Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

EU signals movement on China arms ban

It is looking like by early next year the EU will have lifted arms sanctions with China, imposed after Tiananmen. France seems to be the major proponent of lifting the ban. A code is being considered:

The EU is drawing up a tighter code of conduct, which Europeans believe will be enough to govern arms sales after the ban is lifted.

Negotiations over the code of conduct are a current source of tension between EU capitals, and its completion is seen as a prerequisite for the ending of the arms embargo. Current rules allow some military sales: In 2002, the EU exported $280 million in arms to China, with France making up half the total. The new code could be agreed next month, diplomats said.

Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, said: “Within the EU there is a willingness toward lifting the arms embargo.”

However, this would only come after “certain adjustments to the EU code of conduct on arms exports,” said Balkenende, the acting EU president.

Code of conduct my ass. Is it not clear to everyone that the Chinese authorities will do what they like? I mean how likely is that the situation will get better after the ban is lifted? Or is it more likely the situation will get worse?

The Guardian have published an edited version of a speech Hans Blix gave last week at the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge. The full text can be found here.

His criticism of the American right is telling:

We also see an intense and large-scale campaign of vilification, depicting the UN as “corrupt” because the oil-for-food programme – instituted and supervised by the security council and its most powerful members, including the US – enabled Iraq, the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of products to Iraq, to siphon off money fraudulently and pass it on illegally to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The fraud, although widely suspected and estimated at about a billion dollars a year in the media, was not easy for the programme administration to track down and prove. The council and its members saw it with open eyes just as they saw the billions that flowed to Saddam from oil exports to neighbouring states. The programme functioned as a reasonably effective break against the import of weapons and dual-use items, which was its major objective. Today it serves as a campaign platform against the UN. So long as the current climate remains, it is doubtful if any meaningful discussion about UN reform can be pursued.

This all comes around the time of the latest UN report – billed as one of the most important since the founding of the organisation.

What is this 'European Union'?

Anne-Marie Slaughter in the IHT, with a piece on the EU. She cites the number of times both George Bush and John Kerry have referred to the European Union – and it’s not often. This bit is good:

Suppose the citizens of Ohio or Oregon or Alabama understood that the EU has a larger population and gross domestic product than the United States. That English is widely and increasingly spoken as a second language. That most of the students who are either no longer applying to American schools or unable to enter the United States for a lack of a visa are choosing European universities instead. And that EU representatives are thick on the ground in many developing countries, both trolling for business and doling out aid and advice.

Suppose further that at a time when one of the most important issues in the U.S. election is which candidate is better placed to “win the peace” in Iraq and Afghanistan, American voters knew something about the EU model of building democracy – through assistance, admonition and accession negotiations. Americans would not likely believe that the prospect of EU membership, even if such a thing were possible, would have convinced the Taliban or Saddam Hussein to lay down their arms. But they might think that after the first flush of military victory the EU could teach America quite a lot about the exercise of civilian rather than military power.

EU citizens may be dubious about the EU’s effectiveness, particularly in political and military affairs. They may be unhappy about the democracy deficit. And they may be skeptical about their new constitution. But they know that the EU is an entity distinct from “Europe,” a rising entity of their own creation that is not simply an imitation of the United States. As a result, American voters are genuinely living in a different world from their European counterparts.

This trans-Atlantic divide results not from policies but from the most basic perceptions of relevant political actors in the international system. It should worry us all, well beyond the election.

Nicholas D. Kristof: Our least efforts save thousands of lives

Nick Kristof praises the US president for his action on Darfur, but laments the tardy and inadequate response to the overall situation. He pointedly asks if a mediocre effort saved so many lives, how many lives could a full and immediate international response have saved? And to those out there who seem to either dislike or even despise the United Nations, read the figures:

Even within Darfur itself, the UN World Food Program managed to get food to 1.3 million people last month out of the 2 million who need it.

Sterling work indeed. Do people still think the UN is a waste of time?

Sanctions worked: George Lopez, David Cortright

George A. Lopez, Director of Policy Studies at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and David Cortright, President of the Fourth Freedom Forum and Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute, argue in favour of the sanctions regime in Iraq during the 1990’s.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, they propose that far from being a complete disaster, the sanctions regime, and the subsequent introduction of “smartâ€? sanctions, was a resounding success.

They base their argument largely on the fact that the UN inspection teams, UNSCOM and UNMOVIC, were successful in both destroying existing weaponry (as evidenced by the non-existence of WMD after the invasion) – and in monitoring the Iraqi regime to a sufficient extent that a new weapons program could not be implemented. The sanctions were essentially the stick with which the inspectors could threaten the regime, while the carrot was the lifting of sanctions.

The sanctions regime was also successful in stopping Saddam reconstituting his conventional weapons, as evidenced by the lack of medium to heavy weaponry after the March 2003 invasion.

Lopez and Cortright are quite convincing, while also being critical of the current administration, they note:

Having failed to understand how sanctions and inspections worked in Iraq, the United States risks repeating its mistake in the future. The crisis of intelligence that pundits and politicians should be considering is not why so many officials overestimated what was wrong in Iraq; it is why they ignored so much readily available evidence of what was right about existing policies. By disregarding the success of inspections and sanctions, Washington discarded an effective system of containment and deterrence and, on the basis of faulty intelligence and wrong assumptions, launch a preventive war in its place.

Critics might point out that the war in Iraq had the effect of getting Libya into line, and abandoning its WMD program. But Lopez and Cortright deal with this issue too:

The case of Libya shows that sanctions can indeed influence regime behaviour in the long term. Muammar al-Qadaffi was once as much an outlaw as Saddam Hussein. But over time, and under the weigh of international sanctions, Libya accepted international norms, ended its support of terrorism, and gave up its clandestine efforts to acquire or build WMD. President Bush and other supporters of the war in Iraq have attributed Libya’s dramatic turnaround to what Representative Tom Lantos (D-Calif) termed the “pedagogic valueâ€? of the war. But in reality, Libya’s reversal began years earlier. UN sanctions during the 1990s brought about the negotiations that convinced Libya to turn over suspected terrorists for trial in The Hague.

Are Lopez and Cortright correct? Could the introduction of smart sanctions brought about a more prosperous Iraq while preventing the spread of WMD? And would this have brought an eventual end to Saddam’s regime without the need for invasion? We will never know.

Plotting Europe's eastern border

Viktor Yushchenko, candidate in the upcoming Ukrainian presidential elections, makes some interesting points about the future of the Ukraine, and worries concerning the expanded European Union.

He states:

While welcoming the enlargement of the European Union, Ukrainians are anxious about European integration halting at our western frontier and in fact creating a new dividing line.

Our neighbors in Belarus, Moldova and Russia feel the same way. Our anxiety is also shared by Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic states – neighbors who understand the gravity of problems resulting from the incomplete unification of Europe and the emergence of a new phenomenon: a bipolar Europe

There is an interesting concept. What is also interesting is that Ukraine has a population of some 48 million people. A healthy injection of people in the future, for Europe’s aging population. A bipolar Europe is a worry, but Europe really has to decide where exactly Europe stops and Asia/Middle East begin.

Is there ever a case for EU borders extending all the way to the Eastern parts of Belarus and Ukraine? Turkey will almost certainly join within the next 6 years, meaning that an EU country would border Iraq – a strange thought indeed.

It’s all quite hard to call, but important decision on the future expansion of Europe will have to be made.

EU plays a strong role on Darfur

Bernard Bot, minister of foreign affairs of the Netherlands and the current president of the EU Council of Ministers writes about Europe’s efforts in relation to Darfur.

If the European Union talks to the rebels, we will declare a unilateral cease-fire,â€? said Vice President Ali Osman Taha of Sudan after his meeting with a Dutch government delegation visiting Khartoum on Jan. 30. This was one of the first results of the EU’s diplomatic involvement in the crisis in Darfur, an involvement that began long before the international media became interested in events there.


Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Undefined variable: todo_styles in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/includes/class-bwp-minify.php on line 3120