Collide-a-scape

I am a huge fan of Foreign Policy magazine’s website. In addition to their terrific roster of bloggers, they put up a treasure trove of original content every day. I’m convinced they’ve hit on a successful journalistic formula. The lively mag site on the web is a different animal from the print version. The two complement each other nicely.

Take a look at some of the headlines and articles from today. My favorite is “How to Cover a Paranoid Regime from your Laptop.” That’s a brilliant headline, like so many of FP’s heds.

And they also show how a magazine can follow up on a story it covered a few months earlier (so many magazines don’t do this), with a piece, entitled, “Seriously, the Congo does not Exist.”

The editor in me admires the whole package presented daily on FP. These folks know how to make foreign policy-related news and issues accessible to the general reader. That’s no easy feat. Other mags with a traditionally niche or specialized audience would do well to emulate FP.

When deforestation is covered in places like this, the environmental debate becomes much richer and expansive:

It’s not news that some sectors (and top brass) in the U.S. military are taking environmental issues seriously.

But what’s news to me is that a legendary Vietnamese war general–someone who played an instrumental role in defeating France and then the U.S.– has suddenly gone green. According to this Grist story, Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap is opposed to a chinese mining project in Vietnam’s central highlands. Giap, who is 97, says:

The exploitation will cause serious consequences on the environment, society and national defense.

I can imagine what the ecological and social concerns might be, but it’s not clear from the Grist story what the national security concern is.

There is growing belief within U.S. military and foreign policy circles that global climate change could potentially trigger widespread geopolitical instability. So I get that national security connection. But why would a Vietnemese general contend that mining in his country poses a threat to its national defense?

This op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor suggests that “environmental engagement” could serve as sort of a back-door channel for easing U.S.-China tensions:

Environmental collaboration is unlikely to hit politically sensitive buttons, and thus offers great potential to deepen dialogue and cooperation. Military-to-military dialogue can facilitate the sharing of best practices on a range of environmental security issues. It can help both nations and their regional partners prepare for natural disasters – which are expected to intensify in a warming world – and improve the ability of civilian agencies and militaries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. It can also develop personal relationships that can provide deeper understanding in times of crisis.

This is a good example of the nexus between the maturing field of environmental security and foreign policy.

However, in terms of any future global agreement limiting carbon emissions, climate change is a sensitive issue for China that could also further complicate U.S.-China relations, something the op-ed authors gloss over.

Still, I think they are on to something:

Environmental security issues – and climate change in particular – could be among the most productive avenues for US-China military cooperation. The world’s largest per capita emitter (the United States) and its largest total emitter (China) of greenhouse gases should identify specific areas for cooperation before the upcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Environmentalists recognize the upside too, with some offering a detailed set of recommendations here, on how the U.S. and China can engage on climate change-related issues in advance of the Copenhagen meeting.

UPDATE: As the Guardian reported earlier this week, perhaps China is softening its position on climate change.