Panel Discussions - Thursday, November 09, 2006
The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power
IPI was pleased to host the launch of a new book by James Traub entitled The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power.
Kofi Annan, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been heralded as a "diplomatic rock star" and as a "secular pope." Yet despite much public praise he, and the institution he has come to embody, have faced increasing public scrutiny and criticism after a series of scandals, management failures, and rifts among key UN member states. The US invasion of Iraq without Security Council approval deeply shook Annan. Critics, and even some friends, began asking whether this sixty-year-old experiment in global policing had outlived its usefulness. Do its failures arise from its own structure and culture or from a clash with an American administration determined to go its own way in defiance of world opinion?
In The Best Intentions, Jim Traub recounts the dramatically entwined history of Kofi Annan and the UN from 1992 to the present. In Annan he sees a tension between high idealism and entrenched institutional practice. On the one hand, Annan represents both a conscientious idealist given too little credit for advancing causes like humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, he represents a UN careerist who has absorbed the institution's culture and cannot, in the end, escape its limitations.
Our distinguished panel included Jim Traub, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Simon Chesterman, Executive Director, Institute for International Law and Justice New York University School of Law, and Ed Luck, Director, Center on International Organization, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
Shepard Forman, Director, Center on International Cooperation, New York University served as the Chair.
The Global Observatory
Interview with John Prendergast, Co-Founder, Enough Project
Mr. Prendergast discusses the international justice system and the new ground forged by Invisible Children's Kony2012 campaign.
Key Global Events to Watch in May
A list of key upcoming meetings and events with implications for global affairs.
The Global Observatory is a new website by IPI, providing timely analysis on peace and security issues, interviews with leading policymakers, interactive maps, and more.
Recent Events
May 10, 2012
Arbour: What the Rule of Law Means
“In my understanding of the rule of law, fundamentally, what the rule of law means is that it embraces the principle of equality before the law,” Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told an IPI audience on May 10, 2012. Ms. Arbour outlined that this means that no one is above the law and everyone has both equal protection and equal benefit of the law. 
May 03, 2012
Shachtman: Cyber Threats Akin to South Bronx, Not Pearl Harbor
“There’s not a danger of a cyber Pearl Harbor… it’s more like the South Bronx circa 1999, where there’s a danger that it becomes such a tough neighborhood that no one wants to set up shop there and people move out,” Noah Shachtman, editor of the Danger Room blog at Wired magazine and non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told an IPI audience at a panel on cyber security on May 3, 2011.
April 27, 2012
Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems
An April 27th roundtable discussion at IPI titled “Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems” examined the progress, prospects and challenges of regional and international early warning and response mechanisms to monitor, anticipate, and mitigate potential conflict situations in Africa.