...to Dmitry and Nicolas!
Richard Gowan
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).
Morgan Annan = Kofi Freeman
Kofi Annan often opens his speeches with a joke about once being mistaken for Morgan Freeman in Italy. Today Morgan Freeman was at the UN to launch...
It’s only ten days to UN Jazz Day!
Jazz has inspired some great writing. And this. In November 2011, during the UNESCO General Conference, the international community proclaimed 30 April as...
The Luxembourgers are coming!
The New York Times has just published a genuinely wonderful (if just a little humorous) piece about Luxembourg's revanchist dreams of dominating its...
Wiliam Hague never did this
Hillary Clinton, out on the town in Colombia this weekend:
Highlights from the 2012 Kazakhstan-China-Russia Table Tennis Friendship Tournament
The Washington Diplomat, a magazine focusing on diplomats in Washington, brings us exciting sporting news: On Feb. 25, Asia's time-honored tradition of...
Newt Gingrich’s big multilateral idea: guns for all!
Newt Gingrich, who is still hanging on to his presidential ambitions, has a long record of interest in the United Nations. In the post-Iraq era he was, by...
Hitler and the naughty chair
The Globalist has published an intriguing extract from Adam Nagorski's new book Hitlerland. It recounts the recollections of Helen Niemeyer, an American...
Syria: this is how war works
Last Friday, my attention was caught by the title of a piece on the Mideastwire blog: Richard Gowan misses the key aspect of conflict mitigation: positive...
The West’s warlord fetish
The debate about Invisible Children's "Kony 2012" campaign has been impassioned, but there haven't been many efforts to put it in a proper historical...
Can the UN monitor Syria effectively?
Briefing the General Assembly today, Kofi Annan noted that UN officials are now in Syria to plan a new ceasefire monitoring mission - one element of Annan's...
Syria: has Annan been set up to fail?
Kofi Annan is briefing the Security Council on his efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis today. As I wrote in a piece for Foreign Policy on Friday Annan -...
The Economist scythes through all the nonsense about the World Bank
The Economist favors Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to take over at the World Bank. In takes just four paragraphs (one of them mildly brutal, one of them...
This is how to do political analysis properly
The person who controls the Twitter feed for Aeon - a new magazine of philosophy, ethics and politics launching later this year - has hit upon a remarkable...
The Arab Spring: bad for tyrants and toilets
This week, the FT had a special section on supply chains and risk management. It was mainly very good, but one passage struck a funny note: The risks are...
The state of peacekeeping: NATO retreats, the UN hangs tough and the African Union advances
There's been talk of speeding up the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan this week. France is hurrying for the exit. On a recent visit to Brussels, I found...
Mitt Romney’s genius for baby-holding
Politico reproduces a rather odd political endorsement: Did you know Mitt Romney’s baby handling skills may be a big help in Mississippi? So says Gov. Phil...
The future of global governance in Abu Dhabi
This is just a quick note for any GD readers in Abu Dhabi. On the evening of Monday 20 February, I'll be interviewing Stanford University's Stephen Stedman...
Greece: the image that will reassure the markets
The Greek President speaks on the Euro crisis today, with an interesting backdrop.
Blundering down a humanitarian corridor into Syria?
At the start of December, I wrote a piece for Foreign Policy reviewing proposals for "humanitarian corridors" into Syria and/or the creation of a buffer...
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We can’t rely on any leader to pull us out of the inequality crisis. It’s up to us.
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