If you could transport the current war in the Middle East back to the late 1990s, a majority of people with a liberal temperament would have known what to do. They would say that the UN, the US, Europe or the Arab states must deploy troops to separate the two sides and bring the incalculable benefits of peace.
"We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist," declared British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a speech in Chicago in 1999, as he explained that global terrorist movements and the mass migration of refugees meant that the happy citizens of Fortress Europe couldn't pretend that distant wars and failed states had nothing to do with them.
"Mankind's suffering belongs to all men," said Bernard Kouchner, the inspirational director of Medecins Sans Frontieres, as he laid out the duty of the rich world to intervene to save the poor world from crimes against humanity.
The humanitarian and political benefits men and women with guns on the ground would bring to Lebanon are obvious. An international force that meant business would stop Israelis bombing Lebanon and Hezbollah bombing Israel. Enforcing peace would answer what is now becoming a powerful argument against a wider Middle East settlement: Whenever Israel removes forces from occupied territory -- as everyone says it should -- the abandoned land in Lebanon or Gaza Strip becomes a base for attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah.
The intervention of an international force could therefore provide a model for how Israel might withdraw from the West Bank in safety, and also allow the government of Lebanon to assert its authority over Hezbollah's state within a state. Finally, it would stop the world being distracted from the drive of Hezbollah's patrons in Iran to get the bomb, which is the reason why this war started in the first place.
Experience shows that troops would have to be ready for the long haul. In Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor military interventions that politicians said would last for months, have dragged on for years, but in all three instances, the presence of foreign troops stopped mass murder and further conflicts.
Yet after Iraq, the phrase "humanitarian intervention" dies on the lips. Who would do it? The British and Americans couldn't, their troops are committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, in any case, the Americans are too tied to Israel. The EU? The French just might, but overall the EU is deeply pacific as its disgraceful record in the former Yugoslavia showed.
"The hour of Europe has come!" thundered Jacques Poos, the foreign minister of the mighty Luxembourg, as the Serb nationalists raped and murdered their way across Bosnia in 1992, but that bold declaration was as far as the EU was prepared to go.
The legacy of Iraq means that US, Arab or European generals would know that they would face suicide bombers -- after all, Hezbollah attacks on American and French soldiers in Lebanon announced the arrival of the psychopathic tactic in the Middle East in 1983. After what Iraq has gone through, few commanders would relish a mission in which they had to do a little more than smile and pat children on the head.
Osama bin Laden has always maintained that the citizens of soft, self-indulgent democracies who "love life" would never have the nerve to fight fanatics who "love death," and he may be right. After former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's slaughter of the Kurds or the Srebrenica massacre or the Rwanda genocide, morally earnest people always cry "never again" -- but it is happening again in the Sudan.
One reason why the world barely discusses Darfur is that the Sudanese government in Khartoum has dropped heavy hints that it would encourage al-Qaeda to target a serious international force with the strength to make its presence felt.
Iraq has had a further consequence that I hear echoed in every discussion about war and genocide but find harder to pin down. US President George W. Bush so enraged mainstream opinion that liberal-minded people trashed their principles and cut the ground from under their own feet.
The legacy of their failure to support Iraqi democrats is a growth of conspiracy theory and a furious indifference to the suffering of others. Intervention in Lebanon, the Sudan or anywhere else would be "all about oil," an "illegal" war or a neoconservative plot.
However just the cause or pressing the crisis, there are plenty who are primed now to shout that most solipsistic slogan of consumerist politics: "Not in my name."
Yet the need to rebuild a global consensus on what justifies the use of force won't go away. Blair told his audience in Chicago in 1999 that "threats to international peace and security" had to be the responsibility of the international community.
In 2003, Bernard Kouchner told his fellow French citizens who were gloating at the time about the success of the Islamists and the Baathists in Iraq: "As for us, as so often draped in our certitudes, let us not imagine ourselves protected from barbarism."
Despite all that has happened since, they both remain right.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, people have been asking if Taiwan is the next Ukraine. At a G7 meeting of national leaders in January, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that Taiwan “could be the next Ukraine” if Chinese aggression is not checked. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that if Russia is not defeated, then “today, it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it can be Taiwan.” China does not like this rhetoric. Its diplomats ask people to stop saying “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.” However, the rhetoric and stated ambition of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Taiwan shows strong parallels with