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11. Senior Leadership Training in UN Peace Operations

Author:
Kevin S. Kennedy and Laura Powers
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Due to their unique and complex nature, UN peacekeeping missions depend on effective leadership. Because few, if any, mission leaders have the requisite skills, knowledge, political judgment, and physical and mental stamina upon being selected, they require continuous, institutionalized, and sustained training and learning support. While the Secretariat has undertaken a number of training and learning initiatives, critical gaps remain. This paper identifies these gaps and analyzes obstacles that impede progress in addressing them. It looks at gaps in three broad areas: knowledge of peacekeeping doctrine, policy, and practice specific to UN peacekeeping; knowledge of UN policies and procedures on financial and human resources management; and leadership and team-building skills. To address these gaps, it recommends that the Secretariat prioritize action in several areas: Centralize responsibility for mission leadership training in a single unit; Integrate training into planning and recruitment processes; Provide more sustained support to training; and Employ new tools such as scenario-based exercises for in-mission training.
Topic:
United Nations, Peacekeeping, and Leadership
Political Geography:
Global Focus

12. What Every Boss Wants: Forecasting

Author:
George Fust
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
It was the first day at my new unit. As a staff officer I wasn’t surprised when the Battalion Executive Officer (XO), my new boss, motioned me into his office for a chat. What he said next left me speechless. I anticipated the normal “welcome to the unit” speech, but instead he offered one sentence worth of guidance and sent me on my way: “forecast my needs and that of the unit and you will succeed here.” What exactly did he mean by this? How does one forecast without additional information? Where should I start? What should the priority be? How far out should I forecast? My new boss clearly didn’t have the time to answer these questions, so I would have to figure it.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Leadership, and Bureaucracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

13. Good for the Military - Bad for the Nation?

Author:
George Fust
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
Has an overreliance on the military as a one-size-fits-all solution become so engrained that we no longer consider alternatives? Are domestic politics so intertwined with foreign affairs that the citizenry has no choice but to accept veterans to fill the ranks of the executive branch? Is there hope for the future? Can we rebalance the general orientation of our government? The outcome to all these questions can be arrived at in a favorable way if our military continues to embrace the Huntingtonian notion of objective control. If professionalism continues to guide the actions of our military’s senior leaders and those who serve in decision making bodies such as the National Security Council, there is hope for a reversal in what Lasswell describes as a “picture of the probable.”
Topic:
Civil Society, Military Affairs, Leadership, and Professionalism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. The New Metropolitanism: The International Order and Sub-National Actors

Author:
New Global Commons Working Group
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:
The growth and international clout of cities and sub-state actors has been unparalleled in recent decades. These players seek agency in the international arena, forming networks at the sub-state level that help shape new organizing principles for international cooperation on Global Commons issues like climate, health, transnational crime, and migration. These types of issues will continue to create opportunities for sub-national leadership to help shape outcomes beneficial for all—not just cities and states—through systematic interactions, a stronger connection up and down between cities, states, national capitals, and international bodies, and a larger voice for sub-national actors on Global Commons issues. To explore sub-national activism and its effects upon the international arena, in late 2018 the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy convened a working group on “The New Metropolitanism.” Participants included experts and practitioners drawn from the ranks of local governance, academia, think tanks and research institutions, as well as the diplomatic community. They discussed whether the continuation and pace of this phenomenon is inevitable or a passing response to stalled nation-state leadership; and how this rising “metropolitanism” complicates—or complements—the work of central governments and “old-world” international relations. This report provides a set of policy guidelines and recommendations, aimed at multiple audiences: cities and other sub-national actors and those that work with and within them; national governments; nation-state level foreign ministries; and international organizations. The ultimate goal is to ensure that all the relevant players find ways to harness emerging sub-national activism towards processes, procedures, and relationships that can produce innovative solutions to global challenges.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, Governance, Leadership, and Cities
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

15. Trade under Attack And Necessary Remedies for Dislocation from Economic Change

Author:
Research and Policy Committee of the Committee for Economic Development
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
Research shows that engaging in global trade increases economic prosperity. Policymakers should aid U.S. workers adversely impacted by global trade instead of working to protect U.S. jobs. Trade Under Attack details trade’s immense contribution to the U.S. economy and warns that America risks forfeiting its leadership position if it retreats from trade.
Topic:
Leadership, Trade, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

16. A Better Process, a Stronger UN Secretary-General: How Historic Change Was Forged and What Comes Next

Author:
Yvonne Terlingen
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
When on October 13, 2016, the General Assembly appointed by acclamation António Guterres of Portugal as the United Nations’ ninth secretary-general, there was a sense of excitement among the organization’s 193 members. For once, so it seemed, they felt they had played an important role not only in choosing the secretary-general but also in appointing a man generally considered to be an outstanding candidate for a position memorably described as “the most impossible job on this earth.”1 The five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council (Perm Five) still exercised the greatest power in the selection process, as they always had in the past. Yet the candidate chosen appears, surprisingly, not to have been the first choice of either the United States or Russia, two of the Perm Five that until then had effectively chosen the secretary-general between them in an opaque and outdated process. It is doubtful that António Guterres would have been appointed if the General Assembly had not embarked on a novel process to select him. All previous secretaries-general were chosen on the basis of a haphazard and secretive process that occurred behind closed doors and was not merit based. The method to select the UN secretary-general is laid down in a few words in the UN Charter. Article 97 allocates responsibility for appointing the secretary-general to all members of the General Assembly acting on the recommendation of the Security Council. However, for the last seventy years—with one circumstance-specific exception2—the General Assembly has had no say in the selection: its member states merely rubber-stamped the decision of the Perm Five, which recommended just one candidate each time for the General Assembly to appoint. All previous secretaries-general were chosen on the basis of a haphazard and secretive process that occurred behind closed doors and was not merit based. The process was geared toward appointing the lowest common denominator candidate,3 but nevertheless produced a few outstanding secretaries-general. There has never been a female secretary-general, and until 2016 only three women had ever made it on a Security Council shortlist.4 The entire process lacked transparency and accountability and fell far short of the UN’s own standards and ideals, let alone the current recruitment practices for top international positions. Selections of all previous secretaries-general were made without appointment criteria, without a call for nominations or for CVs, without a timeline for nominations, and without public hearings or other effective methods of public scrutiny. In recent selections, candidates were often pushed into horse trading with the Security Council’s permanent members to gain their support in exchange for making promises of senior UN posts for their nationals. This has led to some countries holding monopolies over key posts.5 Moreover, the tradition of appointment for a five-year, once-renewable term, with reappointment controlled by the Perm Five, has effectively secured a secretary-general beholden to the Council’s most powerful members. The whole process “would be rejected as a bad joke by any serious institution in the private sector,” noted one senior UN authority who worked under multiple secretaries-general.
Topic:
United Nations, Leadership, Diversity, and Transparency
Political Geography:
Global Focus

17. Defining Down Sovereignty: The Rights and Responsibilities of Nations

Author:
Amitai Etzioni
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Defining down sovereignty" refers to the normative thesis that sovereignty should not grant a state absolute protection against armed intervention in its internal affairs by other states, and that instead the international community should condition such immunity on states living up to particular standards. This essay suggests two modifications to this thesis. First, the international community should spell out the kinds of failures to protect civilians that can justify armed interventions by other states, as well as which agency has the authority to determine when such failures have occurred. In other words, the international community should determine how low to set the bar for intervention, and who makes the rules. Second, the international community needs to establish an additional international responsibility, namely, a responsibility to prevent international terrorism. The essay treats both of these modifications as shared international normative understandings; it does not attempt to translate these changes into international law.
Topic:
Sovereignty, Terrorism, Leadership, State Building, and Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
Global Focus

18. Promoting U.S. Economic Growth and Security Through Expanding World Trade: A Call for Bold American Leadership

Author:
Research and Policy Committee of the Committee for Economic Development
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
This report presents a leadership vision of a strong and open global trading system, and urges the United States and its trading partners to adopt vital policy reforms, including delinking agricultural subsidies from prices and production while opening agricultural markets everywhere, and eliminating all tariffs and non-tariff barriers in both manufacturing and services.
Topic:
Security, International Trade and Finance, Leadership, Economy, and Economic growth
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America