The Western Sahara Peace Process: Tragedy or Farce?
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.
Turkey’s Concerns on Syrian WMDs
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.
What Can Be Done in Response to the Crisis in Syria?
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.
Syrians Are Paying the Price of NATO Excesses in Libya
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.
Humanitarian Intervention: A Legal Analysis
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.
Tea with Madam Secretary, Part I
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.
Religion and Human Rights: A Dialectical Relationship
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.
Was the International Intervention in Libya a Success?
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.
The International Politics of Religious Defamation
The current focus by scholars and policymakers on the role of religion in international relations is a welcome development. It’s transnational power can serve as a force for both good or ill by challenging the exclusive authority of states over their citizens, and debates over religious issues cannot be understood without taking religious beliefs into account.
The BRICs and the UN: Coordination or Fragmentation?
Today’s BRICS leaders talk, but rarely take combined action or push for substantive joint strategies, pointing to the possibility that at least in political terms the BRICs made by Goldman Sachs (who coined the phrase) may prove to be more like stumbling blocks than the foundation stones needed to reinvigorate the UN or reshape the international system.
