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Blair Peterson

UN human rights chief criticises security council over global conflicts | World news | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-council-over-global-conflicts

International Relations United Nations UN world news

shared by Blair Peterson on 28 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • “These crises hammer home the full cost of the international community’s failure to prevent conflict,” Pillay said. “None of these crises erupted without warning.”
  • Pillay said Syria’s conflict “is metastasing outwards in an uncontrollable process whose eventual limits we cannot predict”. She also cited conflicts in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza.
  • The resolution acknowledged that the United Nations has not always used the tools in its charter for preventing conflict. It prescribed several steps for improvement, focusing on addressing human rights violations earlier and recognizing that such abuses are often warning signs of looming conflicts.
  • ...5 more annotations...
    • Blair Peterson
      Blair Peterson on 28 Aug 14
       
      What are the tools in the charter that can be used to prevent conflicts? Why have they decided to not use them in the past?
  • The resolution said little about the political differences that often paralyze the security council, where sharp divisions between veto-holding members Russia and the United States have often thwarted action on Syria and Ukraine.
  • “Short-term geopolitical considerations and national interest, narrowly defined, have repeatedly taken precedence over intolerable human suffering and grave breaches of and long-term threats to international peace and security,”
  • The human rights chief said the use of veto power on the security council “to stop action intended to prevent or defuse conflict is a short-term and ultimately counter-productive tactic”.
  • And she suggested building on the Arms Trade Treaty by requiring that, in countries where there are human rights concerns, governments accept a small human rights monitoring team as a condition of purchasing weapons.
Blair Peterson

Ebola and U.S. National Security - 0 views

www.internationalpolicydigest.org/...ebola-u-s-national-security

Public Health ebola International Relations security

shared by Blair Peterson on 16 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. government is sending flimsy plastic aprons and gauze masks to the Africans with assurances that the donning and removal processes are where the majority of the risk to caregivers is realized. This is simply not true. As is evident by the precautions currently being taken in the U.S. and other developed countries, multiple layers of protection are employed by health workers, and cadavers are treated as highly infectious.
  • President Obama has sent nearly 5,000 members of the U.S. military to West Africa to assist in trying to stop the spread of the disease for a very good reason — the problem is quickly spinning out of control, and has the potential to become a serious national security concern.
  • Since 2010, the Department of Defense has partnered with Tekmira Pharmaceuticals to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Tekmira was given ‘fast track’ authority to develop a vaccine earlier this year.
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  • n the interim, if a member of Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or Al Shabaab were inclined to spread the disease from Africa to the U.S. or Europe, all he or she would have to do is become infected and travel to these countries before becoming symptomatic.
Blair Peterson

New Ebola Cases May Soon Reach 10,000 a Week, Officials Predict - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-epidemic-who-west-africa.html

International Relations Ebola

shared by Blair Peterson on 19 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The Security Council in September passed a resolution that declared Ebola a threat to international peace and security. On Tuesday, it heard sobering alarms about Ebola’s widening impact on the region.
  • Hervé Ladsous, the under secretary general for peacekeeping, told the Council that 39 peacekeepers in Liberia were currently “under quarantine or are being closely watched for possible exposure.”
  • While the United States, Canada and Britain have taken emergency steps to screen international passengers to limit the risk of importing Ebola, most of Europe is still struggling with that issue.
smenegh Meneghini

Framing Health and Foreign Policy: lessons for global health diplomacy - 10 views

www.biomedcentral.com/...1744-8603-6-14.pdf

Ebola International Relations health_diplomacy

shared by smenegh Meneghini on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • smenegh Meneghini on 23 Oct 14
     
    This article talks about how health is becoming part of diplomacy and how it is being discussed as part of security: "Several governments have issued specific foreign policy statements on global health and a new term, global health diplomacy , has been coined to describe the processes by which state and non-state actors engage to position health issues more prominently in foreign policy decision-making". "Security, alongside development, is the most recently encountered frame in the documents we reviewed, with the securitization of health now claimed to be a permanent feature of public health governance in the 21st century. Although "health security" is recent in coinage, its history dates back at least to the 14th century when epidemics threatened to destabilize sovereign power and to compromise the material interest of the elite groups".
  • smenegh Meneghini on 06 Nov 14
Blair Peterson

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...national_security_strategy.pdf

foreign policy International Relations security whitehouse

shared by Blair Peterson on 04 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Blair Peterson on 04 Apr 15
     
    US Strategic Security Plan from President Obama
Blair Peterson

WHO | Global health diplomacy: training across disciplines - 0 views

www.who.int/...en

health diplomacy International Relations ebola Public Health Global Public Health

shared by Blair Peterson on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • foreign policy is now being driven substantially by health to protect national security, free trade and economic advancement.
  • he United Kingdom is attempting to establish policy coherence with the development of a central governmental global health strategy based on health as a human right and global public good.
  • Switzerland has prioritized health in foreign policy by emphasizing policy coherence through mapping global health across all government sectors.3 Through the Departments of Interior (Public Health) and Foreign Affairs, an agreement on the objectives of international health policy was submitted to the Swiss Federal Council to assure coordinated development assistance, trade policies and national health policies that serve global health.
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  • Today, Brazilian diplomats serve key roles in health and other ministries to assure policy coherence across the government; they have also provided leadership in key multinational health negotiations such as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI) is an international partnership to strengthen health preparedness and response globally to biological, chemical, radio-nuclear and pandemic influenza threats.
  • he interface between trade and health is, in fact, on the cutting edge of health diplomacy. Health professionals need to understand this interaction to assure rational trade agreements, informed by health needs and supported through progressive foreign policy.6
  • It may not matter which takes preference, but it is clear that the growing concern for multilateral cooperation on critical global health problems requires purposeful engagement in learning across these two sectors. In addition, there is a need to include nongovernmental actors, philanthropy and the private sector in this exciting new field of study.
sabrinacarneiro

Security Threat Analysis: ISIS - 0 views

http://ironline.american.edu/security-threat-analysis-isis/

International Relations

started by sabrinacarneiro on 02 Feb 15 no follow-up yet
Blair Peterson

One World, Rival Theories - 2 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...one_world_rival_theories

International Relations theories

shared by Blair Peterson on 06 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • He sketched out three dominant approaches: realism, liberalism, and an updated form of idealism called "constructivism."
  • Realism focuses on the shifting distribution of power among states.
  • Liberalism highlights the rising number of democracies and the turbulence of democratic transitions.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Idealism illuminates the changing norms of sovereignty, human rights, and international justice, as well as the increased potency of religious ideas in politics.
  • President George W. Bush promises to fight terror by spreading liberal democracy to the Middle East and claims that skeptics "who call themselves 'realists'…. have lost contact with a fundamental reality" that "America is always more secure when freedom is on the march."
  • National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former Stanford University political science professor, explains that the new Bush doctrine is an amalgam of pragmatic realism and Wilsonian liberal theory.
  • Sen. John Kerry sounded remarkably similar: "Our foreign policy has achieved greatness," he said, "only when it has combined realism and idealism."
  • Krauthammer argued for an assertive amalgam of liberalism and realism, which he called "democratic realism."
  • Fukuyama claimed that Krauthammer's faith in the use of force and the feasibility of democratic change in Iraq blinds him to the war's lack of legitimacy, a failing that "hurts both the realist part of our agenda, by diminishing our actual power, and the idealist portion of it, by undercutting our appeal as the embodiment of certain ideas and values."
  • At realism's core is the belief that international affairs is a struggle for power among self-interested states.
  • hicago political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau, are deeply pessimistic about human nature, it is not a theory of despair.
  • In liberal democracies, realism is the theory that everyone loves to hate. Developed largely by European émigrés at the end of World War II, realism claimed to be an antidote to the naive belief that international institutions and law alone can preserve peace, a misconception that this new generation of scholars believed had paved the way to war.
  • China's current foreign policy is grounded in realist ideas that date back millennia.
  • Realism gets some things right about the post-9/11 world. The continued centrality of military strength and the persistence of conflict, even in this age of global economic interdependence, does not surprise realists.
  • Realists point out that the central battles in the "war on terror" have been fought against two states (Afghanistan and Iraq), and that states, not the United Nations or Human Rights Watch, have led the fight against terrorism.
  • The realist scholar Robert A. Pape, for example, has argued that suicide terrorism can be a rational, realistic strategy for the leadership of national liberation movements seeking to expel democratic powers that occupy their homelands.
  • nsights from political realism -- a profound and wide-ranging intellectual tradition rooted in the enduring philosophy of Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes -- are hardly rendered obsolete because some nonstate groups are now able to resort to violence.
  • Standard realist doctrine predicts that weaker states will ally to protect themselves from stronger ones and thereby form and reform a balance of power.
  • Despite changing configurations of power, realists remain steadfast in stressing that policy must be based on positions of real strength, not on either empty bravado or hopeful illusions about a world without conflict.
  • The liberal school of international relations theory, whose most famous proponents were German philosopher Immanuel Kant and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, contends that realism has a stunted vision that cannot account for progress in relations between nations.
Blair Peterson

9 questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict you were too embarrassed to ask - Vox - 1 views

www.vox.com/...alestine-conflict-you-were-too

International Relations Israel Palestine Gaza

shared by Blair Peterson on 18 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • On the surface at least, it's very simple: the conflict is over who gets what land and how it is controlled. In execution, though, that gets into a lot of really thorny issues, like: Where are the borders? Can Palestinian refugees return to their former homes in present-day Israel?
  • Israeli forces have occupied and controlled the West Bank ever since. It withdrew its occupying troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintains a full blockade of the territory, which has turned Gaza into what human rights organizations sometimes call an "open-air prison" and has pushed the unemployment rate up to 40 percent.
  • Settlers are Israelis who move into the West Bank.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Others move deep into the West Bank to claim land for Jews, out of religious fervor and/or a desire to see more or all of the West Bank absorbed into Israel. While Israel officially forbids this and often evicts these settlers, many are still able to take root.
  • The simple version is that violence has become the status quo and that trying for peace is risky, so leaders on both ends seem to believe that managing the violence is preferable, while the Israeli and Palestinian publics show less and less interest in pressuring their leaders to take risks for peace.
  • That sense of Palestinian hopelessness and distrust in Israel and the peace process has been a major contributor to violence in recent years.
  • "We don't have a partner for peace."
  • 9 questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict you were too embarrassed to ask
Blair Peterson

As Iran Nuclear Deadline Looms, France Holding Out | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...ms-france-holds-it-ground.html

International Relations iran france nuclear foreign policy

shared by Blair Peterson on 08 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • To be sure, analysts doubt that France would risk an international crisis by pulling the plug on a long-awaited deal. But it has certainly positioned itself as the Western country pushing hardest to satisfy the concerns of Iran's regional antagonists, Israel and the Gulf Arab nations, which oppose a deal that leaves Tehran in possession of the nuclear infrastructure that could, in theory, allow it to build a bomb. (To do so, it would have to break out of an international agreement and circumvent the stringent monitoring regime currently in place.)
  • hey also want the U.N. Security Council to oversee Iran's nuclear program rather than the International Atomic Energy Agency, as is currently the case, and argue that sanctions should be repealed only gradually once Western powers are satisfied by Iran's compliance.
Blair Peterson

In Syria, the Enemy of America's Enemy Is Still a Lousy Friend | VICE News - 0 views

news.vice.com/...-enemy-is-still-a-lousy-friend

Syria International Relations

shared by Blair Peterson on 09 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The ball was set rolling by Ryan Crocker, the whiz diplomat who made his reputation as the US ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan. In an article for the New York Times, he argued that it was “time to consider a future for Syria without Assad’s ouster." His reason? “It is overwhelmingly likely that is what the future will be.” His circular logic found few takers, though notable among them was former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden.
  • Crudely defined, the US has no interests at stake in Syria, and the Obama administration was never enthusiastic about overthrowing Assad.
  • According to the Daily Beast, the administration is already debating whether to embrace Assad as an ally in a war against terror.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Western intelligentsia are debating the rehabilitation of the monster who presided over this horror.
  • he US will never be secure if it allies itself with the tormentor of the Syrian people and condemns millions to the squalor of hostile refugee camps.
smenegh Meneghini

Rational Theory of International Relations: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation | ... - 3 views

www.foreignaffairs.com/...olitics-the-logic-of-competiti

International Relations coopera cooperation theory

shared by smenegh Meneghini on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • He focuses on three sorts of factors shaping security strategies: the motives of a state, its material capabilities, and the information it has about the capacities and intentions of others. Out of these variables, he fashions a rationalist theory that deduces the circumstances under which states will seek to cooperate or compete.
Blair Peterson

A Test for Ukraine in a City Retaken From Rebels - NYTimes.com - 12 views

mobile.nytimes.com/...n-from-pro-russian-rebels.html

Ukraine IR international relations Russia

shared by Blair Peterson on 03 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • As it struggles to secure the consent, if not yet the trust, of Slovyansk’s largely ethnic Russian population, Ukraine has found that its best weapon has been provided by the rebels themselves — a legacy of violent thuggery and chaos that alienated just about everyone.
  • housands of residents thronged a large square in front of City Hall to welcome the pro-Russian putsch, chanting “Russia, Russia” and posing for photographs with gunmen they hailed as their saviors from the fascists who had seized power in Kiev with the February ouster of President Victor F. Yanukovych, a Russian-speaker from Donetsk.
    • Blair Peterson
      Blair Peterson on 03 Aug 14
       
      Where do the people of Ukraine feel about a Russian takeover? Are there some who are supportive of it?
  • Blair Peterson on 03 Aug 14
     
    Where do Ukranians stand on this war that is going on? Are they all anti-Russian?
  • Blair Peterson on 03 Aug 14
     
    Where do Ukranians stand on this war that is going on? Are they all anti-Russian?
Blair Peterson

Right slams purported security cabinet decision to withdraw from Gaza Strip | JPost | I... - 3 views

www.jpost.com/...op-withdrawal-from-Gaza-369826

Israel Gaza international relations IR

shared by Blair Peterson on 04 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • They said the decision projects weakness to Hamas and its Islamist fundamentalist allies and sponsors led by Iran.
  • “The rest of the tentacles of Islamist fundamentalism are happy tonight,” Likud MK Moshe Feiglin said. “There is no doubt that the picture of the IDF ending its ground operation without defeating Hamas encourages our Islamist fundamentalist enemies. If you don’t annihilate Hamas, the next round will be against Iran, Hizbullah, ISIS, and the Islamists inside Israel.”
  • “Calling the goal merely neutralizing the tunnels is to fight the symptom, not the problem,” Feiglin said.
Blair Peterson

Review - Brazilian Foreign Policy in Changing Times - 0 views

www.e-ir.info/...reign-policy-in-changing-times

brazilian foreign policy International Relations

shared by Blair Peterson on 04 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • This quest for influence, prestige and power—not for autonomy as such—has constituted the guiding principle of Brazilian foreign policy for many decades, since long before the time period investigated by Vigevani and Cepaluni. It provides a constant goal and explains the broadest gamut of foreign policy initiatives, ranging from the efforts at territorial aggrandizement under the Baron of Rio Branco in the early 20th century (pp. 65, 82), to the somewhat quixotic desire for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council in the early 21st century.
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