United Nations Archive

Can Antonio Guterres save the United Nations from the tyranny of overinflated expectations? The U.N. secretary-general, who has been on the job for four months, seems clear about the limitations of his post. When the Security Council selected Guterres for the job last October, he declared that the Syrian war would be his top priority. But speaking in London last week, he implied he could not do much about it. Peace will only be possible, Guterres noted, “when all the parties in the conflict understand and believe they cannot win the war.” This is not exactly a revelation: U.N. officials […]

With the self-proclaimed Islamic State increasingly out of the headlines and on the back foot in Syria and Iraq, the damage wrought by the extremist group on cultural sites in both countries is no longer a consistent source of international outrage, like it was two years ago. Yet the destruction of heritage goes on. In January, for example, evidence emerged that Islamic State militants had wrecked more of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, demolishing the façade of the 2nd-century Roman theater, where the group had previously staged mass executions, and blowing up the Tetrapylon, whose monumental columns once anchored […]

Smart diplomats do not gloat about alienating their most assertive and dangerous foes. Nor do they boast about their influence over uncertain partners who are apt to switch loyalties at short notice. Last week, the Trump administration made both of these mistakes in one sentence. In an upbeat summary of the president’s first 100 days in office, the White House declared that Donald Trump has “further isolated Syria and Russia at the United Nations through successful diplomacy with President Xi Jinping of China.” This claim is not entirely untrue, but Trump should not imagine that he has changed the rules […]