Il 65% ritiene che la propria organizzazione non abbia valutato correttamente le proprie specificità
Secondo un recente studio Ricoh, nelle
medie imprese europee le frustrazioni legate alla tecnologia incidono
negativamente sul morale e sul coinvolgimento dei dipendenti.
Oltre un terzo (36%) dei
lavoratori delle medie aziende europee fatica a sentirsi motivato
quando lavora da casa a causa di problematiche legate alla tecnologia.
A dirlo è un nuovo studio Ricoh che ha coinvolto 573 dipendenti di aziende europee con un organico compreso tra le 251 e le 1.000 unità. La ricerca sottolinea come la mancanza di investimenti in soluzioni per la trasformazione digitale sta danneggiando il morale dei lavoratori, in quanto essi faticano a trovare il tempo per
svolgere attività a valore aggiunto o comunque gratificanti a livello
personale. Questo comporta il rischio che i migliori talenti cerchino di
cambiare azienda per trovarne una più innovativa e meglio preparata
alle nuove modalità di lavoro.
Il
65% degli intervistati sostiene che la propria organizzazione abbia
implementato processi digitalizzati semplicemente per ricalcare quanto
fatto da clienti e partner, senza però considerare le proprie esigenze e
specificità. Entrando più nel dettaglio: il 39% del campione d’indagine
lamenta di non riuscire ad accedere alle informazioni necessarie per
interagire in modo adeguato con i clienti e solo un quarto (26%)
sostiene che la propria impresa abbia investito in piattaforme di
e-commerce o in soluzioni digitali con l’obiettivo di migliorare la customer experience.
Sfide ancora aperte
Dalla
ricerca emerge inoltre come, nonostante la tecnologia permetta di
lavorare in modo più smart e produttivo, il carico di lavoro per i
dipendenti sia addirittura aumentato. Questo perché molto spesso nella
scelta e nell’implementazione delle nuove soluzioni non si tiene conto
delle peculiarità dell’organizzazione e delle modalità operative in
essere.
Inoltre,
il passaggio al lavoro da remoto pone nuove questioni in relazione alla
sicurezza delle informazioni. Il 45% dei dipendenti dice di essere
preoccupato circa la possibilità di condividere accidentalmente file
digitali riservati con destinatari non autorizzati a visionarli.
David
Mills, CEO di Ricoh Europe, commenta così i risultati dello studio: “È
preoccupante come dopo più di un anno di lavoro da remoto, e
con la luce che si intravede alla fine del lungo tunnel della pandemia,
la motivazione dei dipendenti continua a peggiorare a causa delle sfide
poste dall’Information Technology. Non si tratta di mancanza di impegno
da parte delle aziende. Il problema è che molte investono nella
tecnologia fine a se stessa oppure per seguire le orme di un partner o
di un cliente. Il primo passo per qualsiasi investimento tecnologico
deve essere invece quello di identificare ciò di cui si ha davvero
bisogno, tenendo conto del punto di vista dei dipendenti e dei clienti.
Solo in questo modo è possibile compiere investimenti che consentono
alle imprese di ottenere vantaggi immediati e alle persone di lavorare
meglio”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
has said an incident involving a British destroyer in the Black Sea
couldn't have triggered a global conflict even if Russia had sunk the
warship because the West knows it can't win such a war.
The tough statement appeared to indicate his resolve to raise the stakes should a similar incident happen again.
Speaking
in a marathon call-in show, Mr Putin also revealed that he received the
domestically produced Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and urged Russians
to get vaccinated as the country battles a devastating surge of cases
and deaths amid widespread hesitancy to get the shot.
Mr
Putin was asked about the June 23 incident in the Black Sea, in which
Russia said one of its warships fired warning shots and a warplane
dropped bombs in the path of Britain's HMS Defender to force it from an
area near Crimea that Moscow claims as its territorial waters.
He said a US reconnaissance aircraft had joined what he described as a "provocation" to test Russia's response.
Britain,
which like most other nations does not recognise Russia's 2014
annexation of Crimea, insisted the Defender wasn't fired upon and said
it was sailing in Ukrainian waters.
"HMS
Defender was conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial
waters in accordance with international law," Britain's Defense Ministry
said.
Asked if the events could have triggered a global war, Mr Putin responded that the West wouldn't risk a full-scale conflict.
"Even
if we had sunk that ship, it would be hard to imagine that it would put
the world on the brink of World War III because those who do it know
that they can't emerge as winners in that war, and it's very important,"
Mr Putin said.
Two Russian jets conducted "mock attacks" on a Dutch frigate in the Black Sea, the Netherlands government said. (Dutch Ministry of Defence)
The
statement followed Russian officials' warning that if a Western warship
enters the waters again, the military could fire on it.
Mr
Putin charged that the US reconnaissance aircraft that took off from
the Greek island of Crete was operating in concert with the British ship
on an apparent mission to monitor the Russian military's response to
the British destroyer.
"It
was clearly a provocation, a complex one involving not only the British
but also the Americans," he said, adding that Moscow was aware of the
US intentions and responded accordingly to avoid revealing sensitive
data.
Asked
about Mr Putin's claim, Navy Captain Wendy Snyder, the chief of public
affairs for the US European Command, said that "yes, we did have
aircraft in operations," but reaffirmed the Pentagon's earlier dismissal
of the Russian description of the incident as false.
"We are operating in and watching everything in the Black Sea region, as we always do," Captain Snyder said.
The
Russian leader specifically lamented that the incident closely followed
his summit with US President Joe Biden in Geneva last month.
Mr Putin met with US President Joe Biden last month. (AP)
"The world is undergoing a radical change," he said.
"Our
US partners realise that, and that's why the Geneva meeting took place.
But on the other hand, they are trying to secure their monopolist
stance, resulting in threats and destructive action such as drills,
provocations and sanctions."
Even
though the West doesn't recognise Crimea as part of Russia, Mr Putin
said the naval incident took the controversy to a new level.
"They don't recognise something — OK, they can keep refusing to recognise it," he said.
"But why conduct such provocations?"
Mr Putin insisted Russia would firmly defend its interests.
"We are fighting for ourselves and our future on our own territory," he said.
"It's
not us who traveled thousands of kilometres to come to them; it's them
who have come to our borders and violated our territorial waters."
Dmitri
Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, warned that last
week's Black Sea incident presages a new, riskier level of
confrontation.
"Fresh
attempts to expose Russian 'red line' deterrence as hollow - whether on
the ground, in the air, or at sea - would push Moscow to defend what it
cannot give up without losing its self-respect," Mr Trenin said in a
commentary.
Countries with the highest military expenditure in the world
"This
would almost inevitably lead to clashes and casualties, which would
carry the risk of further escalation. Should this happen, Russia-NATO
confrontation would deteriorate literally to the point of brinkmanship, a
truly bleak scenario."
Mr
Putin also reaffirmed his claim of a close kinship between the Russian
and Ukrainian people, but accused Kyiv of hostility toward Russia and
voiced doubt about the value of a meeting with Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him a Western pawn.
"Why
meet Zelenskyy if he has put his country under full foreign control and
key issues for Ukraine are decided not in Kyiv but in Washington, and,
to a certain extent, Paris and Berlin?" Mr Putin asked.
Ukraine's
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba retorted by tweeting that Putin wishes
Ukraine's issues were decided in Moscow. "This is our country and it's
only up to us to decide our fate," he added.
Earlier
this year, Russia bolstered its forces near Ukraine and warned that
Moscow could intervene if Kyiv used force to reclaim areas in the east
controlled by Russia-backed separatists since a conflict there erupted
in 2014. Moscow later pulled back some troops, but Ukrainian authorities
said the bulk of them remain close to the border.
Mr Putin spent most of the four-hour Direct Line
show discussing domestic issues — typical for the tightly choreographed
annual rite that helps him polish his image as a strong leader caring
for people's needs.
It
didn't feature any questions about Russia's beleaguered opposition and
Putin's most prominent political foe, Alexei Navalny, who is in prison.
He
voiced hope the country could avoid a nationwide coronavirus lockdown
amid a surge of new infections. Reported deaths in Russia hit a daily
record Wednesday, with authorities reporting 669, but Mr Putin said
decisions by regional officials to make vaccinations mandatory for some
workers should help.
Russia
has been registering over 20,000 new coronavirus cases and about 600
deaths every day since June 24. On Wednesday, 21,042 new infections were
recorded.
Russian
officials blame the June surge on Russians' lax attitude toward taking
precautions, more infectious variants, and a low rate of vaccinations,
which experts attribute to widespread hesitancy to get the shot and
limited vaccine production.
Although
Russia was among the first countries to deploy a vaccine, just over 15
percent of the population has received at least one shot.
Amid
this hesitancy, Mr Putin revealed he received the Sputnik V vaccine. Mr
Putin got his first shot in late March out of the public eye and has
remained tight-lipped about which vaccine he chose.
On
other issues, Mr Putin said Russia has no intention of banning Western
social media platforms but emphasized that the government merely wants
them to abide by the law, promptly remove inappropriate content and open
offices in Russia.
"We
tell them: 'You're spreading child pornography, or instructions on (how
to commit) suicide, or how to create Molotov cocktails. ... You must
take it down,' and they simply don't listen, don't want to listen to
what we tell them," Mr Putin said.
The U.S. Can’t “Win” an Arms Race With Russia and China
Trump’s childish nuclear gambling and obsessive jingoism have combined in a strategy that could end arms control as we know it.
Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
The president who told the American people
that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” now appears equally
confident about “winning” a nuclear arms race. Last week, Donald Trump
made a half-baked, ill-advised decision to pull the United States out of its Open Skies Treaty
with Russia; now, his administration is signaling plans to blow up the
last major security accord standing, the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty, or New START, with Russia, and thus open the door to an arms race.
In a streaming Q&A with the Hudson Institute last week, Marshall Billingslea, Trump’s arms-controlenvoy, conceded
that major-power nuclear accords were vital to human security, but he
added that if New START fell apart, everything would be fine. “The president’s made clear that we have a tried-and-true practice here,” Billingslea said. “We know how to win these [arms] races. And we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion.”
In
a little over seven months, New START is set to expire, and the Trump
administration is threatening to disregard the agreement’s five-year
extension provision—a no-brainer renewal that would be routinely
approved under a normal administration—unless China joins the talks and
Russia makes additional concessions. If Washington blocks New START’s
extension, then as of February 5, 2021, the nuclear arsenals of the U.S.
and Russia will be without legal limits for the first time in decades.
In that world, the treaty’s verification measures—the sort that allowed American inspectors to see Russia’s fancy new hypersonic boost-gliding intercontinental ballistic missile warhead up close, for instance—would evaporate.
Summer Sale: 50% off fearless reporting. 1 year for $10Subscribe
Russian President Vladimir Putin has already offered
to extend the treaty without preconditions, but skeptics in the
administration see Putin’s eagerness on the matter as weakness,
interpreting it as evidence that their hard-line stance is working to
raise anxieties in Moscow. If the U.S. is willing to let New START
collapse, the onus remains on Washington to show what will come after
it. But just as there was no Trump plan to actually “win” a trade war
with China, there isn’t any plan for guaranteeing American security in a
new post-treaty arms race.
Billingslea’s casual suggestion that
the U.S. knows “how to win” an arms race is wrongheaded but common
enough: Despite the Soviet Union’s demise, neither Washington nor Moscow
“won” the Cold War–era arms race. Instead, to manage the costs of
unconstrained nuclear competition—and to reduce the risks of an
undesired nuclear war—the two parties saw fit to discuss mutual
limitations and sign multiple treaties. The “victory,” such as it was,
actually culminated with New START’s predecessor agreements.
Of
course, Billingslea knows a thing or two about spending into oblivion.
After starting his career as a defense adviser to the late Senator Jesse
Helms, Billingslea worked in the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration, helping to spend an estimated $6.4 trillion on post-9/11 overseas wars
that have killed 800,000 people worldwide and displaced 21 million.
(His arms-control duties for Trump are a consolation prize, granted to
him after his nomination to the State Department’s top human rights post stalled out
over his role in Bush-era torture of detainees.) If spending without
results is what’s being promised, Billingslea might have a case.
Even if the U.S. weren’t facing a second Depression and suffering from epochal deficit expansion following Trump’s 2018 tax cuts,
as an unelected presidential envoy, Billingslea simply has no standing
to argue that the U.S. will spend lavishly on nuclear weapons “if we
have to”—that is, if he fails at his primary job, negotiating. Those
fiscal priorities are up to Congress, which has spent heavily on defense in recent years
only to pull back from an increasingly contentious Middle East, fight
to a stalemate in Afghanistan, and suffer corruption and civil unrest at
home. Nuclear arsenal notwithstanding, the U.S. is looking more like
the late-stage Soviet Union than an unconstrained hegemon.
Summer Sale: 50% off fearless reporting. 1 year for $10Subscribe
There’s
a tragic irony in the White House bracing for an arms race to prove
it’s serious about getting China to the arms-control table. China, like
all nuclear weapons states, should take steps to reduce its counts, but
the Beijing nuclear arsenal amounts to about 5 percent of America’s atomic arms stockpile: By one estimate, France holds more nuclear warheads than China. Even if you take at face value the Defense Intelligence Agency assessment
that China will look to double its arsenal in the years ahead, its
total stockpile of warheads would still be well below half the limits
that New START places on Russian and American warheads. (Beijing’s deployed warhead counts would be far lower yet, possibly in the low double-digits; the U.S. can deploy that many warheads on just one or two of its 14 ballistic-missile submarines.)
Nor
has China’s essential nuclear posture—relying on a small number of
dispersed nuclear weapons for deterrence-by-punishment—changed since the
1960s. Though a debate exists within China on the appropriate size of its own nuclear arsenal,
those at the levers of nuclear policy have seen fit to maintain the
country’s comparatively modest deterrence posture. As much as American
national security culture obsesses over nuclear inferiority, there’s
simply not much enthusiasm in Beijing to outpace the U.S. here in any
meaningful way.
The Trump administration’s theory of why
arms-racing might be desirable remains inchoate at best and delusional
at worst. One explanation is that it flows from the basic hegemonic militarism that has defined the White House’s choices on defense policy. In his days as a candidate, Trump moaned that the American “nuclear is old and tired,” while Russia’s was “tippy top, from what I hear.”
In
fairness, the administration’s stated focus on multilateralizing arms
control with Russia and China isn’t a bad one. At some point, China will
have to come to the table. But holding New START hostage to Beijing’s
participation—a nonstarter in the short time remaining before the
treaty’s lapse—suggests an entire lack of good faith in the White House.
Negotiating in good faith requires seriously hearing out what
the other side would want out of an exchange; today, there’s not much to
go on, since the U.S. and China haven’t held official talks on
“strategic stability” in years. The administration could, of course,
propose such exploratory talks with Beijing while moving ahead with New
START’s five-year extension to preserve the status quo with Russia.
Instead, what we’re left with is bad faith: a desire to show that an
attempt was made to bring China in, but Beijing demurred, and so New
START had to die.
If you want a more secure, stable world, that’s not a great strategy. But if you’re looking to goose American exceptionalism by whipping citizens into a Sinophobic froth
at a time when America looks more and more like other disappointingly
dissembling regimes, you could do worse. “If China wants to be a great
power, and we know it has that self-image, it needs to behave like one,”
Billingslea said, without any hint of irony. This sort of unilateral,
I’m-the-grown-up-here dictating of terms hasn’t worked for the U.S. with
Iran or North Korea: It certainly won’t work with China or Russia. To
be interested in what works, however, the Trump
administration
would need a certain pragmatism about statecraft that has been absent
from day one. What remains is oblivion, and how much treasure this White
House is willing to expend in bringing it a little closer.
Biden and Putin agree: 'Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought'
US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir
Putin have concluded a high-stakes summit aimed at cooperation but
dominated by deep disagreements.
Watch video05:18
Biden, Putin hold 'positive' summit but major differences remain
US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have ended their highly anticipated summit in Geneva.
As
talks ended after less than the five hours either side thought they
would need, Biden gave a thumbs up. Members of the US team said the
meeting had been "quite successful."
After the meeting, the two
sides released a joint statement on one of the main topics of
discussion, nuclear proliferation. The statement read, "Nuclear war
cannot be won and must never be fought."
DW Moscow correspondent
Emily Sherwin said, "Biden managed to walk a fine line with Putin,"
recognizing Russia's desire to be seen as a major geopolitical power.
The
joint US-Russian statement said progress on shared goals could be
achieved, "even in periods of tension," going on to state, "The United
States and Russia will embark together on an integrated bilateral
Strategic Stability Dialogue in the near future that will be deliberate
and robust."
The statement added that the countries "seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures."
Watch video01:40
Biden-Putin summit: Tensions over Belarus
What Putin said after the meeting
Russian
President Vladimir Putin, who described Biden as a "well-balanced" and
"experienced statesman" and the talks as "constructive," was the first
of the two leaders to address reporters after the meeting, declaring:
"The meeting was actually very efficient. It was substantive, it was
specific. It was aimed at achieving results and one of them was pushing
back the frontiers of trust."
Putin spoke of Biden's judgment on
arms control, saying: "I think it is clear to everyone that President
Biden has made the responsible and, in our view, perfectly timely
decision to extend the New START treaty for five years, which means until 2024."
"Of
course, that begs the question of what happens next," Putin said.
Pointing out that arms control discussions would be launched and held at
the interagency level. Those high-level discussions were also announced
in a joint White House-Kremlin statement released immediately after the
summit concluded.
Watch video01:16
Putin calls Biden 'well balanced' and 'experienced'
Signed
in 2010, the New START treaty limits the number of strategic nuclear
warheads, missiles and bombers Russia and US can deploy to no more than
1,550 strategic nuclear warheads each.
Putin also praised Biden
as an "experienced statesman" willing to sit down for hours with other
leaders, as noted by DW's Richard Walker.
Western reporters pressed Putin on Russia's human rights record and the detention of Alexei Navalny.
Putin refused to call Navalny by name, referring to him only as a
"Russian citizen" and a "repeat offender." Putin went on to say: "This
person knew that he was breaking the law in Russia. Consciously ignoring
the requirements of the law, he went abroad for treatment," accusing
Navalny of having, "deliberately acted to be detained."
Putin also defended his crackdown on Navalny's anti-graft group, which
he claims "publicly called for riots, involved minors in riots" and
"publicly described how to make Molotov cocktails." Putin chafed at
criticism of Russia's human rights record, calling out US "double
standards," saying Washington was seeking to interfere in Russian
domestic affairs.
Initially, he referenced the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement
in the US, saying: "What we saw was disorder, disruption, violations of
the law, etc. We feel sympathy for the United States of America, but we
don’t want that to happen on our territory and we’ll do our utmost in
order to not allow it to happen."
Putin also defended individuals
who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, saying they had legitimate
political demands and declaring that he "would not be lectured on human
rights" by Washington.
Asked about his willingness to forego
instability, which the US defines as a trait of Russian policy, in order
to improve relations, Putin took the opportunity to forcefully rail on
the US definition of predictability, calling it a "contradiction of
terms," and noting that "just because the West believes it, does not
mean that it is necessarily true." He then cited US withdrawal from a
number of international arms treaties (INF, JCPOA, Open Skies) as well
its active support for what he called a "coup d'état" in Ukraine,
asking, "Is that what you call stability?"
When asked by a
Canadian reporter to answer a question posed by her young daughter,
namely why he was in Geneva? Putin said it was because he was, "Trying
to make the world a safer place."
What Biden said after the meeting
US President Biden later addressed reporters at a separate briefing at which he also took questions.
In
describing the one-on-one summit, Biden said: "I must tell you, the
tone of the entire meetings, I guess it was a total of four hours, was
good, positive. There wasn't any strident action taken. Where we
disagreed, I disagreed, stated where it was. Where he disagreed, he
stated. But it was not done in a hyperbolic atmosphere.
"The bottom line is I told President Putin that we need to have some basic rules of the road that we can all abide by."
Biden
sought to stress goodwill toward Russia throughout, noting, "I also
said there are areas where there is a mutual interest for us to
cooperate, for our people ... but also for the benefit of the world and
the security of the world. One of those issues is strategic stability."
"And
I'm pleased," Biden said, "that we have agreed today to launch a
bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue, diplomatic speak for saying get
our military experts and our diplomats together to work on a mechanism
that can lead to control of new and dangerous and sophisticated weapons
that are coming on the scene now."
"Another area we spent a great deal of time on was cyber and cybersecurity,"
said Biden. "I talked about the proposition that certain critical
infrastructure should be off-limits to attack. Period. By cyber or any
other means, I gave them a list, if I am not mistaken, I don't have it
in front of me, of 16 different entities."
"I pointed out to him
we have significant cyber capability, and he knows it. He doesn't know
exactly what it is, but it's significant. If, in fact, they violate
these basic norms, we will respond. He knows, in the cyber world. Number
two, I think that the last thing he wants now is a Cold War," the US
president said.
Biden said the two also spoke of releasing
imprisoned US businessmen currently being held in Moscow in that same
context. He said he told Putin he had to "change the dynamic," if he
wanted US businesses to invest in Russia. He also noted, "It's in our
interest to see the Russian people do well."
"All foreign policy
is a logical extension of personal relationships. It's the way human
nature functions. And understand, when you run a country that does not
abide by international norms — and yet you need those international
norms to be somehow managed so you can participate in the benefits
that flow from that — it hurts you," Biden said.
Seeking to
illustrate the situation, Biden asked: "What would it be like if we
engaged in activities that he's engaged in? It diminishes the standing
of a country that is desperately trying to make sure it maintains its
standing as a major world power."
Watch video00:47
Biden: 'I think the last thing he wants is a cold war'
Asked
why he was confident that Putin and Russia would change their behavior
after meeting him, Biden indignantly retorted that he wasn't. "What will
change their behavior is if the rest of the world reacts and it
diminishes their standing in the world."
Biden also summarized
the significance of his entire European trip by emphasizing: "Over this
last week, I believe, I hope, that the United States has shown the world
that we are back, standing with our allies. We rallied our fellow
democracies to make concerted commitments to take on the biggest
challenges our world faces. And now, we have established a clear basis
on how we intend to deal with Russia and the US-Russia relationship.
There's lots more work ahead. I'm not suggesting any of this is done.
We've gotten a lot of business done on this trip."
Watch video02:15
Biden: 'My agenda is not against Russia'
What did observers say about the talks?
US
Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Chris Kupchan told DW the
two leaders were "not coming in looking for a bromance like Trump and Putin," but Biden could "invest in some kind of working relationship with Putin."
"Biden is much more worried about China
than he is about Russia. And I'm guessing that Putin is growing quietly
uncomfortable with China. So part of this conversation might be about
trying to improve the Western relationship with Russia in a way that
contains China's leverage and gives Moscow a little bit of breathing
room in its relationship with Beijing," he said.
Watch video01:55
NATO declares China a global security threat
Andrey
Kortunov, director-general of the Kremlin-founded Russian International
Affairs Council (RIAC), said Putin "understands that relations between
Russia and the United States will continue to be mostly adversarial, at
least for the foreseeable future. But at the same time, there are some
potential pockets of cooperation that can be pursued further. And even
the confrontation can and should be managed, to reduce costs and to cut
down the risks."
David O'Sullivan, former EU ambassador to the
US, said Biden would aim to be charming, and at the same time "open but
firm on the points which are important for him."
"He will reach
out to Putin and say, 'look, we don't agree on everything. Let's find a
way of coexisting and not creating excessive tensions for each other.'"
Russia-US relations: The contentious issues
Biden playing it cool
President
Joe Biden has kept his cards close to his chest ahead of the summit in
Geneva. He declined to say how he plans to confront Putin during talks
with his Russian counterpart — but is expected to address key issues.
"I'm not looking for conflict with Russia, but we will respond if Russia
continues its harmful activities," Biden said ahead of the summit.
Updated
Former President George W. Bush addresses the nation
aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln May 1, 2003, as
it sails for Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, California.
STEPHEN JAFFE/AFP/Getty Images
A month into his presidency, Donald Trump lamented that the US no longer wins wars as it once did.
“When I was young, in high school and college, everybody used to say we never lost a war,” Trump told a group of US governors last February. “Now, we never win a war.”
Dominic Tierney, a professor at Swarthmore College and the author of multiple books about how America wages war, may know the reason why.
He believes the US can still successfully fight the wars
of yesteryear — World War-style conflicts — but hasn’t yet mastered how
to win wars against insurgents, which are smaller fights against groups
within countries. The problem is the US continues to involve itself in
those kinds of fights.
“We’re still stuck in this view that war is like the
Super Bowl: We meet on the field, both sides have uniforms, we score
points, someone wins, and when the game ends you go home,” he told me.
“That’s not what war is like now.”
The US military is currently mired in conflicts
in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. It’s hard to see
any end in sight — especially an end where the United States is the
victor, however that’s defined.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Alex Ward
During his first year in office, Trump got the US more deeply involved
in wars, with the goal of defeating terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Syria, and Somalia. But has this put the US on course to end these
fights?
Dominic Tierney
Victory may be asking a lot.
Since
1945, the United States has very rarely achieved meaningful victory.
The United States has fought five major wars — Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf
War, Iraq, Afghanistan — and only the Gulf War in 1991 can really be
classified as a clear success.
There are reasons for that, primarily the shift in the
nature of war to civil conflicts, where the United States has struggled.
Trump himself recognized this: He said
on the campaign trail numerous times that we used to win wars and we
don’t win anymore. And he has promised to turn the page on this era of
defeat and said that we were going to get sick and tired of winning.
But will he channel that observation into winning wars? I doubt it.
The nature of war continues to be these difficult
internal conflicts in places like Afghanistan, where the United States
has struggled long before Trump ever dreamed of running for president.
Alex Ward
So what constitutes victory in war today, and has that changed from the past?
Dominic Tierney
The famous war theorist Carl von Clausewitz argued
that war is the continuation of politics by other means. So war is not
just about blowing things up — it’s about achieving political goals.
The United States, up until 1945, won virtually all the
major wars that it fought. The reason is those wars were overwhelmingly
wars between countries. The US has always been very good at that.
But that kind of war has become the exception. If you
look around the world today, about 90 percent of wars are civil wars.
These are complex insurgencies, sometimes involving different rebel
groups, where the government faces a crisis of legitimacy.
The US has found, for various reasons, that it’s far more
difficult to achieve its goals in these cases. The three longest wars
in US history are Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan — all from recent
decades, all these complex types of civil wars.
Alex Ward
On its face, this seems to be a paradox: The US can win
on the battlefield against a major military force, but we can’t seem to
win these smaller wars.
Dominic Tierney
Yes. And even more surprising: It’s when the US became a
superpower and created the best-trained, strongest military the world
has ever seen, around 1945, that the US stopped winning wars.
The answer to the puzzle is that American power turned out to be a double-edged sword.
The US was so powerful after World War II, especially
after the Soviet Union disappeared, that Washington was tempted to
intervene in distant conflicts around the world in places like Vietnam,
Iraq, and Afghanistan.
We ended up intervening in countries where we had little
cultural understanding. To illustrate this, in 2006 — at the height of
the Iraq War — there were 1,000 officials in the US embassy in Baghdad,
but only six of them spoke Arabic.
In addition, the US military has failed to adapt to this
new era of war. The US military has this playbook for success against
countries: technology, big-unit warfare, and so on. And when we started
fighting insurgents, it was natural that we would turn to that same
playbook.
Alex Ward
So we might not have much cultural understanding of the
places where we’re fighting, but we have greater technology and better
fighting forces. Why can’t we overcome this obstacle?
Dominic Tierney
The reason, again, comes down to the difference between
an interstate [more traditional] war and a counterinsurgency, or
nation-building mission.
One difference is that we cannot easily see the enemy. In
an interstate war, the enemy is wearing uniforms, we know where they
are on a map. In a counterinsurgency they are hiding in the population.
Now, the US military is capable of hitting any target
with pinpoint accuracy using the latest hardware. But what if we don’t
know where the enemy is? A lot of that technology, which is really
impressive, turns out to be irrelevant.
Alex Ward
It seems like we have two problems here. We haven’t
corrected our way of thinking to deal with insurgencies or civil wars,
and then we keep getting involved in those kinds of wars, despite the
fact that we’re ill-prepared to deal with them.
Why do we keep falling into this trap?
Dominic Tierney
One answer is we basically believe in illusions — the idea that nation-building and counterinsurgency will be avoided.
Look at Iraq, where the United States believed it could
topple Saddam Hussein and basically leave as quickly as possible. We
would overthrow the tyrant and then the Iraqi people would be free to
create their own democracy. That was based on massive overconfidence
about what would happen after Hussein fell.
So why do we go to war if we hate counterinsurgency and
we struggle at it? The reason is the White House convinces itself it
doesn’t need to stabilize or help rebuild a country after a war. But
it’s not just the Bush administration — think of the Obama
administration too.
Barack Obama was a very thoughtful president and talked
at length about his foreign policy thinking. At the heart of the Obama
doctrine was “no more Iraq War.” And yet he basically made the same
mistake in Libya, where there was very little planning for what would
occur after Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011. In fact, Obama went on the record saying that the Libya intervention was his worst mistake a president.
Alex Ward
So if it really is a bunch of wishful illusions and
incorrect assumptions, how do we avoid that? We have tons of evidence
that things don’t go our way when we get involved in these kinds of
wars. We don’t seem to learn from our mistakes.
Dominic Tierney
We don’t learn very well from history. Presidents convince themselves that the next time will be different.
The lesson Obama took from Iraq was not to allow any US
ground forces to get involved in nation-building. Since Obama was
willing to support regime change, the end result was going to be the
overthrow of Qaddafi with no real plan to stabilize Libya.
If a thoughtful president like Obama — who was very
cognizant of the errors of Iraq — can do that, it suggests that any
president would be capable of doing that.
Alex Ward
It seems like one of the problems is that we’re involving ourselves in these wars with little preparation. How do we solve that?
Dominic Tierney
We need better language training, cultural training, more
resources for special forces — and that would mean less money spent on
nuclear attack submarines, for example.
Second, once we improve America’s ability for
stabilization missions, we deploy the US military with greater care and
fight fewer wars. That means when we do fight, we have a better plan to win the peace.
Alex Ward
But then there’s another problem: Sometimes groups like ISIS arise, and US leaders and many Americans want
the military to take them out. So when the president is faced with the
option to target a group like ISIS with airpower, some would argue that
it’s better, politically, to do that.
Dominic Tierney
The US doesn’t think several moves ahead. The US military
is good at taking out bad guys. But the removal of the bad guy creates a
power vacuum, and that power vacuum is filled by somebody else.
In Afghanistan, we created disorder and then the Taliban
returned — the power vacuum there was also filled by ISIS. And in Iraq,
the vacuum was filled by militant groups, most notably al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In Libya, the vacuum was filled by a complicated range of militant
groups.
The mood in the US is: “We just killed ISIS, let’s go home and close the book on the ISIS war.” Well, there’s more to the story.
Alex Ward
The Trump administration says it will pay less attention
to defeating terrorists and will now focus more on battling back growing
Chinese and Russian power.
That new strategic focus means we’ll change the kinds of
weapons we buy and the kind of training our troops do. But I don’t see
the US stopping its fight against terrorism. Does this preparation for a
different style of war — while still fighting another — put the US in
an awkward position?
Dominic Tierney
I think it does.
There is a desire to shift from difficult nation-building
missions toward countering great-power challengers like Russia and
especially China. But this isn’t very new. The Obama administration
wanted to pivot to Asia and the China challenge. And then what happened?
We ended up being engaged against ISIS.
I tend to think that the pivot to China is sort of like Waiting for Godot —
it never arrives. And I think the United States is going to get drawn
back into these civil wars and these kinds of messy conflicts,
particularly in the broader Middle East. The odds of conflict between
the US and China are very low; the odds of the US engaging in another
civil war in the next five years are extremely high.
Alex Ward
Based on this conversation, victory in war seems to be how we define it, or, rather, will it to be. The US sets its victory goals low, but we don’t even meet those lower goals. Why can’t we get over this hump?
Dominic Tierney
We’re still stuck in this view that war is like the Super
Bowl: We meet on the field, both sides have uniforms, we score points,
someone wins, and when the game ends you go home. That’s not what war is
like now. Now there are tons of civilians on the field, the enemy team
doesn’t wear a uniform, and the game never ends. We need to know there’s
no neat ending.
The costs of this problem have been so catastrophic for
the United States, in the form of thousands of military lives and
billions of dollars spent. It’s time we fundamentally rethink our vision
of what war is.
Il Governatore Ignazio Visco è intervenuto oggi su "Back to the future of money" durante il panel online dell'Andrew Crockett Memorial Lecture tenuta da Mark Carney, un evento biennale organizzato dalla Banca dei Regolamenti Internazionali.
Banche e Covid: la pandemia accelera la trasformazione digitale del sistema bancario
23 marzo 2021
Banche e Covid: la pandemia accelera la trasformazione digitale del sistema bancario
Condividi su:
Forte
ricorso al lavoro da casa e maggiore distribuzione dei servizi tramite i
canali digitali. Sono alcuni degli effetti che il Coronavirus ha avuto
sul sistema bancario italiano. A fornire un quadro dettagliato sui
rischi tipici del settore e sulla organizzazione degli istituti è l’Osservatorio Monetario (1/2021) dell’Università
Cattolica. In questo numero il rapporto quadrimestrale sulla
congiuntura economica e internazionale - a cura del Laboratorio di analisi monetaria dell’Ateneo (Lam) e realizzato in collaborazione con l’Associazione per lo sviluppo degli studi di banca e borsa (Assbb) - propone un’analisi ad ampio raggio dell’impatto della pandemia sulle banche italiane.
«La pandemia da Covid-19 è destinata ad avere effetti di lungo periodo
sull’organizzazione e sui modelli di business degli intermediari
finanziari. Essa sta accelerando dinamiche di trasformazione digitale
già in atto. Stanno emergendo nuovi modelli di organizzazione del
lavoro, con largo ricorso allo smart working», spiega Angelo Baglioni, direttore di Osservatorio Monetario, presentato lunedì 22 marzo nell’ambito del webinar Covid-19. Conseguenze e rischi per il sistema bancario.
I dati parlano chiaro: nei mesi maggio-settembre 2020, i dipendenti
che hanno lavorato completamente da remoto sono stati la maggioranza e
in numero quasi doppio rispetto ai settori non finanziari (58% contro il
31%). Anche quando le misure di distanziamento sociale verranno meno,
l’adozione di modelli di lavoro a distanza consentirà di aumentare il
cosiddetto bank desk ratio, cioè il rapporto tra posti di lavoro
equivalenti a tempo pieno (full time equivalent - FTE) e scrivanie,
dall’odierno 1,2 FTE per scrivania a 1,6-1,8 a seconda delle stime,
liberando dal 25% al 40% degli spazi di lavoro.
Nel frattempo cresce la domanda di prodotti e servizi digitali, che
rafforza la trasformazione dei modelli distributivi, con la migrazione
verso i canali in remoto e la conseguente ridefinizione della rete di
filiali. La rete era già notevolmente “dimagrita” nel decennio
precedente, con la chiusura di 9.800 filiali tra il 2010 e il 2019,
segnando una riduzione del 28%. Con la riduzione dell’uso del contante e
degli assegni e con la migrazione delle operazioni più semplici ai
canali digitali, la razionalizzazione della rete subirà una ulteriore
spinta. In Italia, il 15-20% della clientela bancaria dichiara che
intende aumentare l’utilizzo dei canali digitali, per accedere ai
servizi bancari, anche una volta superata la particolare situazione
creata dalla pandemia.
Accanto agli impatti organizzativo-gestionali della pandemia nel
settore bancario, l’Osservatorio Monetario si occupa anche di gestione
del credito e Covid-19. «Alla fine del 2020 si osservava ancora una
situazione “pre-crisi”, sia per i ritardi con cui la recessione si
manifesta normalmente sui bilanci bancari, sia grazie ai provvedimenti
governativi (moratorie ex lege, prorogate fino al 30 giugno prossimo) e
agli accordi di settore, volti a evitare che difficoltà temporanee si
traducessero in una ondata di insolvenze. Tuttavia, le stime sulle
condizioni di famiglie e imprese lasciano prevedere un netto
peggioramento della loro capacità di fare fronte ai loro impegni di
servizio del debito. Il deterioramento del merito di credito sarà
particolarmente grave per i settori più colpiti dai lockdown: alloggio e
ristorazione, arte e intrattenimento, immobiliare. Per le imprese
italiane nel loro insieme, la probabilità di insolvenza è aumentata, tra
il febbraio e il dicembre de 2020, dal 4,5% al 5,1%. Nel settore dei
servizi turistici, essa è passata dal 5,8% all’11%. Nel settore
alberghiero e ristorazione è passata dal 6,4% all’8,7%. Nel settore dei
trasporti, dal 4,8% al 5,7%. Bene invece l’edilizia, che registra un
lieve incremento: dal 7,1% al 7,3%», osserva il professor Baglioni.
Inoltre, «vi è il rischio che le politiche di forbearance rimandino
la soluzione dei problemi, tenendo in vita imprese che non hanno serie
prospettive di ripresa (zombie firms). In prospettiva, sarà essenziale
per le banche istituire un assetto di governance che ponga attenzione
alla determinazione dell’appetito al rischio (risk appetite framework),
agli indicatori di monitoraggio e alle soglie di intervento tempestivo
(early warning), nonché alle politiche di interlocuzione con la
clientela in difficoltà. Per le famiglie, la ristrutturazione del debito
di quelle insolventi a causa della pandemia, mediante l’istituzione di
schemi di ristrutturazione volontaria stragiudiziale, potrebbe essere la
soluzione migliore, in alternativa alla gestione ordinaria e ad altre
politiche di sostegno».
Altro aspetto analizzato è anche quello del rischio azionario. «Il
mercato azionario ha reagito con una perdita molto significativa (-40%)
nella fase iniziale dell’emergenza pandemica (febbraio-marzo 2020), che
però è stata gradualmente recuperata nei mesi successivi. Il recupero è
stato solo transitoriamente interrotto a fine ottobre 2020, in
concomitanza con la seconda ondata di contagi. Tuttavia, il recupero non
è stato uniforme in tutti i settori: a fine 2020, l’indice azionario
del settore bancario europeo scontava ancora una perdita del 25%
rispetto al livello ante-Covid. Il mercato obbligazionario, sia nel
comparto governativo sia nel comparto corporate, ha evidenziato un
andamento analogo: la correzione osservata all’avvio dell’emergenza è
stata progressivamente riassorbita entro la fine del 2020. Lo scenario
futuro, nonostante le importanti iniziative di policy attivate, si
presenta incerto e fortemente dipendente dall’esito dei piani vaccinali,
dalle misure di supporto fiscale e dalle azioni di politica monetaria»,
precisa il professor Baglioni.
Gli ultimi capitoli del rapporto sono dedicati a liquidità bancaria e
politica monetaria. «Sotto il profilo della disponibilità di risorse
liquide e di attività stanziabili come collaterale presso l’Eurosistema,
le condizioni di liquidità del sistema bancario italiano sono più che
soddisfacenti: i rischi di rifinanziamento e di liquidità sono
limitati». Tuttavia, aggiunge il direttore di Osservatorio Monetario,
«qualche preoccupazione emerge per la crescente dipendenza dalla banca
centrale come fonte di finanziamento. Durante lo scorso anno, il ricorso
aggiuntivo ai prestiti a lungo termine presso la banca centrale, da
parte delle banche italiane, è stato massiccio: oltre 100 miliardi,
arrivando ad uno stock di 367 miliardi a novembre, a fronte di 301
miliardi di attività verso l’Eurosistema (di cui solo 210 rappresentano
liquidità in eccesso rispetto all’obbligo di riserva). L’incidenza dei
prestiti ricevuti dalla banca centrale sul bilancio delle banche
italiane è passata dal 6% al 10% tra l’inizio e la fine del 2020. In
prospettiva, questa evoluzione espone le banche italiane ad una
potenziale fonte di fragilità, qualora la Bce dovesse decidere di non
rinnovare (o di rinnovare solo in parte) le operazioni di
rifinanziamento in essere, all’interno di una exit strategy, seppure
graduale, dalla politica monetaria ultra-accomodante attualmente in
corso».
