EU security: a multipolar Europe

Source: European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)

The European Council on Foreign Relations has published a major report on European security architecture called ‘The spectre of a multipolar Europe’, written by Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard, with Jana Kobzova, Dimitar Bechev and Andrew Wilson. The report argues that Europe is becoming increasingly multipolar, and in danger of lapsing into separate spheres of influence. It argues that the US is no longer willing to engage in Europe’s internal security, and instead, the main actors – the EU, Russia and Turkey – must come together in a trialogue to build a new European security architecture. Turkey’s EU accession process must also be strengthened alongside recognition of its recent emergence as a credible regional power.

With Obama and Clinton, a new era for US foreign policy

Source: The New York Times | By David Stout

President-elect Barack Obama called for “a new dawn of American leadership” on Monday as he formally introduced his national security team, led by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as his nominee for secretary of state.

U.N. American agenda after Bush

Source: National Review Online | by Anne Bayefsky

Nobody is happier about the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States than the folks at the United Nations. It is as if they finally discovered kryptonite, and Superman will soon be disabled.

What President Obama inherits…

Source: Good Magazine on YouTube

A world in crisis and foreign policy challenges await President Obama

Source: Reuters | By Caren Bohan

Newly-elected U.S. president Barack Obama will face a daunting array of foreign policy challenges, from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the global financial crisis to the need to shore up the country’s frayed international image.

Obama election unleashes a flood of hope worldwide

Source: The New York Times | By Alan Cowell

From the front lines of Iraq to more genteel spots like Harry’s Bar in Paris, the election of Barack Obama unlocked a floodgate of hope that a new American leader will redeem promises of change, rewrite the political script and, perhaps as important as anything else, provide a kind of leadership that will erase the bitterness of the Bush years.

Attacks against U.N. worldwide are rising

Source: AP on the Washington Times | by Edith Lederer

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Wednesday that United Nations staff and humanitarian field workers are being deliberately targeted for attack by extremists and armed groups at an alarming rate. In a report to the U.N. General Assembly, Ban said the number of deaths of U.N. civilian staff members as a result of malicious acts rose to 25 in the year ending June 30, 2008 up from 16 the previous year.

From tragedy to hope: the U.N. in Iraq

Source: United Nations Information Centre, Washington DC | OpEd by B. Lynn Pascoe*

Today, the United Nations marks the five-year anniversary of one of the darkest and most painful days in our 60-year history: the suicide bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad in the chaotic first days of the post-war insurgency in Iraq .