In the Financial Times, Martin Wolf drafts the speech that Barack Obama should give to the G-20 when they next meet.
Political science professor Sonia Cardenas argues in the International Herald Tribune that Hillary Clinton's promise not to let human rights concerns interfere with the U.S.'s relations with China on economic, environmental, and security issues was a major blow to the concept of human rights.
And former U.S. ambassador to the UN Jonathan Moore, writing in The Boston Globe, urges the United States to beware the spooky-sounding "larger global forces undefined and unconfined by political geography" that will shape foreign policies in the 21st century. He proposes wonky (and worthwhile) solutions in the form of new "paradigms" and "synergisms."
Even coming from a UN official whose job was to investigate extrajudicial killings, this is harsh:
"I have received overwhelming testimony that there exists in Kenya a systematic, widespread and well-planned strategy to execute individuals, carried out by the police," he said of the alleged killing of some 500 suspected Mungiki members.
"Kenyan police are a law unto themselves. They kill often, with impunity," he said.
This was from the testimony of Philip Alston, the UN "rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions" reporting after a fact-finding mission on a problem that should come as a surprise to no one familiar with the shocking violence in the country after the elections of late 2007. The steady hum of killings has evidently continued, albeit on a smaller scale, and with much less media attention.
One of the problems of the otherwise laudable settlement that Kofi Annan brokered in early 2008 was that, instead of resolving much of Kenya's long-standing corruption, it simply tried to diffuse the problem by creating a bloated cabinet. The same offenders remain, therefore, and the incentives for patronage have perhaps only grown. A prime target of Alston's report was the Attorney General, a man named Amos Wako who has been in his position for 17 years and who prompted Alston to remark "Mr. Wako is the embodiment in Kenya of the phenomenon of impunity."
Unfortunately, the same culture of corruption and impunity that has created the problem of Kenya's extrajudicial killings is likely to create resistance to implementing Alston's recommendations. The Kenyan government has predictably rejected the report, claiming that it violates the country's sovereign prerogatives. The stridency of Alston's testimony, though, has caused a stir, so he seems to be using his bully pulpit well.
(image of Kenyans protesting in Minnesota in January 2008, from flickr user Wa-J under a Creative Commons license)
Yes, the world is in a financial crisis, and yes, valuable projects are losing funding the world over. Some priorities, though, aren't going to diminish in urgency even if it's hard to find the money to pay for them. Fighting is going to continue in Congo, Haiti is going to continue to build its nascent government, and Lebanon is going to continue to try to ward off destabilization, no matter how far the markets plummet. And UN peacekeepers, in these countries and a dozen others, are still going to be trying to do their jobs, in some of the hardest hit areas of the world, even if donor nations don't scrounge up the money to pay them.
That's why it is discouraging that the United States, by far the wealthiest country in the world, and the largest contributor to UN peacekeeping, is again going to fall behind in paying its dues. It's extra frustrating because the Obama Administration, and its UN ambassador, Susan Rice, have stressed at great lengths the importance of supporting UN peacekeeping, of re-engaging with the rest of the world, and of ending conflicts in places like Congo and Sudan, where blue helmets are the only ones working to hold tenuous peace. Hell, the United States has even made noise (ill-advisedly) about creating new UN peacekeeping missions. If it's going to vote for these missions in the Security Council, it's going to get billed for them, plain and simple.
Despite this rhetorical support and the fact that the bills are going to come, even if the government keeps deferring payment, the U.S.'s 2009 budget request will shortchange UN peacekeeping by $669 million. That may seem like small potatoes in these days of $800 billion legislation, but when you're talking about the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which runs on a shoestring yearly budget of just $7 billion, those missing U.S. funds will hit hard, in places that need them the most, to protect the people that most need protection.
Congress will have a chance to make up this funding gap later, through what's called a supplemental funding bill, but it's disheartening to see the U.S.'s long-standing policy of paying its UN dues late continue, with an administration so committed to improving America's image and taking up a strong leadership position in the world. For the sake of peacekeeping missions everywhere, struggling with the rest of the world in this economic downturn, and to live up to the administration's own commitments, the United States will have to provide this crucial funding as soon as possible.
Bill Clinton gives a speech on philanthropy and global public health at the United Nations Economic and Social Council. He takes a stab at the question of how philanthropy can do more for public health in these tough economic times? Interestingly, he predicts a financial restructuring in the NGO community, particularly around small donors. Check it out.
Speaking of War Child, I see the BBC has an interview with Somali-born rapper K'Naan. Included in this song, "Somalia," is his perspective on the media's "commotion" over the piracy off Somalia's coast.
Judah Grunstein of World Politics Review sees an opportunity for international cooperation on Iran's nuclear program in what would seem to be a pretty fundamental shared interest: making sure that nobody in Iran is exposed to dangerous nuclear material. Citing James Acton at Arms Control Wonk, Grunstein passes on the hypothesis that the surprisingly large amount of enriched uranium reported by the IAEA the other day was due not so much (or not only) to "Iranian deviousness," but also to Iran's reckless disregard for "standard housekeeping" and basic safety precautions. If the fact that Iran has enough nuclear material to produce a weapon is certifiably bad news for its neighbors, then this lackluster care at maintaining safety at its own facility is decidedly ominous for Iranians.
And therein lies the opportunity, suggests Grunstein:
[Iran's sloppiness] also, however, might present an opening for a Western consortium to become involved in the Iranian program. That, you'll remember, is one of the proposed compromises for resolving the impasse between the West's desire for transparency and Iran's desire to enrich uranium on its territory. Clearly, the safety of the Esfahan facility is in everyone's interests, and it could become the selling point that allows the Iranians to accept the consortium without losing face.
Well, on its face this premise seems true enough, but I'm rather cynically hesitant to assume that Iran's interest in safety would trump its evidently stubborn persistence to develop nuclear weapons capabilities. After all, if Tehran has not thus far heeded IAEA safety advice (let alone permitted open inspections) in its headlong rush to build a bomb, then why would that prove an effective pressure point for the Western consortium to gain entry? On the other side, I don't think the U.S. government's singular insistence that Iran freeze enrichment will cede much ground to the official interest in ensuring transparency over the issue of preventing nuclear disaster within Iran. Grunstein condedes that the latter would be "icing on the cake," but it seems unclear to me how the international community could bake a cake from the icing down.
Color me skeptical about Congressman Frank Wolf's nomination of former Senate Majority Bill Frist for President Obama's special envoy to Sudan. The letter from Congressman Wolf to President Obama (in full below the fold) just landed in my in-box.
I have written Secretary of State Clinton urging the appointment of a high-caliber special envoy to Sudan. Today I echo that call to you, with the specific request that the appointment be made in a high-profile event, which makes it clear to the world that the envoy has your ear and speaks with your authority. I ask that you appoint former Senate Majority leader Bill Frist as this special envoy.
Even when he served in the Senate, Dr. Bill Frist continued his surgical practice, travelling to Africa yearly on medical missions, including to Sudan. He boldly emerged as a leader in declaring what was happening in Sudan to be genocide, and co-authoring the bipartisan Sudan Peace Act. Senator Frist is truly passionate about the people and future of Sudan and in the tradition of former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell he is respected across the aisle.
Don't get me wrong, Bill Frist was a key leader in the Senate on Sudan issues. And Frank Wolf (a Republican) along with Donald Payne (a Democrat) were two of the earliest champions of Darfur in the House of Representatives. Still, I find this proposal a bit off. An effective special envoy generally requires two important features: 1) diplomatic experience 2) access to the president. It strikes me that former Senator Frist possesses neither.
Meanwhile, this bit of intrigue would suggest that the administration is close to settling on a Darfur strategy.
Opinio Juris' Ken Anderson reads Colum Lynch's article in Sunday's Post well, and poses a good question about why it seems like the United States has more allies outside the UN (at least in terms of countries willing to receive American aid) than within (where the U.S. too often has found itself with few friends in lopsided, 188-4 type votes). This is the very problem that Lynch dissects in his piece -- how the Obama Administration, which has recommitted to international diplomacy through the UN, can overcome or work around what seems to be the entrenched presence and exaggerated power of countries eager to frustrate American objectives.
Anderson, along with New York Times Magazine journalist James Traub, whom Lynch quotes, is skeptical of the extent to which repudiating the unilateralist tendencies of the Bush Administration can make significant inroads at solving what they see as a more endemic problem. While this is true, in that the history and the bureaucracy of the UN have created a system that hews to certain unfortunate consistencies, it's equally fallacious to take the UN out of the context of the past eight years, which, after all, have shaped the current dynamics in the body as much as the forces that led to the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a frequent opponent of American policies.
And this is where change may come. A shift in attitude and a willingness to engage will undoubtedly improve America's reputation both at Turtle Bay and in the world, but the more substantive changes in policy will have a perhaps greater effect in bringing the politics of the "real world," as Anderson, with the eye of a political realist, characterizes it, in line with those in the UN. States will continue to pursue their own interests, in the UN as in this real(politik) world, and contrary to some assertions by gleeful skeptics and disappointed supporters alike, Obama's policies will differ substantially from those of his predecessor. This is not to say that countries will line up to agree with the United States, that states like Iran will abandon "anti-American" agendas, or that Israel has any reason to fear being alone in opposing measures hurtful to its interests, but promulgating policies that show greater respect and possibly even resemblance to those of the rest of the world, could go a long way in taking wind out of the sails of the extremists that seem to have such a strong hold on many large UN bodies.
I have to at least disagree with Anderson's conclusion:
But I suspect that the Obama administration, like the Clinton administration, sees the UN as largely irrelevant, andthat it thinks, as the Clinton administration did, that Republican administrations get all too worked up over something that is all hat and no cattle. I think that takes it far too lightly; still, there is something to be said for a reversion to the Clinton administration’s mean of the pious hypocrisy that everyone else undertakes, and quite takes for granted, at the UN.
I understand the roots of Anderson's term, "pious hypocrisy," in that most countries will uphold the value of the UN (at least when it's in their interests to do so) in the abstract, but renege on their support when it comes down to "real" policies. I think this is far too cynical, however. I see no sign that Obama would characterize the UN as "largely irrelevant;" on the contrary, it seems he has gone out of his way -- reinstating the position of UN ambassador to the Cabinet, to take a symbolic example -- to make clear that he will work with the UN, that he respects its functions, but that he also acknowledges its flaws and recognizes the importance of reform. More, by exuding the sort of unhelpful antagonism that Anderson glimpses, the Obama Administration would merely make it that much harder for itself to reform the UN and to heighten the U.S.'s position within it.
What Anderson, and many of the countries that espouse such an attitude toward the UN, are taking for granted seems to be the UN itself, not the strategy to circumvent it.