New U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power is living up to her reputation as a staunch defender of human rights, and in the process is testing the limits of U.S. diplomacy within the bounds of international law. Power came out swinging Monday in a statement about Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s decision to seek a visa to attend the U.N. General Assembly, which opened yesterday in New York. “Such a trip would be deplorable, cynical and hugely inappropriate,” she said, adding that Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, ought to turn himself over to the ICC [...]
Can Barack Obama ever trust the United Nations Security Council again? And will the Security Council, and the U.N. more broadly, trust the U.S. president? Last week, Obama vented his frustration with diplomacy over Syria at a press conference during the G-20 summit in Russia. Asked why he had called for military action in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s resort to the use of chemical weapons, Obama claimed the alternatives “would be some resolutions that were being proffered in the United Nations and the usual hocus-pocus.” This was a sour if pithy turn of phrase from a president who [...]
Believers in international cooperation need to be optimists. It takes faith and patience to endure the endless conferences, committees and communiques that make up multilateral diplomacy. But even upbeat advocates of global governance are liable to feel gloomy about the prospects for two major meetings scheduled for next month. The first is the annual G-20 summit, to be hosted by Russia in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5-6. The second is the gathering of world leaders for the opening of the new session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York beginning Sept. 24. Both events are more likely to highlight [...]
