Evaluating the S-G's performance thus far, Stephen Schlesinger looks at some of the places where Ban has accomplished quite a lot, but which haven't received that much attention: places like Kosovo, Haiti, and Sri Lanka, where Ban's frequent trips have all brought about at least some level of improvement in extraordinarily complex circumstances. Schlesinger sees the point that many like to make, that Ban is less charismatic than certain other S-Gs. But, he argues, Ban can be pretty hip himself.
The problem for Ban is his diffident manner, which stands in stark contrast with that of his predecessor, Kofi Annan, a larger than life secretary-general who dominated the scene through his flair, eloquence, and star power. Ban, by contrast, is neither charismatic nor an inspirational speaker - indeed, his English is not as good as Annan's. In his own way, though, he is an engaging, polite man, hip to contemporary cultural icons, and even given to singing at public occasions with wry lyrics and verses. [emphasis mine]
Rapping skills aside, Ban's legacy will be judged, as Schlesinger concludes, by "what he has accomplished rather than by personal foibles or flatness of style."
To begin with, Rothkopf repeatedly refers to the "U.N.," when it's clear that he's talking about just the Security Council, the instance of the organization that handles matters of international peace and security. But to reduce it to a mechanism for conflict resolution, as Rothkopf does, misses the point. The theory underpinning the composition of the council, rather than elementary, is a rather nuanced and high-minded concept in international relations known as collective security. Put simply, an attack on one member state constitutes an attack on all. The logic behind the theory is to create significant disincentives for aggression, thereby increasing stability among the society of states. The best example of collective security at work was the council's response to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
This is a good point -- that the complexity underlying the Security Council system is often taken for granted, or, worse, misinterpreted as simplicity. Now, one might quibble that the composition of the Council as it actually exists means in reality that an attack on one member state that is supported by a permanent member of the Security Council constitutes an "attack on all." But in this respect, one could even see the relative polarization of the Council's permanent members -- with the U.S., UK, and France often on one side, and Russia and China on the other -- as a sort of benefit. Every country in the world is probably an ally of one of these five, so an attack on any will be strongly dissuaded.
The problem, of course, is that aggression is not limited solely to state-on-state invasion, and that the same alliances that dissuade this sort of aggression can make it more complicated to take collective action to stop a country's internal strife (see, for example, Sudan). This dynamic, though, is not a fault of the construction, or peace and conflict function, of the UN Security Council; it is a development in geopolitics, with which international security norms, writ even larger than the Security Council, have not yet fully caught up. How to make "collective security" incorporate the safety and well-being of a particular state's citizens, without impinging on that state's sovereignty, is a question even bigger than the Security Council. As a mechanism for resolving conflicts and maintaining peace, the Council is in fact evolving along with international relations, as it has to -- but, as, say, the contrasting cases of Kosovo and the second Iraq war suggest, this progression is not a neat and linear one.
(image from flickr user Dipp under a Creative Commons license)
It's mainly being looked at through a Hugo Chavez-centric lens, but yesterday, the Honduran military arrested the country's president, Manuel Zelaya, in Latin America's first post-Cold War coup. Zelaya was an ally of the Venezuelan leader, and Chavez is already blaming the CIA for having a hand in Zelaya's ouster.
The reality seems to be that this was more of an internal Honduran political affair. The Huffington Post, in fact, is reporting that the Obama Administration had been trying "for weeks" to avert a coup. So both Chavez and the United States (as well as other bedfellows like Fidel Castro and the Organization for American States) are calling on the military to restore Zelaya to power.
It's tough to say what is less democratic here, since the immediate cause of the coup was a rather Chavez-like attempt on the part of Zelaya to negate his term limits, but the U.S. State Department is playing the safe card of, you know, opposing military coups and not looking like they’re trying to topple governments in Latin America. Given U.S. history in the region, that's probably the safe bet.
Here's a video from China's CCTV. I was on the lookout for bias, but the most I found was some apparent indignation that Zelaya was "detained while still in his pajamas!"
UPDATE: Brookings' Kevin Casas-Zamora argues (in The Argument, of course) that, even though he started this whole thing, Manuel Zelaya needs to be reinstated.
Jacob Heilbrunn and I take our disagreements to the small screen. In this diavlog, we discuss Heilbrunn's recent criticism of Ban in Foreign Policy and my explanation of why that criticism is unfair. We then venture into a few other topics, like Republicans' detachment from their realist roots and, of course, the untimely death of Michael Jackson. Enjoy!
Let us return to Boltonland, shall we? With yetanotherridiculous op-ed in a major paper, former U.S. ambassador to the UN (*shudder*) John Bolton gives us the current state of the Battle for Iran (war has already begun!): the people are longing to rise up, but they only need a helpful American hand to help them overthrow their government (not that we haven't tried that before...); a feckless and "empathetic" Barack Obama is so eager to sit down and sip tea with Iran's hardest hardliners that he can't understand that Iran is going to nuke everyone and everything no matter what we do; and if we just poke a stick into Iran's complicated ethnic politics, everything will be hunky-dory.
Ummm...
As vehement as his hatred for diplomacy may be, Bolton's chief target here is, quite simply, the Obama Administration. The op-ed, like many others on Iran, is written for baldly partisan purposes. Nowhere does Bolton actually suggest how the United States could "support" his desired goal of regime change; he is able to get away with such ambiguous criticism because, were his preferred policies of strict belligerence and hawkish interference to actually be pursued, his party would bear the inevitable political fallout. As it is, though, even when he admits that "we’re not really in a position now to offer much concrete assistance" (h/t ThinkProgress), his criticism will emerge unscathed. And whenever something violent or unsavory happens in Iran -- imagine that! -- he will undoubtedly reclaim his mantle as the right wing's favoritebullishprognosticator.
That is, swine flu the H1N1 virus doesn't look like it's mixing with its avian counterpart to form some sort of volatile, death-defying H1N1+H5N1 (H5N2?) super-pandemic.
The World Health Organisation said on Thursday that the H1N1 virus was stable and there was no sign yet of it mixing with other influenza viruses.
Some health officials have raised concerns that if H1N1, known by many as swine flu, combined with the much deadlier H5N1 bird flu virus then the pandemic could claim many more lives.
"The virus is still very stable," WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan told reporters at a news briefing in Moscow when asked if there were any signs of the virus mixing with other strains such as avian flu.
A stable pandemic is still a pandemic, sure, but it befits the calm way with which the virus should be treated to make note of this relative stability.
(image from flickr user ittybittiesforyou under a Creative Commons license)
Yesterday evening at about 7 pm, some two hundred demonstrators took to the streets in Washington, D.C. in support of the Iranian supporters of Mir Hussein Mousavi. I ran into the group as they were walking down Wisconsin avenue in Georgetown. Tellingly, photos of Neda featured prominantly in the protests. She truly has become a world-wide symbol of this Iranian reform movement.
And here is a demonstrator with a photo of Mousavi.