Sudan's expected remapping & expectations of violence

NYT op-ed by Dave Eggers and John Prendergast.

Looking ahead to Sudan's upcoming (Jan 2011) plebiscite on dividing the country north and south--the legacy of the 2005 peace deal to end all those years of civil war.

The assumption in Sudan is that when the referendum comes, southerners will vote overwhelmingly for secession. Since Sudan became independent in 1956, the people in the south have been marginalized, terrorized and subjected to countless human rights violations under successive regimes in Khartoum, and the possibility of forming a new nation in 2011 is viewed by southerners as a sacred right.

But the referendum is scheduled for January, a mere six months away, and all signs indicate that the Khartoum government will undermine the voting process or not recognize its results. The ruling National Congress Party has stalled on virtually every pertinent part of the peace agreement, and the national and local elections in April — which most international observers agree were stained by fraud — are a foreboding precedent.

If January comes and goes without a referendum, or if the results are manipulated, then fighting will break out. Both sides have been arming themselves since the peace agreement, so this iteration of north-south violence will be far worse than ever before. And if war resumes in the south, the conflict in Darfur, in western Sudan, will surely explode again.

The Obama Administration's point man on the subject is quoted as saying the US has no real leverage, which sounds a bit like James Baker saying "we don't have a dog in the fight" WRT the Balkans way back when.

And yet, don't be surprised if we get pulled into any resulting civil war. What'll be interesting will be the Chinese response, given the oil bond.  But since the Chinese like to hedge all bets, I wouldn't be surprised to discover China playing both sides as it unfolds--as in, lotsa dogs, all barking.

More aid versus better government: the illusion of Live Aid's success--in retrospect

Brutal bit of analysis in WSJ op-ed by John-Clark Levin (who has a hyphenated first name, I ask you?).

Ground zero for the famine 25 years ago was Ethiopia, hence my newly heightened interest.

$283M raised, but a subsequent BBC investigation says that "so much of the money went to arms instead of food that it may have prolonged and deepened Ethiopia's humanitarian catastrophe."

The later UN relief effort in Somalia wasn't much better, as 80% of the food aid was stolen, such was the bad security situation, which only stabilized after the US Marines showed up in 1992.  Once we withdrew after "Black Hawk Down," the situation once again deteriorated there.

Now fast forward to 2006, when severe drought once again struck. This time, Kenya and Ethiopia, with relatively stable governments, were able to cope far better than lawless Somalia. The easing of food shortages in the Congo over the past five years happened for similar reasons--better local governance.

Levin's point:  "Famine and poverty cannot be solved with charity alone.  We can only stop them by putting an end to corruption and instability."

A certain administering to the system, I might call it. 

The remapping of Somalia proceeds

Economist story on Somaliland's relative stability as evidenced by recent elections. Somaliland is "pushing for international recognition and has been building a democratic state."  Prez election in 2002 and parliamentary one in 2005.

Pet theme of mine: wherever US troops are pulled into intervening in the post-Cold War world, there usually arises multiple states--sort of a reverse of e pluribus unum that reads, "out of one, many."

We went to Yugoslavia and there's now a cluster of states. We went to Iraq and there's now a Kurdish mini-state to the north coexisting with the Shia-dominated Arab south. We went to Afghanistan and that country too is well on its way to de facto partition between the north and south.

Finally (albeit almost two decades ago), we went to Somalia and now there's Somaliland, Puntland, the rump in the middle, and what Al Shabaab (successor to the Islamic Courts Union) owns in the south.  Somalia isn't so much a failed state as a series of mini-states being born, with varying levels of success/acceptance.  

Some "empire."  We really just play midwife to globalization's remapping dynamic, which is itself a correction of the fake-states created by European colonialists in the first great iteration of globalization more than a century ago.

Africa's Horn: radical Islam bumps into Christian fundamentalism?

Economist story that caught my eye for the simple reason that the Ethiopian mother of our two girls identified herself as a Protestant Christian.

But the larger issue:  Islam is fairly prevalent in the Horn and its radicalization is ongoing even as its remains relatively low level in prevalence.  This piece seems to argue that, if one can identify a religion on the march in the region, it's the Pentecostals. Pentecostals are a particularly virulent Christian religion in the sense that anyone can identify themselves as such by simply going the more charismatic route of embracing the notion that baptism by the Holy Spirit creates a profoundly direct spiritual bond with God (being "born again"), exhibited by speaking in tongues and so on.  Protestant and even Catholic churches can take on the "spirit-filled" nature of Pentecostalism, so the faith brand has the networking strength of an Alcoholics Anonymous in that self-selection/declaration is all that is needed to join. Powerful stuff.

Back in 1970, experts estimated the "born again" numbers in Africa to be below 20m.  Now they estimate them at 400m.  Good evidence of the growth:  fly an international flight from the US to east Africa and--especially in the summer--you will find yourself surrounded by evangelical Christians on temporary missions.

The local impact is significant enough:

Ms Wanjiru’s own church, Jesus Is Alive Ministries, is a good example of the new genre. She can draw 100,000 worshippers to a meeting. Add in a visiting televangelist and the number can rise to as many as 500,000. Ms Wanjiru has lived the Pentecostal dream. She is from a poor family of casual labourers and eked out a life as a housemaid and toilet cleaner before working her way up to a marketing job. She then experienced a vision from God calling on her to save Africa. These days videos, CDs and other accessories can be bought from her website using credit cards or phone credit. She makes good use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. She is not afraid to court controversy, last year baptising the boss of the Mungiki organised-crime outfit, Maina Njenga. Mr Njenga’s gang had been involved in extortion and had a history of hacking off the heads of its enemies.

But the business of owner-operated churches is competitive. A few dud sermons and the crowd thins. That is one reason why they are so upbeat and aspirational. Indeed, their insistent calls for self-discipline and education, striving and victory prompt some people to say Pentecostalism should be encouraged in Africa as the new version of Max Weber’s Protestant work ethic. The churches are certainly prominent in anti-corruption campaigns.

However, there is also plenty of hucksterism. You will be blessed with health and wealth by God, congregants are told, especially if you give generously. As in other parts of the world, the new churches in Kenya and Uganda provide a place for the ambitious poor to get ahead. Yet the real competitive advantage of the new churches in east Africa seems to be their willingness to tap, at least subliminally, into traditional beliefs. “They give full play to the enchanted mentality, which holds the world to be inhabited with ghosts and spirits,” explains Paul Gifford, a professor of African Christianity at the University of London. It makes economic sense: getting spells lifted and spirits cast out on a Sunday morning saves money on a visit to the witch doctor during the week.

Fascinating stuff that I would expect to grow far more significantly as Africa experiences rapid development and the transformation of so many from poverty to lower middle class status.

The SysAdmin's workload remains heavy

Christian Science Monitor story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Gist:

It may be only his second day of military training, but Abdullahi Ibrahim Aden is already convinced that he can help bring peace to his war-ravaged nation, Somalia.

Clutching an AK-47 in a field two countries away from his homeland, Aden, a former street kid, refugee, and nurse, is one of the first recruits in an ambitious program run by the European Union (EU) to help train 2,000 soldiers for the fledgling Army of Somalia's fragile Transitional Federal Government, or TFG.

"Somali children, grandfathers, and grandmothers are dying in the streets," says Aden. "That is why I came to be a volunteer, to change what is happening in my country."

Involving 150 instructors from 14 EU countries at a cost of $6 million to European taxpayers, the program is the latest in a series of internationally funded training efforts around East Africa designed to bolster the beleaguered government and nudge Somalia closer to peace after almost two decades of conflict.

Money for logistical support is coming from the United States, which has reportedly already pumped millions of dollars into similar smaller training programs run by local militaries in Uganda and Djibouti over the past 18 months.

Why so crucial? Lack of local resources.

Like all things SysAdmin, it is a matter of pay-me-now-or-pay-yourself-later.

Of course, my critics have long asserted that my vision is so naive in its assumption that Core countries will be willing to do SysAdmin work.  And yet the efforts continue and grow, and Core militaries progressively shift resources from the Leviathan bin (way too expensive for the EU anyway) and into the SysAdmin portfolio. What is needed, of course, is to steer rising New Core powers in similar directions, instead of encouraging their own fantasies regarding the utility of great-power war.

It was never a question of political will, but rather one of finally recognizing the international security landscape for what it is: an era of intense frontier integration that can either be addressed or put off by the dream of future great-power war.  But the integration will proceed apace whether we engage it or not. Globalization is simply that powerful--the essence of our 5GW victory that few on our side are ready to embrace.

Yes, there is plenty of naivete on this subject, but it rests primarily with those who cling to their romantic notions of past warfare.

Africa on the upswing

WSJ story of McKinsey & Company report released 24 June in Johannesburg concerning Africa’s burgeoning economic growth.  The report (“Lions on the Move”) states that “global businesses cannot afford to ignore the potential,” in part because it’s much more widespread than popularly realized.

Some factoids:  the continent now has more mobiles than the US (316m), Africa’s billion people spend more ($860B in 2008) than India’s 1.2B, and Africa grew twice as fast in the 00s than in the 80s and 90s.  Only Asia and Africa grew through the Great Recession.

China’s role is recognized in infrastructure development:  its investments in that sector now outpace those of the World Bank.

Most important one to remember:  the average annual number of conflicts in which 1k or more die in a year declined from just under 5 in the 1990s to 2.6 in the 00s (basically cut in half).  Again, my one regret from “The Pentagon’s New Map” was my undue pessimism on Africa.

Also impressive:  the non-resource-blessed countries grew almost as fast as the resource-heavy ones (4.6% annually in the 00s compared to 5.4%).  Inflation also dropped across the continent from an average of 22% in the 90s to 8% in the 00s.  FDI shot up from $8b in 2000 to $62B in 2008.  The demographics, despite AIDS, are decent:  by 2040 Africa will have 1.1B working-age people—more than either India or Africa.

The great Achilles heel long term?  Poor education systems, but here again I suspect the Chinese and Indians will move in, because both know how to teach at that socio-economic range.

Take out the oil, bring in the jobs

Nigerian delta rebels pic found here

FT story on oil & gas in Africa.  

Laments the troika of security forces, politicians and criminal gangs that engage in so much theft of crude oil in the Nigerian delta.  The broken promise that seems to link them all:  militants complain the government hasn't come through with the projected jobs.

So "the motivation for young men to take up arms is simple":

"There are no jobs, nothing for us, says Paul, 22, a fighter in Bayelsa state.

Worse:

Crude spills have poisoned long stretches of the creeks where locals fish, wash and workship.

Corruption is to blame:

The delta is not poor for a lack of money.  The oil-producing states receive a bigger slice of federal revenues than the rest of the country. Corruption diverts much of it, however.

What the oil companies have learned:  better to spread some wealth in offset projects (clinics, schools, etc.) to as wide a swath as possible than concentrate it in local communities.  Otherwise jealously sets in, followed by instability.

Africa: the stronger hand this time around?

FT special report on African oil & gas.  The somewhat optimistic but seemingly justified vibe:  this time around Africans hold a stronger hand:

African countries with oil and gas reserves have grown accustomed to hearing how exciting they are. Less explored and than the Middle East, possessed of sweeter crude than Latin America and in no position to imitate Russia’s strongarm tactics, they are, energy experts keep telling them, the future.

Explorers have opened up new swathes of the continent, from Lake Albert in the east to the 1,100km offshore frontier discovered in the Gulf of Guinea. Ghana and Niger are due to pump their first barrels in the coming months.

Billions of dollars have poured into deepwater and natural gas developments in Nigeria and Angola, the industry’s linchpins.

“In the past 10 years, African oil producers have become the beautiful brides,” says Charles Ukeje, an international relations specialist at Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University. “We are witnessing a new scramble.”

But crude is trading at roughly three times the average of the previous two decades and African governments have begun to respond to the surge of interest by asking with increasing vehemence: “What’s in it for us?”

Their hand is certainly strengthening. US dependence on African crude is projected to hit 25 per cent by 2015. Late last year, Nigeria surpassed Saudi Arabia as the third biggest supplier of crude to the US.

In April, China imported more oil from  Angola than anywhere else. Europe is hoping a gas pipeline across the Sahara will reduce its dependence on Russian oil – and was rattled when Gazprom tried to muscle in on the project. 

But the days when international institutions exhorted African countries to offer incentives to lure investment at all costs are gone.

“African states are entitled to receive a fair deal for the exploitation of their natural resources,” said the authors of a survey of the continent’s economies last month by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Oil investors’ ability to strike workable bargains in Africa will go some way to deciding whether what are believed to be the world’s biggest untapped hydrocarbon stocks will remain in the ground or whether the region will shoulder a greater share of global production.

Nigeria, home to 60 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa’s proven oil reserves and 70 per cent of its gas, although hampered by graft and mismanagement, has been the most abrasive battleground for this renewed reckoning.

While I will still maintain our Africom has nothing to do with this: the big oil producers for the US are in West Africa, whereas all the AQ activity is to the north and east.  Plus, quite frankly, the oil flows out of Angola and Nigeria no matter the level of violence--sad fact (although the truth is that Angola, after all those years of violence, is amazingly stable right now).

More to the point: the bulk of the new suitors are Asian--not American.

The difference this time for Africa?  In the past, the Western interest was always defined by boom-and-bust mechanics, whereas the Asian demand this time around will be substantial and sustained.  America's long efforts to encourage marketization and integration in Asia have helped create this historic opportunity. That's why Africom's primary focus, in my opinion, should be in enabling this "scramble" by improving local capacity for security provision (yes, target the baddies, such as they appear, but focus most on making this good happen in a sustainable fashion).

There is no question that social tensions will be created, and that governments in Africa will respond sub-optimally, but this is a huge opportunity not to be screwed up, and a perfect locale for Sino-American strategic partnership to emerge.

Rwanda: healthcare on the cheap

NYT story on near-universal healthcare in poor Rwanda.  $2 a year buys it.

Nothing fancy, and yet impact:

Since the insurance, known as health mutuals, rolled out, average life expectancy has risen to 52 from 48, despite a continuing AIDS epidemic, according to Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, permanent secretary of Rwanda’s Ministry of Health. Deaths in childbirth and from malaria are down sharply, she added.

Shows the utility, no matter the level of development.

Doesn't work without some outside money help, and it's hard to get locals to pay in advance, but the larger point is, if it costs something, even if it's not much, people take it a lot more seriously--and use it.

When you do SysAdmin by proxy in Somalia, you enlist children as warriors

NYT story says child soldiers exist "across the globe," but truth is, they exist only inside my Gap.

When people say it's not our role to do the SysAdmin work in these places, they just need to understand who gets pressed into service when Core great powers don't show up.

Take a good look at the kid's face, because he's working for you.

Feel any holier about our non-interference?

"When we want cheap, we go for China"

pic here

Yet another FT on Africa.

From the explosion of mobile telephony to bulging profits of beer companies, evidence of expanding consumer markets in Africa abounds.

Nice.

Hear the African middle-class consumer speak:  “When we want cheap, we go for China.”  Estimates are that 90% of appliances in the major local retail shops are from China, because their prices are about 75% cheaper than the foreign competion and 50% cheaper than the local producers’ stuff.

There's gold in them thar mobiles!

ad found here

Another FT on Africa.

How mobiles fuel banking in infrastructure-hostile environments in Africa:  Better to pay over the phone than carry the cash or waste time going to branches that do not exist.  All sorts of everyday transactions are suddenly greased to the point of actual convenience!

That growth in e-banking, in turn, fuels the ambition of local banks to expand services locally and expand the reach of their operations geographically—an incredibly virtuous trend generated primarily by sheer connectivity.

The key dynamic is the spread of banking services to the previously “underbanked.” The extension of short-term credit to individuals makes capitalism work—as in, I will gladly pay you by mobile for a hamburger today.

Credit to ODA (official developmental aid) where it is due:

Vodafone, the British telecoms company, with a local partner and the backing of Britain’s Department for International Development, launched one of the most celebrated mobile banking initiatives: M-Pesa of Kenya.

This is basically telecoms moving into banking.

What hath teleGod wrought?

Pic here

More FT on Africa as part of the World Cup focus.

The explosion of mobiles across Africa is described as the most important economic development of the last half century, revolutionizing lives and transforming society in ways all that official developmental aid never did. 

No surprise, all that rising individual-level connectivity coincides with dramatic growth in GDP and sweeping new public attitudes toward business.

Ah, but what did Barnett’s “connectivity” ever do for poor people?!?

Plenty, it turns out.

But doesn’t it just piss them off when they realize they can’t be rich like the West?

Apparently, not as much as it jazzes them to exploit new opportunities.

And we’re talking an Africa that’s still only in the 40-50% mobile penetration rate.  The continent as a whole is predicted to pass the 50% mark this year, with at least 8 nations bragging about a 100% penetration level!

Turns out the poor are not to poor for mobiles to be significantly empowering—and profitable—for everybody involved.

The FT piece:

Such success has revealed the continent’s entrepreneurial flair—when the dead hand of the state is lifted—and revived other sectors, particularly banking and consumer industries.

You know that bit about the Indian farmer choosing a mobile over an indoor toilet?  Well, a lot of Africans will pick the mobile over that much additional food.

Why?  Connectivity breeds opportunity.  Along with the mobile penetration, we see foreign direct investment balloon for both oil & gas nations and non-O&G economies.  Both groups attracted about a billion in 1989.  Both now attract in the range of $4B annually now.

Chart of the day: How much aid is too much?

Click smaller one below to enlarge.

Experience says once a country gets above approximately 15% of the GDP in aid, they're in trouble (it's a diversionary effect that also allows the government to care less what its public thinks).

This slide shows net aid as a percentage of government expenditures, where the percentages are naturally going to stand far higher.

What stands out:  

1) the single-digit crowd of North Africa and the southern cone (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, South Africa) and the outlier of Equatorial Guinea; and 

2) the 100-plus-% crowd of Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, C.A.R., Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda (98%).

The Politics Blog: 5 Things You Didn't Know About the Next Al Qaeda

Two Jersey boys by the names of Carlos Eduardo Almonte and Mohamed Mahmood Alessa were arrested over the weekend at JFK Airport as they sought to begin their jihadist pilgrimage to Somalia via Cairo. Before getting on the plane, they had dutifully lifted weights, played paintball, and — unfortunately for them — unwittingly bragged to the Feds about their dreams of killing Americans. Their training was to be completed by al Shabaab, the infamous hardcore "youth" militia that owns south-central Somalia. Because al Shabaab made our State Department's terrorist organization list in 2008, these lost boys face enough "conspiring to..." terror charges to land them in jail for the rest of their lives.

Setting aside your natural fears that America is suddenly crawling with any number of Islamic sleepers, here's five things you should know about al Shabaab.

Read the full post at Esquire.com's The Politics Blog.

NOTE:  Got this assignment Monday morning as I flew out to Baltimore.  Vonne pushed cites to me, and I wrote it on my laptop while sitting alongside the Pentagon on a beautiful sunny day.  Sent it off that night and it went up yesterday morning, while my travels continued.

I am Africa, hear me roar!

FT story citing Boston Consulting Group report:  Africa’s top 40 firms are beginning to compete successfully on the global stage, helping trigger national growth rates that rival those of the BRICs.

So yeah, countering the notion that globalization impoverishes, we’re seeing broad boat-lifting on the poorest continent in the world—right on the heels of the worst financial/trade crisis ever endured by the modern global economy!

Since 1998, the 500 top African companies have been growing in the range of 8% a year—or the China pace.

No question the resource draw from the rising New Core cohort propels a lot of this growth.

The  so-called lions are Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Libya, , Mauritius, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia.  So really the northern tier and the southern cone and the great, Singapore-like connector in Mauritius.

The collective per capital GDP of this crew stands at roughly $10,000, which outranks the BRICs collectively. 

So the old Asian tigers are now being matched by the African lions.

Quite the “de-globalization.”

Africa as a compelling new source of coal?

Map here

FT full-pager on coal rush into Africa.

Turns out Africa has got a lot of coal, and lots of the best kinds, in locations that are relatively cheap to mine.

Why not done up to now?  Coal is fairly dispersed globally, so until emerging economies start running through their own instead of exporting to the advanced West, apparently the economic impetus just wasn’t there.

But now it’s there in spades (pun intended).

So as part of the everybody-is-coming-to-Africa meme, coal is a rising quotient of activity.  This comes on top of all of the other minerals and gas and oil.

This is why, “The growth rates achieved during the past 17 years are comparable to those of the east Asian economies in the 1970s and early 1980s.”

This is why I call globalization the gift that keeps on giving.  Europe gave it to us in the 1900s (screwing everybody else with colonialism), and after the tumult of the first half of the 20^th century, we gave it to East Asia.  Now Asia is doing the same to much of the Gap but especially to Africa.  America doesn’t create that international liberal trade order (first just in the West) after World War II, this doesn’t happen.

Good thing America can’t do grand strategy, eh?

Story focuses a lot on Tete in Mozambique, where everybody in the emerging economy universe is there with cash in hand for one of the biggest and best coal deposits in the world.

You want to spot a Cold War peace dividend, this is part of it.

In 1989, US trade with Africa was about 13% of the continent’s total trade, and what China, India, Brazil, Korea and Malaysia managed  in total was maybe 5%.  Now China’s total (closer to 12%) is more than America’s (just over 10%) and the other four are closing in—cumulatively—on another 10%.

So African trade with the quintet goes from about 5% in 1989 to more almost one-quarter of the continent’s total trade, while America’s share holds steady.

More generally, Eurozone trade decreases from about one-third of Africa’s total to more like one-quarter, while emerging economies’s share goes from basically nowhere to close to half over the two-decade period since Cold War’s end. 

That’s a big infusion of new demand and new investment, with hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs arriving as part of that slipstream—mainly from China.

No, it’s not all good, but in aggregate, it beats the hell out of the past, because the West’s draw on resources—at best—created booms and busts as part of those regions’ business cycle.  Now we’re seeing sustained boom-times demand from a far larger portion of the global consumption base that has very long term infrastructure development and energy consumptions trajectories.

A lot of experts fret over a globalization “unraveling” from a Western perspective, but the larger truth is a globalization on steroids for the rising New Core and those Gap regions that get immediately tied into that stunning growth and the emergent middle class it creates.

Africa's flagships set sail?

WSJ story.

Foreign consumer goods companies from the West have competed in Africa for decades without any real competition from local players.

That changes as Africa's middle class grows.

Now, home-grown companies are expanding aggressively across the continent, eager to accommodate a growing middle-class among the billion-person population.

Highlighted is a Kenyan supermarket chain (Nakumatt Holdings), the continent's largest mobile provider (MTN Group) and South Africa's restaurant chain (Spur Corp), among others.  

The supermarket chain modeled itself on Kmart, and the founder's personal hero is Sam Walton.

Ah, but globalization is unraveling--man!

Another big Chinese investment in African minerals

Pic here, along with stunning accurate 2008 prediction of this investment

FT story on China investing $877m into South African mining industry--the second largest Chinese investment in Africa outside of oil and the first time China takes a direct stake in Africa's platinum reserves.

South Africa holds an 80% share in global platinum production, so it wasn't a tough prediction to make.

Fascinating piece by Matt Armstrong in WPR on next-generation UN peacekeeping

 The starting premise intrigues:

A subtle evolution of United Nations peacekeeping operations is underway. If the first of these missions kept an agreed-upon peace, and later missions sought to make peace, several countries now use these operations to advance their foreign and economic policy agendas, and raise their global profile. This shift, selective as it is to date, may potentially raise the standard of conduct in U.N. peacekeeping operations increasingly fraught with charges of criminal behavior, corruption, lack of accountability, and general ineffectiveness. However, there are significant downsides to this approach. 

China, Brazil and India are thereupon presented for being "well-positioned to leverage this new facet of peacekeeping."

Some cool background precedes the country analyses, to include the factoid that, "Since 2001, more than half of all U.N. peacekeeping forces have come from seven countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Jordan, Nepal and Ghana."  Body-intensive operations, occurring at heightened frequency, means the UN ends up turning to cheaper militaries--in every sense--that are rich in numbers.

Africa, we are told, is China's primary target for public diplomacy through peacekeeping.  I myself have been surprised, whenever I met with Chinese military officers, how many of them have done time on the continent. It is really viewed as a prime operational experience.  True to form, the Chinese provide purely SysAdmin troops (docs, police, observers, engineers) and no combat-capable personnel.  China explicitly explains its expanding role as filling the vacuum created by the decline of Western military participation in such peacekeeping ops.  

As natural as the day is long to me.  You go with the frontier integrators of the age--not last century's version.

Brazil is presented as seeking more peacekeeping roles as part of its long campaign to win a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, although the geographic purview of its participation remains tight on LATAM.

India, a long-time supplier of peacekeepers, is presented as lacking the tight strategic focus of China--as in, it's not yet sure what it wants to become as a great power.

Conclusion:  mostly upside for the UN with some danger that rising great powers will pick only their preferred missions.

Smart piece.