I have a shocking confession to make:  it's possible that maybe, just maybe, professors and graduate students don't always finish tasks on time.  Once in a blue moon, a project will sneak up on us that is due the next day, at which point the academic or aspiring academic is faced with the following menu of options: 

1)  Pull an all-nighter, throw every crazy idea onto the page, and pray something sticks;

2)  Email whomever is waiting for your written work and explain that illness/unforseeen circumstances/preparations for the zombie apocalypse mean you need another week or so to finish;

3)  Go dark on all social media, refuse to answer email queries, and hope that everything works out for the best. 

You'd be surprised how many people opt for (3), but there it is. 

I bring this up because of Mali.  Now let me confess that I am about as far from an Africa expert as one can be.  Let me further confess that I haven't paid too much attention to Mali over the past year.  My sum knowledge of the stituation there boils down to "there's some trouble in the north," "the government ain't that stable," and "gosh, people seem to be saying, 'Al Qaeda!!  There's Al Qaeda in them thar hills!!' an awful lot." 

Still, reading this Financial Times story by Xan Rice on the United Nations' latest plan of action for Mali, it doesn't seem like the Security Council knows that much more than I do: 

The UN Security Council has approved the deployment of an African force to retake northern Mali from al-Qaeda-linked insurgents.

The council also authorised the EU and individual countries to help equip and train Mali’s army, which is meant to work alongside the 3,300-strong international force. The proposed military operation is not expected to start before September 2013 to allow for proper planning and political progress in Mali....

The French-drafted text stresses the need for a twin track military and political plan. Deployment of the intervention force, known as the African-led International Support Mission in Mali, or AFISMA, was authorised for an initial one-year period to take “all necessary measures, in compliance with applicable international humanitarian law and human rights law”. Working alongside Mali’s armed forces, the goal is to retake northern Mali from “terrorist, extremist and armed groups”....

The UN resolution did not specify how the international mission will be funded. Nor is it clear how the force will be composed. The west African regional block Ecowas has pledged to supply the 3,300 troops, with Nigeria taking the lead. But US military officials believe that the desert conditions in northern Mali will be more suited to armies from non-Ecowas countries, such as Chad and Mauritania.

There are also questions about how Mali’s army will work with an outside force. Coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo, who retains significant influence in Bamako and forced the prime minister to resignthis month, is wary of allowing in foreign troops, fearing his power will be diminished.

The resolution stressed that more military planning was needed, and the security council asked Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, to report on the readiness of AFISMA troops before the start of any combat operations.

So, to sum up:  the Security Council has pledged to send peacekeepers on a timetable that makes academic publishing seem speedy, without any idea of how it will be funded, staffed, or operate with indigenous forces, married to vague calls for political action to lay the groundwork for said peacekeepers. 

So in this case, it appears that the Security Council has followed multiple academic routes -- they scrambled to put something together at thre last minute, but still managed to kick the can down the road a great deal. 

Again, let me confess that this could very well be the right thing to do -- I'm no Mali expert.  I do know something about procrastination and last-minute hackwork, however, and man, this reeks of it.

I hereby plead and beg Mali-watchers to correct my misperceptions in the comments.  Cause from the outside, this whole thing seems damn peculiar. 

[NOTE:  The following is a public service message from the hard-working team at FP Magazine to the policy wonks and market analysts inside the Beltway--ed.]

Has this happened to you in 2011?  You're stressed out from a long day of reading/writing/number crunching/contingency planning and you're looking to unwind and enjoy yourself.  Then you see the latest announcement of a European summit meeting and proclamations of a breakthrough deal that will resolve the plight of the Greek economy, the fragile state of European banks, and the perilous credit rating of southern Mediterranean countries. 

As you see stocks rise, credit markets soar, and the euro appreciate, the euro-optimism becomes intoxicating.  Pretty soon, the euro-giddiness starts to get to you.  You start to tweet things like, "the corner has been turned," post on Facebook that, "it's time to Europarty!!" and talk up the metric system again.  Nicolas Sarkozy looks like the brilliant progenitor of grand ideas and grand summits, and Angela Merkel is the shrewd politician who made the bankers blink. 

After a few hours or so of this, all the problems in the world look eminently solvable.  In your head, you've devised brilliant, intricate plans that solve the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, the India/Pakistan enduring rivalry, and the BCS college football rankings.  Before you know it, you've organized and presented a talk in which you provide the Mother of All Powerpoint Presentations to Solving Global Problems, charging the entire, catered affair to the Brookings Institution. 

Beware!!  You are a victim of Eurogoggles.  As the Economist will observe, "in the light of day, the holes in the rescue plan are plain to see."  Both AFP and Bloomberg will point out that the policy euphoria has faded the next day.  It will turn out that details are left unexplained.  The size of the bailout package, which looked massive the night before, will prove to be a limp, unsatisfying half-measure the next day.  The bank rescue fund and the Greek deal remain incomplete.  All you'll be left with is that vague sense of self-loathing at having been suckered again, and a strem of angry voice-mail messages from a DC think tank.  The walk of shame to your water-cooler the next day, in which co-workers mock your tweets of the night before, will be humiliating. 

Eurogoggles -- don't let it happen to you or your colleagues. 

I'm in Shanghai to discuss how the G-20 has been doing as the world's "premier economic forum." As fate would have it, the G-20 actually opened its collective mouth in response to the market convulsions of this week:

The Group of 20 leading economies pledged a “strong and co-ordinated” effort to stabilise the global economy in an attempt to calm tumbling equities markets spooked by fears of recession in the eurozone and a gloomy economic outlook in the US.

Bowing to pressure from investors to take action, finance ministers from the G20 economies said in a communiqué issued late on Thursday that they would stop the European debt crisis from deluging banks and financial markets, and take the necessary steps to bolster the eurozone’s rescue fund and assist banks to boost capital reserves in line with new global regulations. The statement followed a day in which the equity markets suffered some of the biggest falls since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, as investors rushed to safety in a widespread sell-off.

“We commit to take all necessary actions to preserve the stability of banking systems and financial markets as required,” the group said in a statement. “We will ensure that banks are adequately capitalised and have sufficient access to funding to deal with current risks and that they fully implement Basel III along the agreed timelines.”

The G-20's near-total muteness in the face of European sovereign debt convulsions had begun to raise some eyebrows -- particularly as it was the G-7 economies rather than the G-20 that pledged to provide dollar liquidity to European financial institutions.

Unfortunately, if you read the actual communique, you discover... well.... let's describe the statement as very optimistic about what the G-20 countries have done to promote both growth and fiscal rectitude.

One of the takeaways from my conversations so far in Shanghai has been a sense of disappointment about what the next G-20 summit in Cannes will accomplish. The Financial Times' Chris Giles provides some background on the demise of the France's grand ambitious for that summit:

In mid-February, G20 finance ministers gathered in Paris for what turned out to be a harbinger of the challenges that have beset the French G20 presidency ever since. The meeting was supposed to be routine, with finance ministers agreeing a set of indicators that might be used to assess whether their economies and policies fostered balanced global economic growth.

Far from France undermining the meeting with excessive ambitions, countries struggled to agree even the most basic steps to a more stable world economy.

A country’s current account surplus or deficit is the accepted measure of balance in its relations with other countries, but the Chinese arrived in Paris in intransigent mood. Their negotiators refused to let the G20 use the current account as an indicator of balance. After an all-night session, the absurd compromise China accepted was that countries were allowed to assess every component part of a country’s current account, but the term “current account” was banned.

That ended the French presidency’s lofty plans. From then on, limited goals became the order of the day, a shift that has been reinforced as the year has progressed.

I'd quibble a bit with Giles -- any meeting that details indicative guidelines on macroeconomic imbalances is not gonna be a routine meeting. [Um...could you translate that last sentence out of bureaucratese, please?--ed.] Sorry, to rephrase -- any meeting in which the G-20 points out that China's trade surplus is part of the problem in the global economy is not going to be a smooth meeting.

In first days after Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest, there was a big spasm of media output about how the arrest revealed the massive cultural divide between France and the United States, yada, yada, yada.  Led by blowhard French intellectuals France's cultural elite, anti-Americanism seemed ready to spike back to 2003 levels. 

A funny thing happened in the ensuing days, however, a curious countertrend has emerged -- the wave of anti-American sentiment hasn't spiked at all. 

Sophie Meunier, your humble blogger's go-to expert on all things French, explains  in the Huffington Post that what's happened instead has been far more interesting.  DSK's arrest, along with the waves of information about his behavior, have caused French commentators to go through the five stages of grief in coping with the news.  Denial and anger did dominate the first few days, but now France is going through the bargaining phase:

With a few days hindsight, however, what is most surprising about the fallout of the DSK scandal in France is not how much, but rather how little displays of anti-Americanism it has provoked. To the contrary, the scandal is now turning into a teachable moment and a frank analysis of the comparative merits of French and American society. Perhaps this is the bargaining stage: if we understand the American system, perhaps we can expect it to treat one of our own fairly?

The flamboyant declarations by Bernard-Henri Lévy who was trying to help his friend by complaining that the American judge had treated DSK "like any other" subject of justice backfired. The next news cycle in France was about introspection. What if the American justice system actually had some features that could be replicated, such as the equality of treatment? A flurry of accusatory articles popped up in the French press denouncing how a defendant of DSK's stature would never have gone through the same legal troubles in France -unlike a random "Benoit" or "Karim." As socialist and DSK friend Manuel Valls publicly confessed, criticizing the American justice system also puts the spotlight on the weaknesses of French justice. This realization that perhaps the Americans might have components in their justice system that should be replicated in France might have left many with the depressing thought - "maybe we are not as wonderful and superior as we thought: so what is now our place in the world?"

The New York Times' Sarah Maslin Nir reaches a similar conclusion in her story on the French media's reaction to the American media:

It was easy to spot the French men and women among the media hordes. Despite their fatigued condition, they were, well, better looking than many of their American counterparts, and many of them smoked cigarettes as they stood, corralled together, waiting for something to happen. They greeted one another with double kisses, one on each cheek.

There were some local customs that puzzled the French. Franck Georgel, a television reporter for the station M6, was mystified by how respectful American journalists were of police barricades set up around a Lower Manhattan building where Mr. Strauss-Kahn was staying. “In France maybe the barrier would have been dropped on the ground,” he said. “Here, you’re more, how do you say it? Civilisé.”

As he spoke, a non-French journalist outside the building, at 71 Broadway, helped a woman with a baby carriage make her way down the steps. “That’s American,” he declared. “That’s not really French.”

The Atlantic also has a good round-up on French media introspection.    

As I try to sort out all of the implications of Operation Odyssey Dawn, I see two memes that should be thought of in concert.  The first one is the striking fact that the United States seemed to be following rather than leading on organizing the U.N. Security Council to take action.  The second theme is that Libya is way far down on the list of America's Middle East priorities, so the United States should be wary about the opportunity costs of getting too involved.

Combining these two memes makes me think of my wedding -- and therefore why this aspect of U.S. policy towards Libya might be a good thing. 

Let me explain.  When my lovely bride and I were planning our nuptials, we were wary of excessive parental interventions on the issues we really cared about -- the vows, the food, the music, the seating arrangements, etc.  Of course, these were our parents, so a stonewalling strategy wasn't going to work terribly well either. 

Faced with this policy conundrum, we hit upon a brilliant idea -- we had to give them an issue that they cared about fervently but didn't really matter to us all that much.  So, we had the Official Blog Moms decide on the favors that would be at every place-setting. 

This proved to be a brilliant maneuver.  We would receive constant updates and debates about what was under consideration.  When receiving all of this information, we would smile, nod, and say, "we trust you to make the right decision."  All the while, we took care of the Big Wedding Issues that were of Serious Importance to Us.  I think the result was a win-win -- the parents claimed ownership of something they cared about, but we got the wedding we wanted. 

What does this have to do with Libya?  This issue clearly animates French President Nicolas Sarkozy more than U.S. President Barack Obama (surprisingly, given France's past preferences on these kind of issues).  Sarkozy has been receiving plaudits for his leadership.  Which is great on two counts.  First, it (hopefully) means that after the initial efforts to ensure that Libya's air defenses are neutralized, the United States really can let France and the U.K. take the lead on operational activities. 

Second, I share other's concerns that an excessive focus on Libya might distract the top U.S. leadership from Other Really Big Events.  What holds for the United States holds for France with even greater force, however.  In that sense, then, the more that Sarkozy is obsessed with Libya, the less time he can devote to overambitious and ultimately futile grand economic designs his pet projects in preparation for the 2011 G-20 summit. 

Much like big weddings, many things could go wrong along the way -- but I think pundits need to appreciate the positive second-order effects of letting France be in charge of the chocolate favor--- I mean, the immediate intricacies of enforcing Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya. 

What do you think? 

The Financial Times' Ben Hall reports that French president Nicolas Sarkozy is going to take advantage of France’s presidency of the G8 and G20 to do something serious in 2011:

Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday stepped up his attack on global exchange rate imbalances saying “monetary disorder” had become “unacceptable”

The French president said he would make exchange rate policy an important theme of France’s presidency of the G8 and G20 forums of advanced and developing economies in 2011....

With a large trade deficit and with exports that are more price-sensitive than Germany’s, France feels more susceptible to exchange-rate movements than its neighbour across the Rhine.

“We can’t increase the competitiveness of our businesses in Europe and have the dollar lose 50 per cent of its value against the euro,” Mr Sarkozy said. “When we produce in the eurozone and sell in the dollar zone, are we supposed to just give up selling?”

“You know how close I feel to the US. But this is not possible. The world has become multipolar. We must have a multi-monetary system.”

In the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen climate conference to set ambitious, binding targets for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, the French president also reiterated his demand for a carbon tax on imports to the EU from countries that sign up to “no environmental rules”.

However, he gave little indication how France could push forward with the idea, given opposition in Germany and elsewhere in the EU, and France’s recent diplomatic efforts to improve ties with Beijing (emphasis added)

That last paragraph ably sums up Sarkozy's problem, which is that he makes grandiloquent pronouncements but has almost no ability to follow through on them. 

Sarkozy's ability to influence currency politics in particular is limited at best -- not to mention contradictory.  Any diversification away from the dollar as the world's reserve currency will mean an appreciating euro, not a depreciating one, as more public and private actors try to get their hands on the currency.  This appreciation could be prevented if the European Central Bank decided to pursue an looser monetary policy.  Which I'm sure they will do.... right after cheese-eating surrender monkeys come flying out of Sarkozy's derriere.  Oh, and there's also the small matter of ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet wanting nothing to do with a globalized euro. 

I suspect none of this will silence Sarkozy -- but his words aren't going to change anything either. 

As I said previously, I've been reading Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance while in Basle.  This seems appropriate, as the book recounts the creation of the Bank of International Settlements, among other events. 

The book has been a fun and informative read, but I was particularly struck by an excerpt from a newspaper article that Ahamed quoted.  The New York World decided to advise Americans travelling to France in the summer of 1926.  At the time, the French were a bit tetchy about U.S. insistence that the French government repay its First World War debts in fill:

Don't boast in cafes that American currency is the only real honest-to-God money in the world.  It isn't.  Besides such bursts of financial patriotism are annoying to people who did not spend the years 1914 to 1916 accumulating world credit by selling munitions, cotton and wheat to other nations which were busy with a war....

Don't confide to your fellow passengers on raileay trains that America is the most generous of creditors because America has cancelled all that part of debts which nobody can collect.  Talk instead of our prowess in tennis, golf or Prohibition.  It comes with better grace. 

Is it just me, or does that seem much snarkier than most commentary you would read today? 

The Economist's Democracy in America blog takes me to task for this post on the French/European response to sending more troops to Afghanistan: 

[Drezner] then notes a small "to be sure": fewer than 5% of voters in France, Germany, Italy and Britain support sending more troops to Afghanistan too. That pretty decisively handcuffs those goverments. Why not call the Germans or Brits "passive-aggressive-y"?  Because it wouldn't fit the American stereotype of Gallic limp-wristedness.

Two quick responses.  First, the alleged constraint of public opinion (see below) did not cause either the British or German defense ministers to categorically rule out sending more troops to Afghanistan the day after Barack Obama was sworn in.  I focused on France because the French defense minister spoke up on this at an interesting juncture. 

Second, the Economist's blogger did not read precisely what I wrote, nor did s/he apparently click through to the FT story to which I linked.  I wrote, "Less than five percent of those polled believed that European countries should send troops to Afghanistan as a gesture of solidarity with Obama. (emphasis added)"  If you look at the poll, however, a significant fraction of respondents (though not a majority or a plurality) were comfortable with the idea of sending more troops "if warranted by conditions in Afghanistan."  Furthermore, this support is stronger in France than it is in either Germany or the UK, which suggests that the French government faces a lesser constraint than policymakers in Berlin or London. 

I firmly believe that public opinion should play an important role in dictating the foreign policy of a democracy -- including France.  But these opinion polls are not quite the binding constraint that the Economist suggests.  Furthermore, it seems only polite to wait and see what Obama will say on Afghanistan before issuing a firm "Non!"