Article: US-Pacific Relations: Pacific-Minded (The World Today)

Cleo has just published an analysis of geopolitics in the Pacific for in Chatham House's magazine The World Today. You can see it online here. And below:

In early March, United States (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made unusually direct comments to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about America's position in the Pacific. "Let's just talk straight real politik. We are in competition with China," she said. All over the Pacific, China is trying to "come in behind us and come in under us."And it is working. China's influence in the island nations of the Pacific is growing dramatically, and the repercussions are global.

But the fault does not lie completely with the US, and the win is not completely China's. The door for China's dramatic increase in influence in the island nations of the Pacific was opened by decades of mismanagement of Pacific affairs by western allies Australia and New Zealand. And if the US and the west want to regain ground, the two Pacific partners are going to have to rethink how they engage with the region.

It should not have come to this.

Review of Global Warring by Smart Energy Cycle

Smart Energy Cycle reviewed Global Warring and seemed to like it. An excerpt (for more click here):


Books about the environment are more often than not filled with exaggerations or filled with self-righteousness, but Cleo Paskal has provided one of the more comprehensive and balanced views on the real significance of environmental change.
Global Warring is a thought-provoking account into the future of international politics. We really need to wake up to the signs of impending change instead of taking our ecosystem for granted. It is important to note that Paskal frequently uses the phrase “environmental change,” presumably to convey an appropriately broader term than the oft-used “climate change” or “global warming.”
The reader gets a crash-course in geopolitics and views problems at both the micro- and macro- levels.

Articles: Series on an 'Inquiry into New Zealand’s relationship with South Pacific countries' (Tonga Chronicle)

Cleo Paskal has been doing a series for the Tonga Chronicle on New Zealand's thinking on the Pacific. In December 2010, the Government of New Zealand released an Inquiry into New Zealand’s relationship with South Pacific countries. The report is the Government of New Zealand’s biggest public rethink on South Pacific issues since the end of the Cold War. So far three articles have run in the series.

Video: Cleo Paskal on Copenhagen and Geopolitics

And the discussion continues here on Keith Kloor's blog.

Article: WikiLeaks: New Zealand Sells Itself as "a more Pacific country" than Australia - And As Key to Pacific Security. US Buys It. (Huffington Post)

In her latest Huffington Post blog entry, Cleo writes about what Wikileaks has to say about the security situation in the Pacific. An excerpt:

In a time when the Pacific is getting more attention from Washington, Wellington's role in advising on the region is becoming more valued.

This is potentially problematic in two ways.

First, NZ's information and advice may not always be as reliable as thought. There are examples of failure to predict/manage critical situations. For example, mismanagement of the Fiji coup by NZ/Australia resulted in pushing Fiji closer towards the China camp.

Similarly, in Tonga, New Zealand has been backing the 'pro-democracy' movement. That group triggered riots in 2006 that burned down much of the capital city. Following the riots, failure by NZ to substantially participate in the reconstruction resulted in Tonga having to take out a debilitating loan from China. The fact that a group supported by NZ as pro-democracy resulted in the country becoming indebted to an authoritarian country is a small indication of the something going wrong.

Another problem is the character of NZ's engagement of the region (which can affect intelligence gathering, analysis, and operations).

There is a perception of a pervasive NZ 'we know better' attitude towards Pacific island nations. For example, NZ is proposing sending a team to train the new Tongan parliamentarians in governance, in spite of the fact that the Tongan system is fundamentally different than the NZ one.

Second, NZ's interests are not necessarily US interests. NZ has its own range of national priorities and one would expect it to put those above the interests of partner states, no matter how close the relationship.

Article: Kingdom of Tonga, The Pacific, And Geopolitics, part 1 (Tonga Chronicle)

Part One of Cleo's series on Tonga, the Pacific, and geopolitics has appeared in the Tonga Chronicle. An excerpt:

While many in the region consider themselves a backwater, that is inaccurate. From a geopolitical perspective, the nations of the Pacific offer (among other things):

• Sea-lanes and ports in relatively calm waters (increasingly important as China in particular increases trade with South America);
• Access to fisheries (something increasingly important as the Atlantic is fished out);
• Agricultural exports (especially important, as concerns over food security increase in    countries such as China);
• Unknown but potentially valuable underwater resources;
• Geostrategic military basing sites;
• Crucial votes in international fora (Pacific Island countries represent around a dozen votes in the UN – a substantial voting block).

Given what is at stake, other nations are understandably keen to take advantage of discontent with traditional partners to advance their own position in the Pacific.

For more, click here. 

Article: Pacific Geopolitics (Tonga Chronicle)

Cleo's latest Tonga Chronicle column is about how foreign policy decision permeate life in the Kingdom. An excerpt:

Nuku’alofa, Kingdom of Tonga – All Tongans feel the effects of foreign policy, whether it is when shopping for New Zealand products in Chinese shops, or applying for loans at an Australian bank, or paying for energy imports from the Middle East, or going to a hospital built by Japan, or having to fly through Auckland to visit relatives in the US.

Foreign policy decisions that affect Tonga are made all the time. But often, those decisions are not made in Tonga. Someone in New Zealand decides how many Tongans get seasonal worker visas. Someone in Australia sets import regulations that can limit Tongan exports. Someone at the World Bank writes conditions for funding that will keep the Tongan government solvent. Someone in Beijing decided the loan for rebuilding downtown would be paid back in Chinese currency.

Every day, and in many ways, foreign policy pervades, and shapes, life in Tonga. But, often, Tonga isn’t in control of that policy.

For more, click here.

Article: (Huffington Post) Cleo Paskal writes on 'Why the West Is Losing the Pacific to China, the Arab League, and Just About Everyone Else'

Cleo Paskal's latest Huffington Post blog entry is called: Why the West Is Losing the Pacific to China, the Arab League, and Just About Everyone Else. An excerpt: 

Nuku'alofa, Kingdom of Tonga. The small South Pacific country of the Kingdom of Tonga has been busy. In a two-week period around the start of September, separate military delegations from the US, New Zealand, Australia, UK,  and the UN stopped by for a visit. The French sent a frigate and a military aircraft. China sent two warships.

Why all this activity in a country of 100,000? There is real concern that the West may be losing critical influence in the Pacific, while others such as China, and even the Arab League, are dramatically extending their reach. The implications are global, and may already have affected UN Security Council voting. It wasn't always this way. The Pacific is the West's to lose.

For more, click here. 

Video: Cleo Paskal on C-Span from the National Press Club, Washington, DC

Cleo Paskal talks to C-Span's Book show about Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. Topics include the investment by China in ice-breakers. She was interviewed at the 33rd Annual National Press Club Book Fair and Authors' Night, a fundraiser for the Eric Friedheim National Journalism Library and The SEED Foundation held Tuesday, November 9, 2010. To see the interview, click here (it won't embed :) )

Article: Cleo Paskal on commodities versus strategic assets (or how to win friends and influence countries -- with wheat)

Cleo Paskal analyses Canada's position as a global 'commodities' larder for the latest issue of Canadian Geographic. An excerpt (for the whole article, click here): 

Around the world, nations concerned about existing and worsening resource scarcity are making moves to secure supply. Populations facing hardship may be looking for new places to move, as refugees either after an extreme event or because of gradual erosion of stability in their home countries. And that is sure to affect the way they look at Canada.Some have been planning for scarcity for a long time. 
China’s one-child policy, implemented in 1979, followed a series of famines and was, at least in part, designed to reduce demand on resources. China’s willingness to implement such an emotionally, socially and politically difficult policy is a small indication of the seriousness with which it is also trying to secure supply. For example, along with other countries concerned about food supply, such as Saudi Arabia and South Korea, China is investing heavily in farmland in places like Africa. Often, the farms are run by Chinese nationals and the produce is destined for Chinese markets. And what scarce resources China does have, such as rare earth metals, are being kept in the country by the imposition of export quotas and high export tariffs.
The crux of it is that many of the things we currently view as commodities — say wheat and metals — are already seen as strategic assets by less fortunate nations. When something is considered a strategic asset, different economics and politics apply. A bushel of wheat isn’t viewed just as a bushel of wheat but as an essential component for keeping people from rising up against the government. During the food price spike of 2008, for instance, China was very quick to increase food subsidies to that most restive group, students. And in August, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a temporary ban on grain exports because of a severe drought that is expected to reduce the harvest by more than 20 million tonnes.
Canada may think of itself as a commodities nation, but others see us as a strategic-assets storehouse.
The question is, Will the Canadian government incorporate the increasing strategic value of our commodities into the way we engage with the rest of the world? Will we continue to sell off our storehouse to the spot-price highest bidder? Or will we try to plan for the longer term, develop a strategy and perhaps use our relative abundance to help allies get through the coming scarcities — in effect using our resources to increase our own security?
Parts of the Canadian government, including Public Safety Canada, have been considering these issues, and in certain sectors — in particular water — NGOs are raising strategic concerns. But we have a long way to go. What other nations already understand is that in an increasingly unstable world, Canada’s wheat, livestock, water, oil and land aren’t just commodities — they are stability. And that may soon become the rarest commodity of all.

Video: Hammer Forum, Los Angeles. Cleo Paskal and Jeff Biggers moderated by Ian Masters

Cleo presents second, after Jeff Biggers. But the interesting bit is the extended Q&A afterwards. For more on the Hammer Forum, click here.

Interview: Cleo Paskal on Tonga in the Matangi Tonga

Cleo Paskal spent much of August and September in the South Pacific nation of the Kingdom of Tonga, learning as much as she could in the lead up to its elections on November 25th. Mary Lyn Fonua of the Matangi Tonga interviewed Cleo about her visit. An excerpt (for the full interview, click here):


What was interesting for me was this very unique situation of having to think through many of the fundamentals of an electoral process from scratch. What do you do about term limits? What do you do about term lengths? What do you do about campaign financing? These are all critical, extremely important issues that other countries are still struggling with and they were all being dealt with at the same time; and on top of that it's fundamentally a foreign system. There are traditional government structures that have worked for a very long time, at the village level, at the church level. So the whole question of not only good governance but appropriate governance is all coming to a head here, now, and there are questions that are of universal importance anywhere human society has to govern itself. This is a unique place, and a unique time, and a unique set of circumstances for thinking about those sorts of issues.

Video: Visit to EastWest Institute in New York City

Cleo Paskal visited with the fine folks at the EastWest Institute in New York City for bagels and a most interesting discussion. A write-up of the visit can be seen here. A video interview she recorded while there is below. 

Cleo Paskal Interviewed in Canadian Business on Economic Implications of Environmental Change

Jordan Timm of Canadian Business Magazine interviewed Cleo on some of the ways environmental change could affect investments. An excerpt:


A typhoon hits Shanghai
Hurricane Katrina showed the level of destruction a storm can wreak on a developed city, and while a hit on New York isn't impossible, another global financial centre is extremely vulnerable. "Shanghai is like New Orleans," says Cleo Paskal, author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. "It's very low-lying, it's in an active delta, it's in a typhoon zone. For the last few years they've been evacuating literally hundreds of thousands of people from that coastline in anticipation of typhoon hits." Paskal says a direct typhoon hit on Shanghai could have severe repercussions, economically and globally. "If the hit is severe enough, China may have to sell off T-bills in order to fund domestic reconstruction, and pull out of strategic foreign investments for the same reason." In that scenario, she expects China to dump its holdings in secondary markets like Europe.


The big thirst
"Right now, in most economic equations water is valued at zero," says Paskal. But as it becomes an increasingly critical resource for agriculture and energy production (as much as 40% of fresh groundwater in the United States and Europe passes through an energy plant at some point), that may no longer be feasible. "A lot of economic calculations about what is viable will need to be reassessed. The water supply isn't so much a water issue as it is an energy issue." We could see one vulnerable province start bulk water sales, opening the floodgates under NAFTA. But the Holy Grail of water science, Paskal says, is a cheap desalination technology: "Whoever comes up with that is going to be a very rich person."

Video: Commonwealth Club of California interview with Cleo Paskal

fora.tv has the interview Cleo Paskal did with Amy Standen from KQED at the Commonwealth Club of California (San Francisco). It covers a range of environmental change and security issues. 

Review of Global Warring is the cover story for the Montreal Review of Books

Michael Carbert reviewed Global Warring for a cover feature for the Montreal Review of Books (see video of Michael interviewing Cleo below). Some excerpts from the review:


Paskal's goal is not to be alarmist. Instead, she wants to bring attention to the big changes both happening and likely to happen because of a warming planet, and to the simple fact that we need to prepare now for what's coming our way. Global Warring is unique among books on climate change as it eschews a strident tone in favour of a cool assessment of the changes to come, their likely outcomes, and the difficult choices we presently face...


Thus Global Warring, far from being simply another Al Gore-type warning about the peril we face, examines the likely future outcomes in terms of geopolitics, territorial sovereignty, trade, and national security. Thankfully, Paskal goes beyond a simplistic doom-and-gloom analysis that promises more disasters and more suffering. While increased chaos and conflict is likely, Paskal highlights the fact that options also exist and that few of the questions being raised by our shifting environmental conditions are anywhere close to being resolved...


Accessible, lively, and at times chilling, Global Warring is a book offering much-needed insight into a future where nothing can be taken for granted. With an eye-opening examination of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath, a cogent analysis of China's increasing global influence, and convincing arguments in favour of overhauling infrastructure and possibly even abandoning low-lying cities in Europe and North America, Paskal's book is timely and necessary reading. It's difficult to shake the idea that this is one of those books that needs to be read by as many people as possible, as soon as possible, because the near future promises to be extremely interesting, to put it mildly.

Or, as Paskal puts it, "These are the good old days."


For more, click here.

Review of Global Warring and Interview with Cleo in the Calgary Herald

Trent Edwards of the Calgary Herald reviewed Global Warring and interviewed Cleo for the paper. An excerpt:


Cleo Paskal may be an academic, but her new book is frighteningly practical.
Frightening, because Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic And Political Crises Will Redraw The World Map (Key Porter Books, $32.95) rings the alarm for all of us about the environmental changes that have the potential to devastate the world during the 21st century....
Paskal, a Canadian geopolitics expert and foreign correspondent who lives in London, England, spent a decade researching her thought-provoking book.
In it, she shows just how interdependent countries have become, and how a fast-changing environment will test nations' ability to adapt, likely causing unexpected shifts in global economic, political and security landscapes along with the more obvious changes in the physical landscape.
She delves into problem areas that could start future conflicts, such as access to water and resources in Asia, economic trends that are shifting the balance of power (such as China's policy of nationalistic capitalism) and geopolitical realignments (such as the burgeoning strategic partnership between the U.S. and India)....
Paskal's book isn't all doom and gloom. She offers helpful advice for how to prepare for, mitigate and recover from the coming changes in the environment.


To read the rest of the review, and the interview, click here.

Review of Global Warring in Environment Conflict and Cooperation

Achim Maas of Adelphi wrote a nice review of Global Warring for Environment Conflict and Cooperation. An Excerpt:


The author’s analysis of the potential developments for the Pacific Island states offers some interesting new perspectives. While these states are almost exclusively recognized as places with future "climate refugees," Paskal emphasizes the political implications of climate change for the region: currently, countries like China, Australia and Taiwan compete for the island states’ favour by providing financial and economic support. Thereby, the author argues, they hope to obtain the support of the island states in international organizations or secure access to the region’s vast maritime territories, which not only include rich fishing grounds but would also open up new opportunities for further economic exploitation, such as seabed mining.


For more, click here.

Article by Andrew Krystal in the Nova Scotia Business Journal on Cleo Paskal's concept of Nationalistic Capitalism

Andrew Krystal, in his in-depth column in the Nova Scotia Business Journal, explores the implications of nationalistic capitalism. An excerpt:


According to Cleo Paskal, the author of “Global Warring”, nationalistic capitalism, as practiced by China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), allows the Chinese state to use corporations in its sphere of influence to attain long-term strategic goals, like resource acquisition. These corporations appear, on the surface, to be like any other big multi-national. But they’re not. Says Cleo Paskal: “In China, the CCP calls the shots when it comes to who does business and how. The businesses should ideally make money, but always within the context of strengthening what the CCP deems in the best interest of China, and of itself.” 


She continues: “Conversely, in the West, one of the post-Cold war challenges we face is the marked divergence of companies from national agendas. Increasingly, it seems as though businesses are caught up in short-term thinking. The privatization of critical national industries [Britain is kicking itself over the sell-off of North Sea oil, Paskal points out] contrasts markedly with the CCP approach in which China obtains assets and then uses them for national leverage.”


To read more, click here. 

Article By Cleo Paskal and Scott Savitt: Copenhagen Consequences for the U.S., China and India

In this commentary for UPI, Cleo Paskal and Scott Savitt analyze what really happened at Copenhagen and why it was a potentially groundbreaking moment in geopolitics.

"Going in to Copenhagen, the “Rashomon” narratives of the conference varied more than many realized. The West primarily thought it was negotiating a trade deal – as evidenced by the drop in EU carbon trading prices after the talks failed to deliver a climate market deal. China was negotiating for a trade deal, but kept options open for larger strategic advantages. And India wanted to drive home big geopolitical points.

"Coming out of Copenhagen, the narrative is clearer: This was geopolitics pure and simple."

Click here to read more....