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
- • August 14, 2017
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If you are reading this, it must mean we have not been annihilated by a nuclear war between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Not that Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, will …
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- Irwin Arieff
- • July 25, 2017
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Nikki Haley is one lucky Trump appointee. Sure, sure, it’s a great honor to be a public servant, especially when you’re way up at the top. But the GOP wastes no love on the United Nations; Republican presidents can take …
- Categories: Nikki Haley Watch, Security Council, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
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- Irwin Arieff
- • June 2, 2017
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Peak Thai is hidden on a side street — East 49th — and easy to miss. It may never win a Michelin star. But there’s a reason lines form around noon: you can count on this quiet, efficiently run restaurant …
- Categories: UN EATS
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- Irwin Arieff
- • May 13, 2017
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It is widely believed that the Allied powers were in the dark about the “final solution” — the Nazi campaign to exterminate Europe’s Jews — until the discovery of the death camps, strewn with corpses and emaciated inmates, at the …
- Categories: BOOKS, Human Rights, International Justice
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- Irwin Arieff
- • March 7, 2017
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The long-simmering dispute over the fate of Jerusalem stands at the center of the Middle East conflict. Israelis and Palestinians, divided on many points, become most emotional when discussing the future of the walled, ancient crossroads city that is holy …
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- Irwin Arieff
- • March 7, 2017
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Here is a brief political history of Jerusalem, in timeline format, dating from the earliest human settlement to the present. The chronology is selective, focusing primarily on the development of competing visions over the years of the ancient city’s past …
- Categories: Geopolitics, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Middle East, US Foreign Relations
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- Irwin Arieff
- • January 28, 2017
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More than 700 educators and students, meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York recently, called on the international community to protect refugees’ lives, encourage countries to take in “large numbers of refugees and migrants” and do more to ensure …
- Categories: Education, Human Rights, Middle East, Migration, Refugees, US Foreign Relations
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- Opinion by Irwin Arieff
- • December 21, 2016
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The butterfly effect teaches us that seemingly insignificant actions can have enormous future consequences. A tiny pair of fluttering wings can disturb the air in a way that helps trigger a hurricane halfway around the world. Witness Syria, where the …
- Categories: Middle East, OPINIONS, Peace and Security, Security Council, US Foreign Relations
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- Irwin Arieff
- • December 15, 2016
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During New York’s bad old days, Vanderbilt Hall, the waiting room at Grand Central Terminal, was a vast public space populated by homeless people napping on heavy wooden benches alongside some hardy souls actually waiting for trains. The benches were …
- Categories: UN EATS
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- Irwin Arieff
- • December 3, 2016
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Evidence is piling up: the global security framework that emerged from the ashes of World War II is no longer capable of pursuing international peace. The arrangement, conceived by the major powers that won the war, has expanded into a …
- Categories: BOOKS, Human Rights, Peace and Security, Responsibility to Protect, Security Council
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- Irwin Arieff
- • September 18, 2016
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Diplomacy is hard work, and you can easily work up a fierce appetite at United Nations headquarters, whether you’re an actual diplomat or just there to watch. Here are five spots — in no particular order — where you can …
- Categories: UN EATS
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- Irwin Arieff
- • August 3, 2016
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It’s an unforgivable cliché, of course, to say that good things come in small packages. But hey, in this case, it is true. @ The Spot is about as small as a place can get and still count as a …
- Categories: UN EATS
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- Irwin Arieff
- • July 12, 2016
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Too much of Africa is a mess. While there are, of course, great success stories, many countries continue, despite the end of colonialism and the Cold War, to suffer wildly from poverty, illness, corruption, coups and wars — too many …
- Categories: BOOKS
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- Irwin Arieff
- • June 9, 2016
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It started out as fast and filling food for impoverished students. Now ramen is a huge commodity and restaurants are ladling it out all over New York City, often with haute cuisine pretensions and prices to match. So what’s the …
- Categories: UN EATS
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- Irwin Arieff
- • April 28, 2016
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Entering Sons of Thunder, past pictures of surfboards and surfing, you might think this Murray Hill restaurant is dedicated to the thundering of waves. In a sense it is. The top dish here is poké, derived from a Hawaiian snack …
- Categories: UN EATS
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