European Space Agency Should Pursue Upgrades for Automated Transfer Vehicle

This article from the BBC, written by science correspondent Jonathan Amos, makes for some interesting. The European Space Agency (ESA) will soon be faced with a decision over whether to pursue significant upgrades to their Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) program, or allow the program to run its course and end.

The ATV program has been highly successful thus far. The vehicle is designed to transfer large quantities of supplies and other cargo to the International Space Station, then serve as a disposal vehicle for waste generated by the crew, who fill the ATV up with the refuse and then dispatch the ATV to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Most importantly, the vehicle operates only entirely by computer, being able to move towards the ISS and dock with it without any human guidance.

The first ATV, appropriately named the Jules Verne, was launched in the spring of 2008 and performed its mission successfully. A second ATV, with the equally appropriate name of Johannes Kepler, is scheduled for launch in the coming months. Several other ATV missions are in he works, with at least five more scheduled to serve the ISS between now and 2015.

The ESA is considered upgrading the ATV program so as to allow it to return cargo to the Earth by giving it the ability to reenter the Earth's atmosphere and land intact. Even more ambitious plans are being considered which would adapt the ATV into a vehicle capable of carrying a human crew. These plans are quite ambitious, though they would cost a considerable amount of money. As the ESA has only a fraction of the financial resources as NASA, and in light of the intense budget pressures currently facing European nations, this is not a decision that the ESA will make without long and perhaps heated debate.

Still, the ESA should pursue these plans, developing first an ATV which can survive reentry and thus return cargo to the Earth, and subsequently an ATV adapted for use by a human crew.

Manned spaceflight is going through some rough times. The Space Shuttle program of the United States is due to end next year, and President Obama has decided to terminate the Constellation program that was intended to create a successor manned spaceflight system, essentially turning over American manned spaceflight to private industry for the foreseeable future. By committing to the eventual creation of a European manned spaceflight capability, the ESA could give manned spaceflight a considerable boost.

More to the point, it's time for the ESA to step up to the plate of space exploration in a more serious manner. America's fiscal crisis is virtually guaranteed to curtail the American space program for the foreseeable future. The ESA has gradually emerged on the stage of unmanned space exploration in recent years, sending highly-successful missions to Mars and Venus and also contributing mightily to projects focused on cosmology, both on its own and in cooperation with other space agencies.

But manned spaceflight has remained a low priority for the ESA. All European astronauts have essentially been passengers on Russian or American missions. It's time for Europe to develop its own manned spaceflight capability, and adapting the ATV to serve as a manned space vehicle seems to be the most logical way in which it could do so. When it does, Europe will begin to recapture the exploratory spirit with which it once changed the world.

Veto Power in United Nations Security Council Must Be Reformed

Over the past few weeks, we have been discussing the urgent need to alter and expand the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council in order to better reflect the geopolitical realities of the 21st Century, thus making it a more effective instrument at preserving peace and security around the world. Under the system we have laid out, the new Security Council would consist not of five permanent members, but of ten: the United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, a seat held in annual rotation by the United Kingdom and France, and a seat held by a representative of the European Union.

Such a reform would be revolutionary, and it would do much to increase fairness and proper representation within the United Nations. But if enacted by itself, it would also add to a recurring problem with the functioning of the Security Council. Since any single permanent member can veto a Security Council resolution, it is often difficult if not impossible to get meaningful resolutions through unless there is perfect unanimity among the permanent members, which rarely if ever takes place. Expanding the permanent membership from five to ten makes this problem twice as bad as it already had been.

A cautionary tale from history is that of the Liberum Veto in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which lasted from the mid-16th Century to the end of the 18th Century. In many ways, Poland was far ahead of its time in terms of creating a constitutional government that allowed for religious toleration. But in the assembly of nobles which shared power with the king, any individual noble was able to exercise a veto and, if he so desired, terminate the proceedings. This eventually brought the workings of the Polish government to a complete standstill, leaving the country unable to resist the territorial aggression of Austria, Prussia, and Russia.

A quick glance at the history of Security Council vetoes serves to illustrate the problem of an individual, absolute veto. Permanent members cast vetoes, or block progress simply by threatening to cast vetoes, whenever they feel they must do so in order to protect their own interests or those of their close allies. The philosopher Bertrand Russell once compared it to allowing burglars to veto laws against theft. The United States routinely casts individual vetoes to block resolutions directed against its ally Israel, with Russia doing the same thing regarding Serbia. China has used its veto power to block resolutions condemning the repressive government of Zimbabwe, Sudan, or Burma, where they have economic interests. There has often been complete deadlock in the Security Council on these critical issues, and the peace and security of the world has suffered as a direct result.

So long as any individual member can veto any resolution, the United Nations Security Council can only function if all the permanent members are in complete accord. In the vast majority of situations, this is so unlikely as to be effectively impossible. If the permanent membership of the Security Council is expanded, the problem will only become worse. For this very reason, any expansion in the membership of the Security Council must be accompanied by a simultaneous reform in the Security Council veto.

There are those who favor abolishing the veto altogether, thus making all resolutions in the Security Council determined by a simple majority vote. Even if this were ideal, but it is also something to which the permanent members of the Security Council would never agree. It will be difficult enough to get them to reform the veto at all; persuading them to give it up altogether is likely to be a lost cause for at least the next few decades. And there are clear situations when it is both necessary and proper for permanent members to veto resolutions. For example, the United States has routinely had to veto resolutions that denounce Israel for taking retalitory actions in response to terrorist attacks yet fail to mention the terrorist attack itself, thus making it appear that Israel as though Israel had launched unprovoked aggression.

A solution that is both achievable and worthwhile would be an elimination of the individual veto in exchange for a requirement that all Security Council resolutions need a two-thirds majority of the permanent members of the Security Council to pass. In other words, all resolutions will require a simple majority of eleven of the twenty Security Council members (the ten permanent ones and the ten non-permanent ones), but will also require seven of the ten permanent members to vote in favor. This system would allow any three of the permanent members to block resolutions they oppose. In effect, this would replace the individual veto with a minority veto.

Some have also suggested that Security Council members not be allowed to veto resolutions dealing with specific issues. Citizens for Global Solutions has suggested that the permanent members of the Security Council "voluntarily restrict their use of the veto in situations involving genocide, major war crimes, and major crimes against humanity." Such a gentleman's agreement might prove useful, but should also be eventually be enshrined in the U.N. Charter itself.

(Full Disclosure: I am a member of Citizens for Global Solutions and serve on its political action committee.)

Replacing the individual national veto with a requirement that three permanent members must vote together for a veto to be enacted, as well as a prohibition on the use of the veto in cases involving genocide, major war crimes, and major crimes against humaniy (in other words, the sort of crimes which are within the jurisfiction of the International Criminal Court) would mak the United Nations Security Council and must more effective instrument in preserving the peace and security of the world.

The world is in urgent need of a United Nations Security Council that can function quickly and effectively, thus fulfilling the role the founders of the United Nations intended for it. Expanding its permanent membership to better reflect the realities of the 21st Century is a necessary step in this process, and must go hand-in-hand with the reformation of the veto process. Once these two changes are made, we can hope that we will have a United Nations that can more effectively prevent wars, stop genocides, block nuclear proliferation, and bring those guilty of crimes against humanity to justice.

Can Mohamed ElBaradei Save Egypt?

The 2011 presidential election in Egypt is scheduled to take place roughly a year from now. But in Egypt, "election" is something of a relative term. Certainly, the last Egyptian presidential election, held in September of 2005, was a complete farce. President Hosni Mubarak, who has effectively ruled Egypt as a dictator since 1981, was "reelected" with a whopping 88.6% of the vote. International election observers were barred from overseeing the election, the government held complete control of the media, and reports of vote-buying, intimidation, and police breakups of peaceful protests were rampant.

One can judge whether or not the 2005 Egyptian election met democratic standards by looking at what happened to Ayman Nour of the el-Ghad, the leading opposition candidate. About nine months before the election, Nour was arrested and thrown in prison. Released two months later due to American pressure, he was registered by election authorities (controlled by Mubarak) as receiving only 7.3% of the vote. Immediately after the election was over, Ayman Nour was unceremoniously thrown back in prison.

President Mubarak, increasingly infirm at the age of 82, is unlikely to run for another term in next year's elections. Instead, in good dictatorial tradition, he is grooming his son, Gamal Mubarak, to run for president in his place. It's quite clear that, if Hosni Mubarak has his way, the 2011 election will be no different than the 2005 election, and his son will be "elected" by an overwhelming majority.

But Mubarak's plans for a family dynasty in Egypt may be upset by Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian who lead the International Atomic Energy Agency between 1997 and 2009. He came into the global spotlight during the lead up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he directed weapons inspectors in Iraq and concluded that no Iraqi nuclear weapons program existed (he was right, but the Bush administration went forward with the invasion anyway). He has been equally outspoken in calling for negotiations with Iran rather than military action against it, believing that Iran is not an immediate nuclear danger but also that it has not been completely cooperative with the IAEA.

He has been an outstanding leader in the struggle against nuclear proliferation, calling for strong and legally binding inspections of nuclear facilities of all nations, ratification of nuclear reduction and test ban treaties, and an end to the production of fissable materials that might be used for nuclear weapons. For his efforts against nuclear proliferation, he was awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

ElBaradei retired from the IAEA in 2009, and has now turned his attention to his homeland of Egypt. Since his return, there has been much speculation about whether or not he will run for president himself in 2011. He has not yet announced any candidacy, but he has held meetings with reformists and opposition figures, forming a pro-reform organization known as National Association for Change. It is not technically a political party, but clearly it has the potential to become one.

The National Association for Change is calling for strong international monitoring of the Egyptian elections, equal media time for all candidates, a limit of presidential tenure to two-terms, allowing Egyptians overseas to vote, and many other urgently-needed reforms. If these changes took place, Egypt would move a long way forward on the road towards becoming a democracy.

ElBaradei present a great problem for Mubarak. Since ElBaradei is a well-respected figure of global stature (they don't hand out the Nobel Peace Prize on street corners, after all), Mubarak cannot simply toss him into prison as he did Ayman Nour. The American government might have let him off with a few gentle protests back in 2005, when the person in question was virtually unknown outside of Egypt. If Mubarak arrested ElBaradei, the result would be a global firestorm, certainly a denunciation by the U.N. Security Council, and very likely a termination of the foreign economic and military aid that keeps Egypt propped up. But neither can Mubarak simply ignore ElBaradei, whose popularity both in Egypt and internationally is simply too great. Thus far, Mubarak has responded by unleashing a vicious smear campaign in the Egyptian press against ElBaradei, including disgraceful insinuations about his family.

Global Citizens can hope that ElBaradei's movement for political reform in Egypt continues to gather momentum. Egypt is not only home to one of the world's great ancient civilizations, but one of the centers of the Arab and Muslim world. Unlike most of its fellow Arab states, Egypt is at peace with Israel and enjoy full diplomatic relations with it. Egypt also has an increasingly sophisticated and growing economy, as well as abundant natural resources.

It may well be that the main problem holding Egypt back is its lack of proper political freedoms. If the Mubarak dictatorship were to be ended, Egypt could take its place as one of the great nations of the world, and would shine as a home-grown example to what the Arab people are capable of.

Is Mohamed ElBaradei the man to do it? We'll see.

Resolving the European Paradox in the U.N. Security Council

We've been talking a lot lately about the urgent need to reform the United Nations Security Council. Two weeks ago, we laid out the need for an expansion of its permanent membership, and suggested that India, Japan, Brazil and South Africa be given permanent seats. Last week, we explored the possibility of giving a permanent seat to a Muslim-majority nation, and determined that Indonesia would be the most ideal choice. This week, we'll be talking about the need to resolve the problems related to permanent European representation on the Security Council.

Currently, the United Kingdom and France both hold permanent seats on the Security Council, and it would be all but politically impossible to persuade them to give them up, even if that were determined to be a good idea. Germany has long been agitating for a seat of its own, and its immense economic strength and role in financing the United Nations gives its claim great weight.

But giving a seat to Germany raises problems. First, many other European nations (Italy in particular) are opposed to it, because the same criteria for giving Germany a seat could apply to other European countries, at least to some degree. Why, so the argument does, should Germany be considered more deserving of a permanent Security Council seat than Italy? After all, Germany cannot represent the whole of Europe.

This point is articulated by the rise of the supranational experiment of the European Union. In recent years, and particularly since the passage of the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU has been acting with a more unified voice in foreign affairs. Its immense economic strength, its innovative use of soft power, and its crucial role in global economic development make it obvious that it is going to be an important force in global affairs during the 21st Century. Indeed, as far as relations with the rest of the world are concerned, the EU is likely to be more important than individual European national governments.

Considering Europe's disproportionate role in global affairs, it does not seem improper for two seats on the Security Council to be held by Europe, as is presently the case. The problem is to give Europe an arrangement that adequately represents all the people of Europe as they become increasingly unified in a federation. Some have suggested simply abolishing the British and French seats and giving the European Union a representative on the Council, especially if the role the EU plays in foreign affairs becomes more decisive than the role played by national governments. This might work, but we must face the fact that persuading the the British and French to give up their individual, nationally-held seats at the Security Council is politically impossible. An innovative compromise must be found.

The seat held by the United Kingdom presents two other problems. First, there is no guarantee that the British will remain in the EU indefinitely. Unlike other major EU states, there are powerful political forces within the United Kingdom that want a complete British withdrawal from the organization. This is not only the rising UKIP party (which received the second largest number of votes in the last European Parliament election), but a strong faction within the Conservative Party itself. Opinion polls routinely show strong support for British withdrawal, so this possibility cannot be ruled out.

Also, there is the possibility, low but not nonexistent, that the United Kingdom itself could break up within the next few decades. The Scottish National Party is currently in control of the devolved Scottish Parliament, and continues to pursue its dream of an independent Scotland. Plaid Cymru does not have the same strength in Wales, but still yearns for an independent Wales. While the idea of a breakup of the United Kingdom may be rather far-fetched, it cannot be discounted altogether. If the United Kingdom is reduced merely to England, should it retain a permanent seat at the Security Council?

Here is a possible compromise that could attempt to straighten out these convoluted issues. Suppose that the two present seats, held by the British and the French, were combined into a single seat which the British and French would hold in annual rotation. This might be termed the Entente Cordiale seat. At the same time, a new seat could be created that would be filled by a European Union representative, with the stipulation that the EU representative would never be French or British. If the British ever withdrew from the European Union, it could still hold its half-seat, and if the United Kingdom ever broke up by Scottish and Welsh secession, the seat could fall to England, which would likely be the successor state to the United Kingdom under international law.

This arrangement may seem convoluted, but it or something like it may represent the best possible solution, balancing the need for significant European representation on the Security Council, while acknowledging political realities by preserving British and French influence on the Council. here are no perfect solutions for such problems as these, but we can always find the best possible option.

Putting what we have discussed over the past few weeks into a single package, then, the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council should be expanded from five seats to ten, so as to include the United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, the European Union, and a seat in annual rotation by the United Kingdom and France. As it currently the case, ten nonpermanent members will continue to be elected to two-year terms by the General Assembly.

Such an expansion would be the most fundamental reform ever to be enacted within the United Nations. But as we have already discussed, it would make an already bad problem even worse. A major problem with the Security Council is the ability of any single permanent member to veto any resolution, which causes the Council to lock up completely whenever any permanent member believes it own interests would be threatened by a resolution. Doubling the number of permanent members obviously makes this problem twice as bad as it already was. Therefore, any expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council must be accompanied by a reform of the manner in which the permanent members are allowed to use their veto power.

We'll talk about that next week.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Approves New START

Good new on the nuclear disarmament front. Yesterday, in a 14-4 vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to approve the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the Russian Federation. As we have discussed previously, this treaty would require both sides to reduce their deployed nuclear arsenals by 30% and, perhaps more importantly, create a strict inspection regime allowing each side to verify that the other is fulfilling its treaty obligations.

The treaty will now be sent to the full Senate for a ratification vote. Considering the upcoming mid-term elections, it is unlikely that the vote will take place before early November, although not impossible. The most likely scenario at this point is for a vote during the lame duck Senate term, after the fall elections but before the new Senate has been seated. Democrats don't want to be accused of trying to gain a diplomatic victory for President Obama in the weeks leading up to the mid-term election, while Republicans don't want to be put in a position of placing politics before national security.

Prospects for ratification appear good. It requires a two-thirds majority to ratify a treaty in the Senate; if we assume that all Democrats and the two independent senators who caucus with them remain supportive, this means that eight Republicans will need to cast votes in favor. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee itself, three Republicans voted with the Democratic favor in favor of New START: Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), and Senator John Isakson (R-GA). All three are to be commended for their favorable votes, and Senator Lugar in particular is to be commended for the outstanding work he has done on behalf of nuclear disarmament throughout his Senate career.

Assuming these three senators vote in favor of ratification when it comes to the floor of the full Senate, five additional Republican votes are needed. Of Republicans who do not sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, only Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) has indicated that he is supportive of the treaty. But considering how nearly half of the Republican delegation on the Foreign Relations Committee ended up voting in favor of the treaty, we can rest easy that it will be successfully ratified if even close to that proportion of Senate Republicans comes out in favor of it.

All Global Citizens in the United States need to contact their senators immediately and let them know that ratification of New START is an urgent necessity both for the United States of America and for the world as a whole.

Battle of Britain Day

Today is Battle of Britain Day. Seventy years ago, courageous pilots, mostly British but also including Poles, Czechs, Frenchmen and Commonwealth fliers, were locked in a fierce aerial battle over England in a desperate effort to thwart the imperial ambitions of Hitler and the Nazis. Numbering only 2,332 men, they won the battle against long odds and helped save the world from Nazi despotism. As Churchill said, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Global Citizens must never forget The Few.

Should a Muslim Nation Be a Permanent UN Security Council Member? If So, Who?

Last week, we discussed the urgent need for the expansion of the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council. The current composition (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, and France) better reflects the geopolitical realities of 1945 rather than 2010, and if the Security Council is going to have the credibility necessary to fulfill its mission of ensuring peace and stability in the world, more nations need to be included.

In the previous article, we suggested that India, Japan, Brazil and South Africa be given permanent seats on the Security Council. In upcoming articles, we shall look into the issues surrounded giving a permanent seat to a Muslim-majority nation, resolving the problem of European representation (namely, how to give it adequate representation without concentrating too much power in Europe), and reforming the use of the national veto within the Security Council. This article will focus on the issue of a Muslim-majority nation.

The lack of Security Council membership for a Muslim nation is a dilemma. Muslims make up one-fifth of the world's population, and it seems absurd that such an important portion of the human family lacks representation on the most powerful political body in the world. And since many of the world's problems today stem from a perceived conflict between traditional Islam and the modern world, establishing Muslim representation on the Security Council would seem to be an important step in resolving the resultant problems.

But if a Muslim nation is to be granted permanent membership on the Security Council, what country should it be?

One candidate suggests itself immediately, but also immediately disqualifies itself. This is Saudi Arabia. The homeland of Islam, and the location of the two most important religious centers of Islam in the form of Mecca and Medina, the Saudi kingdom is also an economic power due to its immense oil resources. It is also a military power of some significance due to its large arsenal of American military aircraft, advanced tanks, and other equipment.

But Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive nations in the world, ruled by a near-absolute monarch and treated by the al-Saud family as their own personal fiefdom. The criminal justice and educational systems are downright medieval, and anything approaching gender equality id a distant dream. There is absolutely no freedom of religion, nor is any political opposition tolerated. Such an autocratic government has no place on the Security Council.

Another possibility is Egypt. It is certainly one of the most important Muslim nations in a geopolitical sense, having a very large population, a developing economy, and a powerful military. Many of the most important Islamic institutions of higher education are to be found in Cairo, and it has played a central role in Islamic history. Equally important in terms of weighing its qualification for Security Council membership, Egypt is one of the few Muslim Arab nations to have signed a peace treaty with Israel and establish full diplomatic relations with it.

But Egypt is also a dictatorship, ruled since 1981 by President Hosni Mubarak. While not the repressive regime that reigns in Saudi Arabia, it is certainly bad enough, with political opponents routinely thrown in prison and nothing approaching a free press. Unless and until Egypt take genuine steps towards democracy, its political system probably disqualifies Egypt from permanent Security Council membership.

What about Turkey? It is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation but has a strictly secular constitution, demonstrating that Islam need not be incompatible with the concept of separation of religion and government. It also would seem to have Security Council qualifications in that it has a powerful military and a developing and increasingly sophisticated economy. Despite recent problems in their relations, Turkey has long maintained sound diplomatic relations with Israel. But there are many problems.

Firstly, while Turkey seems largely free of the Islamist militancy that infects many other Muslim states, there is a large and significant amount of extremist nationalism in many segments of Turkish society, including the military. Indeed, a large investigation into an alleged nationalist coup plot among the military, including hundreds of high-ranking officers, is ongoing in Turkey. This is no idle threat, as the military has forced civilian governments out of power on four occasions since 1960. The military not so subtly threatened to mount a coup against the ruling AK Party as recently as 2007. What if Turkey became a permanent member of the Security Council and then had its government overthrown by the military?

Turkey also has numerous other problems related to its treatment of its own Kurdish population, the issue of Cyprus, and relations with Armenia (including its refusal to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide). All of these are very likely to be on the agenda of the United Nations in the coming years, and giving a permanent Security Council seat to Turkey would make resolving these conflicts vastly more difficult and complicated.

Another possibility is Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world. Indeed, it is the world's fourth most populous nation, which by itself gives it a strong claim on permanent Security Council membership. It also has a strong economy and significant military power.

In the decades after it won independence from the Dutch in the wake of World War II, Indonesia was prevented from achieving its potential by successive periods of autocratic rule, first by the Sukarno regime and then by the Suharto regime. In 1998, however, as the Asian financial crisis wrecked havoc on the Indonesian economy, Suharto was forced from power. The following year, free and fair legislative elections were held across the country, followed by direct presidential elections in 2004. These actions brought Indonesia into the ranks of the world's democracies.

Indonesia is not without its problems. There are numerous separatist factions in parts of the country, and religious tensions run high in many places (although the constitution of the country is refreshing tolerant of non-Muslim faiths). Corruption within the government continues to be a problem. But considering what the situation had been under the Suharto regime, it is undeniable that Indonesia has made amazing progress in the decade since the advent of democracy.

Although it does not yet have diplomatic relations with Israel, Indonesia is relatively removed from the Israeli-Arab conflict that has absorbed so much of the attention of the United Nations over the years. Were it given greater influence and visibility on the international stage, we can expect Indonesia to use this greater power more responsibly than others might.

When looking over the résumés of the various contenders for a hypothetical permanent Muslim seat on the Security Council, no country is perfect. But the one which has the best combination of qualifications is Indonesia. If the decision is made to give a permanent Security Council seat to a Muslim-majority nation, Indonesia is clearly the best bet.

The Example of Cordoba

In recent months, religious tensions between Christians and the much smaller Muslim community in the United States have become a serious concern. The extreme reaction by many people to a relatively innocuous proposal to build an Islamic community center in southern Manhattan has sparked anti-Muslim sentiment around America. The construction site of a mosque in Tennessee was attacked by arsonists, while a pastor in Florida has threatened to hold public burnings of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Global Citizens believe in universal religious tolerance, wanting a world in which people of good will from any and all religious backgrounds (including those who profess to no religious faith at all) work together for the common good of humanity. Consequently, we find the increasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States to be deeply disturbing.

The Islamic community center in southern Manhattan is to be called the Cordoba House, a reference to the historic city in southern Spain. During the Middle Ages, Cordoba experienced a golden age of tolerance and understanding between its Jewish, Christian, and Muslim peoples. The result was an amazing era of glorious achievements in science, poetry, philosophy, architecture, medicine, and other fields of human endeavour. People who followed the three monotheistic faiths lived together as peaceful neighbors, until their society was destroyed by religious fanatics invading the region from Christian Europe and Muslim North Africa.

Modern Americans should look to the golden age of Cordoba as an example of what their multiethnic and multireligious society could become in the 21st Century if it rejects the siren song of religious extremism and instead embraces the spirit of tolerance and understanding.

Below is a wonderful documentary, about two hours long, detailing the history of Cordoba during its heyday. Enjoy.

GRAIL Mission Expected to Launch a Year From Today

The exploration of the Moon is something that all Global Citizens should get behind. In the long-run, the future of humanity is to be found in space, and establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon is a necessary step in that great project. The Apollo Program, despite its Cold War context, represents one of the great achievements in world history, just as the failure to properly follow it up will be remembered as one of the great failures in human history.

Although current plans to return astronauts to the Moon have run into roadblocks in Washington, we can hope that there will again be a permanent human presence on the Moon within the next few decades. Before that happens, of course, the Moon needs to be subjected to an intense exploratory effort by unmanned spacecraft, in order to pave the way for future human expeditions.

The international community has stepped up to the plate in this regard, launching an unpredicted multinational effort of lunar exploration that has, unfortunately, been all but ignored by the global media. In just the last few years, the Moon has been visited by a veritable armada of orbiting spacecraft from the United States, the European Space Agency, Japan, China, and India, which have been accumulating scientific data that will keep the world's scientists busy for decades to come. And we are only just getting started.

The next major lunar exploration project will be the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, scheduled to lift off one year from today. Part of NASA's highly successful Discovery program of smaller, less expensive projects, the GRAIL mission is designed to place two small spacecraft in orbit around the moon, using the Doppler shifts detected in radio waves passing between them and detectors on Earth to create a full "gravity map" of the Moon. This will allow scientists to gather unpredicted amounts of information about the Moon's interior, helping to answer questions scientists have been asking for decades.

We live in an age of severe budgetary pressures among nearly all nations of the world, so there will always be those who question whether resources should be expended on scientific enterprises like the GRAIL project. But these questions would be better directed towards the massive military budgets or the bloated bureaucracies of the various nations. The scientific enterprise is one of the things which makes us human, and it deserves full support.

Below is a video showing how the GRAIL mission will work. There's no vocal narration, but you're smart enough to figure it out.

United Nations Security Council Must Be Expanded

When it was created in 1945, great hopes were placed in the United Nations Security Council, which was envisioned as the means through which the international community would prevent future wars and preserve peace throughout the world. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way very often. During the Cold War, the Security Council became an arena for shouting matches between the West and the Soviet Union, and since both sides were directly or indirectly involved in virtually every conflict in the world between 1950 and 1989, it was almost impossible to come to any consensus, which made collective action impossible. Good work was done in preventing the spread of conflicts in Cyprus, Kashmir, and other places, but many of the principal problems of the world continued to fester due to superpower rivalry.

Things have gotten somewhat better since the end of the Cold War. The Security Council acted with great effectiveness during the 1990-91 crisis caused by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, because the great powers were able to work together as partners in that particular instance. Great success was also achieved by the Security Council in Namibia, Mozambique, Cambodia, and other places. But when the permanent members again found themselves arrayed on opposing sides, as during the wars resulting from the collapse of Yugoslavia, the Security Council found itself unable to ensure peace and security. We have also recently seen the Security Council hindered in its attempts to deal properly with Iran, Sudan, and Zimbabwe because of the competing interests of Russia, China, and the Western powers.

The ineffectiveness of the United Nations Security Council stems from two primary causes. The first cause is its flawed composition of permanent members, which has remained unchanged since the creation of the United Nations itself. The second cause is the fact that any permanent member can veto any resolution, and will naturally put its own interests ahead of the need for international peace and security.

The role of the Security Council is to preserve peace and security throughout the world, and its composition is ostensibly supposed to be made up of those nations which can best achieve this. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France. This composition better reflects the geopolitical realities of the world of 1945 than the world of 2010. One doesn't have to be a genius to see that the geopolitical realities of the present are vastly different than those that existed at the end of the Second World War.

It is clear that an expansion of permanent membership is urgently necessary in order to better reflect current geopolitical realities. But how might this be achieved? What follows is one possible plan.

The identities of some of the nations that should be granted permanent seats on the Security Council are clear, with the most obvious of all probably being India. It is the world's second most populous nation, its most populous democracy, is nuclear capable, and has a rapidly developing and expanding economy. It is primed to play a key role in global affairs over the course of the 21st Century and beyond. For half a century, Indian troops have served bravely and with dedication in U.N. peacekeeping operations throughout the world. Keeping it out of the Security Council simply defies common sense. The fact that it is also home to a unique Hindu civilization only adds weight to the argument, as it only makes sense for all major elements of the human family to be represented on the Security Council.

A somewhat similar case can be made for Japan, whose role as one of the world's major economies and the fact that it is the second largest financial contributor to the United Nations must be taken into consideration. Although its constitution forbids it from maintaining a military capable of offensive action, it has recently begun demonstrating a greater willingness to participate in U.N. peacekeeping operations. Like India, it is also home to a unique branch of human civilization, which is religiously, culturally and linguistically quite distinct from its Asian neighbors.

Brazil, too, should be in line for its own permanent seat on the Security Council. It is a developing economic and military power, and will play an increasingly important role in global affairs. Giving Brazil a seat would also give representation to Latin America, which seems only fair. Indeed, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed giving Brazil a permanent seat on the Security Council when its format was being drawn up in 1945.

It is often argued that an African nation should sit on the Security Council, especially since so much U.N. activity takes place in Africa. The most plausible contenders are South Africa and Nigeria. Both are economically important and likely to become more so, though they will not be as critical to the global economy as other developing nations like India or Brazil for some time to come. Still, it would be seen by the whole of Africa as unfair if the continent was denied representation, and it would possibly hinder the long-term democratization of the United Nations as a whole.

Between South Africa and Nigeria, South Africa is probably the more appropriate choice, as it has a stronger democratic foundation and is economically and militarily more significant. Its highly successful hosting of the 2010 World Cup helped establish a sense that South Africa is ready to play a bigger role in world affairs.

Bringing in India, Japan, Brazil and South Africa as permanent members of the Security Council would be a considerable improvement to the status quo, but still leaves some problems unresolved

For one thing, objections have been raised as to the absence of a Muslim-majority nation on the Security Council, and it does seem unfair that the more than a billion adherents to Islam around the world are not given a representative on the world's most powerful body. European representation is also a problem, since the British and French cannot, by themselves, adequately represent the entire European population, yet it would be politically impossible to persuade them to give up their seats.

And there's another issue. One of the most complicated challenges to an effective Security Council is the fact that any permanent member can veto any resolution. Expansion of the Security Council makes this already bad veto problem even worse. Clearly, expanding the number of members corrects one problem only at the expense of making another problem that much more difficult. Thus, expansion of the Security Council can only happen if it is accompanied by a simultaneous reformation in the manner in which permanent members can wield their veto power.

To sum up, under the incomplete plan outlined here, the United States, Russia, and China would keep their seats, being joined as permanent members of the Security Council by India, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa. Altering the Security Council in such a way would be one of the most radical changes the United Nations has ever experienced, but it would do much to establish fairness and proper representation.

In upcoming articles, we shall explore the problems of obtaining representation for a Muslim-majority nation, resolving the paradox of European representation, and solving the complicated issue of Security Council veto reform.

Optimism Reported Within Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks

The world's media remains rightly skeptical about the prospects of a durable peace agreement emerging from the current Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, but the sketchy reports emerging from Washington indicate that both sides are pleased with what has been decided upon thus far and are optimistic about future negotiations.

Not even the most wildly optimistic person expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas to emerge from the current talks with anything like a signed peace agreement. The best that can be hoped for from the present negotiations is the establishment of a framework in which additional talks can take place in order to hammer out some sort of peace deal over the course of the next year.

It seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas have agreed, upon their return to the Middle East, to meet with one another every two weeks in order to keep the talks moving. Egypt and Jordan are certain to facilitate this, and American officials seem likely to remain involved at all levels. The one-year deadline, which many commentators decried when it was first announced, seems to have become a centerpiece of the peace process.

It is no going to b easy, to say the least. Borders of a future Palestinian state, guarantees of Israeli security, the future of the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem, proper access by both sides to reliable sources of water, and a host of other complicated issues will continue to bedevil the negotiations. Underlying it all, of course, are decades of hostility and hatred burned into the respective populations by war and conflict.

Perhaps the most important thing to take away from these talks, which have had such low expectations, is that the leadership of both sides seems genuine in their protestations of desiring peace. Whether or not the good will generated by these talks can withstand the coming onslaught by those who do not want peace, Israeli and Palestinian alike, remains to be seen.

Will Turkey's Constitutional Referendum Make the Country More Democratic?

Turkey has long been seen as something of a success story in the Muslim world, in that it is an electoral democracy that maintains a strictly secular government. As such, it can be seen as a model for other Muslim nations. Certainly, if Muslim nations in the Middle East and Africa were to emulate Turkey is these regards, the world would be a much better and more democratic place.

But Turkey is not without serious problems. It has experienced four military coups since 1960, and only narrowly avoided a fifth just a few years ago. Kurdish separatism continues to fester, inflamed rather than hindered by a harsh government response that considers any expression of Kurdish sympathies to be a form of terrorism. The Constitutional Court recently banned the Democratic Society Party for its pro-Kurdish position, a decision that was denounced around the world. Politicians have been thrown in jail merely for speaking Kurdish in public, the most famous being Leyla Zana.

Turkey continues to refuse official recognition for the 1915 Armenian Genocide, a position which has led to widespread condemnation by politicians and academics in Europe and America. Indeed, Turkish law prohibits the publication of any suggestion that the Armenian Genocide took place, or, for that matter, any writing which is seen to "insult Turkishness". These restrictions of freedom of the press are a major barrier to true democracy for Turkey. Over it all is an intense Turkish nationalism that has manifested itself in the assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and whispers of a narrowly-averted right-wing military coup.

Turkey has been making significant progress in recent years, passing several major reforms as part of its bid to become a member of the European Union. The more crushing limits of the use of the Kurdish language have been lifted, albeit grudgingly. Serious problems within the Turkish criminal justice system have been addressed. But fundamental issues remain unresolved, and it seems that progress in the Turkish reform has stalled.

This is evident when looking at the referendum, scheduled for later this month, on a package of twelve amendments to the Turkish constitution. In and of themselves, the proposed amendments are perfectly fine. They will expand the power of labor unions, make the courts somewhat more representative, and create a badly-needed ombudsmen system. Voters in Turkey would do well to approve the package of reforms, as they are an improvement on the current situation.

The problem is that these reforms do no go nearly far enough. Their passage will leave Turkey stuck in its present limbo, somewhere between a semi-democratic and a fully democratic state. The referendum could have given voters the option of abolishing all restrictions on the Kurdish language, eliminating the requirement that political parties win 10% of the national vote before being permitted to take seats in the parliament, and establishing complete freedom of the press. It could have, but it didn't.

As a modern Muslim nation, Turkey has enormous potential to achieve great things for both its own people and for the world as a whole. But until it commits itself to taking the leap into complete and total democracy, it will continue to have a ball-and-chain around its ankles.

Tony Blair, Iraq, and Radical Islam

Pretty much the only thing people have been talking about in the United Kingdom for the last week or so has been the recent publication of the memoirs of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. In his book, Blair spills the details of his famously tense relationship with Gordon Brown and reveals a great deal of his thoughts and motivations regarding his most important actions during his time at 10 Downing Street.

There is much to admire about Tony Blair. His work on bringing peace to Northern Ireland deserves a place in the history books, and he has since devoted his time and energy to finding a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He demonstrated that there is indeed a "third way" between rigid conservatism and ideological liberalism. But the legacy of Tony Blair is certain to be a clouded one.

Rightly or wrongly, Blair will be best remembered for his decision to bring the United Kingdom on board as a staunch ally of the United States when the decision was made to invade Iraq. Everything that will taint the legacy of President Bush- the cynical manipulation of intelligence for political purposes, the subverting and then the sidelining of the United Nations, the failure to plan for the aftermath of the invasion, the thousands of young men who died to capture nonexistent weapons, the enormous numbers of civilian casualties- will fall on Blair no less than Bush. No surprise, then, that demonstrators in Ireland have just pelting him with eggs when he arrived for a book-signing.

As part of the publication of his memoirs, Blair has been giving a number of media interviews. He recently made the comment that radical Islam is the greatest threat facing the world today. This comment has garnered a large amount of attention, perhaps because of its inherent irony.

First of all, Blair is quite possibly correct. Al Qaeda, its allies, and those who share its general view of the world, are either the greatest threat to the world today, or very near the top of the list. Combining a medieval and fundamentalist view of the world with the suicidal terrorist tactics of the 21st Century, radical Islamists have slaughtered tens of thousands of people over the last decade (the majority of the victims being fellow Muslims) and have made it nearly impossible to resolve the ongoing conflicts between the Israelis and Palestinians or between the Indians and Pakistanis. While there are many threats to the modern world, both deliberate and unintentional, radical Islam is certainly one of the most dangerous.

The truth that Blair refuses to face, however, is that his own policies as Prime Minister increased, rather than decreased, the danger of radical Islam. Nothing could have fueled the fires of radical Islam more effectively than the invasion of Iraq, in which the British played a key role. The sight of the two most powerful Western nations attacking and occupying a Muslim state which had not attacked them undoubtedly turned thousands of young Muslim men, who might otherwise have remained ordinary people, into militant terrorists. And if British troops were not involved in the worst excesses of the invasion, such as the torture at Abu Grahib prison, this is not likely to mater much to radicalized young Muslim men.

Militant radical Islam cannot be defeated on the battlefield. It certainly cannot be defeated by hypocritically overthrowing one Arab dictator (despicable though he may have been) while embracing other Arab dictators as friends. Radical Islam can only be defeated in a contest of ideas, which means bringing the Muslim world into the globalized 21st Century and patently waiting for Islam to reform from within sufficiently to purge itself of its radical elements. This certainly won't happen overnight, and it will lack the sex appeal of raising the flag on Iwo Jima. But in the grand scheme of things, it's the only way.

In his heart of hearts, I suspect Tony Blair realizes this as well as anyone. He has been very forthcoming on many subjects in his memoirs, and it chould have been more forthcoming on this. History would have thanked him for it.

What Would a Tea Party Senate Look Like?

Just as Obamania energized the Democratic base for a decisive electoral victory in 2008, Tea Party Fever appears ready to be do the same for the Republican base in this year's mid-term elections in the United States. The Tea Party is more a loosely-affiliated faction of the conservative wing than a well-organized political group, but the activities of its fervent supporters have certainly made an impact. In the last few months, candidates supported by the Tea Party have won Senate primary elections in Kentucky, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Florida, and Alaska, in many cases uprooting long-established Republican incumbents. In many of these races, these Tea Party Republicans appear poised to defeat their Democratic opponents in the upcoming general election.

For Global Citizens, this is a worrying trend. While the domestic policy aims of the Tea Party are difficult to articulate, generally manifesting as incoherent rants against President Obama, their distaste and distrust of the United Nations and other international organizations rings loud and clear. Sometimes this manifests itself in irrational conspiracy theories, such as that of the Republican Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes, who believes that a bicycle-sharing program in Denver is part of a U.N. plot to take over America. Whenever a speaker attacks the U.N. at a Tea Party rally, the crowd goes wild.

As far as foreign policy goes, the Tea Party is a mix of those who favor the unilateral interventionist approach of the Neoconservatives and those who favor the isolationism preached by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). Neither perspective makes any sense to Global Citizens, who want a world in which the nations work together through global institutions to ensure peace and security and tackle global problems. The empire-builders among the Neoconservatives and the America Firsters among the isolationists are both equally wrong. and equally dangerous.

The Republicans are almost certain to make significant gains in the Senate in the upcoming elections, and some pundits believe that they have a chance of actually recapturing control of the chamber. Whatever happens, the Republicans are likely to be in a much better position to obstruct the foreign policy objectives of President Obama, and the presence of these Tea Party-backed Senators will be very bad news for the priorities of Global Citizens.

If the New START agreement on nuclear reductions with Russia is not ratified before the end of the current congressional session, we can expect these Tea Partiers to loudly denounce the treaty in the opening days of the next session and do everything they can to defeat its ratification. If they succeed, the struggle against nuclear proliferation will suffer a body blow.

We can expect the Tea Partiers to oppose paying the share of United States funding to the U.N., even though this is part of our treaty obligations as a signatory to the U.N. Charter and thus refusing to pay them would be a unconstitutional violation of Article Six of the United States Constitution (which the Tea Party claims to cherish). President Obama and the Democratic Congress helped restore American credibility in the U.N. by fully paying the American share of U.N. funds, and it would a shame for America to return to the days when it refused to meet its obligations.

We can expect the Tea Partiers to object to increasing American involvement in the International Criminal Court, and to fight to the death to prevent actual American ratification of the Rome Statute that would make the country a full ICC member. We can also expect them to oppose American ratification of international treaties banning antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions, putting their ideological rigidity ahead of making the world a safer and more humane place for children and other innocent civilians.

We can also expect the Tea Partiers to fight against efforts to bring the United States into any international agreement on the critical issue of climate change. Last year's summit in Copenhagen failed to produce a workable treaty, and the world cannot afford another such failure. Strong Tea Party influence in the Senate will make such a treaty much more problematic, especially since the Tea Party seems pretty divorced from reality on the subject.

Global Citizens in the United States must work to defeat these Tea Party candidates. Most obviously, they need to support those candidates who will be facing them in the November elections, through financial support and volunteering directly for their campaigns. Furthermore, Global Citizens in the United States should also give their support to internationalist Republicans who are opposed to the foreign policy perspectives of the Tea Party, such as Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, Congressman Mike Castle of Deleware (who is now running for the Senate) , and Congressman Joseph Cao of Louisiana (who is in a tough battle for reelection).

Time to get to work.

John Bolton for President of the United States?

In a recent interview the Daily Caller, John Bolton, the controversial former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and one of the most prominent "hawks" in the Republican foreign policy establishment, did not rule out a possible run for the presidency in 2012, at least as a means of highlighting national security issues during the campaign season.

John Bolton is pretty much the manifestation of everything that Global Citizens are against. Despite serving in the Bush administration as the American ambassador to the U.N. (via a recess appointment, as the Senate refused to confirm him), he has never made any secret of his utter contempt for the world body, an opinion that he extends to pretty much every other international organization. He has been a fierce opponent of the International Criminal Court, apparently that his ideological rigidity provides aid and comfort to genocidal killers and war criminals. During his time at the State Department, Bolton fought against efforts to negotiate with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program and effectively killed a U.N. proposal for more effective international monitoring of biological weapons disarmament. He has also been outspoken in his belief that the United States should unilaterally launch military strikes against Iran and should reject the critically important New START agreement on nuclear reductions with Russia.

Bolton is a classic case of the hypocrisy which with the American Neoconservatives pursue foreign policy. They expect other nations to adhere to established rules in international relations, but then feel that the United States has every right to disregard those rules itself whenever it chooses. For example, the reason Bolton scuttled the U.N. biological weapons proposal was his refusal to allow international inspectors into American facilities. How can Bolton justify demanding that other nations submit to international inspections if he is unwilling to have his own country do so? For that matter, what sort of credibility does Bolton have in condemning the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia when he was one of the key architects of the American invasion of Iraq?

In short, Bolton is the most vocal spokesman for the American neoconservative belief that since the United States is the strongest nation in the world, it should feel free to do what it likes in pursuit of its own interests, no mater what damage is caused to the overall international system. This is a point of view that Global Citizens must stand against.

Of course, John Bolton has effectively no chance of winning the Republican nomination, but less actually being elected President. But his mere presence in the Republican primary race would have a detrimental impact on the foreign policy debates within the Republican Party. The Republican presidential primary is certain to be dominated by domestic policy issues, as the various candidates position themselves to be the "anti-Obama". If Bolton is the only primary candidate making foreign policy questions the centerpiece of his campaign, he will be in a position to force the other candidates to dance to his tune or else appear "weak".

Even worse, a Bolton candidacy will help keep his profile high among that faction of the Republican Party which focuses on foreign policy, making it likely that he would be given an influential position within a future Republican administration. Conceivably, he might even aspire to the office of Secretary of State. Such an eventuality would be a disaster that defies any attempt at description.