Diplomats Have Been Dropping Their Pens and Waving Guns – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com

In this discussion, “Foggy Bottom and the Fog of War” several observers explore what is gained or lost when the secretary of defense takes a back seat to the secretary of state in pursuing military interventions.

• Should we follow Samantha Power’s lead and “weaponize human rights?”
• Do career incentives for the use of force skew Washington policy for the worse?
• Did Presidential dysfunction, resulting in the marginalization of Sec State Colin Powell undermine the Powell Doctrine–limiting the use of force except for in extraordinary circumstances–as Christopher O’Sullivan notes?
• Is the State Department as an institution incapable of designing, owning, and implementing strategic? Should we have a stronger, better developed diplomatic core, as Kori Schake suggests?
• Do you agree that Vietnam is the “anti-diplomacy” example, where DOD tried (and failed) to be diplomats, under Robert S. McNamara’s leadership.  (This notion is illustrated in the brilliant doc, The Fog of War.)
• via Diplomats Have Been Dropping Their Pens and Waving Guns – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

A Better Internationalism

Recent events in Syria could lead to serious questions about the UN and international system that has been created out of WWII.  Does it even work? Can a Security Council that excludes India, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and Germany address the most pressing global security threats?  What should follow the Millennium Development Goals? And how could a system meet the United States’ needs while providing a more stable, prosperous world.

A big job, needing some big ideas.  A new article from teh World Policy Journal gives it a shot:

But future military interventions like the Libyan case will and should be rare. The real test of American constructive internationalism won’t be dramatic hard power showdowns. Most of the world’s first order challenges, like the basic needs of the bottom billions, destructive climate change, nuclear proliferation, and unsustainably unbalanced globalization cannot be solved by military force. They are not amenable to crisis-management internationalism—by Washington or any other global or regional power. And they are far too dangerous to keep ignoring or under-resourcing.

Dealing with these challenges will not require budget-busting aid programs or massive global transfers of wealth. What they need is sustained steady funding and commitment, which is harder than it sounds. Trillion dollar wars are politically easier to fund than much more modest and constructive assistance programs. Consider the history of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

via A Better Internationalism.

Richard Butler: Inspections Can Work in Syria

Can UN inspectors find and destroy so many chemical weapons in Syria?  Fareed Zakaria interviewed the UN’s chief weapons inspector. Richard Butler on Sunday:

ZAKARIA: So the bottom line is the inspections process, through all that difficult, actually worked.

BUTLER: It did work. In my last report to the Security Council in 1999, I made clear that we had had a full account of all of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction with the exception, interestingly, of a small quantity of chemical weapons.

We couldn’t account for them. We knew that they’d been produced. We couldn’t find them. Iraq had either destroyed them or, and this is interesting in today’s context, we had an intelligence report that they’d moved them across the border into Syria to keep them away from us.

But basically, Fareed, the system did work and the bottom line to that, Fareed, and this may sound incredible naive on my part, but is a genuine willingness on the part of those being inspected to cooperate.

Now, that might sound a bit funny, a bit naive. We had that willingness from the Iraqi side for quite a while and then they started to withdraw it.

And I’ll make this point right here and now, this can work, what the Russian’s have proposed and the Syrians said they will agree to, it can work provided a system of the kind I’ve described is put in place.

But, above all, provided the Syrians are prepared to want and act to make it work. Cooperation, then it can be done. If they play a shell game, if they resist, it won’t be achieved.

via CNN.com – Transcripts.

Rebel Rifts on Island Confound Philippines – NYTimes.com

Peacemaking among clans in the Philippines is hard work.  New fighting threatens an October 2012 framework with the Muslim separatist group, Moro Islamic Liberation Front:

‘At the root of the problem is a belief by many Muslims in the southern part of the country that Christians in the north have oppressed them and exploited their resources. Well-armed Muslim clans have fought government forces since the American military quelled the Moro insurrectionists in 1899, when the Philippines was under colonial rule by the United States. Every government in Manila since independence in 1946 has struggled to bring peace to Mindanao.

Any peace deal is complicated by factionalism, with ancient roots, among the political and rebel organizations involved, said Ramon C. Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila.

via Rebel Rifts on Island Confound Philippines – NYTimes.com.

Veteran Diplomat Fond of Cigars, Whiskey and Outfoxing U.S. – NYTimes.com

Who is Ambassador Sergey V. Lavrov and what does he want?  In an April 2013 interview, he conveys Russia’s interests to engage with the US and the world. In another interview, “Minister Nyet” tells Susan Glasser essentially that “Russia is not sulking, and she is just about done composing herself”–to cite Alexander Gorchakov, a previous foreign minister from the mid-19th century.

In many ways, Mr. Lavrov’s work over the next six days represented the apex of a career largely spent trying to body-block what the Kremlin has long viewed as dangerous American unilateralism. It is a job he has done so effectively that it has earned him the nickname “Minister Nyet,” and senior American officials, including Hillary Rodham Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, have said they often found it infuriating to deal with him.

As the diplomatic technician for his boss, President Vladimir V. Putin, Mr. Lavrov maneuvered to hem in the United States, averting a unilateral military strike and reasserting Russia’s role — all while Russia was continuing to provide weapons to Mr. Assad and diplomatic cover for his effort to suppress an uprising.

More broadly, though, Mr. Lavrov has sought to force the United States into a conversation that the Kremlin hopes will set a precedent, establishing Russia’s role in world affairs based not on the dated cold war paradigm but rather on its own outlook, which favors state sovereignty and status quo stability over the spread of Western-style democracy.

via Veteran Diplomat Fond of Cigars, Whiskey and Outfoxing U.S. – NYTimes.com.

To see evidence that Lavrov has been working on this angle for a long time, see the translation of an interview with him on Lebanese Television from 13 May 2013.