Posted on September 16, 2019by Ali Tuygan
September 16, 2019
The 74th regular
Session of the UN General Assembly opens tomorrow in the wake of the drone
attacks which knocked out more than half of Saudi Arabia’s oil output raising
the risk of further regional confrontation. It will close on December 16 after
thirteen weeks. World’s attention will focus on New York only during the week
of “General Debate” which starts on September 24 because that is when world
leaders are there to address the UNGA and hold their bilateral and group
meetings. The rest will be business as usual.
According to the draft program of work,
the UNGA will even discuss the “question of equitable representation on and
increase in the membership of the Security Council”, but that is scheduled for
late November when everybody of global public recognition will be gone.
Likewise, the “question of Palestine” and “the situation in the Middle East”
will be taken up in early December. These have been on the UN agenda for years,
proven their intractable quality and debated ad nauseam. In terms of public
diplomacy their deletion from the agenda carries unbearable PR cost undermining
the relevance of the Organization.
A cursory look at the real world would
be dotted with dramatic scenes of human suffering, self-serving and unfulfilled
commitments to peace and prosperity, a goal that has eluded humanity for
millennia. A sharper focus will show that the Middle East remains in turmoil.
Libya is a war zone. Israel has attacked targets in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. A
confrontation in Syria’s Idlib is looming. Iran’s nuclear program has become a
divisive issue even within the West. The Taliban is getting closer to achieving
its objectives. Recent airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition supported by the
West have destroyed a detention center in Yemen killing more than 150 people. Saturday’s
drone attacks have exposed yet again the failure of the Saudi-led intervention
in Yemen, the vulnerability of the Kingdom and world oil supply, a worrisome
development especially for major Asian importers of Saudi oil like China,
Japan, India and South Korea.
The latest summit of the G7 in Biarritz
which again excluded Russia was not a ground-breaking meeting. A week
later, President Putin speaking at an economic forum in Vladivostok said he
could not imagine an effective international organization without China or
India. “Like the UN?” one may ask. Because, “effective multilateralism” is more
than a get-together. It requires more than agreement on lowest common
denominators and a will to move forward.
As the war in Syria has amply shown for
almost a decade, none of the external interventions aimed at putting an end to
bloodshed there. The first meeting of the now vanished “Group of Friends of the
Syrian People” was held in Tunis on 24 February 2012, with the participation of
more than 60 countries and representatives from the United Nations, the League
of Arab States, the European Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation,
the Arab Maghreb Union and the Cooperation Council for the Arab Gulf States.
Regardless of what was said at the end of the meeting on the aspirations of the
Syrian people for dignity, freedom, peace, reform, democracy, prosperity and
stability everybody knew that this was about forced regime change. Russia’s
military intervention pulled the plug on the project. Today, nobody refers to
those “noble aims” because it would sound ludicrous.
Despite its loss of territory, the
Islamic State is trying to regroup in Syria and Iraq.
Are the US, Russia, China and the EU
allies in the fight against ISIS? They should be. But the reality is they are
allies only up to a point. They don’t want ISIS to engage in terrorist acts in
their country, radicalize Muslims all over the world and aggravate the refugee
problem.
Beyond that, for Washington and its
principal regional ally Israel, ISIS is an excuse to remain in Syria. After
enfeebling Iraq and a dividing Syria, their next target seems to be Iran.
For Russia, ISIS provides added justification for its military presence
there until, if ever, the Assad regime can survive on its own. Because, Syria
has always been close to Russia. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be two “peace
processes” one in Geneva and the other in Astana and the 74th UNGA
would witness a summit of the P5 and Syria’s neighbors preceded by diplomatic
groundwork.
In brief, major powers’ shared interests
in Syria still have not gone beyond lowest common denominators.
Part of the problem is some leaders’
aversion to conventional diplomacy and preference for a self-centered,
self-serving approach to foreign policy prioritizing military power or
intervention through proxies. For others, international relations are about
one-to-one summit meetings and cutting deals. Regrettably, the impact of
foreign ministries on policy is waning. This means the loss of decades and
decades of accumulated experience and institutional wisdom. The NPT, the INF
Treaty and the JCPOA were negotiated for years. They were more than “deals”.
Add to self-centered approaches, foreign
policy becoming a tool of internal politics and domestic rhetoric in some
countries, prominently among them the US, Israel and Turkey and the picture
becomes bleaker.
Of interest to Turks would be the
meeting between the Turkish and US presidents. Provided that all goes well, Mr.
Trump may allow Ankara to purchase Patriots on top of the S-400s we have
started receiving from Russia. And if that were to happen, Turkey would breathe
a deep sigh of relief because this would provide us with a unique air defense
system against foreign attack: The Patriots will protect us against Russia and
its partners and the S-400s against the US and its allies.
About
Ali Tuygan
Ali Tuygan is a graduate of the Faculty
of Political Sciences of Ankara University. He joined the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in January 1967. Between various positions he held in Ankara, he served
at the Turkish Embassy in Brussels, NATO International Staff, Turkish Embassies
in Washington and Baghdad and the Turkish Delegation to NATO. From 1986 to 1989
he was Principal Private Secretary to the President of the Republic. He then
served as ambassador to Ottawa, Riyadh and Athens. In 1997 he was honored with
a decoration by the Italian President. Between these assignments abroad he
served twice as Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs. In 2004 he was
appointed Undersecretary where he remained until the end of 2006 before going
to his last foreign assignment as Ambassador to UNESCO. He retired in 2009. In
April 2013 he published a book entitled “Gönüllü Diplomat, Dışişlerinde Kırk
Yıl” (“Diplomat by Choice, Forty Years in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”) in
which he elaborated on the diplomatic profession and the main issues on the
global agenda. He has published articles in Turkish periodicals and newspapers.
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