Stewart M. Patrick

The Internationalist

Patrick assesses the future of world order, state sovereignty, and multilateral cooperation.

¡Viva México! The G20’s New Political and Security Agenda

by Stewart M. Patrick
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at a news conference at the end of the G20 foreign ministers summit in Los Cabos, February 20, 2012. (Courtesy Reuters) U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at a news conference at the end of the G20 foreign ministers summit in Los Cabos, February 20, 2012. (Courtesy Reuters)

Meeting last weekend in Los Cabos, Mexico, for their first, “informal” gathering, G20 foreign ministers made a pivotal decision: to expand the G20 agenda to encompass pressing political and security matters. Patricia Espinosa, the Mexican foreign minister, emphasized that on crucial issues that “affect the lives of billions…the international community is failing,” and announced that the group would reconvene at the G20 leaders’ summit from June 19 to 20 to consider a raft of global issues ranging from transnational crime to green growth and food security. Read more »

Five Things to Know About the G20

by Stewart M. Patrick

As Mexico prepares to welcome the first meeting of G20 foreign ministers this weekend, the Internationalist highlights five things to know about the world’s steering body for global financial cooperation–the Group of Twenty (G20). Watch below to find out how the G20 saved the world from a debilitating 1930s-style depression, how the G20 has breathed new life into a global financial watchdog, and learn about the continuing debate on the scope of its mission. Check it out for those answers and two other lessons, and post your bet on the G20′s future. Read more »

G20 Priorities: Advance Sustainable Development, Bolster Fragile States

by Stewart M. Patrick
Mexican President Felipe Calderon (L) speaks to members of the G20 during a G20 Sherpas' meeting at Los Pinos Presidential Palace in Mexico City, February 3, 2012. (Bernardo Montoya/ Courtesy Reuters) Mexican President Felipe Calderon (L) speaks to members of the G20 during a G20 Sherpas' meeting at Los Pinos Presidential Palace in Mexico City, February 3, 2012. (Bernardo Montoya/ Courtesy Reuters)

This weekend, foreign ministers from the Group of Twenty Nations (G20) will meet in Los Cabos—the first such meeting in a group which has been dominated by finance ministers and central bank governors since its inception. With foreign ministers at the table will the G20, like the G7 and G8 before it, expand its remit to address a broader suite of global challenges? Read more »

Eating Our Seed Corn: Warnings from the Global Sustainability Report

by Stewart M. Patrick
An illegal logger cuts down a tree to be turned into planks for construction in a forest south of Sampit, in Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province November 14, 2010.  Indonesia has one of the planet's fastest rates of deforestation (Yusuf Ahmad/Courtesy Reuters). An illegal logger cuts down a tree to be turned into planks for construction in a forest south of Sampit, in Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province November 14, 2010. Indonesia has one of the planet's fastest rates of deforestation (Yusuf Ahmad/Courtesy Reuters).

Last week, as the world’s media focused on the deepening crisis over Syria, it missed a less pressing story with profound long-term implications. The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, released a sobering assessment for the world’s seven billion inhabitants. The document—Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing­­—offers humanity a stark choice: modify our patterns of production and consumption, or risk crashing through the “planetary boundaries” of growth and social progress. Read more »

Lessons from the Russian-Chinese Double Veto

by Stewart M. Patrick
United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice speaks to China Ambassador Li Baodong during a U.N. Security Council meeting, February 4, 2012 (Allison Joyce/ Courtesy Reuters). United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice speaks to China Ambassador Li Baodong during a U.N. Security Council meeting, February 4, 2012 (Allison Joyce/ Courtesy Reuters).

On Saturday, Russia and China cast a double veto of a UN Security Council resolution backing an Arab League peace plan for an orderly departure of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria, and the creation of a transitional government in that country. This was the fourth time since 2007 that the duo has vetoed resolutions criticizing brutal crackdowns in Myanmar (2007), Zimbabwe (2008), and Syria (2011, 2012). Read more »

A “New Deal” for Fragile States? Promises and Pitfalls

by Stewart M. Patrick
An East Timorese refugee family gathers around their camp in Dili, February 18, 2008.  East Timor's government and the United Nations have started a programme to relocate some 30,000 refugees living in camps that dot the capital. (Beawiharta/Courtesy Reuters) An East Timorese refugee family gathers around their camp in Dili, February 18, 2008. East Timor's government and the United Nations have started a programme to relocate some 30,000 refugees living in camps that dot the capital. (Beawiharta/Courtesy Reuters)

For the past decade, the challenge of weak and failing states has dominated the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Once dismissed as third tier strategic concerns, poorly governed and conflict-ridden states rose to unprecedented prominence after 9/11. Al-Qaeda’s ability to launch the most devastating attack on the United States in U.S. history from one of the most wretched countries on earth persuaded George W. Bush, in the words of the 2002 National Security Strategy, that the nation was “now threatened less by conquering states than we are by weak and failing ones.” Allied nations and international organizations from NATO to the United Nations drew the same conclusion, describing the world’s forty-odd fragile states as “weak links” in the chain of global collective security, generating risks ranging from jihadist terror to transnational crime, WMD proliferation to infectious disease. Read more »

The United Nations Then and Now; and What it Means for Syria

by Stewart M. Patrick

This month marks the seventieth anniversary of the “United Nations.” Not as a formal organization—that would occur in San Francisco in 1945—but as a wartime alliance. After Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was anxious to define a common set of war aims and a joint vision of postwar order that could unify allied nations. The fruit of that effort was a “Joint Declaration of the United Nations.” Released on January 1, 1942, that document bound twenty-six allied nations to the principles of the Atlantic Charter that the United States and Great Britain had issued the previous summer. These principles envisioned an open postwar world, based on self-determination, freedom of the seas, multilateral trade, and collective security. During the war, another twenty-one nations endorsed the declaration, each pledging to “employ its full resources, military or economic” against the Axis powers. Read more »

Dispelling Myths About Foreign Aid

by Stewart M. Patrick
Flood victim Haji Usman holds praying beads as he sits outside his makeshift tent covered by weather sheet donated by USAID in Dadu, Pakistan in September 2010. (Akhtar Soomro/Courtesy Reuters) Flood victim Haji Usman holds praying beads as he sits outside his makeshift tent covered by weather sheet donated by USAID in Dadu, Pakistan in September 2010. (Akhtar Soomro/Courtesy Reuters)

Unsurprisingly, foreign aid has once again become a political football in this year’s primary season. Today’s GOP presidential candidates regularly bash it, echoing “Mr. Republican” Robert Taft—who dismissed overseas assistance more than six decades ago as “pouring money down a rat hole.” Read more »

At the United Nations, Reform for All Seasons

by Stewart M. Patrick

It’s a dirty little secret among supporters of the United Nations: The closer you get to seeing how the sausage is actually made in Turtle Bay, the more you wonder whether the UN-bashers have a point. The entire system is in such dire need of an overhaul—from its encrusted bloc politics and rigid personnel policies to its bureaucratic waste and pockets of cronyism—that even the most dedicated multilateralist may begin to channel his inner John Bolton. The big difference, of course, is that committed multilateralists are dedicated to reforming and strengthening, rather than crippling and weakening, the world body. Speaking last Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ambassador Joseph Torsella, the Obama administration’s point man for UN management reform, explained what the United States is doing to shake up business as usual in New York. Its point of departure, as President Obama has stated, is that the United Nations is both “flawed” and “indispensable.” Read more »

Breaking the UN Deadlock on Syria

by Stewart M. Patrick and Isabella Bennett
Demonstrators protest against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad after their Friday prayers in Kafranbel, near Adlb  January 6, 2012.  (Reuters handout/ Courtesy Reuters). Demonstrators protest against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad after their Friday prayers in Kafranbel, near Adlb January 6, 2012. (Reuters handout/ Courtesy Reuters).

Despite Arab League monitors in Syria, the death toll of the regime’s brutal crackdown on protestors is rising. The situation in Syria raises the question: Why did the United Nations authorize an intervention in Libya, at the mere threat by former Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi to slaughter his people, but remains idle while Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has already massacred over 5,000? Criticism that NATO overstepped its boundaries in Libya to orchestrate regime change rather than merely protect citizens does play a part, but the real story is more complicated. Read more »