Terrorism will become more common and more destructive in the 21st
century. But is al-Qaeda really so new and uniquely dangerous? Carne Ross reviews the book Terror and Consent by Philip Bobbitt, a distinguished US academic and former policymaker.
The death of Sergio
Vieira de Mello in a suicide bombing in Baghdad in
2003 shocked and saddened the world. This charismatic UN diplomat,
idealistic yet also very practical, seemed one of the best hopes for
our unstable times. But does his biography misread the conclusions to
be drawn from his life and work?
Weakened during the Blair era, the Foreign Office needs to clear its
corridors of sycophants and secret cabals if it is to confront the
challenges of the 21st century, says Carne Ross.
Secrets, Lies
and Diplomats By
Carne Ross Published
in The
New Statesman, 26 February
2007 The
serialisation of Carne Ross’book
Independent
Diplomat: Dispatches from an
Unaccountable Elite.
We know next
to nothing of how our overseas embassy staff operate in our name. In an
astonishing
exposé, a former high-flying official reveals the vanity,
elitism and
lack of moral purpose in Britain's
diplomatic service For
full article please click here.
The cloistered fetid world
of
United Nations negotiation over Iraq convinced Carne Ross of the need
for more open, accountable global diplomacy. More scrutiny, more accountability and more
transparency is required. Above all, the closed forums of diplomacy
must allow those with most at stake in their decisions to speak. It is
time to bring in some air to this airless realm.
For full article
please clickhere. For full article in PDF format clickhere.
Only the Closest
Encounter with
the Facts Will Do Now
By Carne Ross
For too long, foreign policy has bent a scant knowledge of other
nations to our preferred version of events. Through habit and a
traditional deference to the foreign-policy elite, we permit these
mistakes in our name. This must change.
In
the
Matrix, You Mess Up Foreign Policy
By Carne Ross
Published in The Sunday Times, 18 February 2007
Observing the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, former policy maker
Carne Ross realised there was a malaise underlying government action.
As in The Matrix, disoriented governments act on the basis of
illusions. But in order to make good policy, we must try to see the
world as it really is.
Independent Diplomat: Diplomatieberatung als Konfliktprävention (Diplomatic Advice as Conflict
Prevention)
By Christina Kiel
Published in Auswärtiger
Dienst (Internal German Foreign Office publication), December
2006
Supporting marginalised actors so that they
can
engage effectively in international processes can prevent violent
conflict. When disadvantaged groups understand their diplomatic
options, negotiated agreements will be more sustainable. That is
Independent Diplomat's philosophy. Christina Kiel charts how this
philosophy is put into practice and how she personally became an
Independent Diplomat.
The fluttering blue flag
of the
United Nations is meant to be a reassuring presence - law and rights
should hold sway where it flies. But that flag has lost some of its
allure in recent years. One reason is its failure - and that of the
"international community" in general - to stop the most serious of
crimes: genocide.
Action Not Words: The Responsibility to Protect in Darfur
By Imran Shafi
Published in The
World Today, October 2006
The idea that the
international
community has a responsibility to protect the vulnerable is facing its
first major trial in Sudan’s Darfur crisis. Endorsed at the
World Summit in September last year, it set out to provide an effective
route for action at the United Nations to protect civilians threatened
with genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The responsibility to protect gave moral weight to the argument that
the UN should act to save the lives of those threatened by their own
state, and attempted to map out a way in which this could best be
achieved.
Powerful and affluent
countries
usually get their way because they are powerful and affluent. But that
is only part of the story. They also dominate international
decision-making because the world of diplomacy is skewed in their
favour. I have seen this diplomatic imbalance from both sides of the
table –the strong and the weak –and it serves the
interests of neither.
Now that the U.N. Security
Council has agreed on a statement demanding that Iran restrict its
nuclear program, the United States and its allies are doubtless
considering tougher measures, including sanctions, to force Iran's
compliance. The experience of sanctions imposed on Iraq (and on other
countries), which I helped engineer and maintain as a British diplomat
at the Security Council, offers some lessons.
TINDOUF,
Algeria—If
any part of you wants to believe that the world is fundamentally just,
that wrongs are eventually righted, and that those of us in the West
are fair and righteous in the way we treat other countries and
cultures, consider the story of the people of Western Sahara. Their
history proves that you can have right wholly on your side,
international law emphatically in support of your cause, be on the
agenda of the U.N. Security Council for decades, and still be ignored.
Creating new states is a
tricky
business at the best of times. The delicate crust of stability, both
within the putative new state and among those countries that must
recognize it, can easily be sundered. Nowhere is that crust more
fragile than in the Balkans, as recent history has all too bloodily
demonstrated.
For full
article clickhere. For full article in PDF format clickhere.
Nearly two years after the
United States and Britain invaded Iraq, the world remains polarised
over the war. Supporters thought the war necessary, while many
opponents believe a false case was deliberately manufactured for it.
This allegation has been
reinforced by the discovery of a putative intellectual justification
for such deceit, the idea of the “noble
lie”propagated by the late University of Chicago philosopher
Leo Strauss, one of the strongest intellectual influences on the
neo-conservatives. According to Strauss, elites in liberal societies
must sometimes create “myths”to hold those
societies together, for fear that they would otherwise collapse through
selfishness and individualism.
