Having lived to a greater age than nearly all of his thousands of victims, and having succeeded in evading justice, the butcher Pinochet is “dead at last”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6167237.stm .
From the category archives:
International Politics
Today is “World Aids Day”:http://www.worldaidsday.org/default.asp, and “UN AIDS”:http://www.unaids.org/en/ “reports”:http://www.unaids.org/en/GetStarted/UNFamily.asp that another 14.000 children, women and men will become infected with HIV today. This year is 25 years ago that the first case was reported. In those 25 years, there has been a gigantic difference in the impact of HIV/AIDS on the affluent societies versus the poor societies, especially in sub-Saharan African. The life expectancy in some African countries such as Botswana and Swaziland is now well below 35 years. And even these statistics do not reveal the grim reality of children who are growing up without adults, in what social scientists now call ‘childheaded households’. How can a 12 year old girl feed her younger siblings? If there are no neighbours or organisations supporting them, it is likely that her only short-term survival option is prostitution. Long-term survival is something these children simply cannot contemplate.
The theme of this World Aids Day is accountability – not only of individuals who are having unsafe sex (especially those who are infecting others through unwanted sex), but also of religious leaders “discouraging the use and promotion of condoms”:http://www.thebody.com/cdc/news_updates_archive/2003/may27_03/malawi_condoms.html, political leaders of rich societies “who don’t give enough money”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/19/health/main1913718.shtml to fight the epidemic, and political leaders in severely HIV/AIDS-affected countries, such as “Doctor Beetroot”:http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=49983, who are misinforming the population. But World Aids Day is also the day when we should thank the many men and women who are fighting this ugly disease, from grassroots awareness activities up to diplomatic action at the highest level, often in difficult circumstances.
At this late stage in the occupation of Iraq, many of Henry Kissinger’s old arguments about Indo-China are being dusted down. One of the hoariest and worst is that we need to “stay the course” (or some similar euphemism) in order to maintain “credibility” – to demonstrate our resolve to our enemies, who will otherwise continue to attack us. It reminds me of my one and only contribution to the corpus of game theory.
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US newspaper headlines are understandably focused on the upcoming election, but another development that will have as much, if not more, effect on us all is headline news in the UK. The Stern report on climate change, commissioned by Gordon Brown, was launched yesterday by Brown and Blair. Stern spells out the economic basis for action on climate change. He warns that if we do nothing, climate change could cost anything between 5% and 20% of global output. If we start now, it will cost about 1% of global output to stabilise carbom emissions. The 700 page report shows that failing to act will cost our economies more than limiting carbon emissions – and not in 2100, but beginning in the next 20 years. The UK is calling for a treaty to limit carbon emissions by taxing or trading to be in place by 2008. To succeed, the UK must convince the US, China and India to join the club.
Climate change denialists should note that Paul Wolfowitz says the report “provides a much needed critical economic analysis of the issues associated with climate change”. Countries like the UK will still struggle with the politics of economic self-restraint when it comes to convincing voters that, for example, one pound flights to Carcassonne were a historical blip. But this report – and the united Blair/Brown staging and messaging behind it – could be the turning point in making climate change a mainstream political issue. If Tony Blair ever wanted to call payback time on his supine special relationship with the US, the moment has come.
The Irish Times reports that the UK government has actually hired Al Gore to raise US public awareness of climate change. The Guardian reports that the Treasury is sending Sir Nicholas on a tour of China, India, the US and Australia to sell the message and urge rapid action. The FT reports that the Germans, who will head both the G8 and the EU next year, are making supportive noises. (In-depth FT analysis of the report here.) Let’s hope the stars are moving into alignment.
I have a post up on the Guardian blog, in praise of “stasis” as an under-rated strategy for government when compared to “reform“.
Of course, the general principle that the status quo is no worse than the status quo, and that all proposals for radical change should first be assessed to see if they can beat this hurdle, is one that has applications in foreign policy as well as domestic. For example, via Normblog Wole Soyinka is apparently castigating the UN and African Union for “inaction” on Darfur. Soyinka apparently believes that sponsoring two sets of peace talks, providing a massive humanitarian relief effort and negotiating the AMIS peacekeeping force don’t count as “doing anything”, which suggests to me (along with the fact that Norm links Soyinka’s speech to a series of diatribes by Eric Reeves on Jeff Weintraub’s site) that the only thing that would count as “doing something” would be war, or economic sanctions of such severity as to be roughly equivalent to war in terms of lethality.
Nobody, from Alex de Waal to Jan Pronk to Mark Malloch Brown, thinks that an invasion would pass the simple test of “would it make things worse or better”. As I’ve said repeatedly with respect to Darfur, it’s the height of irresponsibility to demand “action” without saying what that action might be, or to provide some kind of sensible assessment of its likely consequences.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is very serious indeed about its neutrality. There is an obvious reason for this; neutrality underpins its special status, and if its neutrality is compromised, its personnel may be placed directly in danger and its ability to do its job is reduced. In other words, to impugn the neutrality of the Red Cross is a very serious charge indeed, and ought to only be made on the basis of very strong evidence indeed.
So it is perhaps odd to see Australia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer (who comes across as a hell of a moron; could any Aussie readers confirm this?) merrily asserting that the Lebanese Red Cross conspired with Hezbollah to fake an attack on one of its ambulances, seemingly as collateral damage to a broadside against the media for being biased against Israel.
In fact, his source was a blog, “Zombietime“, which has looked through news agency photos of the ambulance and proved to its own satisfaction that they are fakes. I must say that their case seems pretty unconvincing to me, since it appears to be based on some very strong conditional statements about what “a missile” can and can’t do, and “a missile” is a really quite generic category to be making such statements about.
I think that if I was the Australian foreign minister, I would have considered the pros and cons of undermining the credibility of the Red Cross (particularly as the ICRC is an important provider of the humanitarian aid which supports a lot of the things that the USA, UK and Australia want to do in the sphere of foreign policy) and decided that a political slam on the mainstream media was not worth it, particularly since nobody actually disputes that civilians were killed and ambulances were hit during the Lebanese invasion. Blogosphere triumphalism doesn’t really seem all that important compared to the neutrality of the Red Cross.
Thanks for the introduction, and thanks for the opportunity to blogg about some issues that have been keeping me awake at night. I’m really glad to have this opportunity to write about them and discuss them on this forum, since my 8-months old does smile back but still it’s hard to get a good discussion going with him.
I’d like to start with a puzzle. A family of three who are living in Utrecht (the Netherlands), is driving home from a visit to Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Let’s call this family the family Pierik-Robeyns (yes, my family indeed). In Brussels, two Pieriks and one Robeyns get into the car. Two hours later, they arrive in Utrecht. They have not made a stop. No-one has left the car, and no-one has been picked up. In Utrecht, one Pierik and two Robeyns’s leave the car. How is this possible? [click to continue…]
Marc Mulholland makes a very good point and one that has to be frank left me stumped. Regarding the “Anti (this) War (now)” position, which I had hitherto believed was my own view on the Iraq War, the question is quite simple.
Looking at the way in which Iraq has progressed since the war, is it really credible to say that this is just the result of poor planning? Does it not, in fact, make a lot more sense in light of the facts to say that this was a fundamentally misconceived objective which could not have been achieved by any plan at all and should never have been attempted?
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Following on from last week’s post on Hezbollah’s War Crimes, it would seem appropriate to follow up with a discussion of the actions of the state of Israel with respect to the Geneva Conventions. Human Rights Watch has an excellent and thoroughly-researched report on the subject of whether the civilian casualties in Lebanon have been the result of collateral damage to legitimate military actions, or whether there have been instances of illegitimate, intentional or excessive violence against civilians. It concludes that there is certainly a case to answer. There is also the issue of whether the war crime of “reprisals” has been committed – the carrying out of acts of violence against civilians in order to put pressure on their government to carry out some desired course of action, which is of course called “terrorism” when non-state actors do it.
I had prepared a post on this subject, but the Human Rights Watch report is so much more thorough that I think it’s better to base discussion on that (by the way, the comments on the Hezbollah war crimes post were very civilised and intelligent, let’s repeat that). My summary of the report’s conclusions would be that the proposition that the IDF “takes the utmost care to minimise civilian casualties” has been falsified to a high degree of certainty, and even the weaker claim that the IDF does not intentionally target civilians looks a lot less certain than one would previously have believed. The attacks on infrastructure such as the LibanLait dairy look not at all like legitimate attempts to shut down Hezbollah and very much like attempts to intimidate the Lebanese population; unless we are prepared to postulate a truly colossal series of blunders, it looks very bad indeed.
Israel has in the past been able to maintain, with some justification, that there can be no “moral equivalence” between its actions and those of the terrorists; an important point when the physical effects of the IDF’s actions have been so many more deaths than the physical effects of terrorism. Whatever the jus ad bellum, this issue of jus in bello matters a lot, and speculation about the long term genocidal aims of the President of Iran simply cannot justify war crimes now. The gradual disintegration of the clear distinctions between the conduct in war of Israel and that of its enemies, which are very important in maintaining Israel’s international diplomatic reputation, ought to worry the Israeli government a lot more than it apparently does.
The terrible war in Lebanon has been discussed from all sorts of ethical and legal perspectives, but the simplest way of judging war is to look at its consequences.
After weeks of bloodshed, with the vast majority of victims being ordinary people (mostly in Lebanon thanks to the use of airstrikes as a weapon of terror, but with many killed and wounded in Israel as well) whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s hard to believe that anyone could claim that any good consequences are going to come out of this for the people of either Israel or Lebanon (though of course this is precisely the claim being made not only by the belligerents but by their outside backers, from Bush on one side to the Iranians on the other). But as we’ve seen time and again, the logic of war, once started, is remorseless. However obviously wrong the initial decision to go to war, the consequences of ending it almost always seem worse, at least to those who have to admit that the death and destruction they have wrought has been pointless.
And all this was not only predictable, but predicted by nearly everyone who looked at the situation objectively.
Now that oil has been discovered off the coast of Cuba, I may eventually be deprived of my best come-back to those lefties who oppose anything that could be called “globalization” but who also complain about the U.S. embargo of Cuba. But the more interesting question will be the reaction of Republicans who will be torn between their love of all things oily and hatred of all things Cuban (post-1959). Some possibilities:
1. Suddenly realize that the embargo isn’t working and end it;
2. Suddenly realize that the embargo isn’t working where oil is concerned – end it for oil, but keep it in place for everything else.
3. Dispute Cuba’s territorial claims where the oil was found;
4. Escalate – either blockade or at least stop suspending enforcement of title III the Helms-Burton amendment [pdf] until Cuba is a democracy like Saudi Arabia;
5. Really escalate – invade Cuba (beyond Guantanamo Bay) or some other country, related or not – I’m thinking Venezuela;
6. Keep very quiet about this and hope Castro dies soon and declare success no matter what the replacement regime looks like.
The early front-runner seems to be 2, with hints of 3, and of course 6 is an old standby.
This “FT”:http://us.rd.yahoo.com/finance/news/ft/SIG=119k1ua5r/*http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto070920061427320025&referrer_id=yahoofinance op-ed by Timothy Garton Ash, Dominique Moisi and Alexsander Smolar makes some good trenchant points about the EU’s increasingly tricky relationship with Russia.
bq. Europeans are faced with a delicate balancing act in their policy towards Russia. Should the message be one of trust in a re-emerging power whose energy resources are vital to us, or wariness of a regime whose authoritarian instincts are clearer than ever? … Today we may be witnessing the emergence of competition between European states for privileged relations with Moscow and favoured access to Russian gas. … he time has come for the EU to develop a genuinely European policy towards Russia. While seeking a long-term strategic partnership with its giant Eurasian neighbour, the EU should not hesitate to ask three elementary things of Russia. …The first of these requirements is that Russia should allow its neighbours to determine their own futures. … The second requirement … Energy contracts should be clear, binding and respected … The third strategic requirement has to do with certain minimal standards of legal and political conduct inside Russia’s borders. …Non-governmental organisations should be allowed to function properly in civil society and media independence should be a reality. … The concepts of “sovereign democracy” or “managed democracy” advanced by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, remind us of yesterday’s concept of “people’s democracy.”
I was too busy grading to write a post a few weeks ago on Cheney’s comments on Russia’s slide into autocracy. These were undoubtedly hypocritical (Cheney was perfectly happy to kiss up to nasty Central Asian autocrats a couple of days later) but nonetheless dead on target. Russia is a real problem for both the US and Europe, but EU member states don’t want to face up to it. They’re increasingly dependent on Russian energy resources, and Russia has made it clear that it’s willing to exploit this dependency towards political ends. It has very successfully been playing the game of divide and rule, making individual deals with EU member states (many of which have been notably willing to reach agreement, sometimes under rather dubious circumstances). There were some mutterings a month or two ago about a special energy summit to be convened by the Finns, but as far as I know, nothing has come of this. Unless the EU comes up with a common approach to energy policy, its member states are likely to find their political choices greatly curtailed in coming decades. As far as I can see, there’s no sign that the EU is willing to do this.
Steven Poole, our guest-blogger from last week, has this to say about “asymmetric warfare”:
bq. Asymmetric warfare’ is the term employed by the US military for fighting people who don’t line up properly to be shot at: on the one side you have battalions of American infantry, marines, tanks and aircraft; and on the other you have terrorists, or guerrillas, or militants, or insurgents. [“Read the whole thing”:http://unspeak.net/C226827506/E20060611135824/index.html , as they say. cb]
Of course the reason people don’t line up to be shot at, wearing proper uniforms, distinguishing themselves from the civilian population, and so on, is that it would be suicidal so to do. And here lies a real difficulty for conventional just war theory. If recourse to war is sometimes just — and just war theory says it is — but it may only be justly fought within the jus in bello restrictions, then it looks as if an important means to pursue justice is open to the strong alone and not to the weak. Faced with a professional army equipped with powerful weaponry, people who want to fight back have no chance unless they melt into the civilian population and adopt unconventional tactics. If those tactics are morally impermissible because of the risks they impose on non-combatants, then it looks as if armed resistance to severe injustice perpetrated by the well-equipped and powerful is also prohibited. And that looks crazy.
Writing yesterday in the Independent, Alan Dershowitz makes the familiar case that modern terrorism poses such an unprecedented threat to western society that the law needs to be rewritten. He argues, for example, that “we need rules even for such unpleasant practices” as “waterboarding” – or, to speak plainly, water torture. There are currently plenty of rules on interrogation in general, laid out in places like the UN Convention Against Torture, Geneva, and the extant 1992 edition of the US Army’s own Field Manual FM 34-52 on Intelligence Interrogation; it’s just that the US government doesn’t feel like following them. Dershowitz supposes that this might be moot because people suspected of contemporary terrorism “do not fit into the old, anachronistic categories” such as PoWs, and so it is unclear what it is permissible to do to them. In fact, CAT, UDHR and so on leave no possible category of human being unprotected from torture or other inhumane or degrading treatment.
Alternatively, he appears to suppose that it might be moot on the grounds that “waterboarding” is too newfangled to have been explicitly prohibited. I Am Not A Lawyer, but this seems no better an argument.
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The Supreme Court has found [pdf] that the military commissions set up to try prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are illegal, because Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies there. This is very important news, and has wider implications than for habeas corpus, according to Marty Lederman:
This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely,” and that “[t]o this end,” certain specified acts “are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever”—including “cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” […] This almost certainly means that the CIA’s interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administation has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes).
Meanwhile, there is a certain comedy value in the dissenting opinions of Scalia and Alito, which I have attempted to mine here.