Europe

Is Ukraine a promising model for the management of future international crises? At first glance, it looks like nothing of the sort. Kiev is in the middle of a bloody military campaign to regain control of towns and cities in the east of the country from pro-Russian rebels. More and more civilians have been caught in the crossfire.

In Still Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the Tension Between Rivalry and Restraint, Brookings Senior Fellow and my CIC colleague Bruce Jones sets out a compelling analysis of the present global power structure.

The Lowy Institute today publishes a review of Australia’s “turbulent term” on the UN Security Council.

Eighteen months into their two-year term on the Security Council, Australia’s diplomats at the UN have become masters of crisis management. For more than a year they have played a major role in talks on humanitarian aid to Syria, forging a fragile consensus with Russia and China on the need to assist the suffering.

Read the full Sydney Morning Herald article Australia's battle at the UN

Over the past six months, United Nations peacekeeping has come closer to catastrophe than at any time since the Rwandan genocide and Srebrenica massacre. The UN mission in South Sudan was caught off-guard when the country imploded last December. The crisis has claimed at least 10,000 lives. More then a million civilians have fled their homes, with 80,000 sheltering in UN compounds 

Read the full Chatham House article UN Peacekeepers: Not perfect but just good enough

The Russian Federation truly is the successor state of the Soviet Union when it comes to working the levers of the United Nations to its benefit. From its position as a permanent member of the Security Council, it gains both the prestige that comes with such a lofty place in the international system and a platform to tweak the great powers of the world whenever it wants.

Read the full Think Progress article Russia: The Ultimate Troll Of The U.N.

At the end of March, with the crisis spreading from Crimea to eastern Ukraine, Kerry instinctively reached out to Lavrov anew. The pair held four hours of inconclusive talks in Paris. Then it was back to Geneva in mid-April for quadrilateral discussions with the European Union and the Ukrainians: Seven hours of negotiating delivered a new set of “Geneva Accords” outlining plans for the pro-Russian separatists occupying government buildings in the east of the country to disarm.

Dear Prime Minister,

“Now would be a good time to review and overhaul your UN policies – if only to make space for more pressing priorities.”

Read the full Memo to to the Prime Minister in Pragati