Stewart M. Patrick

The Internationalist

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

Posts by Category

Showing posts for "Regional Organizations"

The UN Versus Regional Organizations: Who Keeps the Peace?

by Stewart M. Patrick
South African President Jacob Zuma speaks during a Security Council meeting during on conflict prevention during in New York on September 22, 2011 (Eric Thayer/Courtesy Reuters). South African President Jacob Zuma speaks during a Security Council meeting during on conflict prevention during in New York on September 22, 2011 (Eric Thayer/Courtesy Reuters).

In January, the South African government of Jacob Zuma threw down a gauntlet. Taking advantage of the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council (UNSC), South Africa introduced a resolution to tighten the relationship between the UNSC and regional organizations—and the African Union in particular—charging that “Africa must not be a playground for furthering the interests of other regions ever again.” The Security Council subsequently adopted Resolution 2033 (2012), which pledges to enhance cooperation with regional organizations, though its clauses remain extremely vague. Read more »

Taking Conflict Prevention Seriously

by Stewart M. Patrick

A member of the Spanish E.U. troops patrols in the capital Kinshasa November 7, 2006. International peacekeepers have bolstered their presence on the streets of the edgy Democratic Republic of Congo's capital to deter any violent challenge to results trickling in from a decisive presidential run-off. (David Lewis/ Courtesy Reuters)

Conflict prevention often seems like the weather. Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. Or so we believe.

In fact, over the past two decades the United Nations and a growing number of regional organizations have developed new capabilities to anticipate the outbreak of violence and stop it from bursting into conflagration. This growing attention to prevention is one of the most hopeful—and unsung—trends in world politics today.

As part of the opening of this year’s UN General Assembly, the Security Council met on Thursday in an extraordinary session  to take stock of the UN’s capacities for preventive diplomacy—that is, its tools for heading off imminent violence, from coups to interethnic attacks to mass atrocities. The question of course, is whether this session will amount to anything more than lip service.

To be sure, a healthy dose of skepticism is in order. World leaders are fond of shibboleths about the wisdom of acting early but action rarely matches rhetoric. Consumed by the tyranny of the inbox, working level bureaucrats are notoriously poor at alerting their superiors, and their political masters are then wary of assuming concrete burdens to head off violence that may never come to pass. The value of conflict prevention is also notoriously difficult to prove. Success seems banal—since “nothing happens”—and attributing a peaceful outcome to a specific intervention requires proving a counterfactual: that all hell would have broken loose. Therefore, political will to act decisively is scarce until the bodies stack up like cordwood. Read more »

Rising Regionalism and Pakistan

by Stewart M. Patrick

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (R) speaks with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani as they watch the ICC Cricket World Cup semi-final match between India and Pakistan in Mohali March 30, 2011. The prime ministers of nuclear-armed foes India and Pakistan stood side by side on Wednesday at a World Cup cricket match and clapped to each other's national anthems in a symbolic gesture aimed at rebuilding ties shattered by the 2008 Mumbai attacks. (Raveendran/Pool/ Courtesy Reuters)

Read more »

Bad Behavior has blocked 673 access attempts in the last 7 days.