The Syria resolution, backed by the Arab League and directed against the Assad regime, passed overwhelmingly. And it revealed the alignment of bigger powers with Syria developing as a proxy conflict between an Iran-Russia side and an Arab-Europe-America side. What the vote showed was a lopsided power balance with Russia and China isolated on the world stage.

Yes 137 ; Abstained 17 ; No 12

Look at the “no” coalition:

Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Belarus, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua

This is the mighty coalition that Russia put together to support its side against the American-led coalition. Let’s compare the relative power of the “yes” and “no” countries. How could we measure that power balance? Well, my International Relations textbook says, “The best single indicator of a state’s power may be its total GDP, which combines overall size, technological level, and wealth.” So how do the sides stack up?

The “yes” side represents a GDP total of about $67 trillion, which is 85% of the world total. The United States and Europe each contribute about a quarter of the “yes” total.

The total GDP on the “no” side is about $15 trillion. [The total is measured by "purchasing power parity" and would be even smaller by an alternative method.] China represents almost three-quarters of the total. Russia accounts for about 15 percent, and Iran about 6 percent. The rest are a bunch of smallish countries with leftist anti-American regimes. They are along for the ride. And the 17 abstaining countries from Algeria to Vietnam together make up less than 1 trillion dollars of GDP.

So by one crude measure we can quantify the power balance at 6-to-1 against the Russian-Chinese side.

Why did China join the losing side? Why did it vote against so many countries that China hopes to influence around the world? In particular, why did China side with Russia to veto the earlier Security Council resolution? In the past China used its veto sparingly, and generally only on issues of direct relevance to China’s core concerns (Taiwan).

In one sense voting no is a natural for China. Its leaders believe in the international system as an arrangement of sovereign states, and they like the UN as a club of states, especially since they have the veto. The Chinese leadership might reason, “If a government massacres its citizens in the streets that’s no business of foreign countries. Sometimes governments might have to do that. We did it ourselves in 1989 and China’s success since then is historical vindication that our policy in 1989 was correct.”

In another sense, China — like the tag-along “no” countries — is using Syria to express opposition to the United States. After all the USA just began a buildup in the Pacific evidently intended to count Chinese power in the region. China did not support the U.S. war against Iraq in 2003, and did not like NATO’s role in helping rebels carry out regime change in Libya last year. China is willing to take a hit to maintain a reputation for meaning what it says. So why not vote against the U.S. side in the UN and give a little brotherly love to the Russians? Let the Americans know they can’t walk all over the world overthrowing governments they don’t like. The trouble for China is that the lopsided vote seems to have strengthened the United States and isolated China.

China does have a potentially constructive role to play in Syria, as a diplomatic mediator that is fairly neutral in the proxy war. China really just wants one thing from the Middle East, like the rest of the world does — oil. It buys a lot from the Arabian side of the Gulf and a lot from the Persian side. And China does not care much whether or not protest and rebellion in Syria succeed, notwithstanding that a toppling of the Syrian regime could be another bad example that Chinese citizens might (but probably wouldn’t) be influenced by.

Two days ago China sent its vice foreign minister to Damascus for talks with the Syrian government. The Chinese diplomat reiterated: “China does not approve of the use of force to interfere in Syria or the forceful pushing of a so-called regime change.” But he said China would try to “play a positive role” in seeking a solution to the Syrian conflict. Let’s see if anything comes of that.

One of these doors slammed a week ago when Russia and China vetoed the UN Security Council resolution put forward by the Arab League, which called for Syria’s president Bashar al Assad to step aside in favor of a transitional government. Russia considers Assad a friend and customer, and therefore didn’t want to side with his enemies. China never likes the idea of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. The United States and other western powers pushed forward a resolution that Russia was sure to veto (an unwise course in my opinion), thereby giving up the potential to deliver a united message to Assad from the international community.

Assad responded by stepping up a lethal assault on neighborhoods of Homs that oppose his rule. The UN’s high commissioner for human rights today called it “an all-out assault in an effort to crush dissent with overwhelming force,” addressing the UN General Assembly where Saudi Arabia today took the case against Syria. Unfortunately nobody needs to slam the General Assembly door closed because that body has no power to do anything about the situation (as Secretary General Ban Ki Moon politely reminded the Saudis).

Yesterday the Arab League officially terminated its observer mission in Syria, another door closed. Instead it is now proposing a joint UN-Arab League observer mission in Syria. (Observers are unarmed peacekeepers, arguably the weakest form of peacekeeping force.) The proposal faces three big challenges: (1) Peacekeeping forces require the consent of the host government, which Syria says it will not grant; (2) They require authorization by the Security Council, where Russia may again use its veto; and (3) They generally can work only after a cease-fire is in place, lest they fall into a Bosnia-style dilemma of “keeping the peace where there’s no peace to keep.” So the peacekeeping door is probably firmly shut for the moment.

A cease-fire itself is no closer than ever. The opposition won’t negotiate with the regime, at least not while the killing continues. The regime does not want a cease-fire while it’s trying to use massive force to put down the opposition.

And so the violence escalates, as the government intensifies its crackdown and nonviolent protests slowly morph into an armed insurgency. Turkey and Saudi Arabia appear likely to support the opposition with arms and money, while Iran and Russia will do the same for the government.

During the Cold War, civil wars around the world were larger and longer because of the support pumped into each side by the opposing superpowers. These proxy wars faded away twenty years ago, and that is one important reason why levels of war violence have been lower around the world. But now, there is a new prospect of big powers fueling both sides in a proxy war in Syria. The fault line in Syria runs right down the Sunni-Shi’ite divide that pits Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah on one side (backed by Russia) against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and most of the Arab League on the other (backed by the United States). Right under that fault line sits the world’s most important pool of oil, the one resource without which the world economy cannot function.

What is to be done? Well, the last deal that had legitimacy all around was the Arab League agreement with Syria last December 19 that let the monitors in and called for pulling back Syrian forces from cities, starting negotiations with the opposition, and giving human rights workers and journalists access to Syria. At the time, opposition leaders said it was just a stalling tactic by Assad, which was probably true, but nonetheless this agreement — especially the demand to pull forces back from cities under assault today — is the basis for moving forward, because Assad already agreed with it and Russia therefore can’t really oppose it.

With some effort, the western powers could line up Russian and Chinese support to put the stamp of the UN Security Council on this demand to pull out of the cities — not the demand that Assad step down — and then push measures to induce Assad to comply. Opposition leaders should be pressured to join negotiations for a cease-fire (it’s in their interest as the party being blasted), and if one can be achieved then the international community should move quickly to insert a UN peacekeeping force (I’m not so sure a joint force with the Arab League is the best way to go, given its lack of neutrality).

It may be that such an approach would fail to stop the slide into a sectarian civil war. It may fail to stop Assad’s slaughter of civilians, and on the other hand if it does stop that slaughter the Assad regime may not be able to stay in power, and a new strategy will be needed to hold the country together under a transitional government. In other words, the outcome probably will not actually be a stable cease-fire with an international peacekeeping force. But this is still the step to try next order to move forward — the step that U.S. policymakers skipped past in bringing to the UNSC what amounted to a demand for Assad’s resignation. Arming the opposition would be a disaster. Waiting and hoping is not likely to improve things. Playing “make Russia look bad” does not help the Syrians.

It is very worrisome that the Syrian conflict could ignite actual war between countries, in an unstable region at a pivotal moment, and with all that oil on the line. To my way of thinking, the best way to prevent this is to line up the international community for united, forceful diplomatic action and focus directly on reducing the violence, not just on changing the regime.

U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, recently told Foreign Policy magazine that the conflict with Russia over Syria (and Iran) did not necessarily portend a return to the Cold War. She pointed to successful cooperation in the UNSC on Iran and North Korea sanctions, the independence of South Sudan, and the UN support of the Afghan and Iraqi governments. “There are going to be issues that are difficult. We’ve had our share of those of late and they … divide us and even get rancorous. But I don’t think is a fair characterization of the body of work that we’ve been doing over the last several years…” Point well taken — now let’s kick that U.S.-Russian cooperation into gear to steer Syria away from civil war.

By contrast, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon seemed more sensible; he said: “This is a great disappointment to the people of Syria and the Middle East, and to all supporters of democracy and human rights. It undermines the role of the United Nations and the international community in this period when the Syrian authorities must hear a unified voice calling for an immediate end to its violence against the Syrian people.” As the drama unfolded in New York, violence in Syria escalated sharply. Government attacks sought to retake neighborhoods and towns controlled by the opposition. Hundreds more civilians were reported killed.

A lot is at stake here. We could go back and try again to work with Russia and China through the UN, or we could go to a coalition of the willing to help overthrow the Assad regime. It’s important to get it right. I have pretty much nothing good to say about the Syrian regime, but we should think carefully about Russia and China’s positions.

When the UN works, it can impede bad ideas that individual countries or groups of countries come up with. History looms large for the Syrian case, with both Iraq and Libya very much on Russian and Chinese minds. Nine years ago the United States came to the UN to demand action to oust Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Then as now the secretary of state showed up in person, Colin Powell waving around a test tube of white powder that was supposed to represent Saddam’s terrifying weapons of mass destruction. The Security Council refused to approve action to overthrow the Iraqi government, the United States formed a coalition of the wiling and did it anyway, and it turned out to be an extremely costly, painful mistake.

In the UN, the great powers act as a form of checks and balances on each other. Just as in the U.S. government, this diffusion of power is frustrating in terms of getting anything done. But currently there is no better system. This is the same system, by the way, that lets the United States veto resolutions critical of Israel, yet I’ve never heard American officials say they were neutering the UNSC in doing so.

If one country uses a veto, it’s easy to dismiss it, but when Russia and China both say no to something, we need to pay attention to their reasons. Their fundamental reasoning here was that the international community should not violate the sovereignty of a UN member to overthrow its government, especially when several Middle East regimes have already been toppled in recent years by the United States and its allies. Russia and China also see hypocrisy in western accusations against Syria’s government, when no action was sought against a U.S. ally in Bahrain that violently repressed its own uprising last year.

Russia and China also complain about Libya. Last year, the western powers asked for authorization of a no-fly zone to protect civilians imminently threatened by the Gaddafi regime. The UNSC said yes, and the western powers then stretched that authority into support for rebel forces battling Gaddafi. They won, Libya was spared a prolonged civil war, and the intervention turned out to be a good idea. Russia and China now say they were burned by allowing a resolution that the West would stretch, and won’t repeat the mistake in Syria. But there’s more to it than that. Syria is not Libya, and they are less comfortable with an effort to oust the government there.

Why is Syria not Libya? First, the Libyan strongman was nobody’s friend, so nobody particularly cared about his fate. In Syria, Assad may be behaving badly but Russia would lose a friend (and possibly a naval base) if Assad were overthrown. Second, in Libya the rebels were already in all-out armed conflict with the government, with control of a substantial territory. There was no question of averting a civil war. In Syria, the country is moving quickly toward a civil war but still the Free Syrian Army cannot permanently hold territory and much of the opposition is not armed. Third, Libya was isolated from the regional politics of the Sunni-Shi’ite and Arab-Israeli conflicts. Syria is in the middle of both. When the Arab League acts against Syria, there is an element of Sunni countries rallying against a Shi’ite-affiliated regime that oppresses its Sunni majority. By contrast, the Arab League call for action in Libya last year did not have any such element.

And then Russia and China have to be influenced by their feelings about recent U.S. actions that have almost seemed to gratuitously “dis” these two great powers. U.S. officials continue to extend their influence in Eastern Europe, making former Soviet allies into NATO members (Clinton spoke while in Bulgaria); they base new missile defenses near Russia; they give publicity and moral support to Vladimir Putin’s domestic opponents; and they back “independent” Kosovo (not recognized by Russia) which was wrested from Russian ally Serbia by military force more than a decade ago.

On the Chinese side, U.S. officials talk up a “pivot” from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Pacific, where they describe plans to beef up military capabilities to confront a rising China; they also continue to sell arms to Taiwan despite their formal recognition of Taiwan as part of China; and they constantly attack China’s currency and trade policies as though U.S.-China trade were a zero-sum game.

These U.S. policies may each make sense — I’m not judging them substantively here — but you can see how from a Russian or Chinese perspective the cumulative effect seems hostile and aggressive. Then the United States asks China to help with North Korea and Russia with Iran, to control dangerous nuclear proliferation that probably poses a greater threat to American security than any of the above issues. It doesn’t make sense.

So now the United States and its friends put a resolution on the table calling for Assad to leave power and the formation of a transitional government. After watering it down by eliminating economic sanctions and explicit calls for Assad to leave, the resolution still supported the Arab League plan, which calls for Assad’s departure. Russia and China still opposed it. At that point, the western powers had a choice — water it down further until Russia and China came on board, or push to a vote and make Russia and China veto it. They chose the latter. As the New York Times reported, “The resolution’s Western and Arab sponsors said they had compromised enough, and pushed the measure to a vote, virtually daring Russia to exercise its veto and risk international condemnation.” So that’s great, we can condem Russia. But Syrians might have been better served by a resolution that could pass, one that condemed the Syrian government’s violence and demanded that the Assad regime stop.

I wish China had not vetoed this resolution, but I can see some arguments on their side to take seriously. Looking forward, China wants to see negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition. The opposition currently says it will not negotiate while the killing goes on, but I hope they change their mind about that. The armed opposition in Syria has little chance of prevailing in a civil war, barring the kind of direct military help from the West that just isn’t going to happen. Another bit of history hanging over the scene is the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, when U.S. officials encouraged an uprising by Iraqi Shi’ites that was repressed with extreme violence while we stood by.

In Syria today, the worst U.S. policy would be one that encourages the opposition to use armed struggle but fails to back them up with effective military force, alienates the Russians and Chinese (whose help we need elsewhere), weakens the UN, and does not induce Assad to reduce or end his killing spree. Yet that seems to be the policy path we are on at the moment. Outrage at Assad’s mass killing is justified; now what can we do effectively to address it? Take a deep breath before answering that. Let’s get it right.

For most of a year the situation has escalated both on the ground and in the international response. Syria’s violent suppression of nonviolent protests has led to armed resistance by some regime opponents and threatens to escalate into sectarian civil war. More than 5,000 have died. My predictions of a protracted stalemate are proving depressingly correct.  But the international response has not been static.

At first, bilateral relations played the major role. Individual countries such as Turkey tried to intervene diplomatically to convince the Assad regime to change course and stop the violence. This did not succeed, and Turkey among others turned against Assad. (Indeed, Syria’s only important reliable friends these days are Iran and Russia.)

Next the regional organization came into play. The Arab League developed a peace plan that required the Syrian government to pull back its forces from cities (some of which would then be de facto opposition territory). Syria resisted implementing this plan, and the Arab League sent in monitors to poke around in Syria and report whether progress was occurring. It wasn’t. First the Gulf states withdrew from the monitoring mission, and then the Arab League as a whole suspended it, called for Assad to hand over power to a transitional government, and asked for action by the UN Security Council.

That’s how the matter came to be discussed this week in the UN. And there they all were — the five permanent members, this year’s ten nonpermanent members, the ambassadors of Syria and of the Arab League. To underscore its importance, the USA sent secretary of state Hillary Clinton to sit in the U.S. seat, and European countries sent foreign ministers. It is a “world order moment.” (Syria, however, used the occasion mostly to attack the Arab League and particularly Qatar, which participated in the air campaign in Libya and has led efforts to remove Assad from power in Syria.) The discussions began Tuesday, continued today behind closed doors, and are expected to culminate in a vote on Friday or Monday. Here’s is a great video summary of the situation as of Tuesday, from al Jazeera:

In these UNSC discussions, the USA and Britain have called for Assad’s ouster and the imposition of economic sanctions on Syria if the violence continues. The United States declares that it is not looking for another Libya-type resolution, which authorized force to protect civilians but was stretched to include fairly direct assistance to rebels who overthrew the government. Russia and China were upset by the stretching of the Libya resolution, and want language in any new resolution that rules out military intervention.

Russia declares that trying to change Syria’s regime by force or even by sanctions could trigger a bigger regional war, presumably along the Sunni-Shi’ite divide between Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s allies. More fundamentally, both Russia and China have violently suppressed domestic unrest in the past, and they want the international community to uphold a strong norm of sovereignty, based in the UN Charter, that essentially says any country can do what it wants within its own borders. That old norm is being challenged of late by a new norm of sovereignty, the Responsibility to Protect, that says the international community may violate sovereign as a last resort if necessary to save civilians from mass atrocity events. The intervention in Libya was a successful application of that principle, halting an imminent massive slaughter in Benghazi, notwithstanding Russia and China’s grumbling about the later uses of air power to help the rebels overthrow Gaddafi.

Syria is no Libya, however. Russia has promised to veto any resolution that does not rule out military intervention, and this means any military intervention would have to occur without a mandate from the UN Security Council. That idea is tempting to some, and Anne-Marie Slaughter believes that the situation in Syria could become so dire as to warrant a Kosovo-style intervention, i.e. without UN authorization.

If you had a request from the Arab League backed by the protesters themselves and you had a – perhaps a super majority on the Security Council, meaning nine, 10, 11 out of the 15 vote to support, then I would be willing to countenance action even in the face of a veto as we did in Kosovo. When it comes down to this kind of humanitarian intervention, I think the rules surrounding the veto are more complicated, and there are precedents as in Kosovo for acting even in the face of a veto.

But this kind of coalition-of-the-willing action is becoming less attractive in recent years, and it seems unlikely that the west would use force against the Syrian regime without the unique legitimacy afforded by the UNSC.

My prediction (why not?) is that the international community will succeed in passing a UN resolution condemning the Syrian regime’s violence and telling Syria to halt it. Possibly it will even endorse the Arab League plan, which among other things calls on Assad to step down. It will not impose sanctions, or perhaps just weak symbolic ones, and it will make clear that the resolution does not authorize outside military force.

Daniel Serwer notes Russia’s interest in vetoing a resolution if only to look strong with an upcoming presidential election. But President Obama has his own election year and would in no way use military force against Syria, so there is not really any conflict about a Libya-style use of the UN to legitimize a western air campaign.

The western powers have every reason to want a resolution to pass, not be vetoed, and therefore they will be limited by what Russia will allow (abstaining but not vetoing). They will press for a few days to see how far they can get, and then take the deal. And that’s a good thing because it means the international community is functioning as it’s supposed to. Not good for Syrian civilians, perhaps, but good for world order. The region is unsettled and the Arab world split, so it is important for the international community to speak with one voice, and that voice is the UN Security Council.

Today the Arab League monitors from the Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and allies) left Syria, saying that their presence was not effectively changing the violent behavior of the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad (backed by Iran). The rest of the Arab League monitoring mission remains, and the League as a whole extended the mission and is expected to send replacement monitors, but the League’s head also called on the UN Security Council to help out. (In my opinion the pullout is not a bad thing, as both the Gulf states and Iran are too close to Syria to play as useful a monitoring role as other Arab states or the UN might.)

The Sunni-Shi’ite conflict was simple back in the 1980s. Iran, the world’s only Islamic Republic and a Shi’ite country, was locked in a war with Iraq. The war would kill close to a million people through trench warfare, the use of chemical weapons, and rocket attacks on each other’s cities. Backing Iraq and its Sunni leader Saddam Hussein were Saudi Arabia, the other Arab countries, and tacitly the United States.

Things are actually more complicated than that. No countries are purely Sunni or Shi’ite. Most have an interwoven patchwork of these sectarian communities — a village here, a city there — as this map shows (high res here):

Two countries next to Iran — Iraq and Bahrain — had Shi’ite majorities ruled over and repressed by Sunni minority regimes. In the past decade, of course, Iraq is no longer Sunni-led but, thanks to George W. Bush, led by Shi’ite parties.  (One U.S. official claimed that Bush didn’t know the distinction between Sunni and Shi’ite before deciding to invade Iraq.)

A step further from Iran is Syria, with a Sunni majority ruled over by a Shi’ite-based (Alawite) minority. That is the regime we are all focused on currently, the one the Arab League is monitoring to no avail. Moving along westward, Lebanon is almost half Shi’ite and that community is the base of the armed militia Hezbollah. After decades representing the disempowered and fighting Israel, and after being implicated in the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s liberal prime minister, Hezbollah last year became the dominant party in Lebanon’s government.

To the south, meanwhile, in Bahrain last year the Shi’ite community rallied for democracy and was violently repressed with help from Saudi armed forces. The United States, whose Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, stayed pretty quiet. A quarter of the Saudi population is Shi’ite but they are in no position to cause trouble and the Saudi royal family has the money to buy out any discontent in the Kingdom. In Yemen, where Shi’ites make up more than 40 percent of the population, the Shi’ite Houthi tribe in the north has been in armed conflict with the central government for decades, even as Sunni al-Qaeda radicals wage war in the south.

Thus, in recent years the Arab side of the Persian Gulf (or is it the Arabian Gulf?) has remained firmly in Sunni control, while across the Gulf four countries in a line now have Shi’ite-affiliated regimes — Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Of these, Iraq and Lebanon have been relatively neutral on Syria (mixed interests and their own problems at home), but Iran has been the Assad regime’s most important external backer (along with more powerful but less enthusiastic Russia).

The emergence of a more solid Shi’ite bloc stretching from Iran to Lebanon is not a positive development in my view. It tends to polarize the region and to extend the ambitions of Iran, which acts in defiance of international norms on important issues. It also raises a legitimate concern that Iran’s creation of a nuclear weapon in the coming years would spark a rush by Saudi Arabia to follow suit. The danger of a terrible war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with their respective allies, is worth worrying about.

In the middle of it all, of course, is oil. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia all share one interest — they are the world’s three top oil exporters. They benefit from reliably high prices for oil on world markets (high price spikes that lead to crashes are less useful). On the other hand, both the western powers and China share an interest in a low, stable oil price. And there was China’s prime minister recently visiting Saudi Arabia, not Iran, for a friendly chat. Turns out that although China is Iran’s largest oil customer, China actually buys twice as much from Saudi Arabia, whose total oil exports are almost triple the level of Iran’s. China wants assurance, which it no doubt received, that Saudi Arabia would fill any gap in China’s supply created by new sanctions on Iran.

The United States supports the Saudi side, and Russia the Iranian side, but China really just wants oil and doesn’t care where it comes from. The main  interest of China and other consuming nations is political stability in the Middle East, to keep oil prices stable and the spigot turned permanently on. In the past, although oil is the world’s most traded commodity in terms of value, its price has seen wild swings triggered by political events like wars and revolutions. A little stability would be a really good thing for the world economy. Saudi Arabia alone has the vast reserves to keep world supplies steady even if another OPEC member stops exporting. And hence the Chinese prime minister’s visit.

As for the UN Security Council, its ability to play any meaningful role in Syria will depend entirely on Russia. As some Kremlin officials suggest their patience with Assad is wearing thin, the western powers are pressing Russia to back the Arab League’s recent call for Assad to step down. When that question comes to the Security Council, soon, Russia will have to decide exactly where it stands.

In most places in the world, inertia is a strong force in international relations. If a country is at war, it stays at war; if at peace it stays at peace; if repressive it stays repressive. So real and permanent changes in a country — for example, the Arab Spring successes in Tunisia and Libya — are always of note.

Is Burma experiencing real, permanent change?  It sure looks like it. U.S. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell recently visited Burma and met the new civilian president, former general Thein Sein, and other top leaders. He said afterwards, “I’m convinced he  is a genuine reformer, and more importantly, so does Aung San Suu Kyi.” U.S. politicians closely follow the advice of Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, regarding policies such as whether to lift sanctions on Burma (not yet but moving that way). Last month Hillary Clinton met with her on a historic visit to Burma that signaled U.S. and international responsiveness to Burma’s reforms.

Last week the Burmese government signed a ceasefire deal with one of the most important of many ethnic militias that have been battling the government for decades near the borders with Thailand and China. The Karen ethnic group has battled the Burmese government for 63 years since Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948. The government also has ordered a ceasefire in its long conflict with the Kachin ethnic group, but some fighting continues.  Since 1989 the government has signed ceasefires with 17 armed ethnic groups. The government now says it hopes to end all these armed conflicts within three or four years.

Just ten months ago the military rulers of Burma gave way to a civilian government, albeit one hand-picked and largely led by themselves, after three decades of military rule. The government over those decades was one of the worst in the world. In 1988, student protests were met by lethal force in a massacre that previewed the following year’s Tian An Men protest in China. In 2007 Buddhist monks led large-scale demonstrations against the regime, which were also broken up with lethal force and repression.

An election in 1990 — the last until the flawed elections in 2010 — was swept by Suu Kyi’s party. Instead of allowing them to rule, the military took over, jailed opponents, and put Suu Kyi herself under house arrest for years at a time. Over the decades, the military leadership and its friends have enriched themselves greatly by exploiting Burma’s great natural resources such as timber and minerals, often sending these to its main supporter, China — which also gets electricity from Burmese hydroelectric dams. (But in September Burma cancelled an extremely unpopular $3 billion dam project backed by China. Burma had also found common ground with North Korea in recent years, reportedly buying missiles and possibly nuclear assistance from the North Koreans. Mitch McConnell said yesterday that Burma’s leaders “understand that a big part of normalizing the relationship with the United States is to discontinue its relationship with North Korea.”

The Wall Street Journal cautions that about a thousand political prisoners remain behind bars, including many associated with the country’s armed ethnic groups, and repressive laws remain in force. As for the April vote, with only about 10 percent of the parliament seats up for election, Suu Kyi’s party cannot take power even if it sweeps the vote. That would have to wait for constitutional reforms or the next regular elections in five years. The military rulers passed a new constitution in 2008 ensuring their continuing stay in power, and 2010 elections were not credible and were boycotted by the opposition.

Notwithstanding the long road still ahead, Burma’s political change in recent months has been breathtaking. Why does a country lurch toward freedom after decades of authoritarianism? Often the answer seems to be personal. In Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi has remained steadfast, totally committed to nonviolence, and has reached out on a personal level to the military rulers. She is Burma’s Nelson Mandela (or, you might say, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi). For his part, president Thein Sein has personally pushed the country in a new direction.

The world’s “rogue” regimes cause turbulence disproportional to their apparent size and power in the international system.  But their numbers are decreasing, with Libya now off the list and Burma seeming to be moving with determination to end its isolation. Iran (75 million people) is becoming more isolated with new sanctions hitting its economy hard and its currency losing half its value in recent weeks. , North Korea (25 million) is in an uncertain leadership transition. Syria (20 million) has a government fighting for survival against its own people. Saddam’s Iraq is a distant memory. All these countries tried, or at least started, to develop nuclear weapons.

Truly these are tough times for rogue states and their isolated elites. Add in the various dead or deposed dictators and terrorists over the past year, and the picture looks grim indeed for today’s embattled authoritarians. Burma’s president shows both wisdom and pragmatism to get off the sinking ship and start the country of 50 million people in a new direction.

In last week’s hostilities, a U.S. destroyer rescued 13 Iranian sailors from 15 Somali pirates who had seized their small ship to use as a mother ship to hijack larger cargo ships.  “It is like you were sent by God,” said one of the Iranian sailors. The U.S. destroyer was part of an aircraft carrier group that had recently left the Persian Gulf and been told in no uncertain terms by Iran not to come back. (Iran’s threat to use force or close the Hormuz Straits if the carrier returns is pure bluster.)

During most of last year, the United States encouraged revolutionary movements in Arab countries unfriendly to Iran’s government, including the unseating of longstanding Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak who had been a key counterweight to Iranian power in the region.

And U.S. forces spent much of the last decade removing from power Iran’s #1 enemy, Saddam Hussein in next-door Iraq, and installing an Iraqi democracy that empowers Iranian allies in the country (Iraq’s Shi’ite majority that shares religious ties with Iran and had been suppressed by Saddam).

It’s an odd way to treat enemies. Iran’s leaders might indeed quote the rescued sailor:  “Thank you for all that you did for us.”

Instead it’s the same old “death to America” out of Tehran. Enter the Persian Gulf and we will attack you. Iran also just handed down a death sentence against an Iranian-American accused of being a spy. It is unclear whether the authorities there intend to carry it out.

Now President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is taking a break from his domestic woes (hint: don’t pick fights with someone who has “Supreme” in his title) to visit supportive countries in Latin America. That would be, um, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. Nice little countries, with leftist and anti-American regimes. They are not the countries that matter most — Brazil, Mexico, Argentina. But there was Ahmadinejad yesterday having a laugh as  Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez joked that a big atomic bomb was hidden right in front of the presidential palace. Take that, Yankee!

Iran’s building of a nuclear weapon has been described as a “red line” by the U.S. government. And thanks to more effective U.S. multilateral diplomacy, biting sanctions against Iranian oil exports are now being considered by some of Iran’s biggest customers, European countries. This is what set off the latest round of anti-American bombast from Iran. Iran is yelling because it’s hurting.

Fareed Zakaria wrote recently that “the real story on the ground is that Iran is weak and getting weaker. Sanctions have pushed the economy into a nose-dive. The political system is fractured and fragmenting. Abroad, its closest ally and the regime of which it is almost the sole supporter — Syria — is itself crumbling. The Persian Gulf monarchies have banded together against Iran and shored up their relations with Washington. Last week, Saudi Arabia closed its largest-ever purchase of U.S. weaponry.”

In an international survey of public opinion last year, the country viewed most negatively by people in 27 countries was Iran (59% negative), followed by North Korea and Pakistan. These three countries all either possess nuclear weapons or have made substantial progress toward building one. Why Iran wants to be in this club is not exactly clear. (By the way, Canada was viewed most positively among the 27 countries.)

Now that Iran’s position is slipping and worse is soon to come (if the new European sanctions do take effect), will the Supreme Leader have a change of heart about nuclear weapons? Will he calculate that the cost to Iran on multiple dimension is too high for a weapon that could never be used?

President Obama famously made a diplomatic opening to Iran early in his term, which did not succeed. Iran expert Trita Parsi argues in his forthcoming book (A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran) that neither side showed adequate perseverance after initial setbacks. In the recent moves against Iran’s nuclear program, the West has focused on a change of Iran’s policy, not an effort to change the Iranian regime. Given that is the case, further diplomacy at this stage would be a good idea. But with Republican presidential candidates falling over each other to be toughest on Iran, President Obama has little room for conciliatory moves toward Iran.

It’s worth remembering that of the dozens of countries worldwide with the capability to make nuclear weapons, most have chosen to not do so. Nuclear weapons are super-dangerous, super-expensive, draw the world’s opposition, and have little to no usefulness in any real war. Why go there?

1. The euro debt crisis grinds on but is looking up a bit this week. Last week the Italian government successfully sold bonds at lower interest rates. When investors are willing to loan money to Italy at a lower rate, this is a signal that the market sees less risk of an Italian collapse. Italy, like Greece, has a new technocrat-led government. But unlike Greece, Ireland, or Portugal, which all recently received large bailouts to keep them from defaulting on debts, Italy is too big to bail out. So the edging away from a financial meltdown is important.

Italy’s success was followed by successful bond issues in the Netherlands and, today, Portugal and Germany. (Germany borrowed $5 billion at below 2 percent interest.) Europe’s financial situation remains tenuous, however. One big worry is that the austerity measures governments are taking to deal with debt will choke off economic growth and drive Europe’s economies into another recession.

2. Iran has been in the news a lot lately. The government keeps creeping closer to the ability to build a nuclear weapon, and Western governments keep tightening up the various sanctions that are supposed to pressure Iran to change course. The Iranian leadership has been turning up the rhetoric in response, most recently by threatening to close down the straits of Hormuz – an international waterway next to Iran that carries a truly huge amount of oil from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. Iran has the capability to carry out the threat, but would be completely crazy to do so. It would be an act of war that would bring in a coalition of Iran’s enemies from Saudi Arabia to the United States, to turn the oil spigot back on.

Iran’s leaders must feel pressured, to be sure. The Stuxnet computer worm (apparently a U.S.-Israeli project) set back their uranium enrichment program, perhaps by a couple of years. Top Iranian scientists in the nuclear program have been attacked, one killed, on the streets of Tehran. A huge explosion, still unexplained, devastated a major missile testing facility and killed the head of the missile program. The United States has been flying drones deep into Iran to spy on activities there, as we all learned a month ago when one either crashed or was shot down by Iran (another case of “still unexplained”). The UN’s atomic energy agency has put out reports accusing Iran of pursuing nukes, and the UN Security Council has imposed sanctions, with much more serious sanctions imposed by the United States and European countries. The domestic opposition to Iran’s leaders was crushed after massive protests two years ago, but smolders still.

Will the pressure induce Iran to change course and give up its quest for nuclear weapons? This seems pretty unlikely, barring a change of regime in Iran (which itself falls in the “pretty unlikely” category). Military action (e.g. by the USA or Israel) might slow the process, but as of right now the single most likely outcome of this situation is that Iran will have nuclear weapons in a few years, and perhaps successfully deploy them on capable missiles in a few more years.

A less likely possibility, but an interesting one, is that regional negotiations could produce a nuclear-free zone in which Israel gives up its nuclear weapons and others such as Iran give up the idea of obtaining them. Before you dismiss this idea as utopian, have a look at the poll last month showing 64 percent of Israeli Jews actually favor it.

3. Syria continues to be extremely important but completely stuck in a rut. The latest hope was that an Arab League monitoring mission would induce the government to stop slaughtering protesters and opponents. But the killings continued. The Assad regime has enough support, including the solid support of the top ranks of the military, to hold onto power. But the opposition has enough support to continue its protests.

It is unclear at this point whether the Syrian situation will morph into a civil war as the opposition gives up on peaceful protest and puts its faith in armed insurrection under the Free Syrian Army. So far the armed attacks on the government have not constituted a serious threat – they are more symbolic and sporadic, albeit deadly – and the rebels do not control territory. There is no chance the international community will intervene Libya-style.

These three issues – European debt, Iran’s arguments with other countries, and Syria’s protests – are in different issue areas of international relations: political economy, security affairs, and domestic politics, respectively. There are also important developments currently in environmental politics, North-South relations, and information technologies, which I will blog about in the future. So the action in IR currently is spread across many parts of the field.  That should make for an extremely interesting year. Admittedly, 2011 was a hard act to follow, but let’s see if 2012 can give it a run for the money.

This year, I will predict things that are NOT going to happen. In IR there’s always a lot to worry about, but in my opinion most of it is truly unlikely to happen.

1. My first prediction is, there will not be a war between two regular national armies, head-to-head. These happened throughout history with great frequency but have not occurred anywhere in the world for eight years now. In a recent New York Times op ed, Steven Pinker and I describe why another one soon is unlikely.

2. The euro zone will not collapse, and the European Union will not fall apart. It’s been a rough stretch, alright, but the EU will always do the minimum to hold itself together. If anything, the current euro crisis will lead to a deepening of integration in Europe, at least among the euro members, as the common currency forces fiscal congruency among the member states. I would bet on the EU to succeed. Europe’s collective unconscious remembers what came for centuries before the EU, and nobody wants to return there.

3. Terrorists will not use a nuclear weapon. A terrorist nuke is actually a very good thing to be concerned about and really work to prevent. But it’s also not so easy to make or get a nuclear weapon and use it. Plenty of people would like to try, but it’s really unlikely they would succeed. Keep worrying, but I’m betting this is not the year it will happen.

4. No nuclear explosion will take place anywhere in the world. Nuclear tests  have all but ceased, with only two in the past 13 years — both by North Korea. Now that North Korea knows its bomb works (the first fizzled, hence the second), it is unlikely to squander its small stockpile on more tests. Iran will not be ready to test one in 2012. Given the more than 2,000 nuclear explosions in the 20th century, the 21st is off to a good start.

5. No major progress will be made in global warming despite the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol at the end of 2012. It is the international community’s biggest failure at present, because the world has not been able to bring about global action to effectively halt a disaster in progress. Instead, the world’s nations each charge ahead in their individual economic interest and create a collective catastrophe that will cost far more to fix the longer we wait.

I hope I’m wrong on one of these predictions, as long as it’s #5.

Happy New Year!

Of course, any realist or cynic can tell you that this wish is an empty hope that will never come true. And oddly, the idealists who march in the streets for peace seem to agree–the world is awash in war, from atrocities in remote provinces of the Congo to drone attacks in Yemen to suicide bombings in Afghanistan. Whether you blame the military-industrial complex, the clash of civilizations, competition for natural resources, or human nature itself, peace on Earth seems further away than ever.

Except, actually, it isn’t. While TV images will always show us the most horrible parts of the human experience, the big picture has changed dramatically in our lifetimes. Peace on Earth as a complete cessation of violence may never arrive, but the distance between the dream and the reality has been shrinking for decades. Worldwide, wars today are fewer, smaller, and more localized than at any time in living memory.

Start with the bloodiest form of violence in history–wars between the world’s regular national armies, head-to-head with their tanks, artillery, airplanes, missiles, and currently 20 million soldiers worldwide. For centuries, these armies fought regularly, several times a year on average, and the worst of these wars killed millions at a time.

Today, nowhere in the world are these armies fighting each other–a historic development that has received almost no notice. It’s as though we had all grown wings but were walking around complaining about the extra weight. Countries are still armed to the teeth and still have conflicts, but they don’t go to war to solve them, mostly because it’s insanely expensive and doesn’t work very well. Exhibit A is the recently ended U.S. war in Iraq.

In Europe, where major interstate wars followed one after another for centuries, a continent has become a Union where (despite monetary troubles) fighting is unthinkable. China, wracked by wars and revolutions throughout history, has not fought a battle in 25 years. Its leadership derives legitimacy from trade-based prosperity, and follows a “peaceful rise” strategy in the world system. The U.S.-Soviet rivalry no longer exists, and the world’s arsenals of nuclear weapons have shrunk by three-quarters in the past 30 years, with no hoopla.

But has the violence of interstate wars merely been displaced onto civil wars that are more widespread and brutal than ever? The answer is “no.” Civil wars have also abated of late. Careful counts of battle deaths worldwide in the 21st century reveal levels half those of the 1990s and a third the Cold War average. (These numbers do not include indirect war deaths, as from epidemics and starvation, but those deaths generally move in parallel with direct deaths from violence.)

Whole regions consumed by war a couple of decades ago–Central America, West Africa, the Balkans–are now at peace. East Asia, where the most lethal conflicts of the Cold War years occurred in China, Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia, enjoys a stable peace. Today’s skirmishes in Burma, guerrilla raids in the Philippines, and bombings in Indonesia are insignificant compared with Asia’s violent past.

Brutality toward civilians is also diminishing. Yes, atrocities do still occur, but today they provoke outrage, whereas in the past they were considered a normal part of war if the world even heard about them. During World War II, the Allies firebombed dozens of German and Japanese cities, each time burning to death tens of thousands of civilians in a night. The other side did far worse.

And what about the statistic showing that 90 percent of war deaths supposedly are now civilian, whereas a century ago 90 percent were military? It resulted from a clerical error in a 1994 U.N. report, which mixed up deaths (a century ago) with the much larger number of killed, wounded, and refugees (recently). A better estimate is 50-50, and not changing through time.

Another longstanding peace dream is coming true–an effective international community. Two centuries ago, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant had the vision of a world federation of states to keep the peace without imposing a world government. Almost 100 years ago the world gave it a try in the League of Nations, but it failed miserably.

Then after World War II we tried again with the United Nations. During the Cold War, its Security Council was deadlocked. When the Cold War ended, it ventured into peacekeeping but ran into a buzz saw of troubles in places like Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. In the 21st century, however, after a period of regrouping and learning lessons, peacekeeping has become far more effective. As U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, the world’s largest deployed army will be the U.N.’s 100,000 peacekeepers. And peacekeeping is cheap–it costs $2 per U.S. household per month compared with $700 for our military forces and veterans’ benefits.

Peacekeeping missions stabilize cease-fires in societies trying to emerge from war by assuring armed groups that their disarmament will not result in being massacred by their enemies. As recently as the 1990s, half of all cease-fires broke down and war resumed, but in the 21st century fewer than 15 percent did so. In Sierra Leone, after an especially brutal war, a 1996 peace agreement failed when an under-funded U.N. force did not arrive quickly enough.

When the U.N. showed up in force several years later to support a new agreement, with British military backing, the peace lasted. In 2005, the peacekeepers left, their mission accomplished. The key to the U.N.’s success in Sierra Leone was giving the effort adequate personnel, funding, and outside military support. We could spread the blessings of peace elsewhere by following this model and beefing up our support of U.N. peacekeeping.

Much as I hate to infringe on holiday gloom with a ray of sunshine, hard evidence shows that the media drumbeat of war and violence does not represent the direction of history. To be sure, one war anywhere is one too many. Our work is not done. But to greet progress toward peace on earth with “Bah, humbug!” is to deny humanity’s ability to grow. Generation by generation, people have left behind cannibalism, human sacrifice, legal slavery, and public spectacles of sadistic torture and execution such as crucifixion–all of which were once widespread around the world. War could be next.

If we open our eyes to the new realities and stop living in the past, we can give our children the greatest gift of all, a more peaceful world.