United Nations Archive

Is nation-building—a concept that most Western policymakers disowned after Iraq and Afghanistan—about to make a comeback? Two weeks ago, I predicted that 2015 could see the deployment of large-scale international stabilization forces in four trouble spots: Libya, northeastern Nigeria, Syria and Ukraine. The prospects for operations in at least two of these cases, Libya and Nigeria, have risen since then. Libya’s factions are engaged in on-and-off peace talks in Geneva, and United Nations officials have publicly discussed options for a military operation to support a political deal. Meanwhile, West African governments have been talking up a new regional operation to […]

The war on drugs has been subjected to unprecedented criticism over the past few years. For the first time since the inception of the international drug regime in the 1960s, world leaders are calling for the regulated legalization of all drugs, and not just marijuana. Politicians, businessmen and activists from across North, Central and South America are leading the charge. Several Latin American presidents are at the forefront of this drug policy revolution, insisting on the legalization of cannabis, opium poppies and coca. Some Western European leaders are also demanding that punitive drug laws be replaced with updated measures putting […]

Where will international stabilization forces intervene in 2015? Potential answers include Libya, Syria, Nigeria’s northern borderlands and eastern Ukraine. Restoring order in any one of these places, let alone two or more at once, would be a daunting task. Libya is sinking into full-scale civil war. Syria has been ravaged by four years of violence, leaving over 200,000 dead. The Boko Haram militant group has inflicted repeated defeats on the Nigerian military in a conflict punctuated by massacres by both sides. Russia retains the ability to turn the war in Ukraine on and off at leisure. Few countries outside these […]