Tag: United Nations
Syria options
Reuters published this piece this morning:
On Saturday the United Nations Security Council demanded that Syria’s government and its armed opponents end attacks on civilians, allow the delivery of humanitarian aid across borders and battle lines, and protect minorities. The Security Council also called for the lifting of sieges against civilians and said that it would take additional measures if the two parties did not comply.
Even if fully implemented, this welcome push on humanitarian issues will not end the violence in Syria, or resolve a conflict that has left over 120,000 people dead and one-third of the population displaced. More action is needed if a political solution is to be found and a serious peace process initiated. The American people won’t support deployment of U.S. troops. Russia will veto any new U.N. Security Council resolution with teeth. But Washington should consider other diplomatic, assistance, financial and military options.
To read more, you’ll have to go to Reuters.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Things are not going well
Things are not going well in many parts of the world:
- The Syrian peace talks ended at an impasse over the agenda. The regime wants to talk terrorism. The opposition wants to talk transition. The US is looking for options.
- Ukraine’s peaceful protests are ending in an explosion of violence. Russia is financing and encouraging the government. The US is ineffectually urging restraint.
- The UN has documented crimes against humanity in North Korea. No one has the foggiest notion what to do about a regime that has now starved, tortured and murdered its citizens for more than six decades.
- Egypt is heading back to military rule. The popular General Sisi is jailing both his Muslim Brotherhood and secularist oppositions. Terrorism is on an upswing.
- Libya’s parliament has decided to overstay its mandate. A new constitution-writing assembly will be chosen in elections tomorrow, but in the meanwhile violence is on the increase and oil production down.
- Yemen’s president has short-circuited the constitutional process altogether. He announced a Federal structure that divides the South, whose secessionists reject the idea.
- Afghanistan’s President Karzai is putting at risk relations with the US, because he is trying despite the odds to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban.
- Nationalism is heating up in Japan, South Korea and China. Decades of peace in Asia are at risk as various countries spar over ocean expanse and the resources thought to lie underneath.
- Nuclear talks with Iran are facing an uphill slog. The interim agreement is being implemented, but prospects for a comprehensive and permanent solution are dim.
- Israel/Palestine negotiations on a framework agreement seem to be going nowhere. Israel is expanding settlements and increasing its demands. Palestine is still divided (between Gaza and the West Bank) and unable to deliver even if an agreement can be reached.
For the benefit of my Balkans readers, I’ll add: Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Conflict matters
I did something yesterday morning I don’t usually do: I went to a discussion of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs to the initiated). The goals fixed in 2000 were supposed to be achieved by 2015. So that UN is working on a new set for then.
The existing goals focus on canonical development issues: eradicating poverty, universal primary education, improving maternal health, reducing child mortality, and combating disease, with a dollop of gender equality and women’s empowerment as well as environmental sustainability. Then a cherry of global partnership to top it off. The exercise has been a useful one, with some real progress made.
But the conflict, peacebuilding and statebuilding communities were left out last time around. So the Alliance for Peacebuilding, John Filson moderating, convened the meeting yesterday to discuss the obstacles to including conflict issues and how they might be overcome. Speakers included Molly Elgin-Cossart of the Center for American Progress, UN Millennium Campaign adviser Ravi Karkara, women’s empowerment advocate Karen Mulhauser, and the State Department’s Charles Call. Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Barack Obama needs to recalibrate
The Syrian opposition delegation at the UN-hosted Geneva 2 talks today tabled its Statement of Principles (for those who read Arabic, and now also in English).
The Coalition (Etilaf) office in Washington writes that this lays out
…its vision for the political solution in Syria. It emphasizes the priorities of peace, democratization, reconciliation, inclusivity, and reconstruction, among other important guiding principles of the transition and post-transition period. The government delegation did not demonstrate either the will or the mandate to discuss these principles.
Our delegation’s position is to pursue the negotiating process to implement in full the Geneva Communique, including the important principles of ending violence and combating terror, but in order to do so both legally and practically, the establishment of the transitional governing body, by mutual consent of both sides, is necessary and required. We believe the attached document serves not only the parties to these negotiations, but also the full interests and aspirations of all Syrians. The government must be prepared to implement in full the Geneva Communique, UN Security Council Resolution 2118, and this statement of principles, beginning with the establishment of the transitional governing body, in order to participate meaningfully in this process to begin to set the stage for a political solution in Syria. Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Pragmatic Kosovo!
I enjoyed a conversation at SAIS yesterday with two of Kosovo’s finest: Deputy Prime Minister Slobodan Petrovic and Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj. Slobodan has led Serb participation in Kosovo’s government for the past three years, holding also the portfolio for local governance. Enver, a political science professor, has participated in many of the international negotiations that Kosovo has undergone over the past twenty years.
The watchword was “pragmatic.” Both speakers are clear about their goals. Slobodan wants improvement in the lives of Serbs who live in Kosovo. Enver wants the Kosovo state to have a well-recognized place in the international community. They have worked together to achieve these goals, but both are ready to compromise along the way, so long as things keep moving in the right direction.
Enver thinks normalization of relations between Pristina and Belgrade means eventual mutual recognition and exchange of ambassadors, but for the moment Kosovo has taken what it could get: an April agreement that recognized its constitution should govern in all of Kosovo and exchange of liaison officers located in the respective capitals’ European Union missions. Belgrade won’t accept Kosovo passports, but it has accepted its identity cards. The other “technical” agreements are also steps in the right direction.
Slobodan thinks the municipal elections held for the first time under Pristina’s authority in Serb-majority northern Kosovo were far from perfect: intimidation and even assassination determined the outcome, which favored a Belgrade-sponsored Serb list. But Petrovic’s Liberals got more votes than ever before and captured what seats they could. The international community should have taken a stronger stand against irregularities and supported those who have been committed to the political process. Next time, he hopes.
In the foreign minister’s view, Kosovo faces some difficult issues in 2014. It wants to get into NATO’s Partnership for Peace but needs to overcome resistance from the Alliance’s non-recognizing members. Kosovo also needs to decide the size, composition label for its security forces. It has passed the halfway mark in gaining recognitions from members of the UN General Assembly and hopes to make it to the two-thirds mark, but it will still face a veto by Russia in the Security Council. Kosovo hosts too many international missions. The UN has been superfluous for some time; the OSCE is overstaffed and undertasked.
The EU rule of law mission is still necessary to handle sensitive cases like that of the recently arrested mayoral candidate Oliver Ivanovic, but the deputy foreign minister thought it important that the remaining cases of this sort be settled expeditiously. In his view, 2014 will be important for the fall parliamentary elections. A gentleman’s agreement to maintain reserved seats for Serbs and other minorities, which were to be phased out after two election cycles, should be respected, not abrogated.
Asked whether the Pristina/Belgrade agreement and recent election results might presage “Bosnia-ization” of Kosovo into two ethnically identified entities, both Slobodan and Enver think not. The already functioning Serb municipalities south of the Ibar will not want to give up what they’ve gained. The northern municipalities are beginning to see clearly that they will gain from operating under Pristina’s authority, as they will retain a good deal of local control as well as substantial resources. If the agreement is implemented in good faith as written and the EU remains the guarantor, the risks are minimal.
I remember a time when I could not have imagined such a conversation. Enver reminded our audience that the war was fought between the Serbian state and the Albanian population of Kosovo. That may be true, but there were long periods when it seemed you could count on one hand the number of Albanians and Serbs willing to have a civilized conversation with each other. Now more than a handful are using democratic institutions to govern together. I know the challenges are still great, but pragmatic can go a long way with time.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Resting on your laurels crushes them
Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose stopped by last week for a public chat with SAIS professor Eliot Cohen, who was once upon a time his youthful professor at Harvard. Their theme was US foreign policy and the future of the global liberal order. Underlying the good-natured joshing between old friends and colleagues was a sharp disjunction in their views of the world and what the proper role of the United States should be.
Rose played the full-throated optimist. Think how much better an average American life is than Napoleon’s: what did he use for toilet paper? Would you want to go to his dentist? Life expectancy and physical body size are increasing. Poverty is down. Economic, social and political development go together and are all on the upswing. There is a general recognition that peace is better than war, cooperation is good, and capitalism works, even if unchecked markets are problematic. The global liberal order, a hybrid “good enough” system, was in place by the 1940s under US hegemony, which provides vital global public goods. The end of the Cold War brought an almost effortless expansion eastwards.
The primary role of US foreign policy in Rose’s view is to sustain, maintain and deepen this system. Washington should first of all do nothing that damages the global liberal world order. It should prevent or avoid great power wars, in particular involving China. It should protect the global commons (high seas, atmosphere, outer space, cyberspace). It should maintain and deepen free trade. Everything else is gravy.
Eliot agreed on the material progress that the world has made but challenged Gideon on two fronts:
- There are real risks to the liberal order originating from the darker forces of human nature. Competitive models present challenges that should not be ignored.
- World history is replete with big disjunctions that depend on individual choices, like the decision of the Archduke Ferdinand not to retire to his hotel on June 28, 1914 after the first assassination attempt in Sarajevo.
Agency cannot be ignored in favor of structure. The triumph of the liberal world order is not inevitable but needs to be nourished and maintained against forces that would happily destroy it.
On the issue of global governance, Gideon recommended Stewart Patrick’s “Global Governance Is Getting Messier. Here’s How to Thrive” in the latest Foreign Affairs, which underlines the jury-rigged but still more or less effective system we are living with. He added that it is important the US tend its role as hegemon by making sure it behaves well and correctly so that it is accepted widely as a legitimate authority.
While agreeing with Gideon in this last respect, I confess to grave doubts about his conception of the US role in the world. It is not sufficient to sustain, maintain and deepen the system, managing the rise of China but little more. There are two reasons:
- The global liberal order is based on concepts that are universal, in particular human rights. If you believe “all men are created equal,” their treatment in autocratic societies (including China) and the treatment of women in many countries is not something you can write off to historical circumstance, cultural differences or your own powerlessness.
- The global liberal order–like its trading arm–needs growth. It cannot sit self-contented and wait for a Berlin Wall to fall. It certainly didn’t do that during the Cold War and there is much less reason to do it now.
Gravy is in the eye of the beholder. But any worldview that relegates the fundamentals of the liberal order to “gravy” can’t have it quite right. Resting on your laurels crushes them.
RSS - Posts
