The S-G will be traveling to the rapidly melting Arctic at the end of August. As a locale to symbolize the imperative of addressing climate change, he couldn't have chosen better. Glaciers are melting at an astonishing rate (for glaciers, that is), and much of what once reasonably could have been considered part of Santa Claus' land route from the North Pole will soon require reindeer that have learned to swim. (More seriously, the global warming of the Arctic does threaten to disrupt important ecosystems, not to mention cause the rise in sea levels that small island nations the world over are so rightly concerned about.)
The trip underscores the enthusiasm with which Ban honestly seems to have taken up the mantle as the UN chief who galvanized the fight against climate change, which he has called the crisis the "defining challenge of our time." Ban will now be the first UN Secretary-General to have traveled to both of the Earth's poles. Two years ago, he became the first S-G to visit the Antarctic (so really, he's just showing off his toughness in the cold here). He did learn to dress warm on that last trip though.
Matt Yglesias points out that, at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event yesterday, the Foreign Minister of Indonesia essentially said that if the United States walks through the door of ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, his country will follow.
This is a shrewd political maneuver, particularly because a statement at a venue halfway across the world likely won't generate as much attention at home than would one made in Jakarta. Such a commitment would also require a greater lift on the part of the United States, which actually possesses nuclear weapons, than of Indonesia, which does not. Indonesia does, however, have the potential to research and possibly test nuclear material, so it would unquestionably be in U.S. interests to make sure another country did not start along the road of nuclear progression.
For all the reasons Matt lays out -- that ratifying CTBT is relatively low-hanging fruit, a short-term good gesture that would advance the goal of non-proliferation -- convincing the eight other countries who would need to ratify CTBT for it to take effect should be an Obama Administration priority (Vice President Biden is reportedly leading the effort to shepherd the treaty through the Senate). Ratifying this ourselves should be a diplomatic and policy no-brainer, so much more clearly so if Indonesia is ready to follow by example. Granted, China and Russia (let alone Iran and North Korea), also CTBT non-ratifiers, probably wouldn't exactly fall like dominoes from this diplomatic reciprocity, but it would at least remove the hypocrisy from the U.S. stance.
Plus, a move by Indonesia would give commentators another positive development in a Muslim country (the world's largest, in fact) to ascribe to the "Obama Effect" of the Cairo speech.
(image of Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, under a Creative Commons license)
If all goes well, by 2050, the European Union might make those target emissions reductions currently bandied about -- 40%, 60%, even 80% -- seem modest. With the right decision making and investment strategy, Europe might be able to go totally green by then.
Governments must stop authorising the building of traditional generators such as coal-fired power plants, accelerate the phasing out of nuclear power, and instead support investment in efficient use of renewable sources, the experts say.
Investment in renewables is, as I mentioned the other day, growing worldwide. There's no reason a completely green economy in the near future shouldn't be a reasonable goal for European policymakers. You know all those newly elected French Greens will be pushing for it...
(image from flickr user woodleywonderworks under a Creative Commons license)
Good news from the country's Human Sciences Research Council:
South Africa's HIV epidemic has levelled off at an infection rate of 10.9% for those aged two or older, according to a new study.
The survey also suggests the rate of infection in children and teenagers could be falling.
This could be partly attributed to increased use of condoms, it says.
There may be "light at the end of the tunnel," in the words of South Africa's Health Minister, but it's still an uphill climb; there are more HIV-positive people in South Africa -- 5.5 million -- than anywhere else in the world. Still, increased condom usage is a good sign, one that the country's leadership -- having shifted from Thabo Mbeki, whose infamous denial and inaction deeply exacerbated the problem, to Jacob Zuma, who, still, disturbingly once claimed that a shower after sex decreased the risk of HIV infection -- will have to actively push.
The reactions here in the United States to the Lebanese elections yesterday are generally of surprised relief. The Hezbollah-led alliance that many feared would come out on top had a disappointing showing, and the "March 14" coalition led by Saad Hariri, the former prime minister's son, had a very good day.
The Wall Street Journal and Huffington Post speculate that the Western-friendly results may owe something to Obama's big speech in Cairo last week. Blake Hounshell, Tim Fernholz, and Andrew Exum are skeptical, and I agree; while the U.S. is likely counting its lucky stars, it seems hubristic to assume that one speech by a foreign politician, a few days before the election, would sway Lebanese swing voters away from Hezbollah.
The elections were a matter of internal politics, and the most relevant dynamic was likely Lebanese dissatisfaction with Hezbollah. (Though, indeed, Hezbollah does seem more comfortable, and possibly more formidable, as an opposition party.) I don't think Obama's speech was directed toward Lebanese voters, and this is a good thing; with the Iranian elections in just a few days, the U.S. would do well to continue this policy of not meddling, even rhetorically, in elections they cannot control. Whatever happens, the results are likely to prove, if anything, just as unpredictable.
(image from flickr user Sana Tawileh under a Creative Commons license)
After reading today's Henry Kissinger op-ed in The Washington Post (he does seem to have those rather frequently, does he not?) on North Korea, I seemed to recall another one on the same subject from a couple months ago. Then, he seemed to be urging the Obama Administration to refrain from restarting the six-party talks just yet. A nuclear test and a couple more missile launches later, you'd expect him to sound the same skepticism, his much-ballyhooed talk of "no preconditions" notwithstanding. But, um...I count six here.
A long-term solution to the Korean nuclear problem cannot be achieved by America alone. Nor is it sustainable without the key players of Northeast Asia; that means China, South Korea, the United States and Japan, with an important role for Russia, as well. A wise diplomacy will move urgently to assemble the incentives and pressures to bring about the elimination of nuclear weapons and stockpiles from North Korea. It is not enough to demand unstated pressures from other affected countries, especially China. A concept for the political evolution of Northeast Asia is urgently needed.
I tried not to think that this was the same guy who attempted to engineer the "political evolution" of Southeast Asia 35 years ago. And while the op-ed is strangely wispy in its policy recommendations, full of broad hypotheticals and conditionals, the concluding note is certainly in the right tune:
There could scarcely be an issue more suited to cooperation among the Great Powers than nonproliferation, especially with regard to North Korea, a regime that is run by fanatics; located on the borders of China, Russia and South Korea; and within missile range of Japan. Still, the major countries have been unable to galvanize themselves into action. [emphasis mine]
"Action," of course, is difficult, particularly with such a confounding regional situation, an enigmatic and intransigent regime, and two unjustly imprisoned American journalists, to boot. Kissinger doesn't seem able to acknowledge that we can't go back in time to prevent North Korea from reaching the nuclear stage it is at right now; nonproliferation, even the preferred multilateral kind that Kissinger rightly supports, must proceed from existing realities. Only then can we work on changing them.
As previewed before the weekend, today is the first official World Oceans Day. And as I stressed before, this sounds like the perfect opportunity to push for U.S. ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty. He doesn't call out Washington, but the S-G would certainly agree.
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides the legal framework within which all activities in the oceans and seas must be carried out, and is the basis for international cooperation on all levels," UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement.
...
"The world must do more to implement this Convention and uphold the rule of law on the seas and oceans," he stressed. [emphasis mine]
The sentence sounds Solzhenitsynian, the trial was certainly Kafkaesque, and whole affair smacks of dangerous Orwellian farce. But this is real life, and North Korea's sham court convicted Laura Ling and Euna Lee, American journalists for Al Gore's Current TV, for "grave crimes" against the Hermit Kingdom.
Whether this brazen sentencing is designed explicitly to challenge the brewing sanctions that the United States and UN are formulating, or whether it is simply a normal outcome of the reigning modus operandi in North Korea, is unclear. But this certainly throws a wrench into the already difficult negotiations over North Korea's equally flagrant defiance of UN resolutions concerning its nuclear program.
North Korea may use the journalists' freedom as a bargaining chip to avoid harsher sanctions, which strikes me as an unconscionable use of hostage-taking as diplomatic strategy. Even before this gambit, though, Pyongyang already seemed pretty resistant to one aspect of the potential new Security Council resolution in particular -- that allowing inspection of suspect cargo coming into the country. And even though the two issues - nuclear proliferation and an egregious violation of press freedom - are nominally unrelated, they are both a matter of North Korean pride, and will therefore be all the trickier for the Obama Administration to deal with them separately.
UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman describes what Ling and Lee's sentence might look like in practice.