Targeting the Source: Why Supporters of Abuse Should Be Held to Account

Guest post by Katherine Boom, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

           As Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on civilian protesters unfolds, the international community agonizes over how to punish the Syrian government. But while the debate rages over whether to respond to Assad through sanctions, military intervention or a punitive tribunal, few are questioning how to treat his third-party supporters. No case of mass atrocity occurs in a vacuum: states or groups committing crimes receive support from outside sources. Yet the international mechanisms for punishing crimes against humanity often focus solely on the perpetrators, not their accomplices. This needs to change.

In the Syrian case for example, what many know but few discuss is that in 2011, Russia sold nearly $1 billion in arms to Assad’s government. After months of standing their ground Russian officials have finally agreed to temper weapons sales, yet this incident raises broader questions about the role that states should have in preventing crimes against humanity. Russia’s decision to limit its material support of Assad may be telling of the effects that pressure from the United States and others can have, which is not insignificant. The fact remains, however, that as they are currently interpreted the existing legal mechanisms are insufficient to ensure that accomplices to human rights abuses are likely to be held accountable. And Russia’s role in Syria is only a recent example of a long-standing problem. 

Mall Culture in a Global City

Starbucks in the Ibn Battuta Mall

Greetings Ducklings!  Just sending y'all a little post-card from the United Arab Emirates where I am spending a couple of weeks in Dubai and the neighboring emirates trying to learn more about the political economy of this fascinating and dynamic country particularly since the housing bubble burst in 2008.

Between meetings I seem to find myself visiting a lot of malls.  With the summer time heat, the many malls here become the center for public life or at least a site of perambulation in a nominally open, air-conditioned space by ethnically segregated family units plus trailing nannies. One of the things that fascinates me about the mega-malls here in Dubai are the generally flimsy attempts to encourage expatriates and visitors to respect local customs by asking them to cover their knees and elbows. The suggested dress code seems to be ignored rather regularly and occasionally egregiously.  Most Emiratis seem quite tolerant of the sartorial choices of their visitors and foreign residents, but there has been a twitter campaign (#UAEDressCode) by some Emiratis to encourage greater modesty.

Communities and otherness: a typology

I have long been intrigued by Orson Scott Card's typology of relations to the other, as expressed in his novel Speaker for the Dead. I like it so much that I used it as a central part of my argument (in Chapter 2 of this forthcoming edited volume) that the depicted relations between Colonials and cylons in Battlestar Galactica can tell us something about how to construct a more humane social order. But teaching the novel for the umpteenth time in my sci-fi course this week -- it and its prequel Ender's Game have been in every iteration of the course since I wrote the first draft of the syllabus when I was about fifteen -- it occurred to me that the Card typology needed some analytical tightening before it could be truly useful. I did a first run at working through the issues in class on Wednesday; this post is my second attempt. And it has prettier diagrams than the ones I scrawled on the whiteboard in class.

Card's typology contains four orders of otherness or foreignness:

The first is the otherlander, or utlanning, the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country. The second is the framling…This is the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another world. The third is the raman, the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the varelse, which includes all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it.

The major advantage of this typology, and the potential that I find in it, stems from the fact that it is a typology of relations, not a typology of already-fully-formed communities.

Politics on the Water's Edge: U.S. Elites and Multilateralism

Are there major differences between Democratic and Republican elites on multilateral cooperation? This question animates a new study that I carried out with my frequent collaborator Jon Monten and my colleague William Inboden.  In mid 2011 and early 2012, we were able to conduct a unique survey of about 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans, nearly all of whom had served in fairly senior positions in the U.S. government, mostly the Executive Branch.

On the Foreign Affairs website, we report on the results of that survey. There are a few surprises, both in terms of areas of shared attitudes but also significant areas of disagreement. Contrary to the emergent conventional wisdom, we conclude that the basis of bipartisan support for multilateral approaches remains quite strong across a number of key areas, namely for international trade, the Bretton Woods organizations, and traditional security alliances like NATO as well as long-time bilateral partners like the UK, Japan, and South Korea.

Say Ron Paul Won…Which US Allies would get Retrenched? (2)

Here is part one where argued that America’s 8 most important allies are, in order: Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Israel, and South Korea.

I argued for 3 quick-and-dirty reasons for that ranking, but I got some criticism on these in the first post, so here is some elaboration :

1. National Security: Some places, like SA and Mexico, may not appeal much to Americans, but they are so obviously important, that abandonment would be hugely risky. So yes, SA is a nasty, reactionary ‘frenemy,’ not really an ally at all, but we’re stuck with it. A Saudi collapse would set off both huge economic and Islamic religious turmoil; all the more reason to slowly exit the Middle East and pursue green energy. But until then, I think we have to be honest and say that we can’t really leave the Gulf. But the bar of this criterion should be awfully high. With some frenemies, like Afghanistan and Pakistan, we don’t really need to pretend to be allies actually. We can just get out if have to.

2. Need: In some places, the US can get a lot more bang for its commitment buck, because without us, our ally would likely collapse/lose/fail. Taiwan is the most obvious example. Conversely, other places, like Germany, pretend to need us, because they don’t want to shell out the cash (and we’re so bewitched of our God-given, history-ending, last-best-hope-for-mankind, bound-to-lead neocon unipolar awesome-ness that we let ourselves get taken for a ride).Between Taiwan and Germany, I would place Israel and SK.

3. Values/Symbolism: I don’t like this criterion much, because it reminds me a lot of McNamara, ‘credibility,’ Vietnam, the Munich analogy and all that. But still, there are a few places where the American commitment has taken on an almost ‘metaphysical,’ good-guys-vs-bad-guys dimension. The whole world is watching, and a departure would be seen as a huge retreat from critical values that would bolster dictators everywhere, especially in China and Russia. SK is the most obvious example. NK is so bizarre, frightening, and horrific that while the US commitment isn’t really that necessary anymore, it’s taken on a symbolism wholly out of proportion to events on the peninsula. Taiwan also comes to mind, as does cold war West Germany. Avoiding another such perpetual commitment was one of the important reasons to get out of Iraq. If we’d stayed, we might have have gotten chain-ganged into never leaving our symbol of GWoT ‘success.’ We really don’t need more of that sort thing

So back to the list. Now come the ones that can more easily be retrenched, because either they are wealthy enough to defend themselves, or their value to the US has fallen:

How the US is Slowly Cultivating the Conditions for a Renewed International Order

Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter’s talk in Parliament in London this week offered useful insights into how the Obama administration and foreign policy analysts around it are thinking about shaping international order. As Director of Policy Planning in that administration from 2009-11 she spoke from experience about the mechanisms being used to implement international change. While she touched on Syria, drone strikes and other newsworthy issues, her wide-ranging discussion was more important for the glimpses it gave of the theoretical assumptions underlying how US policymakers understand change. There is a tremendously ambitious agenda at work. We must scrutinise the theory driving that agenda if we’re to understand US foreign policy.

Slow-Motion Srebrenica

The NY Times’ recent article on Obama’s “kill list” of American citizens and others suspected--not convicted--of terrorism includes much disturbing information on what our government is doing in our names.  The entire “kill list” process and Obama’s central role in it has seldom been presented in such detail in a mainstream publication.   It is necessary if ugly reading, even if it is written in something approaching a triumphalist tone. 

The “kill list” involves U.S. targeting of Americans and others for drone death worldwide. This is being done without “due process of law.”  Previously, due process of law has meant that an impartial decision maker hears evidence presented by the executive branch, before an American is convicted of — let alone executed for— a crime.  For the “kill list,” due process of law does not exist.  If the Executive branch, the CIA, or other “intelligence” agencies, suspect you or another American of being a terrorist, your right to due process of law evaporates.  All you receive is review by officials of the same agencies who fingered you in the first place and will okay your killing, ultimately Obama himself. 

Right to defend yourself?  Forget about it.  Right to trial?  No way?  Worry about blowback?  Not a care, for instance, about reaction to the Yemeni family of 8 obliterated by drone days ago.

To me, one of the most unsettling points in the article was the “explanation” for why drone attacks are asserted, by government officials, to kill so few civilians.  It’s simple really:  just redefine the word “combatant.”   Thanks to the Obama administration, it has now been defined down to mean  “all military-age males in a strike zone . . . unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

And of course, Obama is now personally authorizing the assassination of individuals, whether Americans or foreigners, based merely on their behavior—and without their identities being known.  So-called “signature” strikes, make the situation even worse than it first appears.    

All of this reminded me of the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.   Serb military forces under Ratko Mladic rounded up  “all military-age males” in the town, accusing them of support for or participation in attacks on the Serbs.  They then systematically slaughtered about 6,000, with no process of law.  Srebrenica, of course, was roundly and rightly condemned by the world community, not least Obama’s “atrocities czar” and one-time human rights champion, Samantha Power.

With Obama’s drone warfare, we appear to be doing the same thing, albeit over longer periods of time, in smaller batches of butchery, and using remote control weaponry.   As imperial hegemon, it seems, the U.S. is “permitted” to do this, even by those who profess to believe in human rights. 

The Mischiefs of Faction

Let's face it: academic American politics blogs get all the love. Not only do they have lots of pretty graphs, but they also make authoritative pronouncements about issues central to the political blogsphere. But that doesn't mean the we forlorn international-relations bloggers won't occasionally welcome our more wealthy cousins to the neighborhood, particularly when the blog in question involves a colleague.

So go check The Mischiefs of Faction out. You know you want to.

Duck on a TRIP

The new TRIP survey is out. While the overall findings don't hold many surprises, there are some nuggets of interest. We'll have more to say later, but for now I want to call out a particular finding. 

Every survey asks the question "aside from you, please list four scholars who have produced the most interesting scholarship in the past five years." In some respects, this question functions as a proxy for "most influential," as the list:

• Is very similar to the one for "four scholars who have had the greatest influence on the field of IR in the past 20 years"; and 
• Contains a few people who, despite their big brains and mighty influence, haven't produced much in the way of published work in the past five years. 

Given those two points, I'm particularly impressed by the presence of a single scholar from my cohort among the top twenty. 

W00t!!!

Does the ICC Need to Reconcile with Africa? Bensouda Comes Out Swinging

(Originally posted at Justice in Conflict)

Photo: BBC

Fatou Bensouda, incoming Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, has put threatening war criminals and defiant states on notice. In several recent public statements she has directly addressed two of the Court's most significant challenges: the accusation that the Court's credibility suffers from a "pro-Western, anti-African" bias and the related issue of ensuring state cooperation and support, particularly in executing arrest warrants.

The argument that the ICC has (so far) unjustly targeted only African states and individuals is mostly based on misperception and has become a rhetorical tool of political elites to undermine the Court. Yes, all of the situations presently under the Court's jurisdiction are from Africa. But as Bensouda and many others have pointed out, the Africa bias criticism is baseless for the following reasons.

African states wanted the ICC. Much of the strongest support for a permanent international criminal court in the Rome Treaty negotiations came from the Africa group. That support continued after Rome and African States Parties have a high level of ratification of the treaty (although, notably, a weak level of corresponding implementation legislation).

African states need the ICC. The empirical reality is that many situations of atrocities, and those that meet the (vague) "sufficient gravity" criteria for the Court to intervene, are in Africa. Moreover, many African states have a weak rule of law that fails to deter and respond to such atrocities, and so these situations justify the ICC's intervention as a "court of last resort." As Bensouda defended,

"The office of the prosecutor will go where the victims need us...The world increasingly understands the role of the court and Africa understood it from the start. As Africans we know that impunity is not an academic, abstract notion."

African states invited and welcomed the ICC. Three states self-referred their situations to the Court (Uganda, DRC, and the Central Africa Republic) and three states initially welcomed and have since exhibited a satisfactory pattern of cooperation with the Court (Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Libya). Only Sudan remains resolutely defiant and given its head of state is among the accused this should prove, not disprove, the ICC's credibility. Bensouda expressed frustration that cooperation from African states and civil society is

"not the story relayed in the media...(and) anti-ICC elements have been working very hard to discredit the Court and to lobby for non-support and they are doing this, unfortunately, with complete disregard for legal arguments."