Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Dirie. 0:12 The UN is looking for a new secretary general, and Richard Gowan will come on the show later to talk about that and more. 0:20 But first, I'm joined by Freddy DeGnatel, a senior editor at World Politics Review, for a briefing on world affairs. Welcome to the show, Freddy. What are we talking about today? 0:30 Uh, well, the first piece that I wanted to discuss, uh, was a column by our newest columnist, our editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, who wrote this week about, uh, the civilian toll in Aleppo, Syria, and questions around, uh, what level of, uh, atrocity the United States and the world in turn is willing to tolerate there. 0:51 Uh, since the collapse late last month of a short-lived and really flawed ceasefire that was brokered by the US and Russia, Syrian forces with backing by Russian jets have once again tried to retake rebel-held areas of Aleppo, but with especially brutal force, even for this civil war. 1:11 Uh, and so Judah asks the question in his column of what level of atrocity is the US willing to tolerate there before ultimately intervening. Um, and he runs through the cases, 1:22 you know, morally and also politically that, uh, increasingly, um, have people thinking that 1:29 there has to come a point where the US can use its military power to try to at least roll back some of the scale of suffering in, in Syria and particularly in Aleppo. But then he also 1:42 arrives at the other more rational and strategic reasons that are ultimately, uh, a case for US restraint there. 1:49 Um, and that includes charges that the US would face, uh, of hypocrisy given that Saudi forces are bombing Yemen, uh, in equally brutal ways with US-supplied arms and tacit political support. 2:04 Um, and then also the ongoing risk, which has come up in the past, of the US being drawn into direct conflict not only with Russia on Syria's battlefield but also possibly against forces from Iran and Hezbollah that have been backing, uh, Bashar al-Assad. 2:20 And then there's also the point that any US intervention in Syria beyond the current, uh, operation that it's taking with tacit approval of the Syrian government against the Islamic State would be an act of war and that, as he notes, this isn't just a legal nicety, but it's ultimately one of the pillars of the inter-international order that the US would theoretically be defending in any intervention on humanitarian grounds. 2:44 Um, and so these are all serious issues that 2:47 we have to wrestle with when we ta-- when we read the news every day and we, we ask ourselves, "What can the United States or what can the West do in the face of such atrocities?" 2:57 Um, and, and, and it, it raises hard questions that do not have by any means easy answers. 3:03 Uh, what does this mean for the norms of humanitarianism and for protecting civilians in conflict zones that are currently being trampled in Aleppo? 3:11 What is the US willing to do in defense of those norms when core American interests are not affected? 3:18 Uh, which has, you know, in, in many policy circles and among many observers been the long-running, uh, debate about Syria, that Aleppo, the suffering there is certainly appalling, but if, if core US interests aren't threatened, is the US willing to tolerate 3:36 the scale of brutality and the carnage, uh, of an entire city or an entire half of a city being annihilated? 3:43 And I, I think that these, these type of questions are especially important because this is, of course, not only, um, an issue in Syria and Aleppo specifically, um, but this, these types of question come up again and again. 3:55 Um, if you look back only, uh, for the last few decades, uh, you had the case in Rwanda, um, uh, where the US, uh, stood back and, uh, was later, uh, heavily criticized for it and criticized itself for it as well, as well as the broader international community. 4:12 And, uh, today, of course, we, um, don't only have the, the civil war in, uh, Syria, but you also had a very good piece by Nanjala Nyabola, um, who is a, uh, political analyst based in Kenya who writes about South Sudan and attacks on humanitarian aid workers that took place there in July and, uh, came to light in an, in reporting, um, I think by the AFP in, in August. 4:39 And, uh, South Sudan isn't a, uh, isn't a civil war on the scale of Syria, but it's, it's comparable in some respects in the, in the brutality, um, uh, that, uh, civilians, uh, face on the ground. 4:54 And just like in Syria, you don't only have, uh, armed groups targeting local civilians, but increasingly there's also the tendency to target members of the international community and especially humanitarian aid workers. 5:07 And, uh, in July, 5:10 during fighting in the capital, um, there was an attack by government forces on a, uh, on a hotel and a hotel complex that was used by international aid workers and humanitarian workers from, both from around the region, um, but also from, from the US and other Western countries. 5:30 And, uh, this was a very targeted attack seemingly under the com-- direct command of the South Sudanese government and, uh, which by all accounts, uh, was designed to send a direct message to the US, which is perceived by some South Sudanese groups as, uh, taking the side of the rebels in that conflict. 5:51 And 5:53 Uh, what was very striking in, in the brutality and, uh, and, and the types of violence that were, uh, that, that were committed against these humanitarian aid workers, which normally presume that they are s- somehow out of the fray and, and, and have... 6:08 are exempted from the violence going on around them. 6:12 And, uh, Nanjala makes, uh, some really interesting observations there, just as Judah did in the, uh, pre- uh, previous piece that i- in this type of context, uh, humanitarians are 6:24 s- are not longer being perceived foremost, um, in, in, in the context of their profession, um, but as citizens and repre- representatives of their nations and are perceived as legitimate targets in, in, in some cases if, uh, the nations that they belong to, um, are in some way involved in the conflicts. 6:46 Um, so this puts a really stark light both on the, on the dangers that humanitarians face nowadays in, in, in, in, uh, uh, the conflicts that the world is, is, uh, experiencing currently, but also that there's a... 7:01 th- that the system of protecting humanitarians, um, is, has really become inadequate, and especially the United Nations, uh, which w- which didn't react to calls for help from, from the people attacked in, in, uh, Juba in, uh, in the, in this, uh, hotel, um, but also was, uh, the victim in a recent airstrike, uh, during the ill-fated ceasefire in Syria, um, where, uh, where an, uh, UN aid convoy was attacked. 7:29 Um, the, the UN hasn't really found a way to protect its, its, uh, workers and its representatives on the ground. So, um, some, some very valuable observations there as well, and further questions to, to ponder. 7:42 Certainly, especially in the case of Syria, what happens to the people who are leaving those war zones. 7:47 Uh, and the, the, the piece I was going to mention next was a, a deep dive by Josie Le Blond, who is a reporter in Berlin, who was reporting on asylum seekers in Germany. 7:58 Um, and she takes an in-depth look at Germany's efforts to integrate more than a million new asylum seekers who have arrived in the country in the past year from Syria but also from m- several other countries. 8:11 Uh, she says that this Herculean task of integrating so many so fast is only just hitting home, 8:18 and in particular, she looks at, uh, the debate currently, uh, in Germany over a so-called integration law that would require asylum seekers to assimilate or face legal consequences. 8:29 One of the more controversial measures, um, as part of this law would force asylum seekers to learn German and to attend mandatory integration courses, or they could risk having their benefit payments cut. 8:41 Uh, and this raises a lot of important questions in Germany, uh, not only about integrating, uh, refugees and asylum seekers, um, but providing them with legal protections and legal status. 8:56 Uh, and the political argument that she, uh, she explains is really not dealing with those issues. 9:02 Instead, lots of German politicians are wrangling over what she sees as quite irrelevant points over whether or not to ban the burqa or to serve pork in schools, uh, given new arrivals of Muslim refugees and migrants in Germany. 9:17 Um, and this really is irrelevant because you have more than half a million asylum seekers languishing in legal limbo. 9:25 They have nothing to do but wait on their claims to be processed while political leaders are haggling over these issues that do very little to actually address that. 9:35 Instead, as she says, asylum seekers' current priorities, their hopes, their fears, and their dreams are squarely at odds with the national debate in Germany about how to integrate them into society. 9:47 Uh, and so the piece raises fundamental questions about not only dealing with refugees from war zones like Syria but how, uh, a country in the heart of Europe will deal with this massive influx of people, uh, and what it says about their own society, uh, and the state of their domestic politics. 10:08 And as a German, I, I couldn't agree with that piece more. 10:10 I think that the, uh, that the refugee debate in Germany, um, has really been hijacked by, by the particular interests of certain politicians and parties in Germany who, who try to find a way to, to, uh, to ma- to draw political capital out of the situation and are in no way interested in finding, um, a, a, a real solution to the problems that, that both the refugees but also the communities that accept them are facing. 10:40 So I, I, I really have to agree there. 10:42 I think that this, uh, is really a shame that, that the situation, which is challenging but also, um, would offer opportunities both for the people coming but also for the people, um, uh, welcoming them, um, gets, gets drawn into such a political conflict. 10:57 Okay. Uh, thanks, Freddy, for coming on the show today. Good to be with you, Peter. Thanks. [instrumental music] It is my pleasure to again welcome Richard Gowan to Trendlines. 11:08 Only minutes before we recorded this conversation, uh, the UN Security Council announced its pick for the next UN Secretary General. 11:17 And Richard will talk about this choice as well as other important issues currently facing the United Nations. 11:26 I'm Richard Gowan, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a weekly columnist for World Politics Review. 11:37 The Security Council, having considered the question of the recommendation for the appointment of the Secretary General of the United Nations, recommends to the General Assembly that Mr. António Guterres 11:52 be appointed Secretary General of the United Nations for a term of office from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2021. 12:07 There has been an unusually long and unusually open campaign, uh, for the post of Secretary General this year. It's really been running since January, but we seem to have a winner. 12:23 Uh, the Security Council has held six straw polls where countries vote, uh, confidentially to encourage or discourage, uh, the various candidates. 12:35 In total, there have been 13 candidates, uh, in the running over the past few months, although a few dropped out early. 12:43 But today, uh, on the 5th of October, the Security Council seems to have agreed, uh, in its sixth straw poll that it will back António Guterres, the former Portuguese Prime Minister, uh, to replace Ban Ki-moon. 13:00 Now, this is a confidential vote. There is still a, uh, a formal, uh, vote to come, but it looks pretty definitive. 13:10 And so Guterres, who at the start of the year looked a bit like an outsider because many observers thought that it was time for a, a woman to lead the UN, has pushed through, run a very solid campaign, and will be in charge of the organization as of January. 13:31 From the outset, we said, yes, we do believe that it is the time of, uh, uh, Eastern European Regional Group to present a candidate for the Secretary General. 13:39 We would very much like to see a woman, but at the same time, we have to respect the fact that there are other strong candidates, and depending on the circumstances, we made no promises of sort of blocking everybody who is not coming from Eastern Europe. 13:55 I think the most relevant part of, um, Guterres's, uh, curriculum vitae is the fact that he was a well-respected leader of the, uh, UN Refugees Agency, UNHCR, until very recently. 14:08 And he is known for having, uh, very, very loyal staff. I think he, he inspired his staff. He's not meant to be a details man. He is more of a, a big-picture thinker and, um, 14:26 and political strategist and political communicator, but that will be, be welcome after the Ban Ki-moon years because Ban, by his own admission, was not an amazing, uh, communicator or strategist. 14:38 Uh, it is surprising to some extent that the Russians, uh, in particular have accepted, um, Guterres. 14:45 They, they always indicated that they would prefer someone from Eastern Europe, and there was a whole array of Eastern European candidates, uh, in the race from, from early this year. 14:55 I think that Guterres, to some extent, simply won on, uh, on his merits. 15:02 I think that he performed very well in public hearings in the General Assembly, uh, in, in the spring that convinced a lot of diplomats that he was qualified for the job. Uh, I think that he has projected, um, 15:19 competence and, and maturity, and even the Russians, I think, would like someone at the helm of the UN, uh, who, who looks like a, a safe pair of hands, so that's to his advantage. 15:31 It is possible that he has also, um, done some deals with the Russians and, and Chinese behind the scenes, offering them senior posts in the UN Secretariat. There's a lot of rumors about that in New York at the moment. 15:42 But I wouldn't invest too much in the rumors. I, I think that he simply made people believe that he was the best man for the job. 15:50 Now, there will be a lot of critics of his appointment asking, uh, why could the UN not find a strong woman, uh, to lead the organization? And I think that is something that we, we need a really serious postmortem about. 16:03 Uh, frankly, some ambassadors in the Security Council and General Assembly may feel more comfortable with, um, a male Secretary General. I think there is an old boys club atmosphere at the UN. 16:14 But a number of the supposed frontrunners, um, female frontrunners, such as Irina Bokova from Bulgaria, tripped themselves up, um, by seeming, uh, too close to the Russians. 16:27 Uh, other, other female candidates seemed too close to the Americans or the British. And those sort of political, um, uh, those sort of political issues have got in the way of their candidacies. 16:41 And I'll give the floor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, His Excellency, Mr. Ban Ki-moon. It should have been a speech about his accomplishments over the last decade. 16:51 And while they've been notable achievements, they've been overwhelmed by wars, abuses, and a lack of global cohesion. He used Syria as a case in point. Just when we think it, it cannot get any worse, 17:06 the bar of depravity sinks lower. He said South Sudan's leaders had betrayed their people, urged the leaders of North Korea to change course, while he warned that UN member states were often their own worst enemies. 17:24 Ban has not been very popular inside the UN, and he's known to be very cautious and often insufficiently decisive. 17:33 But I think history will be relatively kind to him because in at least two fields, he's made a, a solid contribution to multilateral diplomacy. Now, the most important contribution he's made has been over climate change. 17:49 Uh, from the very beginning of his time in office, he prioritized climate change and getting a treaty, uh, on limiting global warming. 17:58 That was often a thankless task at times, such as in 2009 during the Copenhagen Climate Summit. It really looked impossible. But Ban- Persevered. Uh, he was dogged. 18:09 He kept on urging world leaders to sign a climate trade change treaty. 18:15 He saw success in that in, in Paris, uh, last December when the, the Paris, uh, agreement was made, and now the, the treaty is, is being ratified and is coming into force. 18:29 So I think Ban will always be associated with successful and very, very painstaking climate change diplomacy. He played a similar, though I think less, 18:41 less essential role on development diplomacy, uh, in the last couple of years. But unfortunately, his, his successes in these multilateral processes are offset by, uh, his weakness as a crisis manager. 18:55 And Ban's, uh, great flaw has been his, his inability to really master the UN's peacekeeping operations, the UN's mediation in places like Syria. 19:06 He's always seemed quite confused and quite weak in his, his guidance of, of the UN in conflict. 19:13 Now, that has been, uh, an especially major failing given the fact that during his tenure, we've seen, uh, violence, uh, continuing in large parts of Africa where there are UN forces deployed, and violence obviously really surging in the Middle East, uh, most obviously in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. 19:32 And too often, Ban has just seemed to be a, a commentator, a figure off, on the side, uh, talking about the need for peace, but not really knowing how to get there. 19:45 I think we sometimes get a little bit romantic, uh, and falsely nostalgic about how the UN performed in the past. 19:54 You have to remember that in the second term of Ban Ki-moon's predecessor, Kofi Annan, uh, the Security Council suffered an appalling meltdown over the Iraq war, and Annan's own career was severely damaged in his, his final, final years in office by disputes with the Bush administration over Iraq. 20:16 And if you go back further into the Cold War, you can find periods where the Security Council was almost entirely paralyzed. 20:24 There was one year in the 1950s, I think it was either 1957 or 1959, when the Security Council was only able to pass a single resolution. 20:33 And compared to, to those dark days, the UN is still functioning reasonably well now. That said, it looked pretty dysfunctional. 20:44 Uh, we have seen UN peacekeeping operations, which ten years ago seemed to be a source of, of hope and progress in places such as, uh, the Democratic Republic of Congo falter. 20:55 Uh, increasingly, we see UN peacekeepers in places like the DRC and South Sudan really unable to control endemic violence around them. 21:06 And then at the diplomatic level, we have seen a, a real deterioration of cooperation in the Security Council, uh, since 2011. 21:16 Uh, we have seen repeated fights in the council over Ukraine, but most seriously, obviously, we've seen, uh, some periods of, of s- immense diplomatic failure o- over Syria. 21:28 And there is an irony that just as the Security Council is getting together to endorse a new Secretary General, it is falling apart over what to do about, uh, the siege of Aleppo. 21:40 And Russia's direct involvement in the siege of Aleppo, the fact that Russia appears to have been involved in attacks on a UN humanitarian convoy, has created a, a massive level of anger, uh, at the UN and in the Security Council, and tensions are running very, very high in New York as a result. 22:00 [instrumental music] Yesterday's, yesterday's, uh, sickening, savage, and apparently deliberate attack on a UN-Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoy is the latest example. 22:17 The United Nations has been forced to suspend aid convoys as a result of this outrage. I think the UN faces two sorts of, uh, political crisis today. 22:34 There are some crises, and, and Syria is the most obvious example, along with Ukraine, which, uh, emanate from differences between big powers. 22:47 And frankly, the, the Security Council and, and the UN Secretariat have a very, very limited ability to bring those crises under control. 22:58 So you can't blame Ban Ki-moon, uh, for the fact that the violence, um, exploded in Ukraine. 23:04 And although I do think he has sometimes seemed, uh, a little at a loss about what to do in Syria, we, we should be fair and say that even if Ban had been more creative over Syria, the results would probably have been very limited. 23:18 So yes, sometimes the UN is, is the victim of big power crises that, um, uh, no Secretary General, whether it's Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon or, or António Guterres in future, is able to control. 23:30 On the other hand, I think we should recognize that there are some crises, especially crises where the UN puts, uh, peacekeepers on the ground, where 23:42 the organization has real leverage, where the Secretary General has real leverage, but the results are still very, very poor. And I think we've seen, um, cases, uh, such as the, the violence this summer in Juba. 23:55 Um, we have seen past cases, uh, in Darfur, South Sudan, and, and the Congo, where UN political officers, UN peacekeepers have seemed, um, unable to 24:09 Uh, unable to react to really serious violence taking place almost in front of them. Now, again, you can say that is not the fault of the Secretary General. 24:19 If Indian peacekeepers, for example, refuse to take serious action to protect civilians, then you have to blame Delhi for that. 24:27 But I, there is a sense that Ban has not really provided strategic guidance or provided the sort of strategic inspiration or implemented serious reforms to the UN peacekeeping system that would allow operations like those in the Congo to, uh, to function better. 24:45 And Ban to some extent, to some extent has admitted that himself by launching some peacekeeping reforms very late in his second term, uh, that, that are meant to improve the functioning of the system, but will take some time to have any real impact, even, even if they have any impact at all. 25:05 I think when I look back to the Cold War, I feel a s- a certain, uh, I feel a certain resonance from the work of some of the, uh, the UN Secretary Generals in, in the Cold War period. 25:17 If you go back to the 1950s and 1960s, Dag Hammarskjöld genuinely was a creative actor in efforts to deescalate tensions between the Soviet Union and the Americans. 25:28 And the most obvious example of that was Hammarskjöld's, uh, role in launching the, the first UN peacekeeping operation, the first full-scale UN peacekeeping operation in the Sinai in 1956, uh, to, to help, um, deconflict, uh, the Suez Crisis, which, uh, was a, was a major Cold War, um, uh, crisis. 25:52 So Hammarskjöld directly contributed to easing East-West tensions then. 25:56 If you go into the 1980s, um, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, uh, the, the last leader of the UN during the Cold War, uh, actually played a very interesting and very, very quiet role in personal diplomacy with, uh, the Soviets over Afghanistan, uh, with the Chinese over, 26:16 uh, Cambodia. 26:18 And he, his contribution is forgotten because he, he was an exceptionally low-key diplomat, but he often acted as a, a bridge between the great powers as they were trying to sort out their difficulties, uh, around the end of the Cold War. 26:33 So at least two former Secretaries General, uh, have been genuine players in great power politics. Uh, I think Kofi Annan at times, um, played that sort of function as well. Ban has tried to do that. 26:48 Ban genuinely made an effort at the start of the Ukrainian crisis to, to deescalate the situation by going to, to Moscow and talking to Putin about what was going on in Ukraine. 26:59 But he's lacked the leverage and he's lacked the credibility to, to play that role. 27:03 It will be interesting to see if Guterres, who is a, a much stronger public political figure than, uh, than Ban, uh, may actually, um, be able to revive the UN's role in great power peacemaking. 27:18 Even if he does, we must emphasize it's a peripheral role. 27:21 You know, the UN is largely there to deal with second-order crises, not the major geopolitical rifts of the day, but I think the UN can do more than it's, uh, than it's managed in the last few years. 27:30 [Instrumental music] My thanks to Richard for coming on the show again and sharing his insights into the inner workings of the United Nations. 27:43 As Richard is a columnist for World Politics Review, you can find his excellent and frequent coverage of UN affairs on worldpoliticsreview.com. 27:53 Don't forget to subscribe to Trendlines in iTunes or another app of your choice. 27:57 And if you want to stay up to date with WPR's coverage of world affairs, you can also subscribe to the WPR newsletter on worldpoliticsreview.com. Trendlines is produced and edited by me, Peter Durrie. 28:09 You can follow me and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 28:18 Have a fantastic weekend, and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. [Instrumental music]
