Diplomacy & Crisis News

Kabul — One band of Afghan gunmen tied up a captive in an open field, picked up rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and used the victim for target practice. Another group rounded up men and boys and confined them in a mosque, before going house-to-house to steal valuables and rape women. Elsewhere, a bunch of gunmen took the most respected elder of a village — a white-bearded gentleman who dared to complain about their behavior — and dragged him behind their pickup truck until he was dead.

Addressing over a hundred delegates attending a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) conference in Rome, Pope Francis today urged Member States to work toward combatting food waste, reducing the volatility of food prices, and creating a sense of global solidarity to ensure food security for all people.

The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission has called on all stakeholders in Central African Republic (CAR) to help promote an environment conducive to holding elections ahead of the country’s upcoming parliamentary vote.

A United Nations counter-terrorism body is calling for expanding the use of advance passenger information (API) to stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, and recommends a number of measures to help overcome the challenges associated with using this important tool.

Concerned at the recent armed clashes amid the ongoing peace talks on Colombia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, today said these incidents have the potential to “derail” a long sought peace process, increasing risks for the civilian population.

The top United Nations human rights official has urged the Government of Pakistan to reinstate its moratorium on the death penalty amid a sharp uptick in the number of executions in the country, the Organization’s human rights office reported today.

The Central Africa region is still facing many challenges, including an economic crisis aggravated by the drop in oil prices, rising youth unemployment, and terrorist activities, as well as the cross-border impact of crises in Central African Republic (CAR) and Burundi, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for the sub-region warned today.

The number of Ebola cases in West Africa has increased for the second straight week, with the number of cases that arose from unknown sources of infection highlighting the challenges still faced in finding and eliminating every chain of transmission, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The United Nations special envoy on the Middle East has welcomed the Government of Egypt’s decision to temporarily open a critical border crossing for residents of Gaza as a result of the dialogue between Palestinian and Egyptian authorities.

The head of the International Labour Organization today opened a summit meeting devoted to tackling climate change as a unique opportunity for job creation and economic growth, saying that up to 60 million jobs can be created in a greener, low carbon economy if the right policies are adopted.

The world’s parliaments play a “fundamental” role in ensuring human rights protections for the global citizenry and, as a result, must reflect international human rights standards in their legislation, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon affirmed today as he continued on his Central Asian trip with a visit to Kyrgyzstan.

Une vraie révolution dans la révolution haïtienne (1791-1804), ou du moins dans la connaissance que nous croyons en avoir : c'est l'apport du travail de l'historienne américaine Carolyn E. Fick . Elle fait descendre de leur piédestal les dirigeants qui gouvernèrent tour à tour, François-Dominique (...) / France, Haïti, Colonialisme, Histoire, Violence, Esclavage, Mouvement de libération - 2015/06

En mars 2013, Isol, illustratrice argentine quasi inconnue en dehors du monde hispanique, décrochait l'Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA), équivalent du Nobel dans le domaine de l'édition jeunesse. La distinction suédoise a permis une prise de conscience du dynamisme de la création éditoriale (...) / Amérique latine, Argentine, Brésil, Mexique, Venezuela, Culture, Enfance, Livre, Mutation, Bande dessinée - 2015/06

From a distance, it looks deceptively like summer camping season in this country’s capital. Men play cards and drink beer by their colorful tents across the street from Parliament. A larger, younger crowd encamped in front of the government building listens to lively music.

Ne jamais soumettre au vote un sujet important si l'on n'est pas à l'avance certain du résultat : le Parlement européen semble avoir fait sienne cette règle d'or des démocraties libérales en décidant à brûle-pourpoint, mardi 9 juin, d'ajourner un scrutin consacré au grand marché transatlantique. / (...) / États-Unis (affaires extérieures), Europe, Démocratie, Libéralisme - La valise diplomatique

The Mediterranean region is undergoing a “nutrition transition” away from its traditional diet, long revered as a model for healthy living and sustainable food systems and known for preserving the environment and empowering local producers, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned.

Around 20 to 30 per cent of children in low income countries complete their schooling and enter the labour market by the age of 15, according to a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report prepared for World Day against Child Labour which is marked worldwide tomorrow.

Jeb Bush speaking at CPAC 2015 in Washington, DC. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Years ago, a few friends and I were walking down the streets of Sorrento, Italy, during some off-time on a class trip abroad. Few paid any attention to the teenage tourists — at least until one man stopped, did a double take and asked, “Are you from the United States?”

“Yes,” one of us said. “Massachusetts.”

“One question. Did you vote for George W. Bush?”

“We can’t vote yet, but we don’t support him either.”

We were all around 13- or 14-years-old, so voting was out of the question. He was pleased. We walked on.

Twelve years later, Jeb Bush has found himself grappling with a similar question on a trip Europe. That is, will Jeb follow in the footsteps of his father or his brother?

That’s a question that resonates stateside as well, but in Europe the need to choose either the 41st or the 43rd president as a source of inspiration is a bit more pressing. Thanks to his support for German reunification, George H.W. Bush remains popular in Western Europe; meanwhile, his son, George W., is likely the least popular American president in Europe since the end of World War II. One poll from 2006 found that a staggering 77 percent of Europeans disapproved of George W.’s foreign policy during his first and second terms.

Jeb’s strategy for avoiding being bogged down by his brother’s own failures appears to be shifting the conversation from his family’s political history to that of an old-but-new common enemy: Russia.

Upon his arrival to Germany on Tuesday, Jeb spoke before the Christian Democratic Union’s economic council in Berlin. He emphasized the need for strong transatlantic ties, took potshots at the Obama administration’s Russia policy, and called for a more aggressive response from the West against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Giving the sense that we’re reacting in a tepid fashion only enables the bad behavior of Putin,” Jeb told an audience of a thousand or so.

“We should never [respond] in a way that pushes Russia away for a generation of time. Then ultimately, Russia needs to be a European nation and that everything we do ought to be to isolate its corrupt leadership from its people, for starters.”

That message of aggression may appeal to leaders in the next two stops on Jeb’s European adventure — Poland and Estonia — but it’s not necessarily wooing German leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has had to wrangle sanctions skeptics like Cyprus, Greece and Italy, would undoubtedly appreciate some recognition of her efforts. Were tougher sanctions against Russia to be implemented — which G7 leaders showed support for this week — she’d have to do more of the same.

Yet, as Leonid Bershidsky, a Bloomberg View columnist, noted, “[Jeb’s] compliment to Merkel for her toughness on sanctions against Russia sounded like faint praise, once he warned against ‘tepid’ reaction to President Vladimir Putin’s ‘bad behavior.'” She’s too entwined with the U.S.’ Russia policy for Jeb’s “tepid” line to work.

The question of arming the Ukraine is also a contentious one. Jeb, like most of the Republican hopefuls, supports the idea. The administration’s “tepid” response presumably alludes to Obama’s unwillingness to embrace the idea. That said, Obama hasn’t ruled the possibility out either. Merkel, meanwhile, has made her views quite clear: Sending arms to Ukraine would not solve the crisis.

If Jeb’s European charm offensive rests on winning over German leaders with an aggressive anti-Putin agenda, he’s out of luck. Not all hope may be lost, though — at least someone admitted he’s better than his brother.

This post also appeared at The Eastern Project.

Testimony to Helsinki Commission Hearing, U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

L. Boltanksi, Mysteries and Conspiracies, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2014

Voir les autres notes de lecture dans la Lettre de l'IRSEM n°3-2015
Désormais traduit en anglais (Énigmes et complots : Une enquête à propos d'enquêtes, pour sa version française), ce travail du sociologue Luc Boltanksi, ancien élève de Pierre Bourdieu, s’attaque aux notions de mystère, de complot, d’énigme, d’enquête, et à travers elles, à celle de réalité, telle qu’elle peut transparaître des romans fantastiques, policiers ou d’espionnage, et qui est dans tous les cas construite. Pourquoi cette sociologie du roman de fiction, et pourquoi en traiter dans la Lettre d’un institut d’études stratégiques ? L. Boltanksi, en plus de l’approche critique que l’on connaît, prompte à déceler les conservatismes derrière la littérature populaire, tire des leçons de cette littérature pour le statut de l'Etat. Que nous dit, par exemple, la littérature d’espionnage sur notre Léviathan ? Qu’il est toujoursen état de guerre, toujours menacé, toujours fragile, et que la population n’en est jamais (ne doit pas en être) consciente. Que l’appareil d'Etat compte lui aussi ses ennemis intérieurs ou ses traîtres, ses faux-semblants, ses arcanes cachées. L’analyse sociologique du roman d’espionnage ou de fiction n’est pas nouvelle (le politiste Erik Neveu en avait fait sa thèse, disséquant notamment avec bonheur les « sens cachés » des SAS de Gérard de Villiers). Mais un agenda de recherche s’ouvre à nous, en ces temps où la théorie du complot fait recette. La littérature de fiction ou de « mystère », pour reprendre la catégorie anglo-saxonne, entretient-elle cette propension à croire au complot ? Est-elle plutôt – est-ce d’ailleurs incompatible ? – de nature à renforcer le consensus libéral (le libéralisme… ou la paranoïa, pour reprendre l’une des sections de l’ouvrage) ? Quels messages les personnages campés dans cette littérature véhiculent-ils ? Il faudrait, par exemple, élargir l’analyse amorcée brillamment ici par Boltanksi, à l’industrie littéraire américaine actuelle, avec ses auteurs à succès (Baldacci, Child, Cumming, Silva, Littell, Patterson…), dont les anti-héros reviennent incompris et psychologiquement blessés d’Afghanistan ou d’Irak pour retrouver l’exploit malgré eux, en dépit d’autres labyrinthes administratifs (Zero Day, de D. Baldacci).