(The following was originally written in August 2008.)

Commentators looking to explain the recent Russo-Georgian conflict by analyzing American foreign policy have found no dearth of candidate provocations. America's support for Georgian membership in NATO, its recognition of Kosovo's independence, and its open planning to install missile defense programs in Eastern Europe all likely contributed to Russia's willingness to exert its influence in the region by force. By and large, however, these speculations have focused on the proximate causes of the past few months. The most significant American contribution to instability in Georgia, however, may actually have occurred some 15 years ago--and its story provides more resounding lessons for U.S.-UN policy than it does for U.S.-Russia relations.

For a very tense decade and a half, peacekeepers in Georgia have consisted not of international personnel, but of Russian, Georgian, and, in one of the conflict regions, Ossetian, troops. Any casual observer would recognize this scenario as a sure recipe for disaster--why, in a dispute involving Russia and Georgia, have Russian and Georgian peacekeepers been entrusted to maintain a neutral presence? More specifically, why have the only UN peacekeepers in the region been a relatively bare contingent of 150 monitors and police, limited to just one of the conflict areas? The answer, in short, points the finger squarely at the United States--and punctuates the danger of developing a foreign policy with little concern of how it may play out in the future.

Flash back to the early 1990's. As the Soviet Union comes apart, various territories on the periphery shed their garb of "Soviet Socialist Republics" and become independent countries. The old U.S.S.R. had included a dizzying mix of nationalities, but so too do some of these new states. The Republic of Georgia was one such pocket of heterogeneity, and even before its declaration of independence in 1991, partisans of two dissatisfied sub-regions--the now familiar Abkhazia and South Ossetia--begin to clamor for their own autonomy. Fighting breaks out, and the conflict risks igniting a larger conflagration.

To stem the violence, Russia, not without interests of its own in the region, leans on Georgia to sign peace agreements with both Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The ceasefire with the former falters, and, after a period of difficult negotiations, the UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) is deployed to Abkhazia, but with only 136 unarmed military observers and limited to a monitoring role. Peacekeepers in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia are drawn not from the UN, but from the Commonwealth of Independent States, the body created out of the U.S.S.R.'s dissolution. In practice, this means that Georgians, Ossetians, and Russians, with very little neutral oversight, will be supervising their own peace accord. It is not insignificant that the recent war began not in Abkhazia, where there was at least some neutral UN presence, but in South Ossetia, where there was none. Moreover, because the agreements designated its troops as "peacekeepers," Russia, employing logic used, ironically, by NATO forces in Kosovo in 1999, has interpreted this as a license to attack not just sites in the disputed regions, but also in Georgia proper, ostensibly to hamper Georgia's war-fighting abilities.

According to the well-respected Security Council Report, Russia, in the Security Council's discussions in 1993-1994, had been willing to accede to a more expansive UN peacekeeping presence in Abkhazia, but had faced opposition from the United States. Why would the U.S. object to sending neutral UN peacekeepers to prevent greater violence and instability in a former Soviet republic? For one, while the U.S. vigorously championed the independence of, say, the new Baltic states, its support for that of the Caucasian republics was, due mostly to a quirk in the history of their boundaries, significantly more muted. Instead, the U.S. at the time regarded their situation as more of a domestic Soviet concern. This is only the beginning of the story, however, as it was a misguided and myopic policy toward the United Nations that most accounted for the United States' reluctance to deploy a larger peacekeeping force to Georgia.

One justification given for opposing UN deployment was financial. In 1993, UN peacekeeping had reached a peak cost of $3 billion, covering 14 missions across the world, and the U.S. was facing a particularly tight budget period in the early 90's. At the same time, the fallout from one particularly dramatic series of events greatly impacted U.S. policy toward UN peacekeeping overall. In October, amidst the debates over UNOMIG's mandate and redeployment, 18 U.S. Army Rangers, operating in support of--but, importantly, not under the orders of--a UN mission in Somalia, were killed and dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident. The United States soon pulled its troops out of Somalia, and, though the UN was in no way responsible, the lessons rashly assumed from this disaster eventually crystallized into an unfortunate cooling of American support for UN peacekeeping missions.

While no one can really say whether a stronger contingent of neutral UN peacekeepers would have been able to mitigate the war in the Caucasus, it seems clear that relying on troops from countries at war with one another to maintain peace was clearly not the most prescient solution. It is not too late, however, to take away the right lessons from what happened 15 years ago. Opposing UN peacekeeping for expedient political concerns may at times seem appealing in the short-term, but, as their 60-year history makes clear, UN "blue helmets" are an essential tool in maintaining global peace and security over the long-term--one that, when considering the alternatives, is always a bargain.

The following appeared as an op-ed in The Guardian Online on Thursday, September 25th.

This week, over 150 world leaders are gathered at the UN for the opening of the general assembly. If recent years are any indication, news outlets will focus on the disagreements aired on Tuesday, when George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the podium.

But the real drama occurs today (Thursday), when the same global leaders that butted heads earlier in the week take stock of one of the most far-reaching and noble statements of international cooperation ever agreed upon, the millennium development goals.

These eight benchmarks, agreed upon at the World Summit in 2000, are meant to be a statement of world support for the idea that all the world's citizens have the right to basic healthcare, education and nutrition, and the mechanisms necessary to support themselves, among other things. This week's meeting roughly marks the midpoint to the 2015 target date.

So far, the glass looks half empty, but time has not yet run out. What is required now above all is a renewed commitment to global development on the part of the US, which, despite the recent economic downturn, remains the world's largest economy and dominant power.

First, the good news. Thanks to improvements in prevention programmes and the availability of anti-retroviral treatments, we are starting to see a decline in the number of people who are becoming infected and dying from HIV/Aids for the first time since the UN started collecting data. Measles is also on the decline. Deaths from measles fell from 750,000 worldwide in 2000 to under 250,000 in 2007. Investments in malaria prevention are also showing results. The distribution of life-saving insecticide-treated bed nets is now widespread in 16 out of 20 malaria-endemic countries. Finally, thanks to campaigns to forgive the debts of so-called "highly indebted poor countries", the share of developing countries' export earnings devoted to paying external debts has fallen from 12.5% in 2000 to 6.6% in 2006.

We have seen some progress. But data shows that it has been spread unevenly across the globe. The situation in sub-Saharan Africa remains particularly bleak. The global economic slowdown and rising cost of food has hit this region the hardest. The goal of reducing by half the number of people who live on a dollar a day will not be met there. To make matters worse, higher food prices threaten to push 100m more people into poverty and erode the measured progress we have made toward reducing childhood malnutrition. To compound all of these problems, international trade negotiations (the so-called Doha round) are years behind schedule and, even if they succeed, are in danger of being less development-focused than was once hoped.

Still, there is enough time for us to reach most, if not all, of these goals. The US will play a pivotal role in whether or not those goals are achieved. The first thing we need to do is increase foreign aid. Americans are a generous people, and we expect the same of our government. But most Americans would be surprised to learn, however, that only 0.17% of our gross national income goes to government-sponsored development assistance programmes. That puts the US second to last (ahead of Greece) among developed countries' official development assistance expenditures. True, our philanthropic and private sectors are much more active than in any other country. But even the wealthiest philanthropy is no substitute for what the federal government can do.

Just throwing money at the problem, however, is not the answer. We also need to reorganise our entire foreign aid apparatus, which has not undergone a significant overhaul since 1961. According to the Modernising Foreign Assistance Network, US foreign assistance is spread across as many as 24 government agencies and 50 programmes. The Treasury department, state department, department of agriculture and sub-cabinet-level agencies like USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation compete with each other for precious foreign aid dollars. On top of that, individual members of Congress often add earmarks to fund foreign aid projects of their own parochial interests instead of what's best for those in need.

We need a strategic and comprehensive view of how to spend taxpayer dollars more wisely and toward a common purpose. The Modernising Foreign Assistance Network advises that the next president fold these multiple arms of our aid apparatus into a single entity, which they recommend as a cabinet-level department of global development. Clearly, a foreign aid bureaucracy developed in 1961 needs to be updated to meet 21st-century challenges.

There are hopeful signs that both our presidential candidates get this. Barack Obama has proposed doubling America's foreign development assistance to $50bn. And, like Obama, John McCain considers eliminating extreme poverty and fighting HIV/Aids imperative to American national security interests.

These are decent first steps, but not enough. Fighting global poverty today is a wise down payment on a more stable and prosperous future. The millennium development goals tells us what needs to be done to live in a world free of extreme, endemic poverty. The next president can show us how to get there.

It's hardly controversial to say that some Republicans sometimes view the UN with deep suspicion. And often, during election season, the UN serves as a useful whipping boy for (typically Republican) candidates trying to curry favor with a small but enthusiastic element of the Republican base.

So, it was rather welcome to see that the portion of the GOP Convention Platform discussing the United Nations, while tough, is far from an anti-UN screed. In fact, parts of it are an out right rejection of far right's preferred approach to the United Nations.

Historically, some Republicans (and here I am referencing House Republicans in the 1990s) have sought to condition U.S. payment to the UN on UN reform; that is, Republican lawmakers sought to withhold UN funding until the UN adopted American-mandated reforms. Although smart reform as a mechanism for making the UN as efficient as possible and the most capable to fulfill its many important missions, would, without a doubt, be a positive development, tying those reforms to UN dues is a horrible idea.

More recently, there has been a movement afoot to overhaul UN funding to a system of voluntary contributions. During his waning months as UN Ambassador, John Bolton argued forcefully for this approach, under which we would "pay for what we want, instead of paying a bill for what we get."

Currently, the UN is funded though assessed dues. The United States is the highest dues paying member of the United Nations, paying 22% of the regular budget and 25.5% of the peacekeeping budget. This figure is negotiated by the United States (and other member states) every two years and is reflective of America's relative economic strength and its position as a veto-wielding member of the Security Council. This comes to a little under $2 billion for peacekeeping and under $500 million for the regular operating budget.

To its great credit, the GOP platform says nothing of voluntary contributions or withholding dues. But it does say this: "At the United Nations, our country will pay a fair, but not disproportionate, share of dues." This is essentially an endorsement of the current modus operandi and a rejection of voluntary funding systems. And, significantly, it represents a commitment to paying our dues to the United Nations without condition.

Progressives, conservatives, Democrats, and Republicans can also get behind other parts of the GOP platform dealing with the UN. For example, in a reference to the somewhat esoteric discussion over what "regional grouping" Israel should join at the United Nations, the GOP platform welcomes progress on Israel joining the "Western European and Others Group". (Countries are often nominated by their regional grouping to serve in top UN posts. Though Israel technically belongs in the Asia group, it is denied membership by Arab countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel.) Joining the Western European and Others Group (which includes all of Western Europe and democracies like Australia, the United States and Canada) gives Israel a shot at being represented on UN committees. Supporting Israel here cuts across party lines in the United States.

Also, noticeably absent from the platform language on the United Nations is any proposal for a "league of democracies" to supplant the United Nations. In fact, there is only one passing reference.

The United States participates in various international organizations which can, at times, serve the cause of peace and prosperity, but those organizations must never serve as a substitute for principled American leadership. Nor should our participation in them prevent our joining with other democracies to protect our vital national interests.

Still, there is more room for progress. The GOP "strongly endorses" the so-called Mexico City policy, which prohibits federal funds from supporting international NGOs or international institutions that provide abortions or discuss abortion as a family planning option. Progressives call this the "global gag rule" because it stifles the ability of NGOs to even mention abortion as an option.

Also, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (which sets rules of the road for international waters and deep sea mineral extraction) takes a hit in the GOP platform. Though President Bush has endorsed it -- and though John McCain backed it early on -- the platform's authors express "deep reservations...about the regulatory, legal, and tax regimes inherent in the Law of the Sea Treaty."

Clearly, there is still a wide gap between where some in the far right currently stand and a more fulsome embrace of the United Nations. But this party platform is a clear indication of the direction of the party as a whole -- and the progress toward reconciliation with the United Nations is overwhelmingly positive.

by Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Ten years ago, I stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate to introduce a bill, which eventually became known as the "Helms-Biden law", to authorize the payment of nearly $1 billion in back dues to the United Nations. Securing its passage was a hard-fought, but worthwhile, initiative.

Unfortunately, we are again in arrears to the UN. For over a year, we have not been paying our full contribution for its peacekeeping operations -- missions in places like Lebanon, Sudan, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kosovo -- that advance our national interests while sharing the human, political and financial costs of peacekeeping with other nations.

The Peacekeeping arrears -- $117 million to date -- are due to an outdated cap which prohibits the U.S. from paying more than 25 per cent of the United Nations' peacekeeping budget. However, the UN is billing us at just under 27 percent (a reduction from 31 percent, negotiated by U.S. Ambassador Holbrooke in 2000, under the terms of my legislation). If we continue to let the arrears stand, these critical missions could suffer, the nations who have been contributing their troops as peacekeepers might begin to balk at future requests, and our standing to press for further UN reform will be diminished. This is why I introduced a bill to correct the cap problem and pay our arrears, S. 392, which the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved on June 27.

Ironically, while our arrears are rising, the importance of UN peacekeeping is rising too. If the UN didn't conduct these missions, we might have to -- at a much higher financial cost and burden on our over-stretched military. Our yearly dues to UN peacekeeping, which support missions in 18 conflict zones, are just over $1 billion -- less than the cost of a week in Iraq, and less than 0.5 percent of our entire Defense budget.

The UN 'blue helmets' are literally on the front lines in conflicts that are the worst of the worst: protecting civilians, monitoring cease-fires, clearing mine fields, and disarming combatants. We vote time and again in the UN Security Council, and rightfully so, to support these critical missions -- and our financial support should be in harmony with our policy. We can not, in good conscience, continue to shortchange these operations.

One year ago today, members of the UN Security Council authorized the deployment of an unprecedented 27,000-strong joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to Darfur, Sudan (known by its acronym, UNAMID). While some critics have chosen this anniversary to focus on the slow pace at which UNAMID has deployed, recent developments give reason to think about what has been accomplished and how the UN and international community can best follow up on these gains.

After another year of humanitarian crisis, sporadic outbreaks of violence, and a crippling lack of peace, one could reasonably ask what recent developments could signal a turn for the better in Darfur. Indeed, the most significant occurrence in the past two weeks is actually something that didn't happen. In the wake of the news that the International Criminal Court (ICC) would hear evidence for the indictment of Sudanese President Bashir, many Darfur analysts feared that Khartoum's response would be to unleash a wave of coordinated military attacks. Fortunately, this has not happened. In fact, as Nicholas Kristof points out in his blog, "humanitarians have had just about their best week so far" in Darfur. This relative calm points to the likely marginalization of hardliners within Bashir's inner circle--a crucial prerequisite for peace.

And what has happened in the last two weeks that could point to accelerated progress in Darfur? For one, likely feeling the heat of international scrutiny, President Bashir deemed it prudent to pay a visit to Darfur, where he voiced support for UNAMID and pledged infrastructural improvements in the long-neglected region. These promises are merely words, of course, and the Sudanese government has a dark history of backtracking once the public spotlight moves away. The international community--particularly countries with influence on Sudan--will have to continue to press Khartoum to actually follow through with these commitments, lest its government conclude that empty promises are an adequate stand-in for real peace, security, and development.

International pressure has also begun to bear some fruit in the frustrating efforts to deploy peacekeepers to Darfur. Contingents of Chinese and Egyptian engineers have recently arrived, and Ethiopian and Egyptian troops are scheduled to join UNAMID by the end of this month. Perhaps even more significantly, long-awaited Thai and Nepalese battalions have finally been accepted by the Sudanese government. Khartoum had consistently refused the deployment of any non-African troops, so this development could signal another political shift within the regime that may bode well for further and speedier peacekeeper deployment.

What has inspired these calculated--but fragile--concessions by the Sudanese government? The continued pressure of Security Council countries is at least partially responsible. The U.S. and UK in particular have pushed for rapid UNAMID deployment, threatening targeted sanctions for continued obstruction, and even China, facing pressure of its own, has been slightly more cooperative in engaging Sudan. But the immediate impetus for Khartoum's behavior was the ICC Chief Prosecutor's decision to tighten the screws on Bashir by announcing his potential indictment. As an independent judicial institution, the ICC makes its decisions--including this one--without any consultation with the Security Council. The Security Council does retain the option of suspending ICC action for a year, however--an incentive that, at this point at least, the Sudanese government has deemed more achievable through tactical conciliation than through overt confrontation.

Even though some Sudanese officials have mouthed predictably hostile rhetoric, this bluster has not translated into actions taken on the ground. This approach is somewhat of a truism in Sudanese politics--if one hand makes conciliatory gestures, the other is obliged to aggressively wave off international interference. More troubling are the recent attacks by government forces on UN peacekeepers. These reprehensible attacks have been roundly condemned, including in a bill that recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives. However, the violence has fortunately not reached the level that some feared would be the response of a vengeful Khartoum.

Even amidst difficult conditions, and still without adequate Member State contributions of funds, manpower, or equipment, UNAMID has valiantly persevered, even taking on additional responsibilities. For instance, UNAMID has increased the number of patrols it conducts from just 271 in January to 644 in June. An ever-growing number of these patrols occur at night, providing protection for women who venture outside of the camps to collect firewood. While a recent report from African NGOs suggests that UNAMID should be doing "more with what it is," it rightly pins a large degree of responsibility on Khartoum's obstruction and the international community's failure to sufficiently equip the force.

Admittedly, the emergence of the "less bad" alternative is never a particularly firm foundation for hope. In Darfur, though, developments have far too often fallen on the "more bad" side of this spectrum. The actions of the Security Council, ICC, and UNAMID present an admittedly thin window to move toward peace in Darfur. These institutions--and more accurately, the countries that comprise and support them--should exert the pressure it takes to consolidate these gains. We cannot afford to wait another year.

July has been a bad month for war criminals. On Monday, July 14, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court set in motion proceedings against Sudanese president Omar el Bashir for genocide. Exactly one week later Radovan Karadzic--wanted for genocide in the Balkans--was arrested in Belgrade.

What does one have to do with the other? To be precise: not much. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a separate institution from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. (ICTY). The latter is a temporary, ad hoc tribunal focused only on the Balkans. The former is a permanent institution with a global remit. Despite these differences, though, Karadzic's arrest may offer a glimpse into how Bashir may one day face justice. It also shows why international war crimes tribunals can be such useful institutions to have around.

Karadzic -- the political mastermind behind the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia in the 1990s, including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica -- has been on the run from the ICTY for the past thirteen years. So why, all of a sudden, is he finally behind bars? The answer flows from a combination of internal politics and international pressure. In June, the pro-west Serbian President Boris Tadic won a decisive victory against hardliners in parliamentary elections. This victory gave Tadic the political cover to finally purge hard line nationalist elements from the government and, once and for all, move against Karadzic. Karadzic's partner in war crime, General Radko Mladic, may soon follow.

Sending Karadzic to the ICTY was a personal political victory for Tadic; it showed his opposition to be truly marginalized. But the smart application of carrots and sticks by the United States and European Union also helped set the stage for Karadzic's arrest. Since the founding of the ICTY, the United States and European Union members have made Serbian cooperation with the tribunal the sine qua non of its bi-lateral relations with Serbia.

The United States is the Tribunal's principal funder and Americans are well represented among ICTY investigators, prosecutors and staff. Each year, aid to Serbia from the United States is conditioned on Serbian cooperation with the court; it is the stick that backs American efforts at political reform in the Balkans. Even more important to Belgrade than American dollars is acceptance into the European Union, whose members have held up even the prospect of future Serbian ascension until Belgrade comes clean with its bloody past. This means handing over wanted war criminals to the ICTY.

One can imagine a similar set of carrots and sticks easing Bashir from power. Bashir's hard-line National Congress Party is unpopular in much of Sudan. Elections are scheduled for 2009--and if held freely and fairly might herald a changing of the guard in Khartoum. The ICC proceedings provide the international community with critical leverage over the Sudanese government, which so far has had little incentive to go ahead with these elections. But just as the European Union and the United States wielded the ICTY to spur political progress in the Balkans, the Security Council can use the threat of indictment--and the prospect of suspending proceedings -- for political gains in Sudan. The Security Council (as is its prerogative) can suspend the ICC proceedings if it decides that doing so would be in the interest of peace and security. If the Sudanese government takes credible steps toward peace in Darfur, and follows through with elections mandated in a 2005 peace accord it signed to end a separate civil war in Sudan's south, the Council may consider lifting the indictment.

Missing from this equation, however, is American support for the ICC. Right now, the Bush administration is somewhere between actively opposed and indifferent to the Court. After spending much of its first term trying to undermine the Court in various ways the administration is starting to acquiesce to its existence. The administration withheld its veto and abstained from a 2005 Security Council resolution authorizing the ICC to investigate crimes in Darfur. And as president of the Security Council in June, the United States even convened a Council briefing by the ICC's chief prosecutor.

Still, these modest steps toward a detente with the Court are a far cry from the way in which the United States embraces the ICTY as a critical tool of American diplomacy. Indeed, upon news of Karadzic's arrest, the White House was quick to issue a statement hailing "an important demonstration of the Serbian Government's determination to honor its commitment to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal."

Until the United States views the ICC through the same lens as it views the ICTY, the Court will only have limited potential as a stick to back diplomacy toward places like Sudan. This is too bad. In Serbia, the ICTY bolstered moderates, marginalized hard liners and locked away bad guys. The ICC can do the same in Sudan. If only we'd let it.

By Ken Bacon, President, Refugees International

Today nearly five million Iraqis--20% of the population--are displaced. About half of them have fled the country and live as refugees throughout the Middle East, while the rest are displaced within Iraq. Most fled their homes because they felt unsafe; those who worked for the U.S. as translators or drivers fled after they were attacked as collaborators. Most refugees and internally displaced lack access to employment, education and medical care; they are facing shortages of food and money.

This is a humanitarian crisis first, but it is also becoming a security problem.

Refugees International recently issued a report that found that internally displaced Iraqis were turning increasingly to militia groups, not the government, for support. "As a result of the vacuum created by the failure of both the Iraqi Government and the international community to act in a timely and adequate manner, non-state actors play a major role in providing assistance to vulnerable Iraqis," the report, Uprooted and Unstable, said. "Through a 'Hezbollah-like' scheme, the Shiite Sadrist movement has established itself as the main service provider in the country."

Militias, not the government, are winning the loyalty of aid recipients. This poses an obvious threat to what the U.S. most wants in Iraq--a stable, peaceful country run by a publicly supported government under the rule of law.

Yet the U.S. seems strangely casual about the impact of massive displacement in and from Iraq. President Bush has never mentioned the plight of displaced Iraqis, and other White House officials act as though the problem doesn't exist. The State Department's June 11 Iraq Weekly Status Report barely mentions Iraqi displacement.

The State Department is far from tone deaf to the plight of displaced Iraqis, particularly those who have worked for the United States. Secretary Rice has appointed an ambassador, James B. Foley, as Senior Coordinator for Iraqi Refugee Issues. At a press conference earlier this month, Foley said that "we believe that we have special obligations to Iraqis who have been employed by the United States or have been closely associated with U.S. efforts in Iraq." Yet most of the pressure to help these so-called Iraqi allies has come from Congress, not the administration.

The United States has vowed to allow 12,000 Iraqis to resettle in the U.S. this year, but eight months into the fiscal year, it has resettled only 4,742. Reaching the goal is still possible, if everything goes right.

What's more, the United States will spend more than $200 million this year to help displaced Iraqis. Unfortunately, that is just a drop in the bucket compared to what it costs surrounding countries to host Iraqi refugees. Jordan says it is laying out about $1 billion a year to accommodate about 500,000 Iraqis, and Syria, which hosts about l.5 million, says the cost is several billion dollars a year.

The surge has reduced violence in Iraq, but not enough to enable safe return of displaced Iraqis. Until it does, the United States needs to pay more attention to meeting the needs of nearly five million displaced Iraqis whose loyalty will be won by those who help them.

The Atlantic blogger and author of the Heads in the Sand: How The Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up The Democrats talks to UN Dispatch about his new book, explains why Americans need to get in touch with our liberal internationalist roots, and warns against displacing multi-lateral institutions with so-called "concerts of democracies."

UND: Your book offers a political history of the main foreign policy debates that have dominated Washington for the past decade or so. You survey the current sorry state of American foreign policy and pull no punches in laying blame at the feet of Democratic and Republican party leaders alike. In what ways are the two parties responsible for the mess we are in?

MY: Well, I think the Republican responsibility is pretty clear -- they've been running the show. Democrats, however, were deeply complicit in the biggest mistake of the era -- the invasion of Iraq -- with the bulk of the party leadership endorsing the invasion and even most party leaders who didn't sign on for Bush's folly being unwilling to renounce the big strategic concepts like preventive war and a hazily defined "war on terror" that undergirded Iraq.

UND: Following on that, you argue that one grand strategic vision that we would be wise to reconnect to is idea of liberal internationalism. For the uninitiated, can you spell out what sorts of policies underpin liberal internationalism?

MY: In the most general sense, liberal internationalism holds out an ideal of a world in which international relations is conducted through rules and institutions rather than force and coercion. Ever since the failures of Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations, smart liberals have recognized that the internationalist ideal is hard to achieve, but in its wiser moments postwar American policy has always sought to bring us closer to that ideal. In that light, the European Union is very much an instantiation of liberal internationalism, as are other less-developed regional institutions.

But most of all, liberal internationalist policies seek to work through, strengthen, and uphold institutions of global or near-global reach -- things like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. In this sense, liberal internationalism is a worldview rather than a specific set of policies. But if you look at a specific area of policy like, say, non-proliferation issues, the internationalist worldview leads to the conclusion that the United States must seek to advance its non-proliferation goals through revitalizing the Non-Proliferation Treaty -- including a stepped-up commitment to meeting our own NPT obligations -- rather than through preventive war.

UND: Is this what you mean by "In With the Old?" [a chapter title in the book]. Similarly, by naming one of your chapters "After Victory" are you secretly trying to channel G. John Ickenberry?

MY: I don't think the Ikenberry-channeling is all that secret, I cite him at a couple of points in the text and, yes, the chapter title was a reference to his book -- a reference I think my publishing company didn't get or they probably would have hated it for being too obscure. I titled my last chapter "in with the old" to suggest that contrary to current fashion we don't really need dramatic "new ideas" to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

In part, that's simple humility on my part. The book, structurally, required a chapter of constructive solutions rather than criticism. But it would be silly for a 26 year-old blogger/journalist to claim to have made grand new strides in the theory of international politics. But really I think the main elements of liberal internationalist theory have been in place for a while now. There's been a group of people in this country who, from "rollback" debate in the 1950s on to the "Team B" exercise in the 1980s to today have consistently derided the internationalist approach, but they keep being proven wrong. After 9/11, they were given the opportunity to really seize the political agenda in an unprecedented way and the results have been disastrous. My argument is that we should go back to what was working before.

To cycle this back around to Ikenberry, he has an idea called "strategic restraint" that's very much in opposition to the neoconservative idea that, as Charles Krauthammer puts it, we have it within our power to reshape the world if only we engage in "unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will." In fact, as we've seen in Iraq we have no such ability. What's more, these kind of demonstrations of will actually tend to push potential allies away from us by making the United States look frightening. To successfully influence events far beyond our borders in a sustainable way, we need to act through means that other regard as legitimate.

UND: One new idea on the table that you criticize in the book is creating a "concert of democracies" to supplant traditional multilateral institutions like the United Nations. Supporters of this idea would contend that creating such a forum would help the United States avoid crippling debates among adversaries like Russia or China. What's so wrong with that?

MY: Well, it's all a bit confusing because oftentimes proponents of the idea deny that they want to supplant the United Nations. But basically, it's true that the U.N. Security Council voting process is cumbersome and, at times, annoying. But it's the very cumbersome nature of the process that lends it it's unique legitimacy. An endeavor that can secure the kind of broad-based support necessary to win the blessing of the [Security Council] can't be dismissed by its targets as reflecting the narrow interests of any one power or any particular ideological quirk.

A league of democracies could be a useful supplement to the international arena if its activities were kept on an appropriately modest level. But some have suggested that one function of the league might be to authorize military activities outside the Article 7 process. I'm doubtful that any of the world's major non-U.S. democracies would actually go along with this idea but if they did it would set us on a path for a new cold war style conflict with China and Russia with dire consequences for the world. John McCain appears to think this is a good idea, but the concert of democracies concept has some proponents who don't want to see a new cold war and don't want to reorganize the world around Sino-American conflict but I have a hard time understanding what it is those people think they're doing.

Interview with Katrin Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive.org and co-author of Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs

What are the major findings of the publication?

We found that there's a lot of activity. Lots of organizations are beginning to use mobiles for social change are are realizing the potential of mobile technology. We're really just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Right now, mobile phones are still primarily being used for staff coordination as opposed to an actual tool for advancing civil society work. However, we found that there is a huge awareness in the NGO community about the potential for doing so and quite a number of pilot projects probing that potential.

Why is the report structured the way it is, with an emphasis on areas of work, as opposed to platforms used, method of interaction, etc.? Does this speak to your target audience?

We really have two target audiences here, NGOs and the larger decision-making community. To unlock the potential of mobile technology, donors, multi-laterals, NGOs, the academic community, carriers, governments, and value-added tech firms all have to be at the table. Otherwise, we're just not going to see it, particularly when we talk about scaling up the projects. This is really a call to action.

You found in this study that most programs still exist in pilot form. How much of this do you think is due to short-lived excitement about a new tool in the fight for social change? How will groups keep these projects from flaming out? Is scaling up simply a matter of more resources?

The three main barriers are cost, training and knowledge, and building usable open-source applications -- for instance those that work on low-end handsets that are required to do certain types of data collection. A lot of these projects are able to succeed because carriers are providing free air time. Scaling those projects up is often not smart economically. We've found a couple of projects, in particular one in Mexico that offers peer support in rural areas for individuals with HIV/AIDS and the WFP work with Iraqi refugees in Syria, that were so successful that the carrier just couldn't continue to support it.

Which of those is the biggest barrier?

Personally, I think they all work in tandem. NGOs always say lack of resources is a problem. We constantly hear that cost is a factor. For larger organizations sometimes it's really just simply a matter of reallocating resources and justifying the costs. For instance, in the health sector, there is a tremendous amount of resources that have been allocated. But, if you look at the scale of mobile technology being used for patient management and data collection, its pitiful. In some ways, it's harrowing. There should be a consortium that works together on this. There is a clear potential for scaling projects, particularly in remote regions, where there are very few physicians and a high reliance on lay workers. Sometimes this is a hard sell. In a world of limited resources, why should we be funding technology when we could be funding drugs. The other two barriers are equally as challenging to surmount. Even understanding the question -- Do you need mobile technology? -- requires a certain amount of knowledge.

Don't you feel that it's ironic that groups pushing the use of mobile technology for social change have a poor track record of sharing information with each other? How can we deal with that difficulty?

This is certainly a huge problem; we have a lot of great ideas out there that never scale, or that go unnoticed. I think that providing this connectivity is primarily the role of intermediaries. This is not necessarily the role of NGOs doing the actual work, dealing with specific constituencies and allocating extremely limited resources for cash. Should a small microfinance NGO in India really be expected to know what a health data project in Mexico is up to, and what technologies they're using? Innovation by definition happens in silos, focused on a potential problem that is often very localized.

This is not a phenomenon limited to mobile applications used for social change. You have the same issue in the commercial sector. What we really need are channels to connect those silos. That's the explicit mission of the tiny NGO I run. We are convening a conference in the fall in South Africa, which will be the largest to date and will include mutlilaterals, donors, carriers, users, etc. We're going to have an in-depth discussion about what is possible and what isn't. We're going to start to build communities of practice. This sort of information sharing requires nurturing. There is a lot of innovation going on; the question is whether we can mix it up and find a way to share knowledge.

MobileActive is just a small part of this. Should there be others engaged in similar ways? Absolutely. Should more attention be paid to this issue in the donor community? Absolutely. It will take evangelizing, publications like this one, prodding. Movements don't emerge out of nowhere. The Vodafone Group Foundation and the United Nations Foundation have put support behind this and that's very encouraging. It certainly gives credibility to the process.

"There needs to be a focus on the benefits of a given system rather that the technology per se." This is an interesting statement considering the fact that the focus of the publication is mobile technology. Can you discuss what is meant here and perhaps give me a couple of case studies that demonstrate how this has been done effectively?

The goal of this publication is to look at mobile technology from the point of view of the user. We're not delving into how the technology works. If we can't sell the end benefit, we fail to make the point. The interesting thing about mobile is that this is a technology that is already being widely used and is widely understood. This is not a device that is foreign, unlike computers for a lot of people. They already understand the benefit. They've already swallowed that fact, gotten past that barrier. So, what's left to do is sell the benefit for a particular mission. Some programs have been successful in this regard.

For example, look at the program that pairs PDAs with nurse practitioners working in rural areas. A lot of these nurses have a lack of access to professional education. The goal is to provide that education based on the best knowledge available and to provide it in a way that is readable and condensed. There was a great idea developed about how to get these nurses to read the information. Turns out they were interested in news from the nearby city -- gossip, fashion, etc. One project combined the professional education with this news. With any medicine, you've got to give a little sugar pill to make it sweeter. This required the group working on the project to change the way they did business, which is never easy.

There is another great example in India, where small groups of women have formed "lending circles" to lend money to each other -- like microfinance, but outside of institutions. The key component here is trust, so record keeping is a big issue, especially because many of these individuals are semi-literate or illiterate. But, in a humid, termite-ridden environment, paper record keeping is a problem. So, one program developed a system through which the amount owed or paid is delineated on a standardized sheet with bar codes. The person keys the number into the phone and then scans the bar code. There is a backend where it is sent and can be retrieved at any point. It is designed to be absolutely intuitive, and because it has a clear benefit, it increases the level of trust. The technology is not innovative per se, it's rather the way we view user interaction.

remarks made by Kathy Calvin, COO of the UN Foundation, at Breakthrough: The Women, Faith, and Development Summit to End Global Poverty

I want to speak to you about three things this evening: First, about adolescent girls and why the UN Foundation has spent over $42 million in the past ten years to try change the realities that far too many of them live; second, about a new initiative we are announcing as our commitment to the Women, Faith and Development Alliance; and, third, to urge you to join us in elevating adolescent girls on the global agenda.

Let me begin with by reading a short quote from a girl in Niger: "One day my father told me I was to be married. I was never asked how I felt. It was my duty to respect his decision. . . I would have wanted to wait and find the one I love. But now it is too late." This girl was 12 years old when she said this, referring to her marriage at the age of 9. Like too many girls, her aspirations were left aside and her possibilities for a better life cut off because of the cultural perception that she is inferior. There are many dire consequences for girls like this. One of them, which I'll speak about more later, is fistula, a debilitating obstetric condition that over two million girls and women in the Global South are living with today, with an additional 100,000 added to that each year.

One of the top priorities of the UN Foundation since its inception has been to advocate for women and girls. Instead of emerging from their teenage years ready to make their mark on the world, too many bright girls on the brink of adulthood find themselves shut out, invisible, and ignored -- their talents wasted. The statistics are astounding.

In many countries around the globe, girls spend up to 15 hours a day fetching water and firewood and doing household chores instead of learning to read and write… taking care of other family members instead of caring for their own health… toiling in fields and factories for no or low wages, without possibility to improve their economic lives.

Nearly half of all girls in the developing world are married, and one-third give birth before they turn 20. Girls ages 10-14 are five times more likely than women over age 20 to die from childbirth, and girls 15-19 are twice as likely -- medical complications from pregnancy are the leading cause of death for girls in the 15-19 age group. For every woman who dies in childbirth, some 15-30 survive with chronic disabilities, the most devastating and debilitating of which is obstetric fistula.

Girls make up over two-thirds of those under age 25 currently living with HIV/AIDS -- in sub-Saharan Africa, 75 percent of HIV-infected youth are female. Fifty percent of sexual assaults are against girls younger than 15. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 17 percent of girls enroll in secondary school.

Many girls in the Global South are not registered at birth -- they have no birth certificate or identification card to for example, prove their age so that they may avoid being married young; sit for school exams or in some cases enter school at all; have legal recourse if anything happens to them; or to ensure that they do not become victims of trafficking. The lack of identification makes them invisible before the law.

When girls' lives are made invisible in these ways, they are not the only ones who lose out. Families… communities… entire countries are stunted when half their human resources are squandered.

Girls are continually left out of the equation not only in their own communities, but in development efforts as well. While we still struggle to even ensure that data from development and humanitarian efforts is disaggregated by sex, rarely is it disaggregated by sex and age. Girls are routinely excluded from programming that is targeted toward women, because of age, and from programming that is targeted for adolescents and youth, because of their sex. All of this contributes to the entrenched invisibility of girls.

Girls' education ranks among the most powerful tools for reducing the vulnerability of girls on many fronts. It has been shown to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and it contributes to female economic independence, delayed marriage, family planning, and work outside the home.

An educated woman is not only more likely to be healthy, and more likely to have a smaller, healthier, better educated family… but she is more likely to participate in civic life and to advocate for community improvements. A 100-country study by the World Bank shows that increasing the share of women with a secondary education by one percent boosts annual per capita income by .3 percentage points.

A key priority for the UN Foundation's is to elevate adolescent girls on the global agenda in the least developed countries of the world. We began this advocacy work with various partners because we realized that, unfortunately, development strategies and dollars have traditionally ignored these girls in much the same way that their own societies have. Even the best-intentioned people cannot successfully work to alleviate the injustices adolescent girls face unless businesses and NGOs, philanthropic leaders, the UN, governments and the faith community work together.

In all of our spheres of influence, we need to advocate for girls -- supporting the policy and funding reforms that can redress the violence, discrimination, and poor health so many adolescent girls endure. If our sectors work together, there's virtually nothing we can't achieve.

The UN Foundation has partnered with faith communities on a variety of causes and efforts. We recently formed a malaria prevention initiative, the UN Foundation Malaria Partnership, with the United Methodist Church and Lutheran World Relief. Together we aim to mobilize their combined 25 million members to raise $200 million toward the elimination of malaria. Indeed, malaria is a major cause of death and illness in children and pregnant women in particular. We want to build on this and support and collaborate with international faith and development leaders to also forge a common agenda for empowering women and girls around the world.

To date, UNF has invested over $42.5 million on behalf of adolescent girls, much of that through investment in UN agencies. We have participated in and heavily supported initiatives like the Coalition on Adolescent Girls, led by UNF and the Nike Foundation and made up of leading international NGOs, UN agencies, and other partners committed to the idea that girls are the most cost effective and best investment that can be make to alleviate poverty and improve society.

The work of the Coalition for Adolescent Girls has thus far culminated in a key report, entitled Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda, which makes the case for why and how to effectively count, invest, and advocate for girls. I know all of you will be getting copies of the report at the Leadership Council Dialogue tomorrow. The report was launched globally at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. A work session followed that asked participants to make concreted commitments to work to leverage the untapped resource of adolescent girls.

The discussion prompted a series of remarkable actions. UNAIDS pledged to convene the world's largest funders to develop a girl-specific strategy on HIV/AIDS; Standard Chartered Bank agreed to allocate $50 million of its microfinance fund to girls; the Gates Foundation agreed to track the progress of girls and women in its agricultural investments; and faith leader Rick Warren committed to mobilize churches to focus on adolescent girls in their development efforts.

But we still have a long way to go. And one of the key issues that UNF has been focusing on of late is the problem of fistula. For those who don't know, obstetric fistula is a childbirth injury, specifically, a hole in the birth canal caused by prolonged labor without prompt medical intervention, usually a Caesarean section. The woman or girl is left with chronic incontinence, other health problems, and, in most cases, a stillborn baby. Most of them are abandoned by their families and communities and relatively few obtain surgical treatment which costs about $300 per operation. Girls, whose young bodies are not yet ready for the physical burden of pregnancy and childbirth, are particularly vulnerable. Obstetric fistula was virtually eliminated in the US and Europe one hundred years ago as medical advances and ending preventable maternal deaths were prioritized. Traumatic fistula, though less common, results from sexual violence, and particularly affects women and girls in countries in conflict where sexual violence is used as a tool of war.

Fistula is a very real illustration of poverty and inequality at its most cruel. Its continued existence into the 21st Century reflects a lack of progress on achieving equality for women and girls, and is verification of their continued invisibility and lack of perceived worth in too many places around the world.

The elimination of fistula through treatment and prevention will be a manifestation of our combined efforts to remove health burdens and allow women and girls to benefit and thrive. To achieve this we need the help of faith leaders and communities around the globe.

To that end I am pleased to announce a very special new initiative to eradicate fistula around the world through focused advocacy, outreach efforts, financial support, and partnership building. We hope to mobilize faith communities, governments, the private sector, and NGOs to work toward the elimination of fistula. The Breakthrough Summit motivated us to get going on this and not allow another generation of girls to suffer needlessly. And we are thrilled that American Jewish World Service, Catholics for Choice, Jewish Women International, National Council of Churches USA, the Muslim Women's Coalition, and the United Methodist Church have already agreed to join us as part of the adolescent cluster at Breakthrough. Nine other NGO partners and counting, as well as the UN's lead on fistula, UNFPA, will be part of this. But we need your help too.

Faith leaders have a long history on the front lines of human rights and poverty alleviation efforts by actively engaging their members to fight for justice and human dignity, and we believe that the faith community holds the power to make girls around the globe visible and considered both significant and valuable members of their communities. We believe this is true of fistula and of other issues that impact adolescent girls so profoundly.

So on behalf of the UN Foundation and its hundreds of partners, I ask the leadership of faith communities with us here tonight to use their power and influence to Preach, Teach, and Reach out on behalf of adolescent girls. We ask that you mobilize your communities to help challenge the status quos around the globe that are maintaining the invisibility of adolescent girls. Partner with other faith leaders and communities in the US and around the globe, partner with us, the UN, and other NGOs to work to end fistula with this generation. And we have several ideas of concrete actions you can take within your faith communities when you return home from this Summit. We hope you'll consider employing some of the 10 Actions for US Faith Leaders that we have developed -- guidelines on how you can Preach, Teach, and Reach out on behalf of adolescent girls. Please have a look and let us know your thoughts.

Together we can eliminate fistula and change for the better the lives of so many women and girls. We share a vision of a better and more just world and a steadfast determination to witness that kind of world in our lifetimes -- regardless of our faith or circumstances. Thank you again for inviting me to be here tonight and thank you for your commitment and work to ensure that women and girls play a central role in shaping their own worlds.

This op-ed originally appeared in The Guardian

Today, at the end of his week-long jaunt through Africa, President Bush stops in Liberia, the war-torn east African country, to highlight that country's democratic transition. Two weeks prior to his visit, though, the president imperilled Liberia and other emerging democracies by releasing a budget request that significantly shortchanged UN peacekeeping, which over the last seven years has been the main vehicle by which African conflicts have become African democracies. This is not only disingenuous, but it is an incredibly shortsighted move.

With an annual budget of only $6bn, UN peacekeeping can hardly spare the cash. The shortage caused by American stinginess may soon be felt in missions that need the most help, such as the peacekeeping force for Darfur. The president's budget under funds that mission by $136m - a substantial sum considering that the UN is struggling to come up with equipment like 24 helicopters needed to transport peacekeepers across Darfur's vast, unforgiving terrain.

Darfur is not the only mission in which the president is unwilling to fully invest. Missions to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and yes, Liberia, (to name a few) also stand to lose US funds. This is hardly helpful to the spread of democracy on the continent. Spending a relatively modest sum on peacekeeping today helps to ensure that countries emerging from civil war do not descend back into conflict.

Peacekeeping missions generally begin after two or more combatants sign a ceasefire, but before a lasting peace has taken hold. Over time, the job of being a buffer often morphs into a vast nation-building project, and the UN has a solid track record in this kind of work. Liberia, which elected Africa's first female head of state in 2005, is one prominent example of the transformative effect of peacekeeping. Yet another is neighbouring Sierra Leone, where UN peacekeeping has planted the roots of democracy following one of Africa's most brutal conflicts.

Groups outside the United Nations have noted the UN's nation-building successes. A 2005 Rand Corporation study, for example, found that UN-led nation-building efforts are more successful - and cheaper - than comparative American-led efforts.

The United States has also recognised the UN's usefulness in this regard. Since the start of the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the UN has quietly assumed responsibility for managing a growing number of conflicts, not only in Africa, but worldwide. The flare-up in Haiti in 2004 and the July 2006 fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, for example, were both mitigated by sending UN peacekeepers, very few of whom were from the United States. Most Americans would be surprised to learn that of the over 90,000 UN troops and police currently deployed to 20 missions worldwide, only 293 are American.

At the heart of this arrangement is an implicit deal: The UN will go to places where the US cannot or does not want to so long as the US picks up a little over a quarter of the cost of each mission. At least, that is the way it is supposed to work. In reality, the US, as a veto-wielding member of the UN security council, has approved mission after mission while falling behind on its payments. If the president's budget passes as is, the US will be $610m short of what it owes to peacekeeping this year, bumping America's total arrears to nearly $2bn.

Peacekeeping certainly has its flaws. The UN has very little authority to discipline individual peacekeepers accused of improprieties, including sexual misconduct. Peacekeeping also tends to struggle in cases where, like Darfur, the parties are still in conflict and no single powerful country takes responsibility for the mission's success.

Still, despite its shortcomings peacekeeping remains a pretty solid investment. For relatively modest sums, the UN takes up the burden of managing conflicts and overseeing the democratic transition of post-conflict societies. If promoting democracy in Africa and beyond is as much of a priority as the White House proclaims, then surely somewhere in the massive $3.1 trillion budget request, the president can find spare change to pay America's share of the cost of UN peacekeeping.

Last month's climate change conference in Bali was another reminder that if we didn't have a United Nations, we would have to invent it.

Bali may not have seemed like a triumph -- but it was. It was a triumph of a process -- the awkward and difficult process of working together in a global community toward a common end.

Where else would the world go to come together on a global threat, but the United Nations? The threat of climate change, of course, is not only global but planetary -- and the UN is the world's essential meeting hall.

It is not often remembered that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the aggregation of the world's scientists that shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore -- is a creature of the United Nations. It was established 20 years ago by two UN agencies, working together -- the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Programme -- with the support of two foresighted conservative leaders, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

It is also often forgotten that all the nations of the world -- including, enthusiastically, the United States -- ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, negotiated in 1992 in Rio and agreed to by former President George H.W. Bush. It is this treaty that established the essential objective of preventing "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." (The Kyoto Protocol, rejected by President George W. Bush, is an implementing agreement of the Framework Convention.)

This month representatives of 187 countries gathered in Bali and agreed on a roadmap to negotiate a new climate change agreement -- a new protocol to replace Kyoto when it runs out in 2012. The session was chaired by Indonesia as the host country, but it was organized by the Framework Convention's secretariat and brought to a conclusion by Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer, who patiently persevered through the objections and obstructions that attend any such negotiation.