The Security Council is meeting to discuss how to respond to the conviction of Aung San Suu Kyi to 18 months of house arrest, effectively preventing her from running in forthcoming elections in Myanmar/Burma.  The ever valuable Security Council Report succinctly analyzed the political dynamics surrounding today's meeting. 

There are basically two groups within the Council with quite different views on how to deal with Myanmar. The Western permanent members, together with countries like Costa Rica and Mexico, are likely to favour strong public collective action denouncing Aung San Suu Kyi’s continued detention. The other group, including China and Viet Nam is more likely to be influenced by the analysis that this is an internal matter and the Council should not react, at least not immediately and not vigorously.

The issue, then is that the Security Council will only take as hard a line as China will let it.  So, what can make China nudge from its position that this is an internal matter not rising to the level of "international peace and security?"  The answer may not necessarily be diplomacy at the Security Council. Rather, what has pushed China in the past to either thwart or join the western alliance on issues like this is the position taken by the relevant regional organization. 

China effectively supported intervention in Sudan, international efforts in Somalia, and sanctions for Sierra Leone only after the African Union endorsed these efforts.  On the flip side, Beijing refused to go along with sanctions on Zimbabwe that were opposed by the AU. 

That pattern has been repeated on Burma.  As a report from the International Crisis Group notes:

A key reason for the Chinese veto of a 2007 Security Council draft resolution on Myanmar was ASEAN’s lack of support for the resolution and its conviction that Myanmar was not a threat to international peace and security. In vetoing the draft resolution, Ambassador Wang Guangya noted, “None of Myanmar’s immediate neighbours, ASEAN members or most Asia-Pacific coun- tries believed that the current situation in Myanmar posed a threat to regional peace and security”. After the shooting of monks in Rangoon in September 2008, China’s critical statements on Myanmar in the Security Council and UN Human Rights Council mirrored ASEAN’s growing exasperation over the situation.236currently underway by the Africans.

This suggests that the real action this week may not be at the Security Council, but at ASEAN.  To that end, Malaysia is pushing for an emergency meeting.  Indonesian officials are also expressing frustration with the Junta. 

My prediction:  As ASEAN goes, so goes China--and the Security Council.

On Bill Clinton's successful diplomatic trip morally repugnant capitulation to North Korea, Spencer Ackerman's satirical take is all you really need to consult:

In an unforeseen turn of events, Bill Clinton strapped himself with nuclear weapons and detonated during a meeting with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. The former president's inability to free imprisoned American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling ended in carnage, the only diplomatic language the North Koreans understand. Clinton, recognizing that diplomacy was useless, bit his lip sorrowfully and expressed regret that so many had to die in the name of American prestige, according to a suicide note obtained by this blog.

...

Back in the United States, conservatives expressed relief that Clinton chose an honorable end to his life. "Diplomacy with the North would be the worst of all possible options," said Rep. Guy "Whitey" Corngood (R-Ark.), a longtime Clinton critic. "Bringing those two Americans back without incident would have represented an unacceptable humiliation for this country." Attempts to reach John Bolton, a former undersecretary of state and U.N. ambassador in the Bush administration, were unsuccessful, but associates said Bolton credited Clinton for posthumously vindicating his worldview and that the former diplomat was considering a courtesy call to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to express condolences.

What makes this morbid telling (Bill Clinton did not actually blow himself up, and did successfully negotiate the release of the American journalists) even funnier is that John Bolton could be reached, and, predictably enough, still thought that Clinton's visit did nothing but "reward[] bad behavior" and "legitimize the [North Korean] regime." That, and, well, accomplish the only goal that he had in going over there.

I'm consistently struck by how ironically similar the likes of John Bolton are to Kim Jong Il and North Korea's power-obsessed cadre of leaders. The only ones who think that an insignificant sop to the latter's silly sense of pride amounts to a serious concession by the United States are the North Korean leaders themselves and, well, Boltonites. Only these two groups of dolts take what Bolton calls "gesture politics" as a matter more serious than actual politics and policy -- which, once again, resulted in North Korea releasing two wrongly imprisoned journalists and the United States giving up nothing more than a day of face time with Bubba.

(image from flickr user Creative+ Timothy K Hamilton under a Creative Commons license)

To mark the one month anniversary of the military coup that deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, select press, think tankers, members of the diplomatic (including at least a dozen ambassadors "from Canada to Chile") gathered at the Argentine Embassy in Washington for a reception for the Minister of Communications for the "Constitutional Government of Honduras" Enrique Reina.  

Reina is actually a bit more than the minister of communication for the deposed Honduran government.  When the military launched its coup, it had an ally in the Honduran ambassador to the United States, Roberto Flores Bermudez.  This caused a schism within the embassy, with about half the Honduran foreign service loyal to Zelaya and half following the ambassador.  The United States revoked the former ambassador's visa, and since then Reina has acted as the "constitutional government's" representative in the United States. 

I had the opportunity to talk to Reina and a number of other South American diplomats and gauge their reaction to the machinations of certain members of congress, led by Connie Mack of Florida, that are supportive of the de-facto Honduran government.  Mack recently returned from Honduras. And, via The Hill upon his return he had this to say:

"The Organization of American States, State Department and Obama administration got it wrong," Mack said. "We're siding with the OAS and Chavez and Castro and that group over an ally." Mack said Zelaya "is playing a game here and Hugo Chavez is pulling the strings."

Reina and nearly all of the South American diplomats with whom I spoke made the similar point that sentiments like this harken back to the bad old days of the Cold War -- a time when the United States viewed Latin American governments in clear dichotomy between left and right. Left bad. Right good.  End of story. 

But in this case, the entire world (save a handful of Republican members of the United States congress) have united around Zelaya.  Left wing Latin American governments like Venezuela find themselves on the same side of the debate as right wing governments of Columbia. This suggests that the coup transcends politics.  As one Latin American diplomat told me, "We have all seen what a coup is.  When you wake the president up at five in the morning with a gun to his head and kick him out the country that is a coup!"   

The one place where the coup has apparently not transcended regular politics is the United States Congress. 

As Mark forecasted, The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration handed down a ruling today on Abyei, the contentious border area that could prove the tinderbox for renewed civil war in Sudan.  A bit surprisingly, the ruling effectively favored the North, shifting the borders of Abyei to award valuable oil fields to the government in Khartoum.  Even more surprising, though, is that -- for now at least -- everybody seems happy with the decision.

Mutrif Siddig, the Sudanese foreign ministry under-secretary, said that Wednesday's decision was a "step forward".

"We respect this decision. And this decision is final and binding because all the parties agreed from the beginning that the decision of the court was binding and final," he said.

Riek Machar, a representative of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which heads an autonomous regional government in the south, said that he hoped that the ruling would increase the chances for peace.

"We want peace. We think this decision is going to consolidate the peace," he said. "We came to see justice and it's a decision we will respect."

Such punctiliousness is nice and all -- particularly on the part of the South, which could be aggrieved at the ruling -- but I don't exactly share U.S. Sudan Envoy Scott Gration's robust optimism at these rhetorical promises.  It's worth remembering that a deal was reached four years ago, through an objective commission that determined fair boundaries for Abyei, and that that ruling was also supposed to be "binding and final."  Diplomatic niceties were followed up to -- and no farther than -- the point of actually implementing the agreement.

One of the authors of the previous Abyei commission report, the very knowledgeable Douglas Johnson, says that "each side can come away feeling that they have been given something from this arrangement."  If that's all it takes to get a viable resolution of the border dispute, then an oil field or two seems worth trading for peace.  Let's hope both North and South Sudan agree.

(image from UN Photo)