The End of the Kyoto Protocol
By Peter Zeihan and Bart Mongoven
European leaders have expressed dismay over U.S. President George W. Bush's June 1 call for the creation of a long-term dialogue among the 15 largest greenhouse gas-emitting countries. The plan, they say, is another stall tactic designed to allow the Bush administration to appear as though it is trying to work with the international community on climate issues, when in reality it is not. Such action, they say, would take time and attention away from the difficult work being done on the issue via the Kyoto Protocol process.
In reality, however, the Bush plan signals the end of Kyoto -- and the beginning of a new international consensus that relieves Kyoto's pressures on governments.
The United States, China, India, Canada and Australia produce more than half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions -- and those emissions are growing. To be effective, then, any climate regime that endeavors to make real cuts in emissions must include these countries. By bringing the Pacific Rim countries into alignment on the issue, Bush has brought the United States far more power over global greenhouse gas emissions policy than Europe ever has had. With this, Bush takes from Europe its one global foreign policy success story.
The Regime
Signed in 1997 by more than 75 countries, the Kyoto Protocol is the recognized international regime on climate change. The protocol is an addendum to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, in which parties agreed essentially to cut greenhouse gas emissions if it was convenient for them. Since cutting those emissions is highly inconvenient, very few followed through, making the protocol necessary.
Under Kyoto, each party agreed to cut its emissions by a specific amount from 1990 levels by 201. (The European Union signed up for an 8 percent cut, the United States for 7 percent and Japan for 6 percent.) But the agreement expires in 2012, at which point all participants are once again legally free from the deal. Moreover, the protocol imposed no emission restrictions on developing countries -- including China and India -- which explains why poorer countries so strongly support it.
Though from a U.S. perspective Kyoto was flawed in many ways, it was this lack of restrictions on developing countries that rendered ratification a nonstarter in the United States. Despite the tone of the current political conversation in the United States, in a 1997 vote both Republicans and Democrats unanimously vowed to reject any climate treaty that did not include commitments from developing countries. Sens. John Kerry, Paul Wellstone, Barbara Boxer and many of the climate issue's current champions were among those who essentially declared Kyoto dead on arrival. Within four months of taking office, Bush did the same, saying the United States would take no part in talks regarding a treaty it had no interest in joining.
Amazingly, the global reaction to Bush's announcement was shock. Bush became an environmental pariah at home and around the world, with Greenpeace dubbing him the "Toxic Texan" and European leaders pleading for the United States to reconsider.
European Logic
From the European standpoint, simply bringing the United States into the climate change conversation is far more important than forcing it to cut its emissions by 2012. Given that the United States is the world's single-largest source of carbon emissions, any deal that does not have explicit American buy-in simply cannot achieve the ultimate end goal: reducing global emissions to the point of heading off the worst-case scenario of global warming.
To get the United States into the talks, then, G-8 leaders agreed in 2005 in Gleneagles, Scotland, to stop pressing for U.S. adherence to Kyoto if Washington agreed to take part in international discussions on the issue. European leaders hoped this would bring the United States into the fold for the more important negotiations on a broad and binding treaty that would address what happens after Kyoto expires in 2012.
U.S. activists fit their tactics into this broad European strategy. Kyoto proponents in the United States considered it a foregone conclusion that, under Bush, the United States would not pass a greenhouse gas-emissions-reducing policy on environmental grounds. The trick, then, was to get Bush to budge for other reasons. Environmental groups thought that if industry were faced with a maze of climate-related regulations at the state and local levels, then business -- normally hostile to greenhouse gas-related policies -- would appeal to the administration for harmonization. This, the environmentalists believed, would sneak in a U.S. greenhouse gas policy via the back door.
The environmentalists' key insights were simple: One of the few things businesses dislike more than patchwork regulation is uncertainty -- and having dozens of constantly changing competing regimes is about as uncertain as one can get. Therefore, the environmentalists believed industry would be more successful than they had been in lobbying the administration for a unified national policy on greenhouse gases. The strategy was a sound one, and local/state directives have proliferated, with laws in 15 states now forcing some climate change-related action or accounting on industry -- laws the Supreme Court already has ruled constitutional.
In the end, however, both U.S. environmental groups and European governments miscalculated. The former mistakenly assumed industry's desire for a single standard would lead industry to Kyoto; it only led industry to Washington. The latter assumed that dropping discussion of Kyoto I would lead Washington to participate in Kyoto II; instead, it led Washington to the Pacific.
American Counterpoint
History will remember 2007 as the year the United States lost its infamous position as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases to China, an event that has been inevitable for years. From the U.S. point of view, therefore, any successful greenhouse gas-limiting agreement is not dependent upon Washington's participation, but on Beijing's.
As such, Bush has engaged China, India, Australia, Canada and even a discontented Japan -- birthplace of the Kyoto Protocol -- in separate negotiations outside the Kyoto system. Called the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, this strategy eschews firm caps on emissions -- which the Americans, Chinese and Indians oppose and which have thus far proved impossible to align with Australian and Canadian resource policy. It instead focuses on sharing technology that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in developing countries; it also offers companies that are developing efficiency-related technologies an expanded market for their products. Key among such technologies are clean coal, nuclear, carbon capture/sequestration and fuel cells.
The Europeans at first saw this "Pacific direction" as a stall tactic, but deemed it acceptable as long as the goal remained intact -- that the United States would eventually join Kyoto.
That too was a miscalculation.
Ultimately, U.S. industry and the Bush administration believe joining an international regime only brings more uncertainty, as both the ideological and practical design of such regulations not only originates in but also is designed explicitly for Europe. As the train of thought runs, the only way U.S. industry can rest assured that the regulatory environment is not going to change constantly -- punishing U.S. investments and rewarding European companies at their expense -- is not simply to take part in a climate regime, but to design one at home. That means abandoning Kyoto in every form imaginable, and launching a fundamentally new program.
The U.S. business community needed Bush to present a climate policy that provides clarity and certainty. A week ago, the only "certainty" was that the United States eventually would accept some new version of Kyoto, and that the climate change issue was locked into European leadership. Bush's June 1 announcement flipped that conventional wisdom on its head. Bush has killed Kyoto and assured businesses regulatory clarity by launching an international system that the United States will heavily influence, if not control outright.
For the Europeans, the key concern so far is that the expected laxness of the Pacific plan will enamor not just the Americans, but all of the major Pacific Rim economies. Compared to the strict expectations for any Kyoto successor -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 -- Chinese and Indian preference for the Pacific plan is a shoo-in. In fact, a Chinese environmental white paper released June 4 dovetails seamlessly with the Bush plan -- and almost ignores Kyoto's existence. With Australia and Canada unwilling to divorce their climate plans from that of the United States, the likely membership in any Kyoto II would be limited to Europe alone. (Europe is the only significant signatory that actually has put the current Kyoto Protocol into practice.) But this time there will be a clear alternative, which will constantly raise the question: Why doesn't Europe get with the program?
Life after Kyoto
Bush's next job is simple: Wait until the Europeans declare Kyoto and Kyoto II dead (the protocol was mortally wounded at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland) and then present U.S. industry with a policy based on the results of negotiations with the other 14 major emitters by the end of 2008. This policy will not reflect Kyoto and will not force action by other countries.
Of course, there also is the little detail that if the Bush administration does hammer out a deal before 2009, then the next U.S. president -- regardless of party affiliation -- will take office with an internationally acceptable deal already in place. Even a Democratic president whose heart lies with Kyoto will be loathe to walk away from an agreement that puts the United States in the driver's seat and all of Asia riding shotgun. (Bush already has won support from Boxer, the Democratic senator from California, who is not exactly wed to the Bush party line.)
Ultimately, the Europeans are looking not just at a policy defeat, but also at the union's strategic failure to have any joint foreign policy. Kyoto/environmental issues have long been the only significant program in which the union has managed to make its voice heard globally. Should Europe continue to champion Kyoto now, it not only will be left out in the cold, but it also will face sharp internal debate about the reasons for deeply cutting emissions when no one else is. Several European governments already are suing the European Commission over climate-related regulations they consider too restrictive, while a newfound Polish bellicosity has led Warsaw to threaten vetoes over this and a wide raft of issues.
For those who believe that nothing but firm caps, as in the Kyoto Protocol, will forestall global warming, this is an unmitigated disaster. Those who feel that any successful global policy has to include the major non-European emitters, however, will see this is a successful first step in a way that Kyoto never was.

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Dempsey: Problems, Solutions Mark Iraq Training Landscape
By Tim Kilbride
Special to American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, June 5, 2007 – As he finishes his tour in Iraq this week, the senior U.S. military official in charge of training the Iraqi police and army offered a candid assessment of the coalition-led training regimen: significant challenges remain, but progress in key areas has been realized.

Army Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, has spent almost three of the last four years in Iraq. Looking back on the development of the Iraqi army, local police and national police over that time, he said the shifts in those institutions' growth curves have been "evolutionary" as they confront obstacles related to security, culture and geography.
In a June 1 interview with online journalists, Dempsey conceded that some American troops in Iraq on their second and third tours were "frustrated" that the "Iraqi security forces are not further along and not fully prepared to address their own security requirements." But he added that most shortcomings on the Iraqi side are a factor of an especially challenging security environment.
"The places where the Iraqi security forces are less developed and less ready to do things on their own are the places that are the most heavily contested," Dempsey said.
In those places, he explained, "the Iraqi army is challenged simply to conduct day-to-day operations at a very high tempo and a very high threat condition."
On the other hand, Dempsey noted, in "those places where the security situation is more stable, they actually have time to do things like train and develop."
Wider spectrum problems tie to issues like leadership development, ministerial capacity, organizational relationships, and recruiting, Dempsey said.
The real vulnerability in our development of the security forces, the general explained, is growing and fielding an officer pool.
Within the Iraqi army, a recent crop of newly trained lieutenants is a start, he said, but so far field grade officers -- majors and above -- have been pulled in from the former regime after careful screening.
To expand the pool, Dempsey said, his team is encouraging Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Bolani to reach out to university graduates with the offer of an Officer Candidate School-type experience.
"Right now it takes us nine months to grow a brand new second lieutenant," Dempsey explained. "We have four military academies. We produce about 2,400 brand new lieutenants every year in a nine-month curriculum."
By reaching Iraqi graduates, he said, multinational Security Transition Command Iraq could "give them something between a four- and six-month OCS experience and see if we can increase the through-put of new leaders into the system."
An additional option under consideration, Dempsey said, is decreasing the time it takes to become an officer.
"They're living a lifetime of experiences on a daily basis here, particularly in Baghdad," he noted. "And so we think it's prudent and feasible for promotion timelines to be somewhat abbreviated from what would be a normal peacetime timeline."
Rounding out the national police ranks faces similar problems, but an even greater number of them, Dempsey said.
Faced with diverse Iraqi populations that are seeking to protect their own interests first, he said, Multinational Force Iraq and the U.S. embassy maintain a team that deals with "engagement activities" independent of traditional police and military recruiting.
This outreach, meant to enhance the Iraqi security force, is "not unique to engaging with tribal groups, but it's really engagement with any group that will agree that the greatest threat to Iraq is al Qaeda and, therefore, agree to not necessarily support us, but to fight al Qaeda," Dempsey said.
The command's role in these cases, the general said, is to seek agreement on "the possibility of young men signing up either for the legitimate, validated Iraqi security forces, or in some cases finding way to have provisional groups of what might more broadly be described as, you know, neighborhood watch or route watch or local district watches."
Creation of such groups entails a "minimal amount of training and oversight by the coalition forces and the legitimate security forces," Dempsey clarified.
Oversight remains an issue throughout the security forces, Dempsey admitted.
"The impact of the leader is even more pronounced" than in the United States, he said, because Iraqi police and soldiers maintain a culture of obedience. U.S. troops place a priority on integrity and honor, but the Iraqis will follow orders without question, Dempsey said.
Blind execution of orders becomes a problem, he suggested, when sectarian rivalries are involved. As Sunni-Shiia tensions have spiked since the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing, Dempsey said, the Interior Ministry has faced "some extraordinarily difficult times with the national police."
As a result, Bolani has relieved "seven out of the nine brigade commanders and 14 out of 24 battalion commanders" from the national police, Dempsey said.
"There is a recognition that the national police are an important cog in the mechanism of security here," Dempsey said, "especially as provinces go to this thing called provincial Iraqi control."
The national police are "right around 85 percent Shiia right now," he said, a percentage that presents the wrong image for national unity. A better number would be about "65 to 70 percent Shiia," Dempsey explained.
Given that Sunnis are less likely to join what is viewed as a Shiia-dominant national police, Dempsey said, "it's sort of a circular argument that I'm faced with at this point."
In the short term, the interior minister is working to "ensure that the leaders of the national police are at least diverse," Dempsey said, while "the rank and file will be diversified over time through a replenishment program."
Moving up to the ministerial level, Dempsey said there is still a small disconnect between the Interior and Defense ministries and their respective forces in turning their institutional training into actions sufficient to support police and soldiers.
"It's one thing for the ministry to say, 'I'm ready; I got it,' and quite another then to take responsibility and accomplish the mission by providing the resources to the fielded forces," Dempsey explained.
"We tend to find they want responsibility," he continued. "They perhaps don't completely understand the breadth and scope and depth of the responsibility."
One encouraging sign is that the government of Iraq is now spending more money to support its security forces than the coalition is, the general said.
He observed, "When they now are spending their money, and they're making the procurement of weapons, and they're doing construction, and they are responsible for certain processes, they take it a lot more seriously, to tell you the truth."
Tied to the Iraqis' increasing awareness of their stake in the outcome, Dempsey said, is a more functional relationship between the government of Iraq and its soldiers and police.
"We're almost to the point where the ministry sees itself responsible for the well-being of the soldiers, and we're almost to the point where the soldiers believe that the ministry is loyal to them," Dempsey noted. "And I think when you ask me, where is the tipping point, I think that's the tipping point, in my line of work.
"I think by the end of the year we will be there," he said.
(Tim Kilbride is assigned to New Media, American Forces Information Service.)

Biographies:
Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, USA

France gets tough on illegal immigration, setting quotas for arrests, expulsions
By Associated Press
Monday, June 4, 2007 - Updated: 04:53 PM EST

PARIS - France set tough new quotas for the number of illegal immigrants authorities should arrest and expel each month, the new immigration minister said Monday.
Brice Hortefeux, who heads the newly created Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development, said a monthly quota also would be set for ferreting out those employed in France illegally.
In a meeting with security officials, Hortefeux reiterated President Nicolas Sarkozy’s goal of 25,000 expulsions by the end of 2007 - compared with 24,000 in 2006 - and set a year-end goal of 125,000 arrests for alleged illegal entry or illegal residence, a ministry statement said. The number of those already arrested was not immediately clear.
Sarkozy, who was elected May 6, pledged during his campaign to create a ministry of immigration and national identity to rein in the flow of migrants and ensure they are integrated into French society. Riots in French housing projects in 2005 were largely driven by anger among children of immigrants at persistent discrimination and a feeling of alienation from mainstream society.
Hortefeux said the new measures were aimed at "dismantling networks that exploit the misery of illegal immigrants," the statement said.
His orders came after he and Prime Minister Francois Fillon visited a holding center for illegal immigrants Monday _ and three days after the bodies of 18 illegal immigrants were fished from the Mediterranean by the crew of a French frigate.
The dead _ 12 men, two adolescent boys and four women _ were believed to be seeking new lives in Europe, though it was not clear what country they were coming from. They will be buried in France.
"The French Republic will be extremely firm. It will ensure laws are applied," Fillon said, adding: "Naturally, these laws must be applied with the greatest humanity."
Many saw Sarkozy’s proposal as a nod to the electorate on the extreme right, which long has made fighting immigration one of its main causes.
"Generosity is not opening wide the borders without thought for how people will integrate, how they will live, how they will subsist," Fillon said.
Hortefeux, in his meeting with security officials, also insisted on the need to develop a system of paying illegal immigrants to voluntarily return home, setting the number of paid departures at 2,500 for this year _ a 25 percent increase from 2006.
Those volunteering to leave, as part of a program started in late 2005, are given a fixed sum of money, normally $4,700 per couple, with $1,350 each for the first three children.

7 Turkish troops killed in rebel attack
By SELCAN HACAOGLU, Associated Press WriterMon Jun 4, 12:49 PM ET
Kurdish rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost Monday, killing seven soldiers in an attack that heightened tension at a time when Ankara has threatened military action against the rebels in northern Iraq.

The army sent helicopter gunships and reinforcements to Tunceli province in southeastern Turkey after guerrillas rammed a vehicle into the military post and opened fire with automatic weapons and rockets, local media reported.

Soldiers returned fire, killing the driver, the military said.

The attack came as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told European Union officials visiting Ankara that "we have every right to take measures against terrorist activities directed at us from northern Iraq."

Turkey's political and military leaders have been debating whether to stage an incursion into northern Iraq to try to root out Kurdish rebel bases there.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country holds the EU presidency, said he "did not get the impression that Turkey would stage an incursion."

A pro-Kurdish news agency reported Monday that Turkish troops shelled a border area in northern Iraq for a second day in an attack on Kurdish rebels based there.

Abdul-Rahman al-Chadarchi, a spokesman for the Kurdish rebel group PKK, told The Associated Press by telephone that there had been artillery shelling from Turkey into Iraqi territory at dawn, and that there had been simultaneous shelling from the Turkish and Iranian sides on Sunday night.

"There were no casualties. Most of the shells landed in empty areas, valleys and farms. Turkish helicopters are conducting surveillance flights over Iraqi border lands," al-Chadarchi said. The report could not immediately be confirmed.

The leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, confirmed shelling by Turkish troops on Kurdish areas early Sunday but said there was no Turkish incursion.

On Monday, the Belgium-based Firat news agency, citing Iraqi Kurdish sources, said Turkish artillery again targeted an area close to the border town of Zakho. On Sunday, the agency said the troops shelled the Hakurk area, farther east.

Turkish authorities, who have called the Firat agency a mouthpiece of the main Kurdish rebel group, the PKK, were not immediately available to comment.

Kurdish guerrillas have long had camps in the Hakurk area, nine miles from the Turkish border.

Turkish troops have occasionally launched brief raids in pursuit of guerrillas in northern Iraq, and have sometimes shelled suspected rebel positions across the border. Turkish authorities rarely acknowledge such military operations, which were more frequent before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Turkey has been building up its military forces on the Iraqi border in recent weeks, amid debate over whether to launch a cross border offensive to attack separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish acronym, PKK. The rebels stage raids in southeast Turkey after crossing over from hide-outs in Iraq and have escalated bomb attacks in the west of the country.

Police arrested a suspected PKK rebel who allegedly staged last month's market bombing in the Aegean port of Izmir that killed one person and injured 15 others.

June 5, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
A Million Little Pieces

By DAVID BROOKS
Over a year ago, Joe Biden, Les Gelb and others proposed a federal solution for Iraq. The basic argument was that Iraq is a ruptured society and there is no way to reconstitute it from the center.

There is no social trust between Sunnis and Shiites, the federalists observed. There is a winner-take-all mentality, which is not conducive to compromise. There is no tradition of impartial rule or impersonal justice, making it hard to establish big national institutions that won’t favor one tribe or sect.

Biden, Gelb and the federalists suggested a devolution of power to the regions, as envisioned by the Iraqi constitution.

Everybody out of power sympathized with their diagnosis, but everybody in power rejected it. Some of their objections were reasonable but not insurmountable. The Sunni and Shiite populations are too intermingled for a federal solution, senior administration officials would say when I would press them. There is no governing capacity in Iraq’s regions, so it’s crazy to talk about devolving power there, others pointed out.

Republicans, Democrats and others went ahead as if a solution could come from the center. The Republicans supported the surge, dependent on the performance of a nonsectarian national military. Democrats imagined that if they came up with the right array of benchmarks, timetables and incentives, they could induce Iraqi leaders to cut deals and make peace. A collection of smart, bipartisan people wrote the Baker-Hamilton report, based on the supposition that regional governments could work with the Iraqi center to create stability from the top down.

Now it’s a year later, and where are we? National reconciliation looks farther away than ever. There’s no petroleum law. There’s no de-Baathification law. There are no regional elections. There’s been no drop in violence.

Iraqi society has continued to fracture and is so incoherent that it can’t even have a proper civil war any more. As Gareth Stansfield wrote in a Chatham House report last month, what’s happening in Iraq is not one civil war or one insurgency. Instead, Iraq is home to many little civil wars and many little insurgencies that are fighting for local power. Even groups like the Mahdi Army are splitting.

After three and a half years of covering the conflict, Edward Wong, a Baghdad correspondent for The New York Times, wrote that the hunger for a final crushing victory overshadows any spirit of sectarian compromise. “Looking back on all I have seen of this war,” Wong wrote in last Sunday’s paper, “it now seems that the Iraqis have been driving all along for the decisive victory, the act of sahel, the day the bodies will be dragged through the streets.”

Meanwhile, American political capital has been exhausted. White House officials are looking for some modest, sustainable policy to implement after the surge. Gen. David Petraeus, on the other hand, is apparently looking to up the counterinsurgency. But Republican patience is gone. The Democrats are veering leftward and may not accept any residual U.S. force in Iraq.

The most likely outcome is that we’ll see a gradual withdrawal to the bases. Some smaller number of U.S. troops will hang around to fight Al Qaeda and to make sure nobody topples the figurehead national government. But the Iraqi people will increasingly be on their own, to find security where they can.

And the irony is that what they will get is partition. It’s just that it will be done de facto, through the back door, and in the bloodiest way possible.

For while the center remains paralyzed, local armed bands are grasping for power and creating their own facts on the ground. Wong and Damien Cave described on May 22 in The Times how this is happening. In the Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiya, Shiite militias are gradually consolidating control. They are expelling the Sunnis. They have created a system of street justice, complete with underground Islamic courts. They’ve battled rival militias. They fund their activities through extortion and bribery. But amid the mafia behavior and ethnic cleansing, they’ve created relative calm. Two thousand Shiite families have moved in.

This is now a success story: an ethnically cleansed safe place. Instead of a sort of managed soft partition that at least has a shot of transferring power to the best local people, we’re now getting machine-gun partition that transfers power to the most violent people. For Iraqis, the thug who rules your local gas station rules your life.

The continuing U.S. mistake is an unwillingness to see Iraqi reality sociologically, from the ground up.