Daily Inspiration Quote by Lakhdar Brahimi

A diplomatic slip that lands like a scalpel: Brahimi’s “international community” isn’t the world, it’s the VIP section. By naming the United States “definitely everywhere” and the European Union “very important,” he performs the quiet cynicism of someone who has spent a career watching power pretend it’s principle. The phrase is usually a moral mask, invoked to suggest broad consensus and shared responsibility. Brahimi pulls the mask off by reciting the cast list.

The genius is in the casualness. He doesn’t accuse; he enumerates. That offhand tone signals what insiders already know: global legitimacy is often manufactured through a narrow pipeline of capitals with vetoes, money, and media gravity. The flattery (“they do show a great deal of international responsibility”) reads like diplomatic etiquette, but it also drips with irony, because “responsibility” is precisely what gets contested when interventions go sideways or when crises are managed for stability, not justice.

Then comes the kicker: “and then the local players.” The syntax demotes the people living the conflict to afterthought status, a subordinate clause to Western primacy. It’s an indictment of a system where locals are treated as stakeholders to be consulted after the agenda is set, not authors of their own outcomes.

Context matters: Brahimi, a veteran UN mediator (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria), speaks from the trenches of multilateralism, where “international community” is code for who can actually move troops, unlock aid, or block action. The line is less gaffe than grim realism: a reminder that global governance often runs on a hierarchy everyone denies and everyone obeys.