Former UN Ambassador John Bolton and former deputy assistant secretary general (and infamous "torture memo" architect) John Yoo join hands in The Washington Post to attack an entirely baseless prediction that the Obama administration insidiously plans to bypass the Senate in negotiating certain "Draconian" treaties.

America needs to maintain its sovereignty and autonomy, not to subordinate its policies, foreign or domestic, to international control. On a broad variety of issues -- many of which sound more like domestic rather than foreign policy -- the re-emergence of the benignly labeled "global governance" movement is well under way in the Obama transition.

The specter of "global governance" to which Bolton and Yoo are referring? Obama's promise to "re-engage" (with every other country on the globe) and "work constructively within" the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, that dastardly agreement to...develop a coherent global plan to address the reality of global warming. Other products of Bolton and Yoo's dreaded treaty-filled world include a halt on nuclear proliferation, U.S. cooperation on the International Criminal Court (already undergoing with U.S. cooperation to bring war criminals in Darfur to justice), and signing on to an international "law of the sea" that would, among other benefits to the United States, increase American ocean jurisdiction and make it easier to fight pirates.

There are many deceptions, inaccuracies, and just plain falsehoods in the Bolton-Yoo op-ed -- such as, for example, the contention that International Criminal Court prosecutors are "unaccountable" -- but most shocking is the piece's premise that working with other countries on global issues amounts, practically prima facie, to the infamous "entangling alliances" that Washington Jefferson warned against (in an era, it bears reminding, that may have had its fill of pirates, but a conspicuous lack of trans-national phenomena like greenhouse gases and nuclear weapons).

The insinuation that the Obama administration will try to join these international accords illegitimately is simply a ruse here; the real bugaboo for Bolton and Yoo here are the treaties themselves, and, worse, the "global governance" that no one is particularly interested in instituting but that serves as conveniently scary-sounding umbrella. To their invocation of Jefferson's famous maxim, I would counter that, if the United States remains alone in its corner -- shut out from much of the ocean's resources, unable to cooperate on securing rogue nuclear weapons, and in the morally awkward position of opposing prosecutions of war criminals, for instance -- then I think we will find ourselves "entangled" in a host of problems more serious than mere alliances.

Posted by John Boonstra on January 5, 2009, 4:03 PM | Comments (1) | Critic Watch, Diplomacy

A commenter in my latest BloggingHeads diavlog with Matthew Lee asks "Will the UN have any say in a negotiated peace in Gaza? Perhaps, getting Israel and the US government to agree to lift the air, sea and land blockade of the territory?" It's a good question. In fact, there is some historical precedent suggesting that the UN may have a role to play in lifting the blockade. In the midst of the 2006 war between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces the Security Council negotiated resolution 1701, which called for a cessation of hostilities. Israel, however, would not lift the sea and air blockade of Lebanon until it was sure that international forces could maintain sea patrols around Lebanon and monitor air freight coming into Beirut. Here is what I wrote at the time about Kofi Annan's personal contribution to the resolution of that conflict:

Annan shuttled from country to country in order to help create the conditions whereby Israel could lift its sea and air blockade of Lebanon. This was an uphill battle from the get-go, for Israel had insisted that it would lift the blockades only when all of the conditions set forth on resolution 1701 were met. But some of these conditions, such as a border patrol and weapons interdiction regime, were weeks away from being implemented. (When Annan visited Beirut, the German ships scheduled to replace the Israeli Navy off the coast of Lebanon were at least two weeks away from their destination.) Meanwhile, the ongoing blockade was enacting a heavy political toll on Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora as well as impeding reconstruction efforts throughout the country. A frustrated Siniora, reported the Financial Times was reaching the limits of his patience and refused to take Annan's calls.

A day before he was scheduled to head back to New York, Annan made one final push to lift the blockade. Working the phones, he secured an agreement from France to patrol the Lebanese coast until the German navy arrived. Then, asked Germany to send border control agents to Lebanese airports, per Israel's demands. Finally, the conditions were right lifting the blockades. With a call to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Annan was able to convince Israeli Prime Minister Olmert to stand down his forces.

The answer, therefore, is yes the UN can have a role to play in situations like this. Ultimately, though, Israel's decisions will be its own. But the United Nations can help set the conditions under which Israel may feel more comfortable in lifting the blockade.

Photo of Gaza Terminal Airport Building from Flickr.

Posted by Mark Leon Goldberg on January 5, 2009, 2:36 PM | Comments (0) | Conflicts, Diplomacy

The brand new Global Health Blog at Change.Org by Alanna Shaikh is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs. It is certainly must-reading for anyone interested in these issues. Here's Alanna making five global health predictions for 2009.

Antibacterial resistance will get worse

Antibacterial resistance will keep getting worse. Bacteria are evolving at a terrifying rate, because of overuse and abuse of antibiotics. As a result, more and more first-line antibiotics will become useless, in both the developing and developed world. A standard treatment for either malaria or tuberculosis will cease to be effective, and the WHO will remove it from the treatment guidelines.

Malnutrition

Rising world food prices are going to mean poor people go hungry more often. We'll see substantial increases in rates of malnutrition. There will be more UN appeals to help the starving, and they will rarely be fully funded, as cash-strapped governments start to cut their donations.

Improvement in AIDS care

We'll see longer average life spans for people living with AIDS. This will result from better access to HIV drugs because of new funding sources and cheaper generic drugs, better treatment of opportunistic infections, and more focus on nutritional support for people with HIV. The rates of new infections will continue to rise, but the infection itself will be better controlled throughout the world than ever before.

Scandal involving fake or contaminated drugs

A large amount of fake or contaminated pharmaceuticals will be discovered; something that has international reach and is on the scale of the melamine contamination this fall. Drugs and their ingredients travel long distances, with relatively little tracking. A problem with Chinese or Indian manufactured pharmaceuticals could affect most of the planet. While finding the source factory might not be difficult, removing all affected product from store shelves would be impossible. We'll learn that the hard way in 2009.

Tropical diseases on new places

We will see traditionally tropical diseases like malaria, sleeping sickness, and dengue fever spread. The neglected tropical diseases will start to seem a lot scarier. At least one of them will be diagnosed repeatedly in a location that has never seen indigenous tropical disease before. (my money's on Onchocerciasis)

Posted by Mark Leon Goldberg on January 5, 2009, 11:19 AM | Comments (0) | World Health

The graphic designer who lead a team of designers in creating the emblematic United Nations logo died last week. He was 92. From ArtDaily.

Lundquist was born in Westbury, New York, the son of an architect. He grew up in Peekskill, New York and studied architecture at Columbia University. As a senior there in 1937, he was hired to work in the office of well-known architect Raymond Loewy, receiving training from Loewy himself. At the Loewy firm, he worked on the Chrysler pavilion for the 1939 New York World's Fair, devising a wind tunnel which would show the air flows around Chrysler's latest car. He also devised a "frozen forest" which would dramatize Chrysler's latest automotive feature, the air conditioning system. Made up of trees with refrigerant inside, the forest became a popular retreat on hot summer days at the Fair site.

Lundquist was commissioned as a lieutenant in the United States Navy, which utilized his graphic design talents. Lundquist served in the Office of Strategic Services, where he worked with Alger Hiss and fellow architect Eero Saarinen. Lundquist would prepare visual presentations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as for the Washington press corps.

In 1943, Lundquist won top honors in Art & Architecture's Post War Living housing competition, for a house which he designed with Saarinen.

After being discharged from the Navy, Lundquist led the team responsible for graphic design for the United Nations Conference in San Francisco in April 1945. The initial design for the badge, initially created by Donald McLaughlin, who worked for Lundquist, was only intended to decorate the delegates' badges, not as a logo for any organization. The design, as developed by the team, was blue because the color was seen as the opposite of red, the color of war. It was more centered on the United States as host nation of the conference than is today's United Nations logo, and it excluded southern South America, since Argentina was not expected to join the United Nations (it did so later). The UN kept the idea of an azimuthal north polar projection of the world within olive branches, but rotated the design somewhat, and expanded it so that all major continents could be seen in full.

A few years ago we celebrated Donal McLaughlin's centennial here on Dispatch. These were two amazing designers whose works are universally recognizable. Lundquist's professional legacy will certainly live on.

Posted by Mark Leon Goldberg on January 5, 2009, 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | Validators

Reuters:

The United Nations Security Council will hold a special meeting on Saturday on the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians, the U.N. press office said.

The meeting was set for 7 p.m. EST (2400 GMT).

Israel launched a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, sending tanks and infantry into battle with Hamas fighters who have defied eight days of deadly air strikes with salvos of rocket fire into Israeli towns.

UPDATE: More from the Associated Press:

[Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon] said in a statement that he was "deeply concerned over the serious further escalation" of violence in Gaza. The statement said Ban had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "and conveyed his extreme concern and disappointment" at the invasion. ...

Ban continued to urge key world leaders to intensify efforts to achieve an immediate Israeli-Hamas cease-fire that includes international monitors to enforce a truce and possibly to protect Palestinian civilians.

On a personal note: I grew up in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. My mother is Jewish American, my father was Christian Lebanese. I lived through the kind of terrible strife that is all too common in the Mideast and I recognize the intricacy (and intractability) of the situation there.

The wide disparity of views in the blogosphere demonstrates how difficult it is to find moral clarity when bombs start falling. But one thing is indisputable: civilians on all sides always bear the brunt of these flare-ups.

After witnessing so many of these bloody paroxysms I hope and pray that I live to see an end to the seemingly endless cycle of Mideast violence.

Posted by Peter Daou on January 3, 2009, 5:23 PM | Comments (2) | Conflicts, UN News

Regarding the most recent of Somalia's tumultuous political twists, Jeffrey Gettleman asks the right question:

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the cantankerous president of beleaguered Somalia, resigned Monday. The question now is, will it make a difference?

Could it be the death knell of Somalia's transitional government, whose zone of control is down to a few city blocks in a country nearly as big as Texas? Or will it be the government's saving grace?

The answer, as should be expected, is that no one really knows. Everyone seems to be optimistic, though. Yglesias calls it "good news (by Somalia standards)," and the U.S. State Department and UN Special Envoy are both aboard the glass half-full train. And while the fact that a (unpopular and probably corrupt) leader did step down peacefully from a national leadership position in a traditionally, ahem, undemocratic state is certainly to be applauded, the magnetic pessimism in Mogadishu is tough to resist.

One context in which I am surprised not to have seen this latest development analyzed is one with regard to Yusuf's last attempted initiative before bowing out -- his botched effort to (illegally) "fire" his prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. It seems pretty clear that this was a last-minute power gamble by Yusuf, and upon its failing, he felt obliged to step down. Whether this makes Yusuf's resignation equally politically waterlogged is unclear. The quotation, from a former employee of Yusuf, with which Gettleman chooses to end his piece, however, is telling.

"Maybe on the outside, to the international community, the resignation will matter," he said. "But not on the inside."

Here's hoping it will at least matter on land and on sea in Somalia.

Posted by John Boonstra on December 31, 2008, 2:34 PM | Comments (2) | Conflicts

An innovative way to prepare for Iraqi elections:

A new United Nations-supported blog site just launched in Baghdad is the latest initiative to engage voters in the nascent democracy and motivate them to go to the polls on 31 January 2009 during the country's provincial elections.

The blog, called "Vote for Iraq" can be found on http://voteiraq.maktoobblog.com and was launched with the support of the UN-led International Election Assistance Team (IEAT).

Voters will just have to make sure not to get too much purple ink on their keyboards.

(image of the dyed finger of an Iraqi voter in 2005 elections, from flickr user carcollectorz under a Creative Commons license)

Posted by John Boonstra on December 31, 2008, 1:47 PM | Comments (0) | Good Works

Julia Keyser at the great new Enough Said blog takes on the thorny issue of whether UN peacekeeping "take-overs" help or hurt efforts undertaken by regional missions in conflict zones.

There is ample evidence that UN missions may actually prolong a conflict -- if there is no peace to keep. With Somalia once again facing serious violence and humanitarian crisis, the members of the UN Security Council must remember that UN missions are not a substitute for genuine political will, effective diplomacy and a practical plan to end a conflict.

The question of whether there is something about the dynamic of the actual take-over itself of a mission -- the process of transitioning from the African Union-led efforts in Darfur to the "re-hatted" hybrid operation under UN control, for example -- that improves or diminishes chances of success is clearly subsumed by the broader one of whether any peacekeeping mission is feasible and potentially beneficial in a given conflict scenario. The expectation that the UN will do a "better" job than a regional organization is simply an extension of the misguided belief that cobbling together some sort of peacekeeping force will be a silver bullet for a problem.

In cases in which a peacekeeping operation cannot halt conflict on its own -- which is to say, never, though the chart that Julia cites does show that conflicts in which peacekeepers are deployed do reignite less often and take longer to do so than those without -- this perverse international response to crises sets up a predictable double-dip of disappointment. First the world sighs when a beleaguered regional cannot impose peace on a chaotic society (e.g. Somalia); then it chastises the UN when its blue helmets also cannot square the circle of keeping a peace that does not exist. It would save a lot of time, money, and lives to recognize this pattern before precipitously looking to peacekeepers as a one-size-fits-all panacea to any problem.

Posted by John Boonstra on December 31, 2008, 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | Conflicts, Peacekeeping

The Ambassador At Large points out some rather tongue-in-cheek suggestions from Gregg Easterbrook on how to resolve the, er, name problem of the so-called (and very strictly so, if you ask a Greek) Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The Republic Formerly Known As Prince.

Steve. Wouldn't Steve be a cool name for a nation?

An Obscure, Landlocked Mountainous Region Along the Vardar River.

Emmanuelle. Really sexy woman's name might increase tourism.

ROM. Subliminally suggests Republic of Macedonia, but the official name would be just initials -- like KFC -- thus frustrating Greece's objection.

Skopje and So Much More!

The Greatest Nation in Human History. This would force the United Nations to say, "Now we will hear from the delegate representing The Greatest Nation in Human History."

The United States of America. Leading national brand in the world, yet cannot be copyrighted.

Easterbrook's suggestions rest of the logic that, as he exasperatedly reminds Greece, "titles cannot be copyrighted!"

Anyone may publish a book called "Gone With the Wind." Any country can call itself France, though it's not clear what the incentive would be.

Perhaps. But I don't think Macedonia would improve its prospects of joining NATO among, say, the French if it tried to call itself "France."

Posted by John Boonstra on December 30, 2008, 4:30 PM | Comments (20) | Diplomacy

The last thing Congo needs is another out-and-out war. The Washington Post's Stephanie McCrummen reports:

A Ugandan rebel group known for its horrific cruelties has massacred 189 people and kidnapped at least 20 children over three days in northeastern Congo, U.N. officials reported Monday.

...

The group killed 40 people in the small town of Faradje on Thursday, and over the next two days, it attacked the villages of Doruma, where rebels massacred 89 people, and neighboring Gurba, where 60 were killed, Brandau said, citing reports that the United Nations received from local authorities.

The group, of course, would be Joseph Kony's murderous Lord's Resistance Army, and the massacre seems to be in response to a joint offensive launched by Sudan, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo a few weeks ago. If there was any doubt that Kony wasn't interested in peace talks before, there can be none anymore.

Posted by John Boonstra on December 30, 2008, 3:59 PM | Comments (1) | Africa, Conflicts