Showing papers in "Global Governance in 2002"

UN Conferences and Constructivist Governance of the Environment

Abstract: In this article I review the history of global environmental conferences and draw political lessons about their broader role in constructing efforts at global environmental governance. I also examine the future of global conference diplomacy for the environment, in particular Rio+10 in Johannesburg in 2002 and the prospects of reaching the goals for sustainable development set at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Global conferences are oft-used policy instruments, thus deserving careful evaluation and assessment. Jacques Fomerand expresses justifiable skepticism that most global conferences are momentary media events that provide sound bite opportunities without lasting effects on policies or the quality of the environment. (1) Guilio Gallarotti, and Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, offer similar skeptical judgments about the potential for effective state-based international governance. (2) Yet Fomerand also points out, as do I, that many conferences provide indirect effects that may be beneficial for inducing states to take more progressive steps toward governance and sustainable development. Governance and Constructivism Governance has recently become a popular catchphrase of international relations. Without the prospects of hegemonic leadership, and in light of the substantial growth of influence of international institutions and nonstate actors, international rule making has become the domain of multiple overlapping actors and regimes, rather than the clearcut leadership by one state or multilateral conformity with a small and homogeneous set of shared rules backed by enforcement mechanisms. Anne Marie Slaughter defines it as "the formal and informal bundles of rules, roles and relationships that define and regulate the social practices of states and nonstate actors in international affairs." (3) Sustainable development requires multilateral governance, because without well-defined rules and expectations most countries are incapable of unilaterally protecting themselves from transboundary and global environmental risks Constructivist scholars of international relations (IR) have been focusing on the institutional, discursive, and intersubjective procedures by which international governance develops. John Ruggie writes that social constructivism rests on an irreducibly intersubjective dimension of human action ... constructivism is about human consciousness and its role in international life.... Constructivists hold the view that the building blocks of international reality are ideational as well as material; that ideational factors have normative as well as instrumental dimensions; that they express not only individual but also collective intentionality; and that the meaning and significance of ideational factors are not independent of time and place. (4) Constructivists look at the mechanisms and consequences by which actors, particularly states, derive meaning from a complex world, and how they identify their interests and policies for issues that appear new and uncertain. It is now widely accepted by most IR scholars that governance increasingly occurs in a decentralized manner, through a loosely tied network of multiple actors, states, functional state agencies, and nonstate actors who interact frequently, sometimes at global conferences. (5) Governance of the environment is no different. Constructivists focus on such distinctive processes as socialization, education, persuasion, discourse, and norm inculcation to understand the ways in which international governance develops. Typically these are complex procedures involving multiple interacting actors that accrue over time and contribute to transformational shifts in perceptions of national identity, international agendas, and the presumptive ways by which national interests are to be attained. UN conferences contribute to governance and sustainable development by establishing and reinforcing some of these constructivist themes in international relations. …

Legitimacy, Power, and the Symbolic Life of the UN Security Council

Abstract: The Charter of the United Nations gives the Security Council enormous formal powers, but it. does not give it direct control of the tools with which to enact those powers. As many have noted, much of the power of the Council is contingent on the voluntary coop eration of states, measured in variables such as the contribution to peacekeeping missions and the national enforcement of sanctions re gimes.1 It is often also noted that this voluntary compliance depends also on states' perceptions of the legitimacy of the Council and its ac tions.2 However, the central role that legitimacy plays in supporting the power of the Council is rarely investigated. After Inis Claude's state ment of the matter in 1966, the issue has not been revisited.3 The contingent nature of Council authority means its effect in the international system is both broader and narrower than the formal pow ers of the UN Charter?narrower because the Cold War stunted the de velopment of the four-policemen idea, but broader because the high so cial status of the Council signals a deep pool of "social capital" that it can draw on to induce compliance by states. This article expands the traditional emphasis of international organization (IO) studies from the black letter of treaties and charters to a perspective that takes into ac count actual practices and the power of symbols around the Security Council. Taking seriously the symbolic power of the Council helps us to see the reasons behind certain otherwise inexplicable phenomena in in ternational relations (IR) and allows us to ask questions regarding the legitimacy of the Council that were previously hidden from view. Most political conflicts have symbolic payoffs at their root, which a concern only with studying material gains will inevitably misunderstand. This is an important problem with respect to the Security Council because so much of what makes the Council a significant actor in international pol itics is a result of the informal development of its role in international society. This is both a cause and a consequence of the distribution of material rewards and costs. We miss much that is interesting in social 35

Postwar Political Economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Spoils of Peace

Abstract: In postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), international and local captains maneuver to assert control and negotiate areas of collaboration. In each of the Croat and Bosniac areas of the Federation and in the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska (RS), the major political elements that took Bosnia into war now also enjoy the economic spoils in their geographical sectors. Central institutions remain weak in BiH, undermined by war entrepreneurs and patrimonial elites that interact with international organs and external capitalist institutions, adapting their clientism to externally imposed conditionalities. A pseudo international "protectorate" is operated through the executive management of the external actors: the Office of the High Representative (OHR) of the Peace Implementation Council; the United Nations; the missions of both the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU); the International Management Group (an EU-funded body that undertakes reconstruction evaluations) ; aid agencies; and international financial institutions (IFIs). They provide executive governance that reflects the values and norms of the powers that dominate the global economy. (1) For example, at the end of 2000, the OHR introduced wide-ranging laws and amendments concerning privatization, wages, and financial operations designed to maintain market reforms that would meet the demands of the IFIs for the privatization of public enterprises and socially owned assets. (2) Indeed, the external actors are drawn into micromanagement in their efforts to implement this vision because they encounter resistance and prevarication. (3) Obviously, the clientist and neoliberal mechanisms for managing investment, shares, and profits are dissimilar. But the normative assumptions of the external actors and the interests of domestic elites coincide in extracting profit from public goods and in fostering opportunities from privatization and discrimination against social ownership. In this there is common ground between in ternational and domestic parties as well as friction and resistance. There has been limited critical research on the political economy of war-torn societies or on the dysfunctional aspects of neoliberalism in peace building. (4) However, a critical theory perspective shows that the maneuvering and collaboration in BiH highlights not only contradictions in the practice of neoliberalism but also the limitations of a paradigm that configures society as an adjunct of the market. It contests the neoliberal discourse of norms that privilege global markets, the noninterventionist state, and the discounting of political and social dynamics. (5) Further, external micromanagement stems from seeing collapsed statist economies as the dysfunctional "other," and from attempts to modify the corporatist systems and "criminal" behavior of local war entrepreneurs. But the external actors juggle between nation building and diminishing the state as an economic actor by privatizing essential services and shifting responsibility for employment and welfare from the state to the individual. This has hardly alleviated a grim social and economic situation that differentiates markedly between participants in the entrepreneurial economy and the excluded poor, unemployed, and welfare dependent. In the first part of this analysis I present a snapshot of the BiH economy after six years of peace. I then examine the prewar and wartime aggrandisement of nationalists that carried over into the postwar settlements. In the next section I deal with the goals and basic mechanisms of the external "protectors" and the interaction of neoliberalism and clientism, with a particular focus on the privatization process. Finally, I contend that the neoliberal model is dysfunctional in providing the social protection that war-torn societies such as BiH lack. A Dire Economy In 2001, six years after Dayton, the economic situation was officially described as "dire. …

China’s International Socialization: The Role of International Organizations

Abstract: The many questions surrounding China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its potential compliance with WTO rules direct scholarly attention toward the record of its compliance with the norms, rules, and treaties of other international organizations and the role of these bodies over the past three decades in facilitating China's international socialization. Managerial theorists like Abram and Antonia Chayes contend that international organizations contribute significantly to the socialization of participating states. International organizations and their treaties not only ensure transparency, cut transaction costs, build capacity, and enhance dispute settlement, but also, through a process of "jawboning," persuade states parties to "explore, redefine and sometimes discover" their own, and mutual, interests. (1) They subject states to a process of interaction and mutual pressure for consensus that helps regulate their conduct. Particularly in the less political and more publicly discreet and les s political forums, international organizational participation may blunt the sharp edges of nationalistic stances. In this sense, international organizations may be understood broadly as the institutional representations of interdependence, constituting a "collective organizing response to a multiplicity of 'traffic' control problems in a world of contradictory trends." (2) Moreover, they bring to bear a wide range of pressures that may appeal as much to a state's short-term interests as to its ideals. (3) International organizations also represent a challenge to the state, at once confirming sovereignty and constraining it. Management of the challenge of participation is thus a highly complex matter. For each state it is a question of steering between the benefits for sovereignty that membership in international organizations and regimes entails and the potential threat to sovereignty that it implies. (4) For these reasons, when scholars seek a benchmark of China's international socialization in the post-Cold War era, nothing could be more appropriate than to look to the nature of its participation in international organizations and their rules and treaties. The crucial question is whether such participation, while promoting China's interests and status, has also inculcated in it a corresponding sense of accountability, reflecting respect for the norms of the international community and an awareness of interdependence. International socialization has been defined as "the process that is directed toward a state's internalization of the constitutive beliefs and practices institutionalized in its international environment." (5) In other words, socialization is not only a process but also an outcome. As a process, it may be assessed by comparing China's instrumental purposes and motivations in participating in international organizations against its practical readiness over time to make concessions and accept costs as a result of organizational participation. As an outcome, it may be evaluated on the basis of China's international behavior and the extent of its implementation of international norms in domestic legislation and social practice. Also relevant are questions of consistency and uniqueness. To what extent does China's participation reflect a linear development and learning process, and how is China different in its participation from other states? In this article, I briefly outline China's attitude to international organizations and its reasons for joining them. I then discuss evidence of socialization in its participation and practice and assess whether international organizations have influenced China to accept the requirements of cooperation, respect for international rules, and accountability in today's globalized world. China's Approach to International Organizations The importance of international organizations in China's foreign relations cannot be overestimated. …

ASEAN in the Aftermath: The Consequences of the East Asian Economic Crisis

Abstract: Beginning in May 1997, East Asia was caught in the grip of a progressively worsening financial and economic crisis. The crisis involved the collapse of many of the region's currencies, accompanied by economic upheaval and political instability, particularly in Indonesia. After more than two years, the crisis came to an end. The affected Asian states (with the exception of Indonesia, which is still wracked by political upheaval and instability) appear to be on the road to recovery. (1) Nonetheless, the crisis will have long-term effects. This discussion focuses on Southeast Asia and analyzes the effect of the crisis on the institutional development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). As an organization, ASEAN has been at the forefront of Asia Pacific regional politics for much of the past thirty years. ASEAN has attracted a great deal of attention as an organization that aspires to be an instrument of regional governance and political management. (2) In the post-Cold War period, ASEAN has been active in advancing its organizational interests in the Asia Pacific region. However, ASEAN's apparent impotence during the recent regional economic upheaval has raised serious questions about its continued utility.3 In this article, I argue that the economic crisis undermined ASEAN in three interconnected ways. First, it shattered the confidence that allowed ASEAN to pursue leading roles in the Asia Pacific's institutional and political development. Second, it revealed the weakness of ASEAN's ambition to redefine itself as an economic organization. Third, the crisis demonstrated the limits of ASEAN's established method of interaction, "the ASEAN way." Nonetheless, despite its detrimental effects, the crisis may have created new possibilities for ASEAN as a regional economic actor. I divide this article into four sections. In the first section, I critically evaluate ASEAN's historical development. Next, I describe the East Asian economic crisis. In the third section, I look at the harmful effects of the crisis on ASEAN. Finally, I examine the new possibilities for ASEAN that the crisis may have created. The crisis exposed limitations that were already present in ASEAN and that are a necessary part of its institutional survival. Within those limits, however, ASEAN may have found new ways to evolve. A Historical Evaluation of ASEAN ASEAN was created in 1967, (4) in the aftermath of the Konfrontasi between Indonesia and Malaysia (and, by extension, Singapore). Indonesia, under President Sukarno, challenged the legitimacy of Malaysia. Konfrontasi ended when Suharto overthrew Sukarno, but it taught the involved states important lessons about their mutual vulnerability and the need for a politically stable regional environment. ASEAN was created, in part, to construct intraregional economic and social ties between its members and to foster a sense of regionalism. In response to Konfrontasi, a fundamental part of ASEAN's mandate was alleviating tensions between its members. Relations between the ASEAN states were too fragile for these intramural tensions to be explicitly addressed; instead, ASEAN expressed this purpose through its commitment to the principle of nonintervention in any state's internal affairs. (5) The ASEAN states were also united by their common opposition to regional communism, although again political considerations made i t impossible to state this openly. In principle, ASEAN was opposed to regional interference from any external power. In practice, however, all the ASEAN states (except Indonesia) depended on external alliances with Western powers to help ensure their security. (6) A defining characteristic of ASEAN is the "ASEAN way," the process of interaction through which ASEAN reaches organizational decisions. The ASEAN way encourages decisionmaking through consultation and consensus building. …

Military Collaboration with Humanitarian Organizations in Complex Emergencies

Abstract: Until the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, few aside from professional aid workers paid attention to one of the first major humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century. After over twenty years of continuous warfare, the Afghani population was nearly at the breaking point; more than 2 million Afghani refugees lived in Iran and Pakistan after fleeing civil war battles and three years of drought. (1) Millions more were internally displaced inside Afghanistan, victims of ongoing struggles between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, the Afghani ruling regime. After the terrorist attacks, world attention focused on the Afghani humanitarian crisis because the Taliban had a symbiotic relationship with Osama bin Laden and his organization al-Qaida, the alleged perpetrators of the attacks. As the United States and its coalition partners prepared for operations against Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and the Taliban, the potential for a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented dimensions quickly came to the atten tion of the world's press. By October 2001, with U.S. forces beginning military operations, a new wave of Afghani refugees began streaming into neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Although the United States pledged humanitarian assistance as part of its overall strategy, the international relief community was abandoning its operations on the ground. (2) Under the best of circumstances, aid workers and refugees in Afghanistan were insecure. Complicating relief efforts, the Taliban itself, alQaida loyalists, and Afghanistan's neighboring governments posed security risks to aid workers and refugees alike. Even before the current crisis, nongovernmental organization (NGO) relations with the nominal ruler of Afghanistan, the Taliban, were complicated by the religious affiliations of some NGOs. After the initial U.S. attacks, news reports indicated that Taliban members assaulted local UN aid workers. Worse still, aid workers were endangered by the U.S. air strikes themselves. In the fall of 2001, the situation in Afghanistan and neighboring countries exhibited all the signs of a potential complex humanitarian emergency by combining serious civilian suffering (from hunger, poor sanitation, and lack of shelter in the face of rapidly worsening weather) with concerns about the physical safety of both the refugees and aid workers. Yet, as with the Great Lakes region, Chechnya, and the various Balkan crises of the 1990s, the world community remained largely unprepared for the consequences of humanitarian disaster taking place in regions where political, religious, and ethnic conflicts might undermine the best efforts of humanitarian organizations. (3) Although international military intervention has often been justified on humanitarian grounds and many humanitarian NGOs receive government support, few formal measures have been undertaken by donor governments to increase the security of those providing relief to the victims of conflict. NGO aid workers are left on their own even when they operate, in effect, as proxies for international organizations and national governments. The same is also true when the military operations themselves lead to humanitarian emergencies, as in post-Gulf War Iraq. Traditionally, most humanitarian organizations have supported this hands-off approach because they have seldom believed that using military forces to protect aid workers is appropriate. In fact, many members of the humanitarian community believe that official involvement may make their jobs more difficult, exacerbate complex emergencies, and even endanger the local victims. Thus, despite the increased "internationalization" and "privatization" of humanitarian assist ance, the governments who fund relief activities have taken few measures to increase the security of humanitarian aid workers. In this article, we argue that this position is untenable in a world of "failed" states, "gray area phenomena," increasingly violent internal conflicts, and, as recent events demonstrate, a global "war on terror. …

Civil-Military Responses to Security Challenges in Peace Operations: Ten Lessons from Kosovo

Abstract: The complex environments in which peace operations have to function often pose difficult internal security challenges, such as the demilitarization of nonstate militias, control and seizure of heavy and light weapons, protection of humanitarian aid/zones, deterrence of anarchy and crime in situations of state collapse, prevention of interethnic violence, and control of porous and/or contested borders. Security sector reforms have been central to the mandates of Balkans peace operations, but difficulties in responding to specific security challenges have often led to operational setbacks in the field. Effective management of such challenges has thus been an increasingly important priority for both the United Nations and European security organizations, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). But while NATO can provide the requisite forces for a strong military deterrent, it cannot contribute the political, administrative, legal, and economic elements necessary for effective security sector reform. Joint action by both military and civil actors is necessary for successful management of the security sector. And successful security sector management is in turn central to the broader strategic goal of fostering a sustainable peace-building dynamic. (1) In this article, I examine the recent experience of civil-military responses to security sector issues in the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR). It should be noted here that UNMIK and KFOR have been the most successful complex Balkans operations to date for interorganizational interaction and have demonstrated that many post-Bosnia lessons were effectively applied in the international peacebuilding response to the 1999 Kosovo conflict. A comparison of evolving Balkans security sector action, from Bosnia and Eastern Slavonia to Kosovo, suggests that the civil-military interface should move from cooperative relations to coordinated unity of effort. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that Kosovo is not in a truly postconflict condition, as previous Balkans theaters have been. The key elements for "postconflict" status--a peace agreement and/or determination of a final end state for the territory--are glaringly absent in Kosovo and have been from the arrival of international actors in the contested province. Indeed, Kosovo's indeterminate political status is at the root of many of its most intractable threats to public security, including endemic violence against ethnic minorities, particularly Serbs, and the consequent emergence of polarized ethnic enclaves. Civil-Military Interaction and the Imperative for Coordination The inherent complexity of Balkans conflict environments has demanded interaction between NATO's military forces and the civilian organizations, such as the UN and the OSCE, also active in addressing security sector issues. The capacity of the UN is challenged where deterrent military force is needed in a rapid and massive manner. This need has been the norm for the Balkans, with Bosnia and Kosovo both requiring tens of thousands of well-equipped forces able to project a credible war-fighting face. The fact that NATO is the only organization in the region with the capacity to mount such missions was recognized early on by Kofi Annan. In 1993, he advocated UN-NATO cooperation in the delivery of missions that needed "peacekeeping with teeth," noting that their size and complexity make it "imperative to explore new avenues of cooperation with regional organizations such as NATO." (2) The interrelated nature of security challenges in these missions has also meant that what used to be understood as a clear distinction between military and civil roles has become increasingly indistinct. While NATO has taken some concrete steps to institutionalize aspects of civil-military interaction in the field, these have generally been only to the extent of formalized cooperation. …

Multilateral Diplomacy, Norm Building, and UN Conferences: The Case of Small Arms and Light Weapons. (Review Essay)

Abstract: United Nations General Assembly, "Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects," 20 July 2001. Reproduced in UN document AICONF. 192/1.5. At about 6:00 A.M. on Saturday, 21 July 2001, after two weeks of difficult negotiations and several years of preparation, delegates at UN headquarters in New York agreed on the "Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects" (hereafter "Programme of Action"). (1) Consensus was reached only after the African delegations, in late-night discussions, agreed to abandon attempts to have the draft program include references to the need to regulate the civilian possession of weapons and to restrict weapons transfers to nonstate actors. The final statement by the conference president, Ambassador Camilo Reyes of Colombia, expressed his disappointment over the Conference's inability to agree--due to the concerns of one state--on language recognizing the need to establish and maintain controls over private ownership of these deadly weapons, and the need for preventing sales of such arms to nonstate groups." The "one state" was, not surprisingly, the United States. Some called the agreed "Programme of Action" "unprecedented" or "path-breaking"; others concluded that the conference was a "failure" or a "missed opportunity." Press reports and public commentary told a familiar story: the last-minute intransigence of the United States (which almost blocked final consensus), the silent opposition of states such as China, the activism of the European Union (EU) and like-minded states, the persistent resistance of the Arab League to concrete measures, and the impassioned pleas of affected states-this time mainly in Africa. With some modifications, a version of this story could be told about the negotiations leading to the Kyoto protocol on global warming, the International Criminal Court, the Ottawa process leading to the treaty banning antipersonnel land mines, and other, less prominent, issues on the multilateral agenda. But for scholarly observers of the process, these are perhaps not the most interesting parts of the story. In this review essay, I examine the decade-long effort to put the issue of small arms and light weapons on the international security agenda and to develop concrete measures to deal with their deadly consequences in different contexts around the world. I use the UN small arms conference experience and focus on its "Programme of Action" and related documents to discuss several questions important to students of multilateralism and global governance: (2) * How should scholars understand the documentary record left by UN conferences, and how much can it tell us about multilateral diplomacy in an issue area? * Does participation in conference diplomacy shape state interests, or are such processes better understood as bargaining games between actors with exogenous or fixed interests? * What is the role of nongovernmental actors in such multilateral processes? * To what extent does the UN serve as a site for global norm building? A conventional academic review essay would not analyze the primary source material (documents) that is required to answer these questions, but rather the contributions of the existing literature. With a few exceptions, however, this literature does not yet exist in the area of small arms. For such a literature to develop it will require drawing upon research that is more fully developed in other issue areas (global environmental and human rights policy, for example) and making use of the available primary materials on small arms to advance a coherent research agenda. My focus on the "Programme of Action" as the centerpiece of multilateral efforts is justified by the central role such documents play in the creation and dissemination of new norms. …

The Failure of International Humanitarian Action in Afghanistan. (Global Insights)

Abstract: In adapting to the challenges of the. 200 1-2002 war against terrorism in Afghanistan, the international humanitarian system has experienced an identity crisis. (1) Humanitarian principles clash with organizational considerations. A conventional interpretation of humanitarian principles and law would posit that the primary duty bearers for providing emergency relief should be the warring parties themselves, with the international humanitarian system providing secondary support on a neutral and impartial basis. Instead, in Afghanistan, the international relief agencies have successfully advocated for an outside monopoly over the provision of relief aid in spite of the insecurity and remoteness of much of the country. The constraints facing the relief agencies have been partly logistical and, for the United Nations (UN) system and many international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), partly due to threats to the security of field staff posed by their non-neutral status. While the coalition forces had the me ans to overcome the former problem, and the delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were not compromised with regard to the latter, neither of these respective institutional advantages translated into the major relief programs that both law and politics would indicate. As the evidence emerges of the high human costs associated with the failure of the international community to provide timely and adequate relief aid in certain contested and inaccessible areas of Afghanistan, (2) the causes of this lamentable state of affairs need to be understood. The position widely held among UN and international NGO staff is explained by Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the Right to Food, who in November 2001 wrote: Food drops by military forces compromise the credibility of humanitarian aid, which in its essence must be neutral, universal and respond to the needs of suffering people. It is very dangerous to confuse humanitarian and military objectives. This compromises the key principles of humanitarian organizations and international law. This is putting at risk humanitarian personnel and failing to protect the neutrality and credibility of humanitarian aid. (3) An open letter from a group of U.S. agencies to Zeigler extended the argument: The seminal principle of humanitarian relief is that, military operations should be clearly distinct from humanitarian activities. Particularly at the height of hostilities, military forces should not be directly involved in humanitarian action, as this would or could, in the minds of the authorities and the population, associate humanitarian organizations with political or military objectives that go beyond humanitarian concerns. (4) This proposition, in various forms, was articulated with great effect by numerous NGOs and UN agencies in response to the U.S. "snow drops" of humanitarian daily rations (HDRs). The U.S. consortium Inter Action believes that the argument persuaded the U.S. secretary of defense to backpedal on his alleged intention to break the humanitarian impasse in Afghanistan during the difficult days of November 2001 through employing military assets. The argument is based on the fallacious proposition that humanitarian action is the exclusive province of civilian humanitarian agencies. On the contrary, international humanitarian law (IHL) recognizes humanitarian roles that are routinely undertaken by military personnel. Medical staff, stretcher bearers, and ambulance drivers are able to wear and enjoy the protection of the Red Cross emblem, which is available to neither the NGOs nor the UN. (5) The nature of the activity rather than the institutional identity of the actor defines humanitarian action. Illustratively, warring parties have a duty to respect the humanitarian principle that the "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited" (6) and to "facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage for all relief consignments and personnel. …

Siting Indiscriminacy: India and the Global Movement to Ban Landmines

Abstract: In the mid-1990s, a unique confluence of activists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and governments, unprecedented in the history of arms control, took shape as an international movement to ban antipersonnel (AP) landmines. Widely hailed as a triumph of an emergent global civil society, this hitherto unlikely coalition managed in only a few years to first stigmatize AP landmines as a humanitarian scourge and, ultimately, to parlay this re-presentation into a broadly respected ban backed with the force of an international treaty. (1) Since then, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)--a coordinating body through which the mobilizations of NGOs and activists are focused--has continued to work both together with and independent of interested governments to extend the ban and to monitor its implementation. The successes and continuing resonance of the campaign owe much to the generation and propagation of a taboo regarding AP landmines. At the beginning of the 1990s, even Canada, eventually amon g the most strident advocates of a ban, was dismissive of the suggestion that militaries would, should, or could give up their AP landmine stockpiles. But less than a decade later, these once unexceptional weapons, in widespread use for more than a century as "force multipliers" in war and as "sentinels" or deterrents in peacetime, had become so thoroughly stigmatized that states that had declined to accede to the Ottawa Convention were increasingly defensive about their intransigence. Though neither the weapons themselves nor their more insidious effects had changed appreciably, they had been reconstructed in the public mind as a humanitarian scourge. This discursive watershed, perhaps even more so than the key players themselves, is central to a full understanding of the successes of the movement to ban AP landmines, its limitations, and some uncomfortable implications of its rhetorical devices. Pivotal to the rendering of an AP landmine taboo was the characterization of mines as indiscriminate--that is, the nature of the weapon, designed to lie in wait until triggered by an unsuspecting victim, is such that civilian populations are as vulnerable as combatants, and often more so. By itself this is ample reason to think that the world would be better off without AP landmines. The pursuit of a universal ban, however, left no room for deference to context; the mines themselves were cast as the site(s) of indiscriminacy in case it should otherwise be imagined that they might be employed without ill effect in some instances. To foreclose the possibility of any such notion, AP landmines have been rendered as a humanitarian scourge in an objective sense independent of context. This powerful rhetorical move precludes thinking about ways in which the indiscriminacy attributed to them might be attenuated in order to preserve some measure of legitimacy regarding their use. It thus lends well to the view that a universal ban is requisite, but it accomplishes this by way of an anthropomorphic turn that, as we shall see, imbues AP landmines with agency. The academic literature on the movement to ban AP landmines is limited. There has been one edited volume (2) and a handful of journal articles. (3) Scattered mentions can also be found embedded in works dealing principally with other issues. In what follows, I hope to stimulate further reflection on the siting of indiscriminacy in rhetorical efforts to extend and, conversely, to resist the AP landmines ban. I consider the issue of agency as brought into focus in assessing whether India might be bound under customary international law to accede to the ban. This is a good vantage point inasmuch as the idea of a binding customary norm turns vitally on the degree to which the central validity claims of the AP landmines taboo can be said to have been accepted by India. Moreover, this case is instructive in light of India's own rhetorical machinations, by dint of which it has sought to have restrictions imposed on the use of AP landmines while preserving certain exemptions for itself - a justificatory feat made wo rkable only by a repositioning of the site of agency. …

Democracy as an International Issue. (Global Insights)

Abstract: Democracy as an international issue goes far beyond its direct connection to international peace. Where domestic peace has broken down, the international community must be able to assist in its restoration. In this work, democratic governance, and the realization of human rights, are essential. The United Nations (UN) not only can offer essential help in repairing democratic breakdowns in domestic peace but also must explore democratic principles at the global level. Democratic Peace Many associate connections between democracy and international peace with Immanuel Kant, whose essay of 1795, "Perpetual Peace," argued that "republics"--which meant essentially what today we call liberal or pluralistic democracies--were less likely than other forms of state to go to war with one another. Broadly speaking, the last 200 years have proved him right. During that time there have been many horrible wars, which technology has made ever more destructive. Liberal democracies played a big part in those wars. But almost always they fought as allies. Dynastic states have fought each other throughout history--as have religious states, totalitarian states, and military dictatorships. But liberal democracies have generally found other ways to settle their disputes. (1) Let me qualify that observation to avoid building too many hopes upon it! Until recently only a few liberal democracies existed. So we lack enough case histories to justify sweeping generalizations or confident predictions. Also, democracies often have behaved aggressively toward nondemocracies. These wars are not always the fault of nondemocracies, as the history of colonialism illustrates. Sometimes democracies argue that their opponents are illiberal, autocratic, or undemocratic. They may be right, but saying so does not justify war. Nonetheless, the peace among democracies is supported by credible evidence and has substantial foundations. The most convincing explanation is that liberal democracy is essentially an open, transparent system with built-in safeguards against military adventurism. Democratic rulers cannot mobilize their countries for war without convincing most citizens that war is both just and necessary. This means convincing them that vital national interests or principles are involved and that there is no peaceful way to achieve the same objective. That is much easier if the government on the other side can be portrayed as evil, aggressive, and not open to rational persuasion or reasonable compromise. People in a democracy find it easy to believe the worst about another country with a closed political system. When decisions are made behind closed doors, it is difficult to tell whether the reasons given are the real ones, or indeed whether something quite different from what has been announced is being planned. Regimes that are not accountable often can control or manipulate the mass media. They find it easier to mobilize a society for war, whether against a similar regime or against a democracy. By contrast, it is much harder to convince people in a democracy that war is necessary against another country with an open and transparent political system. In such cases, the two peoples can engage, not just through war and diplomacy, but on a much broader front. They can see into each other's political processes and also influence them. The more open and accountable governments are to their fellow citizens, the less likely they are to use force, at least against other states whose systems are similarly open. Democracies are least true to themselves when their governments pursue covert policies. Even the greatest democracies have worked to undermine the stability of other elected governments, by means that they would probably not have dared to use if decisions had been open to public scrutiny. Kant himself understood this danger, which was why he considered "publicity" a necessity. …

Whither Kosovo? Whither Democracy?

Abstract: In September 1999, the Independent International Commission for Kosovo held its first meeting in Stockholm with a brief to analyze objectively the Kosovo crisis that led to the first ever military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Swedish prime minister Goran Persson initiated the work, but the independence of the commission was guaranteed and its chair and cochair were given the freedom to appoint the remaining members. Thirteen multidisciplinary experts from eleven countries on four continents decided on the mandate and terms of reference. (1) The commission met six times. It consulted widely with relevant governments and officials. It made a number of visits to Kosovo and met tete-a-tete with important leaders. Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned, published in October 2000, concluded that, in the absence of United Nations Security Council authorization, the NATO military response violated international law but was nonetheless politically and morally legitimate. (2) The illegality lay in NATO's decision to avoid the Security Council and certain Chinese and Russian vetoes. The legitimacy arose from the egregious oppression and violations of the human rights of the Kosovar Albanians by their Serb rulers. The Kosovar Albanians were the victims of ethnic cleansing that led to more than a million of them being driven from their homes. Whereas many of them fled after the NATO military campaign was initiated, there is no doubt that the bombing provided cover and encouragement for the Serb forces to intensify their execution of the policy of ethnic cleansing. It was simply unrealistic to expect the Kosovar Albanians to submit again to rule from Belgrade. The subsequent removal of Slobodan Milosevic as the head of state of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in no way changes this reality. In recognizing that the NATO intervention was both illegal and legitimate, the commission pointed to the consequent gap between international law on the one hand and morality on the other. An inevitable consequence of such a gap is that the system of international justice suffers. Where the law is not just, respect for it and its institutions is diminished. The apartheid laws of South Africa provide a graphic illustration of this phenomenon. The laws were manifestly unjust and oppressive. Imprisonment for violation of those laws became a badge of honor rather than shame. When such a gap emerges in international law, it is essential that steps be taken to narrow it. The commission suggested, therefore, that the UN General Assembly should consider a declaration setting forth the conditions that would make humanitarian intervention legitimate. The community of states should lay down the guidelines that could be used to measure legitimacy (for example, in the case of Kosovo) and attacks on legitimacy (in cases such as Chechnya). If the General Assembly does not undertake such an initiative, individual governments and international commissions should be encouraged to do so. The commission also recommended "conditional independence" for Kosovo. This meant independence from Serbia, although it was subject to international supervision, primarily to ensure the integrity of its neighbors and the full protection of the human rights of the minority communities of Kosovo. Since the commission reported, Milosevic has fallen from office, violence has spread to Macedonia, and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has promulgated a new constitutional framework. Elections under this framework were held on 17 November 2001. In light of these developments and many comments on the original publication, the Kosovo commission reconvened in September 2001 and issued an addendum to its report at the end of October 2001. (3) After reconsidering all pertinent developments in Kosovo itself and in the region, the commission unanimously reaffirmed its initial findings and recommendations. …

Justice and International Organization: Two Models of Global Governance

Abstract: Recent events suggest that justice is a central yet neglected ele ment in the theory and practice of international organization. For example, in March 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launched a war in Yugoslavia to curb the abuse of human rights by Serbs in the Kosovo province, but without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. This violated a sovereign state's territorial in tegrity, in addition to UN norms, but NATO leaders spoke of the right ful protection of the Albanian Kosovars.1 NATO's subsequent inability to uphold the basic rights and entitlements of all Kosovars, Albanian and Serb, suggests its actions were fundamentally unjust, however sound the original intent. Not long after, thousands of protestors attempted to shut down the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle and of the World Bank in Washington, D.C. Protestors claimed these institutions are unjust in their failure to take the interests, welfare, and basic rights of "the people" seriously. Spokespersons for these multilateral economic institutions were quick to defend the extent to which the benefits of globalization could be harnessed in favor of social equity and, moreover, could be pursued in tandem with human rights and the environment.2 These events reaffirm a widely known problem of international or ganization: an inherent tension between competing visions of what is just (in any particular case) and the dominant norms and procedures that constitute and decide upon the just or rightful within international soci ety. In this article, I claim that today's context of globalization renders this tension more complicated, because the justice claims of nonstate actors now increasingly clash with the largely statist basis of existing authoritative practices and institutions. I also suggest that the success, legitimacy, and effectiveness of international organization depends upon striking an appropriate balance between openness to the (contentious) justice claims of different political agents and the existence of (widely accepted, entrenched, and legitimated) authoritative practices. Finally, 19

Learning from Doha: A Civil Society Perspective from the South. (Global Insights)

Abstract: The fate of the Fourth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, hung in the balance until literally the last minute. Shortly after the adoption of the ministerial declaration,' WTO director general Mike Moore thanked the delegates for "saving the WTO," while U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick congratulated them for wiping away "the stain of Seattle." The relief expressed by Moore and Zoellick reflected the severe crisis of legitimacy the WTO was experiencing prior to Doha. A deadlock between North and South could very well have spelled the end of the WTO as an effective engine of trade liberalization. This crisis, however, was part of the larger crisis of the paradigm of corporate and market-driven globalization, which became particularly acute in the period between the earlier summit in Seattle and the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The Doha declaration may have curiously saved the WTO, but it has not surmounted its crisis of legitimacy. Indeed, the very methods by which the trading powers extracted a "consensus" at Doha may leave a legacy of bitterness and resentment that will be felt in the critical run-up to the Fifth Ministerial, to be held in Mexico in 2003. The Key Outcomes Doha put the WTO back on its feet after the disaster in Seattle. C. Fred Bergsten, a prominent partisan, once said that the WTO is like a bicycle: It collapses if it does not move forward. By agreeing on a declaration giving momentum to new negotiations for liberalization, the Doha meeting got the bicycle upright and moving again. What resulted may not be a new round in the sense of immediate negotiations on a wide range of issues. But it was a major step toward further liberalization. The Doha declaration affirmed ongoing negotiations on certain existing agreements, such as agriculture and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and opened negotiations to review other existing agreements, like the antidumping agreement. It also initiated negotiations for new agreements in such new areas as industrial tariffs. But perhaps most ominously, by putting them as the centerpiece of the declaration, Doha gave momentum to what may be the eventual launching of negotiations to bring new, nontrade areas within WTO jurisdiction. These are the so-called new or Singapore issues of investment, competition policy, government procurement, and trade facilitation. Doha was a clear setback for developing countries, most of which had wanted to focus the ministerial and its aftermath on resolving outstanding issues of implementation from the Uruguay Round, of which there are at least 104 according to the Group of 77. (2) The declaration simply acknowledged these concerns in perfunctory fashion and outlined a vague process for their resolution. Even in key areas of implementation specified in the text, such as agriculture and textiles and garments, developing countries came out as losers. The European Union (EU) managed to water down the Cairns Group's demand that there be a quick phaseout of agricultural export subsidies, and the United States and other developed countries did not commit to an early removal of quotas on textile and garment imports of critical importance to the developing countries. It is important to stress that the South lost out because much of the influential Northern press has been saying that Doha proved that developing countries can "win" in WTO negotiations. The Doha resolution of the trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) and public health issue is often cited as proof of this "win." However, it is important not to exaggerate its significance. That "the TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent Members from taking measures to protect public health" is a political statement. (3) There is nothing in the Doha compromise that commits members to change the text of TRIPs--in effect, a victory for Washington, which held that the current text is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the public health concerns of developing countries. …

Rediscovering the State. (Global Insights)

Abstract: Simply put, our post-war institutions were built for an inter-national world, but we now live in a global world. Kofi Annan There may have been a time when both the theory and the practice of world affairs was too state centric, when the role of civil society, the private sector, and transnational regimes was little understood or appreciated. But that was a decade or more ago--before the end of the Cold War, the acceleration of European integration, and the promise of multi-lateralism led to a refocusing on the subnational, transnational, and international dimensions of political life. This reorientation has produced some valuable insights and a more nuanced feel for the multiple forces driving international relations. The pendulum, however, has swung too far. It is time to return the state to a more central place in our research and in our understanding of the purposes, workings, and potential of international organization, especially the United Nations. For example, only 5 percent (seven) of the articles in Global Governance in its first six years have addressed the policies of specific states toward international institutions, and all but one of these have focused on the United States. Such articles are even rarer in International Organization; since 1995, two have addressed overall voting patterns in the General Assembly, one has addressed U.S. attitudes toward internationalism in general, and one has addressed why countries chose to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF). None has described or assessed the policies of a specific state or group of states toward the UN or other global organizations. The relative neglect of those factors that make individual states unique--in favor of an assumption of generic motivations, values, and responses--has had distorting consequences for both the theory and practice of global governance. The academic discourse on international relations theory has been substantively rich and methodologically sophisticated, but it has focused more on regional integration than on global institutions and relied more on historical cases than on recent events. Ironically, each of the major competing theories acknowledges the centrality of national governments in foreign affairs; and the spirited intellectual debates are largely about what forces move them. Yet the very effort to build generalizable theories has discouraged analysis of individual differences. Research on such unfashionable topics as interests, geo-politics, history, domestic politics, and political culture has faded. As a result, there is less and less dialogue between scholars and practitioners. Neither their vocabula ry nor their agendas coincide. Meanwhile, the dramatic strides toward regional integration and global cooperation have been accompanied by growing signs of dissonance and discord. Squabbles about global warming, arms control, the International Criminal Court, assessments, and who is going to sit on which intergovernmental bodies have been along East-West as much as North-South lines. Yet our models tell us little about why Washington and its allies see the basis for international cooperation so differently, why the U.S. Congress is so skeptical of multilateral impulses, or why U.S. attitudes vary so markedly from one issue to another. One reason may be ideological: the right and left ends of the political spectrum do not speak to each other any more in academia than they do in politics. On both levels, more conservative voices have followed a jarringly different score. In the chorus heralding global norms and means, however, there is little room for dissent. The Bush administration is seen as an unschooled aberration and, according to som e in Europe, the United States has become a "rogue state." Under such conditions, everyone's theories and assumptions are due for a reality check. Besides, the United States has hardly been the only dissenter. Its bald and unapologetic stance has permitted smaller powers to free ride, while other large states, such as China, India, and Russia, have also expressed serious reservations about much of the new multilateral agenda. …

The Messy Afterlife of Colonialism. (Global Insights)

Abstract: It is, thankfully, no longer fashionable in most of the developing world to decry the evils of colonialism in assigning blame for every national misfortune The imperial statues have been toppled, cities and streets renamed, the vestiges of a foreign presence either abandoned or adapted With the sole exception of Zimbabwe in its struggles with the land question, no leading politician in any postimperial country has made a significant speech in recent years attacking colonialism That great staple of political rhetoric in most of the developing world appears to have been buried once and for all Internationally, the subject of colonialism is even more passe There was a time when the votaries of one kind of new international order or another decried the evils of imperialism (sometimes, but not always, prefixed with a "neo-") in justifying their demands for a more just dispensation That theme has died out in diplomatic discourse This is not simply because of the irresistability of globalization There is little room for controversy, since the need for decolonization is no longer much debated, and what little remains of colonialism itself no longer generates much conflict Colonialism can no longer be seen as a threat to peace and security since there are, after all, no empires left whose maintenance or withdrawal might trigger extensive warfare Of all the subjects worthy of addressing in this august journal at the dawn of the twenty-first century, colonialism must surely seem the least plausible Yet those who follow world affairs would not be entirely wise to consign the issue of colonialism to the proverbial dustbin of history The last decades of the twentieth century suggest that, curiously enough, it remains a relevant factor in understanding the problems and the dangers of the world in which we now live To begin, residual problems from the end of the era of colonization, usually the result of untidy departures by the colonial power, remain dangerously stalemated The dramatic events in East Timor in 1999 are still fresh in the memory, and associated difficulties linger, most notably in the plight of the militia-menaced refugees in West Timor But at least closure seems in sight there, unlike in Western Sahara or in those old standbys of Cyprus and Palestine, all messy legacies of European colonialism Fuses once lit in the colonial era could ignite again, as they have done, much to everyone's surprise, in the Horn of Africa, between Ethiopia and Eritrea, where war broke out over a colonial border that the Italians of an earlier era of occupation had failed to define with enough precision And in Zimbabwe, colonial land ownership patterns that gave most of the viable farmland to white settlers lie at the root of the political crisis in that country a century later Zimbabwe was, strikingly enough, the only major colony (aside from a few islands in the South Pacific) to have been named for an imperialist--"Rhodesia" was created to honor the man who had declared of his fellow Britons, "We are the first race in the world, and the more of the world we inherit the better it is for the human race" Cecil Rhodes openly told the press that the only way to "save" the United Kingdom from "a bloody civil war" was to "acquire new lands to settle the surplus population" It is all the more ironic that an African president is now using Rhodes's own logic to reverse land ownership in the country once named for him Even more ironically, it was Rhodes who famously pronounced the colonial dictum "the Empire is a bread and butter question" So, it now seems, is its dissolution But it's not just the direct results of colonialism that remain relevant, because there are the indirect ones as well The intellectual history of colonialism is littered with many a willful cause of more recent conflict One is, quite simply, careless anthropology The Belgian classification of Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi, which reified a distinction that had not existed previously, continues to haunt the region of the African Great Lakes …

The Middle East Conflict: The Palestinian Dimension. (Global Insights)

Abstract: A significant flaw in the search for peace in the Middle East over the years has been the calculated avoidance of the centrality of the Palestinian dimension of the conflict. Only now are efforts being made to tackle the problem. But the recognition of the intractable nature of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship still offers the temptation to pursue other avenues of resolving the conflict. This kind of diplomatic approach to the conflict is both dangerous and futile. There can be no durable peace and stability in the Middle East until a just solution to the Palestinian plight is found. Those involved in Middle East diplomacy should be constantly reminded that, from the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 and the British Mandate under the League of Nations in July 1922 to the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, the basis of the conflict between Jews and Arabs has been over sovereign territorial control of Palestine, and nothing else. The formulation of the Balfour Declaration was widely condemned by all Arabs and was perceived by one writer as "the double undertaking of irreconcilable commitments to the Jews and Arabs." (1) A writer who has given much thought to the issue of self-determination and nationalism had this to say of the problem: "The conception of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine could not possibly be squared with the principle of self-determination, or, for that matter, of democracy, on the basis of any of the generally accepted criteria." (2) Under the British Mandate, the conflict was mainly between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish Agency, which represented Palestinian Jews. In accordance with Article 4 of the mandate, the Jewish Agency, whose president was Chaim Weizman, was set up to cooperate with the British in implementing the promise of a Jewish national homeland. Despite the many Arab revolts and the guerrilla warfare conducted by the Jewish underground against the British, negotiations continued involving the Jewish Agency and the Arab High Committee, under the leadership of Mufti Haj Amin el Husseini. The Palestinian Arabs, strongly supported by all the Arab states, rejected the partition plan recommended by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in Resolution 181 of November 1947. The British government, which held the mandate under the League of Nations, increasingly took an ambivalent attitude toward the partition plan and in the end was one of the member states that abstained in the resolution. As David Ben-Gurion was broadcasting the declaration of independence under the terms of the UN partition resolution on May 1948, war broke out, with Egyptian bombs landing on Tel Aviv. (3) And, with the defeat of the Arab states, the Palestinian Arabs lost control of their own destiny. It should be recalled that during the League period and during World War II, Palestinian Arabs, with strong support from other Arab states, had actually been more successful in shaping the prospects for their future independence. For example, they had managed to pressure the British and other allied governments to reformulate the promise of a Jewish national homeland under the Balfour Declaration. The Churchill White Paper of 1921 appeared to reject the concept of a Jewish state in Palestine and also called for the restriction of Jewish immigration into Palestine. (4) However, between the end of the war in 1948, the subsequent signing of the armistice agreements in 1949, and the outbreak of the Six Day War in June 1967, the Middle East crisis was widely perceived as a conflict between Israel and the Arab states. The Palestinian Arabs, in contrast, were treated as a problem of refugees, for which UN Resolution 194 of December 1948 had made provisions for the right of return or compensation. What brought about this dramatic change of fortune for the Palestinian Arabs when they were marginalized in Middle East diplomacy? …