Foreign Policy Blogs

International

U.N. Deploys More Peacekeepers in the CAR, But Will It be Enough?

U.N. Deploys More Peacekeepers in the CAR, But Will It be Enough?

Last Monday, in a ceremony at Bangui airport, about 1,800 additional peacekeepers and police joined a mission under U.N. control in the battle-torn Central African Republic CAR), along with the previous contingent of 4,800 African troops and 1,000 international police. The new reinforcements have come from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Morocco and Bangladesh, joining others […]

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The U.N. Lacks Moral Authority to Dictate Morale in Haiti

The U.N. Lacks Moral Authority to Dictate Morale in Haiti

  It is a volcano jumping between dormant and active stages and last month, it erupted again, spitting a litany of condemning editorials across global opinion pages that set ablaze United Nations’ inexcusable, uncompromising policy in Haiti, where the cholera epidemic, now entering its fourth year, killed more than 8,300 people and sickened another 650,000. […]

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A reform of the U.N.? Think again

A reform of the U.N.? Think again

In a recent communication (see below) from the French Foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, announced a possible new reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Such announce is not surprising as France has been for quite some time been in favor of an enlargement of the U.N. Security Council, when declaring “France is in favour of […]

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Can the U.N. Security Council Reform?

Can the U.N. Security Council Reform?

As the rebellion in Syria languishes on with little attention from the international community, a confidential report authored by the U.N. Security Council’s Group of Experts was leaked to Reuters. This is not the first time such a “leak” has occurred, which implicates the credibility of the Group of Experts or the U.N. itself. The […]

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The United Nations and the “Paranoid Style”

The United Nations and the “Paranoid Style”

As historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out in his classic 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” U.S. history has featured recurring waves of conspiracy theories. Sometimes they have become prominent; sometimes they abide below the surface. Nineteenth-century versions saw threats that were vague and ill-defined (Illuminati, Masons, Papists, Monarchists); more recent ones have depicted […]

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Syria and the Resignation of Kofi Annan

Syria and the Resignation of Kofi Annan

Kofi Annan, on August 2, resigned as joint special envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League for Syria, effective as of the end of the month. He had been assigned the difficult task — a “mission impossible,” as he himself put it — of negotiating a peaceful solution to the current crisis in […]

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The True Bias Of The United Nations

Per Obama’s proclamation last week, yesterday was United Nations Day.  So I’ll take the opportunity to respond to fellow blogger, Ben Moscovitch, of FPA’s Israel blog, who wrote: “does that moniker then also make it anti-Israel day”?  Moscovitch, like many others, misreads the nature of the UN’s bias. Moscovitch criticizes the UN because it “considers […]

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