publicly, about cyber-security issues.
Perhaps the fuss that Hillary is now making about the internet is an effort to reverse this perception of weakness.
It was fascinating to see Paul Volcker standing next to Barack Obama yesterday, when the president made his big announcement on the reform of investment banking. Volcker, the slayer of inflation in the early 1980s, who more or less disappeared from the public eye for a generation after retiring as head of the Fed in 1987, is now back in fashion and back in power. Meanwhile, Alan Greenspan – the man who succeeded Volcker, the high priest of deregulation and once hailed as a “Maestro” – has had his reputation trashed.
There is a fascinating contrast in styles between the two men. Watching the pictures yesterday, I was reminded of what Greenspan had to say about Volcker in his autobiography:
“Volcker and I were not personal friends. At six foot seven with an ever present cigar, he made a vivid impression, but in conversation I always found him quite introverted and withdrawn. He didn’t play tennis or golf – instead, he liked to go off by himself and fly-fish … Having been a civil servant most of his career, he didn’t have much money. He kept his family at their house in suburban New York for the entire team he was Fed chairman. All he had in Washington was a tiny apartment – he invited me over once in the early 1980s to to talk about the Mexican debt crisis, and the place was filled with piles of old newspapers and all the other clutter of a bachelor apartment.”
By Daniel Dombey, US Diplomatic Correspondent
Fly into Islamabad. Offer military aid. Deny conspiracy theories. Suggest that it wouldn’t be too bad an idea for Pakistan to go after Islamist extremists more vigorously.
That, in a nutshell, has been Robert Gates’ job over the last day – and it’s a difficult task to carry out.
Mr Gates’ 24 years of travelling to Pakistan have made him all too aware that US-Pakistani cooperation – which Washington sees as central to its own national security – is afflicted by what officials call “a trust deficit”.
Opinion polls make clear the US’s spectacular unpopularity among the public at large; Pakistani leaders well remember Washington’s decision to walk away from the region after the Soviets’ pullout from Afghanistan in 1989.
So it’s not surprising that in a television interview broadcast from the US’s fortress embassy in Islamabad, Mr Gates sought to shoot down conspiracy theories rife in Pakistan – denying, for example, that the US wants to take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons or its territory.
It is a little more alarming, however, that Mr Gates also felt the need to make such points in meetings with Pakistan’s leadership during the day. If the country’s top civilians or generals are tempted by such theories the US still has a long way to win Islamabad over.
He also went the extra mile to set out his “admiration” for the Pakistani’s army’s efforts to take on Islamist militants in the Swat and South Waziristan regions over the past year.
The US would clearly like Islamabad to do more, particularly in North Waziristan, which Washington says has hosted one of Nato’s main foes in Afghanistan. But Mr Gates tactfully acknowledged that “the Pakistani army, the Pakistani government, being sovereign, will make their own decisions about the pacing and the timing of what they do,” adding: “In that context we are prepared to help them with whatever help they want that will make them more effective.” (For those who aren’t clear about what that last comment meant, it’s probably a reference to weapons.)
The US already provides Pakistan with $3bn in military aid a year. But it knows it doesn’t have as many friends as it would like in the country’s military – not least because Washington cut off military ties in the 1990s in light of its worries about Pakistan’s nuclear programme. General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, who trained at Fort Leavenworth, may be one of the last Pakistani army chiefs for a while who was educated in the US.
So if it’s to overcome the trust deficit, Washington – and Mr Gates – hardly has very much time. Expect a good few more flying visits to Pakistan.
By Daniel Dombey, US Diplomatic Correspondent
The man responsible for America’s military has come to the country at the heart of the US fight against militant Islamists – and yet he can’t talk about a key part of that struggle.
Robert Gates, US defence secretary, has followed up on his trip to India by flying to Pakistan – his first visit to the country for almost three years. The last time he came calling, in February 2007, was only a couple of months after he had been installed as Secretary of Defence by George W Bush.
The Obama administration has been more forthright than Bush’s team was about how Pakistan – a nuclear armed state of some 166m – is more important for US national security than is Afghanistan, the country in which the US will soon have 100,000 troops.
But what is lost in the talk of grand strategy is the fact that the US’s experience in the Af-Pak region consists of two wars. One, in Afghanistan, revolves around improvised explosive devices, the crude bombs that account for most of the Nato casualties at the hands of insurgents. The other, in Pakistan, is largely about the drone strikes that are the US’s weapon of choice against al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
How long those two conflicts will last may depend on large part on how long the US is willing to accept significant numbers of IED casualties, and how long Pakistan will tolerate the drone strikes on its terrain.
The problem is that as a CIA operation, using bases on Pakistani territory, with the reluctant and off-the-record approval of Pakistani authorities, the drone strikes are not anything that US officials like Gates can talk about in public.
That’s all the more important, since the drone strikes are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, and are blamed for many civilan casualties (the US often disputes just how many). The issue has grown in intensity after a Jordanian double agent recently killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan, since when the tempo of the drone strikes has been upped still further.
So when asked about the drone strikes on the flight over Gates declined to talk about such operations. Instead he highlighted the US desire to avoid civilian casualties and Washington’s readiness to provide Pakistan with surveillance vehicles, adding a bland and not hugely meaningful: “We are very mindful of Pakistan’s sovereignty.”
It’s far from clear how effective such bromides will be in diluting opposition to the strikes. After all, all such attacks depend on a green light from Islamabad. Almost any country would be wary of allowing another power to carry out systematic, repeated attacks on its own territory – and that’s even more the case in Pakistan, where anti-American sentiment runs strong and the government is weak.
One gets the sense that the status quo can’t last for all that long.
But if you are looking for a public defence of Washington’s most controversial actions in its war against al-Qaeda – its most direct strikes against Islamist groups – sorry, the US can’t help.
By Daniel Dombey, US Diplomatic Correspondent
Ripples from events on both US coasts have reached India, where Robert Gates, America’s powerful defence secretary, is talking grand policy.
To begin with, of course, there’s Massachusetts, which has just given the Obama administration a highly unwelcome birthday present in the shape of a Republican Senator whose mere election has already enfeebled the White House.
Even from Delhi, President Barack Obama appears bloodied, as the American anti-incumbent backlash grows.
So annoyed are US voters at almost all government officials that Mr Gates was probably wise to go out of his way to stress that his transport to the day’s most photogenic event - a trip to the incomparable Taj Mahal – was at the Indian government’s expense.
A visit to this 16th century monument – which today looked almost diaphanous in the warm, hazy air - is seen in India as a mark of respect to the country’s history and culture.
But in the US, particularly in the current climate, it could be seen as just one more official indulgence at taxpayers’ expense – hence Gates’ keenness to thank the Indian government for flying him over from Delhi.
India, meanwhile, is abuzz about an alleged Chinese cyberattack on government computers, revealed just a week after Google complained of similar Chinese assaults, including at its headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Asked at a press conference just before the Taj Mahal trip whether India and the US faced a common Chinese cyberthreat, Gates highlighted the big strategic issues he discussed with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh – although he did so in his own diplomatic, elliptical way.
He didn’t link China to cybersecurity explicitly, but he stressed the US and India’s “common interest in security of the Indian Ocean and… and if you’re talking about the internet, the ether.”
And he said the two sides also discussed China’s military modernisation programme – a growing obsession in both Washington and Delhi. Indeed, as an old cold warrior who spent years working on the Soviet Union Gates allowed himself a little nostalgia about the endless arms control talks with the USSR.
He said those negotiations may not have “actually reduced any arms” but produced more candour between the two sides, so helping prevent “miscalculations and mistakes”, adding: “that kind of a dialogue with China would be most productive and frankly in the best interests of global stability.”
Throughout the press conference, Gates appeared a little preoccupied – as anyone would, if they had Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti on their plate and even needed to worry about an innocuous sightseeing trip to the Taj Mahal
Losing the Senate seat in Massachusetts is, of course, the worst possible way for Obama to celebrate his first year in office. It is a stinging rebuke to lose a seat in a state that is so liberal that it is the only one to have voted for George McGovern in 1972. Even worse, by losing the Democrats’ super-majority in the Senate, it is now substantially less likely that Obama will be able to pass health-care reform. And if he loses health-care, he loses the opportunity to notch up a big and obvious achievement for his presidency.
Obama certainly needs something big and tangible to point to. The problem with his first year in office is that his biggest domestic achievement is a negative one – stopping the recession from tumbling into a Depression. And you tend not to get much credit for things that didn’t happen on your watch. Meanwhile his biggest foreign-policy achievement is ephemeral – improving America’s image. I have no doubt that Obama has done this, and that it is important. But it is something that it is difficult to put your finger on, and it has not yet translated into solid improvements in America’s most troubling foreign-policy dilemmas.
The Afghan war is getting worse and bloodier. Engagement with Iran has not got off the ground. There has been no progress in the Middle East peace process. Obama has made concessions to the Chinese on human-rights and Tibet, but got very little in return. He has pressed the re-set button with Russia, but not much has happened. Key allies, including India, Japan and Israel, are unhappy with him. The Copenhagen climate talks were a fiasco. It’s all very difficult.
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