Humanitarian Intervention After Iraq: Legal Ideals vs. Military Realities

The theory of humanitarian intervention has received new attention since the humanitarian crises of the 1990s and the United States’ becoming the world's sole superpower. The actual practice of humanitarian intervention, however, has declined. It is difficult to forge the political will for it when the countries composing the global organizations that could provide the political legitimacy disagree on an intervention, and with so few countries—mainly the United States and Great Britain—capable of providing the required expeditionary forces. Moreover, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have diminished the United States’ political will, military capability, and diplomatic credibility to conduct future humanitarian interventions. In particular, those wars precluded its intervention in the current genocide in Darfur. Regional bodies such as the African Union may be the only entities that can, with aid and training, undertake effective interventions.     

Why Humanitarianism Needs a Pacifist Ethos

ABSTRACT

Debates concerning the relationship between humanitarianism and the use of force are by no means a new phenomenon, yet humanitarian rationales for waging war have become more and more commonplace over recent decades. The commitment to humanitarian intervention, in particular, raises deep theoretical and practical questions about the foundational principle of political neutrality espoused by many humanitarian aid organisations. In this paper I will provide an overview of the literature on the relationship between humanitarianism and the use of force before advancing the argument that a genuine humanitarianism must necessarily be premised upon a pacifist ethos. A pacifist ethos, in this context, is presented as a commitment to non-violence and anti-war activism even while recognising the limits of such an aspiration. Such an understanding of pacifism in practice, inspired in part by realist ethics, allows humanitarian actors to take strong, principled, and sustained stands in support of universal values of peace and human well-being without losing sight of the material challenges posed by the very real violence of the arenas in which they operate.     

Challenges to multilaterism free trade agreements

The establishment of free trade took place in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries and, after the Second World War, international trade through trade liberalisation gained increased importance. International organisations such as the General Agreement in Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the present World Trade Organisation (WTO) were then established to provide the institutional framework for a system of rights and obligations for trade in goods and services between countries. Nations worldwide are currently promoting trade liberalisation using various ways, multilaterally, regionally or bilaterally.     

Italy’s Migration Policies Combating Irregular Immigration: from the Early Days to the Present Times

Italian migration policies combating irregular immigration from the early 20^th century to the present times have been increasingly debated and controversial. Four phases are detectable: the absence of a legal framework while Italy was still an emigration country, the first regulations of the 1980s, policies influenced by both the European integration process and the increase in immigration until 2002 and, lastly, the country’s controversial approaches since 2004. What is noticeable is a dichotomy in Italy’s migration policies, with generally consistent internal measures and often contrasting external ones.     

François Mitterrand’s Visit to Sarajevo, 28 June 1992

At 10:30 in the morning on 28 June 1992, a Dauphin helicopter landed at Sarajevo airport carrying a precious cargo: the French president, François Mitterrand. Since the beginning of the Bosnian War, Bosnian Serb forces had controlled the airport and restricted the delivery of humanitarian aid to the city’s destitute population, which formed an important cornerstone of their siege strategy. In reaching the airport, the president secured its re-opening and, with it, the commencement of one of the longest humanitarian airlifts in history. However, Mitterrand’s visit also had implications and significance beyond the Bosnian capital. The visit secured humanitarian intervention through the United Nations as the international community’s modus operandi for conflict resolution in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Through its permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council and enthusiastic engagement with humanitarian intervention, France would shape the intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina and thus continue to justify its position amongst the world’s Great Powers.     

Political terrorism in South‐East Asia

This article will provide an overview of one specific non‐military threat that is beginning to assume greater prominence on south‐east Asia's broadened security agenda: political terrorism.¹ Although by no means new to the south‐east Asian environment, for much of the twentieth century its importance was sidelined and, in a sense ‘contained’, by the more pressing concern over US‐Soviet nuclear rivalry. With the end of the Cold War, however, the ‘bottle has been uncorked’ on a variety of lower‐level threats, with issues such as terrorism now taking on greater prominence and relevance in their own right as significant regional and national security concerns.²     

Responsibility to Protect: Emerging Rules on Humanitarian Intervention?

This article discusses different forms of military force under or linked to the principle of the responsibility to protect (R2P) in relation to international law, with particular emphasis on humanitarian intervention. It contributes to the ongoing debate by analysing and separating the lawful forms of military force falling under Pillars II and III of the R2P from unlawful claims and extensive interpretations of R2P. Apart from the already existing legal right of the Security Council to authorise humanitarian interventions, it is argued that there are no ongoing legal customary developments of similar rights or obligations for other actors to intervene in another state (without consent) to protect populations by military force against grave crimes under the principle of R2P. The argumentation is based on a series of case studies of humanitarian interventions by the Security Council, regional organisations and “coalitions of willing states”. The article also includes legal analysis on the Uniting for Peace Procedure and the prior treaty-based consented rights to intervention under the African Union Act and the 1999 ECOWAS Protocol on the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention.     

Humanitarian Emergencies and the International Criminal Court (ICC): Toward a Cooperative Arrangement between the ICC and UN Security Council

Erratum . International Studies Perspectives 6:4, 431-466
This article analyzes the role of humanitarian intervention in bringing together the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN Security Council. It argues that a framework for cooperation between the ICC and Security Council is needed to facilitate a coordinated response to humanitarian emergencies. One of the concepts explored is a mutual legitimacy push, or how the ICC and Security Council can lend effective assistance to one another when responding to humanitarian emergencies. Such a push will not only serve to enhance a response to humanitarian disasters but also close the "critical gap" between the moral legitimacy of international humanitarian action and the legality of the UN Charter. The article concludes that a cooperative relationship will not politicize the ICC, and that the ICC and the Security Council, can, through institutional re-engineering, achieve mutual political benefits.     

Soldiers,Civilians, and Multilateral Humanitarian Intervention

Approval from the United Nations or NATO appears to have become a necessary condition for US humanitarian military intervention. Conventional explanations emphasizing the pull of legitimacy cannot fully account for this given that US policymakers vary considerably in their attachment to multilateralism. This article argues that America's military leaders, who are consistently skeptical about humanitarian intervention and tend to emphasize its costs, play a central role in making multilateral approval necessary. As long as top-ranking generals express strong reservations about intervention and no clear threat to US national security exists, they can veto the use of force. In such circumstances, even heavyweight “humanitarian hawks” among the civilian leadership, who initially may have wanted to bypass multilateral bodies to maximize US freedom of action, can be expected to recognize the need for UN or NATO approval—if only as a means of mollifying the generals by reassuring them about the prospect of sustained multilateral burden sharing. Two case studies drawing on interviews with senior civilian and military officials illustrate and probe the plausibility of the argument.     

Balancing against threats or bandwagoning with power? Europe and the transatlantic relationship after the Cold War

The United States has played an important role in European security since the early 20^th century. From the time of the end of the Cold War, this role has changed as a consequence of the lack of a common territorial threat and the overwhelming power of the United States relative to Europe. How have European states responded to the challenges of the American world order? Are they adapting their security policies to match the challenges of US security policy and the American world order? What are the implications of the European response for the transatlantic relationship? This article seeks to describe and explain European security behaviour in the American world through the prism of two realist theories: balance of power realism and balance of threat realism. Despite sharing a common starting point in realist assumptions, each theory allows us to tell a different story about Europe's position in the American world order as well as the opportunities and challenges it faces.     

Pushing the Boundaries of the Possible at the Margins of Peacekeeping: The Promises of ESDP–Russia Co-operation for Humanitarian Intervention1

While relatively little attention has been paid to the significance of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) as a newly emerged mechanism in the domain of international peacekeeping, even less research has been undertaken on the potential benefits of its external relations and co-operation with third countries. This article sheds light on such a potential by investigating the relations of the ESDP with the Russian Federation. The current debate on humanitarian intervention tends to reduce the analysis to a single plane of reality, namely the normative one, thus ignoring the material aspects of military intervention. The enlargement of the ontological horizon of research from normative to material factors uncovers the greatest advantage of ESDP–Russia co-operation for humanitarian intervention, namely their mutually complementary peacekeeping capacities. Whilst the European Union boasts a long-standing human rights culture, Russia could offer vast material resources both in terms of manpower and logistics. Ignoring this possible synergy between the ESDP and Russian capacities would be a considerable loss for the cause of humanitarian intervention. Joint operations conducted by the European Union, Russia, and NATO against genocidal governments, the “common enemies”, would not only enhance the cause of humanitarian intervention but also enable common actions and thus mitigate current tensions between the East and West. In many respects ESDP–Russia co-operation actually lags behind NATO–Russia relations.     

The Renewed ‘Struggle for Syria’: From the War ‘in’ Syria to the War ‘over’ Syria

ABSTRACT

Syria is generally considered a case of non-intervention. One of the dominant (since the 1990s) kinds of intervention, namely multilateral humanitarian intervention, failed, as did other attempts by a select group of countries to implement a ‘red line’ concerning the use of chemical weapons. However, in this case, there is no sharp dichotomy between intervention and non-intervention. In lieu of an intervention that would tilt the balance and coordinate help to halt massacres, various rival and uncoordinated international and regional interventions overlapped over time, fuelling a market for violence. ‘Weakened interventionism’, as opposed to principled and hierarchical intervention, has manifested itself in Syria in a model recalling “the struggle for Syria” of the 1960s in a new, contemporary setting.     

Realizing the Responsibility to Protect

Written prior to the release of the UN Secretary-General's report on implementing the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), this article examines the effort to translate the principle from words into deeds. It begins by noting a post-2005 "revolt" against the principle in which a number of states expressed skepticism about the principle and its use in different settings. This revolt, the article contends, was largely a product of the continuing association between R2P and humanitarian intervention. This association was, in turn, caused by a combination of misplaced commentary and the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty's focus on the intervention question. This article maintains that building consensus on the R2P requires a shift in emphasis and proposes three avenues: clarifying the nature of prevention, developing practical measures, and proposing modest proposals for institutional reform.     

The changing ‘logics’ of capitalist competition

This article criticizes contemporary attempts within the Marxist tradition to understand the current juncture of international relations in terms of either a return to classical Marxist theories of inter-imperial rivalry or ultra-imperialism. It argues instead to put the debate on a new theoretical footing that is able to capture the rich diversity of international relations and permutations of territorial orders within the entire history of capitalism since its inception in 17^th-century England. It argues specifically that the system of multiple states and capitalism, rather than being causally co-emergent and co-constitutive, have historically different origins. Since the latter emerged within the former, their interrelation is not structurally determined by any ‘logic of capital’ per se or by a ‘logic of anarchy’ (or by their intersection). Rather, profound variations in capitalist international orders result from the contested construction of diverse projects of territorialization by historically situated capitalist classes and states. They are neither subject to an evolutionary long-term logic of globalization and global state-formation, nor to a recurring logic of inter-imperial rivalry, but far exceed the limits of these narrow options.     

Humanitarian dilemmas in peace and war

Humanitarian assistance is becoming more complex and the environment in which it operates more competitive. Nevertheless, humanitarianism is shielded from such pressures by a set of principles that are reflected in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) which all governments ostensibly accept. The issue for the wider international community as well as for donor and recipi ent governments and humanitarian organizations is whether such principles can endure in light of the dilemmas posed in times of conflict and post-conflict. Humanitarian Dilemmas in War and Peace explores the dilemmas that humanitarianism not only confronts but also creates in seeking to protect and preserve life of the disaster and emergency-affected. In so doing, it views humanitarianism from three perspectives: (i) humanitarian principles in times of conflict; (ii) humanitarian principles from the perspective of many within the Group of 77; and (iii) humanitarianism from the perspective of institutional survival. The opinion piece concludes that, despite the dilemmas suggested by these perspectives, humanitarian principles can be upheld even amidst the complex and com petitive aid environment. It would require inter alia a more focused definition of humanitarian action, mechanisms that hold humanitarian organizations to higher standards of accountability, a commitment to more consistent and coherent advocacy and greater strategic perspectives to anticipate and respond to factors creating large-scale human vulnerability.     

Soft Security Threats in the New Europe: The Case of the Balkan Region

‘You cannot have a process where Balkan countries pretend to reform and we pretend to believe them.’

Chris Patten, EU Commissioner in charge of External Relations BBC World News, 25 November, 2002

Southeastern Europe represents for Europe a significant geo-strategic and geopolitical region whose stability and security directly affects Europe’s political and security infrastructure. Conflicts and instability are still prevalent in the Balkans and, as a consequence, security cooperation in Europe is struggling to cope with risks of a non-military nature. It is widely accepted that as a region, the Balkans at the dawn of the 21^st century remains weak and unable to deal efficiently with soft security threats. This article initially provides a generic picture of the Balkans and the hard security challenges prevalent there. It also aims to identify and assess the main types of new security threats that are currently present in the region, as well as to explore how these threats would be influenced by EU and NATO membership. The article also outlines the cooperative security measures adopted by the southeastern European countries, and it concludes by providing some thoughts on how the future developments in the region will be influenced by current international developments     

"Do Ourselves Credit and Render a Lasting Service to Mankind": British Moral Prestige, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Barbary Pirates

This paper raises the issue of moral credibility in international relations and shows that considerations of preserving moral prestige can become crucial for armed humanitarian intervention. It contrasts realist and constructivist explanations about the causes of humanitarian intervention and demonstrates that traditional accounts do not provide a complete understanding of the phenomenon of intervention. In the case studied here, Britain engaged in a relatively costly humanitarian intervention against the Barbary pirates, slave trade in Christian Europeans due to her willingness to defy moral criticism and exhibit consistency with her professed moral principles. No material incentives and/or constraints influenced the British decision, and neither was it affected by a sense of felling, with regard to the Christian slaves. Instead, allegations that Britain urged Europe to abolish the black slave trade out of selfish interests, while at the same time turning a blind eye toward the Christian slave trade of the pirates, undermined British moral prestige and became the cause of the Barbary expedition.     

Japanese youth consumption: A cultural and a social (r)evolution crossing borders

This paper deals with the issue of Japanese youth as the social group that is (r)evolutionising the consumption trends in their society by a cultural change in values and lifestyles. These changes are reflected in new ways of social relations, work, gender issues and mainly consumption patterns. Japanese youth is creating a pop culture of their own that is spreading around East and South-East Asia, affecting their consumption trends as well. Such influence confers a new identity to the region that will be a key issue for marketers in the 21^st century.The author thanks the help of the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Technology through the R&D Project BS02003-07810, that enables the funding of this ongoing research.