by Richard Gowan | Jul 21, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Off topic
It’s a sad fact of life that very few rock bands address the sort of issues that we write about on this blog. The future of UN reform? With the admittedly mighty exception of Megadeath’s “United Abominations” album last year (sample lyrics: “Saddam Hussein violated 17 UN resolutions/ The UN was asked to join the war in Iraq/ The US invaded, Ha!/ There was no UN!) it’s a pretty thin field.
What about the G8 and the worsening economy? Not even Megadeath’s Dave Mustaine has opined on the Hokkaido summit in song (I’m not counting Bono and Geldof here, on the grounds that they have sensible things to say, and they say them rather than sing). So a big hand, please, for the Midnight Juggernauts, an Australian band who seem to want to stuff the entire cooperation and coherence agenda into their song “Into the Galaxy”: “United Nations/ Inter Relations/ A declaration/ Of hypertension/ Emerging Summits/ Pre-emptive plummet…” That’s just verse two: you try to work out what they’re warbling on about…
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6SKNEYvZvQ]
* On balance, my answer is no, we simply can’t be seen to advocate that falsetto, although you have to admire the unashamed use of synths.
by Richard Gowan | Jul 21, 2008 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development
The fact that I think UN (and quite a lot of non-UN) peacekeeping is in crisis will not come as news to regular readers. Indeed, a rapid search of my contributions to this blog over the last seven or eight months reveals that I’m not just the Boy who Cried Wolf about the future of UN ops, but the Boy who cried “Wolf! W-w-wolf!! Really Big Wolf!! Actually, it might be a Bear…”. And so on ad nauseam.
Earlier this year, I tried to step back and define what this time of troubles consists of, beyond the flow of bad news from Chad, Congo, Darfur, Kosovo, etc., etc. The results of my musings were published today in that multi-million-selling glossy International Peacekeeping, under the subtle title “Peacekeeping in Crisis: 2006-08”. For those who don’t want to spend their summer beach-time ploughing through 7,000 words of this stuff, here’s my argument in three parts:
- Yes, this is a real crisis. There is a school that argues that the UN is just being whiny. It has managed to field 100,000 peacekeepers worldwide, far beyond its own predictions – and half its problems result from its own bureaucratic inflexibility, not real threats on the ground. This is wrong. The UN does have many internal flaws, but it is being asked to go to too many places at once, including places where peacekeeping stands no chance…
- …like Darfur. I argue, contrary to some optimists (including myself in an earlier, happier incarnation), that Darfur presents the UN with a systemic crisis. Sudan’s success in blocking the deployment of a serious UN force for two years (and counting) has shown that its pretty easy to bring the UN to a halt, if you have sufficient political will and few morals. I pick up on David and Alex’s concept of “intentional systems disruption”, which involves bringing down a complex system by exploiting its most vulnerable points – in the case of Darfur, those vulnerabilities have been (i) the UN’s political reliance on winning consent for its operations, which Sudan has denied and (ii) its shortage of specialized assets like helicopters. My hunch (shared by a lot of UN officials) is that Darfur is a textbook for how to block a UN operation that will be used elsewhere, weakening the whole system’s credibility…
- …and yep, we see the UN’s vulnerabilities being exploited from the Congo to Afghanistan. Getting all theoretical, I talk about a paradigmatic crisis for the UN: the idea of large-scale, multi-dimensional UN missions overseeing countries stumbling out of conflict may have run out of road. That’s not only because nasty governments know how disrupt UN ops, but because the UN model for building liberal, democratic and Western-oriented regimes doesn’t make so much sense in a world defined by a fit of Western self-doubt.
Does that mean it’s all over for the UN? No. But, as the article concludes in a slightly bathetic fashion, we have to adjust to an environment in which UN operations can only deliver limited goods: some stability, perhaps, and a limited amount of time to do political deals and maybe get to work on early economic recovery (for guidance on that part, check out the excellent new study by my colleagues at CIC). But not shiny and sustainable social democratic states.
by Daniel Korski | Jul 21, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia
As Richard’s reported, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused of being responsible for the massacre of more than 100.000 Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian War in the late 1990s, has finally been captured by Serb forces after 13 years on the run.
This is nothing short of a momentous day for international justice and therefore deserves a double blog-entry. ICTY Prosecutor Serge Brammertz, who will prosecute Dr. K – as he was known – summed it up:
This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade. It is also an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice.
The date of Radovan Karadži?’s transfer into the Tribunal’s custody will be determined in due course, but the capture comes at a key moment, with ICTY’s sister court, the International Criminal Court, coming under fire for having indicted the Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur.
As readers of the blog will know, only a few weeks ago I voiced concerns about ICTY, pointing out that two key fugitives – Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic – were on the loose. Now I feel a lot better.
For the Serbian goverment too, this is crucial moment allowing President Boris Tadic to begin his country’s road towards European integration that was cruelly stopped when Prime Minister Zoran Dindic was killed.
by Richard Gowan | Jul 21, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia
Serbia has arrested Radovan Karadzic. Just as it was starting to look like the hunt for the former Yugoslavia’s worst was going to peter out unfulfilled (and the whole idea of international justice is getting knocked all over the place in Africa) this is a much-needed victory. Well done Serbia.
by Alex Evans | Jul 21, 2008 | North America, UK
Sam Coates points us to this from the Sunday Times:
[Obama] will have a 45-minute meeting on Saturday morning with Gordon Brown followed by a press conference, which Obama will conduct on his own outside Downing Street in a blatant departure from the usual protocol.
There will be no Brown at his side to spoil the No 10 backdrop for American voters, even though it would be unthinkable for a British prime minister to appear in the White House Rose Garden without the president. Brown will say a few words later in the day, once Obama has gone.
