Bombs and rockets – Page 43 – a sibilant intake of breath

Nye and Roberts on democratization

Last night’s talk on democratization by Joseph Nye and Adam Roberts basically encapsulated the most dominant strand of academic thinking on the subject. It was heavily focused on the American role in the Middle East (though Russia’s apparent slide towards autocracy was not entirely ignored) and essentially concluded that the US can and should continue to spread democracy, but must do so in moderate and locally tailored ways, rather than just stomping on people. There was agreement that the next administration (whether Clinton or McCain) would pursue more or less this path.

Both speakers agreed that attacking Iran would be an appalling error: both strategically, given the capacity of that state to cause havoc in the region, and politically, because of how an attack would unify moderates and conservatives in Iran around the present regime. It would also further diminish American credibility in the Muslim world.

Finally, there was some discussion of narratives: the one that Osama bin Laden propagates, that of the United States, and the kind that Europe might fruitfully deploy. As a continent that has managed to come together into peace and prosperity, after an appalling history of war, perhaps the European experience can be illustrative for other regions.

All of these points are sensible and sound, as you would expect from professors from Harvard and Oxford – the latter even knighted. One question that remains sitting on the table is how to deal with allied states that have less than excellent democratic credentials. It certainly damages US soft power to be so reliant upon the House of Saud, as well as people like Pervez Musharraf and Hosni Mubarak. It creates many opportunities to accuse the US of hypocrisy. That said, the generally cautious approach recommended by both speakers suggests a course of constructive engagement, rather than something more aggressive (though not forceful).

On a side note, the St. Antony’s International Review seems to be doing a very good job of publicizing itself. This is very welcome, given Oxford’s notable lack of a quality international relations journal. I should try to get a book review or something into it, before I leave Oxford.

‘Able Archer’ and leadership psychology

If you have any interest in nuclear weapons or security and you have never heard of the 1983 NATO exercise called ‘Able Archer’ you should read today’s featured Wikipedia article.

One fascinating thing it demonstrates is the amazing willingness of leaders to assume that their enemies will see actions as benign that, if they had been taken by those same enemies, would be seen as very aggressive. Case in point: the issues America is raising about Iranian intervention in Iraq. If Iran was involved in a major war on America’s doorstep, you can bet that there would be American intervention. This is not to assert any kind of moral equivalency, but simply to state the appallingly obvious.

OUSSG seeks new webmaster

Studying at Oxford? Interested in Strategic Studies? Web savvy? If these characteristics apply to you, consider nominating yourself to be the next webmaster of the Oxford University Strategic Studies Group. At present, I am serving in this capacity, but I will be leaving Oxford at the beginning of July.

The workload is very reasonable: uploading a termcard in HTML and PDF format once a term and then formatting speaker biographies and photos for each week of term time. Documentation that describes all of these processes, step by step, will be available. No coding skill is necessary; indeed, anyone who can run a blog can use Mambo, the content management system behind the OUSSG site. Basic knowledge of FTP use, HTML, and photo cropping would be assets.

Nominations for President, Vice-President (my other current role), and Secretary open at this Tuesday’s meeting at 8:30pm in All Souls College. Anyone interested in the webmaster position should contact any member of the executive in person or by email.

Thirteen Days

I watched Kai’s copy of Thirteen Days tonight. As a historical re-enactment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is apparently quite accurate. A lot of the dialogue was taken straight from tapes made of the meetings. Though, from what I have read, our historical understanding of the crisis keeps changing as new evidence becomes available. One can only speculate how much of what has happened in world politics more recently will be improperly understood, unless such archives are eventually opened.

The tension between the military and civilian portions of government is a particularly interesting aspect of the film. The kind of autonomy granted to military forces – as required for strategic reasons – is profoundly worrisome, in a world where ever more states have ever more nuclear weapons. That’s what makes the crisis such a chilling incident: the disjoint between intentions and certain action, the possibility of error and catastrophe.

Legal responsibilities of soldiers

A question in international law:

Some people will doubtless have heard about the case of Lieutenant Ehren Watada: the first American commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, on the grounds that the war is illegal. He has said, for instance:

This administration used us for rampant violations of time-tested laws banning torture and degradation of prisoners of war. Though the American soldier wants to do right, the illegitimacy of the occupation itself, the policies of this administration and the rules of engagement of desperate field commanders will ultimately force them to be party to war crimes.

In some ways, this is the inevitable product of saying that “I was just following orders” is not a legal defence for someone who has committed war crimes. In effect, stripping them of that protection obliges every soldier to contemplate the legality of their own actions. This is especially true for officers, given their special responsibilities under international law, as referenced in the Youmans Claim¹ and Zafiro Claim².

The Fourth Nuremberg Principle, established to try war criminals after the second world war, states that:

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

The Sixth Principle defines “Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression” as a crime against peace, punishable under international law. The Seventh says that mere “complicity in the commission of a crime against peace” can likewise be punished. Kofi Annan has called the second Iraq war illegal, and there is a legal case to be made that it was “a war of aggression.” At the very least, Lieutenant Watada will be able to make an interesting argument.

Politically, this case will probably just perpetuate the mudslinging war between people on the left who accuse the administration of criminality and those on the right who accuse the left of lacking patriotism and threatening American lives.

Lieutenant Watada’s court martial begins on February 5th, and he could be sentenced to up to six year’s imprisonment, if convicted.

[1] US v. Mexico (1926) US v. Mexican General Claims Commission: Van Vollenhoven, Presiding Commissioner; Fernandez McGregor, Mexican Commissioner; Nielson, US Commissioner. 4 R.I.A.A. 110

Essentially, Mexico was found to have not exercised due diligence in protecting three American nationals surrounded by a mob. The fact that Mexican soldiers actually fired upon the Americans while “on duty under the immediate supervision and in the presence of commanding officers” was taken to be relevant.

[2] Great Britain v. US (1925) American and British Claims Arbitration: Nerincx, President; Pound, American Arbitrator; Fitzpatrick, British Arbitrator. 6 R.I.A.A. 160

A privately owned ship with a Chinese crew was being commanded by an American officer. In the arbitration, it was found that in allowing the crew ashore unsupervised, when it could have been anticipated that they would participate in looting, was a violation of international law on the part of the officer.

No doubt, many more cases about the special responsibilities of officers exist. The Wikipedia entry on command responsibility includes a lot more information. American military doctrines and regulations also place special responsibility upon officers. As such, it would seem that people in that position have a special obligation to ask the kind of moral questions that Lieutenant Watada has.

Anfal charges dropped for Saddam Hussein

Compounding the error of hanging him, the Iraqi High Tribunal has chosen to drop all charges against Saddam Hussein in the ongoing trial about the Anfal campaign. He was convicted earlier for the killing of 148 civilians in Dujail, but the campaign against the Kurds in Anfal between 1986 and 1989 killed more than 100,000 people and involved the use of chemical weapons including Sarin.

The brutality and illegality of this campaign has been used by many to bolster the assertion that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and a criminal, and that the American-led invasion and occupation have been justified. It has also been used by those critical of the United States, particularly because some of the weapons used were almost certainly provided to Iraq by the United States and other western or NATO powers, either during or before the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). In March of 1986, the President of the United Nations Security Council issued the following statement:

[P]rofoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops… the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons.

(S/17911 and Add. 1, 21 March 1986)

The United States voted against the issuance of the statements, while the UK, Australia, France and Denmark abstained.

Those who hoped that there would at least be a proper investigation and documentation of the crimes committed under his regime will be disappointed. Likewise, those who hoped that further precedents about the use of chemical weapons by heads of state might be established in international law. The progression in Iraq seems less and less like one towards a democratic state governed by the rule of law.

Human security

This evening, I have been thinking about ‘human security.’ This is the idea – very hot right now in international policy circles – that the object of security should be the individual, rather than states (which are arbitrary) or governments (which can be selfish or non-representative). “Protect the Human,” as the Amnesty International campaign asserts. Given the atrocities committed against individuals in the quest to assert higher ideals, a moral system based around preventing such abuses has intuitive appeal.

What I am wondering about is the basis upon which the claim can be made that human security is the important sort. There is the possibility that the realities of human life make human security a valid perspective in a deep way that transcends trends in thinking and the present character of the international system. At the other extreme is the idea that this is just a concept cooked up in some reports and boardrooms that is being applied universally by those groups who have accepted it, despite it not having any fundamental validity. The third and most sensible possibility is that the idea of human security has emerged as the product of a lengthy deliberation among states.

That said, the state consensus view has problems of its own. In particular, the manner in which transgressors are dealt with becomes important. When African states and regional organizations fail to condemn Zimbabwe and Sudan for egregious violations of human rights, are they doing so because the think continued integration is the best way to forward a human security ideal they have already internalized (this would be akin to the supposed ‘sunshine policy’ of South Korea in dealing with the North), or do they remain wary of outside impositions, having been at the sharp end of too many in the past?

The present American administration has, in some ways, made this whole debate more difficult. On the one hand, they assert certain moral values as though they have absolute validity: democracy is good, tyranny is evil. At the same time, they are willing to compromise on fundamental moral questions, ostensibly to serve higher ends. Guantanamo Bay is one embodiment of this attitude. To champion both moral absolutes and a huge level of moral flexibility is enormously problematic. Taking a universal stance and then acting in a way that seems hypocritical leads people to question whether there are moral truths with a strong claim to validity. It also profoundly diminishes the ability to that particular moral actor to act as a model to others, or exert moral pressure. Arguably, situations like the inaction of the international community tars all other states that champion a human security agenda with a similar brush.

One of the more stirring things Michael Ignatieff ever wrote relates to just this issue of universal assertions and hypocritical failures to act:

The liberal virtues – tolerance, compromise, reason – remain as valuable as ever, but they cannot be preached by those who are mad with fear or mad with vengeance. In any case, preaching always rings hollow. We must be prepared to defend them by force, and the failures of the sated, cosmopolitan nations to do so has left the hungry nations sick with contempt for us.

That possibility – that the states of the developing world reject ‘human security’ and similar concepts because of the manifest lack of commitment from the developing world – is another potential solution to the puzzle of the status of such concepts in the world today.

Defining state failure

From writing about foreign aid, I have moved on to failed states. I am meant to discuss who defines states as ‘failed’ and what consequences it has for sovereignty. It seems to me that there are three general ways in which a state can be considered to have failed:

States can lose their integrity, as viewed from the security perspective by outsiders.
Alternatively, they can fail to maintain other characteristics that are considered essential in a modern state, such as a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Finally, they can fall below some moral threshold, below which their government or leadership is no longer seen as legitimate.

Of course, the relevance of a state being ‘failed’ or not failed lies primarily with how this changes the behaviour of other states and non-state groups towards it. If being a failed state suspends the traditional rights afforded to states – from territorial integrity to diplomatic immunity – being thus categorized could very significantly affect the treatment of both individuals and territory by outsiders.

In the first instance, a ‘failed’ state might be one that has lost control of what passes in and out of its territory, to the point where it endangers neighbouring states. This is a situation very specifically addressed in the United Nations Charter. Chapter VII specifically empowers the Security Council to “to maintain or restore international peace and security.” Generally, serious measures such as sanctions or interventions need to be justified as responses to such a threat. While the issue is sometimes fudged – for instance, by saying that possible refugee flows from an internal conflict threaten international peace and security – this is still quite generous amount of space to give states, in which to manage their own affairs.

There is a problem here, when it comes to states that have strong governments, and possibly even democratic legitimacy, but nonetheless either passively submit to or actively encourage activities that threaten international peace and security. Supplying weapons to illegal groups, for instance, is an activity that a very great many states have engaged in. It may be possible to be a criminal state without being a ‘failed’ state. If so, the difference in terms of treatment is worthy of consideration.

A definition of state failure based on the maintenance of certain characteristics by the state under consideration necessitates a setting out of what the essential characteristics of statehood are. In The Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War, Montague Bernard explained it thusly:

a Community or number of persons permanently organised under a Sovereign Government of their own, and by a Sovereign Government we mean a Government, however constituted, which exercises the power of making and enforcing law within a Community, and is not itself subject to any superior Government. These two factors, the one positive, the other negative, the exercise of power and the absence of superior control, compose the notion of Sovereignty and are essential to it.

Here, non-failed states need to do more than control their borders; they also need to maintain the capacity to enact and enforce laws. Probably, this requires more resources than just maintaining territorial integrity, though it is hard to imagine a state with impeccably policed borders and a largely lawless interior. The bigger issue with this expanded definition is that it begins to subject the internal structures of a state to external scrutiny, in a way closely tied to the ability of that state to maintain international legitimacy and recognition.

(I know we discussed a formal definition of statehood in international law, in the class I took at UBC on that subject. I can’t remember which specific document was involved, however. Anyone who does is very much encouraged to comment. All my notes and textbooks from the course are back in Vancouver.)

The definition of state failure with the widest scope is some kind of affirmation of moral codes that non-failed states must obey, even in the conduct of their internal operations. This is, of course, a conception that arises hand in hand with the idea of human security. The idea that governments that either actively engage in crimes against humanity or allow them to take place unchecked have foregone their sovereignty is one that can be easily justified within a liberal tradition of political theory. Of course, it is a step beyond that to affirm the right of other states, or of the international community, to intervene in such circumstances.

Other problems arise when the above criteria are considered in combination. Take the example of Pakistan. By many measures, it is a strong state. There is an organized central government with a clear structure. There is an organized military and police forces. The state is externally recognized by the international community. At the same time, Pakistan either cannot or does not control the flow of materials and individuals across its northern border with Afghanistan, despite a recent and bloody effort on the part of the army to take control. Also, Pakistan has been shown to be involved in international illicit trade in nuclear materials and information on making nuclear weapons. While few would call Pakistan a failed state, it does demonstrate characteristics associated with state failure.

In the end, it isn’t clear to me that the failed / non-failed dynamic has much usefulness, when it comes to states. It is too simple to allege that a right to intervene arises from failure to comply with one or another set of requirements. Some kind of more sophisticated moral and legal conversation is necessary, making this binary distinction just one point of discussion in a broader dialogue.

Another death in Iraq

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Charlie Chapman – “The Great Dictator“

Saddam Hussein’s sentence, discussed here previously, has been carried out. I maintain that it was immoral to kill him, just as it is immoral to take anyone’s life in the pursuit of justice. It is not through the living or dying of individuals that just societies arise, but through the creation and maintenance of fair and impartial institutions. This is why Chapman’s statement, while stirring, is also profoundly naïve. Sadly, very little in the way of a just society seems to be emerging in Saddam’s former kingdom.

I am not sure whether it is legitimate to hope that this will bring some satisfaction to the families of those tortured and murdered by his regime. On the one hand, they deserve whatever kind of compensation can be provided. On the other, encouraging people to delight in the death of a fellow human being seems morally reprehensible. At the very least, let us hope that this action does not spur greater violence in Iraq, and does not cut short the investigation and documentation of the whole sordid history of Saddam’s regime.

[Update: 3:00pm] My friends Lee and Tim have also commented on this matter.

Remembrance Day

After reading my friend Michael’s post on Remembrance Day, I find myself rethinking the event. I can think of three different potentially valid understandings of its purpose:

The day as a formalized period of mourning for the specific people who died in the wars commemorated.
A day meant to serve as recognition of the fundamental badness of war in general
A day meant to encourage contemplation of the specific conflicts being commemorated.

The first and second are clearly somewhat contradictory. You can get around that by either saying that war in general is bad, but these ones were noble and important or that waging war is honourable if done defensively, and all of these conflicts were defensive. Another way out is to say that the actions of those who died, specifically, were honourable, regardless of whether the broader endeavour in which they were engaged was.

The most easily justifiable position is to avoid the automatic taking of a moral stance – in response to the occasion – but rather use the chance to reflect on the specifics of the conflicts themselves: how they arose, how they progressed, what they resulted in, and what the importance of all of that is now. Such an approach has the virtue of independence of thought, but probably rather misses the point of a commemorative ceremony of the sort that Remembrance Day is meant to be.

Regardless of the conclusions you reach, the balance you end up contemplating is one between large-scale strategies and small-scale sacrifices. Whether it’s Canadians being blown up by roadside bombs while trying to aid negotiations between the central government and provincial warlords in Afghanistan today or Canadians dying to test the German defences in Dieppe in 1942, such examples force us to think hard about the aims of our foreign policy, and the purposes for which armed force should be employed in the world.