Month: November 2010
The Balkans can still be lost
The International Herald Tribute surprised me yesterday by publishing a piece I did a couple of weeks ago with Soren Jessen-Petersen (formerly head of the UN Mission in Kosovo, now a co-lecturer at Georgetown) on how the Balkans could still go haywire. For those interested in an overview of what remains to be done there to make peace irreversible, check it out:
The Balkans Can Still Be Lost – NYTimes.com.
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The scruffily bearded guy gets ready to sing
Maliki and Allawi have at long last apparently cut a deal putting Allawi’s people in as speaker of the parliament and as head of a committee overseeing national security (but is this the old, ineffective one, or a new one?). This is the deal Reidar Visser proposed several days ago (Iraq leaders reach deWhy Iraqiyya Should Accept the Speakership « Iraq and Gulf Analysis). Kudos to Reidar!
Hard to believe this saga is at an end until we see a list of ministers approved in parliament. Is Moqtada al Sadr in or not? In where? What is the overall Iraqiyya role? What is Allawi’s specific role? Lots of devilish details before it is possible to judge what this all means.
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Europe has to go on a diet
President Obama scored points this week by supporting India’s bid for a permanent (non-veto) seat on the 15-member UN Security Council. He is likely to do the same for Brazil when he next meets its President, newly elected Dilma Rousseff. Neither Brazil nor India, however, can expect to occupy their cushions any time soon. Among the many obstacles, two bear mention:
1. Regional opposition is strong. Pakistan (and other Asian countries) are unlikely to applaud loudly as archrival India gets a permanent seat among the world’s mighty. Nor are Argentina and Mexico likely to applaud for lusophone Brazil to represent Latin America permanently on the Council.
2. Europe is over-represented and needs to give up seats so that the Council can be kept at a reasonable size. As many as five, more often four, seats on the Council are occupied by European Union members, including two permanent seats for France and the UK. To make room for Brazil and India, plus increased regional representation from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, will require Europe to go on a diet, as it has (barely) begun to do at the IMF: IMF Survey: G-20 Ministers Agree ‘Historic’ Reforms in IMF Governance.
This won’t be easy: Germany has long campaigned for a permanent seat of its own. But with EU countries coordinating their foreign and security policies, is there really any need for so many different European voices to be saying much the same thing? Or would European weight in peace and security issues be greater if the Union had fewer seats (and a louder voice)?
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Kerry still running
Even for the chair of Senate Foreign Relations, this is an unusually frenetic trip to important places.
The envoy: Kerry in Turkey, Israel, West Bank – Laura Rozen – POLITICO.com.
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Walt v. Bush
A healthy reminder of where we’ve been, but then it is hard to credit Walt’s remark that Obama’s “foreign policy…looks surprising[ly] like George W. Bush’s.”
Delusion Points – By Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy.
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Hizbollah to fight zombie?
Marc Lynch thinks the Special (“Zombie”) Tribunal for Lebanon lacks credibility, so why give it $10 million? But the more important question is this: how will Hizbollah react if the indictments finger it? Can Lebanon, an already weak state, survive the blowback?
The Zombie Tribunal for Lebanon | Marc Lynch.
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