Diplomacy & Crisis News

A senior commander from Argentina, who has been deployed to the United Nations peacekeeping mission on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, has said that serving the UN is a “great opportunity” to develop professionally and personally.

A partir du 1er janvier 1999, l'euro a cours légal dans onze des quinze pays de l'Union européenne. Les célébrations médiatiques se gardent cependant de mettre en avant certaines des caractéristiques de la monnaie unique et du pacte de stabilité qui l'encadre : pouvoir sans partage d'une Banque (...) / Intégration régionale, Monnaie - 1999/01

The UN chief has expressed his deep concern by the reported advance of forces based in the east, towards the Libyan capital, Tripoli, declaring that “there is no military solution” to restoring peace and stability to the country.

Quel avenir pour  la zone euro face à la guerre économique États-Unis/Chine ? Une nouvelle crise financière semblable à celle de 2008 est-elle possible ?

Réponses de Jean-Claude Trichet, ancien président de la Banque centrale européenne et gouverneur honoraire de la Banque de France. Cette interview s’appuie sur son article, « L’avenir du système monétaire et financier international », publié dans le numéro 1/2019 de Politique étrangère « 2019-2029 – Quel monde dans 10 ans ? ».

Découvrez le sommaire complet ici.

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• l’article de Chantal Delsol, « Le crépuscule de l’universel »
• l’article de Thomas Gomart, « Entre concentration et dispersion : le bel avenir de la puissance »
  

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Celebrating the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told an event in New York on Wednesday - headquarters of team UN - that “sport helps find common ground” during times of division.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has paid tribute to the role played by Egypt in helping to avoid a “dramatic” escalation of violence in Gaza over recent months, as tensions grew over Palestinian protests at the border, Hamas rocket attacks, and reprisal airstrikes by Israel.

With the end of the UN’s peacekeeping presence in Haiti in sight, the UN’s human rights chief told the Security Council on Wednesday that the country now stands “at the crossroads between peacekeeping and development”, urging all concerned parties to continue building on progress made, or “risk losing it” altogether. 

In their support of the Green New Deal, did some Democrats call for a return to American global leadership – or even endorse American Exceptionalism?

First-term Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-NY) and forty-year veteran Senator Ed Markey (D.- Mass.) put forth a dramatic re-imagining of the approach the U.S. government should take toward climate change and economic affairs, with important emphasis on social justice questions.  The announcement on Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s web site described it as “a 10-year plan to create a greenhouse gas neutral society that creates unprecedented levels of prosperity and wealth for all while ensuring economic and environmental justice and security” with a “World War II scale mobilization.”

Media attention went quickly to interpretations of some of the most curious proposals: eliminating air travel, retrofitting “all buildings,” and ensuring economic security “to all who are unable or unwilling to work.”  Supporters clarified that these items were in earlier, unfinished drafts.

When “House Resolution 109 – Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal” was formally introduced in Congress, it had lost references to banning fossil fuels, decommissioning every nuclear power plant, and the trouble of “cow emissions.”  It emphasized instead that inducing the private sector to implement small-scale climate change-fighting technologies was not sufficient.  It promised economic prosperity for all as a result of government-led shift to renewable energy and post-oil infrastructure. It focused on the importance of re-structuring the economy and the environment for the benefit of “frontline and vulnerable communities” – that is, those exposed to “systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices [including] indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.”

Foreign Policy Questions

What the media did not discuss, though, were the foreign policy implications in the advocacy of the Green New Deal.

Rapidly shifting away from a carbon-based economy could have obvious impacts on the oil-producing world.  Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Middle Eastern states might come to mind first, but countries as different as Nigeria, Russia, and Mexico – and many others – rely on energy exports for large parts of their GDP, export earnings, or government revenue.  Losing significant amounts of income could have destabilizing effects in even otherwise stable countries around the world.

Less predictable, perhaps, was the emphasis by Green New Deal advocates on restoring the United States’ role as a global leader, at times even seeming to invoke the ideals of American exceptionalism.

At the press conference announcing the Green New Deal, Sen. Markey talked in universal terms:  “We will save all of Creation by massive job creation.”  That is, “we” the U.S. government will save not just Europe from fascism but the whole world from global warming. Citing FDR, the New Deal, and World War II, Markey said, “We have acted on this scale before, and we must do it again.”

Markey continued by pointing out that when President Kennedy said we would go to the moon, he didn’t say how, because the methods hadn’t been invented yet. Markey left no room for modesty or half-measures: “We are reclaiming our leadership on the most important issue facing humankind,” toward a Lincoln-esque “new climate democracy: of the people, by the people, for the planet.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was as grand: “Economic, racial, and social justice in America – that’s what this agenda is all about.”  “Climate change,” she continued. “is one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life – not just as a nation but as a world…Today is also the day that we choose to assert ourselves as a global leader in transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy and to charting that path…. We should do it because we should lead.  We should do it because that is what this nation is about.  We should do it because we are a country that is founded on ideals, on a culture that is innovative…. We should do it because we are an example to the world…. We need to save ourselves and we can save the rest of the world with us.”

In previous weeks, other Democrats had supported this kind of globalism.  In December 2018, Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) compared the scale of urgency and effort of combating climate change to fighting World War II and the Nazis.  In October 2018, climate scientist Kevin Anderson called for a “Marshall Plan.”

In response to Markey and Ocasio-Cortez, support came with the same magnitude. Obama-era Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz criticized the Trump administration for leaving the Paris climate treaty and “not exercising the global leadership that we need to bring the whole world along.”

Democratic presidential hopefuls joined the chorus.  New Jersey Senator Corey Booker introduced an environment bill in 2017 that emphasized social and economic justice; last week he adopted the Green New Deal’s World War II and Moon Landing analogies.  “When the planet has been in peril in the past, who came forward to save Earth from the scourge of Nazis and totalitarian regimes?” the Washington Post reported on Booker in Iowa, “We came forward.”  Booker elaborated: “So the question is, what’s the United States of America going to do? Is it going to lead the planet in terms of dealing with this crisis? Or is it going to pull back from global leadership when we are the biggest economy on the planet Earth? I believe that America should lead, and it should lead boldly”

California Senator Kamala Harris endorsed the Green New Deal by identifying climate change as  “an existential threat to our country, our planet, and our future” and called for urgent action “to protect ourselves and our planet.”

In January, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand used President Kennedy’s own words from his pledge to go to the Moon:  “Why not create a moonshot? Say in the next ten years we are going to create an entire economy based on our innovations, based on what we can do, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” She repeated this Kennedy language after the Markey–Ocasio-Cortez release.

A New Global Leadership – Narrow or Broad-based?

Together, these calls for American global leadership reverse much of the last two decades’ mixed commitment to lead.  As a candidate and before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush pledged to quit nation-building and to abandon the ABM treaty (US did end the ABM treaty in 2002).  The global war on terror at times lacked key allies and raised human rights questions.  Barack Obama was elected on his promise to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Later, he drew “a line in the sand” over Syria’s use of chemical weapons but then ceded the issue to Congress and Russia.  Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2016, surrendering the region’s American diplomatic and economic leadership to China.  Eventual nominee Hillary Clinton finally joined him on TPP, reversing her earlier commitments as Secretary of State.  Donald Trump has criticized NATO and other essential allies, decried and replaced NAFTA, battled China over trade, and fiercely opposed illegal and much legal immigration. These are not the leadership principles of American globalism from World War II to the 1990s “indispensable nation.”

Democratic advocates of the Green New Deal, rooted in the left-wing of the party, are drawing on America’s historic global leadership roles to justify and demand a leadership role in today’s environmental/economic/social justice questions.  The call is for a “shining progressive city on a hill” to lead the world and save the world.  American Exceptionalism language is unusual from the U.S. political left. Observers will watch carefully to see if calls like these expand to other issues.

Photo from C-SPAN

 

The post Foreign Policy and the Green New Deal appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Avec sa décision, désormais officielle, de mettre en place l'euro dans onze pays en janvier 1999, l'Union européenne accentue le parti pris ultralibéral qui imprégnait déjà la plupart de ses politiques et, les surplombant, un droit communautaire fondé sur le seul principe de la concurrence. La (...) / Intégration régionale, Finance, Monnaie, Démocratie, Europe - 1998/05

In the wake of the resignation in Algeria of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the UN Secretary-General on Wednesday saluted “the mature and calm nature” of protests involving hundreds of thousands of citizens who took to the streets peacefully in recent weeks, to express “their desire for change.” 

À l’occasion de son 40e anniversaire, l’Ifri et le comité de rédaction de Politique étrangère vous proposent de remporter un exemplaire de notre nouveau numéro
« 2019-2029 – Quel monde dans 10 ans ? ».

Vous avez jusqu’à mercredi prochain, 10 avril 2019 (clôture des participations à minuit), pour participer à ce concours en envoyant à l’adresse pe@ifri.org votre nom et adresse, et ainsi tenter de faire partie des 10 heureux gagnants qui seront tirés au sort !

Vous vous intéressez aux relations internationales ? Vous vous demandez de quoi sera fait le monde dans 10 ans ? N’hésitez plus, ce numéro prospectif est fait pour vous !

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More than two billion people face grave health risks because basic water facilities are not available in one in four medical centres globally, the UN has said, in an appeal to countries to do more to prevent the transmission of treatable infections that can turn deadly if not washed or flushed, away. 

Over the past two years, Washington has come to embrace a policy of strategic competition with China. The Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy make clear that the United States sees China as a great power rival not only militarily but also in a contest for economic and technological supremacy.

As a result, an effective coalition to manage China’s rise can no longer center on Asian security partnerships alone but must now include the world’s principal concentrations of economic power, technological progress, and liberal democratic values. Among these are many of the United States’ partners in the Indo-Pacific, such as Australia, India, and Japan. But the European Union and its major member states are also becoming increasingly critical U.S. counterparts in dealing with China.

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From killing and maiming, to recruitment, sexual abuse and abduction, “violence against children in armed conflict can take many forms”, said Secretary-General António Guterres, in a special message delivered at the launch of a new UN advocacy campaign on Tuesday - Act to Protect Children Affected by Conflict. 

In a world defined by “competition over cooperation, and the acquisition of arms, prioritized over the pursuit of diplomacy”, the threat of a nuclear weapon being used is “higher than it has been in generations,” the Security Council heard on Tuesday.

A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) waves an ISIL flag in Raqqa June 29, 2014. The offshoot of al Qaeda which has captured swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria has declared itself an Islamic “Caliphate” and called on factions worldwide to pledge their allegiance, a statement posted on jihadist websites said on Sunday. The group, previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as ISIS, has renamed itself “Islamic State” and proclaimed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghadi as “Caliph” – the head of the state, the statement said. REUTERS/Stringer

After ISIS was forced out of Baghouz, Syria, the murderous terror group is starting to move its forces to Africa and Asia.  

After the last ISIS-held area in Syria fell in Baghouz, many people in the West are under the impression that the murderous terror group notorious for beheading Westerners, raping Yezidis and Christians en masse, and massacring minorities is now finished.  Even US President Donald Trump tweeted, “We have defeated ISIS.” However, what many people in the West fail to grasp is while the last ISIS strongholds in the Middle East may be gone, the murderous terror group has merely transformed from having a base to being a clandestine terror network, which is capable of emerging in any part of the world, terrorizing innocents across the globe.  

In a recent press release, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center, while acknowledging that ISIS no longer controls a third of Iraq and Syria, a huge mass of land that included between 5 to 6 million people and a great portion of the world’s petroleum, the murderous terror group still has “active provinces in Iraq and Syria and in countries in Asia and Africa, where the local regimes find it difficult to uproot the organization.”  Furthermore, they added, “ISIS’s charismatic leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and several other senior figures have so far managed to survive the blows and continue to lead the organization and control its various provinces, even if it is decentralized.  The ISIS brand has eroded to a certain extend but the organization and the ideology behind it continues to attract young Muslims in Iraq and Syria, in other countries in the Middle East and around the world.”

Shortly after the ISIS terror group fell in Baghouz, the New York Times reported that the ISIS flag was waving in Mindanao Island in the Philippines.  Last January, two bombs went off in a Philippines church, slaughtering 23 people.  ISIS claimed responsibility for that terror attack.   Since then, ISIS has been taunting the leadership in the country.  The Philippines government responded forcefully with airstrikes and 10,000 soldiers in Jolo.   Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, stressed that ISIS is the “most complicated, evolving problem for the Philippines today and we should not pretend that it doesn’t exist.”

Aside from the Philippines, 40 ISIS terrorists of Bangladeshi origin are seeking to return to their country of origin in the wake of the fall of the Caliphate, the World Hindu Struggle Committee reported: “They are suspected to be a threat to the Bangladeshi Security Services.  According to the sources, they are all relatives of high level officials in the country.”  Nevertheless, the head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit in the country said that all of their names have been handed over to airport officials and that they will be arrested upon arrival. 

However, Shipan Kumer Basu, President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, has emphasized that in the past the Bangladeshi government has turned a blind eye to ISIS supporters active within its borders in the name of promoting the ethnic cleansing of the Hindu, Buddhist, indigenous and Christian minorities from the country: “The local Islamists force the Hindus to convert to Islam by force.  They frequently murder innocent Hindu men and rape their women and girls. The minorities of Bangladesh are tortured daily.  The Hindus have not enjoyed the country’s independence from Pakistan.”  He stresses that these 40 ISIS terrorists returning from the Middle East have local supporters to hide amongst and that they thus could potentially manage to evade border security, thus enabling them to hide among local supporters and to build up a base in the country under a different name.

“ISIS has many supporters in Bangladesh,” Basu proclaimed. “I warned of this before. Nobody believed me. Moreover, the Sheikh Hasina government has repeatedly denied the existence of ISIS within the country. Hopefully, now the world will wake up and recognize the threat that ISIS poses to Asia.”

Furthermore, as ISIS makes inroads in Asia, the murderous terror group is doing likewise in Africa.  According to Nigerian Archbiship Ignatius Kaigama, “Boko Haram has territorial ambitions and is evolving into the Islamic State of the West Africa Province, manifesting a desire to have their own expanded Islamic country.”  Earlier this year, ISIS-backed terrorists overrun a Nigerian military base.  Towards the end of last year, they seized Baga.  In recent years, Nigeria has been overrun in many areas by Boko Horom and other Islamist groups, who are notorious for slaughtering, abducting and raping local Christians.   In the wake of the Caliphate collapsing in the Middle East, ISIS could easily claim a base in the war-torn African country.  

Nigeria is not the only concerning area in Africa.  Recently, Malian Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga visited Washington, DC in an effort to bolster US support for his country, warning that a weakened ISIS in Iraq and Syria could lead to an increased ISIS presence in Sahel: “The United States should have the same level of engagement in Sahel as it does in the Middle East.” In 2012, al Qaeda terrorists infiltrated Mali and destroyed numerous historic treasures in Timbuktu.  Only a French intervention prevented them from overrunning the entire country.  However, parts of Mali remain a hotbed for Islamist extremists, a situation that ISIS could exploit in the wake of the fall of the Caliphate.

The time has come for the American public to focus on how ISIS is spreading its tentacles in Africa and Asia.  Americans must stop living under the false illusion that ISIS is entirely defeated.  In the eyes of the murderous terror organization, they did lose a battle in Iraq and Syria but they have not yet lost the war.  If Americans give up on fighting ISIS now, the terror group can reemerge and everything that we gained in Iraq and Syria can be lost.  For this reason, Americans must start paying attention to how ISIS is reemerging itself in Africa and Asia, and to start investing resources in fighting against ISIS there.  At the same time, we must not close our eyes to the fact that ISIS can still remerge in the Middle East at any moment and can undo all of the gains that the International Coalition against ISIS made.  America must pay attention to what is happening in the world.  Isolationism is a failed policy, which always leads to more intense bloodshed at a later date.  

The post Is ISIS terror spreading its tentacles to other parts of the world? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

On World Autism Awareness Day, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres underscored in his message on Tuesday, the importance of technology which helps people living with autism “achieve their full potential”. 

Approximately 113 million people in 53 countries experienced high levels of food insecurity last year, according to a new joint UN and European Union (EU) report released on Tuesday, which warns that these crises are primarily driven by conflict and climate-related disasters.

Around 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine arrived in Mozambique on Tuesday to help stave off a possible epidemic, after the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai, amid reports that the disease has already infected more than 1,000 people in affected areas.

Speaking in Cairo’s historic al-Azhar mosque on Tuesday, UN chief António Guterres issued a call for societies, faiths and cultures everywhere to “focus on what unites us”, urging everyone to work together towards realizing the 2030 Agenda “for the collective benefit of all”.