On April 23 I was comfortably seated in row six at the Holocaust Memorial Museum when President Obama declared that "preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility" of the United States. Amongst the small crowd of holocaust survivors, government officials and...
(8) Comments | Posted April 4, 2012 | 6:01 PM
At the recent "Friends of Syria" meeting in Turkey, Rwanda's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo, declared that despite the distance between Damascus and Kigali, "Rwanda and Syria share the same experiences." She denounced the killing of innocent people by the Syrian government and asserted that, "the responsibility to protect"...
(2) Comments | Posted February 29, 2012 | 3:47 PM
As Homs was being demolished by artillery last week, the United Nations announced the appointment of its former Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, as Special Envoy to Syria. At a time when much of the media was debating military intervention and arming the Syrian rebels, his appointment brought some diplomatic balance to...
(5) Comments | Posted February 10, 2012 | 1:01 PM
If nothing else, last weekend's double veto should have put a nail in the coffin of the idea that Russian opposition to UN Security Council action in Syria was about post-Libya fallout and the "Responsibility to Protect." The veto was about arms, allies and power. Nothing more, nothing less.
As...
(11) Comments | Posted February 3, 2012 | 1:10 PM
Diplomacy is a shadowy and unpredictable business, but one thing is certain. If Russia uses its veto this week to block a second UN Security Council resolution on Syria, innocent people will die.
On 4 October last year when Russia and China vetoed the Security Council's first attempt to...
(3) Comments | Posted May 9, 2012 | 12:44 PM