Suchergebnisse

An examination of the US war in Afghanistan focuses on two aspects of the action that are relevant for debates on humanitarian intervention. The first consideration is how the US used humanitarian concerns to hold together an increasingly unstable international coalition & to win the hearts & minds of the Afghan people. The second factor is the human suffering that invariably results when a state's institutions crumble & the government is unable or unwilling to curb terrorist groups within its territory. Even when military action against terrorists is not undertaken to assist the civilian population, a sustainable peace is likely to require both military action & civilian reconstruction. An overview of justifications used to support the first phase of US military operations in Afghanistan is followed by a look at changing war aims articulated by the Bush Administration, & the impact of these shifting goals on debates over humanitarian intervention. The reality that disintegrating state institutions often provide a haven for terrorists which in turn puts populations at risk is discussed. J. Lindroth

An overview of the emergence of the nation-state determines that the bases for intervention were rooted in the multicultural heritage of every nation-state & that, unless there was a security or economic threat, indifference was registered to the actions of other states. Thus, considered is the significance of the nation-state in determining when to intervene, particularly in the context of globalization. The weakness of states is examined to underpin the assertion that global consensus regarding responses to complex emergencies is really more myth than reality. In this light, whether the UN ought to evolve into a true form of global governance is pondered, concluding that the state, weaker though it may be, remains the major political institution mediating between local cultures & the emerging global civilization. Attention turns to the bifurcation points (vs turning points) in conflicts, contending that they are the most significant point of intervention. After noting the theoretical conflicts at play, the huge gap between theory & actual foreign policy is examined, focusing on Rwanda. In conclusion, the humanitarian intervention implemented in Zaire is scrutinized, finding that proponents of intervention were in such conflict that the chance for founding an intervention on norms & rules & for utilizing the crisis to express a consistent rational was forfeit. A call is made to articulate the rules for justifying intervention. J. Zendejas

Explores humanitarian intervention in the Balkans from the perspective of a participant in the action. The focus is on the political ramifications of conflicts/interventions in both Bosnia & Herzegovina (Bosnia) & Serbia & Montenegro (former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). It is argued that interventions in Bosnia & Kosovo were just as much the consequences of circumstance as they were demonstrations of the international community's commitment to deal with human rights violations. Basic principles underlying humanitarian aid are examined, along with conflicts surrounding the break-up of Yugoslavia; involvement of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees; & the role of the much-criticized UN Protection Force. Similarities & differences between conflicts in Kosovo & Bosnia are pointed out. It is maintained that the Balkan situation illustrates that any international response intended to relieve suffering resulting from human rights violations will lose legitimacy over time. Other lessons learned include the need to engage the UN, preserve the identity of humanitarian operations; & end granting immunity to those who commit human rights violations. J. Lindroth

Examines the causes & consequences of the UN's shift from adherence to the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states to its recent involvement in a series of humanitarian interventions. The evolution of human rights law & laws of war since 1945 are traced. Provisions related to the use of force in the UN Charter are described, along with UN doctrine & practice before & after the Cold War. Disputes over humanitarian intervention within the UN; Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call to take the issue seriously; the General Assembly's lukewarm response; & challenges posed by the Bush Doctrine of September 2002 are discussed. Troublesome developments arising from interventions since 1991 that have the potential to weaken the UN are explored. Although international law does not definitively state whether states have a right to intervene in other states for humanitarian reasons, it is contended that some of these questions can be settled within the UN if that body can strike a balance between implementing international law & maintaining a limited norm of non-intervention. J. Lindroth

The concluding essay reviews the main themes of the preceding chapters & discusses the impact of 11 September 2001 on the politics of humanitarian intervention. In spite of significant human rights abuses, Afghanistan exemplified "non-intervention" until 9/11 placed survival concerns ahead of concerns about individuals suffering in humanitarian crises. The relevance of post-cold war changes in the concept of sovereignty is explored, along with the revival of the just war discussion, especially in terms of what constraints should be placed on the use of force in international society. Other issues discussed include the impact of "proper authority" issues on the Security Council's role in authorizing the use of force by states; growing concerns about the implications of the new "Bush doctrine"; & the expanded responsibilities of intervening states beyond just cause/just conduct to include a program of social & political reconstruction. It is concluded that the issues explored in this volume will continue to impact discussions about both humanitarian intervention & the broader war on terrorism. J. Lindroth

Examines legal & ethical objections to humanitarian intervention that dominate the international relations debate. It is contended that the most compelling arguments are those that stress the consequences for international order. Special attention is given to the ethical position of pluralism & concerns about "neo-imperialism" articulated by non-Western states. It is suggested that humanitarian intervention can be legitimized in extreme cases if a limited notion of "sovereignty as responsibility" is retained & the temptation to combine the protection of human rights with the right to liberal democracy is avoided. However, there is a strong consensus in both Western & non-Western states that the state is still the best agent to promote & protect human rights. Emphasis is placed on the need to improve the representativeness & effectiveness of the UN Security Council in order to reduce growing concerns about who represents the international community. The situation in Kosovo showed that humanitarian intervention can have complicated & unforeseen consequences; therefore, more attention must be paid to non-military means of operationalizing sovereignty as responsibility. J. Lindroth

Explores challenges facing the international community in relation to human rights abuse & humanitarian intervention in Africa. Debates about humanitarian intervention that occurred between 1945 & 1990 are described. Although the UN Charter sanctions intervention only if the Security Council recognizes a threat to international security, the case for intervention rests on the belief that humanitarian catastrophes demand an exceptional response. It is argued that Africa fails to provide support for the proposition that there is a new norm of humanitarian intervention even though it has been the testing ground for post-Cold War interventions. An overview of the UN operation in Somalia shows that Somalia's political culture is unique & failure in Somalia was not an indication that other African interventions were bound to fail. Nonetheless, the Somalia experience led to the Western denial of genocide in Rwanda. Difficulties surrounding the issue of consent, proposals of pragmatic humanitarianism that focuses on what is politically possible, & contrasts between the international response to natural disasters & those caused by civil conflict are discussed. J. Lindroth

An examination of the changing boundaries of UN Security Council interventions during the 1990s supports UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan's contention that there is a "developing international norm" to protect civilians threatened by genocide or ethnic cleansing. Competing theories of the relationship between power & norms are assessed in relation to humanitarian interventions. The significant expansion of the boundaries of legitimate intervention that occurred in Somalia & northern Iraq is pointed out. Although the material power of Western states was instrumental in those cases, a materialist based explanation is seen as inadequate because it fails to consider changed normative context at the domestic level in Western states. Ways in which norms constrain the behavior of states are discussed & the Rwanda case is used to illustrate the moral limits of new norms of protection. The impact of 11 September 2001 on the likelihood that states will use force to protect humanitarian values is explored. Evidence from Afghanistan & Iraq suggest that states will articulate humanitarian rationales to legitimize the use of force against terrorist threats. J. Lindroth

Argues that the 1999 international military intervention in East Timor was strikingly different from the international intervention in Kosovo during the same year. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened in Kosovo over the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's claim to sovereignty that NATO insisted it would continue to recognize. In contrast, although Indonesia's claim to sovereignty over East Timor was not recognized by the UN, the international community claimed Indonesia's consent was necessary for intervention. Attention is called to the extreme suffering of the people of East Timor during the years of non-intervention; Indonesia's resistance to any international security presence in East Timor; & Indonesian President B.J. Habibie's decision to allow the East Timorese to choose between autonomy within Indonesia or independence. The violence that erupted after the ballot prompted criticisms that Australia, the US, & the UN should have exerted more pressure on Indonesia to accept an international force to maintain security in East Timor. Further contrasts between the East Timor & Kosovo interventions are pointed out along with their implications for humanitarian interventions. J. Lindroth

Examines the paradox inherent in international relations whereby international law & diplomacy favor state autonomy in domestic affairs while multilateral treaties & international institutions allow for collective action against governments violating generally accepted norms of behavior. It is contended that this paradox is based on the character of sovereignty, which specifies that "individual states are independent, but not autonomous, from the collectivity of states." At issue is establishing the conditions under which the international community has assumed the right & responsibility to intercede to protect individuals & groups in sovereign states. The manner in which the principle of sovereignty limits & empowers state collectivities to enforce international norms is explored, highlighting the dialectic of sovereignty arising from the Westphalian system in which sovereignty is both a constitutive principle & derivate. Attention turns to scrutinizing international communities as conceptually independent of the states that constitute them, arguing that only with general consensus can a broad-based community of states legitimately intervene in the affairs of a sovereign. Because international norms change over time, how & why some rules & practices emerge during certain historical periods must be considered to explain the conditions necessary for legitimate multilateral intervention without violating sovereignty. Three conditions are seen as prerequisite for the existence of the kind of pluralistic international communities necessary to account for the relative consensus needed to legitimate intervention: (1) There must be a least a modicum of consensus among major powers of the fundamentals of international politics. (2) The consensus principles must enjoy broad support from smaller states & their key domestic groups. (3) There must be a universal membership organization with the authority to create & enforce norms of behavior. Those specific norms & principles on which the community is based are looked at. The principles of legitimate post Cold War multilateral intervention are next assessed, delineating four generally accepted principles, eg, in cases where governments commit a consistent pattern of gross human rights violations deemed "shocking to the conscience of mankind." Some policy & theoretical implications are touched on in conclusion. J. Zendejas

Considers whether nations are justified in violating sovereignty by intervening in other nations' affairs to protect persecuted minorities. A short presentation of social psychological research in altruism & pro-social behavior, highlighting why, when, & who to help, demonstrates its salience for the tension between sovereignty & international responsibility. Social psychological research on Gentiles who intervened to protect Jews from the Nazis depicts circumstances where social responsibility overrode other considerations. This research delivers three conclusions: (1) Intervention to help another person reflects a cost-benefit analysis, with costs & benefits impacted by (2) empathy & (3) perceived similarity to the victim. Two methodological traditions are at play: an experimental line of inquiry seeking causal relationships & qualitative inquiry looking to define those psychological processes that direct behavior. The implications of these traditions of social psychological research for comprehending the contention between respecting sovereignty & the requirement to intercede are addressed. J. Zendejas

In light of the kind of armed interventions concomitant with post-Cold War conflicts, a call is made for a redefinition of the individual soldier & the character, role, & structure of the armed forces. The present contradictory image of the soldier, particularly as involved in peacekeeping missions, is articulated. It is argued that certain archetypal warrior characteristics might sustain while the soldier shifts toward assuming a position as an element of law & order. Thus, the future soldier's motivation is deemed important as it derives from his dual commitment to participate in the defense of basic values & to act on behalf of new regional or global security structures that foster security, peaceful development, & prosperity. Noting the advances in military technology that have automated the battlefield, it is asserted that a trend toward tallying how many people were protected or rescued will be the measure of victory alongside the number of kills & amount of territory taken. In this, the emergence of the guardian soldier (as opposed to some kind of battlefield technician) is seen. Further, this changing role at the soldier level is viewed as part of a paradigmatic shift in the global security environment, wherein the adversarial approach to security is being superceded by cooperation & accompanied by a strategic shift that has implications for the armed forces. In this light, seven new guiding principles are delineated. To engage in humanitarian intervention & low-intensity conflicts, armed forces will have to eschew classical war fighting for untraditional forms of combat; the new guardian soldier can accomplish this. J. Zendejas

Considers issues regarding the media's intermediary role in cases of international intervention, asserting that in democratic societies, when a government wants to involve itself in another country, it ought to obtain & uphold public support for its actions. Thus, the government must offer & the media must present reliable, comprehensive, & comprehendible information. In this light, four problems inhibiting the media's capacity to steer public opinion are discussed: (1) state regulation, influence, or manipulation of the media; (2) news flow imbalance; (3) stereotypical framing of certain foreign events as social conflicts; & (4) inherent cognitive difficulties in TV news production that impairs viewer comprehension. As these problems are exacerbated in relation to foreign news, the solution for producers is to domesticate the news, providing a familiar context for domestic viewers. Because TV seems to be the main source of news, & in light of the problems addressed, how the situation can be improved to make the public discourse on intervention more responsible is explored, arriving at three potential directions: (A) Demand reliable information from the government & other agencies. (B) Insist that journalists & broadcast organizations improve methods of informing the public. (C) Promote media literacy for better information processing & to generate public concern with international affairs. J. Zendejas