He Said, He Said – Kai Eide Resigns

When Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador serving as a deputy to Eide at the UN’s Afghan Mission resigned in protest, questions arose about how the elections were being handled by the international community.  Today’s news doesn’t exactly clear things up:

The top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said Friday that he would leave when his contract expired early next year, as the organization was already looking for a replacement.

Mr. Eide, a 60-year-old Norwegian diplomat who came under criticism for his handling of the fraud-ridden Afghan presidential election in August, said that he had never planned to renew his contract, which expires in March, and that his departure had nothing to do with the tumultuous aftermath of the national ballot.

via Kai Eide, Leader of U.N. Afghan Mission, Plans to Step Down – NYTimes.com.

Not a Fan of the UN Population Fund

From the WSJ Opinion page, an argument explaining why some find UNFPA, also known as the UN Population Fund, to be on a fool’s errand:

Now the Fund has gone a step further, arguing that the scourge of reproduction is not just a question of raw numbers, but that humanity itself is destructive. “No human is genuinely 'carbon neutral,' especially when all greenhouse gases are figured into the equation,” the report tells us in a section entitled “At the brink.” “Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution.”

That sounds like a somewhat totalitarian formulation to us, even if the Fund goes out of its way to shed its image as a eugenics-advocacy group by swapping the term “population control” for “population dynamics.” Indeed, the Fund—unusually for a U.N. organ—favors efficiency when it comes to culling our ranks, citing one finding that “dollar-for-dollar, investments in voluntary family planning and girls' education would also in the long run reduce greenhouse-gas emissions at least as much as the same investments in nuclear or wind energy.” Even better, the report says other studies indicate that avoiding one billion new babies by 2050 would save as much energy as building two million one-megawatt wind turbines. The environmental argument extends equally to human welfare—the report notes that “the use of voluntary family planning directly decreases child mortality.”

via U.N. Population Fund Supports Population Control – WSJ.com.

Hillary’s Report Card

How is the Sec State doing?  Time Magazine provides a mid-term grade and its a mixed review:

The job of Secretary of State is more thankless than glamorous; in some ways, the Department of State, a noble antique, is still trying to come to terms with the invention of the telephone. In an era when Twitter haiku-messaging rules, diplomacy moves at the speed, and requires the nuanced complexity, of literature. Power has drifted from State to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, especially in wartime. Only a few of Clinton's recent predecessors have distinguished themselves. Henry Kissinger, a National Security Adviser who belatedly became Secretary of State, was Richard Nixon's schizophrenic alter ego; George Shultz was a strong policy voice in the Reagan Administration; James Baker had clout because he was George H.W. Bush's best friend and a world-class dealmaker. Most of the others have been frustrated or forgettable. And yet this is Hillary Clinton we're talking about — the second most popular American in the world, an eternally compelling and supremely talented character, the subject of constant speculation, a walking headline. Her very presence in the job makes it crucial once more.

via Hillary Clinton After Mideast Trip: Diplomacy Success? – TIME.

Asean Inaugurates Human Rights Commission – NYTimes.com

Don’t cut the cake—the new HRC for ASEAN didn’t get a great start this week, adding to skepticism that the secretive, poorly attended and conflict-ridden discussion could produce a functioning new body:

…human rights activists called the body toothless and walked out of a meeting here Friday when “civil society” representatives from five countries were rejected by their governments.

“The commission has not been designed to be effective and impartial,” said Debbie Stothard, a human rights activist from Malaysia.

via Asean Inaugurates Human Rights Commission – NYTimes.com.

The Case for the CTBT

This past May we took a group of BYU Kennedy Center students to the United Nations “City” in Vienna, Austria to learn about the challenges involved with nuclear non-proliferation.  Our group–the innaugural Global Diplomacy tour–met with officials and even a Utah State University intern at the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization.  As one of the newest IO’s on the global governance scene, we observed through a plate glass window into the room where scientists monitor any sign of nuclear testing around the world using the latest technology.  Little did we know, within a few days of our visit, the DPRK would announce a nuclear test, verified by the CTBTO with a 4.52 Richter scale signal at 00:54 GMT.

The history of testing is a fascinating and awe-insipiring threat to humankind.  What is the appropriate response to a threat that could destroy the world?

Here–as with many other shared threats–a global response may be most effective.  Consider this position argued by Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment:

The positive reason to ratify is that giving up nuclear tests enhances security.

Since 1999, we have learned that a nonproliferation system designed against threats from states must be rebuilt to eliminate loopholes and to contain new threats from commercial groups and from terrorists.But 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the non-nuclear states feel that the weapons states haven’t upheld their end of the NPT bargain: to move toward disarmament. They are, therefore, unwilling to discuss necessary new restrictions until they see movement. Ratifying the test ban is a necessary first step.

via This Time, Ban the Test – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

You can review the global scorecard in this great GoogleMap mashup that shows treaty status by country as well as test sites.

Another view by John Mueller of FP.com—no need to be alarmist.  Nukes aren’t that big of a deal:

However, it is increasingly clear that the Soviet Union never had the slightest interest in engaging in any kind of conflict that would remotely resemble World War II, whether nuclear or not. Its agenda mainly stressed revolution, class rebellion, and civil war, conflict areas in which nuclear weapons are irrelevant. Nor have possessors of the weapons ever really been able to find much military use for them in actual armed conflicts. They were of no help to the United States in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq; to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; to France in Algeria; to Britain in the Falklands; to Israel in Lebanon and Gaza; or to China in dealing with its once-impudent neighbor Vietnam.

In fact, a major reason so few technologically capable countries have actually sought to build the weapons, contrary to decades of hand-wringing prognostication, is that most have found them, on examination, to be a substantial and even ridiculous misdirection of funds, effort, and scientific talent.

Obama’s U.N. Debut: A Dizzying Agenda – Political Hotsheet – CBS News

An historic moment for a U.S. President at the UN:

But he certainly won’t be doing all that and more in his 15-minute speech to world leaders. Rather, he has a dizzying set of meetings set up, all with varying agendas. Just a week ago, the White House announced that the president would address the U.N. Climate Change Summit, meet with Sub-Saharan African leaders, hold a U.S. meeting for U.N. peacekeepers, and have bilateral meetings with the leaders of Japan, China and Russia. That is not to mention the social gatherings – dinner with the climate change leaders, the Secretary General’s lunch and the U.S. diplomatic party – all while trying to avoid the traditional U.S. adversaries, such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Libya’s Col. Moammar Gaddafi, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, in any social setting. (He does not have to worry about North Korea’s Kim Jong Il or Cuba’s Raul Castro since they are not attending this year.) This, after a handful of Sunday talk show interviews and the Late Show with David Letterman.

The question: Is an agenda this packed with world conflicts too much?

The president is ambitious to take on the U.N., no doubt. But his agenda is sort of like the kid at Disneyland who wants to go on every ride.

via Obama’s U.N. Debut: A Dizzying Agenda – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.

In for the Long Haul? Trouble with the Coalition of the Af-Pak Willing?

The Europeans begin to tire in Afghanistan:

We are all convinced that it would be best for everyone, whoever they are, to remove our conspicuous presence from Afghanistan quickly,” Mr. Berlusconi said.

Senior elected officials in Germany and Britain have also expressed weariness with the mission as violence has increased and casualties have mounted.

via Italy Looks at Afghan Pullout After Deadly Blast – NYTimes.com.

But the larger question looms?  Is this war winnable?  If its a culture of corruption on both sides (Karzai’s government, as well as the Taliban), can a satisfactory outcome be achieved?  Is this the Balkans, the Korean “conflict,” or something else?  From a recently returned captain who served two tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, from Wed NYT Op-Ed:

I have just returned from Afghanistan, where I spent seven months as a special adviser to NATO’s director of communications. On listening tours across the country, we left behind the official procession of armored S.U.V.’s, bristling guns and imposing flak jackets that too often encumber coalition forces when they arrive in local villages. Dressed in civilian clothes and driven in ordinary cars, we were able to move around in a manner less likely to intimidate and more likely to elicit candor.

The recurring complaint I heard from Afghans centered on the untenable encroachment of government corruption into their daily lives — the homeowner who has to pay a bribe to get connected to the sewage system, the defendant who tenders payment to a judge for a favorable verdict. People were so incensed with the current government’s misdeeds that I often heard the disturbing refrain: “If Karzai is re-elected, then I am going to join the Taliban.”

Today, on Diane Rehm (NPR) was one of the most informative discussions I have heard in a while on the situation, for anyone interested in really understanding the policy nuances of this challenging issue for the US, NATO allies, and, of course, the Karzai Government.

Options for Afghanistan

The top U-S commander in Afghanistan warns that without more troops, mission failure is a possibility. Diane and a panel of experts discuss the situation there and the benefits and drawbacks of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

• Paul Pillar, is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. and a former CIA National Intelligence officer.
• Karin von Hippel, codirector of the CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project and senior fellow with the CSIS International Security Program.
• Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Senior Correspondent and Associate Editor at The Washington Post

via WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio – The Diane Rehm Show.

Put a Ban on Ban Ki-moon?

Its been said that the UN Sec Gen is a pope without a church, a general without an army… but here is a pretty rough assessment on the leadership effectiveness of the current occupant of this high office from Jacob Heilbrun in FP.com:

Ban’s flaws were obvious dating back to his decades toiling in the South Korean foreign ministry, where he earned a telling nickname, “The Bureaucrat.” Luckily for Ban, if not for the rest of the world, The Bureaucrat was exactly what the Bush administration was looking for after years of tussling with the assertively anti-American Annan. When it became Asia’s turn to nominate a secretary-general, Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, made Ban’s election her pet project. But Ban failed to charm outside observers. In his book The Best Intentions, James Traub recounts a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations during Ban’s campaign to become secretary: “[B]etween his anodyne oratory, and his unsteady grasp of English, I found that I had been lulled to sleep.”As secretary-general, Ban’s soporific effect has never left him. One U.N. watcher told me that Ban is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one around to witness its crash—if you don’t hear him, does he really exist? Aside from his role as a subsidiary of South Korea, Inc.—lining his office walls with Samsung televisions and hiring his South Korean buddies as senior advisors—his imprint has been negligible. Even Ban seems aware of what a nonentity he is: Last August, speaking to senior U.N. officials in Turin, he described his management style as elevating teamwork over intellectual attainment. But he went on to bemoan his difficulty overcoming bureaucratic inertia, ending with a gnomic admission of general defeat: “I tried to lead by example. Nobody followed.”

J.P. Singh’s book on Negotiation, globalization, and international relations

An interesting book from Georgetown professor J.P. Singh noting that its not a flat or spikey worlds–but rather, both.

Obama and the UN

What does an Obama Presidency mean for the US-UN relationship?

Much has been written in recent years about America “rejoining the world.” Nowhere more than at the UN have Washington’s bullying tactics and stunted, provincial vision of global challenges cast such a pall over international cooperation. Here, the United States is close-up and personal. After the naming in Washington of a new secretary of state, the appointment most eagerly awaited at the UN is that of the next American ambassador.

Peter Maurer, Switzerland’s ambassador to the UN, says that what he hears among his diplomatic colleagues is a plea for trust to be restored between the US and the UN. There are the wounds of the Iraq war, and there is skepticism about the motives of Washington when politicians talk about UN reform. “The new administration will find a kind of window of opportunity because there is enormous goodwill around the UN to see and to hear some new voices” Maurer said. But the UN as well as the US will have to work on closing the rift, he added.

The world of the United Nations is divided into two distinct camps. The people of the headquarters Secretariat and the various agencies are recruited or appointed international civil servants who are expected to leave their nationalities behind and work for a global constituency. Many of them fail to meet that test, but that’s another story. Separate from them are the diplomats who represent the 192 member nations. Their missions are in essence embassies to the UN and their views, at least formally, would reflect those of their governments.

To the foreign diplomats based in New York, perhaps surprisingly, the ambassadors sent to the UN by the Bush administration have generally been respected and liked, from John Negroponte and John Danforth to Zalmay Khalilzad, the first Muslim to represent the US in New York. John Bolton was the exception, but his period as ambassador was relatively brief and he was regarded as competent even by some who found him undiplomatically abrasive and driven blindly by his distrust of internationalism and rigid defense of American sovereignty.