I –Introduction

As is customary, a press conference was held by Ambassador Vitaly Churkin to mark the beginning of the Russian Federation’s Presidency of the Security Council for the month of December 2011. Ambassador Churkin’s comments in this press conference provide insight into an important problem in the structure of the Security Council that became evident in the course of the implementation of the Security Council resolutions against Libya.

The press conference was held on December 2. There is video of the press conference for those who are interested in viewing the conference itself. (1)

Though other issues were brought up, many of the questions asked by journalists related to the Russian Federation’s views concerning Security Council action on Libya and Syria.

II– Critique of Implementation of SCR 1973 on Libya

During the press conference Ambassador Churkin revealed that NATO had been asked for a “final report…summing up… weiter lesen

[Note:A version of this article was originally published in the English edition of Global Times on 4-18-2011]

Recently Joseph S. Nye, Jr spoke about his new book, “The Future of Power” at the Japan Society in New York City.

During his talk, Nye defined soft power as the ability to attract or persuade others to give you what you want without having to use coercion.

For Nye, it is not the facts that matter in “the information age”. Instead soft power, which includes how the narrative describing a situation is framed, is as important as, or even more important than military action, in gaining one’s objectives. As he says in an online article, “In a global information age, success is not determined just by who has the biggest army, but also by who has the best story.”

In the question period at the end of his talk, Nye was asked… weiter lesen