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

Quoted: NZ risks 'strategic nincompoop' tag with Pacific policy (Scoops BusinessDesk)

By Pattrick Smellie

Feb. 27 (BusinessDesk) - New Zealand risks being seen as a "strategic nincompoop, at best" if it persists with attempts to bind Pacific Island countries into the New Zealand and Australian economies using mechanisms such as the PACER Plus free trade agreement, an analyst with global think-tank Chatham House told a high-powered foreign policy conference in Wellington.

While such an approach may be intended to curb the potential influence of new actors in Oceania, such as China, it risked having the opposite effect, said Cleo Paskal, a Canada-based Chatham House associate fellow in energy, environment and resources policy, 

Her comments come just days before Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern meets her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney before making a tour of the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga early next week.

Ardern addressed the same conference in her first major foreign policy speech, saying New Zealand's international reputation was for speaking with "credibility" and acting with "decency".

On relations with Pacific Island nations, Ardern said "we can do better and we will" to assist countries "where prosperity is threatened by environmental issues and encroachment on fish stocks, as much as by size and isolation". 

Foreign Minister Winston Peters would be outlining the government's thinking on Pacific relations in a speech to the Lowy Institute, in Sydney, on Thursday, ahead of Ardern's meeting with Turnbull on Friday.

However, Paskal argued that one of the centrepieces of Australian and New Zealand policy in Oceania - the PACER Plus free trade agreement - amounted to the kind of manipulation of Pacific Island states that New Zealanders often accused the United States of bringing to bear on New Zealand.

The "incredibly peculiar deal" had been reached by what many had described as "bullying and chequebook diplomacy", with Fiji and Papua New Guinea pulling out, Tonga threatening to leave, and the Federated States of Micronesia - US protectorates - not turning up to last June's signing ceremony.

"Objectively, there are few, if any, good reasons for Pacific Island countries to ratify PACER Plus," Paskal told a session of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs conference, which was entitled 'Asia-Pacific: Game of Thrones in our Own Backyard'. 

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

She warned that such efforts could backfire and drive Pacific nations into the arms of soft loans from China and other rivals in the region rather than deepen ties to Australasia.

That also risked reducing New Zealand's value to the 'Five Eyes' intelligence-gathering partnership with the US, UK, Canada and Australia, in which New Zealand was tasked with being the primary source of reliable information about the Pacific.

"In the long term, the people of the PICs (Pacific Island countries) will suffer disproportionately, create regional instability, contribute to global disruption, giving openings to China and others, and will fundamentally make New Zealand like a strategic nincompoop at best," she said.

"Times are too tense at the moment for such an obvious and avoidable own goal."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1802/S00749/nz-risks-strategic-nincompoop-tag-with-pacific-policy.htm

Quoted: The 2018 Camden Conference — A New Player in the Global Security Game — Rising Sea Levels (The Free Press)

by Christine Parrish

Thursday, February 22, 2018 6:52 AM

Melting polar ice, rising sea levels and catastrophic hurricanes are now established factors in national security and foreign policy, according to Cleo Paskal, a policy analyst based at Chatham House in London who researches the security, economic, and political implications of climate change around the world. 

Paskal looked at two major players at the Camden Conference: the U.S. and China.

Airports are typically built on river plains or in flat places that are subject to flooding, said Paskal. As such, American air force bases are increasingly becoming liabilities, not defense installations. This was the case at Keesler Air Force Base during Hurricane Katrina and at other U.S. military bases around the world. A report released to Congress this January showed that over half of the 3,500 U.S. military bases around the world are affected by the changing climate.

The Arctic is becoming increasingly important in global security as melting polar ice opens up the way for shipping. Chinese leaders surprised many security analysts in January when they announced plans to establish a new trade route called the Polar Silk Road across the top of the world — in spite of the fact that China has no territory adjacent to the Arctic. There is no internationally adopted Arctic Treaty in place to stop them, although Arctic powers, including the U.S., are concerned.

Little islands are having big impacts, too. The 200-mile marine Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ, gives each small island a big territorial footprint on the globe under the international treaty known as the Law of the Sea.

Right now, the U.S. has the largest EEZ footprint in the Asia Pacific due to its territorial claim to islands. But the Law of the Sea left a big loophole: it didn’t account for rising seas swallowing up islands — something that is currently happening. Will the 200-mile EEZ go down in the drink, too? Maybe. If it does, it will change American influence in the region. 

While islands sink in some places, China is building islands in the South China Sea to capture the territorial claim to the 200-mile EEZ. 

A rock with a hut attached manned by three unlucky Chinese soldiers doesn’t look like part of a grand territorial strategy, but it is. A military installation built on a Chinese-made island at Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands shows why. 

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the man-made islands have hardened shelters with retractable roofs for mobile missile launchers, enough hangars to house 28 military planes, and a runway long enough to land a Chinese bomber that could perform combat operations within 3,500 miles of the reclaimed reef.

The islands also overlap territorial claims made by Vietnam and the Philippines.

Without American engagement in the Law of the Sea and the other international agreements, the U.S. is poised to lose territorial advantage and strategic power that will have real consequences for American trade and security, said Paskal. The costs will make their way down to Main Street and American wallets.

https://freepressonline.com/Content/Home/Homepage-Rotator/Article/The-2018-Camden-Conference-A-New-Player-in-the-Global-Security-Game-Rising-Sea-Levels/78/720/57229

Quoted: New World Disorder and America’s future (Camden Herald)

Ron Bancroft covered the 31st Camden Conference for the Camden Herald. He wrote this about Cleo Paskal's presentation:

My personal favorite was Cleo Paskal, a Canadian working on energy and environmental issues at Chatham House in England. Cleo’s specialty is the intersection of geopolitics and the geophysical – think geopolitical implications of Chinese constructing islands out of barren rocks in the Pacific. Cleo had much to offer and she did it in a warmly self-deprecating way. This Canadian certainly endeared herself to us Americans present when she finished one Q&A in which our present administration had taken some heat by saying that we all should remember and be thankful for how much good America has and will continue to contribute to the world. I could have hugged her for that.

For the full article: https://knox.villagesoup.com/p/new-world-disorder-and-americas-future/1726314

Interview: Cleo Paskal on John Batchelor Show with Gordon Chang on The Quad Powers (US-India-Australia-Japan) rattle China.

Video: Camden Conference Panel of All Speakers (Cleo Paskal, Avril Haines, Stephen Walt, Natalie Nougayrede, Thea Mei Lee, Chas Freeman, Jerry Seib, Matthew Goodwin)

Final Panel of All Speakers from Camden Conference on Vimeo.
The 31st Camden Conference
New World Disorder and America’s Future
February 16, 17, 18, 2018

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?