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Can the US be a global leader on human rights?
Is it difficult to be a global leader on human rights when the US is facing such a challenging and divisive political environment?
GZERO World sat down with US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield at UN headquarters in New York ahead of the US taking over presidency of the Security Council for the month of August.
Ian Bremmer asked the ambassador about her priorities during the presidency, as well as how domestic issues in the United States impact her job as an international diplomat. Is it difficult to be a global leader on human rights when the US is facing such a challenging and divisive political environment?
“If we’re not talking about human rights around the world, no one else will,” Thomas-Greenfield said in an interview from the floor of the Security Council chamber, “I know that others appreciate that they can depend on the United States to be the voice of the people.”
While acknowledging the US is not perfect, Thomas-Greenfield says that when the US wasn’t sitting on the Human Rights Council during the previous administration, “people missed us, they needed us.” That gives her a clear path to make sure America’s voice is heard on things like human rights and humanitarian assistance.
“The United Nations is an important part of our history,” Thomas-Greenfield emphasized, “But it’s also an important part of our futures.”
Watch the full interview: Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Russia, Sudan & the power of diplomacy
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.
- Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Russia, Sudan & the power of diplomacy ›
- UN official: Security Council Is “dysfunctional” - but UN is not ›
- Did the UN accomplish anything in Xinjiang? ›
- Women in power: Chile’s Michelle Bachelet ›
- Podcast: UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Russia, human rights, & the Security Council presidency ›
Ambassador of Russia Vassily Nebenzia at the UN
Russian UN veto cuts aid deliveries to northwest Syria
Russia has voted down a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended a land border crossing needed to deliver crucial humanitarian aid from Turkey into northwestern Syria.
The Bab al-Hawa crossing is used by UN aid convoys to cross into Syria and is the main lifeline for around 4.5 million Syrians, many of whom have been displaced from other parts of the country during the brutal civil war that broke out a decade ago. (The UN says it has been providing aid to a whopping 2.7 million Syrians a month there.)
What happened? Russia was backed by China in refusing to extend the aid deal for another 12 months, joining Syria’s Bashar Assad – a close ally of the Kremlin also known as “The Butcher” for waging a brutal war on his own people – in saying that all aid should flow through Damascus, the capital. Assad has long claimed that using Bab al-Hawa violates Syrian sovereignty.
For more on why Russia is such a strong backer of the Assad regime, see our feature here.
But the other permanent members of the Security Council – the US, UK, and France – don’t trust that Assad would actually deliver and administer aid to civilians in the northwest, which is governed by Sunni Islamist rebels that have been trying to drive him from power for the past decade.
The timing is dire: It comes after a massive earthquake in February pummeled southern Turkey and northern Syria, further hampering civilians’ access to food, water, and medicine. While two previously-closed crossings from Turkey were temporarily reopened after the tragedy, they also expire next month. And even if they were to remain open, Bab-al Hawra accounts for a whopping 85% of aid deliveries into the northern part of the country.Syria'n President Bashar Assad
Once frozen out, Bashar Assad is back in
Over the past decade, few Arab leaders have been willing to go anywhere near Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Sure, he managed to hold on to a few friends – like Iran and Russia – but for the most part, the Syrian president, broadly dubbed “The Butcher” for waging a war on his own people, has been considered persona non grata by regional bigwigs.
But Assad is now being embraced by many who had once vowed to continue treating him as a pariah. In recent weeks, Assad enjoyed the royal treatment when he attended an Arab League summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for the first time in over a decade, while a top Syrian official also rubbed shoulders with international diplomats at a World Health Organization summit in Geneva last week.
In a big win for Assad, the Syrians have also been invited to attend the COP28 climate summit in Abu Dhabi later this year, giving renewed meaning to what many have called the Age of Impunity.
To be clear, this development is not so much a reflection of collective amnesia as it is of Realpolitik. Grappling with changes at home and abroad, many Arab states are now betting that embracing Assad will better serve their respective political and economic aims. But at what cost?
Recap: Assad was never supposed to rule. The second son of Syria’s longtime despotic leader, Hafez Assad, Bashar was summoned back from the UK in 1994 after his elder brother – the rightful heir – was killed in a car crash. Bashar, who trained as an ophthalmologist, ultimately took over as head of the government and military when his father died in 2000.
But the younger Assad failed to amass the widespread loyalty enjoyed by his father, and he exploited sectarian tensions to solidify his rule. In true authoritarian style, Bashar Assad, who belongs to the Alawi ethnoreligious minority, elevated loyalists from his clan and purged those deemed disloyal.
Then in 2011, he launched a brutal crackdown against mostly peaceful protesters encouraged by the Arab Spring. What started as violent suppression morphed into a civil war that to date has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced around 13 million – half of which remain in Syria.
Images of heaps of dead children frothing at the mouth from sarin gas poisoning have become a symbol of Assad’s depravity after he used chemical weapons hundreds of times during the war.
In an alliance led by the US, Gulf states poured millions of dollars into propping up Syrian opposition forces. So why are some of them now bucking their own investment?
Riyadh’s change of heart. One of the most consequential shifts paving the way to normalization with Assad has come from Saudi Arabia. While the Saudis were once one of the most vociferous anti-Assad choruses – they didn’t much appreciate Assad accusing them of birthing ISIS – the de facto Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman recently kissed Assad’s cheeks as greeted him at the Arab summit on Saudi home turf.
There are several reasons for this change of heart, which is likely linked to the belief that regional instability undermines Riyadh’s grand economic ambitions of diversifying the economy away from hydrocarbons. Regional de-escalation, according to the Saudis, is key to luring the investment needed to get new industries off the ground and also helps explain why the kingdom recently (sort of) patched things up with archnemesis Iran.
Consider that upon assuming the role of defense minister (2015) and crown prince (2017), MBS adopted a pugnacious approach to foreign policy, as demonstrated by having launched a war in Yemen, ordered the slaying of a prominent journalist, and conducted a blockade of Qatar. But it now appears that the de facto Saudi leader has reasoned that this approach hasn’t necessarily yielded great results and that de-escalating tensions across the region will better serve his political and economic ambitions.
The recent devastating earthquake in southern Turkey and northern Syria provided the Saudis a reasonable opening to formally begin engaging with Assad on humanitarian grounds.
For Riyadh, it is also about asserting itself as a regional – and global – leader capable of fixing intractable issues that others can’t.
“Saudi Arabia wants to steal the thunder from the UEA and Turkey over who’s the mediator here and who's taking the lead on addressing the core issues in the Middle East,” says Qutaiba Idlbi, a senior fellow and Syria project manager at the Atlantic Council. For MBS, it is as much about sending a message to regional competitors – and to the US – about Saudi’s diplomatic bonafides as it is about stabilizing Syria itself.
Once Riyadh, arguably the most influential player in the Arab world, jumped on board, several states appeared more comfortable backing Assad’s reintegration into the Arab League, a largely toothless but symbolic regional bloc. Meanwhile, others, like the Jordanians, say that while they are open to the idea they want to see tangible concessions from Assad first.
Returning refugees. Syria’s civil war has given rise to one of the world’s largest refugee crises. Around 3.6 million Syrians remain in Turkey, followed by hundreds of thousands in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. Turkey, in particular, has made no secret of the fact that it wants to return millions of refugees back to Syria, a populist message so resonant with voters that even Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the mild-mannered opposition figure who just ran and narrowly lost to populist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently joined the chorus of those calling for Syrians to be repatriated.
Jordan and Egypt, both facing deep economic pressures at home, have also emphasized the need to strengthen Syria’s economy to facilitate refugee returns from neighboring countries.
Beating the drug habit. Blocked off from financial markets and searching for alternative revenue streams, Syria has emerged as the Middle East’s foremost narcostate. The regime’s star product, captagon, a speed-like amphetamine, has been funneled throughout Lebanon, Jordan, the Gulf, and beyond. Consider that more than 250 million captagon pills have been seized around the world so far this year. Meanwhile, a UK government report revealed that the Syrian drug trade is worth roughly three times that of all the Mexican cartels combined.
And the ripple effects are reverberating throughout the region. In Jordan, for instance, drug-related crimes are now the most common offenses and are causing what authorities have labeled a youth epidemic. This is such a high-stakes issue that Jordan last month launched air strikes inside … Syria, targeting a high-profile drug smuggler.
The Assad regime, for its part, recently pledged to crack down on the drug scheme, but it’s hard to take it at its word given that Assad cronies run the trade and make a mint from the stuff to the tune of more than $5.7 billion in 2021. The US, for its part, recently sanctioned two of Bashar Assad’s cousins for involvement in drug trafficking.
But at the end of the day, there’s no greater unifying force than a mutual aversion to democracy. “Ending the Arab Spring and the democracy movement’s aspirations in the Arab world” is a common theme for many Arab states in reaching out to Syria, Idlbi says. He points out that “Syria remains the only open chapter where rebels or revolutionaries still have a say in what's happening and have geopolitical support.”
Rebuilding Syria. Many analysts have claimed that Arab states are also vying for lucrative building contracts in war-ravaged Syria, but Idlbi isn’t convinced.
“There’s no appetite to invest money without a vision of return,” Idlbi says. What’s more, he adds, many governments still don’t trust Assad and fear that if they do step in to build up the country’s water, power, and agriculture systems, Assad could turn around and nationalize these companies once the country is in a more stable position.
Other interested parties. Syria is a crucial part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israel and the US, used as a hub to manufacture and transfer advanced military equipment to Hezbollah in Lebanon and other proxies. Indeed, Riyadh’s acceptance of Assad as Syria’s rightful leader signals at least a tacit acceptance on the part of Arab states of Tehran’s presence there and of its role as a key regional actor more broadly.
For Russia, any move that reinforces the region’s new security structure, whereby Arab states appear to be prioritizing political pragmatism over sectarian struggle (and in the process further diluting US influence in the region) is arguably a win.
But not everyone is on board with Assad. In the Arab world, Qatar and Kuwait have rejected bilateral ties with Syria, while the EU and US also appear committed to the ongoing isolation of Assad. Still, it is notable that a US official recently urged Arab states to “get something for that engagement,” a rare acknowledgment that Assad’s reintegration into regional affairs is essentially a done deal.
So what does that tell us about the US’ commitment to Syria? For Washington, which still has troops in the rebel-held northeast, “the current situation in Syria is the solution,” Idlbi says, referring to the fact that while Assad continues to rule over much of the country, the northeast and northwest are controlled by anti-regime opposition forces. And as the Biden administration focuses its attention across the Pacific, “Washington seems to be going with a sort of ‘you touch it you own it’ approach.”
In the meantime, Assad’s fortune is no doubt sending a clear message to other dictators and autocrats around the world that if you stick it out long enough, good things might just come your way.
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad chats with Prince Badr bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz
Assad welcomed back to Saudi
While the summit is unlikely to result in any big announcements – though the situation in Sudan will be high on the agenda – Assad’s invitation by Riyadh after a decade of isolation sends a strong message. It’s a snub to those in the West who continue to emphasize Assad’s pariah status, and it’s a solid victory for Assad’s key backers: Iran and Russia.
Assad, you’ll likely remember, used chemical weapons in a war over the past decade that killed more than 306,000 and displaced 12 million people (more than 6 million remain abroad).
Since then, the Saudis and Egyptians, who have the most power within the 22-member bloc, have shunned Assad. So why the about-face now?
Arab states have different reasons for pursuing a detente with Assad. For Saudi, which recently reopened its embassy in Damascus, cozying up to Assad can be seen as part of a broader strategy of repairing ties with Iran – to which Syria is a client state. Riyadh is focused on diversifying its economy away from hydrocarbons, and de-escalating regional tensions is key to luring the investment needed to get new industries off the ground. Riyadh also wants to crack down on Syria's drug trade, which is wreaking havoc across the Arab world. Many Arab countries are also vying for lucrative reconstruction contracts to rebuild the war-torn county.
Still, the Arab League is a largely ineffective bloc. Of greater relevance will be whether Assad agrees to attend the COP28 climate summit in Dubai later this year after the Emiratis recently sent him an invite. Indeed, this important event will be attended by high-ranking US and European officials, which would make for some awkward interactions.
Still, the US and Europe have said they have no intention of letting Assad back in back from the cold.
Ukrainian offensive tests Russian defenses
How is the Ukrainian counteroffensive going? Pro-democracy opposition parties swept the Thai elections. Will they be allowed to govern? Is Assad's invitation to COP28 a sign of Syria's return to the global stage? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How is the Ukrainian counteroffensive going?
Well, it's just started. It's a little premature to ask me that question. Right now you're looking at probing attacks, artillery for the Ukrainians to try to assess where Russian defenses might be weakest so that when Zelensky gives the order for the full counteroffensive, it's starting, but not with masses of troops, that it's most likely to succeed. There is general optimism right now. The Russians are dug in along three lines of defense in southeast Ukraine. There's pretty significant optimism the Ukrainians will be able to break through one, at least maybe two of those lines of defense, which puts them in striking distance of artillery of the coast of the Sea of Azov, which means being able to threaten the land bridge to Crimea. That's a pretty big deal. It improves Ukraine's ability to negotiate if that happens after the counteroffensive is over.
Pro-democracy opposition parties swept the Thai elections. Will they be allowed to govern?
Well, the elections were free. They were fair, but the system structurally advantages the military and the pro-military parties and electors. The military gets to determine basically a large percentage of those people that form a government. What that means is that even with a massive win for the pro-democracy opposition, the possibility that they form a government is pretty much a coin flip. It's about 50-50 right now. The structural disadvantages for pro-democracy forces in Thailand are that great. It's going to be a very hard-fought few weeks and we'll see where it goes, but I would not yet hold my breath that this is a meaningful transition election in Thailand. Still though, there's an opportunity, as there isn't in Turkey, as Erdogan is likely to win, very likely to win is in the second round.
Is Assad's invitation to COP28 a sign of Syria's return to the global stage?
I don't know if I'd say the global stage. Remember this is in the Emirates. It's Abu Dhabi. There has been a re-engagement of the Gulf States with Syria's Bashar al-Assad. That does not change the way the United States is feeling about Assad, or most of the Europeans for that matter. But despite the red line and the whole, "Assad must go," that President Obama once said, and Obama's well gone, Assad is still there and Assad is now increasingly someone that you engage with internationally. It is harder to say no to rogue states when other countries are prepared to deal. Hey, Venezuela is now pumping more oil and Chevron's licenses have been re-approved. Any other gas exploration is now happening. Same Maduro, but the United States with the war in Russia going on and with Ukraine is saying, "Hey, we need to work with these guys." Basically what we're seeing is that more and more tolerance for countries and rogues that act in despicable impunity, but nonetheless, less capacity, less willingness of the world to bring them to bear, and Assad is a piece of that.
84 million tablets with the "captagon" logo, produced in Syria by ISIS to finance terrorism.
Jordan's war on drugs ... in Syria
Can you imagine the DEA fighting the Sinaloa cartel by firing rockets over the Mexican border? Well, that's what Jordan just did with a suspected drug kingpin operating inside Syria.
Early on Monday, a rare flurry of Jordanian airstrikes inside neighboring Syria killed Merhi al-Ramthan, wanted by Amman for alleged cross-border smuggling of Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine similar to speed. Over the past decade, Captagon has become the most popular drug in the Middle East — raking in billions of dollars for the Syrian army, which mass-produces the pills in cahoots with the regime’s inner circle.
Now that many Arab governments are looking to normalize ties with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, drug trafficking is so far proving to be a major spoiler with Jordan, which the narcos use as a transit country to distribute the drugs via Lebanon. Syria's foreign minister promised no more “Breaking Bad” last week, but Amman warned it would not take any chances.
Print photocopies of Benjamin Ferencz, while he served as a prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials, on a table at his home in Delray Beach, Florida on June 1, 2022.
Nuremberg now: the legacy of Ben Ferencz
At 27 years old, with no trial experience to speak of, Ben Ferencz entered the courtroom at Nuremberg in November of 1945. He was tasked with holding to account a regime that had slaughtered millions and tried to annihilate his own people. Acting as chief prosecutor, Ferencz secured convictions against 22 Nazis.
Ferencz, the last-surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, passed away last week at the age of 103. As a child, he and his family fled anti-semitism in Romania. After finishing law school at Harvard, he joined the US army, taking part in the Normandy landings and the Battle of the Bulge. He was then assigned to General Patton’s HQ as part of a special unit investigating Nazi atrocities, interviewing survivors and witnessing first-hand the horrors of the concentration camps. That experience would shape the rest of his life. He would remain a warrior, not on the battlefield but in the public arena as a professor of international law and tireless campaigner for justice for the victims of genocide.
The Nuremberg trials marked a watershed moment in the history of modern human rights law. Never before had an international tribunal sought to hold global leaders to account for starting a war and carrying out crimes against humanity. They also included a new term- genocide – as part of the indictments.
In the decades since, the notion that war criminals may face justice has – however imperfect in practice – become an accepted part of international norms. That’s especially true since 2002 when Ferencz’s efforts helped to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague. International courts have judged the perpetrators of genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in ways that were unimaginable when Ferencz was a child.
Still, more than 75 years after Nuremberg, international justice remains a work in progress. Participation in the ICC is voluntary, and even the world’s most powerful democracy, the United States, refuses to do so, out of concerns that it would limit American sovereignty. That puts Washington – which has faced its own human rights allegations in the past – in the unsavory company of serial abusers like Russia, China, Syria, or Saudi Arabia, which also refuse to ratify the ICC’s underlying statutes.
Despite a recent ICC warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, there’s little chance that he’ll face prosecution. Bashar al-Assad, for his part, has survived the civil war he helped create, and is unlikely to face justice for the gruesome crimes that his regime committed during the war.
The coming years pose particular challenges to the cause of international justice. For one thing, the emergence of new major international powers may make it even harder to secure universally-applicable mechanisms of human rights law. Technological advances, meanwhile, enable state and non-state actors to spread disinformation in an attempt to erode trust in facts and evidence. For instance, the Russian disinformation narratives have asserted that the civilian massacre in Bucha, Ukraine was staged.
Nevertheless, Ben Ferencz and his colleagues gave today's international human rights lawyers and activists the tools to document evidence and gather witness testimony, and the mechanisms to hold leaders accountable.
Ferencz himself was under no illusions about the challenges of creating a system that would bring war criminals to justice. In his later years he remarked “Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task.”
But he also reminded us that “if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race.”
Earthquakes expose political and humanitarian challenges in Turkey and Syria
In a recent episode of GZERO World, the International Rescue Committee's President and CEO, David Miliband, sheds light on the immense challenges of delivering aid in the aftermath of the deadly earthquakes that rocked Turkey and Syria. With the northwest of Syria controlled by armed opposition groups, aid delivery remains a hurdle that needs to be overcome urgently.
Miliband highlights the compounded crises in Syria, with inadequate medical care, cholera outbreaks, freezing temperatures, and ongoing border skirmishes threatening the survival of the population. He notes, "Hope is hard to find if you live there."
The political repercussions of the earthquakes are already being felt in Turkey, with citizens demanding accountability for lax building standards and corrupt permit systems. Miliband draws parallels to the 1999 earthquake, which saw accusations of corruption and the ousting of the prime minister. He predicts that the government's response to the disaster will be a hot-button issue in the upcoming election.
But it's not just about politics. The migrant crisis is an urgent humanitarian issue, with Miliband emphasizing the need for fair and humane treatment of those who have been driven from their homes. As he puts it, "We need to fulfill legal as well as moral obligations."