#the latter half of 1 and 5 go together well -- changing global power systems and creating more equality is hard because some Seers benefit

[savrenim]

Hey mx savrenim its me again and I'm wondering: how you maintain tension in a story with characters with future vision? Especially in a story with no guaranteed future, where seers can ensure the best possible future for themselves

oooooh v v good question, once more under the cut

so there are a lot lot LOT of ways to do this that all depend on the tone that you want your story to go for, and Imma reference a few pieces of media that do this in various ways, but this is pretty much a subset of the question “how do you maintain tension in your story when your character is very overpowered”

1. Just very realistically explore that “in theory able to do things perfectly” and “in practice able to do things perfectly” are very very different things.  Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri had pretty much someone with Seer-like capabilities (namely, the ability to loop back I thiiiink as far as they wanted in time?) that they could use to make sure they always said the right thing, got the right answers on tests, etc etc, and it just.... didn’t work out for them perfectly. Because perfect knowledge didn’t fix everything. If you know how every single play is going to work idk in a baseball game, that gives you an edge, but it doesn’t actually mean you win the game unless you are good enough at baseball to hit that ball and run those bases

In that case, the more effective the Seer wants to be, the more they have to actually train the skills that they care about, so that they can carry out the actions physically that lead to their ideal future. And building physical skills is hard and takes work and practice, and anything you have to work to get better at to reach a goal is the starting point of tension. 

Also to continue the sports metaphor, having perfect knowledge of a baseball game and even being the best player in the world doesn’t guarantee you a win because you cannot play every single position, there are other people on the team who are going to be doing actions that at most can have secondhand versions of your knowledge. Trying to manage the human aspect leads to human error. So maybe there is tension because the Seer aggressively self-isolates so that Other People Will Not Fail Them and tension comes from interacting with other people they have extreme trust issues. Maybe the tension comes from them playing puppetmaster and trying to figure out which people they are willing to sacrifice for their goals, which people will fail them and which people they can and should hold onto, and from nobody really trusting them because everyone is well aware that the puppetmaster is willing to make sacrifices.

And finally -- just knowing the future doesn’t mean you can fix it. I don’t know about you, but even if I had perfect foreknowledge of the future, I would not be truly happy just personally thriving as idk rich and a famous mathematician and physicist and married to my fiance and maybe the books that I want to be published published and enough money to give to all my friends too and maybe can we have warp drives I want to go to space and inventing some solid if not immortality-tech then life-extension tech would be cool -- which, like, is everything I could personally wish for from life and more -- but in the world that we have? like, climate change SUCKS. fascism SUCKS. racism SUCKS. sexism and homophobia and poverty and class wars disguised as generational wars and all of the existing structures that reinforce all of these things SUCK. and even personally having perfect foreknowledge of the future enough to either start with or build up a bunch of political power and money, to try to change any of that would mean going against incredibly entrenched institutions that I honestly have no idea how effective one person could be at changing. Like if B*zos suddenly decided “wait let’s save the world and make a socialist utopia” do you actually think he would succeed? or even get very far? even applying every single resource he commands? or would he just.... lose a lot of his money and power trying to do that and then someone else becomes the richest person in the world who does want to maintain the system. because a lot of that power are things that do not exist, like stocks, it’s imaginary money that the moment you stop playing the game you get kicked out of the game and maybe you can make tiny changes but the game itself doesn’t stop

so baaaasically consider making your Seer a radical anarchist or at least someone who cares about tackling large-scale problems that one individual will never be able to solve, to play the “well if a very powerful individual had a single-minded focus on trying to fight these things could we at least get further than every single powerful person wanting to screw us over or just not caring?” game -- that creates tension because global problems can only be solved by global and communal actions, and one individual, no matter how perfectly they can see the future, cannot do that on their own

2. “Psychic powers don’t make you popular.” This is my obligatory “I just rewatched Mob Psycho 100 and am obsessed with it seriously consider watching it if you haven’t.” I know I keep bringing up MP100 but hear me out my favorite media is where the main character is stupidly overpowered so I don’t have to be stressed at all consuming it and MP100 maybe is the most touching but also well thought out and interestingly plotted version of that I’ve ever seen  But the basic premise of Mob Psycho 100 is that the main character, Mob, is a middle schooler with the most powerful psychic abilities in the world. The tension comes from: (1) Mob is not in total control over his powers and feels really really bad when he loses control and for example uses his powers against another person even in self-defense because that’s a Rule he made for himself that he really doesn’t want to cross ever. Which with a Seer, maybe you have a Seer that Cares Deeply About Other People’s Privacy, or who Cares Deeply About Having Real Relationships That They Do Not Manipulate, or who Cares Deeply About Their Achievements Being Their Own and so they don’t use their powers in everyday life out of moral considerations, except sometimes gods in stressful situations you just want everything to be okay so the tension of “do I fix this right now or is this crossing a line” drives your story. (2) because Mob isn’t using his powers in everyday life, while he is having these giant badass psychic battles with ghosts and evil psychics as a part-time job after school and yeah yeah you know he’s going to win, the tension and growth in the story comes from the gains that he is making in his personal life of, like, “oh he made a friend!!!!! oh he stood up for himself even though that’s really hard for him and he set a boundary!!!! oh he’s working really really hard towards his goal of being better at running!!!!! oh look he’s grown so much at episode 1 he didn’t talk to anyone his own age or have anything to do and now he’s doing things for himself!!!” Having your Seer take the ethics of not using seeing into the future to manipulate the people around them really really seriously, working very hard at tiny life things and then being a complete fucking badass that is putting down world-threatening threats as hobby that they kind of don’t view as that important in defining them as a person or defining their accomplishments or how they feel about themselves means that it doesn’t matter how overpowered they are in terms of their abilities, your audience will care and be invested in the tiny life accomplishments that they are working so hard to do on their own, and will be proud of their personal growth.

3. Blind Spots. Exactly what it sounds like, can your Seer really see everything? Perfectly? And if they do see everything do they know the exact effect that acting differently will cause? Or are they limited visions -- they only come at certain times, they only are about very specific things, the Seer cannot control when they happen, etc. The more specific and limited your visions are, the harder they have to actually work to figure out how to interpret them and best play the cards that they have, so maybe finding that perfect happy life isn’t actually all that easy. 

Alternatively, your Seer can only see the natural future, what would happen if they do not change their actions. If they change their actions, they can’t re-glimpse the new version, so it’s up to their best guess as to whether or not their plans to make things better will actually make things better. You can create a shit-ton of tension there if only because Plans Never Go Perfectly. Honestly at this point you’re just writing a slightly different version of those “MC is a Super Genius” books that instead of them making good plans because they are a Super Genius, it is good plans because they can see the future, I stand by childhood me that the first three Artemis Fowl books are great and honestly I’m pretty sure the plot wouldn’t really change too much if you added “Artemis can see what future would happen if he didn’t take any actions to interfere” and it would just be another interesting trait that was a part of his planning process.

And even if your Seer can see re-glimpse the new version, they are human. They have only a finite amount of time, and a finite amount of brain space. You don’t need to make the rules of Seer powers be that “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” They can miss things by not thinking something is important and looking in a different direction. You can build up tension around they can only look into the future, not the past, they missed something, and now they don’t know what they missed and what to target to fix it. Or play the finite amount of time bit very hard: if they see the effects of deciding one particular course of action, it takes [x] time for the vision to complete, then they need to try to see the effects of one other particular course of action, and they can only effectively run a handful of simulations -- or even hundreds or thousands, but the answer is still a finite number of dear gods is nature chaotic / the butterfly effect is built into every single physics equation that there is that describes the world -- so tension comes from even if they can check that a plan is good, they still have to come up with a plan to change the future, and can only come up with so many plans in the time that they have. 

4. Existential Crisis. You made Seer powers “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” idk I would find life terribly boring and have an existential crisis over that probably? of am I even human? does anything I do matter? does anyone else exist, really, since I can see and control every aspect of their lives? am I a god? how do I relate to anyone? how do I care about anything? 

In this setup, your main character would not be the Seer, it would be a person or group of people who are either trying to Save The World or Accomplish Something Important or even Accomplish Something Selfish who spend the story trying to befriend the Seer and get their help goddamnit because the moment the Seer is on their side, they win. and then the tension comes from the Seer keeps refusing but is ~slowly opening their heart~, jaded older mentor figure adopts tiny adorable hopeful child is the found family JAM and then your main character finally decides they aren’t getting the help and goes off and does the incredibly dangerous thing alone and the Seer realizes too late that oh nooo my tiny son is in danger and at just the last moment decides fuck it and leaps back into the game to try to help and save them and oh both the glorious drama and all the best tropes all of them seriously if you write this book ping me I’ll read it I’m a sucker for jaded old loner adopts Naive Hopeful Hero Who Is Going To Save The World Even If It Kills Them and jaded old loner just spends the entire time going “oh no. oh no tiny child. oh gods I’m coming out of retirement aren’t I. tiny child please. please have you considered just being chill so that I don’t have to come out of retirement” and then just. the SATISFACTION. when they come in at just the right moment and the tension leading up to it when you didn’t know if they were going to or not. it’s poetry.

This can also pretty easily be done without the Seer having godlike powers, just pretty strong powers-- have them have made their life perfect, found it empty, and fallen into a depressive fugue then use the above plot for the same effect. 

5. Make Them Your Villain. The final way of dealing with making tension and having an overpowered character is, uh..... it’s only no tension when your protagonist doesn’t need to struggle to reach their goals. if the antagonist is walking down easy street that only makes things all the more stressful because how do you beat that? and that is all of the tension in your book: figuring it out.

a subgenre of this is Seer v Seer: the best possible future for one Seer is not necessarily the best possible future for another Seer, so if you have multiple Seers, Seers clashing against other Seers that have the same powers which means their powers aren’t necessarily an advantage is a shit-ton of tension. That is.... pretty much the plot of trash novel? So I’d rather not go into detail about how I personally am doing it, but anytime people who have the same abilities fight, they’re on equal ground, you don’t know who is going to win, so boom, tension.

6. Seers are illegal/ kidnapped by the government the moment they are discovered to work for the government only/ targeted for kidnapping by all sorts of powerful groups, so your Seers need to aggressively hide their powers and the more they use them to make their life perfect, the more in danger they are; even if they can use their abilities to avoid ever being captured, they will be on the run their entire lives if they get found out.

[canadianabroadvery]

What will the upcoming year bring in world affairs? A presidential election looms in America; the wave of leaderless protests from Chile to Lebanon is rolling on; China’s rising belligerence is being felt on the streets of Hong Kong and in the expanses of cyberspace; regional tensions in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and in east Asia all threaten to escalate into wars; Europe’s future remains uncertain. Will 2020 be known for an explosion of conflict and instability, for a reassertion of norms and order, or for some as-yet unanticipated historical shift?

These matters too are uncertain to make firm forecasts possible, but you can try to identity the critical factor in each case. The below is my stab at doing so: a (non-exhaustive) list of big questions about the year ahead with the factors that will decide them and a prediction of how those crucial factors will turn out. I will return to these predictions at the end of the year to see how well I did.

1. Will there be war with Iran?

The issue: At the time of writing America has just killed Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s proxy forces across the Middle East, in a drone strike in Baghdad. Tehran has vowed “severe revenge”. This could accelerate the existing spiral of escalation, pulling in players like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and possibly lead to American air strikes on Iran and outright war.

The decisive factor: The Iranian leadership knows war with America would be catastrophic but believes (seemingly correctly, at least until now) that Donald Trump does not want direct conflict. The question is whether the president might blunder into a different position in the heat of the moment. An election is looming and voters do not want war, but Trump is also thin-skinned, volatile and will be desperate to save face if Iran retaliates spectacularly.

My prediction: Iran will most likely calibrate its response to avoid pushing Trump and American public opinion on to a full war-footing; by targeting American allies and interests rather than directly attacking Americans and by using proxies like Shia militias in Iraq and Hezbollah. More likely than outright American-Iranian war is a proxy war played out the Levant, the Persian Gulf and especially Iraq.

2. Will Donald Trump be reelected?

The issue: On 3 November Donald Trump will go up against a Democrat challenger in America’s presidential election. His approval ratings are below those of previously reelected presidents like Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton, but as in 2016 he does not necessarily need to win the popular vote to secure victory under the electoral college system.

The decisive factor: Trump’s victory relied on a coalition spanning hardline Republicans, moderate Republicans who accepted his theatrics as the price of tax cuts and white working-class voters who defected from the Democrats over cultural issues. That coalition is fairly robust, so the Democrat candidate’s chance of overturning it relies on his or her ability to build a culturally and, crucially, geographically broader coalition taking in states like Wisconsin and Arizona.

My prediction: With the Trump coalition more consolidated than the fragmented Democrat one, the fundamentals point to reelection for the president.

3. Will global carbon emissions peak?

The issue: Under the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rises above pre-industrial levels to the 1.5 to 2.0 degree range (within which the future impacts of climate change rise from moderate to very high), global greenhouse gas emissions need to plateau this year and start falling next year. That requires a step-change in global efforts, as 2019 saw carbon dioxide levels rise to record levels and at almost the same rate as in the previous year.

The decisive factor: This will largely be decided by policy in three places: China, the United States and the EU. Together these three largest emitters generate about half of the world’s greenhouse gases. The good news: the “Green New Deal” - the notion of a radical ecological re-wiring of the economy - will be a major feature of US and European politics this year and China is sticking to its Paris targets. The bad news: America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will take place over 2020 and, having stabilised for several years, China’s emissions are growing again.

My prediction: With most countries failing to meet their Paris targets and none of the big three (particularly America and China) decarbonising their economies fast enough, emissions will continue to rise in 2020.

4. Will Boris Johnson get an EU trade deal?

The issue: The newly elected prime minister has until the end of June to decide whether to extend the transition period beyond the current deadline of the end of the year. He has pledged not to prolong this “vassalage” but will struggle to negotiate more than a basic trade deal - one most disadvantageous to Britain rather than the EU - with Brussels in that time.

The decisive factor: Any fast deal will probably cover goods (where the EU has a surplus) but not services (where Britain has a surplus). Nor will it cover many matters relating to data, science or security. The question is whether Boris Johnson believes that his 80-seat majority in the Commons is big enough to absorb rebellions when it comes before parliament, whether he believes voters will tolerate the costs of such a deal and whether, on the first of these at least, he is right.

My prediction: Johnson’s self-confidence and the momentum of his electoral win will allow him to push through a bare-bones deal, sowing the seeds of political crisis in 2021.

5. Will China march into Hong Kong?

The issue: Last year’s Hong Kong protests, sparked by plans to allow extradition to the Chinese mainland, have carried on into 2020 with violent clashes on New Year’s Day. With no resolution in sight and Chinese troops massing at the border, the threat of a military intervention to crush the protests, a second Tiananmen, continues to loom.

The decisive factor: The protesters, boosted by supportive results in district council elections in November, are standing by their demands of universal suffrage, an amnesty for arrested protesters and an independent inquiry into police brutality. So the endgame depends on whether the Chinese leadership’s highest priority is to maintain political, economic and diplomatic stability or to make a example of Hong Kongers to discourage anti-Beijing rebellions elsewhere in its neighbourhood or within mainland China. The former militates for patience, the latter for violent intervention.

My prediction: With Hong Kong due to lapse to full Chinese control in 2047 anyway, Beijing can afford to play the long game, continuing to squeeze Hong Kong and vilify the protesters without a full intervention. With its domestic economy slowing, it needs stability. Only if the unrest in Hong Kong threatens to spill over onto the mainland, which currently looks unlikely, will the Chinese army march in.

6. Will the wave of global protests continue?​

The issue: Hong Kong was just one of many places struck by last year’s wave of street protests. Others included Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Russia, France, Spain, Chile and Bolivia. The motives were various but many concerned autocratic or corrupt governments, low living standards or climate change, and most were leaderless movements organised online. Were they a one-off, or part of a longer trend?

The decisive factor: Protests tend to subside when one or more of four conditions are met: grievances are addressed, governments crack down successfully, the means of organisation are curtailed or protest-fatigue sets in. Whether 2019 will be seen as an exception depends on the presence of these factors in the main arenas of protest in 2020.

My prediction: In some cases, like Chile and Lebanon, governments are changing tone or policies in light of protesters’ demands. But even there, protest movements are merely developing into broader more long-term movements. Grievances linger on, most obviously the international intransigence on climate change motivating the Fridays for Future protests. And the opportunities for mobilisation afforded by social media are only growing. Do not expect the protests to go away; instead expect them to evolve.

7. Will the EU become a more serious player?

The issue: Ursula von der Leyen’s presidency of the European Commission gets under way as member states squabble over the next seven-year budget, big challenges like euro-zone reform and migration policy remain parked and relations between Paris and Berlin continue to be at a low ebb. Emmanuel Macron wants to reinvigorate the EU alongside von der Leyen but his proposals, including greater ��strategic autonomy” from America and NATO, are divisive.

The decisive factor: Essentially there are two countervailing forces at work. On the one hand Trump, Brexit, the crisis years and shifting geopolitical circumstances are pushing the EU to become a more serious, hard-nosed actor; Angela Merkel’s big EU-China summit in September will be a case in point. On the other this process is exposing new divisions on things like common defence, emissions reductions, the future shape of the union and the relationship with outside powers. The question is whether the centripetal forces (events, threats and other shifts pushing the union together and forward) exceed the centrifugal ones (differences of outlook and interest pulling it apart and holding it back).

My prediction: On balance the EU is more resilient than it looks. But while it may muddle its way forward in 2020, major advances will only take place in the heat of the next crisis.

8. Will there be conflict between India and Pakistan?

The issue: Tensions between India and Pakistan grew in 2019, with tit-for-tat air strikes and diplomatic sanctions. India has revoked the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority state, and further inflamed tensions last month by introducing an anti-Muslim citizenship rule, the latest in Narendra Modi’s increasingly blatant flirtation with Hindu nationalism. Further attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir by Pakistani-linked Jihadis, or another terror attack in India like that in Mumbai in 2008, could easily escalate.

The decisive factor: The region is a tinderbox. Modi and Pakistan’s Imran Khan have ramped up their rhetoric, mass media outlets in both countries are talking up confrontation and both countries face economic problems fuelling political grievances. So the question is whether the mechanisms for deescalation still work. An attempted Modi-Khan reset in 2018 came to little and neither America (distracted) nor China (considered partisan by India) make ideal mediators.

My prediction: Though neither Modi nor Khan want war, the possibility of a runaway escalation between the two nuclear powers is one of the most underpriced global risks of 2020.

9. Where will the unexpected bad news occur?

The issue: Lawless and rogue states, inadequate global governance and climate change are three defining features of our age. With them come risks of state collapse and war, cyber-attacks and terrorism, uncontrollable epidemics and refugee crises and environmental catastrophe. 2020 will doubtless see various as-yet-unpredictable instances of many or all of these.

The decisive factor: Most of the world’s states, especially in the complacent West, are less truly sovereign and more interdependent than they believe themselves to be. It is this delusion that causes them to be caught by surprise when an unexpected crisis occurs, as chaos or risk from one part of the world ripples through the global system. The question is not whether this will occur but how resilient states and international organisations are when it does.

My prediction: Given the risks I expect at least one of each of the following categories of cataclysm. First, an extreme climate event hitting part of the West not used to the levels of climate chaos already felt in the global south (the fires raging in Australia are but a foretaste). Second, an instance of violence or other instability in one of the world’s rogue or war-torn zones (most probably North Korea, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Burkina Faso, Venezuela or eastern Ukraine) causing a crisis in a country far from its own borders. Third, a crisis or calamity specifically caused by a failure of international governance and democracy; that is, by insufficient coordination, information sharing or collective action at the supra-regional or global level.

10. Where will the unexpected good news occur?

The issue: It is customary, in these end-of-year or start-of-year round ups, to nod to how many good things have happened beyond the headlines: poverty rates and infant mortality falling, literacy and immunisation rates rising. But each year also throws up specific causes to rejoice. In September for example Tunisia held what were widely deemed the Arab world’s first TV debates, during its second free election since the Arab Spring. There will be such happy moments in 2020 too.

The decisive factor: China, Latin America and Africa have thrown up plenty of good rising-living-standards stories in recent years. But with authoritarianism on the march in China and Brazil, and Africa’s rise more halting and troubled than some sunny predictions of the past decades suggested, the picture there is more mixed.

My prediction: There will nonetheless be specific and epochally good news from Africa in 2020. It is possible that the Ebola epidemic will be finally vanquished during the year. And Ethiopia goes to the polls in May, with good prospects of victory for the reformist prime minister Abiy Ahmed (winner of 2019’s Nobel Peace Prize). That would put Africa’s second most populous country, its future in the balance, on a positive course. Elsewhere this could be a further year of growth for progressive mobilisations, from the Fridays for Future marches to anti-nationalist movements like Italy’s “Sardines” and emerging digital rights campaigns; I predict that these will trigger at least one major, positive change of national government or international policy during 2020.

[khalilhumam]

Development Leadership in the UK’s New Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

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Development Leadership in the UK’s New Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

The UK prime minister announced Tuesday that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development (DIFD) will merge into a “powerful, single integrated voice” in September. Looking at previous cases of similar mergers in other countries, it’s hard to see this move as strengthening Britain’s role in development. But, if the department is serious about development, there are important steps it could take to demonstrate that commitment. The government has given itself three months to implement the merger. What should Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan prioritise to make the new department the best possible asset for Britain and its development partners? I set out seven components below.

1. Do not cut aid during the COVID-19 pandemic

The new department can immediately demonstrate it is more effective working together by avoiding a major own-goal by cutting support to its partners during the COVID crisis. The new department’s 32 developing partner countries—including 12 Commonwealth partners, who might have expected post-Brexit boost—are facing massive health and economic problems. At the same time, they are hearing from DFID that their support will be cut as the UK says it cannot spend over 0.7 percent of GNI, and “must” find nearly £2 billion (around 12.9 percent) of in-year savings; £1.5 billion within DFID and FCO combined. The inconsistency of massive public spending at home while reducing spend with key partners will be hard to miss—and will badly tarnish the image of both the merger and, more broadly, Global Britain with key partners like Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, not to mention Kenya (which is coping with a “biblical” locust infestation and the risk of new trade barriers post-Brexit). But the Whitehall super-department should do two things. First, make clear to HM Treasury that the aid target is a minimum, not a maximum, and that it will spend the budget it was allocated a year ago (the minimum in every other department). Second, if the concern really is about the tabloid optics of exceeding 0.7 percent, the new Foreign and Development Secretary should review Whitehall spend and use the legal reporting power to exclude borderline items (the Cameron government did the opposite to meet the target). Of course, the recovery from COVID-19 will ultimately bring fiscal pressures, but the new department should ensure that, as with the analogous 2 percent NATO defence target, the UK does not cut aid to key partners during the crisis.

2. Get on top of global health security

The new department should get a grip on global health security. The UK spends 2.1 percent of national income on defence but COVID has already killed 10 times the cumulative fatalities from terrorism since 1970. Surprisingly, the Integrated Review of foreign policy and security excluded health from its initial scope despite the links being made all the more obvious during the outbreak and the role military health systems have played in the UK and globally in the response. The new department should create a directorate on global health and use its place on the National Security Council to make the security-health link more explicit. It can work with HM Treasury and the Department of Health to lead efforts at global institutions like the World Bank (given its emerging role in global health security), the Global Fund, and WHO. It can forge partnerships with emerging regional players such as Africa CDC, as well as with its bilateral partners to support data infrastructure, surveillance, and capacity for preparedness in the poorest nations and populations.

3. Establish new parliamentary scrutiny and oversight structures

The government effectively sets parliamentary scrutiny structures; these will be critical in retaining confidence in the merger, the scrutiny of foreign policy, and the value for money of aid spending. UK taxpayers, the media, and aid recipients all benefit hugely from the scrutiny of the UK’s policy and spending by Parliament. The committee structure will need to change to reflect the merger, with a single committee to focus on Foreign and Development policy. Still, given the importance of value for money in aid—and over £2 billion still spent outside of the new department—the government should create a cross-cutting committee, like the public accounts committee, to focus on questions of aid value for money. This would provide visibility and reassurance to taxpayers and Parliament alike on aid spending, and enable the Foreign Affairs and Development Committee to focus on policy. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact, an operationally independent non-departmental public body and a model for other countries, should automatically move to the merged department and continue its critical work to weed out non-impactful spending; reflecting the new Secretary of State’s legal requirement to ensure “independent evaluation.”

4. Appoint a Chief Secretary for Development

Evidence shows that cabinet representation for development results in better development policy. A voice that reflects the perspective of the 3.7 billion people who live in countries with average income below $4,000 is a valuable input to collective decision-making. Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt highlighted the value of such input, and the Chief Secretary to HM Treasury (fulfilled by current Chancellor Rishi Sunak) plays a similar role. This post could also play a major role in ensuring the coherence of the UK’s aid spend across government. The PM made the case for more “coherence to our international presence,” and with the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Department spending £1 billion (more than the Foreign Office) and the Home Office with ambitions for more than its half a billion, a Chief Secretary for Development could help ensure the coherence and quality of all Whitehall’s international aid spending.

5. Match major development actors on capability

All other major OECD development actors—France, Germany, Japan, and the US—have a separate development agency with deep expertise. In going a different way, the new department will need to work hard to retain that same degree of expertise. DFID is renowned for the professionalism of its approach—and there is clear evidence that mergers elsewhere have led to a loss of expertise. There are at least three strengths that the new department should build on:

The Value for Money architecture. This is the approach to spending aid money is careful, systematic, and evidence-based. It involves concept notes, business cases, peer review; and annual reviews.

Professional advisory cadres. The Foreign Office’s excellent diplomats will surely survive the merger. So too should DFID’s own specialists, including those in infrastructure, planning, anthropology, and public health, consistent with the professionalisation of the civil service

Chief technical advisors. High-calibre professionals in roles like chief scientist and economist are invaluable. These roles have advised and been empowered by Ministers. The new department should retain this strength; including both macro and micro chief economists for its unique global and spending challenges.

These capabilities are major assets—and ones the merger should build on.

6. Foster coherence in finance with a UK single lead at the World Bank and IMF

The UK should move its World Bank and regional development bank board seats to HM Treasury. With the impact of COVID-19 on the already indebted global economy, the key global puzzle will be how to help finance the recovery in developing countries while heading off a debt crisis. The two key global institutions in this effort will be the World Bank and the IMF, where traditionally DFID and HM Treasury have respectively represented the UK. The vast majority of World Bank shareholders (almost 70 percent) are already represented by their ministries of finance. With the G20 and G7 finance ministers leading the COVID-19 response, the UK should take the opportunity to make HM Treasury the sole lead at the World Bank to ensure coherency of approach. The same case can be made for CDC the government’s development finance institution. The regional development banks that DFID currently leads on—the Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank—should also be under HM Treasury’s remit, as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank already are (potentially with alternates from the new department).

7. Prioritise poverty and refocus EU funds

The Foreign Office is short of resources, and support for “neighbourhood” countries is hidden within the UK’s EU contribution. The new department should receive part of the £5 billion EU contribution which reduces from 2021 rather than raid its support for the poorest. The UK has already de-prioritised the poorest countries. Under Osborne’s aid strategy, the share of the UK's bilateral spend going to just over 50 least developed and low-income countries fell from 38 percent to 27 percent between 2014 and 2018. The prime minister signalled he wants to see more security support to countries like those in the Balkans and Ukraine. Many of these countries are eligible for aid (although the latter has a space programme, a show-stopper for some) though they have very few extremely poor people. But if the UK does not spend enough in Ukraine, one major reason is that its spend is still channelled through the EU. This non-aid international spend is very significant, and almost completely overlooked. In a forthcoming analysis, we will show the UK spends some £5 billion per year in Eastern and Southern Europe through the EU (and over £60 million to Ukraine). In 2021, this contribution will decline—and the new department should be allocated part of this budget-line. The Conservative Manifesto admirably committed to ensuring children and mothers do not die unnecessarily. The UK can’t accomplish this alone, but spending the aid budget in China, Ukraine, or other places with relatively low infant mortality will slow progress. The PM himself doubted whether any other event surpassed the recent pledge to increase GAVI’s funding in terms of lives saved or suffering avoided. A key test for the department will be whether it continues or reverses its decline in spend on the poorest countries.

Conclusion

The timing of the creation of the new department was arbitrary and pre-empted the conclusions of the integrated review. The UK’s development reputation and effectiveness are at risk, but are not yet irreparably damaged. What will matter in the coming months is whether the new secretaries discard the UK’s development leadership or build on it. I’m grateful for input and great advice from colleagues, including Sam Hughes, Euan Ritchie, Rachael Calleja, Kalipso Chalkidou, Ranil Dissanayake, Susannah Hares, Mark Plant, and Mikaela Gavas. Any views and all errors are entirely the responsibility of the author.