Mali and its blind partners

 The serious political situation Mali is going through raises in my mind some fundamental questions about the political performance of the key external partners of the country. Basically, what I mean is that we cannot keep supporting national leaderships that are not appreciated by the vast majority of their people. We might feel comfortable with them. But what is the value of that if they are not accepted by their own citizens?

In this case, France, other European countries, and the UN have been supporting a regime that has not implemented the peace agreement they have signed with their own rebels and that has closed their eyes in an attempt not to see the rapid deterioration of the security and poverty situations. The partners played the same game.

And now, several years down the line, we have a much graver national crisis, that has grown into a regional one as well. And we see that the image of the external actors has also been seriously damaged. That is a sure way of undermining the role of the UN and of some key Western countries.

 

 

Aid to Lebanon

There have been some discussions about the conditions to be attached to the humanitarian aid to Lebanon. I would like to clarify that such aid should only have one provision: it should reach those in need. There is no other political condition when it comes to saving lives. The political dimensions belong to another sphere, not to the humanitarian one.

Reporting on war and weapons

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has just published its annual report, a flagship compilation of data and analysis about last year´s wars, military expenditures and weapons production and trade. It is an excellent reference document.

Unfortunately, it also shows that the world is indeed a dangerous place. And that international security remains a major concern in the field of international relations.

The UN and the regional organizations continue to play major roles in peace and security, notwithstanding their own contradictions and other shortcomings. The truth of the matter is that without them, the world would be even more insecure. It is also true that the cooperation between all these international organisations could be stronger and more effective. That remains a priority for the future. 

Ukraine and the election of the new UN Secretary-General

Have we thought that a collateral damage resulting from the Ukraine crisis is related to the election of the new UN Secretary-general? Up to now it was safe to believe that the new SG, to be elected in 2016, would be a senior figure from Eastern Europe. Now, with the tense situation that has developed between the West and Russia, it is very likely to see Moscow opposing a strong candidate coming from a former member of the Warsaw Pact. Or from a former USSR territory. That puts an end, I believe, to the ambitions some key figures in the Baltic States had been nurturing.

It also increases the chances of someone coming from a smaller Western State. And it gives a new breath of hope to UNDP´s boss, Helen Clark, a New Zealander that would love to be in charge. 

Comprehensive peacekeeping operations

Yesterday we had a discussion here in Brussels among international staff about peacekeeping.

 My colleagues, who are well informed and widely travelled people, could not avoid the usual mistake in this type of discussions: to reduce peacekeeping to military operations, boots on the ground and many of them for that matter. They forgot, like many do, the important role Police play in peace support operations. I had to remind them that more and more often the security challenges these missions are facing have more to do with Police work than with soldiers ‘work. The UNPOL, for instance, has become in the last few years a major Police division in the UN Secretariat. It is also an example of the UN´s capacity to adapt to new demands.

And then beyond the Police, there are now thousands of civilian experts equally involved in peacekeeping. 

Their contributions in many areas make the current operations multidimensional and more comprehensive. 

Crisis response: Moving beyond strategic games, ineffectiveness and indifference

 It is time to discuss the new trends in the international community´s response to major peace and security challenges. As globalisation advances, violent conflicts in a far flung corner of the world can easily gain a wider dimension and have a regional or even a larger impact. They also tend to have dramatic humanitarian consequences, hand in hand with extremely serious human rights violations.

Is the international machinery ready to address such threats in an urgent and comprehensive manner? What to do if the UN Security Council is unwilling to agree on an appropriate response? How to address the issues of urgency and comprehensiveness? Is development assistance, as practiced during the last decades, geared towards strengthening human security and reinforcing peace building? How is public opinion in the developed world being influenced when it comes to reacting to crisis in distant lands? 

New international relations theories in the making

History is happening on a daily basis.

Very exciting times, indeed. And also very enriching in terms of new approaches to international relations. They are an invitation for an in-depth reflection about might and right. 

Afghanistan: more coherence within the international community

One of my friends called my attention to the recent attacks against international organisations in Afghanistan. In both cases –International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – the Taliban targeted organisations that had signed a memorandum of understanding with the NATO-led force ISAF.

This coincidence sounds very much like a message being sent by the extremists. The message back should then be very clear: it should be about a greater degree of coherence and unity within the international community, around a shared political agenda. That’s actual the only way forward in Afghanistan. Now and after 2014. 

Supporting international operations

I spent the last couple of days in Lisbon. I had been invited to go back to Portugal to deliver a lecture about the logistics of aid projects at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

I ended up by focussing the audience’s attention on the support required by emergency operations, large-scale humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping. These are the civilian areas where logistics are major challenges. Aid projects are now more and more focussed on soft matters, like good governance, and they call for little logistical support.

And I also told them that a good logistician needs to develop a rhinoceros hide. A very deep skin indeed. My experience has shown that when everything is going smoothly, nobody says that the chief logistician is an excellent professional. As soon as something goes wrong, like a generator that stops abruptly or the fuel that runs low, everyone starts blaming the incompetence of the logistics fellows. 

Complexities and the deficit of confidence

  The dynamics of geopolitics and key international events are moving faster than our capacity to forecast, grasp their meaning or measure the intensity of their impact. We live at present in a world that is in constant flux and too complex.

Above all, there is a major inadequacy between the global nature of many challenges and the mechanisms to respond to them. That’s why the reform of the UN System is more urgent than ever.

But there is also a very serious crisis of confidence in the leaders and in the institutions. And that makes some places even more dangerous.