Diplomacy & Crisis News

Gerard Araud, the French ambassador the United States, says an emerging nuclear deal with Iran will impose tough restrictions on the Islamic Republic and improve regional security across the Middle East. But on Tuesday, Araud acknowledged that it could also pose a potential risk: spurring an array Arab countries to develop their own civilian nuclear programs.

Burma may be getting closer to ending its 60-year-old civil war. But there's still a long way to go.

Following an agreement between the Nicaraguan government and shadowy Chinese billionaire Wang Jing, there may be a new canal in the Western Hemisphere. The possibility of a transoceanic canal through Nicaragua has been discussed for almost 400 years. Nicaragua was almost the place for the U.S.-built canal until, for a number of reasons, Panama became more ...

The top United Nations human rights official drew attention to several issues of concern today in an informal address to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council from the eruption of violence in Burundi and the overflowing migrant dilemmas in the Mediterranean and South-East Asia, to the protracted and worsening conflict in South Sudan.

As teams of trekkers and Nepalese sherpas are now reaching remote, high-altitude villages with humanitarian aid, a senior United Nations development official today drew attention to the post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction needs of more than 500,000 homes and cultural heritage sites in the rural areas.

The Syrian government's efforts to suppress the rebellion against it have been described as war crimes.

Their main complaint: Swiss-born Blatter’s support for Russia’s hosting of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, “despite Russia’s ongoing violations of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”

Shiite militias and Iraqi government forces have started to move into place around the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi in preparation for a highly-publicized but hastily-planned push to wrest the city from the fighters who chased the Iraqi army out earlier this month. U.S. military officials believe that the militants had been carefully planning the ...

The Security Council today adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) as the Horn of Africa country continues down its road towards political recovery and increased security.

Northeast Nigeria has witnessed a sharp increase in suicide attacks involving women and girls this year, the United Nations children’s agency warned today, calling on the country’s incoming Government make the safety and well-being of children a political priority.

Travelling around South Sudan to see efforts made by the United Nations to protect civilians in the country, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, Ellen Margrethe Løj, who also heads the UN Mission (UNMISS), visited Bentiu in Unity state this weekend.

Amid a range of structural challenges, including high unemployment and poverty, Serbia is now also facing a housing crisis which demands an immediate Government response, according to a United Nations independent human rights expert.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has called for humanitarian pauses in Syria so farmers can safely harvest and transport crops within the country to reach all Syrians in need.

As he wrapped up a visit to Ireland today, the Secretary-General congratulated the country on its “fruitful and strong” relationship with the United Nations over the past 60 years and looked forward to a continued partnership as the world tackled several significant challenges.

The government says it’s taking “incremental” steps toward reform, but the plan to reshape payouts for the poor is nothing short of a revolution.

A farmer in Patiala, India shows damage to wheat caused by unseasonably heavy rains in April 2015. While India and Pakistan don’t see eye to eye on pretty much anything, climate change dangers may help finally bring them together. Photo: Getty Images via aljazeera.com

Relations between India and Pakistan have been notoriously frosty for decades. But the two long-time adversaries will soon need to work together to effectively combat literal frost: in other words the effects of climate change.

Neil Bhatiya, a policy associate at the Century Foundation, reports that monsoon-level rains pounded Pakistan this past April — much earlier than expected — and resulted in at least 37 deaths. At the same time, unusually heavy spring rain also decimated wheat crops in India. Farming remains critically important to both countries’ economies: The World Bank estimates that about 47 percent of India’s, and 45 percent of Pakistan’s, workforce is employed in the agriculture and rural development sector.

In addition to impacts on the economy, both Mumbai and Karachi are susceptible to problems caused by rising sea levels. Just this week India suffered a debilitating heat wave that killed over 500 people. If these recent extremes are signs of things to come — and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a higher rate of severe weather events in the next century — India and Pakistan could face significant environmental, economic and societal upheaval.

The situation may not be not as grim as it seems. Cooperation has already taken place between the two neighboring countries on the the Indus Waters Treaty, a scheme to share river resources that has been in place since the 1960s. Leadership in India and Pakistan have made some progress in developing renewable energy sources, notably solar.

Thus far these efforts have been pursued separately. India and Pakistan must somehow find a way to pool their ideas and initiatives. If they can, as Bhatiya writes, such interaction could “serve as confidence building measures for climate change cooperation an important cornerstone of the bilateral relationship, to the benefit of the region as a whole.”

Enemies for so long, India are linked by their geography and potential to be devastated by climate change. If anything could bring them together, it should be this.

Chinese construction on the previously submerged Hughes Reef. Photo: Tuoi Tre

I had not given much thought to the flight plan of the airline I recently booked to go back to the U.S. from Vietnam, but recent events in the airspace over the South China Sea prompted an online search. As I discovered, my commercial flight will be flying not far from where a U.S. surveillance plane was warned on Wednesday to leave by a Chinese radar operator.

The P8-A Poseidon, the U.S. military’s most advanced surveillance aircraft, was flying near artificial islands which China is constructing, and the order is thought to have come from an early warning radar station on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Island chain, on which the Chinese have been constructing military facilities, which include a 10,000-foot runway. New satellite images show heightened reclamation work by China at seven sites in the Spratlys, adding around 2,000 acres of land since March 2014. Beijing claimed last month that the new islands would benefit provide weather forecasting and search and rescue facilities for the benefit of other countries, while admitting the islands could also be used for military purposes.

Also on board the P8-A Poseidon was a television crew from CNN, which recorded the American pilot insisting they were flying over international airspace. A commercial flight operated by Delta was also in contact with the Chinese radar operator during the confrontation with the U.S. military aircraft, and assured of safe passage. Following the incident, both Beijing and Washington accused each other of taking potentially dangerous actions, sparking memories of the 2001 collision between another U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter aircraft. In the 2001 confrontation, the Chinese pilot was killed while the American surveillance crew were detained on Hainan island.

The latest confrontation, along with earlier warnings to Philippine military aircraft to evacuate airspace in the same area, are igniting concern among claimant nations to the waters (Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan), as well as the Obama Administration. While China has not officially declared an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea, it claims the right to establish an ADIZ — similar to the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone it introduced in November 2013. The U.S. response back then was similarly confrontational, as American B-52 bombers were ordered to fly through the zone. Both military and commercial aircraft operating in ADIZs are required to identify themselves or be subject to military intervention.

As tensions of claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea have escalated, the U.S. has repeatedly expressed its desire for freedom of navigation in the waters, which see around $5 trillion in shipments. To reinforce this message, the Pentagon is actively considering the deployment of military aircraft and ships to within 12 nautical miles to patrol the disputed waters and airspace of the Spratly archipelago.

In an apparent response to Wednesday’s confrontation, Chinese embassy spokesman Zhu Haiquan hoped “relevant parties” would not to take sides “and refrain from playing up tensions.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying added, “Freedom of navigation does not give one country’s military aircraft and ships free access to another country’s territorial waters and airspace,” according to Xinhua, China’s state-owned news agency.

Given China’s claim to some 90 percent of the South China Sea, how far Beijing is willing to prevent free access to any country’s military and ships remains to be seen.   “Freedom of Navigation” exercises were conducted by the U.S. military last year, and the combat ship USS Fort Worth just completed a week-long patrol near the disputed Spratly Islands, where it encountered numerous Chinese warships.

Other regional actors such as the Japanese may become more involved, should they decide to join the U.S. in conducting joint maritime air patrols.  Japan held its first joint naval exercise with the Philippines last week in the South China Sea, and has promised to supply Manila with 10 coastguard vessels by the end of the year.  Last week, foreign and local journalists were invited by Manila to tour the Thitu Island, the largest island occupied by the Philippines in the South China Sea.  Japan also conducted search and rescue training with Vietnam this week, and is supplying used navy patrol boats to Hanoi.

While the latest incident ended relatively quickly, the International Crisis Group warned in a report released last week that clashes in the South China Sea were “becoming more heated and the lulls between period of tension are growing shorter.” With the flight of the surveillance plane, Washington made it clear it would not tolerate any further restrictions to international airspace over the South China Sea, with Daniel Russel, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, saying, “Nobody in their right mind is going to try to stop the U.S. Navy from operating.”

How far Washington will go to preserve freedom of navigation and how far Beijing is willing to assert sovereignty over the 90 percent of the South China Sea it claims remains to be seen. But small-scale skirmishes will continue, and despite warnings in the Global Times, a Chinese state-owned newspaper, that construction of the artificial islands is the country’s “most important bottom line,” and that “war is inevitable” unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the construction, China is not prepared for conflict with the United States, and the U.S. is not prepared to go to war with China over small piles of sand. Wednesday’s provocation was a carefully crafted combination of hard and soft power from Washington, using not a B-52 bomber but a surveillance plane, and using a television crew to curry international favor.  Sometimes using soft power to shame proves vastly more effective than forcing a country to save face with a military challenge.

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May/June Visual Statement

Modi's China visit was a triumph of style over substance, but cultural diplomacy may produce a meaningful shift in the relationship.