Video: Interview with Cleo Paskal for Adelphi and German Federal Foreign Office

Cleo Paskal discusses a range of environmental change and security issues, including the difference between Indian and Chinese approaches to environmental change and foreign policy.

Huff Po: Cleo interviews MD Nalapat on "West Helping Wahabbi Winter Spread to Syria"

Original is here.

The United States, Britain, France, and others, have just recognized a rebel coalition as being Syria's legitimate representatives. However, serious questions are being raised about the coalition, including by Canada, which isrefusing to recognize it until it rejects extremism and pledges to protect minorities -- something it is unwilling to do.

One person watching the situation very closely is Prof. M D Nalapat, UNESCO Peace Chair, and Director of the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, Manipal University. Prof. Nalapat has an unusually spot-on record in predicting trends in the region. He was in New York City on September 11, 2001, having just warned that the U.S. was likely to be targeted. At the start of the Arab Spring, he was already predicting a 'Wahabbi Winter'. And he foresaw the current catastrophic situation in Libya from the early days of the conflict. This is what he has to say about Syria.

Who are the people who have just been recognized by the U.S.?

Nalapat: The U.S. and the EU are essentially recognizing people whose influence disappears outside the borders of NATO member states. On the ground, the groups that President Obama has recognized as the "legitimate representatives of the Syrian people" have no say whatsoever, and not even a pretense of having, the allegiance of any segment of the Syrian public, nor any influence among any of the groups now battling the Assad regime.

Does the U.S. realize this?

Nalapat: Clearly the U.S., as with other NATO powers, has equipment and a few personnel which enable them to understand the situation. However, they are misreading the dynamic in Syria, and believe that formal recognition will somehow enable these ruthless groups to establish influence, if not control, over key elements of the groups militarily fighting Assad. The reality is that the core ideology of almost all these groups is anti-Western, so such a recognition will only distance the so-called Syrian Opposition Coalition from the fighters on the field, who would see them -- correctly -- as agents of the West.

One problem facing the NATO powers is their reliance on the intelligence agencies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other allied Arab states. Many of these have become infested with Wahabbis, who are expert at conveying a distorted version of ground realities upward to their superiors. In particular, these Wahabbi nests within the Saudi, Qatari and other NATO-allied intelligence services sponsor individuals whom they know to be hostile to the core security interests of the West, but for whom they seek backing. Just as in Afghanistan and Libya, the West is funding elements that will very soon work against them.

Unfortunately, the Saudi, and especially the Qatari royal families, are assisting their own destruction by helping Wahabbi groups within their societies, and outside, to gain traction. Ultimately, such groups will seek to do away with the ruling families and at best - from the point of view of the West - establish a Muslim Brotherhood-style soft-authoritarian religious state within Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In such a task -- now that the Brotherhood has succeeded in taking over the reigns of office in Egypt -- the Wahabbi elements of the Egyptian diaspora within the GCC countries are working overtime to convince local populations to eventually follow the same route to state power through street protests. 

What does this mean for the future of Syria and for U.S. security?

Nalapat: Syria represents a battle between the Shia and the Sunni. The opposition to Bashar Assad is grounded in hatred for his Alawite faith. Wahabbis believe the Alawites to be apostates, just as they regard all Shia to be non-Muslim, and indeed apostate. The punishment for apostasy in Islam is death. Hence the current targeting of Alawites in Syria by so-called "freedom fighters", who may be expected to launch a full-scale bloodbath once they assume power in Damascus. Already, in locations now controlled by the "freedom fighters", Alawite, Christian and Druze women are being captured as trophies of war, without any coverage in the Western media.

It is extraordinary that the West is so viscerally against the Alawites. They are the group in Syrian society that is the most Western in their attire and lifestyles. Women within the Alawite community seldom resort to the veil, while other aspects of the lifestyle too are much closer to those followed by Europeans than to those followed by observers of Wahabbi doctrine. It's hard to understand why a Nicolas Sarkozy would ban the veil in France and yet support those who insist on the veil in the Middle East. Civilizationally, possibly because of the close links between the GCC monarchies and the West, the West has taken the side of the Sunni against the Shia. They are targeting Shia groups in Lebanon. And they are ignoring oppression against Shia in Saudi Arabia, as well as the suppression of the Shia majority in Bahrain.

The U.S. insisted that the new Iraqi government devolve a substantial proportion of oil revenue on the Sunni regions of Iraq, although these form a minority within the country. The silence of the U.S. and the EU on the equally justified need to ensure that the Shia regions of Saudi Arabia, and the Shia in particular, get a significant share of Saudi oil revenue indicates, to local minds, a bias.

In 1980-82, Israel committed a strategic blunder by backing the Gemayal-led Maronite Christian groups in Lebanon in their assault on the Shia. The consequence is that Israel is the only country in the world facing Shia terrorism -- in contrast to the wide swathes of the globe confronting Wahabbi terror. Should the West continue to assist the Wahabbi project of marginalizing the Shia throughout the Middle East, the danger is that the whole of the West will become the target of a new breed of Shia terrorist. The West should be neutral in the current sectarian Wahabbi-Shia conflict sweeping across the Arab world. At present it is clearly on the side of the Wahabbis. Getting involved will make no friends in the long run but will create immediate enemies.

Interview for Urania, FES and Adelphi on the 3 Geos (filmed in Berlin, December 2012)

Cleo writes on risks to global financial centers for The World Today

From The World Today. Read the whole article here.

Superstorm Sandy brought devastation to New York and the city is still cleaning up the mess. When disasters hit big cities, the media naturally focus on human tragedies. In the heart-rending chaos, large, systemic failures get brief mention. 

However, as patterns develop over time, it is becoming clear that those systemic failures are occurring more often. One increasingly glaring problem is that many global trade and financial centres, including Shanghai, Mumbai, Bangkok, London as well as New York, are in vulnerable locations. Each city is projected to be increasingly subject to extreme weather, throwing periodic wrenches into the global economy. Such disruptions can weaken economic systems, and have unexpected cascading effects, from shutting down trading floors, to rupturing critical supply chains.

Extreme weather is just one factor, however. Most financial centres grew up around ports which placed these cities on the coast – New York, Shanghai, Mumbai, Bangkok – or, like London, on a large river. Population booms then led to haphazard zoning and development.

The result is overstretched infrastructure papering over the cracks in an increasingly unstable environment. Buildings start subsiding, airports go up on floodplains, saltwater infiltrates underground wiring and transport systems. And the city – a critical hub in a global economy – becomes a disaster waiting to happen. In future there will be more Sandys hitting more global centres more often. And they will affect you. Here we look at five cities and the threat they face from just one disruption, flooding.

More here.

German book is now an app!

Spielball Erde. Machtkämpfe im Klimawandel is now an app available on iTunes. 

Cleo interviewed on Voice of Russia about Kyoto

VoR’s Tim Ecott spoke to Cleo and asked her what was actually achieved at Kyoto. You can hear the interview here.

German book is bestseller

German book has been on Der Spiegel's bestseller's list for three weeks.

Cleo releases new book, in German, and co-authored with TV anchorman Claus Kleber

A book co-authored by Cleo and German TV anchor Claus Kleber, Spielball Erde: Machtkämpfe im Klimawandel (Random House, Germany, 2012), is on the German bestseller's list.  It is loosely related to the sort of topics covered in Global Warring. And no, Cleo doesn't speak German. Google translate is a wonderful thing.

Quoted in ASP's 'Military Basing and Climate Change' report

Cleo was quoted in the American Security Project's Military Basing and Climate Change report -- one of an important and timely series of reports on climate security released by ASP at nearly the same time Sandy hit the US. You can find the Military Basing report here.

Interview: Cleo on Background Briefing talking about Sandy

Cleo was interviewed by Ian Masters on his LA-based radio show Background Briefing about Sandy in a larger geopolitical and geoeconomic context. You can hear the interview here.

Video: Cleo in the NATO Review on energy security

Featuring Chad Briggs and other people smarter than Cleo. The original is here. Filmed in Brussels, September 2012.

Quoted in China Dialogue

Cleo was quoted in Olivia Boyd's interesting article on environmental change and the implications for Shanghai. A sample:

Cleo Paskal is associate fellow at London-based think-tank Chatham House and author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises will Redraw the World Map. She points to enduring corruption, poor transparency and a “King Cnut” emphasis on heavy engineering as an environmental fix-all as reasons to be worried. [...]

But for Paskal, this is a sign China is not prepared to admit that its richest – and perhaps most prestigious – mainland city, home to glittering skyscrapers and the Maglev bullet train, is at risk of catastrophe as climate change rewrites the rules of the game. It is “very hard to imagine” that a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina won’t happen at some point here, she said, pointing out that Shanghai shares many similarities with New Orleans: aside from rising sea-levels, both cities sit in typhoon pathways and on sinking river deltas – Shanghai has dropped by more than 1.8 metres since 1921. Meanwhile, chemical plants strung along the coast and interspersed with high-rise apartment blocks – built thanks to malleable zoning laws and pally relations between local officials and developers – mean a “Fukushima-type” scenario could also be on the cards, she said. 

“If China wants true stable development that will show real security to its population it needs to be honest about what areas are going to stable and what areas aren’t. They can’t continue to band-aid a place like Shanghai, because it will get hit and when it gets hit the implications are humanitarian but they’re also economic and political.”

For more, click here.

Quoted in The Telegraph (UK)

Cleo was quoted in Colin Freeman's The Telegraph story on the Arctic: 

Yet the fact Beijing has no realistic territorial claim there may not stop it seeing the Arctic as its own backyard, according to Ms Paskal. What Moscow wants to rename as the "Russian Ocean", Beijing may opt to term the "northern Pacific".

"China is an expanding maritime power, and has already shown a 'might is right' policy in the South China Sea," she said, referring to recent military stand-offs with Vietnam over the Spratly Islands. "Potential for conflict in the Arctic is probably limited, but it may lead to a fundamental shift in world geostrategy. For centuries, northern Russia has been seen as a wall. Now it's going to be a highway, which opens up all kinds of new threats."

For more, click here.

Quoted by Bloomberg on the Arctic

Cleo is quoted in Alex Morales' Bloomberg feature Arctic Sea Ice Heads for Record Low as Melt Beats Forecasts. A sample:

“There’s a whole new frontline from a strategic standpoint,” said Cleo Paskal, a geopolitical analyst at Chatham House, a policy adviser in London. “Countries that have been kept apart by a wall of ice are now facing each other for the first time and countries like China are slipping up through the middle.”

For more, click here.

Article: Chinese Corruption Party Undermines China's Stability (HuffPo)

By Cleo Paskal

Corruption is literally built into the foundations of modern China. The construction and infrastructure sectors are two of the most corrupt in country, putting at risk China's vaunted development, and also potentially endangering its neighbors.

All across China, everything from sidewalks to apartment buildings to megadams are compromised corruption.

Apartment building in Shanghai falls over soon after completion, 2009

The corruption takes many forms. Pay-offs regularly turn up on contractors' budgets as 'public relations' fees. Bribery is often used to bypass safety standards and illegally acquire land. Corrupt local officials ignore zoning laws and allow building in danger locations, like flood plains. Cheaper, lower standard materials are substituted for the mandated safer alternatives. Public bidding on projects is often predetermined. Inspectors are bribed.

According to Jay Hoenig, former Chair of the American Chamber of
Commerce in Shanghai and current COO, Asia-Pacific, for Hill and Associates:

In a recent survey, 84% of companies reported at least one asset-protection fraud in the past three years. In China, 96% of companies reported such fraud. Of these cases, 41% of China's bribery cases were in construction, with 91% of companies suffering losses from corruption or fraud in the last three years. In fact, construction in China is always ranked first in size and frequency of fraud, ahead of defense, oil and gas and banking and finance.

In construction in China, 70% of projects are not completed on time, 73% are over budget and up to 20% of capital cost is wasted due to fraud, theft and negligence. One senior Chinese official even stated that 40% of China's construction projects are "out of control" with regard to health, safety and corruption.

China knows it has a problem. In the two years ending in December 2011, a total of 15,109 Chinese officials were punished for construction-related corruption or dereliction of duty. But the corruption is so endemic, that those numbers barely scratch the surface.

Examples abound. During the Sichuan earthquake of 2008 over 7,000 schoolrooms and dormitories collapsed, killing thousands of children. Meanwhile, in many locations, the nearby Government buildings survived the quake intact. The suspicion was that the officials made sure that proper procedures were followed where they lived and worked, but they took bribes and cut corners elsewhere.

Promised enquiries into the link between corruption and the child deaths were either not done, or not made public, and some grieving parents who tried to pursue complaints were persecuted.

At the same time that ground level stability is being compromised by pervasive corruption, top down Government diktats are resulting in the construction of vast, complex infrastructure projects that are reshaping entire ecosystems. China's approach to development has included large-scale engineering projects that connote a driving ideology that the natural environment can be controlled though engineering.

For example, engineer Professor Liu Zihui, described the idea behind China's major North-South canal as: "I don't feel we are conquering nature. We think nature itself isn't very fair. God isn't fair. Why is that? He's given Southern China so much water but given the North so little. It's good land -- nice flat land -- up there. But it's got so little water. So we say, as God isn't fair, we are trying to balance out God's unfairness."

It's not a coincidence that eight of the nine members of the apex political body in the country, the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, are engineers - including China's President, Hu Jintao, who is a hydrological engineer by training. This idea of engineering away God's unfairness has led to massive developments in unstable areas. A prime example is the coastal region around Shanghai. Shanghai, like New Orleans (which was so famously brought to its knees by Hurricane Katrina), is in an active delta, fraught with shifting waterways, subsidence, storm surges and typhoons.

The city, a global economic engine, averages no more than around 3-4 metres above sea level (the name Shanghai means "Above the Sea", implying that, from the start, there was a lot of sea and not that much land, making it exceedingly vulnerable. And yet the Government encourages development and population growth in what is clearly a highly exposed region.

As a result, as the coast around Shanghai takes typhoon hit after hit, substantial annual evacuations are required to keep growing populations out of harm's way. Some examples of recent Chinese coastal evacuations:

•2005 (July): Up to a million people evacuated from the path of Super Typhoon Haitang.
•2005 (September): At least 790,000 evacuated from path of Typhoon Talim.
•2006 (May): Over a million evacuated from path of Typhoon Chanchu.
•2006 (July): Around 320,000 evacuated from path of Typhoon Bilis. 
•2007 (September): Around two million evacuated from path of Typhoon Wipha.
•2007 (October): At least 1.4 million evacuated from path of Typhoon Krosa. 
•2008 (July): Around 600,000 evacuated from path of Typhoon Fung-Wong, Shanghai closed all ferry terminals. 
•2008 (September): 460,000 evacuated from path of Typhoon Sinlaku. 
•2009 (August): Approximately a million evacuated from path of Typhoon Morakot. 
•2010: Around 270,000 evacuated from path of Typhoon Megi.
•2011 (August): Around 1.35 million evacuated from the path of Typhoon Muifa. A chemical plant toxic waste containment pool was breached, leading to demonstrations and political unrest.

Clearly, China is facing challenges that will become increasingly difficult to engineer around. Combine that with construction that is compromised by corruption, and the implications are troubling.

And the danger spreads far beyond China's borders. A hit on Shanghai could affect the global economy, as major economic drivers are washed away, and China uses its sovereign wealth fund to rebuild it's own home.

The potential instability of China's megadams, caused by a combination of engineering hubris and corruption, is of particular concern. For example, China's Three Gorges dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, has been problematic from the start, displacing over a million people.

One key flaw was that the effects of environmental change (including climate change impacts such as changes in rainfall patterns), weren't properly factored into the dam design, making it already out of sync with its environment even before the first watt was generated. As a result, even if the planning and construction had been perfect, the dam would still be problematic.

However, to make things worse, in 2000 alone, 97 officials were convicted of corruption related to dam funds. Who knows what corners were cut and vulnerabilities introduced? A collapse of the dam would not only cause untold damage and loss of life, it could severely, if not fatally, undermine the credibility of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Similarly, the collapse of one of China's proposed megadams in the Himalayas -- which are also beset by engineering overconfidence and corruption -- could do tremendous damage to downstream neighbors, including India, potentially affecting geopolitics.

The effects of corruption are tangible in China. It is killing children, physically undermining development, and corroding the ship of state. And its effects are not going away. Given the long time scale of infrastructure, a small corner cut in 2000, can result in a major disaster in 2050.

If the CCP isn't going to become known for generations as the Chinese Corruption Party, it will need to eradicate the gnawing termites of corruption from its foundations, and fast.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cleo-paskal/chinese-corruption-party-_b_1460519.html

Article: ASEAN and the Elephants

Cleo co-wrote an article with Tinh Dinh Le, deputy director general of the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam on Southeast Asian geopolitics for Chatham House's The World Today. It was also picked up by the The Diplomat. Here it is:

ASEAN and the Elephants

By Tinh Dinh Le & Cleo Paskal

April 17, 2012

• iThere’s an old Southeast Asian saying: “We are like the grass beneath two elephants. We will be crushed underfoot regardless of whether they fight or make love.” This saying is much repeated these days now that the United States and China are in open competition in the Asia-Pacific region.Ianuary, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a new focus on the region. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “Let’s just talk straight realpolitik. We are in competition with China.” All over the Pacific, she said, China is trying to “come in behind us and come in under us.”Militarily, there have been announcements of new deployments of U.S. troops around the region, includingmarines rotating through Darwin, Australia, and more collaboration between American and Australian air forces, allowing the U.S. another access point in to the disputed South China Sea region. 
  
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There’s an old Southeast Asian saying: “We are like the grass beneath two elephants. We will be crushed underfoot regardless of whether they fight or make love.” This saying is much repeated these days now that the United States and China are in open competition in the Asia-Pacific region. 

In January, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a new focus on the region. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “Let’s just talk straight realpolitik. We are in competition with China.” All over the Pacific, she said, China is trying to “come in behind us and come in under us.” 

Militarily, there have been announcements of new deployments of U.S. troops around the region, includingmarines rotating through Darwin, Australia, and more collaboration between American and Australian air forces, allowing the U.S. another access point in to the disputed South China Sea region. 

Many neo-realists are saying that a fast-rising China, which sees a bigger role for itself in the region, isn’t comfortable with America’s moves as these restrict its room for maneuver. This isn’t a new analysis of the region. But things are different this time. 

First, China and the United States are no longer confined to raw power rivalry. The U.S. is, and China is increasingly becoming, concerned with global issues that require a response from those claiming to be major powers. As a result, China and the United States will have to show that they wish to be partners in ways that benefit the region as a whole. 

By taking advantage of U.S. and Chinese desires to engage in the region, Southeast Asia can become a champion of non-traditional security issues such as water resource management and countering climate change – issues that must be solved by collective action among states. These aren’t the traditional “hard” security domain of the neo-realists. 

Environmental projects are already leading to U.S. and Chinese engagement in the region. In 2010, the United States launched the Lower Mekong Initiative, a cooperative gesture funded by the U.S. government for effective management and equitable use of the Mekong. China, which controls the headwaters of the river, was propelled to do something in return to show its responsibility for trans-boundary affairs. 

In its initial response, China has become a bit more open to the Mekong River Commission, an inter-governmental body made up of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam that manages the great river. China isn’t yet a member, but it has been sharing some information with other riparian states about the operations of the hydro-electric dams upstream in the wet season. Certainly, more will be expected of China in the future.

Second, if either China or the United States become too overbearing, they face the risk that smaller nations will turn to the other players in the region, such as India, also a rising power with its “Look East” policy.

Finally, Southeast Asian states working together can achieve certain things that can’t be done by either China or the U.S., despite their limitless reserves. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, is proving to be an increasingly important venue for quiet, regional problem-solving and co-ordination. 

The larger networks forged through the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) have become the primary security and foreign policy discussion forum for the region. With its preventive diplomacy measures, the ARF can provide good offices, mediation, prior notification, and early warning about potential flashpoints to member countries as well as to China and the United States. 

The sinking of the South Korean navy ship the Cheonan in 2010, the U.S. joint military exercise with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, and China’s recent activities in the South China Sea have all been discussed in ARF meetings.

Times have changed in Southeast Asia. Smaller nations have a hard-earned, well-rounded and complex understanding of geopolitics in the region. They are talking to each other and, increasingly, working together. And, in many areas, they have common goals. 

The elephants aren’t going to be able to blithely stampede through. It isn’t a grassland anymore, it should be regarded as a mature forest. Successfully navigating it takes consideration of local concerns, knowledge, respect, and true partnership. The era of naked power rivalry is over. It’s a time of equitable and mutually beneficial alliances, not forced allegiances. The elephant that understands this first, and best, will have the edge. In the meantime, Southeast Asia will continue to have more options than some people imagine.

Tinh Dinh Le is deputy director general of the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam. Cleo Paskal is an Associate Fellow, Chatham House. This article was original published in the latest edition of Chatham House’s magazine The World Today here.