Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
UN Ambassador John Bolton will step down at the end of his recess appointment and not go through a Senate confirmation process that is sure to end badly. Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his recess appointment expires soon, the White House said Monday. Bolton’s nomination has languished [...]
I’ve often commented that the United Nations deserves its bad rap for futility in collective security matters but that it is actually quite effective in its humanitarian endeavors, including pure peacekeeping missions (as opposed to peace enforcement missions that require active combat). Mark Leon Goldberg, responding to a bit of snark from the good folks [...]
Less than 24 hours after major trade sanctions were imposed on North Korea by the United Nations, it appears large holes are forming. Questions over the effectiveness of the Security Council’s punitive sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test grew Sunday, as both South Korea and China — the North’s two most important [...]
The UN Security Council has unanimously agreed to impose sanctions on North Korea to punish it for testing a nuclear weapon and to prevent further proliferation. The U.N. Security Council on Saturday voted unanimously to impose sanctions against North Korea in response to the country’s claimed nuclear test. The vote was scheduled soon after negotiators [...]
Mexico is considering asking the U.N. to stop the U.S. from building a fence along its southern border. Mexico’s foreign secretary said Monday the country may take a dispute over U.S. plans to build a fence on the Mexican border to the United Nations. Luis Ernesto Derbez told reporters in Paris, his first stop on [...]
The next leader of the United Nations will be South Korean. South Korea’s foreign minister was officially nominated Monday as the next U.N. secretary-general, and he pledged to work to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis hours after the communist regime announced it had tested a nuclear weapon. “This should be a moment of joy. [...]
Austin Bay calls for an aggressive international intervention to stop the genocide in Darfur. In February 2004, reflecting on Rwanda’s genocide, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said: “There can be no more binding obligation for the international community than the prevention of genocide. … The events in Rwanda … were especially shameful. The international community [...]
Steve Clemons reports that the White House’s bid to have John Bolton confirmed as our UN Ambassador before his recess appointment expires is dead, with the cancellation of a last-chance meeting previously scheduled this afternoon. This is one of the more bizarre excercises in which we engage. The chief reasons to oppose Bolton for the [...]
Henry Kissinger argues that internecine bickering over the Iraq War and misunderstanding of the consequences of the Israel-Hezbollah war could lead to dire consequences. He calls for a comprehensive cross-Atlantic strategy to stave off a “war of civilizations.” Everything returns to the challenge of Iran. It trains, finances, and equips Hezbollah, the state within a [...]
Defying U.N., Iran opens nuclear reactor – Yahoo! News An Iranian plant that produces heavy water officially went into operation on Saturday, despite U.N. demands that Tehran stop the activity because it can be used to develop a nuclear bomb. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the plant, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. The announcement [...]
Israel has thrown yet another wrench into the struggle to maintain a cease-fire with Hezbollah by insisting that UN peacekeepers patrol Lebanon’s border with Syria in addition to the border with Israel. Israel is demanding that U.N. troops patrol the Syria-Lebanon border to prevent Hezbollah from receiving arms shipments. But even if Israel overcomes Syrian [...]
It appears that Italy may be preparing to step up to the plate that France abandoned and take control of the U.N. Peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon. Responding to entreaties from the leaders of Israel and Lebanon, Italy is prepared to step forward to lead the expanded United Nations peacekeeping force that has been proposed [...]
The Lebanese government has reclaimed sovereignty over its southern territory. Or, at least sent in on soldier to plant its flag. The Lebanese army reached the country’s southern border with Israel for the first time in decades, sending a lone jeep on patrol Friday through Kfar Kila, a battered stronghold of support for Hezbollah militants. [...]
“Hizbullah will not hand over its weapons to the Lebanese government but rather refrain from exhibiting them publicly, according to a new compromise that is reportedly brewing between Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah,” reports the Jerusalem Post. Well, that was certainly a result worth fighting for . . . Background [...]
Why latest for TCS Daily, “Why Israel Lost,” argues that the current cease-fire is a defeat for Israel: Israel has accepted a truce that falls far short of its original war aims, failing to establish control over their border with Lebanon, let alone deliver a crushing blow to Hezbollah. As many of us have argued [...]
The UN-sponsored Israel-Lebanon cease-fire went into effect as scheduled at 8 a.m. local/ 1 a.m. EST. So far, both sides are complying with the terms. Israel halted its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas as a U.N.-imposed cease-fire went into effect Monday after a month of warfare that killed more than 900 people, devastated much of south [...]
Israel has announced it will end its war in Lebanon early Monday morning. Israel will halt its war in Lebanon at 7 a.m. Monday (midnight EDT Sunday night), a senior Israeli government official said Saturday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter. Israel’s [...]
AP’s Charles Hanley has a long piece expressing dismay that a new poll shows half the American public still believes Saddam had WMD at the time of the 2003 invasion. Do you believe in Iraqi “WMD”? Did Saddam Hussein’s government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003? Half of America apparently still thinks so, a [...]
The United States has gotten France to sign off on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would institute a conditional cease-fire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict. The United States and France reached agreement Saturday on a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at ending the fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said. [...]
Although that’s the quotable moment of this exchange between Tony Snow and Helen Thomas, the entire thing is worth watching simply for its entertainment value alone. It’s old school Helen Thomas, trying to “Scott McClellan” Tony Snow. And somehow Tony has already mastered the art of dealing with the queen of combativeness and irrationality. It’s [...]
The government of Lebanon petitioned the United Nations for help in stopping Israeli bombings. This happens as all signs point to the war expanding into a broader regional conflict involving Syria and Iran. Meanwhile, the spreading conflict in the region is dividing longstanding international allies while creating some unusual bedfellows. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora [...]
Two thirds of the UN Security Council voted to condemn Israel’s attack on Gaza as “disproportionate” but the United States exercised its veto power to kill the resolution. The United States blocked an Arab-backed resolution Thursday that would have demanded Israel halt its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, the first U.N. Security Council veto [...]
Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on the North’s missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible U.N. Security Council vote on Tokyo’s proposal for sanctions against the regime. The vote itself could be delayed for several days, a news agency reported. China asked Japan [...]
Andrew Sullivan answers his own rhetorical question: That question has troubled me for quite a while. The Hamdan decision certainly suggests that, by ignoring the Geneva Conventions even in Guantanamo (let alone in Iraq), a war crime has been committed. And in the military, the command structure insists that superiors are held accountable. I’ve been [...]
Rwandan president Paul Kagame says the popular film “Hotel Rwanda” was a propaganda piece that got little right. “Hotel Rwanda” stars Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a luxury hotel in the Rwandan capital Kigali who uses his position to help save more than 1,200 Tutsi refugees. Kagame said the movie’s portrayal of [...]
News is breaking about a peace agreement that may help end the horror of the civil war in Sudan. Sudan’s government and the main Darfur rebel group signed a peace plan Friday, marking major progress in an internationally backed effort to end the death and destruction in western Sudan. Two rebel groups, though, rejected the [...]
Dan Drezner asks and answers an interesting question: [A]re people who reject Bush’s current foreign policy are promoting something that looks awfully similar on a lot of dimensions? Is Francis Fukuyama’s “realistic Wilsonianism” so different from plain vanilla neoconservatism? Is George Clooney clamoring for intervention in Darfur any different from the humanitarian impulse (yes, there [...]
Britain and France yesterday introduced a resolution in the U.N. Security Council demanding Iran abandon uranium enrichment or face sanctions. Over Chinese and Russian opposition, Western nations circulated a U.N. Security Council resolution that would demand Iran abandon uranium enrichment or face the threat of unspecified further measures, a possible reference to sanctions. Britain and [...]
In yet another United Nations irony, Iran has been elected the Vice-Chairman of the current UN Commission on Disarmament along with Chile and Uruguay. What’s next, Sudan on the Human Rights Commission? (Oops, that happened.) The election was on April 10, but is only getting noticed now. As Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) protests, The election [...]
The World Bank may be headed back to Iraq, reports the Financial Times. Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank and one of the main advocates within the Bush administration for the invasion of Iraq, is considering sending bank staff back to the troubled state to help with rebuilding. “One of the things we [...]
Via The Corner; FRIST INTRODUCES RESOLUTION OPPOSING U.S. PARTICIPATION IN U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL “The newly created U.N. Human Rights Council fails to address the significant failures and shortcomings of the widely discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Since its establishment in 1946, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights sacrificed efficacy and credibility by granting [...]
Steven Taylor documents the chronic abuse of Lego products by the United Nations. Write the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and protest this outrage today.
The editors of the New Republic have a credulous plea for doing more to save Darfur. The genocide in Darfur has been going on for three years now. And, for three years, the international community hasn’t done much to stop it. It has threatened, but not enforced, sanctions. It has sent peacekeepers, but with insufficient [...]
The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. The U.N. nuclear watchdog Saturday reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council in a resolution expressing concern that Tehran’s nuclear program may not be “exclusively for peaceful purposes.” Iran retaliated immediately, saying it would resume uranium enrichment at its [...]
Even the European powers have given up diplomacy with Iran, agreeing with the Bush Administration that a referral to the U.N. Security Council is appropriate. The British, French and German foreign ministers said Thursday that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program had reached a “dead end” and the Islamic republic should be referred to [...]
Lost in the media storms surrounding the Libby indictment and appointment of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court is a rather strong escalation of tensions between the United States and Syria. Syria accuses US of launching lethal raids over its borders (London Sunday Telegraph) Syria has accused the United States of launching lethal military raids [...]
The Times of London reports that yesterday’s UN report on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri actually omitted more damning evidence against the Syrian government of dictator Bashar al-Assad. UN might have done something worthwhile, in stark contrast to what I’ve observed in over two decades of studying international politics. The Times [...]
President Bush has called for an emergency session of the United Nations to deal with Syria’s involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. CNN.com – Bush calls for immediate U.N. session on Syria (AP) President George W. Bush on Friday called on the United Nations to convene a session as soon [...]
The long-awaited United Nations report on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri found that it was orchestrated and carried out at the highest levels of the Syrian government. Brother-In-Law of Syrian Leader Implicated (AP) The brother-in-law of Syria’s president was implicated in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and [...]
A Spanish judge has issued an arrest warrant for three American soldiers who accidentally killed a Spanish cameraman in Iraq in 2003. Spanish Judge Issues Warrant for Three GIs (AP) A judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a [...]
The U.N.’s 60th anniversary celebration yesterday was devoted, not to the accomplishments of the past six decades but rather to the need to restore the organization’s credibility. Annan Seeks to Restore U.N. Credibility (AP) Bitter differences between U.N. member states have blocked many crucial United Nations reforms, and nations must act boldly to restore the [...]
The rumored recess appointment of John Bolton has come to pass. Bush Appoints Bolton as U.N. Envoy, Bypassing Senate (NYT RSS) President Bush bypassed the Senate confirmation process today and appointed John R. Bolton as the new United States ambassador to the United Nations. The appointment, while Congress is in recess, ends a months-long standoff [...]
CNN reports that President Bush will use a recess appointment to put John Bolton in as U.N. Ambassador. Source: Bush to appoint Bolton to U.N. (CNN) President Bush will use a recess appointment to install John Bolton temporarily as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a senior administration official said Monday. Such a move would [...]
The woes of John Bolton, President Bush’s embattled UN Ambassador nominee, continue. State Dept admits Bolton gave inaccurate answers (Reuters) The State Department reversed itself on Thursday night and acknowledged that President Bush’s U.N. ambassador nominee gave Congress inaccurate information about an investigation he was involved in. The acknowledgment came after the State Department had [...]
Embattled UN Ambassador nominee John Bolton may take a recess appointment after all. Bolton May Accept Recess Appointment (WaPo, A4) John R. Bolton’s nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations was the hottest issue in Congress a few months ago. But it has virtually evaporated this summer, eclipsed by speculation over a Supreme Court [...]
In preparing for the most heated kind of nomination battle, the Bush administration seems to be distancing itself from yesterday’s fight: Bush Backs Away from Recess Appointment of Bolton (FT) President George W. Bush is unlikely to seek a recess appointment for John Bolton in the near future, increasing the sense that his nomination for [...]
Iran’s Plutonium Use Dates Back to 2003 (AP) Iran has acknowledged working with small amounts of plutonium, a possible nuclear arms component, for years longer than it had originally admitted to the U.N. atomic watchdog agency, according to a confidential report made available Wednesday to The Associated Press. The report, to be delivered as early [...]
Japan, 3 Others Drop Veto Demand in Bid to Win UN Council Seats (Bloomberg) Japan, Germany, India and Brazil will drop a demand that new permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have veto rights in a renewed bid to win seats on the UN’s most powerful committee, Japan’s government said. “We are working [...]