Friday, August 18, 2006
A UN army or regional armies - what does the G8 think?
A couple of well researched reports have been published recently on peacekeeping operations.
One is Meeting the Challenges of Peace Operations: Cooperation and Coordination. It suggests the G8 thinks it unrealistic to have universal political standards; instead the G8 prefers regional standards, regionally enforced.
Another is A UNITED NATIONS EMERGENCY PEACE SERVICE.
This report recommends a standing UN army. Referring to the difficulty of getting troop contributions from nations, "Kofi Annan once said, the UN is the only fire brigade in the world that has to acquire a fire engine after the fire has started."
The impetus for the report: "Because governments have not created the necessary UN capability, the responsibility for breathing life into the UN Emergency Peace Service
now lies with civil society, working with allies in the UN and interested governments."
One is Meeting the Challenges of Peace Operations: Cooperation and Coordination. It suggests the G8 thinks it unrealistic to have universal political standards; instead the G8 prefers regional standards, regionally enforced.
Another is A UNITED NATIONS EMERGENCY PEACE SERVICE.
This report recommends a standing UN army. Referring to the difficulty of getting troop contributions from nations, "Kofi Annan once said, the UN is the only fire brigade in the world that has to acquire a fire engine after the fire has started."
The impetus for the report: "Because governments have not created the necessary UN capability, the responsibility for breathing life into the UN Emergency Peace Service
now lies with civil society, working with allies in the UN and interested governments."
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Energy Security
The G8 conclusions on energy security for 2006 are here.
Not a lot of urgent action was agreed, for example: Since 2/3 of world oil is consumed by the transportation sector and its fuel consumption is outpacing general energy consumption we will pay special attention to this sector of energy demand.
And should a nation state, which is lucky enough to have energy, extract it as quickly as possible for the benefit of the global market (not necessarily itself)?
Not a lot of urgent action was agreed, for example: Since 2/3 of world oil is consumed by the transportation sector and its fuel consumption is outpacing general energy consumption we will pay special attention to this sector of energy demand.
And should a nation state, which is lucky enough to have energy, extract it as quickly as possible for the benefit of the global market (not necessarily itself)?
