Intervention in the Emerging Multipolar System: Why R2P will Miss the Unipolar Moment

Abstract

With the rise of China and Russia, the international system is poised to shift from unipolarity to multipolarity. This article argues that this structural reconfiguration will have—and is having—a profound effect on the future efficacy of the responsibility to protect (R2P). The rise of R2P, we argue, must be situated in the context of the end of the Cold War and the ‘unipolar moment’ this heralded. The efficacy of R2P is predicated on the assumption that moral advocacy can influence liberal democracies to re-orientate their foreign policy priorities towards human rights protection. We argue that the emerging multipolarity will expose the temporal specificity of this strategy and, ultimately, weaken the influence of R2P.     

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.     

JISB Interview: The Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

Dr Aidan Hehir interviewed Dr Francis Deng, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, in New York on 20 August 2009     

Continuity or Change?: Intervention and Statebuilding after Kosovo

ABSTRACT

The significance of Kosovo can only be understood by first situating the intervention in 1999 and the subsequent statebuilding process in a historical context. While there is a profound difference between 1999 and today, we should not conclude that this means the practice of humanitarian intervention has gone into decline as a result of waning western power. Decisions on intervention at that juncture, as indeed they are today. I conclude by arguing, however, that the theory and practice of statebuilding, has changed markedly since 1999; expectations as to the capacity of international administrations to transform post-conflict societies have declined markedly.     

Responsibility to Peace: A Critique of R2P

Abstract

The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 led to the doctrine of R2P, which envisages the use of force in defence of human rights. But as the Kosovo conflict demonstrates, nothing is more destructive of human rights than war. The protection and promotion of human rights should be done through lawful and non-lethal means. This essay argues that citizens and states have a responsibility to peace as much as to human rights because human rights can only flourish in a condition of peace. This essay seeks to restore peace to its proper place in the discussion of international politics and human rights.     

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan: Impartiality in New UN Peace Operations

Abstract

Set within the complex contemporary context of international interventions, UN peacekeeping operations have now evolved into peace operations. The emergence of the concepts of human security and the responsibility to protect have raised expectations that UN peace operations should deal with both macro and micro level insecurity in conflict and post-conflict situations, especially in the case of failed or collapsed states. Reflecting this development, the question of an appropriate framework in which to conceptualize peace operations has also been debated. This essay considers a conceptualization of UN peace operations from a conflict resolution perspective and analyses the case of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), using a framework of conflict transformation. It argues that the impartiality of UN operations has been reconceived in terms of the values of ‘human security’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’, making it vital to explicitly articulate the meaning and implications of ‘value-based’ impartiality.     

The Responsibility to Protect and the End of the Western Century

Abstract

It is argued here that the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) has to be placed in the context of the failure to develop new international norms around questions of intervention in the 1990s. Far from embodying global consensus, R2P represents the failure of the West to impose new global norms. This lack of consensus was revealed most dramatically by the disagreements among Western states themselves before the 2003 Iraq invasion. It is argued that many of the principles of the War on Terror (such as the commitment to pre-emptive action) are substantively similar to those of R2P. The essay concludes by considering R2P in light of the decline of the West.     

Security Identities and ‘No More,No Less’ Operations: On Making NATO's Involvement in Darfur Possible

This article explores NATO's support mission to the African Union's peacekeeping operation in Darfur, Sudan between 2005 and 2007. NATO policies are commonly presented as functional responses to events, but how did a conflict on the African continent become the Atlantic Alliance's business? In this essay, a poststructuralist practice-oriented approach is used to understand the way in which discursive practices progressively establish a policy option as ‘natural' in a given situation. It is argued that the normalization of NATO's support mission to the African Union in Darfur and the integration of this operation in NATO's security identity were the result of complex and conflict-ridden social interactions between different discursive practices supported by different actors.     

The unbearable rightfulness of being human: citizenship,displacement, and the right to not have rights

Claims to human rights protection made by displaced persons are displaced from the universe of humanity and rendered ineffective by the geopolitical character of modern international human rights law, in favour of the protection of citizens' rights claims. In response, there is increasing interest in leveraging respect for and protection of the rights of displaced persons through extension of the rights enjoyed and supposedly borne by emplaced citizens. However, it is a mistake to assume that humans as citizens bear human rights or that the freedoms that they may be able to extend beyond state boundaries are universalisable. The extension of the right to citizenship functions to displace questions of human rights themselves. The question of the human in rights is in fact always displaced, as long as the human subject is acted upon as if it could possess rights. In paying attention to the critical perspectives with which displaced persons confront the citizen, she or he may come to appreciate the fact that the universality of human rights is served where one does not claim to have rights but, rather, actively engages, without limits, with others in the struggle for rights and their respect.     

人类命运共同体思想构成与新安全观总体性内联初探——基于马克思主义哲学思考为中心的分析

人类命运共同体的思想与总体国家安全观的内在联系,具有马克思主义在方法论与方法上的性质,符合马克思主义"总体论"方法的基本认识,具有对新时代的引领作用。习近平提出并多次强调构建"人类命运共同体"与树立"总体国家安全观",在面对世界百年未有之大变局的情势中,对中国如何处理好国际事务和保证国家安全两大方面有着很强的引领作用。构建人类命运共同体的思想,其基本构成具有科学性并厚重的底蕴,五大构成的总体性使得其内涵精炼且外延宽阔;总体国家安全观,总结和提炼了对国家安全的十一大方面,强调要予以总体把握和统筹,对于进入新时代的中国高瞻远瞩地处理好安全事务,在共同体的构建之中,依照党的十九届四中全会的精神,认清形势,把握大局,夯实自身基础等具有很强的指导意义。     

"行乞权"之争的法理误区--兼评"法无明文禁止之处即可作权利的推定"命题

乞讨行为从来都不是一种被社会道德或国家法律所倡导的行为."行乞权"既不是公民的生存权,也不是一项"穷人的道德权利"或具有普遍意义的道德权利.在"行乞权"之争中,暴露出长期以来法理上,以及近些年来人们在人权理念上的种种误区.逻辑上和实践中,从法无明文禁止之处不能必然地推导出权利.人权不是一种排除义务的绝对权利,或可以凌驾于一切社会规范之上不含界限的一种特权.     

Homeland security and citizen response to emergency situations: a perspective on the need for a policy approach to information access

Open access to public information is a hallmark of American political culture; however, the terrorist attacks on and before September 11, 2001 have prompted a reevaluation of how “freedom of information” should be balanced against the need for enhanced homeland security. This essay begins with a summary of legislative and executive actions that have led to restriction of environmental and health-related information formerly available to the public. Drawing on studies of disaster behavior, it is argued that citizen responders may be significantly hampered by restriction of environmental and public health-related information formerly available by means of public access web sites. The Lasswellian policy decision process is examined to explore the basis for a balancing test for agencies contemplating restriction of information related to environmental and public health-related threats. It is suggested that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) implement guidance for federal agencies in weighing decisions concerning the public status of information.

The Use of Drones in Pakistan: an Inquiry into the Ethical and Legal Issues

It is clear the United States and other major powers see drone warfare as the wave of the future. Today more than 70 countries possess drone technology and many others are seeking to acquire it. It is expected that within 20 years, there will be swarms of drones and many autonomous fighters and bombers in use around the globe. If the trends continue as anticipated, these drones will usher in a ‘boundless and borderless war without end’. The development of technological improvements will eventually lead to a militarisation of foreign policy and unnecessary conflicts. While the circumstances in Pakistan are unique, the questions surrounding the US drone programme in non‐combat zones such as Pakistan raise important issues regarding how drone use should be governed in the future. This article is an attempt to analyse legal and ethical issues raised by the US use of drone technology in non‐combat zones such as Pakistan, and it looks into its underpinnings and also its repercussions as tool in prospective warfare.     

New Labour Legacy: Comparing the Labour Governments of Blair and Brown to Labour Governments since 1945

The election of the Conservative–Liberal coalition in May 2010 provides the opportunity to start to map out the record of the Labour governments between 1997 and 2010. This paper deals with the specific question how the Brown/Blair governments performed on public expenditures when compared to the records of UK Labour governments since 1945. Did the public expenditure record of the 1997 represent a departure from that of previous Labour governments? This is important to ascertain since there are strongly held beliefs that New Labour was not committed to Labour's historic commitments of income redistribution and universal benefits. The analysis that follows is constructed around five major public expenditure programmes that reflect Labour's priorities. These include total expenditure, expenditure on health, education, housing and social security.     

按要素分配假设中要素贡献、所有权的内涵--与白暴力教授对要素价值论评说的商榷

应辩证地看萨伊生产要素命题,明确劳动生产率决定因素的具体作用.以"贡献"决定剩余分配所依据的是产权.如果有一个恰当的条件限定,按要素分配和按劳分配两种学说并不冲突.     

"效率优先,兼顾公平":历史与现实之评述

13年前中共十四届三中全会提出的“效率优先,兼顾公平,”其实质体现的是新旧体制的转换,是用机会均等的公平观对结果均等的公平观的取代。这一提法具有很强的历史和现实合理性。在实践中,我们存在的问题是没有认真落实“兼顾公平”。目前,为了解决严重的分配不公,我们必须更加重视公平。但在很长历史时期,作为战略方针的“效率优先”不能因目前更加重视公平的潮流而牺牲掉。可以说,以经济发展为基础,在效率与公平之间保持适度关系,应当是我们寻找社会主义市场经济体制下制度化分配的指导思想。     

两种文化的融合与人的全面而自由发展

人自身的全面而自由的发展,将成为21世纪的一大主题.科学与人文的融合,不仅有利于生产物质生活本身的人的劳动能力的全面而自由的发展,而且也有利于人在文化和精神生活领域获得全面而自由的发展.     

论夫妻间的生育权冲突

生育权乃一项基本人权且属于人格权的范畴,不受他人的支配和干涉,生育请求权之说存在法律逻辑错误。夫妻双方享有平等的生育权,应充分协商,共同行使。夫妻因生育问题发生冲突,不能简单以侵权论,若导致感情确已破裂,一方可诉请离婚。