Irwin Arieff
Irwin Arieff is a veteran writer and editor with extensive experience writing about international diplomacy and food, cooking and restaurants. Before leaving daily journalism in 2007, he was a Reuters correspondent for 23 years, serving in senior posts in Washington, Paris and New York as well as at the United Nations (where he covered five of the 10 years that Sergey Lavrov spent in New York as Russia's senior UN ambassador). Arieff also wrote restaurant reviews for The Washington Post and Washington City Paper in the 1980s and 1990s with his wife, Deborah Baldwin.
- Irwin Arieff
- • December 19, 2022
Early and often during his 2016 run for the presidency, Donald Trump vowed to pull Washington out of the Iran nuclear agreement the moment he arrived at the White House. The pact, brokered the year before by Barack Obama,…
- Irwin Arieff
- • May 23, 2022
Can we shed a tear for Sergey Lavrov? Who could have foreseen, a few years back, the huge mess he now finds himself in? Spanning five decades of service in Moscow’s foreign policy hierarchy, the veteran envoy has worked…
- Categories: Peace and Security, Security Council, UN Diplomats, WORLDVIEWS
- Deborah Baldwin and Irwin Arieff
- • May 5, 2022
Everything about Montagu’s Gusto is unexpected, from its name and the size and sweep of its menu to its location, on a nondescript stretch of Second Avenue near 35th Street, sandwiched between a reflexology salon and a Chinese takeout…
- Categories: UN EATS
- Irwin Arieff
- • February 1, 2022
Just as we were looking forward to the new year with hope in our hearts, things have already grown dicey. The chaotic images of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan still reverberate around the world, continuing to raise big…
- Categories: Secretary-General
- Irwin Arieff and Deborah Baldwin
- • January 15, 2022
Nearly five years after the murder of two United Nations investigators in a rough and lonely patch of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, their lives and their deaths have become a metaphor for the extraordinary challenges faced by…
- Categories: Africa, BOOKS, UN Peacekeeping
- Deborah Baldwin and Irwin Arieff
- • December 28, 2021
Once upon a time, self-appointed food critics tasted a dish and gave it thumbs up (or down). These days it has to pass a different test. Is it ready for its close-up? Don’t blame restaurants for tuning in. As…
- Categories: UN EATS
- Deborah Baldwin and Irwin Arieff
- • October 14, 2021
The next time you pass by a florist who is pulling shots, pull over. It’s not often you get to inhale the heady perfume of freshly brewed coffee, hand-tied bouquets and artfully potted flowering plants. Remarkably, you can have…
- Categories: UN Diplomats, UN EATS
- Irwin Arieff
- • September 9, 2021
The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has weakened the Biden administration’s campaign to restore multilateralism as the touchstone of United States foreign policy, eroding international support for US global leadership. Incidentally, Biden also came out sounding at times a lot more…
- Categories: US Foreign Relations
- Irwin Arieff
- • June 15, 2021
After four years of wandering lost in the desert, diplomacy is finding its way back to Washington. With Joe Biden in the Oval Office, “America First” is out and “multilateralism,” “cooperation” and “alliance” are no longer dirty words. Washington…
- Categories: Security Council, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
- Irwin Arieff
- • April 26, 2021
Should the United States acknowledge and openly lament the fact that white supremacy played a significant role in the country’s founding? Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Joe Biden’s pick as the US ambassador to the United Nations, thinks so. So does Biden…
- Categories: US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
- Irwin Arieff
- • March 2, 2021
Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a memoir due out in June, is done concealing his anger over Donald Trump’s bad behavior on the international stage. The UN has always tried hard to maintain strong ties with the…
- Categories: BOOKS, Nuclear Disarmament, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
- Irwin Arieff
- • January 21, 2021
Donald Trump may be out, along with his disastrously incompetent foreign policy advisers, but don’t expect them to sit quietly on the sidelines while a new team struggles to clean up the mess they left behind. Just days before…
- Categories: US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS
- Irwin Arieff
- • November 24, 2020
President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to move quickly once he is in office to reverse Donald Trump’s ill-founded pledge to cut ties to the World Health Organization during a deadly worldwide plague. But it will not be easy for…
- Categories: Health and Population, US-UN Relations
- Irwin Arieff
- • September 25, 2020
Fake news alert: President Donald Trump said something vaguely positive about the United Nations during his speech marking the opening of this year’s General Assembly session. “God bless you all. God bless America. And God bless the United Nations,”…
- Categories: General Assembly, UN75, US-UN Relations
- Irwin Arieff
- • August 18, 2020
Talking heads are showering Donald Trump with praise over his surprise unveiling of an agreement that he said would alter the Middle East landscape by building a diplomatic bridge between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. If completed as…
- Categories: Middle East, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS
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