No Easy Way Out in Syria

Tribune October 24 2015

Written By: Ian Williams

Published: October 24, 2015 Last modified: October 20, 2015

Ten years ago, every country in the United Nations adopted “the Responsibility to Protect”, a euphemism for humanitarian intervention. R2P as it is known in the UN, was steered through by Kofi Annan, who was then the Secretary General. Rather than rewrite the UN Charter with its overly punctilious respect for national sovereignty above all other considerations, the resolution reinterpreted the Charter’s Chapter Seven so that the threats to international peace and security now included mayhem being inflicted with national borders.

The international commission that came up with R2P found that there were deep worries about how the concept could be abused. Hitler had, after all, invoked humanitarian reasons for seizing Sudetenland. There was also a common caution that the UN Security Council should be very careful about how it was implemented. The Commission cited Hippocrates’ advice to doctors: “First, do no harm”.

R2P has been adopted varying degrees of enthusiasm, with the Russians and Chinese dragging their feet most often. But oddly the strongest defenders of the sovereign rights of tyrants to massacre their citizenry at will are often so-called socialists who have forgotten the proletarian internationalism thing in their rush to canonise sundry dictators as anti-imperialist saints.

The first line of defence against abuse of R2P is the role of the Security Council as gatekeeper since there could be no intervention without its permission. That is why, ironically, the Russian annexation of Crimea and creeping occupation of Ukraine is illegal even though Vladimir Putin evoked the alleged threat to ethnic Russians posed by the Ukrainian nationalists .The problem with the Security Council is the refusal of the veto holders to turn the key when the gate does need opening. It is easy to point the finger at Russia, but many UN members look at Moscow’s cover for Bashar al-Assad’s assault on his own citizenry as no better or worse than Washington’s cover for  waves of destruction on Gaza.

Similarly, there is a repeated pattern in which the West, having secured doubting Russian co-operation over Libya, or Iraq,then disregards Moscow’s views and stretches the resolutions farther than was implied. Iraq, touted as humanitarian intervention by Tony Blair, proved all of the warnings about the dangers of R2P that its supporters had identified. The invasion had no legal or moral authority and its conduct was cretinously colonial even by American standards, while inept by every standard of winning hearts and minds. It was wrong in every sense, from conception to execution and the Syrian tragedy is a continuing aftershock.

Syria is clearly a total humanitarian disaster, and if ever there were a need for intervention and international action this is it. But there is now a real dilemma. It is very difficult to conceive of any course of action that would not make things worse. We prefer the binary simplicity of absolute good and evil, even though sordid reality usually presents us with comparative worse and better. Syria’s complexities also defy attempts to rally world opinion behind any course of action. Indeed Syria has already had more than enough intervention with outside powers pursuing their sanguinary sectional interests across the heartland of civilisation. The United States has been unable or unwilling to restrain the Saudis and Gulf States from arming and bankrolling their own brand of fundamentalists. Russian and Iranian support of Assad means that he has seen no need to negotiate.

Even what would have been a straightforward response some time ago, enforcing a no-fly zone to prevent Assad’s aircraft bombing civilians now leads us to some literally awesome possibilities – do we want to risk a third world war by challenging Putin’s aggressive attacks on Assad’s non-ISIL opponents?

The pleas from UN representatives, Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi, and others for diplomacy can sound like wimpish abdication. But only concerted action by the major players, which might involve the US talking softly to Russia and China while waving a big stick at the Wahabi dynasties in the Gulf can produce a solution that might rescue Syrians from the horrors of previous partisan interventions. Putin and the ayatollahs are certainly a big part of the problem – but they also have to be part of the solution.

Ian Williams is Tribune's UN correspondent

Kofi Annan interview!

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Why No Go for US No Fly

Tribune 11 March 2011

Ian Williams on Libyan intervention

Some people would have picketed the Normandy Landings as imperialist intervention. (The Communist Party of the USA did actually condemn the British blockade of Nazi Germany as an imperialist attempt to starve German workers!) On the other hand, when I went to the UN legal department at the time of the belated attempts to help the Kurds after the first Gulf War, they shuffled their feet, and admitted that one of the few modern precedents they could find for “humanitarian intervention,” was Hitler’s land grabs in Czechoslovakia when he claimed to be rescuing Sudeten Germans from persecution.

When Kofi Annan persuaded the governments of the world to reinterpret the UN Charter to encompass “The Responsibility to Protect,” even supporters of intervention invoked the maxim “First do no harm,” and warned of the need to consider carefully the motives, intentions and methods of those intervening. Beware of brain surgeons with grudges and hatchets.

So, even though there are good ethical reasons to help the rebels in Libya, sadly there are few candidates qualified to do it. Obama has certainly blown it with his recent veto, which regresses US standing back to the inglory days of George W. Bush. (By the way, the UK went against the Blairite tradition and supported the resolution.)

In the face of Netanyahu’s refusal even to pause building settlements which the US coyly calls “illegitimate” but which the rest of the world unequivocally condemns as “illegal,” the US stood firm - and threatened to withdraw aid to the Palestinian victims unless they withdrew the embarrassing resolution!

One consequence is that this effectively rules out any attempt at international intervention in Libya, even to enforce a no-fly zone - at least if it involves US or NATO forces. There would be too many questions in the region about whether the jets flew for democracy or Israel, which was after all invoked by Mubarak’s security forces and the Yemeni president against protestors.

Gaddafi is still in some parallel universe where he thinks invoking Al-Qaeda gets him a free pass in Washington. This sounds like he is not quite hundred dirhams to the dinar, but put in the regional context of US support for any murderous autocrat who signs on for the anti-terrorist crusade and it is not that stupid. It might work yet, but if it doesn’t and there is any Western intervention, you can guarantee that he will invoke Israeli interference.


It is an interesting exercise to compare Obama’s recent stands, (or in some cases “prones,” might be a better word) on events in the region with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has categorically condemned settlements as illegal, and called for Mubarak to step down long before the leaders of the free world screwed their courage to the sticking place. After making the call, he returned to New York to fierce protests from the Egyptian mission to the UN, which have one gathers, been replaced with thanks and plaudits from the new regime in Cairo.

In Libya Ban called for "an immediate halt to the government's disproportionate use of force and indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets". This is welcome change from the UN’s traditional inability to distinguish between victim and perpetrator in conflicts and reflects Ban’s unprecedentedly forthright condemnations of member governments committing crimes - and, it is worth remembering, his public support for the International Criminal Career when he was running for the office with the support of the Bush administration.

Of course, Ban has no troops of his own, even if he wanted to deploy them. The UN is now sending a fact-finding mission which could restrain regime excesses in Tripoli, and one also suspects that other countries are sending less public missions to help the rebels, which one hopes are more circumspect than the arrested British SAS team. Any help has to be hands off to be successful. And the ironic result of democracy in Libya, like in Egypt, will be an elected government more anti-Imperialist than its paid-for predecessor.

Kofi gets his Bounce Back

from Comment is Free, Guardian, 25 March
Ian Williams

Last week, previous and present UN secretary generals Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon appeared together at the Waldorf Astoria on the occasion of the MacArthur Foundation's presentation of its first International Justice Award to Annan. It was pretty much their first public appearance since Annan handed over the reins to Ban on January 1, 2007, and it was a significant occasion for both them and the UN itself.

The explanations for Annan's absence vary. Certainly, in his ineffably polite way, he did not want to cramp his successor's style, but also in the early stages of Ban's tenure, his team paid too much attention to the "American" view - as expressed by the former unconfirmed US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, and the Murdoch press.

The vitriolic prejudice and attacks on Annan from Bolton and his ilk did much to redeem the Ghanaian's reputation with the rest of the world, but clearly influenced Ban's team when they arrived, basically clutching Bolton's "reform" plan in their hands. Their experience at the UN has clearly taught them a lot, not least about the qualities of the former secretary general.

It was Ban who approached Annan to undertake what seems to have been a remarkably successful mission to Kenya, and in fact leaned hard on the Kenyans to accept him.

In fact Ban and Annan have much in common. Both are humble men, in the best possible sense, confident enough in their own dignity to be approachable and personable, and they both have a strong moral sense that they do not brandish ostentatiously but manifest when needed.

In fact, a just criticism of both would be that they let their diplomatic duties muffle their use of the bully pulpit that the office provides. Even so, when he was campaigning for the office, Ban expressed his support for the "responsibility to protect" (R2P), and the International Criminal Court - anathema to Bolton, who had spent years trying to strangle it.

He reiterated that support at the presentation last Thursday, giving due credit to Annan, whose chief legacy was indeed getting the whole membership of the UN to agree to R2P. In effect, at the sixtieth anniversary of the organisation the membership agreed to reinterpret the UN charter so that threats to international peace and security against which the security council can take action included humanitarian disasters within states where the governments concerned had failed in their responsibility to protect their own people.

Of course, with the bleating from Belgrade about "sovereignty", the repression in Tibet or the continuing disaster in Darfur, not to mention events in Palestine, a cynical and superficially appropriate response would be "Big deal! So what?"

Certainly there has been a loss of momentum behind the idea, not least as the non-aligned and African states that Annan recruited to the concept have stepped back in the face of western double standards. Now that a rested and recuperated Annan is back on the world stage, allied with Nelson Mandela, an equally respected world figure, he can return to advance the work he started.

It will not be quick. It has taken several thousand years for the precept "thou shalt not kill" to gain acceptance, and the R2P may take some more. However there are signs. Already, in Sudan for example, China cannot preach absolute sovereignty to excuse Khartoum, so it has come under heavy pressure for its abuse of its veto.

One could only wish that the US would come under equal pressure for its use of its veto in the Middle East. It would do a lot to disarm the critics of R2P. Even there, some progress has been made. After a honeymoon period, Ban's UN has now remembered that Israel's settlements are illegal and that Israel promised to stop expanding them under the "road map". Pointing out the obvious may not seem revolutionary, but small things like this are big steps toward the idea that international law applies to everyone, not just those of whom Washington disapproves.

Testing the Tightrope

From the April edition of the World Today, journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House.

Testing the Tightrope

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL
FROM IAN WILLIAMS IN NEW YORK

As Winston Churchill said of his successor Clement Attlee, Ban Ki-Moon is a very modest man. It remains to be seen whether the United Nations Secretary-General also has ‘much to be modest about’. As the traditional hundred-day deadline for assessing new office-holders approaches, there is a quite remarkable lack of information on which to base any assessment. Ban shows no sign of rushing. With unprecedented time to effect a transition, he could have started running with a full team – unless he was waiting for former United States Ambassador John Bolton to go.

Ban Ki-moon brought a team of Koreans with him to the United Nations, seven according to most reports, regardless of his official nominations to office. Most notable is Kim Won-soo who was the mastermind of Ban’s election campaign to become Secretary-General. Now officially the assistant to newly appointed chef de cabinet Vijay Nambiar, UN staff report that Kim is no eminence grise, but is indeed very openly assertive in his authority.

But neither he nor his compatriots at UN headquarters are open about much else. Neither Ban nor his team have taken any great pains to explain themselves to senior staff, let alone to the media and the public.

Consequently, no one can be sure how deeply in debt Ban feels to the Americans for their electoral support, or indeed whether the nature of any such obligation has changed with the removal of Ambassador John Bolton and the change of control in Congress.




Spoils System

Ban’s appointment of B. Lynn Pascoe, a veteran United States diplomat, to head the Department of Political Affairs sent one sign. But his retreat from plans to put the substantive part of the peacekeeping department under the American, and his refinement of original proposals to downgrade disarmament affairs could be a joint product of a change of emphasis in Washington, or resistance from other member states.

Pascoe is an accomplished diplomat, well versed in Asian affairs, who even speaks Mandarin. If it had to be an American, then he is possibly the best for the position. Nonetheless, having an American, or for that matter, in the current state of the relationship between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush, a British nominee in such a crucial position, is bad for the UN and for Washington.

Despite its churlish lack of public enthusiasm, the US relies increasingly on the UN for major parts of global policing that would otherwise consume its increasingly challenged resources. And
one of the advantages of the UN is that its global legitimacy gives it an appearance of neutrality that Pascoe’s presence may belie.

The Security Council permanent members’ spoils system as applied to senior UN positions has led traditionally to a reliance on a kitchen cabinet of people you can trust. However, in Ban’s case, these all seem to be Korean. Senior UN staff report that insofar as the Korean team has manifested an agenda, it is ‘reform’, which it is pursuing with singular intensity – and on which it also seems to be taking advice from the Americans, although it is certainly a personal preoccupation of Ban’s.

Reform Rhetoric


Following an American reform agenda could be very frustrating since the Humpty Dumpty principle applies, ‘When I use a word, it means just what I want it to mean, neither more nor less’. For significant constituencies in Washington, reform means that the organisation will do what it is told, when it is told, by the US. In particular it would be expected to drop its traditional support for international law in the Middle East, particularly the Palestinian rights programmes.

One indication of trouble ahead is indeed the Middle East. Retiring Secretary-General Kofi Annan got scant thanks for trying hard to engage Israel in the organisation, without abandoning the Palestinian case in international law and the catalogue of UN decisions. There are some indications that Ban is not overly concerned about the latter, and by being somewhat over-receptive to Washington’s input, is heading for a confrontation with Arab and Islamic states and their non-aligned allies. In the UN version of Kremlinology, it was regarded as significant that Israel steered him away from going to Gaza during his March visit.

The Group of 77 developing nations are, with some justice, concerned because they know the American political agenda lurking beneath the managerial reform rhetoric. Bolton could hardly be accused of hiding it! Many would prefer an inefficient status quo in which their concerns will be addressed, to an efficient machine that excludes their agenda.

It must also be admitted that for a developing country ambassador, the prospects of a reincarnated career in the UN also looms large in the calculations. They know how to work the present system and would not welcome a slimmed down meritocracy they suspect would be under western control.

Tactical not Technocratic


Ban has tried to pre-emptively head off their opposition to his plans with senior appointments carefully spread around the global south. Many people suspect that, unless he has seen hidden depths unobserved by others in some of his appointees, a number of selections have been more tactical than technocratic.

Very late in his second term, Annan went to the long neglected root of the rot in the UN’s personnel system – and even then only after appointing Anne
Veneman, the White House nominee to head the traditional American fiefdom of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to avert US opposition.

Briefly the UN advertised and conducted a passable search process for candidates for senior positions, for example choosing Kemal Dervis of Turkey for the traditional Anglo-Saxon realm of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). And then right at the end, under heavy White House pressure, after consulting Ban, Annan appointed a Bush nominee, Josette Sheeran Shiner as head of the World Food Programme. She is a former editor of the Moony-owned Washington Times.

Following that, Ban abandoned this brief burst of genuine reform and has chosen a series of candidates who appear to represent pay-offs to powers that could have, but did not, veto his candidacy. Despite a reform pledge to cycle anyone more than five years in one position, he reappointed the French candidate, Jean-Marie Guéhenno as head of peacekeeping.

Sir John Holmes, a Blair nominee, became head of the Department of Humanitarian Affairs, a task in which he may succeed, but for which he is less qualified than the political affairs job the
British hoped for. And of course the reason that London had to accept a consolation prize was the most significant pay-back of all, Pascoe. It may be reform, but hardly root and branch.

Short on Substance


So what are Ban’s prospects? Any Secretary-General has to balance the aspirations of the bulk of the membership and the imperious demands of the great powers, in particular the US. Annan was extremely adept at this, for which he was rewarded with mutterings from the nonaligned that he was an American puppet and a two year campaign of vilification from US conservatives.

The Bush administration policy was ‘Bear not false witness: let the lie/Have time on its own wings to fly’. The White House did not start the slanderous campaign about the failures of the Iraq Oil for Food Programme, but it certainly did nothing to rein it in, and took advantage of Annan's weakened position. Ban should learn the lesson that that American support lasts only
until the first disagreement.

Some observers, unimpressed by Ban’s approach, and perhaps irritated by his own boast to the title of the ‘slippery eel’, for his avoidance of substance, have assumed he is the lacklustre product of a
backroom fix. But that is no truer than of any of his predecessors.

Indeed, while last year’s voting itself had all the transparency of a papal conclave, the campaign was unprecedentedly open, and Ban acquitted himself well on the hustings. For example, when asked about the International Criminal Court, and the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, he declared himself unequivocally in favour of both – even though one was hardly designed to woo Bolton’s vote, while the other was not exactly what Beijing may have wanted.

Like Annan, Ban is personally very affable and approachable, but quietly spoken, and has given evidence of strong ethics. No one could be foreign minister of a fulcrum state like South Korea without developing Annan-like skills at tightrope walking. In recent years South Korea has contrived to loyally disagree with Washington even though its survival has depended on American military support. Indeed, the few hints we see of his decision-making suggest some very intricate balancing acts.

Annan, more than any recent Secretary-General realised that in the absence of serious military or financial power, careful cultivation of a public persona of trustworthy moral authority provided the best substitute. Despite indifferent speaking skills, and very carefully weighing every word, he was
initially very successful in this.

One way in which Annan succeeded was to open up the organisation to the media in an unprecedented way. Previously, staff rules forbade talking to the press, but he reversed the position so that they were mandated to do so on areas in which they had competence. He also surrounded himself with a team that could articulately fill in the gaps in his diplomatically constrained public discussion.

It is to be hoped that Ban may begin to realise what he is missing. There is no point in having the world’s most prominent bully pulpit if he is not prepared to read the occasional sermon and deliver some ringing ex cathedra judgments. He will find that soft power is the strongest weapon in his armoury.

IAN WILLIAMS is Editor of the forthcoming Guide to the UN, published
by CQ Press