The Iraq War and the Responsibility to Protect: Uses,Abuses and Consequences for the Future of Humanitarian Intervention

Before the 2003 Iraq war, the political leadership of the United States and United Kingdom had to sell the case for war to their people and the world. This was attempted through a number of speeches that employed rhetorical justifications for the war. Two prominent justifications used during this period involved the employment of security and humanitarian narratives. The security narrative focused on claims regarding Iraq's undermining of international law, possession of weapons of mass destruction and threat to the world. The humanitarian narrative revolved around claims about human suffering in Iraq and the need to liberate its people. While it is widely assumed that security is the dominant casus belli in the post-9/11 world, there is much evidence to suggest that the humanitarian justifications that played a critical role in the military interventions of the 1990s were still important after 9/11. The use of humanitarian justifications for the Iraq war clearly has implications for the ‘responsibility to protect (R2P)’ movement, which has gained prominence since the December 2001 publication of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) report. Based on an extensive content analysis of speeches by the US and UK political leadership before the war, this article will quantify the relative importance of each narrative and analyse what the findings mean for the ongoing debates within the ‘responsibility to protect (R2P)’ movement.     

Allele frequencies of 15 autosomal STR loci in the Iraq population with comparisons to other populations from the middle-eastern region

Allele frequencies for the 15 autosomal STR loci included in the AmpFlSTR((R)) IdentifilerTM PCR Amplification Kit panel from Applied Biosystems (D3S1358, vWA, FGA, D8S1179, D21S11, D18S51, D5S818, D13S317, D7S820, TH01, TPOX, CSF1PO, D19S433, D2S1338, D16S539) and several statistical parameters were estimated from a sample of 103 unrelated individuals, mostly Shia and Sunni Arabs, living in most of central and southern Iraq provinces. We compared the allele frequency spectrum detected in the Iraqi population to allele frequencies from 11 other data sets from published studies of individuals from Turkey, Iraqi-Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, Arab Emarates, Oman, Iran, Syria, and Jordan. Significant global differences in allele frequencies were detected in 9 of the 11 comparisons following sequential Bonferroni corrections. Comparisons with the two independent panels from Saudi Arabia were not significant after applying Bonferroni corrections, however, low P-values (P<0.05) associated with these two contrasts nonetheless suggested that at least slight genetic differences between populations may exist.     

试论美国对伊新战略及其对中东地区的影响

伊拉克战争结束后,中东问题已不仅是个地区性问题,还关系到国际体系的转型、国际政治经济秩序重构等全球性问题。布什总统2007年1月提出了关于解决伊拉克问题的“新战略”,内容包含了军事、政治、经济和外交等多个层面,但短期内难以奏效。“新战略”的实施主要受美国国内政治走向、巴以问题、黎巴嫩局势、伊朗外交政策走向以及俄、欧、中、日等大国(集团)与美国关系发展等诸多因素的影响。     

Democracy promotion and ODA: a comparative analysis

Scholars of democracy promotion foreign aid often claim it has substantially increased, yet they shy away from explaining by how much, nor investigate comparative trends in giving. This paper attempts to fill this void by addressing the following: (1) Has democracy promotion aid increased since the end of the Cold War? (2) Has the ‘assumed’ trend of increasing aid persevered through the difficulties encountered in democratizing Iraq? (3) Did aid increase from states that supported the invasion of Iraq compared to states that did not? The author's analysis purports that the answer is yes to the first two, yet it is harder to draw conclusions regarding Iraq. Another finding, contrary to claims in the scholarly literature, in terms of percentage and overall spending, the USA gives more democracy promotion aid than the EU. The author hopes this work stimulates research into the role of democracy promotion in the Arab Spring to consider historical trends in giving.     

Memorialize the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre

正THE Nanjing Massacre refers to the 40-day slaughter committed by the Japanese army in the early stages of their invasion of China,which cruelly claimed the lives of more than 300,000 civilians and captured soldiers.One third of the city was razed and property losses were beyond count.Some believe that the Nanjing Massacre,along with Auschwitz Concentration Camp and bombing of Hiroshima(the first use of atomic weapons in combat)were the three     

Mrs. Song＇s Fish Soup

正Mrs.Song was expert at cooking f ish soup.She lived in Bianjing(today’s Kaifeng in Henan Province),capital of the Northern Song Dynasty(960-1127).After the Northern Song collapsed following the invasion of the Nuchen people,and the ensuing Han regime,the Southern Song(1127-1279),moved its capital to Lin’an in Zhejiang Province,Mrs.Song and her family migrated with other patriotic citizens to the south,and settled down by the West Lake in Hangzhou to establish her own f ish soup stall.     

近代日本侵略中朝思想中的民族优越论分析

日本特有的民族优越论是其侵略中朝思想的观念格局中潜在的持久性精神要素.以神国观、“华夷之辨”世界观和社会进化论等为依据而虚构、鼓噪的日本民族优越论实用于日本与亚洲邻国的关系方面,促成日本侵略中朝思想的滋生和延展.以近代化成功为依托而昂扬的日本民族优越论终使其将本民族优越意识置换为“挽救”东亚的救世意识和鼓吹日本充当东亚霸主的舆论工具,发展为民族沙文主义,成为日本对外侵略扩张理论最直接的思想基础.     

THE ASSYRIANS IN WORLD WAR ONE AND THE 1933 MASSACRE: NEW DISCOVERIES IN THE RSAA ARCHIVES

The recent discovery of a bundle of documents in the archives of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs has shed more light on the history of the Assyrian Christians of Iraq from the time of the First World War up to the Simele massacre in 1933. The documents are accounts and correspondence written primarily by a number of leading British players including Major-General Dunsterville, Sir Henry Dobbs, Colonel J.J. McCarthy, and also the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Shimun. They also shed further light on the role played by Leo Amery, Secretary of State for the Colonies. The documents appear to have been compiled by Sir Percy Sykes, the then Secretary of the Royal Central Asian Society (as the Royal Society for Asian Affairs then was) as part of an investigation into the situation of the Assyrians. This article introduces the newly-discovered collection of documents and discusses how they advance our understanding of this period.     

国际法视角下的伊拉克战争--浅析布什主义的先发制人策略

先发制人是布什主义的基本要素,即坚持美国具有潜在的敌人能够伤害美国之前,对其首先发动攻击的权力.国家进行预防性战争的理由主要是,他国未来将发动袭击,因此要努力阻止这样的袭击发生.先发制人与预防性战争的区别主要在于敌人正准备进攻的确定无疑或似是而非.伊拉克战争是美国人一场预防性的战争,历史和国际法对预防性战争都是否定的.     

中外环境与资源保护法民事责任制度比较研究

在我国,由于长期以来在环境保护方面过分强调政府的行为,重行政手段的规制而轻民事法律的调整,使环境民事责任制度得不到充分的重视而难以形成体系.现行的环境侵权法在环境民事责任制度方面存在很大的不足和问题,影响实践中环境损害案件的处理,对于受害人权益的保护尤为不利,不能适应新形势下新的要求.应借鉴中外不同法系国家环境侵权民事责任的不同架构原则,力求为我国可持续发展的新形势下环境保护和环境侵害责任追究探讨一条可操作性强、理论体系完整、归责原则明晰的环境民事责任体系.