Archive | February, 2022

Lost and Found: A Reflection on Exile, Dr. Robert Zuber

27 Feb
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Even if exile is spent in the most beautiful city in the world, Brunetti realized, it is still exile. Donna Leon

The exile is a ball hurled high into the air.  Salman Rushdie

The words I write are not only mine, but a contemplation on the loss, grief and hope of those I care for. Elia Po

Everyone must come out of his exile in his own way.  Martin Buber

It’s a kindness that the mind can go where it wishes. Publius Ovidius Naso

All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land. Janet Frame

I leave with tears blurring all that I see.  Euripides

I had planned to write my next piece on the phenomenon of UN exile, specifically the implications of a two-year + banishment we and many others have endured from UN Headquarters.  The roots of such exile have been both clear and not – the need to enact pandemic restrictions being the most obvious and understandable one, but also the unstated desire of some UN member state to be free of the annoying interventions of groups like ours – even in our current hibernated state – a desire which has kept doors closed to the in-person engagements which we and others had thrived on in the past.

And no, advocacy by screen is no substitute.  We have long commented on the Security Council meetings we were privileged to sit in on over many years – that watching the Council is like watching a sumptuous meal unfold that you are allowed to behold but not to consume.  In the absence of personal engagements, meaningful access is more and more reserved for groups with big brands, big budgets or big needs. We can’t even begin to complement the work of the big brands on screens and we certainly don’t ever want to be in the way of voices seeking to be heard from communities ravaged by poverty, by famine, by pandemic, by violence, communities whose frequent exiles from familiar homes and farms constitutes another layer of grief, another blow to stability, another instance of feeling like a ball thrown high in the air with no clear sense of where it might land and what awaits once it does.

The tears of such exile make what we have experienced around the UN much more of a petty annoyance than an existential threat.  Indeed, it seems tone deaf even to mention our erstwhile plight as people in places like Afghanistan and Ukraine fight for their lives, their dignity, their autonomy.   Such fights, regrettably, force many to take to a more uncertain road than I will ever walk, one that often turns out to have as many dangers along the route as at its starting point, one that leads perhaps to greater safety and predictability, perhaps to another land as “lost” as the one they left. 

And whether lost or not, the journey often takes exiles far from home, far from whatever comforts emanate from familiar people and places, far from any certainty that a return to those familiar spaces will ever be possible.  Even if exiles find places of beauty and excitement, even if the places they are fortunate enough to land in offer a different possibility than where they came from (as we are reminded now by the presence of Jamshid Mohammadi of Kadahar Afghanistan, who will soon be posting in this space), it is still exile.  There is still loss, still things to grieve, still loved ones back home who face challenges now largely unimaginable, and which are now beyond helping reach, still people back home choking back tears, hoping beyond hope that the expressive faces of their loved ones will one day be returned to them.

This is the exile that must matter above all, the millions now on the move escaping armed invasion and climate emergencies, escaping collapsing economies and threats from hate speech, hoping to find spaces free from violence and predation where children can go to safe schools, visit a proper health clinic, and eat more than once a day. 

But our own exile has consequences also, the consequences of being further marginalized by a system which is in fresh danger of its own collapse of sorts – a collapse brought about by sinking levels of public trust, rising levels of diplomatic inflexibility, a long chain of broken financial commitments to ameliorate human suffering, and a two-tiered system of international order wherein the established guardians of that order are the ones which feel most entitled to violate its core provisions.

The UN, as we have noted often, does a remarkable job of highlighting and even addressing challenges from ocean health to vaccine equity.  Moreover, it has mobilized vast resources to help people survive emergency conditions due to famine and displacement.  What it has not done as well is to shrink inequalities, including those related to the entitlements some large and powerful states have used – and continue to use — to justify clear and obvious violations of the UN Charter and international law. 

When any person or institution stands in exile from the values in which it is ostensibly grounded, such as in the case of the UN, trust and confidence erode among constituents most directly affected, and policy is reduced to “work arounds” regarding the insistences and manipulations of the most powerful. 

We have a role, as with many others, in assessing and communicating internal threats to a system whose structural flaws have rarely been so exposed as in the present.  And while we have no power to speak of, we do have a certain authority born of years of attentive regard for what the UN does, what it claims to do, and what has proven time and again to be beyond its remit.

But that authority requires personal engagement if it is to have any chance of connecting to mechanisms of effective change.  Hurling critiques across vast and barren zoom spaces is no more likely to enable that change than screaming at immigration officials is likely to help exiles gain safe passage.  We must be determined, but also maintain a personal touch, also demonstrate some compassion for those who make and implement policy under sometimes severe limitations, who also must face up to the things they cannot fix no matter how hard they might want to do so. At the same time, we have a duty to insist that promises made to constituents are promises kept, that doors which we have pledged to keep open are kept ajar, all while ensuring that we never deign, not for a single moment, to equate our own institutional inconveniences with the deep heartache of exile experienced by so many millions in this damaged and war-torn world.

As the late, great Martin Buber noted above, all must come out of exile in their own way, on paths hopefully accompanied by determined and compassionate others.  As the bombs continue to fall in Ukraine and Yemen and economic options evaporate in settings from Afghanistan to the Sahel, we must continue to accompany those well-trod paths, continue to do more to ensure softer, safer, less-traumatic landings for the uprooted. For us and for many around UN Headquarters, advocacy for such landings is sure to be more effective with a personal, physical presence. 

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Play Time: Games We Should Renounce, Dr. Robert Zuber

4 Feb

Morals were nothing but things to be manipulated with. They were tools you could use against others, and weapons others could use against you. Rebecca Schaeffer

Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it?  Robert Jackson Bennett

What I learned in this tragedy was the eternal lesson of good people going bad.  Steven Ramirez

Pens, swords, sticks—weapons shoved into our fists as soon as we’re old enough to grasp them. Hafsah Faizal

The phrase ‘ninth graders with machine guns’ isn’t exactly followed by ‘have a nice day’. Michael Grant

Many years ago, I was an adherent (albeit temporary) of the field of “transactional analysis” made popular by Eric Berne.  His book “Games People Play,” described the numerous games in which people indulge in order to get from others what they might well not be able to acquire otherwise if they were committed to “playing it straight.”

Some of the gamesmanship Berne highlighted, as in a game of poker, is largely about pulling off the bluff, of making others believe that you “hold a better hand” than you actually have and thereby compelling decisions which largely benefit the person at the other end of the table more than the one making them themselves. 

This “game” is hardly news to those of us who navigate this overly competitive world, a world in which we try to “sell” our talents and experiences often well beyond what the facts and/or testimony of others might otherwise suggest, projecting power and/or authority that we might not actually possess based on credentials which in the best instances represent a massaging of what we have any right to publicly claim and at their worst are mere fantasy projections of what we “wish” we had achieved (or were in a position to achieve) more than an actual, frank assessment of capabilities and consequences.

This “game” is an oldie but goodie, but it was not my favorite of Berne’s litany of gamesmanship dysfunction.  That title would have to go to the one known as, “Now I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.”  This is the game by which we stalk our adversaries until we “catch” them in words or deeds, catch them so as to justify our original decision to hold them to often-highly unflattering assessments.  This game is not at all about being fair to others but of ensnaring them in “traps” of our own creation.  The point in bringing this game up here is not to justify wrongdoing of word or deed, but to highlight the tendency of those many who play this game to reduce a person’s “footprint” in the world to those acts or ideas which justify our own unseemly judgements about them, even our hostilities towards them.

The attraction of this game shouldn’t surprise anyone either.  Indeed, the “now I’ve got you” mode is pervasive in our time, a mega-offering of what some now refer to as “cancel culture” in which the cancelling is largely about “catching” rather than about healing, or reconciliation, or even what some theologians refer to as “amendment of life.”  The idea isn’t so much to invent accusation, though that sometimes happens as well, so much as to feed the accusations we have already lodged against others with allegedly “fresh” evidence of their malevolent intent.

The fact of the matter, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, is that this so-called “cancel culture” is merely one tip of a much more imposing, threatening iceberg: that of “weaponizing,” the willingness to turn ideas, objects, career positions and much more into the means for criticizing, mocking or otherwise attacking others whom we generally know only enough about to know that we can’t stomach their ideas or practices. Such weaponization takes numerous and expanding forms as our ideological bubbles harden and our information sources “about the world” become more relentlessly self-selected and self-confirming.  Most everything in our midst now represents some occasion to attack or defend.  We are so much more prone now than even in Berne’s time to “lie in wait” for our competitors or opponents to “slip up” in word or deed such that we might in turn intimidate them, harass them, sue them, or plaster mocking accusations all over social media with little if any regard for context.

Or without any regard for the ways in which, as Reinhold Niebuhr was famously quoted, “the evils against which we contend are often the fruits of illusions similar to our own.”  Evidence of this chunk of wisdom is hard to find in people who are determined to “catch” their adversaries in speech or actions which might well be toxic but are also, generally speaking, not unrelated to the speech and actions of those doing the accusing.  This aspect of the “gotcha game,” of “seeing the speck in the eyes of others but not the plank in our own is a most unfortunate characteristic of our time, an often-reckless consequence of our obsession with the mis-steps of perceived adversaries and competitors coupled with a healthy set of blinders regarding the many (and preventable) ways in which we also betray, also deceive, also mock and condemn without due cause, also fail to honor promises and obligations, also fail to negotiate with others “in good faith.”

This posture is both pervasive and counter-productive, ramping up our levels of suspicion about each other and our “motives” for all sorts of things, even with regard to matters as simple as compliments or small acts of kindness. Everyone, we seem to be increasingly convinced, has got an angle, a hidden motive.  No one plays it straight.  None are uncorrupted by power and money. None can be trusted to present and “own” more than a piece of truth, some even less than that. 

It does not take a saint or a genius to see how such a pervasive attitude could so easily undermine our efforts to build trust (what the UN now most often refers to as “solidarity”) or to disarm at least some of the growing array of ideas, objects, affiliations and technologies which many are now more prone to horde and weaponize than to share and ensure just access.   

This point came to light this week at a UN discussion hosted by the Group of Friends of Mediation and its chairs from Finland and Turkey.   The event featured USG DiCarlo explaining how the UN has been fortifying its non-coercive tools and capacities to prevent and resolve conflict.  In addition to what the UN refers to as “special political missions,” DiCarlo spoke of the importance of UN mediation resources which are inclusive, accessible and backed by commitments to the “primacy of politics” by all member states but especially the major powers.

But the issue here is more than about providing the resource but also about seeking it out and heeding its conclusions.  In a world that is inclined to weaponize far more than with weapons themselves – food, sex, justice, health care, even diplomacy itself are all candidates – it can be difficult to find those softer spots where mediation can do its best work.   As many of you already know, for a case to proceed at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the parties to the case must consent to compulsory jurisdiction.  That is, they must agree to accept the verdict regardless of whether or not it is favorable to their national interests.  But something beyond mere consent is required here if mediation is to have a desired effect, if it is to be viewed as an honest, trusted service on the path to peace rather than as tool for partisan political interests or even conspiracy theories under the guise of “frank and open dialogue.”

This was communicated effectively at the “Friends” event by the former Foreign Minister of Finland, Alexander Stubb, who lamented that in our time the “lines between war and peace have been blurred.”  Everything now, he warned, seems to be a candidate for weaponization, including information, elections, even climate threats. In such an environment, how can we know when mediation is more apt to resolve than inflame?  How can we move forward in convincing states and other conflict parties of the “logic” of mediation and related tools, that it isn’t necessary to resort to military measures in order to resolve conflict and address conflict threats, and that effective mediation offers more sustainable pathways to healing and reconciliation than missiles and IEDs ever could?  How do we demonstrate the benefits of mediation resources when so many of us, even global leadership, are consumed with the game of “getting” others rather than ensuring a softer time and space to sort out our common messes?

It is clear to me, if only me, that the sphere of disarmament for which we have advocated over decades must again be expanded – beyond military hardware and weaponry to all of the pieces of our social fabric that we are now willing to deploy against others with whom we disagree or who threaten our power or position.  Our “game” of turning common objects and basic needs into common threats levied against adversaries real and perceived, of applying self-serving glosses to our judgements about those we seek to trip up rather than to steady, is one that we simply cannot win. The world is endangered now by numerous challenges the alleviation of which will require more from all of us, and more from us together.

It is high time to put this “got you” game back in the box from whence it came.

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