Notes:

① Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, New York: Random House, 1987, pp. xv-xvi.……     

Analysis: Reconceptualising transitional justice: embedded and distanced justice

This article argues that transitional justice ranges from the very personal and local to the global and structural, spanning processes and outcomes, clear demands, compromises and contracts. It explores this diversity using the framework of ‘embedded justice’ and ‘distanced justice’, and the case studies of South Africa, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. The argument draws on Fletcher and Weinstein (2002) to argue that justice needs to be embedded within and to engage the communities, cultures and contexts of conflict. A recent article by Sieff and Vinjamuri (2002) is used to advocate decentralisation. Transitional justice debates have generally overlooked justice, and human rights, as manifest in political, economic and social processes whilst privileging the law, and dismissing the potential of locally generated and embedded justice. The article argues that achieving the correct balance requires a shedding of naïve faith in, and the transformation of, both local and international justice, and the contexts within which they operate, whilst seeking to build on their complementary capacities and legitimacies.     

Introduction: Appeasement: Rethinking the Policy and the Policy-Makers

The “Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine of 1904/05” constitutes a landmark in United States foreign policy. However, the 1902/03 Venezuela Crisis—in particular, the arbitration process between the South American country and Germany, Great Britain, and Italy that settled the crisis—led to President Theodore Roosevelt's decision to amend the Monroe Doctrine. The arbitrational award was an important impetus for the corollary because its decision appeared to encourage future European interventions in the western hemisphere. The Roosevelt Corollary was needed to prevent a situation similar to the 1902/03 Venezuela Crisis from occurring again. Strategically speaking, Roosevelt felt the corollary was necessary to uphold the Monroe Doctrine under new circumstances.