One can see why some would argue that the Annan plan has failed. However, it is important to retain a realistic perspective about how much a third-party mediator can hope to achieve given the circumstances.
While South Sudan is clearly facing great problems and even grave danger at the moment, there is still room for optimism. The people are resilient and determined, they are proud of their new nation, and they have a remarkable capacity for hope.
The UN mandate to achieve a political solution that will afford Western Sahara its long denied right to self-determination is a farce and everyone knows it.
Syria is different to all other countries hit by the Arab Spring. The international community’s main security concern should be the fate of Syrian WMDs.
The best response to the crisis in Syria is the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force to oversee an inclusive political process for a new Syrian constitution.
The China–Russia veto does not prove the irrelevance of the UN Security Council. Rather, it proves that the politics of the Security Council must be got right before an R2P military intervention; and the political equilibrium should be maintained during the operation.
The fact is that humanitarian intervention is here to stay. Instead of trying to get rid of it there is more prudence in allowing the lesser evil of a streamlined and legally-regulated form of humanitarian intervention to continue.
My most recent interview was with Madeleine Albright, the US foreign policy practitioner and policy-maker, the women’s rights implementer in foreign policy during her time as a US Ambassador to the UN and as Secretary of State, the daughter of a Czechoslovak dissident who was a recipient of US support during WWII and the Cold War, and finally as the academic examining foreign policy.
The real challenge is one of how to get global faith in a dignified and well-protected existence for everyone, rooted in all hearts and minds. This tends to entail periods of sharp confrontation with the powers that be, as the recent Arab Spring has markedly illustrated.
The UN-mandated intervention in Libya is now officially at an end. Perhaps only time will tell whether Libya turns out to have been a great case of international intervention or something rather less.
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