Week: Our Perspectives

Posts from the ISN, CSS and guest writers

Missing the Mark: The ICC on its Relationship with the UN Security Council

ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo briefing the UN Security Council on the situation in Sudan. Photo: Coalition for the ICC/flickr

Last month, for the first time since the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established, the United Nations Security Council debated its relationship with the Court. After two Security Council referrals (Darfur 2005 and Libya 2011), it was high time that the relationship was critically analyzed. Unfortunately, key issues which have undermined the independence and legitimacy of the ICC were left largely unaddressed.

There are many problematic issues with regards to the relationship between the ICC and the UN Security Council. Broadly, most fall under three categories: the potential tensions and dilemmas between peace-making/conflict resolution and international criminal justice; the inevitable selectivity that only some situations of mass atrocity will be referred by the Council to the ICC while other cases, which are just as deserving, will not; and the political constraints imposed by the Security Council on the ICC when it decides to refer a case to the Court.

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Big Oil in the Arctic Council?

A tugboat towing an oil drilling platform into the Alaskan Arctic. Photo: anyaku2419/flickr

 

Drilling for oil is almost always risky business. Deposits are rarely found in convenient places and drilling is expensive. Even if alternative energies are slowly taking over the energy market, most experts agree that we still need oil. As current wells dry up, therefore, we must also drill in new, more challenging places, like the Arctic seas.

The US Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds ninety billion barrels of undiscovered oil. This is almost three times annual global consumption and could be as much as thirteen percent of the world’s undiscovered reserves. The vast majority of Arctic oil, however, lies offshore – protected by fierce weather conditions that make drilling almost impossible, or at least very dangerous.

Commercial interest in the Arctic is nonetheless high. As recently as September the Norwegian government announced that forty-two companies had applied for drilling permissions in the Norwegian Arctic. Statoil alone applied for drilling in seventy-two new blocks and will drill nine new exploration wells next year. Meanwhile, Royal Dutch Shell (finally) received permission to drill to shallow depths at the Beaufort and Chukchi wells in Alaska, US.

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Occupy Eyes the Drones

In Front of the Left Forum
In front of the Left Forum. Photo: World Can’t Wait/flickr.

A hallmark of U.S. President Obama’s foreign policy has been a scaling down of troop presences in conflict areas, but without scaling down efforts in the War on Terror. Obama has pursued this as vigorously as his predecessor, but he has more strategically come to rely on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)–commonly referred to as drones–to target individual terrorists and terrorist camps.

From the beginning of this program, some groups have expressed concerns over the civil liberty implications of the use of UAVs. Privacy concerns, since UAVs are largely used in reconnaissance, were forefront in the minds of activists–until Anwar al-Awlaki.

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The West’s Uncertain Trade Relations with East Asia

Swiss Ambassador Luzius Wasescha, left, talking to Markus Mugglin (Swiss Radio DRS) at JapanGate. © Nozomi Glanzmann

Deep down Luzius Wasescha is a multilateralist. Until July 2012, Wasescha led the Swiss delegation to the WTO in Geneva, where he was widely respected for his negotiation skills. Ultimately, he is probably not happy about the Doha Round being deadlocked and would prefer a multilateral trade agreement to the proliferation of bilateral accords that have been concluded recently.

Yet, in part, Wasescha is also responsible for the stalemate at the WTO – in his capacity as Switzerland’s representative. As the former speaker of the G10, a group of agriculturally protectionist countries, he fought against a substantive reduction in tariffs on agricultural imports. Those tariffs are part of the conflict at the WTO between developed and developing countries that is holding up the Doha Round.

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U.S. Presidential Elections: What Role for Foreign and Security Policy?

U.S. presidential elections 2012
President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign slogan – Betting on America. Photo: Anirudh Koul/flickr

On the 9 October, the ISN and the Center for Security Studies (our parent organization) hosted an expert panel organized by the US Embassy in Bern. The panelists, who included Ms. Susan M. Elbow, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy; Professor Antonius Liedhegener; Mr. Claude Longchamp; and Professor Corwin Smidt, provided their observations on how US international relations and security interests are impacting the current American presidential elections, if at all. You can find out more about their perspectives and opinions by watching the following video.

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