Kofi Annan’s efforts to pacify Syria face growing criticism. Violence continues and few hope that real peace talks can happen soon.  Diplomats are asking how long Annan can keep going.  In a new piece for Foreign Policy, I set out the dilemma he faces:

The former U.N. Secretary-General has made it clear that he knows his mission is close to failure. But it’s very difficult for him to call the whole thing off. While violence has continued in Syria at what Annan calls “unacceptable” levels, the death-rate has generally been lower than prior to the “ceasefire” he engineered in April. But whoever is attacking the U.N. observers probably wants to foment a full-scale war, and fighting appears not only to be on the rise again but also to be spreading into Lebanon.

If Annan were to quit now — precipitating the withdrawal of U.N. military personnel from Syria — he could risk a further escalation. This presents an ethical dilemma: Is it better for the United Nations to oversee, and arguably provide cover for, the current violence or retreat and open the way for something potentially worse?

Read my full attempt at an answer here.

This is a bit of a diversion from the normal Global Dashboard diet, but as a Brooklyn resident I cannot help reproducing parts of a sterling defense of NYC’s better borough from 1946, dredged up by the Paris Review:

Walt Whitman described Brooklyn as “the city of homes and churches.” And it is true. View any Brooklyn-bound rush-hour subway crowd. The workday is at its fever-wracked end. Fathers, husbands, wives and loving children are anxious to reach the comfort and solace of their families. They want to take their ties off and open their collars. They want to get into their slippers. They want to listen to their radios; to laugh with the high-priced comedians, to weep with the maudlin true-life-story actors. To outsmart the experts. And what is happening in Manhattan across the river at the precise moment? Bartenders are setting them up again. Showgirls are tiredly getting into their muslin and crepe de Chine for another gay evening of smiling at out-of-town buyers on the loose. Waiters are moodily turning the table­cloths and breathing on the silver. Man­hattan flexes its muscles for a night of gaudy and artificial fun, while the good burghers in Brooklyn relax and act with quiet dignity like human beings. For Brooklyn has a heritage of culture and charming society to uphold. It was of national importance when men like Henry Ward Beecher mounted the pul­pit of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church and gave forth a fiery sermon damning slav­ery. The effect is still felt on every young student today, for the colony’s first free public school was opened in Brooklyn in 1661, fathering the modern-day pub­lic-school system in New York City. These are facts not easily overlooked.

Nor is the American premier of the hot dog to be lightly scorned. Here is a delicacy which brings enjoyment to all classes of people—the rich, the needy; the bright; the dull; the beautiful, the plain. Where was this savory social leveler first introduced to America? On a Brooklyn sand bar known as Coney Island, “the world’s largest playground.” A hearty German baker, Charles Feltman, is reputed to have laid the first made-in-America frankfurter tenderly between the fluffy halves of a soft roll, dabbing its succulent body with mustard, back in the happy days circa 1870. To this day, Feltman’s restaurant is renowned for its food and atmosphere.

The piece goes on about how good Brooklyn is for some time, and ends with a fine flourish:

In other, and terser, words, Brooklyn is quite a place. True, like any large community, it has its slums, its shabby and seedy districts, its low-down bars, its smoky and dirty industrial centers, its percentage of honky-tonk, its share of crime and lawlessness. There is as yet no established heaven on earth.

Brooklyn is too big, too virile to be pushed around. And much too proud and accomplished to be ignored by Manhattan. For Brooklyn is the sturdy base upon which frail and flimsy Manhattan rests. And, if in the stealth of a dark and quiet night a bunch of Brooklyn boys were to snip the bridges which shackle Manhattan to us and let the whole dang island float off to sea and destruction, it would serve Manhattan right. It was bought in a crooked deal in the first place.

The Syrian government defies belief:

In a letter to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly made public on Thursday, Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, said hotel occupancy had dropped from an average of 90 percent before the crisis began in March 2011 to less than 15 percent.

“In the cities and areas where there is tension, the impact of the crisis on the tourism sector has been totally disastrous: tourism activity has come to a complete halt and hotels have ceased to operate,” Ja’afari wrote in the letter dated May 7.

“All restaurants, roadside rest-stops, fairgrounds and other leisure facilities have also had to close,” he said.

There was mild amusement yesterday when newly-minted President Hollande had to delay his arrival in Germany after lightning struck his government jet.  The jet in question (seen back on the tarmac above) looks quite modest from the outside.  Let’s hope that there was at least some Sarkozy-era bling on the inside.  After all, other world leaders have some pretty luxurious plane interiors.  Check out a fun series of photos here.  Dilma Rousseff of Brazil can enjoy an in-flight shower:

But the Brazilian shower looks positively suburban compared to the one on the Russian presidential jet, which Vladimir Putin is presumably glad to have back:

That said, the real surprise is that some countries are still able to maintain presidential jets at all. Cash-strapped Greece has one.  Italy has one for the president and a couple of extra for officials.  Spain has a whole air group devoted to bearing the King and senior politicians about… check out a helpful list here.  Sadly, the quality of the bathrooms involved in call cases is not clear, but in an age of austerity shouldn’t some of these planes be grounded?

Nigeria is not known for strong governance. On the contrary, it is arguably one of worse governed countries in the world, losing hundreds of billions of dollars to corruption and waste over the past four decades. Yet, it has two important governance achievements worth emulating.

First, it has devised a system of decentralization that has sharply reduced ethnic conflict. And second it has a major metropolis that increasingly is acting like one of a handful of city development states–large urban areas in developing countries that are driving progress forward in a way typically associated with well-managed central governments.

In Nigeria’s case, the central government has worked so badly for so long and is so poisoned by its access to and dependence on oil money that state and city led development may be the only way to achieve progress. (more…)

So near, and yet so far – as so often in EU climate policy. Back in December of last year, at the Durban climate summit, it looked as though the EU was finally getting on the front foot and managing to set the agenda for once on international climate policy.

Where the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit had seen the EU and its partners badly outflanked by a low ambition consensus of the US and the BASIC countries (leading to a voluntary pledge-and-review approach rather than the binding targets-and-timetables approach that the EU wanted), it appeared at the 2011 Durban summit that a new dynamic might be emerging – based on a partnership between the EU and low income countries who were not only increasingly focusing on global mitigation scenarios, but also increasingly prepared to break ranks with the G77 and speak out about the need for emerging economies to do more to reduce their own emissions.

The surprising spectacle of the EU managing to gets its act together will have made many US and emerging economy policymakers sit up and take notice. But all of them will also have been wondering whether the EU and its partners would manage to build on this initial success and turn it in to an inflection point on the global climate agenda, with the new alliance not only maintaining political momentum, but also converting it into design principles for future climate policy.

Alas, the signs now emerging are not good if this Reuters piece today is to be believed:

The European Union recommitted to providing 7.2 billion euros ($9.4 billion) for the Green Climate Fund over 2010-12, according to draft conclusions seen by Reuters ahead of a meeting of EU finance ministers next week. But after that, how much cash will flow is unclear as the text, drafted against the backdrop of acute economic crisis in the euro zone, states the need to “scale up climate finance from 2013 to 2020″, but does not specify how.

The article goes on to detail that EU ministers are arguing over how much of the money should come from public and how much from private sources – needless to say, many ministers would find it a lot easier to exhort the private sector to do more than to do pony up the cash themselves.

Although the article doesn’t name names on which countries are causing the problems, it’s a fair bet that Poland figures prominently among them, especially given that Poland vetoed plans for the EU to adopt a 30% (rather than merely 20%) emissions reduction target by 2020. In the background, there’s the further problem that Italy and Spain – two countries who in the past tended to side with calls for more ambitious action – are likely to fall away as their economies implode.

Although the Green Climate Fund is far from being the biggest issue on the climate negotiating table, it matters a lot to many low income countries. If the EU looks like it can’t be trusted to stick with them on the issues they really mind about most, then it’s hard to see an EU-low income country alliance setting the pace on the larger global climate agenda over the next couple of years – and we can look forward to lots of crowing from emerging economies made gleeful by the opportunity to argue that this is what happens when G77 solidarity is allowed to fracture.

Robert Silvers is best-known for editing the New York Review of Books since its foundation, but he started out at The Paris Review, the classic “little magazine”.  But how did he get there?  It all began with a posting to NATO HQ in the 1950s:

I was a soldier at NATO military headquarters—called SHAPE—near Paris. One of the best things about working there was that, by some international understanding, practically everyone had Wednesday afternoon off—you could go to the Louvre, you could go to the Café de Flore. And there, one Wednesday afternoon, at the kiosk in front of the Flore, I bought a copy of The Paris Review and took it back to our international barracks at Rocquencourt and read it in my bunk. I thought I should know more about it.

For unknown to NATO, some of my old college friends at the Noonday Press in New York had asked me to be their scout in Paris and see what books I might find for translation. So on some of those Wednesday afternoons, I would see publishers.

One of the people he went to see was George Plimpton, who took him to a party:

The sun began to set over the Luxembourg Gardens nearby, and suddenly the lights came on in the street, and George said, “Pati Hill is having drinks on the Île Saint Louis, and why don’t we go over there?” So we walked down to the Île de la Cité and over the little bridge to the Quai d’Anjou and found the beautiful Pati Hill—once a model, now a writer for the Review—and she offered us tall glasses of blanc de blanc in her charming rooms near the Seine. And among the blur of American and French writers and artists there, I talked to John Train, who was one of the founders of The Paris Review, and he asked me to see him at his flat on the Avenue Franco-Russe the following Wednesday.

The rest is literary history.  Could a NATO official follow the same path now?

…to Dmitry and Nicolas!

Even though we’re all excited about mobile money these days, it’s useful to be reminded that cash still matters.  A recent evaluation study in Kenya run by Innovations for Poverty Action found that:

in Kenya the average firm loses an estimated 5 to 8 percent in profits from a combination of sales lost because of not having change and sales lost while searching for change.

That’s really quite a big deal for a small business.  And it’s not just small businesses – the study reminded me of something I saw some years ago in Cabo Delgado, the far north of Mozambique.  It was cotton harvest time and the company, a joint venture between Lonrho and the Mozambican government, that was buying the cotton from the farmers needed to get it all bought and paid for.  But there wasn’t enough actual cash in all the banks in the province for them to pay the farmers what they were owed.  In the end the company had to go to the Asian businessmen who ran much of the economic activity in the province (this was in the days before the Chinese came), and beg for a loan to tide them over while they flew banknotes up from Maputo.

A reminder that MPESA and the like won’t save the world – we’ll still be needing real money for a while longer….

What type of ethnic divisions and political circumstances are most likely to produce conflict?

There is no easy answer, but there are formulas that can provide a guide. (more…)

All the current furore about the doings of US Secret Service agents is likely to cause a few chuckles among their sister services in other countries, who tend to regard their American counterparts with a mixture of respect and deep irritation – the latter on the basis of a rather full-on approach to their protection duties that can, now and again, come across as perhaps just a little arrogant.

The best story I heard about this tendency, told to me by a close protection officer from a different country while I was at an intergovernmental meeting, goes like this:

During President Bush’s 4 hour visit to Uganda in 2003, he and President Museveni went to visit The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO), which is a regular fixture on the itinerary of any dignitary visiting Kampala. The whole place was mobbed, and at one point President Museveni got detached from President Bush while working the crowd.

Showing that quiet tact and diplomacy for which the Secret Service is famed, US agents pitched in to help reunite the two heads of state. As they cleared a path for Museveni through the crowd, one of them was heard to bellow, “Out of the way please! The Local President is coming through!”

Completely unconfirmable, obviously, but too good not to share…

Jazz has inspired some great writing.  And this.

In November 2011, during the UNESCO General Conference, the international community proclaimed 30 April as “International Jazz Day”. This International Day will bring together communities, schools, artists, historians, academics, and jazz enthusiasts all over the world to celebrate and learn about the art of jazz, its roots, its future and its impact. This important international art form will be celebrated for promoting peace, dialogue among cultures, diversity, and respect for human rights and human dignity, eradicating discrimination, promoting freedom of expression, fostering gender equality, and reinforcing the role of youth for social change.

Yes, hepcats, the UN is digging jazz like never before.

By celebrating International Jazz Day, UNESCO intends to:

• Celebrate the unique musical style that jazz represents!
• Raise international awareness of the need for intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding;
• Mobilize the intellectual community, decision-makers, cultural entrepreneurs, cultural and educational institutions and the media to promote jazz-related values as a vector of UNESCO’s mandate, pioneering role and intellectual mission;
• Reinforce international cooperation and communication in the field of jazz music.

I’d devote a bit more time to mocking this (especially that exclamation mark) but as the album cover at the top of the post demonstrates, there’s a long history of jazz-multilateral-policy fusion.   Long may it continue.  Just try to keep the syncopated rhythms a little further away from the UN bullet points…

Best argument for entrepreneurship (and rural development) in Africa you will ever see:

Thanks to New York University’s Development Research Institute’s Annual Conference 2012.

That’s a snap from Alitalia’s 0920 Rome to Tunis flight yesterday morning, taken by Francesco Sperandeo and posted on his Facebook page.  He comments,

Two Tunisian nationals deported from Italy and treated in an inhumane way. Brown wrapping tape around her face and mouth, and plastic ties to secure the wrists.This is European civilization and democracy. But the worst part was that everything happened to the total indifference of the passengers; my request to treat the two passengers humanely led to me being labelled “arrogant” and told to return to my seat because it was a normal police operation. Normal?? I still managed to steal a photo! Go ahead and spin that or prosecute me!

The New York Times has just published a genuinely wonderful (if just a little humorous) piece about Luxembourg’s revanchist dreams of dominating its neighborhood.  Read it in full, but first enjoy this map of the Grand Duchy’s potential territorial claims:

I have almost nothing to add to the NYT’s investigations, except that Luxembourg is running for a seat on the UN Security Council at the end of 2012. Watch out Belgium!