Video: Cleo Paskal's presentation at the 2018 Camden Conference

Cleo Paskal - "The '3 Geos' Reshaping Our World" from Camden Conference on Vimeo.
The 31st Camden Conference
New World Disorder and America’s Future
February 16, 17, 18, 2018

Cleo Paskal is an associate fellow in the Energy, Environment and Resources department of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, an independent policy institute based in London. She is a geopolitical expert specializing in the confluence of the “three geos” (the geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geophysical).  Her research includes the geopolitical, security, and economic implications of environmental change (including climate change) and Arctic and Pacific security.

Ms. Paskal is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Geopolitics, Manipal University, India and adjunct professor of Global Change in the School of Communication and Management Studies, Kochi, India.  In 2015, she was awarded a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Visiting Fellowship to lead a multi-year research project based at the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales de l’Université de Montréal (CÉRIUM) looking at strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific region.

Ms. Paskal has taught at the US Army War College, the Royal College of Defence Studies (UK), the National Defence College (India), and the National Defence College (Oman).   She has consulted for or briefed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the German Foreign Office, the European Union, major corporations and security professionals.

Her book Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map has won multiple awards.  Her most recent book, the bestselling Spielball Erde, was co-authored with German TV news anchor Claus Kleber, and focuses on the security implications of climate change. She has been a columnist for Canada’s National Post and Toronto Star, a radio producer for the BBC, and the author of an Emmy-winning documentary television series.

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The 2018 Camden Conference explored shifts in global power and the ramifications for major players, particularly China, the US and the nations of Europe, in pursuing their national interests. Our speakers addressed the impact of globalization, the rise of nationalism, transformations in global economies, and the management of a range of future threats such as climate change, population growth, and cyber insecurity.  How can the United States remain competitive economically, preserve national security, safeguard American values, and meet dangerous challenges from unstable countries? What role in the world do Americans want for their country?

Interview: Analyst highly critical of NZ over PACER Plus deal (Radio New Zealand)

From Dateline Pacific.

8 March 2018. An analyst says New Zealand's planned trade deal with Pacific Island nations could be extremely damaging to their economies.

For the past ten years, New Zealand with Australia has been strongly promoting the PACER PLUS trade deal and it is now awaiting ratification. 

But Dr Cleo Paskal of the global think tank Chatham House says the deal shows a disconnect between the country's political aims in the region and its economic moves.

Speaking at a recent New Zealand Institute of International Affairs Dr Paskal said New Zealand risks gaining "strategic nincompoop" status.

Don Wiseman asked what she meant.

Audio is here.

Interview: Cleo Paskal on John Batchelor Show with Gordon Chang on 'Canada mishandles trendy identity politics in India'

Quoted: NZ told PACER Plus deal could be destructive for the Pacific (Radio New Zealand)

6 March 2018

An analyst says New Zealand's planned trade deal with the Pacific Island nations could be extremely damaging to their economies.

Representatives who signed the PACER Plus trade agreement in Tonga Photo: Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat

New Zealand with Australia has been strongly promoting the PACER Plus trade over the past 10 years and later last year it got the required backing, though it is still to be ratified.

But Dr Cleo Paskal of the global think tank Chatham House said there was very little in PACER Plue for the island nations.

She said Australia and New Zealand had bullied Pacific countries into a deal that offers very little and include no development for them.

"If you push through this deal you will end up not creating an integrated economic environment that ultimately revolves around Australia and New Zealand, you will end up with a fragmented Pacific economic area, which creates even more dislocation internally and potentially more inequalities and more abilities for outside actors to come in."

Dr Cleo Paskal said the way PACER Plus has been approached shows a disconnect between the economic engagement in the Pacific and the political and strategic engagement.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/351935/nz-told-pacer-plus-deal-could-be-destructive-for-the-pacific

Interview: Analyst highly critical of NZ over PACER Plus deal (Radio New Zealand)

From Dateline Pacific. An analyst says New Zealand's planned trade deal with Pacific Island nations could be extremely damaging to their economies. For the past ten years, New Zealand with Australia has been strongly promoting the PACER PLUS trade deal and it is now awaiting ratification. 

But Dr Cleo Paskal of the global think tank Chatham House says the deal shows a disconnect between the country's political aims in the region and its economic moves.

Speaking at a recent New Zealand Institute of International Affairs Dr Paskal said New Zealand risks gaining "strategic nincompoop" status.

Don Wiseman asked what she meant.

Audio is here.

Quoted: New Zealand risks becoming a “strategic nincompoop” as China woos tiny Pacific islands (Quartz)

Good piece by Steve Mollman on China and New Zealand in Oceania. Quotes Cleo Paskal:

However, the strategic effectiveness of the free-trade agreement New Zealand and Australia have in place with Pacific island nations, called PACER Plus, came under criticism this week ahead of Ardern’s trip. The agreement as structured amounts to “bullying” and can make the island nations poorer and less resilient, making it more likely they’ll accept soft loans from China, argued Cleo Paskal, an associate fellow with the Chatham House think tank, at a New Zealand Institute of International Affairs conference. Nations like Fiji and Papua New Guinea declined to join the deal, Paskal noted, over concerns it would harm their economy. She warned that New Zealand risks being a “strategic nincompoop,” accidentally acting to shore up China’s influence in the region, rather than its own.

“Times are too tense at the moment for such an obvious and avoidable own goal,” she said.

https://qz.com/1219925/new-zealand-risks-becoming-a-strategic-nincompoop-as-china-woos-tiny-pacific-islands/

Audio: Camden Conference talk on Maine Public Radio (watch the video instead -- the slides help)

Thursday, March 1 at 2:00 pm

New World Disorder And America’s Future - “The ‘Three Geos’ Reshaping Our World.”

Cleo Paskal AUDIO: https://cpa.ds.npr.org/mpbn/audio/2018/02/20180301_sim_cc_cleo_paskal_0.mp3

In part one of a two-part episode, Evan Medeiros, Managing Director of Asia at the Eurasia Group and former Special Assistant to President Obama, talks about “Politics, Nationalism And Their Impact On Us-China Relation And China’s Role In World Affairs.”  In part two of a two-part episode, Cleo Paskal, Associate Fellow at The Royal Institute of International Affairs, talks about “The 3 Geos Reshaping Our World.”

Speaker:
Cleo Paskal
Cleo Paskal is an associate fellow in the Energy, Environment and Resources department of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, an independent policy institute based in London. She is a geopolitical expert specializing in the confluence of the “three geos” (the geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geophysical).  Her research includes the geopolitical, security, and economic implications of environmental change (including climate change) and Arctic and Pacific security.

Ms. Paskal is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Geopolitics, Manipal University, India and adjunct professor of Global Change in the School of Communication and Management Studies, Kochi, India.  In 2015, she was awarded a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Visiting Fellowship to lead a multi-year research project based at the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales de l’Université de Montréal (CÉRIUM) looking at strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific region.

Ms. Paskal has taught at the US Army War College, the Royal College of Defence Studies (UK), the National Defence College (India), and the National Defence College (Oman).   She has consulted for or briefed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the German Foreign Office, the European Union, major corporations and security professionals.

Her book Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map has won multiple awards.  Her most recent book, the bestselling Spielball Erde, was co-authored with German TV news anchor Claus Kleber, and focuses on the security implications of climate change. She has been a columnist for Canada’s National Post and Toronto Star, a radio producer for the BBC, and the author of an Emmy-winning documentary television series.

The Camden Conference is a non-partisan, non-profit, volunteer-run organization whose mission is to foster informed discourse on world issues through community events benefitting hundreds of Maine university and high school students. Its signature February Conference is presented in Camden, Rockland, Belfast, and Portland.

Source:  www.camdenconference.org/2018-camden-conference/
For more information about the 31st annual Camden Conference, please click HERE.

Quoted: New Zealand risks 'strategic nincompoop' status in the Pacific (Stuff; Widely Syndicated in NZ)

PATTRICK SMELLIE

Last updated 05:00, March 1 2018

OPINION: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's first major foreign policy speech, delivered this week, ended with the observation that when New Zealand speaks on the world stage, it does so with "credibility" and when it acts, it does so with "decency".

We'd all certainly like to believe that.

But as she heads to Sydney to meet counterpart Malcolm Turnbull this Friday and next week makes a tour of the Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga, and Niue, uncomfortable questions are being asked about how well New Zealand is playing its role in the Pacific.

​Speaking at the same New Zealand Institute of International Affairs conference as Ardern, an associate fellow with the global think tank Chatham House, Dr Cleo Paskal, laid out a damning alternative to the assumption New Zealand is Pacific Island countries'(PICs) best friend.

Rather, she says New Zealand risks "strategic nincompoop" status as the contest for influence in the region heats up against a global backdrop in which China and authoritarianism are on the rise while the global rules-based system underpinned since the Second World War by the United States declines.

Speaking at the same session as Paskal, Australian Institute of International Affairs president Allan Gyngell declared the post-war global order "is over" and "we're going to look back on that period as one that was much better suited to small and middle-sized powers" like New Zealand and Australia.

Gyngell's point was partly hawkish Aussie, suggesting New Zealand won't be able to keep straddling the diplomatic fence between the US and China, and between the economic and security trade-offs implied by choosing between the two.

In that context, Paskal suggested a troubling confusion in attempting to integrate PICs into the economies of Australia and New Zealand using mechanisms such as the PACER Plus free trade  agreement.

Rather than making these strategically important neighbours more resilient and self-sufficient, PACER Plus is likely to make them poorer, less well-disposed to New Zealand and Australia, and more likely to be driven into the arms of regional contestants such as the Chinese, she argued.

Excluding French Polynesian territories, PICs represent just 2.3 million people spread across 15 per cent of the Earth's surface. The World Bank says they are among the most exposed to annual natural disasters and long term climate change impacts.

Yet their geographic location means their strategic importance, for shipping and aviation, defence and security, and access to resources, particularly fish stocks far outstrips their economic potential.

Just making them viable states is challenge enough, and the blandishments of cheap loans, few-strings-attached infrastructure projects and resource deals with other nations, particularly China, are deeply tempting to Pacific Island governments.

That being so, New Zealand and Australia's main strategic focus should be to keep the PICs focused on Australasia as their main source of regional security and support, Paskal argued. 

Instead, New Zealand and Australia have been pursuing "an incredibly peculiar deal" in the form of PACER Plus, for which there are "few, if any, good reasons" for PICs to sign.

Rather than strengthening the region, PACER Plus is "essentially creating division economically in the region … creating regional instability, contributing to global disruption, giving openings to China and others and will fundamentally make New Zealand look like a strategic nincompoop, at best", she said. 

Papua New Guinea and Fiji have already refused to sign the deal, Tonga is wobbly, and US-aligned Federated States of Micronesia have gone AWOL, and French Polynesia was always outside the tent. 

"If we're talking about moral leadership, you really need to take a look at the reality of what's going on in the trade negotiations going in with Pacific Island partners," said Paskal.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/101846532/pattrick-smellie-making-trouble-in-our-own-backyard