Contributors

Kofi Annan: Super Negotiator

Spare a thought for the tireless Kofi Annan, criss-crossing the globe in search of a negotiated solution to the current crisis in Syria. Since finishing his tenure as secretary general of the United Nations, Annan has been mentioned most often when those exasperated with seemingly intractable situations are in search of a mediator. It’s an interesting sign of the times that there are so few figures seen to possess the qualities of patience and impartiality necessary for mediation.

Annan played a critical role in stemming the violence that erupted after Kenya’s disputed national elections in late 2007 (which led to approximately 1,200 deaths and the displacement of over 600,000 people). As the ethnically motivated attacks threatened to spiral out of control, the African Union sent in a number of potential mediators (including former South African bishop Desmond Tutu, and the former president of Ghana, John Kufuor). But it was only when Annan arrived and the international community focused on a single negotiation process that the talks between the two rival political leaders (President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga) finally got underway. After roughly 40 days of hard bargaining – underpinned by threats to impose targeted sanctions and cut off aid – a deal (the National Accord and Reconciliation Act) was reached, which included a power-sharing agreement and the establishment of a justice and reconciliation commission. The key measures that facilitated the accord included sequestering the two sides at a retreat at the Kilaguni Lodge in Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park, Annan’s well-timed interventions with the two principals, and temporarily suspending the talks when negotiations appeared to be deadlocked. More …

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What a Difference a Year Makes

On Feb. 26, 2011, in response to the Gadhafi regime’s violent crackdowns against protesters, the United Nations Security Council reached unanimous agreement on a resolution to impose an arms embargo, travel ban and asset freeze against the Libyan authorities, and to refer the killings of civilians to the International Criminal Court.

Yesterday, almost a year later, the council was the scene of tension and discord, rather than consensus. In a show of defiance, Russia and China both exercised their vetoes to block passage of a resolution sponsored by western and Arab states, designed to address the ongoing carnage in Syria (the final vote tally was 13 to two). Amid the recrimination that followed, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice dropped any pretense of diplomatic courtesy and claimed that she was “disgusted” by the Russian and Chinese decision. “For months this Council has been held hostage by a couple of members,” she said. “Any further bloodshed that flows will be on their hands.” The British permanent representative to New York, Mark Lyall Grant, echoed this sentiment: “Russia and China have turned their backs on the Arab world to support tyranny.” More …

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Do We Need a Foreign Policy Review? Afraid So…

A number of commentators, including former Canadian ambassador to Washington Derek Burney and Carleton University professor Fen Osler Hampson, have recently lamented the Harper government’s decision to engage in a review of the country’s foreign policy – with the end result likely to be a new “Foreign Policy Plan.” These critics call on Canada to focus on “doing” foreign policy, rather than “talking” about it, particularly if that talking involves any mention of Canadian values.

Call me a sucker for punishment, but I believe we actually do need to review foreign policy, and much better than we have in the past. Burney and Osler Hampson’s argument that Canada has engaged in strategic reviews more than any other country of “comparable size” needs greater scrutiny. Prior to 2005, when the Martin government issued its International Policy Statement (full disclosure: I was actively involved in producing this statement), Canada had not formally reviewed its foreign policy for a decade. Is this the definition of “frequent,” especially when the intervening events (like 9/11) and power shifts between 1995 and 2005 created critical new imperatives for our foreign policy? More …

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Lean, But Still Mean?

U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement yesterday of a new defence strategy for his country is a response not only to painful fiscal realities, but also to a strong sense of fatigue with the policy of the large military “footprint.” Obama declared that his country was “turning the page on a decade of war” and no longer anticipated the need to engage in large-scale stabilization efforts of the kind we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The fine details of this shift in doctrine will only emerge with the U.S. budget next month, when actual troop reductions will be specified. Nonetheless, there is a clear expectation of a 10-to-15-per-cent cut to the size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, and an increased reliance on the Air Force and Navy. Many commentators will therefore ask whether, under this revised scenario, the U.S. will still be able to sustain its capacity to fight two wars at once – long held to be the defining feature of its superpower status. But while the forecasted reduction in troops is significant – estimated to be worth $450 billion – it still leaves the United States with the largest military in the world (and one that is roughly the same size as it was five years ago). What emerges, then, is a U.S. that is undoubtedly leaner, but still “mean” enough to intimidate its rivals. More …

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Solving Syria

The Arab League’s monitoring mission to Syria is facing a legitimacy crisis. While the secretary general of the League, Nabil Elaraby, claims the mission has helped persuade the embattled Syrian regime to release political prisoners and pull tanks back from city centres, critics contend that the monitors are colluding with the government to cover up the killing of protesters. Some organizations, such as Amnesty International, have gone even further, arguing that the mission chief – senior Sudanese military officer Mustafa al-Dabi – cannot credibly engage in an investigation of atrocities in Syria given his alleged connection to human-rights abuses in his own country.

Al-Dabi reported this past week that he had seen “nothing frightening” in the embattled Syrian city of Homs. Yet, if the reports can be taken as accurate, 150 more protesters have been killed on Syria’s streets since the observers arrived. Even the advisory committee to the Arab League has opined that the monitors come home. More …

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British Exceptionalism and the ‘National Interest’

Twenty years ago today, British Prime Minister John Major obtained an opt-out clause on the proposed single European currency. This allowed the United Kingdom to be part of the European Union for political and economic union but outside what would become the eurozone. The policy pursued then was consistent with the approach Britain had taken ever since joining the European Economic Community in 1973: to be “in” Europe, but with caveats. 

The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, appears to have broken with that conventional wisdom by choosing to veto a new EU-wide treaty designed to address both the symptoms and root causes of the deep economic malaise affecting the eurozone.

The decision is ironic on many fronts, most notably because Cameron’s overriding concern as prime minister has been to avoid tying himself in knots over Europe — as so many Conservative leaders have done before him. Indeed, the issue of Europe has torpedoed many a Conservative’s career in the U.K.

When Cameron became prime minister in 2010 at the head of a Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition that included both dyed-in-the-wool Eurosceptic Tories and pro-European Liberals, he confidently believed he had found the formula to transcend the problems of old. It appears that overconfidence has been misplaced. After 18 months of insisting that there is not, and never will be, a two-speed Europe, where Britain is on the margins, Cameron has created precisely that scenario. More …

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How “New” is the Threat of Cyber Attack?

NATO’s recent military campaign in Libya is the subject of intense scrutiny from all corners. Did the alliance overstep its mandate? Were civilian lives sacrificed, rather than protected, in order to secure regime change? Is it possible to protect civilians from the air at all?

One aspect of the campaign, which has received relatively little attention, may in fact turn out to have long-lasting effects. In the very first days of NATO’s air strikes, officials in the Obama administration engaged in intense debate over whether to disrupt and disable the Libyan air-defence system through a cyber attack. While the precise details have not been made public, it appears that the attack would have involved an attempt to sever military communication links to prevent early warning radar in Libya from gathering information about NATO war planes, and relaying that data back to missile batteries with the capacity to bring down the aircraft.

Several reasons have been cited for the eventual decision not to proceed with a cyber attack (and to use conventional missiles and drones instead). One prominent theory is that members of the administration were concerned about a lack of legal authority to engage in such an act, without Congressional approval. But equally plausible is the argument (reported in the New York Times) that engaging in a cyber attack would have set a precedent for other countries, such as Russia and China, to do so in the future. If true, this suggests that the capacity to engage in cyber attacks is seen as a key advantage in the coming struggles of the 21^st century – and one that should be kept secret from one’s rivals. As one U.S. official is reported to have said, “These cybercapabilities are still like the Ferrari that you keep in the garage and only take out for the big race, not just for a run around town.”

Yet, we know that the Ferrari has made it out on a couple of occasions – most notably in 2010 when a Stuxnet computer worm wiped out part of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges (delaying its ability to produce nuclear fuel), and in 2007 when Estonia was subjected to a “distributed denial of service” attack (effectively shutting down all internet-based services in this highly internet-reliant society).

Jennifer Welsh on other ways in which the ethics and conduct of war are changing. 

Clay Shirky and Margaret MacMillan on how Wikileaks will change international affairs.

In both of these cases, it has been difficult to attribute the attack to any one actor in particular (though the U.S. and Israel are the suspected perpetrators of the first, and Russia the suspected mastermind behind the second). This “attribution problem” has been noted by both scholars and policy-makers, and seems to be one of the key challenges confronting attempts to conceive of any legal constraints on cyber attacks.  In one of the few attempts to analyse the moral issues raised by cyber attacks, philosopher Randall Diepert has argued that “cyber conflict” is so different and so novel that it cannot possibly be regulated by our existing ethical and legal frameworks.

But is this true? Do we need to start from scratch when thinking about how to limit cyber attacks? We were also told after 9/11 that terrorism was “completely different” from any other threat that we had ever faced, and that “new rules” were needed. And so we got rendition and Guantanamo Bay.

While not wanting to minimize the novelty or seriousness of the threat, it’s worth asking how our current legal and moral prohibitions on the use of force (contained in the UN Charter’s Article 2.4 and the broader notions of “just cause”, “proportionality”, and “last resort”) might serve as a starting point for thinking about how to contain and limit this new practice. So, as George Lucas (Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy) has recently argued, we can begin to distinguish between permissible from impermissible forms of cyber conflict – based on whether they are aimed at justified military targets. Under this logic, Stuxnet might be deemed a legitimate act, while the widespread attack on Estonia’s civilian infrastructure would not.

Adopting this perspective, we might also question the view – sometimes expressed – that cyber attacks are to be welcomed rather than feared. Because they do not use traditional military means, they are less destructive, and therefore constitute a kind of ‘lesser evil’ to bombs and bullets. Fewer (if any) soldiers’ lives are lost, and so-called collateral damage from inaccurate missiles is avoided. On this reading, then, the Obama administration acted immorally when it opted to use a conventional weapon, rather than a cyber attack, to take out Qaddafi’s air defences.

However, if we contemplate not the means, but the effects of cyber attacks, it’s not obvious that they are more “humane”. Estonia experienced a widespread and indiscriminate attack on civilian institutions; had the attack lasted much longer, the damage done to those institutions could have been profound (with the potential for loss of civilian life). To put it another way, cyber attacks do not render old ethical questions meaningless; rather, they challenge us to think about what “harm” means in the context of cyberspace.

Following the 2007 attack, Estonian officials requested NATO to consider invoking Article V of its treaty (which treats an attack on one member of the alliance an attack on all). At the time, this suggestion was swiftly rejected, on the grounds that a clear military attack had not occurred.

NATO’s confusion, and non-response, is unlikely to work when (and not if) such an attack occurs again. As long as societies become increasingly dependent on networked technologies, and as long as some of those societies are preparing ways to coerce one another in cyberspace, the question of how to minimize the harm caused by cyber attacks will remain a pressing one.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

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Revenge of the Technocrats

Three weeks ago, I suggested that democratic politics had reasserted itself in Europe – to the consternation of those who wanted Greece and Italy to fall into line on the policies needed to address the eurozone crisis.

This past week, by contrast, has seen moves to minimize those democratic impulses. On Friday, Italy’s newly appointed prime minister and respected eurocrat, Mario Monti, won a vote of confidence on the composition of his new government in Italy’s lower house of parliament – a government whose cabinet does not include a single elected official.

Monti proposes to double up as Finance Minister, with a plan to balance the budget, stimulate growth, overhaul Italy’s pension system, and fight against decades of tax evasion. It’s an agenda that technocrats have long wanted to pursue, but that democratic politics in Italy had apparently made very difficult. 

But it’s not just the technocrats who are frustrated with democracy. It’s also the financial markets. As The Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland argued last week, 2011 may be remembered as the year when democracy was being demanded and fought for in one part of the world (during the Arab Spring), while it was exposed elsewhere “as paralysed and impotent in the face of economic crisis.”

By contrast, the leaders of the world’s non-democratic states, wrote Freedland, “had a spring in their step” at the G20 meeting in Cannes, confident that they could “face down whatever the economic meltdown threw at them.” Without the constant pressure of an unruly electorate, states like China, Saudi Arabia, or Singapore could – in theory – push austerity down and through their societies, or engage in massive stimulus. The markets know this too. This is why they appear less pessimistic about these states’ capacity to weather the storm than they are about the capacity of the U.S., Italy, and the rest of the eurozone.

 See what Jennifer Welsh wrote three weeks on the reassertion of democratic politics.

Read John Hancock’s argument on how democratic politics can cause problems.

The shrewd observer of democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, once lamented the inability of democratic governments to fashion a coherent foreign policy – one that could sail above petty local concerns and squabbles and take the “long view.” What the current crisis suggests, however, is that markets have adopted de Tocqueville’s critical stance regarding democratic states’ domestic policies, as well. 

So does this mean the era of democracy’s triumphalism is coming to an end? After the fall of the Soviet Union and the revolutions in Eastern Europe, western commentators declared democracy to be the “winner” in the contest to bring progress and prosperity to citizens. Some went even further, claiming that – because democratic states tend not to go to war with one another – a broad campaign to democratize was also the best answer to the problem of interstate conflict.

But if Italy is any indication, democracy is having a bit of a rough ride. The technocrats’ rise to power is eerily reminiscent of the words of another commentator on democracy, the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who argued that it was impossible to have “rule by the people” (the essence of democracy), given their short-term perspective and lack of knowledge and expertise. As Schumpeter famously wrote: “If results that prove in the long run satisfactory to the people at large are made the test of government for the people, then government by the people, as conceived by the classical doctrine of democracy, would often fail to meet it.”

This seems to be the view of those who believe it is time for the technocrats to rule for the people, by doing what is “best” for them. The problem, of course, is that decades of liberal democracy have created a people that is anything but homogeneous, with a single and definable interest. Despite the rhetorical commitment to equality that underpins democracy, economic inequality is a striking feature of many of the democracies now facing crisis.

So where does this leave democracy? The core of this system remains the capacity to change government without bloodshed. As political theorist Adam Przeworski once put it, in a democracy, “people who have guns obey those without them.” That (among other things) is what distinguishes Italy from Syria. Moreover, the very fact that there is the prospect of a government changing fosters a spirit of compromise that makes the resolution of conflict more likely. 

As the markets express their dissatisfaction with the fickleness and indecisiveness of democracy, those pulling the strings behind those markets should perhaps ask themselves whether they would really like to live under any other system.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

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It’s About Politics, Not Economics

There was a time, at the height of the euphoria over globalization in the 1990s, when nation-states and their governments seemed to be, well, beside the point. Economic forces were alleged to be in the driver’s seat, determining not just fiscal and monetary policy, but social policy as well.

The roller coaster ride that we have experienced in Europe over the past two weeks is a potent reminder that politics – and more precisely, democratic politics  – are alive and well, frustrating the efforts of the elites to craft the “right” solution to the Eurozone crisis.

The economic pundits seem to be in broad agreement about what needs to happen. The Greeks need to swallow the medicine, no matter how distasteful, and agree to the conditions attached to their loan. The rest of the Eurozone countries (read Germany) need to step up and provide sufficient resources to shore up the Euro. And the IMF needs to become – as it was during previous financial crises – the all-important anchor and source of liquidity in the global economy.

 But in all three cases, politics have intervened. As the conversation in Cannes revealed, neither the U.S. nor the U.K. – let alone the squeamish Chinese – could promise to pump large sums into the IMF. In the case of the former two, their domestic parliaments and congresses just wouldn’t agree. In Britain, for example, there is a powerful sentiment against allowing taxpayers’ money to travel via an IMF infusion in the coffers of the Eurozone. And so no precise figures were promised at the G20 meeting. Instead we saw an agreement on the part of Italy to be “monitored”, and vague discussions about a new “special facility” that might be created to support Europe in its hour of need. But the overwhelming sentiment at Cannes, shared by the Europeans themselves, was that this is the Eurozone’s responsibility to sort out first, if it can.

In the case of the Germany, it is history that seems to shape so much of its policy response. On the one hand, German policy-makers from this particular generation are hard-wired to support European unity, no matter what it takes. The European ‘project’ has delivered peace for a generation, and offered Germans the possibility of new history. Hence the strength of Merkel’s commitment last week to bail out Greece. Yet, at the same time, another ghost from Germany’s history – rampant inflation – has served to dampen its enthusiasm for providing what the markets seem to crave: a huge sum of money that can prop up not only Greece, but Italy as well.

And then we come to the embattled Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou. As I write, he has survived a no-confidence vote in the Greek parliament, but only on the condition (it appears) that he step down and pave the way for a new government of national unity that will attempt to deliver on the requirements of the bail-out package agreed last week by European leaders. The task facing the government that emerges from this turmoil is no less than monumental, given the continued presence of large protests in the Athens’ square just outside parliament.

There is much irony in the fate of Papandreou. Most obvious is the fact that his grandfather (whose name he shares) was first elected as Prime Minister 48 years ago on November 3 – the very day that Papandreou the younger was warding off calls for his departure. But there is also irony in the fact that it is Greece – the birthplace of democracy – that has done a u-turn on the promise of the referendum. These days it seems that to be a “good European” is to act against the instincts of one’s electorate (or, in the case of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the desires of a good portion of his own party) and avoid – at all costs – referenda.

Europe has, of course, been here before. The reaction of the Irish public to the Lisbon Treaty threatened to scupper the handiwork of Europe’s enlightened technocrats. But this time, there is arguably more at stake. The economic and social dislocation that threatens Greece (no matter how much the Greeks may have contributed to their own malaise) is very real. And for a relatively young democracy, it is deeply unsettling. What is particularly striking about the protesters in Athens is their age: they are predominantly young, under the age of 30. They are Greece’s future, yet their overwhelming sense is that their future is bleak.

Given that reality, was it really so audacious for Papandreou to seek a mandate from those who will bear the costs of austerity? The reaction of his European peers suggests that he had committed the ultimate betrayal. The script had been written, and all Papandreou needed to do was act out his part. Perhaps, in the end, Greece will deliver its lines – even if later than expected, and with a new Prime Minister. But something important has intervened to remind the guardians of the Eurozone about who, ultimately, should be in the driver’s seat.

More broadly, the Greek tragedy points to Europe’s hubris. It was politics, not economics, which motivated the push to include Greece in the Euro. The signs were there, for anyone who cared to look, that Greece’s ‘economic fundamentals’ might not be compatible with the requirements of its inclusion in the common currency. But the symbolic prospect of inclusion was just too tempting. How could the country of Plato be, as proclaimed by one French official, outside of Europe’s great scheme for monetary union? And so, today, politics rears its head again, though not quite in the way that the leaders of the Eurozone might have expected.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

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The Impact of 9/11 on the Ethics of Military Action

Ten years ago, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the United States initiated military action against Afghanistan – a state it accused of harbouring those who launched the devastating attacks. There has been much reflection on what 9/11 has meant, and how it changed the nature and trajectory of international politics.

But what about the legality and ethics of war itself? At a recent seminar in Oxford, the co-directors of the Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC) analyzed this broader question, and identified at least three major effects of 9/11 on ethical and legal developments.

The first effect relates to the authorization of the use of force. If we cast our minds back to September 2001, we’ll remember an unusual moment of international solidarity and support for the United States. Indeed, on Sept. 12, 2001, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1368, a statement in support of measures against those responsible for aiding and supporting the perpetrators of the attacks. At the same time, NATO invoked Article 5 of its founding treaty, declaring that the assault on the U.S. represented an assault on all members of the alliance.

At that point, however, the Bush Administration did not take up the implicit offer of a UN-authorized military action against Afghanistan. Nor did it immediately accept NATO’s offer of assistance. Instead, on Oct. 7, the U.S. informed the Security Council that it would exercise its right of self-defence, under the terms of the UN Charter, to attack al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban military installations in Afghanistan. The rationale, as explained at the time, was a desire on the part of the U.S. to maintain as much flexibility as possible in terms of how it engaged in reprisals against those who had attacked its territory.

Ten years on, however, Security Council authorization has become more important than ever as a means of legitimizing the use of force. The biggest factor explaining this trend is, of course, the Iraq war – the great diversion from the war in Afghanistan – which the U.S.-led coalition initiated without the backing of the council. The negative fallout from this episode is still with us, seen most visibly in NATO’s reluctance to participate in the Libya mission until an affirmative UN Security Council resolution had been passed.

A second major impact of the post-9/11 attack on Afghanistan is the evolving view in international law on the legitimacy of military action against non-state groups. The question can be posed as follows: To what extent can a state use force, in self-defence, on the territory of another state, in order to “punish” a non-state group, if that state is not directly responsible for the actions of the non-state group?

As noted by international lawyer Dapo Akande, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) addressed a very similar question in 1986, during its deliberations over the legality of U.S. military actions against Nicaragua. At that time, the U.S. argued that it was acting in collective self-defence, in support of neighbouring states such as El Salvador and Costa Rica, to respond to the destabilizing effects of Nicaraguan-sponsored rebels in their territory.

The ICJ, however, ruled that Nicaragua’s support for the rebels – while perhaps illegal – did not constitute an armed attack, and therefore did not justify the military response of the U.S. In order to qualify as an armed attack, the court reasoned, there had to be evidence that the state in question had “sent” or “controlled” the rebel groups. Only a year earlier, in a unanimous resolution, the Security Council had come to a similar conclusion in its condemnation of the Israeli use of force against Palestine Liberation Organization positions in Tunis.

But what a difference a decade makes. The response to the 9/11 attacks has opened up a space where states now believe they can lawfully use force in the territory of states that “harbour” terrorists or rebel groups. Examples of this practice include Turkey in Northern Iraq, Russia in Georgia, Rwanda and Uganda in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia in Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

More broadly, this trend marks a change in the very nature of war. Today, most instances of military force do not involve two sovereign states, but are instead characterized by a single state acting against non-state rebel groups or “terrorists.”  The law of armed conflict, by contrast, is still designed primarily for the former kind of conflict – resulting in significant gaps in regulation. So, for example, while the law pertaining to international armed conflict (i.e., war between two states) has clear provisions for the detention of prisoners, the rules for non-international armed conflict (i.e., of the Afghanistan variety) does not have the same degree of clarity.

Finally, the military response to 9/11 has raised important questions about the ambitions of liberal interventionism. The rationale for the use of force in Afghanistan went through a series of iterations. In the very early days, the campaign was dubbed “Operation Infinite Justice” – a symbol of the spirit of reprisal that motivated it. Once Muslim groups in the United States warned of the implications of invoking notions of justice, the Bush Administration switched to “Operation Enduring Freedom.”

This shift was more than linguistic. It also reflected the growing belief on the part of the U.S. that political transformation and the promotion of humanitarian outcomes were necessary to “win the hearts and minds” of the Afghan people. President George W. Bush, who, in the 2000 election campaign, had expressly eschewed nation-building, now embraced it with open arms – committing not just the U.S., but all of the members of the NATO alliance, to an expansive conception of the “national interest” and a lofty set of war aims that are still largely unfulfilled.

Some commentators have argued that the failure to achieve these aims in Afghanistan has killed liberal interventionism. But the willingness to engage in military action in Libya suggests that the arguments in its favour still carry some weight. Whether the national budgets of the U.S. and its allies can finance these arguments is perhaps the most pertinent question to ask.

Two things, however, do seem clear. First, without 9/11, liberal interventionist impulses would not have been strong enough to justify military action to improve the human-rights situation in Afghanistan. The Security Council had imposed sanctions in October 1999 against the Taliban, and routinely expressed concern about violations of human rights (especially the rights of women). But there was insufficient will to act more forcefully on that concern.

Second, even if the word “justice” fell out of the U.S. rationale for war soon after 9/11, it has now found its way into the rhetoric and motives of those fighters in Afghanistan who today seek to throw out the foreign “intruders.”

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

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