Another day. Another outrage by the Trump administration. This time the outrage happened on the floor of the United Nations. While the attention of the American people was focused on the troubling conclusions of the Mueller investigation, the Trump administration’s U.N. delegation bullied its way to dominating the terms and diluting the intentions of what was an otherwise noble effort to prevent, treat the aftermath, and pursue justice for sexually victimized civilians in conflict zones – commonly referred to as conflict-related sexual violence.

What is conflict-related sexual violence and who are its victims?

Conflict-related sexual violence is understood to be sexual violence committed by armed actors during conflict. This type of sexual violence most often is aimed at girls and women but sometimes includes boys and men. It is often based on ethnic or political identity. A 2017 report by the U.N. secretary general called conflict-related sexual violence a global epidemic employed as a systematic tactic of warfare, intimidation, terrorism, and torture that destroys the social fabric of communities.

The list of recent conflicts in which documented cases of conflict-related sexual violence have commonly been employed as intimidation tactics spans the continents. Afghanistan, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Colombia, Darfur, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, and Yemen are just some of the places where hundreds of thousands of non-combatants have been systematically brutalized and traumatized.

What just happened at the United Nations in the name of the American people?

A decades-long, painstaking process to gather data, document survivors’ first-hand accounts, and negotiate terms for a resolution addressing conflict-related sexual violence was suddenly and unexpectedly upended by the U.S. threatening to veto the final language due to ideological concerns about implications in the resolution’s language for providing abortion services to victims of sexual violence and forced rape. 

In a particularly out-of-touch and cruel display of disregard for the suffering of victims and their need for survivor-related services, the Trump administration threatened to veto the resolution and set back years of international efforts to address the violence and suffering if the resolution contained any reference to reproductive rights. Here’s how Foreign Policy magazine described the Trump administration’s outrageous and factually dubious reasoning for the threatened veto:

“The Trump administration pressured Germany into watering down a United Nations resolution aimed at preventing rape in conflict situations, forcing it to remove language on sexual and reproductive health that key Trump administration officials say normalizes sexual activity and condones abortion, according to U.N.-based diplomats and an internal State Department cable.”

Ultimately the authors of the resolution, the German delegation, were so desperate to save what they could that they gave in to the Americans’ demands and stripped the resolution of the language on reproductive rights. On Tuesday, April 23, 2019, Resolution 2467 (2019) passed, with thirteen votes in favor, none against, and the Russian Federation and China abstaining.

Following the vote, it was reported that one diplomat observed that the resolution had been “reduced so much that it’s now inadequate and there isn’t much left.” In a joint statement, four countries–-Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—dared to speak out against what they saw as “the lack of reference to victims’ rights due to the threat of a U.S. veto.” A French diplomat didn’t bother to hide the scorn shared by a majority of the international community when condemning the American tactics. “The Americans have taken negotiations hostage based on their own ideology. It’s scandalous.”

I suppose most Americans will never hear about what just happened at the United Nations. They probably will never hear about the continued suffering of millions of victims of conflict-related sexual violence in places too far away to pay attention to, nor understand how the Trump administration, with its penchant for ignoring the suffering its policies inflict, forced the international community to back down from their well-intentioned efforts to address the victims’ suffering. Once again—in our name—the Trump administration brought shame upon this country on the international stage.

The video below, produced by the U.N. Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support, documents the staggering scale of conflict-related sexual violence and explains how this brutality rises to the definition of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or acts of torture or genocide.

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Sometime in early 2019 Heather Nauert, Donald Trump’s appointee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will go before the Senate for confirmation hearings. If confirmed, Nauert, a former Fox News correspondent with no foreign-service or direct diplomatic experience, will join a long lineup of questionable and unqualified high-profile appointments by the president.

For observers following the trajectory of the erratic governance style of the Trump administration, Nauert will inevitably be seen as the latest in a long line of unqualified individuals to have been blessed (or cursed, depending on your perspective) by Trump’s toxic spotlight. If confirmed, Nauert will join the coterie of unqualified Trumpists in high-profile positions in and out of the cabinet, including Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and everyone’s all-time favorite, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Why does Trump appoint these people?

Some media attention (but perhaps not enough) has focused on speculation about the reasons why Trump surrounds himself with the glaringly unqualified and why, from an outsider’s point of view, his staffing decision making appears to be so fundamentally flawed. As the numbers of the unqualified and their destruction of the agencies they head continues to expand, the question of “why” should continue to be at the forefront of news coverage and discussion by our elected representatives.  After all, Trump’s appointees work for us, the American taxpayer, not for the president.

Is this deeply troubling pattern the result of Trump’s need to ensure the loyalty of the Republican Party by furthering the party’s decades-long dream to “starve the beast” and limit through incompetence, mismanagement, and budget and program cuts the effectiveness of government agencies—like the EPA, the Energy Department, the Consumer Protection Agency, or the Department of Education?

Or are Trump’s hiring decisions the result of a personal psychology that combines a need for self-aggrandizement and unquestioning loyalty, a terrifying dependence on the gut rather than the brain, the need to appear to be the smartest, most domineering, or most powerful person in the room, or, too often, a banal focus on whether an individual looks the part. Let us never forget (or forgive) that Vice President Mike Pence, who could succeed Trump if he were impeached or resigned, was plucked out of the Republican universe of potential running mates simply because he looked like a poster boy for the second in command.

Or is the explanation all of the above and more?  Perhaps the decades-long dream of the Republican Party to destroy or limit the effective operation of the federal government is nothing more than a conspiracy theory (although all evidence points to the contrary), and there is no back-door plan to limit the effectiveness of the federal government. Perhaps Trump’s staffing picks simply reflect a fundamental ignorance and refusal by Trump to school himself on the actual functioning of government, or a deficit of interest and lack of seriousness and respect for the responsibilities of the presidency, or the president’s inexplicable dependence on the advice of the talking heads of Fox News rather than the advice of his more schooled advisers. All such explanations should be setting off alarm bells with voters across America, no matter their party affiliation.

Qualifications: Nauert vs everybody else

But enough of speculation. Let’s return for a moment to the upcoming Senate hearing for the next unqualified appointee. I’m hoping that level-headed senators and their staffs on both sides of the aisle are doing their homework on Nauert’s lack of qualifications. I’m hoping they’ll be armed with the resumes and history of prior U.N. ambassadors. Those resumes will certainly illuminate the gulf between Nauert’s  lack of foreign-policy chops and the foreign-policy experience of most of her most recent predecessors.

My conclusion is this. The United Nations is not an organization to be taken lightly nor disrespected. America deserves a serious, experienced, and qualified ambassador to represent our interests and negotiate the most difficult of the world’s interconnected challenges. Being a quick study is not good enough. Putting on a good show after marathon coaching sessions and being a clever talking head is not good enough. In a dangerous and unsettled world, America needs an ambassador who has experience and years of grounding in the world of foreign affairs and diplomacy. America deserves more than just window dressing at the United Nations.

If you’re not yet convinced of why Nauert should not be confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., I encourage you to review the list below of her qualifications and those of some of her distinguished predecessors. Then draw your own conclusions.

Heather Nauert – Nominated by Trump

• Health-insurance consultant, Washington, D.C.
• Fox TV news anchor and presenter Fox & Friends
• ABC network correspondent
• Trump-appointed Acting Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, March – October 2018
• Trump-appointed State Department spokeswoman,  April 2017 to present

Nikki Haley – Appointed by Trump

• Representative, South Carolina House of Representatives
• Governor, South Carolina

Samantha Power – Appointed by Obama

• War correspondent
• Harvard professor
• Adviser to Obama’s National Security Council
• Senior director for Multinational Affairs and Human Rights
• Pulitzer-prize–winning author

Susan Rice – Appointed by Obama

• Member, National Security Council
• Member, State Department
• Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
• Brookings Institute Fellow
• Author of policy papers on international terrorism, peacekeeping, global effects of failed states
• Senior foreign-policy adviser for presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Barack Obama

Zalmay Khalizad – Appointed by George W. Bush

• Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation at Dept. of State
• Counselor at Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Consultant at U.S. State Department and Pentagon since 1980s
• U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan
• U.S. Ambassador to Iraq

John Negroponte – Appointed by George W. Bush

• Research fellow and lecturer – International Affairs at George Washington University, Elliot School of International Affairs, and Yale University
• Deputy Secretary of State
• First Director of National Intelligence
• U.S. Foreign Service
• U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, and Philippines
• U.S. permanent representative to U.N.
• Ambassador to Iraq

Richard Holbrooke – Appointed by Bill Clinton

• Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Assistant Secretary of State for Asia
• Assistant Secretary of State for Europe
• Ambassador to Germany
• Brokered peace agreement in Bosnia

Bill Richardson – Appointed by Bill Clinton

• Governor of New Mexico
• Secretary of Energy

Madeleine Albright – Appointed by Bill Clinton

• Secretary of State
• Member, National Security Council
• Professor, Georgetown University

Daniel Patrick Moynihan – Appointed by Gerald Ford

• Advisor to President Nixon
• Assistant Secretary of Labor
• U.S. Ambassador to India

 

 

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Instead of grieving for the past, or focusing on whether world leaders laughed at or with President Trump at the United Nations, grassroots progressives should be searching for a new deal with the world.

During his visit to the UN in September 2108, the President’s stated vision and priorities for multilateral action got little discussion. While the majority of world leaders used their time at the UN dais to speak of “common threats” and “universal values,” President Trump, for a second year in a row, expounded on the urgency of patriotism, rejecting the multilateral process, the vaulted “ideology of globalism.” This approach is hardly surprising from a leader who campaigned on the promise of “America First.”

Two years into the Trump presidency, we are quick to dismiss the President’s rhetoric as mere theatrics. Yet, his vision of the world, greatly influenced by veteran war-hawks around him such as the current National Security Advisor John Bolton, currently set the tone of U.S. foreign policy. They shape America’s relations with its neighbors and overseas nations alike, and in turn the safety, well-being and prosperity of Americans at home.

Few question the current state of affairs on the foreign policy front. Many have accepted it as a part of the ongoing reality show that the American political process has become. Others grieve for the past administration which, in its dealings with foreign nations and multilateral institutions, typically called on America’s better angels. We would be better off searching for new ideas about alternative means of American engagement with the world — a sort of New Deal with the world.

Historians are quick to point out that the popular consensus on U.S. foreign policy has undergone little change following the fall of the Berlin Wall, regardless of the party in power. Rather, leaders have mainly prioritized policies with a singularly pro- war, surveillance, and exploitative business focus.

The progressive wing, the mainstream-kind, has rarely dared to challenge the status-quo. Often, they are busy with advocacy on domestic issues. There are also no ongoing robust discussions in the D.C. think-tank circles about alternative U.S. foreign policy practices. The funders for such projects are scarce. According to some reports, there are not even enough policy experts to staff administrations that deviate from the mainstream foreign policy consensus. The American foreign policy elite follows a cookie-cutter approach, namely because most of them came of age in the same institutions of higher-learning.

However, the blueprints for an alternative foreign policy are slowly emerging. They include proposals that would both honor and  advance the ideals of justice upon which the U.S. was founded, and would guarantee the well-being of others and the planet.

These policy proposals are being sketched out by scholars and foreign policy experts. They are also championed by a small group of politicians unafraid to take on the establishment. One of these people is long-term Vermont Senator and former Democratic-party nominee candidate Bernie Sanders.

Earlier this month, Sanders took the spotlight at D.C.’s premier international relations university to outline what some have dubbed, “Bernie’s New Internationalist Vision” for U.S. engagement with the world.

The ideas outlined were less of a battle cry to resist, and instead, a call for a new international movement “to create a decent life for all people.” Standing up to authoritarians of all stripes, controlling unchecked greed and eliminating corrosive corruption is a first step in this endeavor.

Sanders’ political vision has yet to be translated into specific policy proposals. Right now, it would only play well at political rallies. Other progressive elected or aspiring officials have yet to fully come around to this way of thinking and offer their take on how America should conduct its foreign affairs. Though, with a presidential campaign just around the corner, this too might change. The electorate and social movements, preoccupied with domestic resistance struggles, likewise have yet to show genuine concern for or interest in transnational debates. Though, their struggles have often been framed in transnational ideals and with the suffering of marginalized people across the world in mind.

Therefore, this is an opportune time for progressives to get more seriously involved and begin imagining new ways of U.S. engagement in the world. Similar to domestic battles for social justice, American dealings with the world should reflect the aspirations of grassroots progressives: blue-collar workers concerned about climate change; college students calling for justice in Syria; and religious leaders crusading for a reduction of nuclear armaments.

Ultimately, it is these people who will experience the most direct consequences of the country’s foreign policy, whether it’s when their loved ones are sent to war, or when profits drop due to ongoing trade wars, or when crops fail from the lack of sustained global action on climate change.

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I was not looking forward to The United Nations Association Leadership Summit. What concerned me was not the seminars or panels with veteran US diplomats in DC. Rather, I was concerned with the events of the conference’s last day, when UNA members would head to Capitol Hill to meet with Congressional staffers. I confess that I am rather uncomfortable among politicos and upwardly-mobile, lanyard-wearing types; but it was actually the seminars, not the lobbying, that ended up being the most concerning for me.

The Congressional staffers we met with were attentive, or were at least able to imitate attentiveness. I even feel that I made some headway with the staff of the more reactionary and nationalist Congresspeople. Unfortunately, I am less certain that I made any headway in discussions with the UNA members themselves. During the conference, I asked several questions intended to challenge what I considered to be weaknesses of the organization, to mixed results:

On the Permanent Veto

Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering led a panel titled “The State of Multilateralism”. Ambassador Pickering served as the US Ambassador to the UN from 1989-1992. The topic of this panel was largely centered on the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the world community at large: The proposed cuts to the foreign aid budget (which represents around 1% of US GDP annually), Nicki Haley’s threat to cut aid to states that don’t vote with the US, and Trump’s general inability to speak coherently to other world leaders.

A frequent complaint from Ambassador Pickering was the use of the permanent veto. The veto is a function of the UN Charter itself: Any of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Britain, France, Russia, China) can immediately halt any UNSC action by casting a vote in the negative. The ambassador cited the frequent use of the veto by Russia and China to protect its allies that commit human rights abuses.

I told the ambassador that in the course of writing my thesis, I found that the veto was in part the creation of Joseph Stalin, who wanted to continue his purges and ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe without UN interference. Given that the very inception of the veto was to allow for mass murder, why have it at all? Why privilege state sovereignty over human rights? The ambassador’s response was surprisingly satisfying: While he, as a veteran US diplomat, could not argue for abolishing the veto, he did articulate a powerful reform: Only allowing the veto in cases directly pertaining to the existence of the state. While this would not be enough to curb state-sponsored atrocities, it was still quite heartening to see a veteran US diplomat acknowledge that the current paradigm was insufficient.

On Climate Change

I was interested to attend the “Action on Climate Change” panel, as the problem of the environment is exactly what the UN was created for: a transnational issue that individual member states are incapable of solving on their own. Unfortunately, the ideas presented were rather small-bore and sometimes flat-out unhelpful.

I was especially annoyed by Elan Strait’s comments.  Strait is the Director of the US Climate Campaign of the World Wildlife Fund. He laid out a vision of climate change policy in which governmental agencies work with corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s to “green” businesses and public institutions. Against this effort, he said, stands the administration of Donald Trump. He also claimed that he had no idea why climate change denial existed. I objected strenuously to this: It is corporations like Wal-Mart who fund far-right candidates, fueling climate change denial. Why, I asked, would concerned citizens team up with the wealthy, who fundamentally are the malefactors in this case? I articulated the belief that capitalism itself is the problem. He replied that while he understood my concern that corporations “greenwash” their policies while doing nothing, it was easier to work with such people than against them.

I found this profoundly unsatisfying. I was less concerned with “greenwashing” than I was with the coming collapse of global ecosystems and the mass death that could easily result from the same. Later, moderator Julie Cerqueira, Executive Director of the US Climate Alliance of the UN Foundation, mentioned something similar, quipping about “market forces.” To me, this kind of business-friendly gradualism in the face of absolute catastrophe seemed like fiddling while Rome burns.

On US-Backed Human Rights Abuses

One of the nights of the Leadership Summit culminated in a dinner at the United States Institute of Peace, an “independent institution devoted to the nonviolent prevention and mitigation of deadly conflict abroad.” I asked the Director of Public Education, Ann-Louise Colgan, if the USIP ever studied conflicts and human rights abuses committed by US-backed regimes. “We’re Congressionally funded, so probably not,” she said. I have to admit, her honesty was refreshing.

I really shouldn’t have been as frustrated with the above as I was. The UNA-USA is, after all, an American organization dedicated to advancing the goals of the UN and promoting a strong US presence within the UN system. Its governing ideology could best be described as liberal internationalism. UNA-USA President Chris Whatley described himself as a “liberal Republican”, for instance. There seemed to be underlying assumptions among many of the speakers, namely that the world-system established by the United States and the other allies in 1945 was fundamentally good. This includes the dominance of the great powers and economic inequality.

This means that the UNA-USA, and the UN itself, is rooted in the world-system, and not in any substantive effort to overthrow said system. My politics have moved significantly to the left since I began to serve in the UNA. Therefore, the redeeming qualities of the liberal, post-1945 world-system seem less appealing to me than they once did.

At least the Leadership Summit was better than UN Member’s Day, which I attended in 2017. This was even more nonpartisan and milquetoast than USA-USA 2018. Personnel at Member’s Day asked us to mass-text Nicki Haley to thank her for her service. I refrained.

But I maintain that my disappointment with the UNA-USA Leadership Summit was not simply my own petulance. Together, the attendees grappled with some of the world’s greatest challenges, and only yielded unambitious solutions. It’s difficult to fault me for not getting excited about carbon tax credits for mega-corporations.

The reader can take some solace that on the last day of the Summit, UNA-USA members split into several teams and spoke with congressional staffers about the importance of the US’s role within the UN. The Trump administration has frequently threatened to stop paying UN dues, and as of my writing this, has pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council. But despite the above critiques, I genuinely believe the US should strive for a seat at the table at the United Nations. It brings me a little comfort than UNA-USA personnel had an effect, however small, towards that goal.

Note: Adam Michael Levin is the Vice-President of the United Nations Association of St. Louis, MO.

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About 1,200 Afghani, Iraqi and Iranian refugees—currently housed in terrible conditions on islands near Australia—are supposed to come, over time, to the US, under an agreement signed by Barack Obama and Australia’s prime minister Malcom Turnbull. But Donald Trump doesn’t want them. Yesterday, he called the deal “dumb,” and says he will refuse to accept any of the refugees who come from countries banned by his Jan. 27 executive order.

So, who are these refugees? First of all, they are not “illegal immigrants,” as Trump labeled them during his disastrous phone call with Turnbull.  This Washington Post article helps clarify what’s really going on:

The measure was necessary because of Australia’s draconian immigration policies. Asylum seekers who reach the country by boat are never settled in Australia proper. Instead, they’re sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island for “offshore processing.” Right now, there are about 2,000 people between the two islands, including many children. The vast majority come from Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. Many were transported to Australia by smugglers across a treacherous sea route hundreds of miles long. (At least 1,200 people have died trying to make the trip, one study found.)

After arrival, the migrants are thoroughly vetted; about 80 percent of those people are legitimate refugees, according to the Australian government. And most have been at a camp for more than a year, living in an immigration limbo. They are unable to leave their camps but also forbidden from settling for good.

Critics say that this amounts to indefinite and illegal detention; several reports have documented widespread abuse and mistreatment. Last year, a U.N. committee report found multiple cases of “attempted suicide, self-immolation, acts of self-harm and depression” among children who had lived in prolonged “detention-like conditions.”

Australia has a very tough stance on refugees. Despite the inhumane conditions at the island detention facilities, the Australian government has remained “resolutely unwilling to resettle refugees in Australia.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull campaigned in 2013 on a vow to “stop the boats.” His posters bore slogans like, “No Way: You will not make Australia home.” Instead, his government looked to other countries willing to accept the refugees. And they didn’t have much luck until the United States stepped in. America has already begun their own vetting on the refugees that they will resettle. Several told CNN that they had already had one round of interviews with American officials.

So, what was in “the worst deal ever,” anyway?

The Guardian explains:

In November the US agreed to take an undisclosed number of refugees from Australia’s offshore detention regime. The resettlement option was only to be available for detainees who had been found to be refugees (under the refugee convention). Others who were assessed and found not to be entitled to protection would not be deemed eligible. Applicants were to be interviewed twice by US officials before being resettled, in a process that was to take between six and 12 months. If a refugee missed out on US resettlement, the existing options of Papua New Guinea and Cambodia were still available.

As the Telegraph reported:

It has never been clear whether Australia offered anything in return for Washington’s concession. There has been speculation that Australia could take asylum seekers who arrive in the US, or that Canberra may have volunteered to send extra troops to Iraq or to conduct a freedom of navigation exercise patrol near Chinese-claimed territories in the South China Sea.

Others suggested that Australia, which already hosts American troops and has followed the US into each of its wars since Second World War, offered nothing as part of the deal – and that it was this element which infuriated Mr Trump.

Then, during his first ever contact with Turnbull, Trump belligerently accused the Australian prime minister of “seeking to export the next Boston bombers.” And when he essentially hung up on Turnbull, he also disconnected from the island-bound refugees whose conditions, said a United Nations psychiatrist, are “akin to torture.”

No one is certain about what will happen to the refugee deal forged between Obama and Turnbull. It looks as though the Bannon-Trump presidency is on course to channel the hard-line, anti-refugee stance of Australia’s Turnbull. But there’s also talk that Bannon-Trump might honor the deal. Unfortunately, in the Bannon-Trump era of lies and alternative facts, it depends on what the meaning of “honor” is. The Guardian puts it this way:

“ Trump could still honour the deal but simply accept none of the refugees who apply.

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I can see why perhaps Donald Trump has little love for the United Nations. After all, since its inception in 1945 and his birth a year later, the United States has really not won any wars, with the possible exception of the Reagan’s “come-from-behind” victory over Grenada in 1983. If Trump was into playing blame games, he might assert that the United Nations, along with NATO, have prevented the United States from “winning again.”

According to the New York Times, Trump, while in Wausau, Wisconsin,

“also turned his attention to the United Nations, warning that it could meet a fate similar to NATO under a Trump administration. “By the way, United Nations — same thing, smaller numbers,” he said, seeming to call for a pared-down version of the intergovernmental organization.

“Where do you ever see the United Nations?” Mr. Trump continued. “Do they ever settle anything? It’s just like a political game. The United Nations — I mean the money we spend on the United Nations.”

He sounds like the late, not-so-great, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina who loved to block payment of US dues to the UN. In Helms’ case it was because he objected to the UN distributing information on birth control. Both Helms and Trump seem to have a very petty view of the UN.

Trump likes to think big, or huge, so let’s see how the United Nations has done on the biggest of all global issues since its inception. It gets an A+, because not only did 1945 mark the establishment of the United Nations, it also was the first and only year in which nuclear weapons were used in warfare. Perhaps it’s coincidence, or perhaps it’s cause and effect, but in the era of the United Nations, the world has been spared a nuclear holocaust. While there have been dozens of wars, including big ones like Korea, Vietnam, and on-going carnage in the Middle East, no country has resorted to using nuclear bombs. There is neither a shortage of nuclear weapons around the world nor countries that are in possession of them. But they alone have been silent for the past seventy-one years.

The United Nations has also succeeded in doing what its predecessor, the League of Nations, could not do. It has played a role in preventing another world war. The League came into existence in 1920, right after World War I (then known as “The Great War”). However, the Treaty of Versailles that created both the League and dictated other terms of surrender following the war that planted the seeds for another even greater world war. In 1939, World War II exploded.

The mission of the United Nations must be seen in conjunction with the generous terms of surrender that the world, and most particularly the United Nations, placed upon Germany and Japan following the Second World War. The UN knew that fomenting hatred was what had created that war and pacifying the world was key to limiting or diminishing the presence of war.

Trump openly states that he is channeling the anger of others (and of course himself), and the distinction between anger and hatred is minimal. Trump’s criticism of the United Nations, as well as NATO, reflects several key lessons learned, and put into practice, following World War II.

1. The best way to defuse hostile feelings among nations is through kindness. The United States’ Marshall Plan for Germany is perhaps the best example of this. And Mr. Trump, the United States has never asked Germany to pay back the expenses of the Marshall Plan.
2. The fewer the number of nations that have large military forces (with nuclear weapons), the better. Following the war in the Pacific in World War II, the United States insisted that Japan spend no more than 1% of its GNP on the military. Japan has stood by that. Now Trump is suggesting that Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear weapons to protect themselves from North Korea and China.

Trump seems to have been absent the day they talked about the benefits of a Pax Americana following World War II. Yes, the U.S. has not always been the best cop, but it has been successful in minimizing the re-militarization of other major nations.

When the United Nations works best, it is when countries are willing to negotiate. Some may call that “the art of the deal.” Perhaps Trump should examine the United Nations a little more closely and learn more about “win-win” negotiations.

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I just finished reading a book worth writing about in light of recent events in Africa and Iraq: Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Gen. Dallaire was the Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda, 1993-1994, and witnessed the Rwandan Genocide firsthand.  In around 100 days, the Hutu population*, constituting a large majority of the Rwandan people, turned on the Tutsis and one another, murdering between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers.

Gen. Dallaire attempted to implement the Arusha Peace Accords in 1993 and early 1994, aimed at ending a stalled civil war and bringing a multiracial democracy to power in Rwanda. Progress was predictably slow, undermined by Hutu nationalists and intervention from abroad. But when Hutu President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, killing him and variety of other local leaders, the peace talks broke down completely. Hutu extremists (who are suspected to have killed Habyarimana for being too moderate) seized the opportunity to slaughter their Tutsi opponents and those perceived as too soft on Tutsis. Gen. Dallaire’s UN force was mostly cobbled together from Third World forces and generally underfunded or unused to peacekeeping operations. They were thus unable to stop the Hutu militias. Equally useless was the international community, which offered paltry humanitarian aid, sometimes allied with the genocidaires, and generally prevented Dallaire from mounting a competent defense of innocent civilians.

Why dwell on one of history’s worst massacres today? Because despite the international community’s tepid, post-Holocaust promise of “never again,” the racially charged massacrescontinue to pile up, even today. The Islamic State has committed what many are calling genocide with impunity within the caliphate’s bases of operation in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, Hutu-Tutsi violence has sprung up in Burundi against the backdrop of an authoritarian president’s attempts to stay in power.

What is the cause? Political scientist Kenneth Waltz once wrote of three explanations for war:  Problems within man, problems within the structure of various states, and problems within the international system of states. Of these three “images,” Waltz found the last most convincing, indicating that war’s cause is lack of a central authority in the international system. In this authority-less, or “anarchic” world, states must primarily protect their existence and interests. It was in no powerful state’s interest to help poverty-stricken and marginal Rwanda. When France finally did attempt a humanitarian intervention, the results were far from humanitarian: The French Operation Turquoise was aimed at protecting French nationals and securing the safety of France’s allies, the genocidal government.

Given that states will as a rule not intervene in cases of mass ethnic violence, preventing genocide in the current state of the world-system is impossible. However, one reform should be rather uncontroversial: States on the United Nations Security Council (and to a lesser extent, the General Assembly, which passes only nonbinding resolutions) should be barred from voting on issues pertaining to mass ethnic violence within their borders. Rwanda happened to have a seat on the Council during the genocide; This meant that its representative could lobby against intervention and generally obfuscate the situation. Gen. Dallaire remarked that because of the representative’s privileged position on the Council, the genocidaires had more information, logistics, and resources than he did, despite the fact that his force worked for the UN. Eliminating this privilege would help prevent genocidal regimes and groups from committing their atrocities without answering to the international community.

Samantha Power, now the United States’ Ambassador to the UN, once described genocide as the “problem from hell.” It is a testament to the apathy of the great powers and their international system that this hell continues unabated.

*Note:  It is possible that the Hutu and the Tutsis are not “ethnic groups,” per se, according to geneticists, but they are distinct cultural entities.

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A new CNN / ORC poll just revealed that the majority of Americans want Congress to reject the nuclear deal with Iran that the Obama Administration negotiated. This is a shift from April, 2015 when the majority favored approval of the deal.

It might be farcical that the American people are asked their views on the deal; it’s very complicated and hardly anyone has read it. On the other hand, we’re all entitled to engage in “gut politics” in which we intuitively make judgments about whether or not we can trust an individual or a policy.

The problem with the second approach, the “gut approach,” is that we are more susceptible to emotional appeals, particularly when they are blasted upon us by the electronic media. No sooner had Secretary of State John Kerry concluded the arduous negotiations with the Iranians and five allies than right-wing organizations began saturating the American airwaves with fear-mongering ads that as always, present only partial information and a lot of disinformation.

We have previously written about how the nuclear deal is somewhat similar to the fast-track consideration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that President Obama narrowly shepherded through Congress. It’s complicated and does not lend itself to easy consideration. However, a fundamental difference between the two is who the opponents of each is.

In the case of the TPP, those who opposed the President’s stance were primarily his traditional supporters, workers, labor unions, environmental groups, consumer groups, and progressives in general. In the case of the Iran nuclear deal, those opposed are mostly Republicans, most vehemently those who have sworn to do whatever they can to undermine virtually anything that he supports. These people are bankrolled to the hilt and can roll out one ad after another to scare Americans about the Iran deal. Those who opposed the TPP were of limited means and also somewhat reluctant to dumb down the conversation with 30-second fear pieces.

While I am not a nuclear scientist and cannot personally vouch for the scientific veracity of the agreement, I am pleased that one of the top American negotiators was Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, former professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at MIT. He and most other scientists who understand nuclear physics support the deal. This is somewhat like climate change; those with the knowledge support reform; those who are largely ill-informed resist taking reasonable action to address a true threat.

It’s not just the United States that entered the deal with Iran, it’s also countries as disparate as Russia and China, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. All but Germany are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. On July 20, 2015, the ten non-permanent members of the Council joined the permanent members to give unanimous endorsement of the agreement. Those countries are Angola, Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Spain and Venezuela.

The fact that the agreement is supported by so many scientists and so many countries is reason, though not assurance, that it is a good deal. One of the problems that President Obama has had in trying to sell the deal is that neither he nor anyone else can guarantee or assure that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons sometime in the future. What’s unfortunate is that opponents of the deal cannot accept the simple truth that there is no way to prove a negative; that something won’t happen. That leaves you with relying on the best information available. This is certainly a far shot better than Congress disapproving the deal and overriding his veto. Then whatever guarantee exists now will be destroyed and the likely outcome will be war with Iran and further isolation of the United States from other countries in the world.

Maybe supporters of the deal will have to take to the air waves, but as we all know, it’s difficult to overcome Republicans pandering to fear.

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Perhaps you haven’t noticed. Our current president is an unwavering optimist.

Whether we see Obama’s optimism as a character trait or a belief system doesn’t really matter. What does matter is recognizing that optimism has helped carry the man and the politician through the most difficult, contentious, and downright ugly political climate we’ve seen in contemporary times. Despite all the conflict and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Obama has remained true to his optimistic nature.

Obama’s dilemma reminds me of kids I grew up with. You may remember kids just like them. They were the ones who found themselves on the receiving end of unprovoked insults. The taunting pursued them no matter how fervently they tried to fit in. Some were targets of violent impulses of bullies out in the schoolyard. Those vulnerable kids, caught in a world they couldn’t control, learned quickly to summon every drop of courage to resist the easy way out—the feigning of illness that would have kept them home for the day or the easy escape of hiding out in bathroom stalls until recess was over.

Like those kids, Obama keeps coming back out for more because he has no other choice.

Remember, too, that Obama’s not only an optimist but also a realist and a stealthy, patient fighter to boot. The guy is not a victim. You can tell by his public demeanor that the President truly believes that each day might just be that one breakthrough day when governing with the ideological bullies in Congress will get a bit easier or a bit more productive.

Once again it seems the President is getting ready to play the optimism card. According to multiple news sources, Obama’s planning to give Senate obstructionists and conservative mudslingers a second chance to unlock their better selves and do the right thing by voting “yes” to ratify the U.N. Treaty Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

This is one international treaty that should be a no-brainer. After all, the treaty is modeled closely after our own Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that’s been improving the lives of the disabled for more than two decades.

But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking the vote is going to be any easier the second time around. Ratification was defeated one year ago in the Senate when the treaty failed by six votes to garner the necessary sixty-seven votes for two-thirds’ majority passage. Incredibly, there were senators who could not be persuaded to vote “yes” even though there was overwhelming support from mainstream disability and religious organizations, civil- and human-rights advocates, veterans groups, and lobbyists for American business interests.

Unfortunately, failure to ratify the U.N. treaty here at home speaks volumes about our poisoned political climate. It’s a sign of how callousness and disregard for the protection and rights of the less fortunate have come to dominate our public discourse and the direction of our governance. That failure is also a sign of just how far we’ve moved away from the international mainstream.

Unlike the United States, 158 countries and the European Union have ratified the U.N. treaty. That’s a clear message of optimism and those countries’ commitment to improving the lives of the more than one billion disabled around the world—eighty percent of whom live in developing nations.

And where did opposition to guaranteeing the most basic rights to disabled individuals come from in this country? Needless to say, the most vociferous objections to the treaty came from perennial pessimists on the Republican side of the aisle.  Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum summed up conservatives’ objections by whipping up a false frenzy about how the treaty would lead to a ban on home schooling in the U.S. and an increase in the number of abortions worldwide—resulting, according to Santorum’s tortured logic, from guarantees that women with disabilities gain equal access to reproductive care.

In fact, in the upside-down, nonsensical world we live in, legal scholars with no ideological agenda to push explain that the U.N. treaty would actually make it easier for the U.S. to encourage other countries to allow disabled children to be home schooled and that the language of the treaty disallows jurisdiction over any American legislation.

(Don’t forget a bit of history here. On whose watch did the concept of protecting the rights of the disabled gain steam? It was those two feisty, firebrand progressives, Pappy Bush and George W., who got the ball rolling. Remember that it was Pappy who signed the ADA into law, and it was George W.’s administration that helped draft the treaty’s language.)

Santorum and those who voted “no” to ratification failed to mention the true plight of individuals living in countries that systematically deny the disabled the most basic of human rights—privileges like birth certificates and acceptance of officially recognized names. Nor did opponents bother to talk about medical procedures commonly performed on the disabled without their consent, such as forcible sterilization and abortion, or the moral and ethical responsibility we share to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Former Republican Attorney General Richard Thornburgh—who served under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush and is himself the father of a son with disabilities—refuted the doomsday fears about American sovereignty when he testified in favor of ratifying the U.N. treaty before the Senate in 2012. Thornburgh explained that

the reservation regarding private conduct will ensure that the U.S. will not accept any obligation except as mandated by the Constitution and the laws of the United States. . . Thus, as with our current law, religious entities, small employers, and private homes would be exempt from any new requirements.

The sad truth is that the fight over ratification of the U.N. Treaty Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is hardly an anomaly.  The U.S.A. is M.I.A. when it comes to ratifying international treaties on a whole host of issues that would protect human rights, defuse international tensions, and make the world a less dangerous place.

The list of treaties signed by one president after another—both Republican and Democratic—and left to languish in no-man’s land without ratification is long and shameful. Just take a look at treaties that were signed but never ratified by us. Take a look as well at the company we keep.

Convention on the Rights of the Child

Signed 1995. Not ratified. (Supporters of the death penalty for children and American conservatives fearing that the convention would prohibit parents from hitting their children as punishment or allowing their kids to opt out of sex education are holding up ratification of a treaty that protects children from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.)

The company we keep: Somalia.

International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

Signed 1977. Not ratified.

Kyoto Protocol

Signed 1998. Not ratified.

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Signed 1996. Not ratified.

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Signed and ratified 1972.  U.S. unilateral withdrawal in 2001 by President George W. Bush, citing terror threats.

Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention

Signed 1972. Ratified 1975 then rejected draft proposal in 2001.

Chemical Weapons Convention

Signed 1993. Ratified 1997 with a reservation that gives the U.S. president the right to refuse inspections on grounds of “national security.”

Mine Ban Treaty

Never signed.

The company we keep: The only member of NATO besides Turkey and the only state in the Western Hemisphere that is not a signatory.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Signed 2000 but later unsigned in order to exempt U.S. military and government personnel from the court’s jurisdiction.

Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

Signed 1979. Not ratified.

The company we keep: The convention has been ratified by 185 countries. Iran, Sudan, Palau, and the U.S. have not signed. The U.S. is the only industrialized democracy and the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has not ratified the CEDAW.

Convention Against Enforced Disappearance

Not signed.

The convention prohibits secret detention and abduction of individuals by the state.  This would have put the U.S. in violation of an international agreement when the C.I.A. abducted individuals and incarcerated them in secret prisons.

Antarctic Treaty

Signed in 1959 by twelve countries, including the U.S.

Prohibits nuclear explosions and disposal of radioactive waste in Antarctica.

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