War is not the answer, Marvin Gaye once observed, and only love can conquer hate. Now Citizens for Global Solutions is trying to translate this into policy by asking everyone to sign an electronic Valentine’s Day card to the Syrian people.
I was going to write more, but I’ve decided to let the image speak for itself.
February 9, 2012 at 10:45 pm | More on Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa, North America, Off topic | CommentWith apologies to Global Dashboard readers who don’t live in New York (bad luck you!) here’s an invitation to an event at NYU next week. On Friday 10 February, the Center on International Cooperation is hosting a launch for ECFR’s European Foreign Policy Scorecard from 9.30am-11am at the NYU Law School. Speakers include:
This is an open event. Fuller details and an address for RSVPs are available here.
February 1, 2012 at 6:25 pm | More on Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America, Off topic | Comment
ECFR has just launched the second edition of its European Foreign Policy Scorecard, which gives the EU grades for how it dealt with different international challenges over the last year (full disclosure: I am a minor contributor to the project). Here are the headline scores and analyses:
There’s a great interactive website for the report here. Enjoy!
February 1, 2012 at 3:07 pm | More on Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system | Comment
Tuesday should be a dramatic day in the UN Security Council. Hillary Clinton, William Hague and Alan Juppé are all jetting in for a debate on Syria and the Europeans are set to table a resolution calling for a political transition in Damascus that Russia is determined to veto. China will probably do so too. Smash, bang, wallop.
What are the Europeans up to here? Last week, I published a commentary for the EU Institute for Security Studies summarizing the European strategy towards Syria:
European policymakers have recognised that they are not best-placed to mediate a final political settlement to the crisis. Instead, they have ceded political responsibility to the Arab League, which has gradually hardened its stance against Assad and has even called for him to stand aside (although the League has not been firm enough for some of members, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia). Meanwhile the EU’s policies have included (i) backing UN and League attempts to monitor the situation in Syria in an effort to restrain the Assad government; (ii) putting pressure on Damascus through sanctions; and (iii) using debates at the Security Council and the wider UN system to reinforce the case for pressure.
Even though the Security Council debates have rendered almost nothing concrete (except for a mildly worded presidential statement cooked up by the IBSA countries last August) the Europeans have arguably utilized the UN route quite cleverly:
Although frustrated by Sino-Russian obstructionism, European diplomats have chosen to use the Security Council as a platform to publicise the case against Assad. In October, having tried to find compromise language on sanctions, they tabled a mildly-worded resolution in the knowledge that China and Russia would veto it. This ostensibly self-defeating strategy (which the U.S. had doubts about) has at least pushed Moscow and Beijing to try and legitimise their defense of Damascus. Russia has served up a series of resolutions of its own, calling for an end to violence but making no reference to sanctions.
In the meantime, resolutions condemning Syria’s actions have been passed by large majorities in both the Human Right Council and UN General Assembly – forums that are usually hostile to Western positions. In the final quarter of 2011, the Arab League used the threat of pushing for Security Council action (as it did very effectively over Libya) to persuade Assad to accept its observer mission.
So even if Russia and China use their veto again this week, the Europeans will keep coming back to the Council for public relations reasons. I think this is a cunning strategy, although it will fuel talk about the decline of the Council as a serious decision-making body. It’s remarkable to think that it’s only ten months since the Council was being praised for OK-ing the Libyan campaign.
January 30, 2012 at 8:17 pm | More on Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, Middle East and North Africa | Comment
Good news: Ban Ki-moon will save Antarctica!
Ban Ki-moon has just set out his plans for his second five year term. He is not unambitious:
“Today I want to share with you an action agenda for the coming five years,” he told the Assembly as he returned to the rostrum to brief Member States on his vision for his second term.
“A plan to make the most of the opportunities before us. A plan to help create a safer, more secure, more sustainable, more equitable future. A plan to build the future we want,” he said.
The “action agenda” presented today describes specific measures regarding each of the five imperatives, including an unprecedented campaign to wipe out five of the world’s major killers – malaria, polio, paediatric HIV infections, maternal and neonatal tetanus, and measles.
Mr. Ban also announced that the UN will work with Member States to make Antarctica a World Nature Preserve and that he will appoint a new special representative for youth.
Hm… a year ago, I published an article in which I noted that “Ban has oscillated between bouts of fatalism about the UN’s decline and curious bursts of overheated rhetoric about its importance.” We seem to be in one the latter periods:
“Waves of change are surging around us,” he told the Assembly. “If we navigate wisely, we can create a more secure and sustainable future for all. The United Nations is the ship to navigate these waters…
“We are the venue for partnerships and action. Now is our moment. Now is the time to create the future we want,” he stated.
Interestingly, Ban didn’t use the words “South Sudan” once in his main speech (he nodded to it in a post-speech press conference) despite the evidence that the country may be falling apart on the UN’s watch. But then he didn’t mention Syria either. Still, he didn’t overlook the UN’s crisis management operations completely:
Our operations build bridges — literally and among communities.
Clever, huh?
January 25, 2012 at 9:02 pm | More on Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Global system | Comments OffOur colleague and friend WPS Sidhu has written a thought-provoking column about recent revelations of nuclear proliferation - from a most unusual source:
Playboy magazine is not the most obvious choice for those preoccupied with nuclear proliferation. Yet, Joshua Pollock’s article on “The Secret Treachery of A.Q. Khan” in the January/February 2012 issue has proved to be as titillating as the all-revealing photos that made the publication infamous.
The article, written in the whodunit oeuvre, uncovers that in addition to the three known customers of the Khan network—Iran, North Korea and Libya— there was a fourth hitherto unknown customer and reveals the “last country on the list: India, Pakistan’s foe.”
It’s worth reading the whole column. But I want to know whether the publication of Pollock’s piece resulted in a big rise of sales of Playboy in news agents around the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Vienna headquarters. Was some aspiring Hans Blix sent out in a grubby mack to purchase copies of the top shelf magazine for his superiors? Did IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano have to flick through pages of poorly-clad minor celebrities to find the article (curiously, there is no mention of it in his “Director’s Corner”)? Is the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which has a slightly stronger pedigree on nuclear issues, going to change its approach to illustrations now?
These are all puerile questions. But you know you want them answered.
January 25, 2012 at 8:01 pm | More on Conflict and security, Influence and networks, Off topic | Comments Off
European ministers are meeting today to discuss an oil embargo on Iran. The run-up to the meeting has been dogged by reports that some impoverished EU members – notably Italy and Greece – have questioned the initiative. The Iranians may think that the EU won’t do them real damage, as I point out in a new column for E!Sharp:
There is a general impression that the EU would not hurt a fly. Instead, it might launch a strategic partnership with the fly, hold annual meetings with the little creature, and possibly fund a Brussels-based think-tank to produce a report entitled “Achieving a Sustainable EU-Fly Relationship by 2025”.
That is the image that many EU officials want to project. “The strength of the EU lies, paradoxically, in its inability to throw its weight around,” Catherine Ashton declared in February last year. “In short, the EU has soft power with a hard edge – more than the power to set a good example and promote our values. But less than the power to impose its will.” Yet the EU was throwing its weight around just then.
The EU’s top target one year ago was Laurent Gbagbo, who was refusing to accept the UN’s decision that he had lost elections in Côte d’Ivoire in November 2010. A brutal but wily operator, Gbagbo had unleashed thugs on his opponents, menaced UN peacekeepers and bamboozled African mediators.
But the UN had mandated sanctions against his regime and the EU took the lead in implementing them. In a very un-European moment of nastiness, Ashton’s spokesperson told a reporter that the “priority is on the economic asphyxia of Gbagbo’s regime.” When I read that menacing line, I wanted to cheer.
Things turned out pretty badly for Mr Gbagbo, who was undercut by the EU sanctions and is now at the ICC. The Syrian regime is also struggling with Euro-sanctions:
The EU first imposed sanctions on individual Syrian officials as violence in the country escalated in May last year, but raised the stakes by deciding to stop importing Syrian oil in the autumn. Although the Syrian regime has held on to power – and continued its vicious campaign against protestors – the EU’s sanctions have had an impact. Companies like Shell have pulled out. With its energy sector under siege, Damascus has struggled to supply its own population with fuel. The Financial Times reports that the price of subsidized cooking gas for normal Syrians had now tripled.
Syria’s President Assad has accused the Europeans of persecuting innocent civilians. Nobody should be proud that poor Syrians have been affected by the price hikes – even leaving ethical issues aside, it is arguable that some citizens feel greater solidarity with the regime in the face of EU pressure. But Côte d’Ivoire and Syria both show that, at least when it comes to sanctions, the EU has more than “soft power with a hard edge”. It has straightforward hard power – even if it is economic not military.
Iran is, of course, a rather tougher target. But the EU may do it real damage.
January 23, 2012 at 5:09 am | More on Conflict and security, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa | 1 CommentThe situation in South Sudan is very bad and getting worse, as the New York Times underlined in a lengthy and blunt analysis last week:
South Sudan, born six months ago in great jubilation, is plunging into a vortex of violence. Bitter ethnic tensions that had largely been shelved for the sake of achieving independence have ruptured into a cycle of massacre and revenge that neither the American-backed government nor the United Nations has been able to stop.
The United States and other Western countries have invested billions of dollars in South Sudan, hoping it will overcome its deeply etched history of poverty, violence and ethnic fault lines to emerge as a stable, Western-friendly nation in a volatile region. Instead, heavily armed militias the size of small armies are now marching on villages and towns with impunity, sometimes with blatantly genocidal intent.
But aren’t there UN peacekeepers in South Sudan? There are, but with fewer than 5,000 troops in the country, the UN is struggling to cope. This was emphasized by an attack by Nuer fighters on members of another tribe, the Murle, in the town of Pibor, which the UN made an effort to deter. But the peacekeepers were outgunned:
As thousands of Nuer fighters poured into Pibor on Dec. 31, United Nations military observers watched them burn down Murle huts and then march off, in single file lines, into the bush, where many Murle civilians were hiding. Murle leaders have complained that they were abandoned in their hour of need. Neither government forces nor the United Nations peacekeepers left their posts in Pibor to protect the civilians who had fled, and it appears that many Murle were hunted down.
Hilde F. Johnson, head of the United Nations mission in South Sudan, said the peacekeepers had warned residents that the fighters were coming. But she argued that the United Nations troops had little choice but to stay on the sidelines. “Protection of civilians in the rural areas and at larger scale would only have been possible with significantly more military capacity,” she said.
Why are UN forces so thin on the ground? Independent analysts repeatedly warned that South Sudan could slump into violence after independence in 2010 and 2011. Although I claim no special knowledge of the country, it’s a theme that I’ve occasionally tried to highlight too. In a December 2010 article on Sudan and the UN, I argued that Ban Ki-moon’s top priority should be to “offer the Security Council a compelling version of what the UN can achieve in the South.” Last summer, I repeated rumors circulating in New York of UN turf wars over South Sudan:
More than 40 officials representing various agencies piled into an initial assessment mission. The U.N.’s “integrated” planning process, which has proved cumbersome in the past, was just as unwieldy in this case, and tempers frayed badly in New York.
After I wrote that, quite a few people inside the UN were in touch to say that I was off the mark. While the UN planning process was a bit of a mess, the real problem was that the planners did not believe that the Security Council would accept a large military mission in South Sudan comparable to those in Liberia or the Congo. European members of the Council in particular seemed to be fixated with keeping the costs of the mission down, part of larger austerity drive. UN officials put together ideas for protecting civilians with a relatively small force, but Hilde Johnson’s statement to the NYT suggests that the level of anarchy in South Sudan has now passed the point that it can be handled through “peacekeeping lite”. To make matters worse, troop contributors to the mission are getting (justifiably) nervous. Russia, which provides military helicopters to the mission, seems to have had enough already:
Russia is likely to withdraw its military helicopters servicing the U.N. peacekeeping force in South Sudan after voicing alarm at attacks on Russian personnel there, a Russian official said on Tuesday. Although Moscow has not made a final decision on its possible withdrawal , Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the security situation for the 120 Russians aiding the U.N. peacekeepers “recently has not been satisfactory for us.” “There is a likelihood that our unit will be withdrawn,” Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted Gatilov as saying. He said Moscow had repeatedly asked the U.N. Secretariat and the South Sudan authorities to take measures to ensure the Russians’ security.
An anonymous UN official is reported as saying that Russia’s decision is “outrageous”. But if the situation is as bad as it seems, then UN officials – up to and including the Secretary-General – are going to need to go further than that. Last year, Ban Ki-moon took a stand over the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire and, as I point out in the current edition of Global Governance, demonstrated an unexpected degree of moral purpose and leadership. He needs to repeat that feat over South Sudan.
Ban has already expressed concerns about the situation. But he needs to make a huge push on this issue now: if he does not, he may find that the UN stands accused of overseeing massacres and crimes against humanity reminiscient of the 1990s. That would not only sully his second term in office, but the institution’s standing as whole.
January 17, 2012 at 11:26 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security | Comments Off
It’s so hard to know which global threat to worry about most these days. Global warming? Weaponized bird flu? WMD? Well, now you can add the Death Star to your list. Viewers of Star Wars will of course recall the planet-sized spaceship that could blow up planets, but they may have dismissed it as entertainment. The fools…
Such an act of destruction would seem impossible to us–it seemed so to many of the movie’s characters until it happened. But perhaps not, say three students at the University of Leicester in England who last year published a study on the subject in their university’s undergraduate physics and astronomy journal.
The study’s authors start off by making some simple assumptions: The planet being fired upon doesn’t have some sort of protection, like a shield generator. And it’s about the size of Earth but solid through and through (Earth isn’t solid, but the planet’s layers would have significantly complicated the math here). They then calculate the planet’s gravitational binding energy, which is the amount of energy required to pull apart an object. Using the mass and radius of the planet, they calculate that destruction of the object would require 2.25 x 1032 joules. (One joule is equal to the amount of energy required to lift an apple one meter. 1032 joules is a lot of apples.)
The energy output of the Death Star isn’t given directly in the movie, but the space station was said to have had a “hypermatter” reactor that had the energy output of several main-sequence stars. For an example of a main-sequence star, the authors look to the Sun, which puts out 3 x 1026 joules per second, and they conclude that the Death Star could “easily afford to output [the energy required for an Earth-like planet's destruction] due to to its tremendous power source.”
Fantastic. The only good news is that the Death Star probably couldn’t take out Jupiter without self-destructing. Perhaps the need to get to larger planet explains China’s recent burst of enthusiasm for manned space flight?
[H/t: Vanessa Parra.]
January 17, 2012 at 6:27 pm | More on Conflict and security, Global system, Off topic | 1 CommentWhatever you think of French politics – or ratings agencies – this is a super front page:
Two weeks ago, I blogged about the Arab League’s observer mission in Syria, and argued that it was likely to struggle. And struggle it certainly has. Last Friday, I wrote a short piece for Foreign Policy summarizing the mission’s numerous woes:
The Syrian opposition claims that the roughly 100 monitors, deployed to oversee the army’s withdrawal from urban areas, have been manipulated and fed disinformation by the government. There have been accusations that the military has used the observers’ presence as a cover for increased violence. Perhaps most notoriously, the League selected a Sudanese general associated with the war in Darfur to lead the mission. The observers, dressed in brightly-colored waistcoats and armed only with digital cameras, often look lost and ineffectual.
In any plausible scenario, the monitors were never going to have a decisive impact on Syria. Although the Syrian government promised that it would halt military operations against civilians in December, few analysts took this promise seriously. A handful of observers were not going to change political calculations in Damascus, especially as they have neither their own guards nor secure communications equipment — leaving them excessively reliant on Syrian assistance to monitor and report anything at all.
But one week ago, it still seemed too early to write off the mission. Since then, however, the operation has given a very good impression of imploding. One observer has publicly condemned the mission:
An Arab League official has launched a scathing attack on the regional body’s mission to Syria, claiming it has been powerless to prevent “multiple crimes against humanity” from being committed by troops loyal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Anwar Malek, an Algerian member of the team, said the observer mission was becoming a farce. He said it was not acting independently and was serving the regime’s interests.
And even the Arab League’s top man sounds defeatist:
The Arab League chief has cast further doubt on the delegation his organisation has sent to monitor the crisis in Syria, describing ongoing violence as “very worrisome” and saying the mission was not going to plan.
Even the Syrian government hates the damn thing:
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has also condemned the delegation, describing it as ineffective and a key element of a broad international conspiracy against his embattled country.
So the mission, which is meant to produce a full report by 19 January, may struggle to keep going until then. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I argued in my Foreign Policy piece, the mission’s true role may not to be oversee a (now entirely discredited) peace agreement, but to concentrate international attention on just how awful things are in Syria:
While the observers may be failing in their stated goal — to help ensure that the Syrian army halts attacks on civilians — they have already played a significant role in underlining the brutality and untrustworthiness of the Syrian regime. There was previously copious evidence of the regime’s violence from refugees, human rights activists, undercover journalists, and U.N. reports. But the observer mission’s presence has magnified outside awareness of these abuses, especially because the media have tracked the observers’ every move. Although the mission’s leadership has mishandled relations with the press, individual observers have been frank with journalists about abuses they have witnessed and the limitations they are under — effectively circumnavigating the constraints on their formal reporting lines.
The fact that atrocities appear to be ongoing while the observers are in place also raises the diplomatic stakes. Arab politicians and commentators have already demanded that the mission should withdraw in protest at Syria’s behavior, and the monitors’ public difficulties will surely increase tensions between Damascus and the rest of the League. It is a sad truth of international politics that governments and international organizations are often far more concerned about attacks on their own credibility than human rights abuses. The Arab League, having won a new degree of credibility by taking a tough stance on Libya nearly a year ago, now finds its reputation tied to its observers’ performance in Syria.
If the Arab League wants to maintain some respect, it should now make a point of stating quite clearly that the Syrian government has made the observers’ work impossible – and call on the UN to take action as a consequence. The League’s mission has been a mess, but I still believe it may have an important role in triggering a real response to this grim crisis.
January 12, 2012 at 7:31 pm | More on Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Middle East and North Africa | 1 CommentAfter all last year’s excitement about social media’s role in the Arab revolutions (“Think what Trotsky could have done if only he’d had a twitter feed rather than an armored train, blah, blah”), I’m delighted to see that protestors in Lagos are adopting a lower-tech but highly effective tactic. To wit, spreading their message via cute animals:
(H/t Teju Cole’s always-excellent twitter feed.)
January 12, 2012 at 4:53 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security, Off topic | Comments Off
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, which kicked off when America made a grab for what is now Canada. There then followed a range of battles that nobody can remember properly, except that British redcoats torched the White House and Andrew Jackson won a historic victory in New Orleans (but a bit late, as a peace treaty had already been signed). All very exciting, and there’s a super monument near the Niagara Falls to General Sir Isaac Brock, who came all the way from Guernsey to get shot and become a great Canadian hero (that’s him above).
But, let’s be honest, this war is pretty obscure to most people. But now Ottawa is going all out to celebrate the war’s anniversary. As the Economist notes in a wry piece this week, Canada arranged a symbolic exchange of cannon fire with the U.S. near the site of Brock’s death to celebrate the New Year. And now the Ottawa Citizen reports that the government is attempting to buy up antique military equipment…
As part of the Harper government’s push to promote the War of 1812, the Department of National Defence wants to buy 20 complete uniforms with accessories and weapons to costume a War of 1812 Re-enactor Team at the Royal Military College. The re-enactors will be dressed as historically accurate representations of soldiers of a Battalion Company of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment of Fencible Infantry, from the period of 1812 to 1814. All of the uniforms, accessories and weapons must be delivered by March 30, 2012.
So what is the Canadian taxpayer’s money about to be spent on?
a.) Musket, India Pattern (Brown Bess), proofed safe to fire black powder as follows: A good quality, well made, accurate replica of the India Pattern (3rd model Brown Bess) Musket . . .
b.) Musket Sling: Leather sling, adjustable, of sufficient length to fit the sling swivels on the India Pattern musket.
c.) Brown Bess bayonet – Socket bayonet: fluted, triangular sectioned blade, approx. 16-17″ in length, sockets to fit snuggly over India Pattern musket barrel.
d.) Whisk and Prick: Cleaning tool- Hard, bristle brush and metal spike.
And so on, until you get to:
o.) Trousers (or Pantaloons): Drop-front trousers made from grey wool (Melton cloth, same weight as for tunics).
This is a little obsessive… if I were Barack Obama I’d be worrying that Stephen Harper was about to come and burn the White House again…
January 11, 2012 at 11:37 pm | More on Conflict and security, North America, Off topic | 3 Comments
Observers from the Arab League are now in Syria to check whether the Assad regime fulfills its promise to pull the army out of urban areas. Fifty observers have arrived, and there may eventually be up to 200. This is not the first time the League has deployed a peace operation (it sent troops into Lebanon in the 1970s, as I noted in a piece for the National earlier this year) but it’s still a pretty unusual initiative. The exact make-up of the observer mission is a bit of a mystery: it’s being led by a Sudanese general, but it’s been reported that it will include human rights experts and members of NGOs as well as security personnel. The Syrians will take care of the observers’ security, or so they say.
Can this type of mission, which is only able to observe and report rather than directly protect civilians, make a difference? Just before Christmas, the U.S. Institute of Peace published a paper by me entitled Political Missions and Preventive Diplomacy, which looks at what international missions can do to avert potential conflicts in periods of latent and escalating tension. In Syria, the situation has shifted from “escalation” to the verge of civil war. What can observers achieve at a moment like this? In the paper, I highlight one precedent: the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), deployed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1998. The mission observed but could not stop the violence that led to NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign:
In October 1998, the OSCE was mandated to deploy the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) to oversee a cease-fire and supervise elections in the then Yugoslav province after a year of mounting violence. The request followed negotiations between Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke, but American-led talks were still ongoing. Both the Yugoslav security forces and Kosovo Albanian guerrillas continued to operate, and Yugoslav atrocities eventually made it impossible to continue talks. In these unpromising circumstances, the KVM was expected to deploy “2,000 unarmed verifiers.”
The operation stumbled along unhappily…
The KVM initially had a high level of access to Yugoslav military facilities, but its presence proved insufficient to halt continuing violence. The head of mission, U.S. diplomat William Walker, tried to involve the mission in human rights and political affairs. But its personnel tended to focus more narrowly on military matters, and less than a tenth of the verifiers were assigned to human rights duties. This is unsurprising given the instability of the situation. Concerns for the mission’s safety also resulted in the deployment of a NATO extraction force in neighboring FYROM. The mission’s detachment from the faltering diplomatic process meant that it never developed a clear sense of purpose [and it was] withdrawn from Kosovo in January 1999 prior to NATO’s air campaign against Yugoslavia. The KVM did, however, continue to assist refugees from Kosovo in FYROM for some months, both advising humanitarian agencies and compiling a record of human rights abuses that had taken place during the crisis. The KVM experience suggests that once a crisis has reached its peak, the presence of external monitors alone is unlikely to affect decision makers’ choices.
This precedent doesn’t exactly suggest that the Arab League observers can make a great impact on Syria – not least because they will have far fewer personnel to cover a significantly greater area, and there is no extraction force to help in a crisis. Looking at the lessons from the KVM and other missions in my USIP report, I’d have three bits of advice to the League:
(1) Ensure that observers’ reports are full, clear and detailed – and get to the top levels of the League fast. It’s all too easy to let reporting standards drop under pressure or for officials in the field to succumb to “happy reporting” (emphasizing positive aspects of cooperating with the authorities in an effort to sustain access).
(2) Maintain political pressure while the observers are at work. It’s important that the Syrian authorities don’t exploit the presence of observers on their territory to slow down negotiations towards a lasting political settlement. It would be very easy for Damascus to drag out negotiations by arguing over details of the observers’ mandate (by repeatedly blocking access to sensitive sites for example). Arab diplomats must keep up political pressure for a lasting deal between the government and opposition, rather than hoping that the presence of the observers will restore calm.
(3) Have a credible exit strategy. League officials must make it clear to Damascus that they will withdraw the observers if their freedom of movement is curtailed or their ability to report objectively is compromised. The Syrian leaders should be aware that there will be strong penalties for failing to meet their commitments, and that the observers are only a temporary mechanism for confirming that they do so. Having the observers in Syria is not an end in itself, and should never become one.
December 27, 2011 at 1:51 pm | More on Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa | 4 CommentsAnd it’s tidings of comfort and joy… but not for the Security Council. On Thursday, Russia proposed an investigation into the casualties of NATO’s Libyan campaign:
Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said a council-mandated investigation was essential “given the fact that initially we were led to believe by Nato leaders there are zero civilian casualties of their bombing campaign”.
US ambassador Susan Rice, who stepped to the microphone after Mr Churkin, responded: “Oh, the bombast and bogus claims. Is everyone sufficiently distracted from Syria now and the killing that is happening before our very eyes? I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that this is something of a cheap stunt to divert attention from other issues and to obscure the success of Nato and its partners – and indeed the security council – in protecting the people of Libya.”
And just in case anyone had missed that episode, Russia enlivened matters on Friday by tabling the latest draft of a cunning resolution on Syria that expresses concern about the situation without imposing any penalties on Damascus.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow had limits on how much it would accommodate the demands of the European and U.S. delegations, which would like the 15-nation council to threaten sanctions on Damascus over its nine-month-old crackdown on protesters.
“If the requirement is that we drop all reference to violence coming from extreme opposition, that’s not going to happen,” Churkin told reporters. “If they expect us to have arms embargo, that’s not going to happen. We know what arms embargo means these days. It means that – we saw it in Libya – that you cannot supply weapons to the government but everybody else can supply weapons to various opposition groups.”
This is like a family Christmas from hell. If you want to understand why it’s so nasty, turn to a short paper I published with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung this week entitled The Security Council’s Credibility Problem. It explains how the Libyan and Syrian crises left the Council divided, with everyone having something to be cross about:
(1) Western officials believe that China and Russia’s refusal to countenance serious Council action against Syria has made the Council look impotent. They also complain that Brazil, South Africa and India have avoided tough decisions at the UN, abstaining in important votes on Libya and Syria. They conclude that these five BRICS countries are more concerned with constraining the West than resolving crises through the Council, and that giving them more power in the UN would be risky.
(2) Non-Western officials counter that the U.S. and its NATO allies did greater damage this year by converting the Council’s mandate for a humanitarian intervention in Libya as a pretext for regime change. They claim that their refusal to support even mild UN sanctions against Syria stems from the Libyan experience, and that the West cannot be trusted to implement UN mandates faithfully.
(3) For those who value the Council as a mechanism for ensuring international peace and security, the last year has been depressing for more fundamental reasons. Its limitations as a crisis management tool have been obvious. In recent years, there has been much talk in Council debates of shifting from “reaction” to “prevention”. Yet in the Libya case, its efforts to prevent the conflict escalating failed miserably and the Council’s only option was to mandate an ad hoc military campaign. It is unclear that the Council would have performed any better over Syria, even if there had been a consensus on how to act. The crises of 2011 have revealed major gaps in the Council’s capabilities.
This soap opera will, I suspect, continue to throw up surprises in 2012.
December 24, 2011 at 12:53 am | More on Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, Middle East and North Africa | Comments Off
Richard Gowan coordinates the International Security Institutions program at the Center on International Cooperation, New York University. He is also the UN Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and an associate of the Foreign Policy Center (London).
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