“Making Intervention Work.” by Morton Abramowitz and Thomas Pickering. Foreign Affairs. September/October 2008.
Recent events, including armed conflict and natural disaster, have alerted the international community of the critical demand for mechanisms that allow for the safe and effective facilitation of humanitarian intervention. To an increasingly larger extent, diplomacy, campaigns of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the international media play a significant role in raising awareness of human rights abuses and violations that occur worldwide. However, according to authors Abramowitz and Pickering, despite numerous calls to action, the United Nations remains the major enforcer of international conventions and norms.
“There have been remarkable advances in the fields of human security and human rights…terms such as ‘never again’ and appeals for ‘humanitarian intervention’ and a ‘responsibility to protect’ have become commonplace.”
Regardless of idealistic conceptions of enforcement and intervention, advocates, governments, and NGOs remain hampered in their efforts to protect lives on the ground. Thus, securing and providing for communities ravaged by war or natural disaster is increasingly stymied by political inaction and repression. In responding to such crises, Abramowitz and Pickering call for a revamped and reinvigorated United Nations to provide the much needed legitimacy, capability, and resources to protect those in need.
“Reinvigorating the UN–which is still perceived by most countries as the preeminent institution providing international legitimacy—will be essential. What is needed is a streamlined UN decision making process, ready UN access to military and other forces, and strong investment in diplomacy by key states and institutions.”
In making their recommendations on reforming the United Nations, Abramowitz and Pickering focus on restructuring the Security Council, establishing a limited peacekeeping force, and investing in high-level diplomacy. But, for the authors, improvements to the United Nations system will only be successful if they occur in conjunction with the continued participation of advocates, governments, and NGOs. Moreover, efforts made by the international community, particularly those made by governments and politicians, must take greater account of public sentiment surrounding human rights atrocities.
“These measures would not necessarily resolve the world’s many humanitarian disasters, nor do they represent the final word on these matters. But they would offer a greater likelihood that strong international action would be taken in the most challenging situations.”
Abramowitz and Pickering realize that simply restructuring the United Nations will do little to resolve problems of intervention. Specifically, more must be done to include the international community in the complex mechanisms and practicalities that ensure effective and legitimate intervention in all cases.
These issues and others are considered in this month’s Roundtable.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Editor's Introduction - October 2008
Has the Iraq War Torpedoed the "Responsibility to Protect"?
by William F. Felice, Eckerd College
"Unfortunately, such pleas that call for strengthening global governance to forcefully intervene inside sovereign states, in the name of human rights and humanitarianism, will most likely be resented and then ignored by the majority of the world’s states and peoples. To a large degree, this is an unfortunate legacy of the Iraq war."
At a U.N. World Summit in 2005, the nations of the world approved the “responsibility to protect.” This emerging principle of international law, charges each individual state with the responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. If a nation fails to protect its populations from these barbarities, the nations of the world declared that they would act, through the Security Council, in accordance with the U.N. Charter, to stop the violence against innocents everywhere and protect imperiled peoples. In theory, Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter gives the member states the military muscle to intervene inside a sovereign state in order to prevent future Rwandas.
Former U.S. Ambassadors Morton Abramowitz and Thomas Pickering, in this month’s Roundtable centerpiece article, advocate certain instruments to allow the U.N. to enforce the “responsibility to protect.” The Ambassadors seek to empower the U.N. to effectively “face down governments that massively mistreat their people.” The Ambassadors’ three-prong line of attack involves a “streamlined U.N. decision-making process, ready U.N. access to military and other forces, and strong investment in diplomacy by key states and institutions.” To accomplish these objectives, Abramowitz and Pickering hope that the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members— China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—could agree “not to use their vetoes to block proposals for coercive intervention in extreme humanitarian crises.” They further make the case for the creation of a standing army of 25,000 well-trained and well-equipped troops to add credibility and professionalism to U.N. peacekeeping operations and to be able to militarily intervene quickly in a humanitarian emergency. In this regard, the authors go beyond the areas of jurisdiction outlined in the “responsibility to protect,” which were limited to interventions to stop genocide, war crimes, ethic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The Ambassadors argue that the U.N. should also be ready to intervene with force after a natural disaster (hurricanes, cyclones, and so on) when a national government is doing little to aid the survivors.
Unfortunately, at this moment in history, such pleas from former American Ambassadors that call for strengthening global governance to forcefully intervene inside sovereign states, in the name of human rights and humanitarianism, will most likely be resented and then ignored by the majority of the world’s states and peoples. To a large degree, this is an unfortunate legacy of the Iraq war.
After exhausting the other rationalizations for the war in Iraq (WMD, al-Qaeda connections, and so on), the Bush administration justified its killing as a humanitarian action to bring democracy and freedom to the oppressed Iraqi people. The so-called “liberal hawks” in the U.S., in particular, supported this call for a humanitarian intervention to liberate the Iraqi people from the brutality of the Hussein regime. Yet, as is well-known, the overwhelming majority of the nations of the world vehemently rejected these arguments for war before the 2003 intervention. In fact, it was not just the governments who opposed the war, but according to opinion polls the overwhelming majority of the world’s people as well. An unprecedented global anti-war demonstration took place in sixty countries, involved eight hundred cities, and included over ten million people around the world. This outpouring of protest was all designed to prevent a war from breaking out. Never before in history had such an event occurred before a war had actually begun.
As the U.S. ignored these voices, the world’s peoples looked to the U.N. to represent their interests. With their veto power, France, Russia, and China were able to prevent a U.N. endorsement of the globally unpopular U.S. preventive war in Iraq. This U.N. action—standing up to the biggest military power in the world—was ridiculed inside the U.S. But, outside this country, the majority of the planet applauded the U.N. and the international organization gained a new level of legitimacy.
There are at least two conclusions to draw from this recent history that are relevant to the Ambassador’s proposals to strengthen the U.N.’s ability to intervene for humanitarian purposes. First, this Iraq experience led many to a new appreciation for the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council. As a result, this may be the wrong time for Abramowitz and Pickering to be calling for a “blunting of the power of the veto” during a humanitarian crisis. To many in the Southern Hemisphere, this call will most likely be seen as an attempt to blunt the power of Russia and China and open the door for U.S. unilateralism abroad. Even though the Security Council did not prevent the U.S. from invading Iraq, it was of tremendous moral significance that the U.N. refused to endorse this effort. Any talk now of removing or down-grading the veto power from those who opposed U.S. actions, will smack of retribution.
Second, the Iraq experience confirmed for many the ways in which the language of “humanitarian intervention” is used by the powerful to advance their interests at the expense of the weak states. Abramowitz and Pickering’s proposals to empower the U.N. could thus be seen as merely a means to give the powerful more freedom to intervene in the affairs of the weak. This will not necessarily increase global cooperation in response to humanitarian emergencies. Unfortunately, the great powers consistently analyze humanitarian crisis through the lens of national interest and act accordingly. China’s support and protection of the genocidal regime in Sudan comes foremost to mind.
As with China, the U.S. is also viewed by many as highly hypocritical in its human rights and humanitarian actions. The U.S. recently had an opportunity to change this negative reputation of utilizing the language of human rights and humanitarianism to advance an agenda of power politics. In September 2008, Hurricane Gustav devastated Cuba, damaging more than 100,000 homes and wiping out key sugar and banana-growing regions. The cumulative storm damage has been placed at $3 billion to $4 billion. Despite this humanitarian crisis, the U.S. has been unwilling to relax the outdated trade embargo and let Americans help Cuba. Instead, the U.S. offered Cuba a paltry $100,000, with enough “strings” attached that the State Department knew Cuba would reject the offer. This fiasco has again demonstrated that the U.S. applies “humanitarian” aid and intervention to promote its foreign policy agenda. It was a lost opportunity for the U.S. to prove its critics wrong.
Until the major powers—including China and the U.S.—demonstrate a firm commitment to humanitarian principles across the board, proposals to strengthen the U.N. bureaucracy ring hollow. It is putting the cart before the horse.
William F. Felice is professor of political science and head of the international relations major at Eckerd College. Dr. Felice was named the 2006 Florida Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is the author of The Global New Deal: Economic and Social Human Rights in World Politics (2003), Taking Suffering Seriously: The Importance of Collective Human Rights (1996), and numerous articles on the theory and practice of human rights. More information can be found on his department website http://www.eckerd.edu/academics/irga/faculty/felice.php.
The Responsibility to Protect and the Failure to Respond
by Todd Landman, University of Essex
"Any assessment of the plight of billions of people around the globe will undoubtedly recognize that real efforts to match in reality what is pledged rhetorically requires some sort of commitment, or “buy in” from today’s great powers. The proposals offered by Abramowitz and Pickering will need to confront the challenge of incorporating humanitarian and human rights concerns into a realist world."
Commentators on global politics frequently observe the abject failure of states and global institutions to respond to local, regional, and global crises ranging from dramatic climatic events, humanitarian crises, warfare and violence, to the continuation of unsavoury rights-abusive regimes. In my own work in the field of the comparative politics of human rights, the types of observations that Abramowitz and Pickering make in this piece are all too common, and have led many in the past to make similar such observations that powerful states constantly engage in a grand human rights “double standard.”
In a 1999 article in the New York Times Magazine, David Rieff argued that the selective intervention of states on behalf of human rights is a tragic betrayal of an otherwise impressive “triumph” of human rights in the latter half of the twentieth century. Stephen Krasner has long argued that powerful states will pursue human rights policies when they are in their interests to do so. Somewhat more critically, in Theory and Reality in the International Protection of Human Rights, James Shand Watson contends that the failure of states to prevent a century of state-led violence, genocide, and continued rights abuse, proves that human rights are merely a fiction.
Beyond these various arguments, systematic empirical analysis of foreign aid allocation shows that states behave strategically in often ignoring the human rights practices of recipient states (particularly now during the “war on terror”), while other cross-national comparative research shows that the impact of international human rights law on state behavior is non-existent, counter-intuitive, or in the case of my own research, “significant, but limited.” Indeed, it appears that domestic processes of economic development and democratization, coupled with greater openness to international linkages through non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations serve as important supporting conditions for improvements in human rights protection on the ground.
Any assessment of the plight of billions of people around the globe will undoubtedly recognize that real efforts to match in reality what is pledged rhetorically requires some sort of commitment, or “buy in” from today’s great powers. This, however, is an old chestnut of internationalism that has been with us from the early realist arguments found in Thucydides and Machiavelli, through the attempts to establish the League of Nations, the debates to give real teeth to the United Nations, the latest efforts to fortify the security and rights mechanisms within the U.N. (as well as within the regional systems of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia), to the establishment of the International Criminal Court.
In addition to the different experiments mentioned by Abramowitz and Pickering, I would add the Community of Democracies (which is restricted to democracies) and the U.N.-sponsored International Conferences of New and Restored Democracies (which are open to all member states) that have been organized since 1988 and currently chaired by Qatar. But any of these projects is always subject to the realpolitick of the great powers, whoever they may be at the time a potential solution is offered. Abramowitz and Pickering are fully cognizant of this point as they discuss the difficulty of overcoming the veto on the U.N. Security Council and in realizing their modest idea of a small U.N. force that could respond to various crises in the world. In addition to the absence of response to the typhoon in Myanmar, the impotence of the United States and European Union in the face of the situation that developed recently in Georgia shows the limits and additional challenges to breaking this cycle of selectivity.
Perhaps one way to proceed is to start to cast human rights and humanitarian arguments in realist terms. Is it not in the national interests of states to surround themselves and to associate themselves with what Jack Donnelly calls “rights-protective” states? Can the rationalist approach and the realist paradigm (even in their most material manifestations), as well the real decision makers within the world’s great powers, incorporate the idea that the promotion of democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights are actually in their interests as an end in themselves and as a means to achieving greater overall security and peace?
For too long, such arguments have been cast as against realism rather than within realism. Some worry that repeating the realist mantra (especially to international relations students) becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the observable behavior of states in terms of their selective attention to the world’s humanitarian and human rights problems (either immediate or long term) suggests that the balance of evidence still very much weighs in favor of the realist perspective. It thus seems that if any progress can be made, it is within realism and within the minds of policy makers who are worried about national interests and national security on a daily basis. The proposals offered by Abramowitz and Pickering are certainly laudable, but their realization will need to confront the challenge of incorporating humanitarian and human rights concerns into a realist world.
Dr. Todd Landman is Director of the Centre for Democratic Governance, Department of Government, at University of Essex. He is author of Issues and Methods in Comparative Politics, 3rd Edition (Routledge 2008), Studying Human Rights (Routledge 2006), and Protecting Human Rights (Georgetown 2005); co-author of Governing Latin America (Polity 2003) and Citizenship Rights and Social Movements (Oxford 1997); and co-editor of the Sage Handbook of Comparative Politics (Sage 2009). Dr. Landman has served as international human rights and democracy consultant for UNDP, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CIDA, DFID, DANIDA, IDEA, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands, Foreign Ministry of Mongolia, International Centre for Human Rights Policy, and Minority Rights Group International. His personal website can be found at http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~todd.
Improving the Agents and Mechanisms of Humanitarian Intervention
by James Pattison, University of West England
"Much of what I have said may give the impression that I think that we should abandon the U.N. as the focus of peace operations. This is mistaken. The frequently-highlighted inefficiencies of the U.N. are, in practice, overshadowed by the understated, but notable, successes that it has with its peace operations."
I agree with the broad thrust of Abramowitz and Pickering’s article. They rightly highlight the failings of the current agents and mechanisms of humanitarian intervention. The problem, however, is twofold. First, all the currently-existing interveners possess notable, and well-known, flaws. The U.N. and regional organizations suffer from serious shortfalls in funding and equipment. States frequently lack the commitment and willingness to act. And, although NATO’s operations in Bosnia and Kosovo raised hopes that it would be a willing and powerful humanitarian intervener, the reluctance of many of its members to commit troops in Afghanistan (where member states have clear interests) has cast serious doubts over whether it can be relied on as an effective agent of humanitarian intervention in the future (where the interests of its members may be less clear). Second, there are problems with the authorization of intervention: there are many occasions when humanitarian intervention should be rapidly undertaken, but is not because it has been stymied in the U.N. Security Council. There needs, then, to be notable improvements if the international community is to possess the capacity to intervene effectively for humanitarian purposes when necessary.
However, I am less convinced that the solutions offered by Abramowitz and Pickering would do much to improve the international community’s capabilities in this regard. To start with, take their suggestions that concern the authorization of force and, in particular, the proposal to curb the use of the veto. This has been mooted for a number of years (for instance, it was suggested by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001 (ICISS)), but there has been little, if any, indication of a willingness by the permanent members (P-5) to restrain themselves in this way. I fear that this is a political dead end. What we need instead are alternative, additional sources of international legitimacy. Indeed, this is one reason why the notion of a “league of democracies” has been floated. Other options for improving the authorization of intervention include the strengthening of regional organizations (more on that later), a reinvigoration of the Uniting for Peace procedure of the General Assembly and, more ambitiously, the development of cosmopolitan democratic institutions, such as the world parliament endorsed by Andrew Strauss and Richard Falk. My point is that finding alternatives to the U.N. Security Council is the best way of making it work. These alternatives would pressurize the Council into making the right decisions more often, for fear of losing power and influence.
Abramowitz and Pickering also present two proposals for improving the mechanisms to undertake humanitarian intervention: (i) a contribution of 5,000 troops from each of the P-5 (a 25,000-strong force in total); and (ii) a 5,000-strong autonomous U.N. rapid reaction force. There is reason to be cautious about the first proposal. Having the P-5 authorize, and then undertake, their own interventions could risk putting too much power in their hands. The second solution, however, has more merit. Indeed, I have written elsewhere that such an option is the most desirable long-term solution to the problems faced by the current agents and mechanisms of humanitarian intervention.
That said, the particular proposal made by Abramowitz and Pickering of 5,000 troops would run into a number of problems. If the force fulfilled its role in one region in the world, it would not be able to intervene elsewhere. The need for rotation of troops would also mean that it would be a “one-shot option.” That is, after undertaking one mission, it would not be able to intervene for a number of months afterwards while its troops regenerate. Furthermore, there may be no backup troops forthcoming to replace the force, which would leave it with the dilemma of either leaving, thereby letting the crisis go unresolved, or staying, and thereby depriving others access to its protection. Moreover, having funded the force, states would expect it to remove some of their peacekeeping and intervention burden (or humanitarian relief burden), and therefore may be less willing to provide troops and equipment themselves. As such, this proposal, if established, would add little to the currently-existing options.
To be fair, Abramowitz and Pickering seem to see this force as a stepping-stone to something more significant. But the same problems would apply to a larger, more developed force (including their other suggestion of 25,000 troops from the P-5). To be more valuable, a standing U.N. force would need to be much larger. But this leads to problems of its own, including feasibility and the potential for abuse.
Accordingly, I still believe that regional organizations offer the best solution for improving the capacity to intervene. The potential of the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU) in particular is substantial. To be sure, both institutions are currently a long way from being able to conduct major humanitarian interventions by themselves. But given their general support for humanitarian intervention (e.g., in the African Union’s Constitutive Act) and the interests that they possess in halting humanitarian crises, we should pursue the development of their capacities. A stronger AU and EU will add much to the ability of the international community to undertake humanitarian intervention.
Much of what I have said may give the impression that I think that we should abandon the U.N. as the locus of peace operations. This is mistaken. The frequently-highlighted inefficiencies of the U.N. are, in practice, overshadowed by the understated, but notable, successes that it has with its peace operations. Likewise, the problems that UNAMID has had getting up to strength in Darfur should be put into the context of what is a boom time for U.N. peace operations. According to the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, there are, as of August 2008, 107,503 troops, police, observers, and other officials serving in 16 U.N. peacekeeping operations. This is the largest number of peacekeepers to date and, what is more, it looks like this number will continue to grow. Of course, this should not be a reason for complacency. We should continue to improve the agents and mechanisms of humanitarian intervention to build on the U.N.’s abilities and to offer more options when faced with the mass violation of basic human rights. Augmenting regional organizations’ capacities would be one way to do so.
Dr. James Pattison is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of the West of England, U.K. He recently completed his PhD on humanitarian intervention, for which he was awarded the “Sir Ernest Barker Prize for Best Dissertation in Political Theory.” He has written various articles on the ethics of war and intervention and is currently working on a book on the Responsibility to Protect for Oxford University Press. Please visit his website: http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/politics/staff_jPattison.shtml.
Reforming Humanitarian Rescue
by Brent J. Steele, University of Kansas
"The U.N. performs many functions very effectively—but armed humanitarian rescue has never been one of those. While the authors fully recognize the problems with the U.N. as it currently stands, in my view the main issue is the constitutive basis of the U.N. itself."
There is much to commend in Morton Abramowitz and Thomas Pickering’s article “Making Intervention Work.” They propose to reform the United Nations’ capacity for intervention with the creation of an autonomous U.N. force largely constituted with forces contributed by the Security Council’s member-states. If such a force were kept to a minimal operational mission, “a small rapid-deployment force with special engineering, logistical, medical, and police skills,” as the authors suggest, then I think this is a good idea. If such a force would, however, become more than this—an autonomous army of military personnel meant to intervene with force into any humanitarian crisis in which it is needed or sanctioned—then I fear this would be a counter-productive entity.
I do concur with the authors’ important points on the obstacles inherent in democracies that make their propensity for intervention very rare indeed. This is a point that Samantha Power most stridently made in her seminal book A Problem From Hell. Leaders in liberal democracies see all risks and no rewards in pursuing an intervention to stop a genocide, although Power also seemed to think that liberal democracies were still the most likely actors to recognize the horrors of genocide. Yet I’d even take Abramowitz and Pickering’s argument further—perhaps the reason why liberal democracies are risk-averse when it comes to genocide is because they are liberal, in a classic philosophical sense. By focusing on the self-interest of individuals, and forming a government around those interests, such regimes are not meant to initiate any “other-regarding” sentiment in their populaces, even if they pay lip service to such a notion in speeches and ceremonies promoting the phrase “Never Again.”
Had I read this proposal ten years ago, I would have been whole-heartedly behind its prescriptions. And still today I applaud the attempt by these authors to try and resolve a problem (humanitarian crisis) seemingly desperate for a systematic solution. But in 2008 I am less inclined to see this as anything more than another “top-down” one-size fits all solution to a “type” of crisis (humanitarian disasters) that is as diverse as it is urgent. In short, I do not see the U.N. resolving these crises—even an autonomous force of “first responders” would still be log-jammed with bureaucratic obstacles. The U.N. performs many functions very effectively—but armed humanitarian rescue has never been one of those. While the authors fully recognize the problems with the U.N. as it currently stands, in my view the main issue is the constitutive basis of the U.N. itself. The U.N. was created to promote sovereignty and stability. To paraphrase the tenor of many English School theorists, the U.N. is here to promote order, not justice. In a world of nation-states, such an entity constituted by states will not be able to transcend the Westphalian tension between national and international interests.
So I would suggest that in order to support humanitarian intervention we need to by-pass the nation-state as rescue’s main instrument, and instead look towards non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and even private military firms (PMFs). These come with costs, of course, but in humanitarian crises, debate and consensus-building cost precious time and lives. NGOs and PMF’s are quicker and more efficient. NGOs are most preferable—because as glorious as an armed intervention against a genocidal regime or militia may be, the most comprehensive way to save lives is still the well-organized distribution of medical and food aid. PMF’s of course challenge the monopoly of violence that the sovereign state is supposed to have, but if sovereign states have no interest in intervention, then PMF’s are a potentially prudent last resort, as Michael Walzer suggested in a recent article in The New Republic. Again, this is one of several possibilities that should be considered depending upon the context of the humanitarian crisis. Such a complex problem deserves a diverse array of solutions, but I am afraid that the solution proposed in “Making Intervention Work” would have limited feasibility, if it ever came to pass in the first place.
Brent J. Steele is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas. His primary research interests cover a wide array of international relations topics, including international ethics, international political theory, United States foreign policy, Just War theory, ontological security theory and international security. In addition to his first book, Ontological Security in International Relations, he has published articles in journals such as International Relations, International Studies Review, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of International Relations and Development, Millennium and, Review of International Studies. Please visit Dr. Steele’s website: http://www2.ku.edu/~kups/people/Faculty/Steele_Brent.shtml.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Editor's Introduction- July 2008
"Armed and Humanitarian" by Bruce Falconer. Mother Jones. May 19, 2008.
An annotation
As the "war on terror" continues to drive American foreign policy, those waging this "war" have broadened their understanding of what constitutes a security threat to include failed states, and those teetering on the brink of instability. Among the new security risks are states ravaged by natural disaster. And, with the U.S. defense establishment's concern with humanitarian aid as of late, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have traditionally provided relief are placed in a compromised position. With often divergent motives, there is increasing tension between the NGO and military sectors, and caught in the middle are destitute populations. One must question the political and social implications of cooperative missions between these "strange bedfellows."
"NGO officials are grateful for the US military response to disasters. But the struggle to be seen as independent players, unaffiliated with any government, is crucial to NGOs' ability to operate."
While it is essential to realize the resources that the military can contribute in disaster zones, humanitarian organizations must contend with the political baggage that accompanies this external assistance. When NGOs depend on their legitimacy and perceived altruism for access to communities in need, their fear is that the presence of military support jeopardizes that perception. However, since humanitarian aid workers operate with limited capabilities, working alongside the military allows for a collaborative effort that serves the need of vulnerable people and enables a more effective response. Considering what is at stake in humanitarian terms, what is gained and what is lost when aid workers stand side-by-side with military personnel?
"When the military undertakes what appears to be humanitarian or development work.'decisions are being based on tactical considerations of whether this area has a strategic importance with regard to broader military activities. That is not humanitarian.'"
If security interests continue to be weighed against human rights priorities, what are the consequences for humanitarianism? To hand over the reins to the military would run contrary to the core principles of humanitarian relief work and sacrifice the higher moral ground. As well, the benefit garnered by Western NGOs, who contribute significantly to positive relations with the developing world, might also be lost. Failed states do indeed pose security threats; but, can these states be repaired without waging the political battle for "hearts and minds"?
These issues and others are considered in this month's Roundtable.
Mission Creep: De-Militarizing Humanitarian Protection
by Sonia Cardenas
"Overall, the U.S. military's new humanitarianism is problematic. It is not humanitarian in intent, it is premised on faulty assumptions about failure in Iraq, and it disregards a global consensus about the value of multilateralism.”
Over a decade ago, the U.S. military was warning liberal internationalists about the dangers of "mission creep." Today it is doing the opposite, incorporating relief and development work into its operations. In the devastating aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma , the U.S. military's newfound mission may seem compelling. Unfortunately, expanding the military's role into humanitarian work reflects a flawed logic that should be resisted. There are more promising ways to protect victims of humanitarian disaster.
The term "mission creep" has been used to describe the gradual and unwanted expansion of the military's role into non-traditional areas, such as human rights. First mentioned in a 1993 Washington Post article by Jim Hoagland, warning against intervention in Somalia, mission creep has become part of the political lexicon. In 1994, President Clinton assured Congress that mission creep would not occur in Rwanda. In 1995, Senator John McCain and military officials warned of military creep in Bosnia . A decade later, Paul Wolfowitz applied the term to the World Bank, describing mission creep as the pursuit of "sweeping international causes that sound good without any evidence to show that they can be accomplished."
Post-September 11 th exigencies may have dissipated the military's anxiety about mission creep. The U.S. military now asserts that it is essential to engage in non-combat activities, which it dubs "stability and support operations." The goal is to stabilize volatile political situations, the potential breeding grounds for terrorism. For the military, one of the key lessons of Iraq is that brute force is insufficient to assure security. Humanitarianism-defined broadly to include relief, development, and nation-building-is also necessary.
While the U.S. military has long engaged in non-combat missions, the emphasis today is quite different. Humanitarian operations are to be considered a "core military mission" of comparable priority to traditional combat missions, according to a 2005 Department of Defense Directive. The primary rationale for non-combat operations, moreover, is geo-strategic. An Army Field Manual in 2003 admits the goal is to "retain U.S. access or influence abroad." This is a new brand of militarized humanitarianism.
Not surprisingly, some observers are skeptical of this doctrinal shift and its practical implications. NGOs, which thrive on independence, worry about coordinating on-the-ground logistics with military forces and appearing politically partisan. Many critics of the war in Iraq (including some who supported humanitarian intervention in the heyday of the 1990s) have become broadly suspicious of U.S. motives, accepting what Madeleine Albright recently labeled "the end of intervention." Even the initial reluctance of the world community to intervene in Burma may be partly a backlash against the U.S. military's ostensible embrace of humanitarianism.
The expansion of the U.S. military into relief and development work should in fact be contested. First, unlike humanitarian interventions of the 1990s, which used force for humanitarian (and other) ends, non-combat operations today deploy humanitarian means mostly for military and economic ends. Yet as Michael O'Neill of Save the Children observes, "humanitarian work is based on need and need alone. It's valued for its own purposes." And it cannot be captive to prevailing military and economic interests, dictating which human beings are protected. When strategic calculations trump humanitarian concerns, human rights are likely to be compromised.
Second, insofar as the U.S. military's new humanitarian mission draws on its experience in Iraq, it has learned the wrong lessons. Even as Iraq reveals the limits of a military approach, the lesson of Iraq is not that the U.S. military needs to do more, adding humanitarian operations to its arsenal. The lesson of Iraq is that the military needs to do less, including desisting from forcible regime change.
Disengagement, however, is not the answer. In extreme cases, force should be used to protect human rights and the military should participate in the tactical delivery of humanitarian assistance. The 2001 Responsibility to Protect report offers concrete guidance for when and how to intervene. It invokes at least two criteria relevant for non-combat missions: the precautionary principle of right intent (even when states have mixed motives, the primary purpose must be to relieve human suffering); and the importance of a multilateral organization authorizing the intervention (i.e., the United Nations or a regional group like ASEAN).
Overall, the U.S. military's new humanitarianism is problematic. It is not humanitarian in intent, it is premised on faulty assumptions about failure in Iraq , and it disregards a global consensus about the value of multilateralism. More directly, it threatens to harm the work of humanitarian organizations. Jim Hoagland, who originally coined "mission creep," now warns against "mission shrink" in Iraq (or cutbacks in the military's democracy-building role). The terms of the military-humanitarian debate may have shifted, but the consequences for human rights are still largely negative.
Sonia Cardenas is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is the author of numerous publications, including Conflict and Compliance: State Responses to International Human Rights Pressure (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). She is currently completing two book projects, both for the University of Pennsylvania Press— Chains of Justice: The Global Rise of State Institutions for Human Rights and a textbook, Terror and Hope: The Politics of Human Rights in Latin America.
When Steel and Guns Meets Bread and Butter
by Daniel J. Graeber
"Now, instead of 'shock and awe,' the new face of the U.S. appears to take lessons learned from the adage of finding native solutions to native problems.”
Speaking before the 191-member United Nations in 2005, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that "For the first time . we are agreed that states do not have the right to do what they will within their own borders but that we in the name of humanity have a common duty to protect people where their own governments will not." This notion, that of responsible sovereignty, says that nation states forfeit the right to uninterrupted internal freedoms when they no longer uphold the responsibilities associated with sovereignty. The evolution of international law has typically been to protect states from outside interference. However, the questions posed by such historical atrocities as Rwanda, and most recently the devastation in Myanmar following Cyclone Nargis, pave the way for a consideration for moral intervention. States have been historically reluctant to adopt humanitarian intervention into their military policy. The international legal regime, however, has widely recognized that intervention on behalf of humanitarianism is permissible when the use of force is restricted to that which saves lives.
Article 3 of The Montevideo Convention of 1933, which established the definition, rights and duties of a nation, says that one such sovereign duty of a nation is the right "to provide for its conservation and prosperity." This provision alludes to the emergence of responsible sovereignty. There are two ideologies of modern sovereignty. One conceptualizes sovereignty as a right of statehood, and another envisions a right to statehood. State responsibility to sovereignty invokes an obligation to maintain internal order and protection of its citizenry. A state takes on a duty to its citizenry when classic individual rights are exchanged for protections provided by the state. Furthermore, the responsibility of the state to adhere to internationally recognized normative relations, both intra and interstate, is an obligation of sovereignty. The inherent rights of non-intervention in state sovereignty in an interdependent system may be cast aside if the responsibilities of state sovereignty are not met.
Writing for the May 19 online edition of Mother Jones , Bruce Falconer comments in his piece, "Armed and Humanitarian," that U.S. military doctrine has evolved to embrace moral intervention by way of "stability operations." The U.S. Department of Defense defines stability operations as "[m]ilitary and civilian activities conducted across the spectrum from peace to conflict to establish or maintain order in States and regions." These operations may place military forces in disaster areas, such as the earthquakes in Pakistan in 2005, in order to bring victims humanitarian supplies. The purpose, Falconer says, is to prevent states "from slipping into chaos." However, Falconer notes that nongovernmental organizations such as Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières, worry that this new military doctrine will paint them as agents of the intervening force, or at the very least, it will put them in the line of fire. But as U.S. military doctrine tries to catch up with Mr. Blair's sentiment regarding the "common duty to protect," so too must the NGO community, and Falconer, to be perfectly frank.
Humanitarian agencies worry that the U.S. military's new found interest in operations other than war will muddy the line between relief work and regime change. The article makes reference to former Army Special Forces officer Roger Carstens, saying this emerging military doctrine makes sense. "We have the capability, we have the capacity, and we have the cash," Carstens says. "You put all the NGOs together, and they can't even come close to what an aircraft carrier battle group can deliver in a few sorties." But this is both duplicitous and contradictory to the mission for the NGO community to object to or complain about "the guns and steel of the military" being used to assist in humanitarian operations. In 2003, the U.S. military assisted in humanitarian operations in Bam, Iran, yet there were no underlying efforts at regime change here, only assistance in the face of mounting disaster. Falconer backs his allegations with a statement by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to solidify the concern. "Just as surely as our diplomats and military, American NGOs . are out there serving and sacrificing on the front lines of freedom," Powell said in 2001. "NGOs are such a force multiplier for us, such an important part of our combat team." But this doctrinal argument, in part, the Powell doctrine, has been largely replaced by U.S. military strategists with what could be referred to as the Petraeus doctrine, based on the counterinsurgency strategy laid out by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. This doctrine relies less on the "shock and awe" elements of the Powell doctrine and more on incorporating elements of the native population into providing solutions for violence. While the Powell argument certainly held validity in the 20 th century, it largely proved a failure in Iraq . Now, instead of "shock and awe," the new face of the U.S. appears to take lessons learned from the adage of finding native solutions to native problems.
Falconer's argument is off base, as is the NGO community's complaint that military force is malevolently utilitarian. When the United Nations closed its embassy in Baghdad following the devastating 2003 bomb blast that killed Secretary-General's Special Representative for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations should have sent in more advisers equipped to manage 21 st century conflict, not withdraw in fear from it. The same holds true for the NGO community. It, and the rest of the world, must adjust to a new face of conflict. The clean Cold War notion of a state-centric division between civilians and the military, between conflict and peace, no longer exists. In a globalized world, when ethnic identity supplants nationalism, and military force is no longer exclusively for fighting wars, the consideration must be made that "steel and guns" may run tandem to bread and butter.
Daniel J. Graeber has been a contributor to the Foreign Policy Association's Great Decisions series since its inception, writing on war crimes and international law. He has focused considerably on the legal aspects concerning the U.S.-led "war on terror" and various war crimes tribunals. He has lectured on the history of war crimes in the international arena and served as a professor of ethics at Grand Valley State University. He has published works on the history of the U.S. relationship with Israel and the U.S. foreign policy regarding Hamas. He is currently a writer for United Press International covering Iraqi political developments, as well as the oil and energy sector. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Reconstructing Sovereignty: From Control to Responsibility
by Eric K. Leonard
"According to this new interpretation of sovereignty, Burma has a responsibility to protect its citizens, and if it lacks the adequate resources to fulfill this responsibility, it is incumbent on the international community to intervene."
As I stood with a standing-room only crowd last fall at a United Nations University of New York (UNU-ONY) event entitled, "Prevention of Mass Atrocities: From Mandate to Realization," I began to wonder how far the responsibility to protect (R2P) could be stretched. As defined by the UNU-ONY organizers, the purpose of the event was " to explore the work of mass atrocity prevention across the UN system, with a focus on the role of the new Office of the Special Representative for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (SRPGMA)." As I currently look at the international community's response to natural disasters such as the cyclone that devastated Burma, I reflect on the core document of this conference, the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) entitled "The Responsibility to Protect (R2P)," and its applicability to situations that are not genocidal in nature or part of a broader civil conflict. As a result, the primary question for me is not who should be involved in such humanitarian/aid interventions, as is the case with the Falconer article, but whether the repressive government of Burma has the right, or authority, to keep any and all humanitarian assistance out of their country.
In order to address this query, it is important to first assess the viability of applying the R2P principle to a natural disaster situation. Upon reading the report, it is clear that the intent of the document is not necessarily to contend with the results of a natural disaster, but to deal with both the prevention and reaction to man-made disasters that involve conflict and civil strife. Most notably the R2P principle would apply to situations regarding acts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. However, as one reads the report it appears reasonable to stretch that focus to situations in which a state neglects to react to crisis situations like Cyclone Nargis. If we couple that neglect with the large-scale loss of life and subsequent human rights violations, it is feasible to claim that such a situation provides a valid justification for intervention based on the responsibility to protect principle. As described by Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, and other prominent human rights' NGOs, the Burmese government's failure to react and subsequent denial of access to both aid agencies and willing states has resulted in mass starvation, wide-spread disease, a lack of adequate shelter and clean water, among other human rights' violations. According to a recent Human Rights Watch estimate, only 1.3 million people of the 2.4 million people affected by the cyclone have received aid. It is this type of preventable situation that necessitates outside intervention because of the Burmese state's neglect of its civilian population.
Ultimately though, the question of humanitarian intervention turns, as do most questions in international affairs, on the issue of sovereignty and how this defining term of world politics is applied to humanitarian aid situations. The ICISS properly recognizes the centrality of this question in their report. As a result, they provide a novel and important re-construction of how we interpret this term. Building on former Secretary-General Kofi Annan's seminal article, "Two Concepts of Sovereignty," the report calls on the international community to act upon the notion of sovereignty not as a form of control, but as a responsibility-a responsibility to protect one's citizens. The consequences of such a re-construction of sovereignty are cogently stated in the report:
First, it implies that the state authorities are responsible for the functions of protecting the safety and lives of citizens and promotion of their welfare. Secondly, it suggests that the national political authorities are responsible to the citizens internally and to the international community through the UN. And thirdly, it means that the agents of state are responsible for their actions; that is to say, they are accountable for their acts of commission and omission.
This third and final point is where international humanitarian intervention for natural disaster situations, such as Cyclone Nargis, becomes pertinent. As stated earlier, it is the omission of action by the Burmese government that allows for the international community to intervene based on the R2P principle. According to this new interpretation of sovereignty, Burma has a responsibility to protect its citizens, and if it lacks the adequate resources to fulfill this responsibility, it is incumbent on the international community to intervene. This is the point where the international community must act, but act with a diplomatic consciousness of the situation. This means that unilateral action must be avoided and the responsibility to protect resides with the U.N. Security Council. Although difficult to imagine the Chinese not vetoing a resolution requiring the opening of Burma's borders to all forms of humanitarian aid, the wide spread acceptance of the responsibility to protect principle in the 2005 U.N. World Summit final document provides a glimmer of hope. Regardless, it is simple cowardice by the international community to not react with a vote in the Security Council that, if vetoed, would result in the public shaming of the dissenting parties.
In my last roundtable contribution I called for a less state-centric system, and I believe that my current advocacy for a reconstruction of sovereignty is conducive to such change. This is not to say that the responsibility to protect principle results in a non-state centric system, but it is one way to re-orient state thinking on issues of authority and control. Such progress will only assist the international community to move beyond a Westphalian consciousness and towards the more cosmopolitan level of global governance consciousness that I advocate.
Eric K. Leonard is the Henkel Family Endowed Chair in International Affairs and Director of General Education at Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA. He has published several articles, case studies and a book on such issues as the International Criminal Court, humanitarian law, theoretical conceptualizations of sovereignty, and global governance. His book is entitled, The Onset of Global Governance: International Relations Theory and the International Criminal Court (Ashgate, 2005).
Friday, November 2, 2007
Editor's Introduction - November 2007
“Disaster Capitalism: The New Economy of Catastrophe” by Naomi Klein. Harper's. October 2007.
An Annotation:
In this month’s Roundtable, our contributors discuss the suggestion that, once again, and in a new way, capitalism has run amok. Looking at the market response to political and natural disasters, Naomi Klein revisits a notion upon which both Karl Marx and Milton Friedman would agree: Capitalist markets create and deal with their own problems. However, the discrepancy that places these economic giants at odds is whether this mechanism constitutes the seeds of capitalism’s own destruction, or simply is a self-corrective and balancing feature of open markets. For Marx, capitalism is perpetually expanding, devouring everything in its path as it insatiably seeks new markets until reaching a crucial tipping point. For Friedman, capitalism, if it remains free to operate, will respond to systemic shocks in such a way that in the long run will re-establish equilibrium and allow for its continuity and growth. Klein uses her own contemporary lens of privatization under neoliberalism to address this question as she looks primarily at the response to Hurricane Katrina and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
“The end result is the same kind of unapologetic partition between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned…”
With startling, apocalyptic prose, Klein paints a stark picture of a broken government unable and unwilling to fulfill its basest responsibilities—be they security, health care or education. If the private sector performs duties traditionally reserved for the State, what is the cost? Klein, through her critique, intends to highlight the sidestepping of foundational principles of liberalism and human rights, such as transparency, accountability, and reciprocity. Underlying even these is the notion that all are equal before these principles; none are above the rule of law and none are below the safety net the State provides. Placing these obligations in the hands of corporations compromises the universal nature of the State and threatens to create a situation where these necessities are available only to the highest bidder.
“The companies at the heart of the disaster-capitalism complex increasingly regard both the state and nonprofits as competitors; from the corporate perspective, whenever governments or charities fulfill their traditional roles, they are denying contractors work that could be performed at a profit.”
The process Klein describes is one that begins with public money spent to hire private contractors, which results in transferring “common welfare” provision into the realm of commodification—the very tasks for which government is convened get outsourced and transformed into a product one must purchase. Not only does access to these services become more limited, but the nature and value inherent in them is irremediably altered. Whereas the human rights previously assigned to the State for universal protection are now subject to the dictates of the fluctuating market.
“All indications are that if we simply stay the current course, they [disasters] will keep coming with ever more ferocious intensity. Disaster generation can therefore be left to the market’s invisible hand.”
Is this phenomenon an outgrowth of capitalism itself or a directed political strategy? Put another way, does “Disaster Capitalism” exist by default or by design? Do we correctly point to the “Washington consensus” and the expansion of neoliberal economic ideology or would it be more accurate to identify a State that is compelled to go to outside providers to perform its most fundamental tasks because it is overburdened, overstretched and/or simply incapable? Naomi Klein’s article implies that the Disaster-Capitalism Complex is at the same time a natural progression with its roots in the Military-Industrial Complex, as well as a deliberate attempt to weaken government and maximize revenue for private interests.
Finally we must ask: What is at stake? Do these trends produce positive results for ordinary people? To return to our authoritative economists, while Milton Friedman would respond that this is indeed a positive direction in which to be moving as the market is better suited to meet the demands of “common welfare” than the state, Marx would describe this as yet another instantiation of economic power consolidation bent on securing massive profits at the expense of human freedom and well-being.
These issues and many more are addressed in this month’s installment of Human Rights & Human Welfare’s Roundtable.
~ The Editors
Thursday, November 1, 2007
American Capitalism - Disasterous Consequences?
by Richard A. Falk
"Missing is the possibility of countervailing politics here and elsewhere, from above and below...Looking at world capitalism as a whole, the American economy is being displaced by more constructive forms of profit-making elsewhere in the world that are not linked to 'disaster capitalism.'"
Naomi Klein’s depiction of late-capitalism as feeding off a disaster-prone planet and state-system is provocative and illuminating, even if it seems to be itself a form of “shock and awe” journalism. The great cultural critic of the 1960s, Norman O. Brown, memorably said of psychoanalysis, “[o]nly the exaggerations are valuable,” and so it might be with this critique of the dark sides of recent tendencies in world economic activity. It is notable that the book version of Klein’s article bears the title The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which itself can be read as a sly admission that her account is intended to portray one controversial facet of a much more complex economic reality. Also, it should be understood that most of the attention is paid to the American experience—which has certainly featured a preoccupation with disaster at home and abroad—looking at the combined impacts of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Whether her assessment would be as relevant if the same questions were considered from a Chinese, Indian, Turkish, or French perspective seems quite doubtful.
Klein’s argument is that the private sector has recently flourished in those contexts where either natural disasters occurred or geopolitical obstacles have been experienced. Her stress is upon the word “recently” in order to sustain the position that we have entered a new phase in the evolution of world capitalism. It is certainly true that extreme weather has produced a series of events around the world during the last several years in a form that has required massive aid and reconstruction efforts, and that mega-corporate construction firms such as Halliburton and Bechtel have been better positioned than governments or foreign companies to organize responses. She also correctly notes that the challenge of responding to natural disasters bears resemblance to the challenges associated with occupation and reconstruction in Iraq.
It is almost certain that natural disasters will continue to offer opportunities to private firms for profitable undertakings in the years ahead, but hopefully the outlook is less clear in the area of geopolitical failure. The possibility exists that American political leaders will learn the hazard of seeking to intervene forcibly in foreign countries, and find less costly, more acceptable, and more effective means of pursuing its foreign policy goals. This is by no means assured. The Vietnam War did inhibit interventionist geopolitics for some years, but the so-called “Vietnam syndrome” was gradually overcome by some ambiguous military successes in the First Gulf War (1991) and the Kosovo War (1999), and by the ascendancy of neoconservative grand strategy during the Bush presidency. Klein does not really take into account whether there will be a new “Iraq syndrome” that will discourage recourse to counterinsurgency ventures in the years ahead, and how that might alter the overall profile of unfolding world capitalism.
Surely, Klein is correct to note that post-9/11 homeland security has been an area of robust and profitable economic expansion, and that there exists a correlation between profitability and insecurity within American society. In this respect there is a deeply troubling connection between a politics of fear pursued by the U.S. Government to obtain a mandate for limiting the freedoms of Americans and the private sector benefits that result from the surveillance and monitoring of the citizenry. Klein’s article is valuable in making us appreciate the linkages between the “war on terror” and private sector interests.
Klein also casts her discerning eye on the privatization of the security functions of the state, including even the conduct of wars. The notorious role of Blackwater in Iraq was definitely highlighted by Klein well before it became a matter of public concern in the United States and elsewhere. Her larger point is also well-taken, to the effect that the dominant state in the world, despite its huge military budget, is increasingly dependent on private contractors and mercenary soldiers to fill the gaping holes of its military occupation in Iraq.
Although Klein does not accuse the corporate beneficiaries of conspiring to produce disasters, she notes that they use their leverage with the government and the media to discourage steps that might move toward ecological and geopolitical stability. Again, this is a disturbing trend that when coupled with neoconservative political leadership seems to be leading the country down a catastrophe-laden path.
It is a bleak picture, but perhaps not as decisively so, as Klein would have us believe. Her outlook is expressed at the end of the article where she observes that the only possible counterweight to the disaster scenario is the “unlikely scenario that this latest boom could somehow be interrupted by an outbreak of climatic stability and geopolitical peace.” What is missing is an assessment of tensions within capitalism itself, as not all parts of the economy are dependent on disaster, especially if the future magnifies the disasters experienced in the last decade. Also missing is the possibility of countervailing politics here and elsewhere, from above and below, that is, by shifts in governmental policies and by populist pressures. Looking at world capitalism as a whole, the American economy is being displaced by more constructive forms of profit-making elsewhere in the world that are not linked to “disaster capitalism.” The dollar is declining, U.S. manufacturing is losing out to foreign competitors, trade and fiscal deficits are growing, the military budget is excessive and exacts damaging opportunity costs vis-à-vis restoring the American infrastructure, and investment flows are moving elsewhere.
In concluding, I believe that Klein has over-generalized her argument, insufficiently distinguishing the afflictions of American economic development from the overall condition of world capitalism. There are acute difficulties with world capitalism associated with terms of trade, widening disparities, insufficient social and environmental regulation, but these criticisms do not lend support to Klein’s contentions about “disaster capitalism.” Her framework would be more convincing if it explicitly limited the burden of her indictment to the American role in the world economy, and did not conflate the two. It is a common liberal fallacy to suppose that whatever happens to the United States happens to the world, which seems to me dangerously misleading in this setting because it fails to clarify the relationship between American economic and geopolitical decline (of which “disaster capitalism” is a symptom) and the global economy that is certainly affected by disaster, but not nearly to the same extent. For instance, European governments are more prepared to make sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions than is the United States. In this central respect, Naomi Klein should be thanked for starting a conversation, but others must steer it in different directions, if we are to avoid wallowing in despair.
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent book, The Great Terror War (2003), considers the American response to September 11, including its relationship to the patriotic duties of American Citizens. In 2001 he served on a three person Human Rights Inquiry Commission for the Palestine Territories that was appointed by the United Nations, and previously, on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including Human Rights Horizons; On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics; Explorations at the Edge of Time; Revolutionaries and Functionaries; The Promise of World Order; Human Rights and State Sovereignty; A Study of Future Worlds; and This Endangered Planet. Falk also acted as counsel to Ethiopia and Liberia in the Southwest Africa Case before the International Court of Justice.
If It Were Only that Simple
by Katherine Gockel
“The fact is that a combination of public, private and civil society efforts are usually employed in most of these situations. To lay most of the blame on privatization and business misrepresents reality.”
Reading “Disaster Capitalism,” one would think that the current dire situation in Iraq and the lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina are all because of an emphasis on “small” government, privatization, and partnerships with the business sector. If only it were that simple.
That is the problem with this article and those written by people who argue the “other side”—that big government is wasteful, stifles competition and harms U.S. competitiveness. The fact is that a combination of public, private and civil society efforts are usually employed in most of these situations. To lay most of the blame on privatization and business misrepresents reality. Corruption is also found in government and civil society, especially in the developing world.
Americans need to stop accepting oversimplified arguments. Telling the whole story is impossible. Yet, we should expect those writing for the public to at least offer more than one perspective and even provide examples that might contradict their argument so that better solutions can be developed.
This response article to Ms. Klein’s piece also will not tell the “whole story.” The various situations used as “evidence” for her argument are too complex to cover in 800 words. Rather, it will provide a different perspective on what has happened in Iraq and in the New Orleans’ school system for readers who might want to think more about the validity of the “disaster capitalism” argument.
To begin, the public and private sectors are not mutually exclusive and they never have been. Business people have entered politics and politicians have entered the business world. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Let us not forget that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an organization where many humanitarian professionals would love to work.
Yes, there are businesses with questionable practices. Especially those like Halliburton, which has been censured for overcharging the U.S. Government in Iraq. There are also politicians (from both major U.S. political parties), government officials, and non-governmental organization representatives who have demonstrated questionable and even unethical practices. There are also efforts by members of business, government, and civil society to make the globe a more inhabitable place for all people. More people are coming to accept that it is a combination of efforts from each of these sectors that leads to better and more sustainable solutions.
Let us not forget that questionable public policies brought Iraq to its current state of affairs; and not just those policies of the U.S. Government. The Iraqi Government and the various sects in Iraq are also responsible for the ongoing strife and insecurity that make development and reconstruction so difficult. Iran and other countries also have a role in this, as do groups advocating terrorist activities.
The political situation caused by internal Iraqi sectarianism is now deemed by many experts as being more critical than the security situation. In a dinner conversation last spring, a high-ranking Iraqi shared that every time something was built in Iraq, someone or some group destroyed it. So it is not as if people—from the public, private, and civil sectors—are not trying to help Iraq recover and develop. Rather, power struggles and use of violence by many players are impediments to progress. That situation cannot be blamed solely on the use of private contractors.
Yes, Americans and their allies are afforded greater security in Iraq than most Iraqis. But the picture painted in Ms. Klein’s article would have one think that people inside the Green Zone are not being shelled or attacked, which is not the case. The security situation for Americans is so dangerous that U.S. State Department employees do not want to serve in Iraq. Secretary Rice even had to implement a policy to ensure that posts in Iraq will be filled before any others.
Switching to the New Orleans school system example, again it was poor homeland security responses by local, state, and federal officials that let this natural disaster become a humanitarian crisis. Who can forget the pictures of rows of public school buses that were never used to transport New Orleans’s residents out of the city? Also, the choice to expand the number of charter schools in New Orleans was done in response to what was a previously failing school system. Those of us who have lived in Louisiana know that its educational system has always been poor. That is why so many people in the state send their children to private schools. No one knows how New Orleans’s experiment with charter schools will turn out. But is it not worth trying a new approach?
Overall, turning to the private sector to assist with disaster relief is not inherently bad. Many times the private sector can respond faster and more cost-effectively. But it also requires strong government oversight, which did not happen with many contractors in Iraq, and better administration of policies, which did not happen in New Orleans.
Let us also remember that the Bush administration was re-elected by American voters who knew that the Administration promoted tax cuts while financing two significant wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Blaming the private sector and “disaster capitalism” for what is now taking place is just a way to pass the buck, literally and figuratively.
Katherine Gockel is a program officer in the Policy Analysis and Dialogue department. Gockel leads the foundation’s Middle East policy programming and also concentrates on the areas of counterterrorism and failing states. She holds an M.A. in global studies from the University of Denver where she focused on human security and economic development. She also holds an M.B.A. in marketing and a B.A. in communications. Gockel began her career in the business sector where she worked for and with organizations such as AT&T, Sun Microsystems, The National Nanotechnology Initiative, the Center for Teaching International Relations, and Ernst & Young Consulting.
A Democratic Disaster
by Michael Goodhart
“The catalogue of outrages Klein supplies is enough to make even the local chamber of commerce president blush. Yet as I read her piece, I found myself angry not so much with the corporations as with my fellow citizens. How can we allow this to happen?”
Naomi Klein’s “Disaster Capitalism” paints a grim and compelling portrait of an emerging American dystopia: Large corporations making huge profits on non-bid contracts to handle the government’s response to natural and political disasters (like Katrina and Iraq). She envisions “a collective future of disaster apartheid, in which survival is determined primarily by one’s ability to pay.” The catalogue of outrages Klein supplies is enough to make even the local chamber of commerce president blush. Yet as I read her piece, I found myself angry not so much with the corporations as with my fellow citizens. How can we allow this to happen?
Klein’s essay should be read alongside Robert Reich’s musings on “How Capitalism is Killing Democracy,” in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy. According to Reich, “Democracy has become enfeebled largely because companies, in intensifying competition for global consumers and investors, have invested ever greater sums in lobbying, public relations, and even bribes and kickbacks” in seeking to change the rules of the game to their advantage (41). This cash-fueled competition prices most citizens out of politics. In effect, corporations are buying a political system that makes the rules under which “disaster capitalism” flourishes.
Yet the problem is not—or is not fundamentally—corporate greed. Reich reminds us that markets are designed to make us richer: Corporations exist to make a profit. That is what all of us expect and demand that they do when we act like investors, worriedly tracking the rise and fall of our IRAs, or as consumers, shopping for the best bargain. Democracy is supposed to distill and act for the common good. To Reich, the problem is that we do not do a good job in putting our role as citizens ahead of our role as investors and consumers.
“The challenge for citizens is to stop these economic entities from being the authors of the rules by which they live” (40). In other words, citizens must use the power of the ballot to check corporate excesses. Interestingly, the word “democracy” never appears in Klein’s essay, and “democratic” appears only once, with a capital D, in identifying Representative Henry Waxman of California. That is the main flaw in her argument. As repulsive as disaster capitalism is, it is first and foremost a failure of democracy—a failure of the citizens.
Klein seems to think that we are in a hole so deep that we will never climb out of it. But she never admits that we have dug the hole ourselves—or maybe contracted Bechtel to do it for us. Even Reich talks about citizens’ voices being “drown[ed] out” and society finding itself “unable” to respond to the social calamity of unbridled capitalism. Both apparently believe that somehow the corporations have gained an insurmountable advantage, that the writing is on the wall, that capitalism will run amok right until it runs over a cliff.
So in both of these stories, to varying degrees, capitalism is the villain, democracy the victim. This strikes me as utter nonsense. Of course, representative democracy is a flawed system: Money buys influence; the rules favor the haves over the have-nots. And, as Reich acknowledges, we face a tension between our public roles as citizens and our private roles as economic actors seeking to maximize our own personal welfare. But for all their problems, democratic institutions make it possible for the people to make and enforce the rules.
Thomas Frank, in his 2004 bestseller What’s the Matter with Kansas?, argues that people have been duped by right-wingers, distracting themselves with values issues while privatization, deregulation, and the rest of it get smuggled in under their noses. This might be true, but it hardly absolves democratic citizens of our responsibility for those economic policies or for others (like the Iraq war). If people are so lazy, ignorant, or uninterested that they have not noticed corporations plundering the treasury and impoverishing the nation, perhaps the old adage that people get the government they deserve is true after all.
Karl Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto that the first step in the proletarian revolution is “to win the battle of democracy.” He saw that capitalism could never be tamed unless the people first used democratic political institutions to change the rules of the game. He would surely be saddened to learn that nearly 160 years later we have still not learned this lesson—or rather, that we have forgotten it. The post-war welfare states in Europe and North America are (were?) a testament to the power of the people to shape the system, to control capitalism without crippling it (they were also testament to an unjust global economic order, but that is another story).
Today capital again has the upper hand. Disaster capitalism, with all of its affronts, is clear evidence of that, as Klein shows. Yet perhaps the greatest outrage of all is that things have gotten so bad that democracy does not even seem to be worth mentioning.
Michael Goodhart is Associate Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on democratic theory and human rights, especially in the context of globalization. He has published on these subjects in Human Rights Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Human Rights, Polity, and elsewhere. Goodhart’s first book, Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization, was published by Routledge in 2005. He is book review editor at Polity and a past president of the APSA organized section on human rights. For more information visit www.pitt.edu/~goodhart.
The Personal Side of Disaster Capitalism
by Susan E. Waltz
“A human rights approach has to ensure fullest accountability for public response where lives may hang in the balance, whether by slow rescue (an act of omission), or by use of lethal force (an act of commission).”
Two weeks ago a tornado ripped through my small hometown in rural Michigan (population 3,500), unexpectedly providing fresh perspective on the phenomenon Naomi Klein has called “Disaster Capitalism.” While I was writing this commentary, work crews were out with chainsaws and chippers, cutting up the remains of fallen trees and clearing mountains of debris from roads and sidewalks.
Klein draws attention to the spread of privatized disaster relief, using the two catastrophes of Iraq and New Orleans as her primary examples. Her essay exposes a reality that is only slowly sinking in: Functions once considered at the core of governance responsibilities are increasingly being performed by private companies. Within the U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was established in 1978 to provide direct disaster relief, but as Klein notes, Hurricane Katrina obliged FEMA to hire a contractor not simply to manage contracts, but to award them. Blackwater’s recent incident in Iraq, which left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, has at last focused attention on the expanding role of private military corporations. Klein’s article is threaded with alarm about the growing tendency to outsource disaster response or depend on private initiatives—but is this much ado about nothing?
As I reflect on Klein’s examples and look out on the clean-up efforts in my own disaster-struck community, I think the answer must be, “It depends” (it turns out that virtually all of the workmen who trampled through my backyard last week are employed by private industry under contract to utility companies or my little community. My town lives off of agriculture and light industry, and as a practical matter, it is hard to imagine how our tax dollars would be able to cover necessary services if all the equipment and personnel had to be on hand rather than on contract). Over the past two decades the U.S. has systematically privatized many erstwhile public services at every level of government—federal, state and local. In the interest of efficiency, and because private industry presumably does it “better,” government has been downsized and jobs that range from janitorial services to prison management have been outsourced. Klein’s account of this privatization focuses on the far edge of the phenomenon, where private contractors police the streets of New Orleans and perform military functions in Iraq. She leads us to, but never quite asks, the critical question: How far do we want this trend to go? Privatization and outsourcing attenuate the accountability of elected governance bodies. Are there some functions for which we do not want—and cannot ethically accept—reduced accountability?
Disaster preparations and decisions about disaster response inevitably involve utilitarian logic: What is feasible in view of available resources? What kinds of threats should receive priority preparations (and response)? Overall, how can the greatest good be achieved with the least expenditure of public resources?
From that starting point, a human rights perspective would weight the considerations in favor of fundamental human rights, beginning with the right to life itself. Even in the midst of disasters, every society—in proportion to its resources—has a rights-based duty to assure that everyone has access to basic, life-protecting emergency response, and above all, to see that no one is systematically excluded.
In addition, a human rights approach has to ensure fullest accountability for public response where lives may hang in the balance, whether by slow rescue (an act of omission), or by use of lethal force (an act of commission). It is one thing to outsource construction and maintenance. It is quite another to hire private police officers, or security guards, who may not in any substantial way be regulated by local authorities or even accountable to law and local ordinances. As an environmental contractor sent to remediate the effects of an electrical transformer that spilled its contents into my yard commented last week, “it all depends on who sets the rules, and who you’re ultimately working for.”
Susan Waltz is Professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. She has published extensively on the politics of human rights in North Africa and has recently completed a series of essays on small state participation in the negotiations of human rights standards. From 1996-1998 Dr. Waltz served as International Chairperson of Amnesty International.
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