"A teaching moment for an entire generation"

The phrase is from this report on the Khmer Rouge trials and their effect on education in Cambodia.

Goldstein on Sudan

A good review of the situation in Sudan which concludes that the independence of South Sudan will occur as scheduled in July and that, despite recent fighting around Abyei, full-scale civil war will not resume. Omitted (probably because not directly relevant to the current situation) is the fact that Omar al-Bashir remains under indictment by the International Criminal Court for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in connection with his government's actions in Darfur. The chief prosecutor of the ICC said a few years ago that the entire Sudanese state apparatus was complicit in the crimes.

Barnett on humanitarianism

Michael Barnett discusses his book Empire of Humanity (Cornell U.P., 2011) in a talk recorded in early April. I listened to the first 28 minutes or so. He argues, among other things, that humanitarian movements and organizations ('humanitarianisms') are creatures of the historical contexts in which they developed, that they have always interacted with states and 'done politics,' and that the perception among aid workers of a sharp divide between the Cold War and post-Cold War periods is historically false. The first two of these points seem incontestable; the third might be more controversial. I'll leave that to those who know more about this than I do.

Will R2P become a 'European Monroe Doctrine'?

DPTrombly has a post suggesting that, inasmuch as European states will be willing and able to enforce the Responsibility to Protect only within a defined geographic area, R2P will come to resemble a European Monroe Doctrine, with Europe attempting to ensure certain norms of behavior by states within its sphere of influence, i.e., "Sahara, Sahel, Mediterranean rim, and Balkans."

Does the analogy work? I'm not convinced. The U.S., as DPT indicates, relied on Britain's naval power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine for most of the 19th century. And not too long after the U.S. became capable of using its own navy to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed in 1904 his famous 'corollary' to the Doctrine which "declared that misgovernment (or 'chronic wrongdoing')" by Latin American governments would be grounds for U.S. armed intervention (Penguin Dictionary of International Relations, 1998, p.337). Applying this principle via his paternalistic pronouncement that "we must teach the Latin Americans to select the right man," Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines into Mexico in 1914 (ibid., p.573).

By contrast, R2P is less paternalistic than the Monroe Doctrine as applied by TR and Woodrow Wilson. R2P's application is limited to four circumstances: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity (see M.W. Doyle, "International Ethics and the Responsibility to Protect," Int'l Studies Review 13:1, March 2011). It is not a question of teaching the inhabitants of country X "to select the right man [or woman]." A leader can drive his or her country into the ground and can be as corrupt as all get-out, but as long as he or she does not engage (or very credibly, by his or her own pronouncement, appear to be right on the verge of engaging) in genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity -- all of which, with the possible exception of ethnic cleansing, have accepted definitions in international law -- the question of R2P does not even arise.

Of course, application of R2P will be selective and considerations of the sort mentioned by DPT will influence the 'selections'. But that does not mean that R2P will be used to legitimize interventions of the kind that Wilson ordered in Mexico. Thus "European Monroe Doctrine" may not be the right description, inasmuch as it may conjure up a history of paternalistic, imperialistic interventions that I think few have any interest in defending or repeating.

In the wake of Boumediene

A piece by Robert Barnes in the Wash. Post makes it sound as if the Supreme Court's June 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that Guantanamo Bay detainees could challenge their detentions via writs of habeas corpus in federal court, has not had much of a practical effect. Barnes writes that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which had to work out the details of what rules would apply to detention hearings, has issued "a string of rulings" against the detainees which the Supreme Court has declined to review. "The bottom line," according to Barnes, "is that while Guatanamo's population has declined from around 270 at the time of the decision to 172 today because of decisions of the executive branch, not a single release has come as the direct result of a judicial order."

This statement, if one emphasizes the word "direct," may be technically correct, but it does not capture the story of what happened with the named plaintiffs in Boumediene, a story I found when a search on "Boumediene v. Bush" turned up the site of WilmerHale, the law firm which handled the case for the plaintiffs on a pro bono basis.

WilmerHale's post reminds those who had forgotten the facts (or never been too clear on them, such as myself) that the plaintiffs were six Algerians living in Bosnia who were transported to Gitmo by the U.S. government in 2002 and held there for more than five years before the Supreme Court's 2008 decision. The U.S. claimed among other things that they had been planning to attack the American embassy in Sarajevo. I pick up the story from the law firm's post:

In October 2008, WilmerHale filed the first-ever evidentiary response ("traverse") on behalf of Guantanamo prisoners, refuting the Government's asserted grounds for detention...

As a result of WilmerHale’s challenge, the US Government dropped its most inflammatory claim against the men, namely that they were planning to attack the US Embassy in Sarajevo in 2001. The US Government abandoned this claim even though President Bush had specifically mentioned it in the 2002 State of the Union address.

In November 2008, Judge Richard J. Leon of the US District Court in Washington DC held a seven-day hearing into the Government’s allegations. It was the first merits hearing in a habeas case involving Guantanamo prisoners. The hearing also included another first-time event: testimony by Guantanamo prisoners, live via videolink from Cuba, in support of their own bid for release.

On November 20, 2008, Judge Leon ruled that the Government had failed to show any credible evidence justifying detention of five of the six men. Judge Leon also took the extraordinary step of imploring the Government not to appeal that ruling. Judge Leon ruled against the sixth Petitioner, Belkacem Bensayah.

In December 2008, the Government informed WilmerHale that it would, indeed, forgo any appeal and abide by the ruling as to the five successful Petitioners. On December 16, 2008, three of WilmerHale’s clients—Mustafa Ait Idir, Hadj Boudella, and Mohamed Nechla—arrived safely home in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where they were met by elated family members and friends. This was the first time that the US Government has released Guantanamo prisoners in response to a court order. The remaining two successful petitioners, Lakhdar Boumediene and Saber Lahmar, were released and transferred to France in 2009.

WilmerHale appealed Judge Leon's denial of Belkacem Bensayah's habeas corpus petition to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia... On June 28, 2010, the DC Circuit panel unanimously reversed and remanded Judge Leon's ruling, holding that the government's evidence was insufficient to demonstrate that Mr. Bensayah was detainable. This marks the first (and so far only) case in which the DC Circuit has reversed a district court's denial of habeas corpus to a Guantanamo prisoner.

So although Barnes's article is no doubt correct that the practical impact of the Boumediene decision has been much less than proponents had hoped, at least in the case of the original plaintiffs the decision did make a difference: the five who were released (the three who returned to Bosnia and the two who went to France) were set free in response to a court order, as the law firm's post says.

Why hasn't Boumediene benefited more detainees? The Barnes piece suggests that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has weakened, if not undermined, the decision (he quotes the Center for Constitutional Rights as saying the D.C. Circuit has "openly defied" Boumediene). That is probably part of the reason; another may be that most detainees, unlike the Boumediene plaintiffs, have not been lucky enough to receive the skilled pro bono services of a big, very well-resourced law firm like WilmerHale. (This is not in any way to cast aspersions on the various lawyers who represent detainees, merely to note that resources can make a difference.)

P.s. Looking back at a post I wrote when Boumediene was decided, I see that Roberts in his dissent said the decision would have only a "modest practical impact," whereas Scalia in his dissent said it would have far-reaching and "disastrous" consequences. On this point, score Roberts one, Scalia zero. (But note that two commenters on my June 2008 post thought Scalia and Roberts were talking about different things, not making different predictions about the same thing. Whatever.)

Multipolarity and normative convergence

What can someone who is not at all a China expert, makes no real effort to keep up with the literature on China, and is also not an expert on Northeast Asia (or Southeast Asia for that matter) or on the politics of international economic relations, have to say about Hu Jintao's U.S. visit that might be of interest? Probably not much. But as they say in the blogosphere, you get what you pay for, and I herewith hazard a thought or two on a visit that has already faded from the news cycle -- or rather, I use the visit as an excuse to reflect on more general issues.

Hu's statement that China has 'some work to do on human rights' (that was the gist if not the verbatim) is striking: it was not broadcast back in China but the fact that he said it is remarkable. Talk may be cheap but it is never completely empty or meaningless. Surrounded as it was by the standard stuff about China and the U.S. being different societies at different levels of development, needing to respect each other's sovereignty, etcetera etcetera, the statement stands out all the more sharply. It struck me as noteworthy that the first-among-equals in a collective leadership of an authoritarian state would publicly utter the phrase 'human rights' at all, as opposed to finding some euphemistic substitute.

There is a wide -- albeit not universal -- agreement among observers of international politics that the world is entering a period in which power is diffusing to more countries, as 'rising powers' (China, India, Brazil, perhaps Russia, and a few others) take a more assertive, visible role on the world stage and as the relative power of the U.S. continues to decline. Because China and Russia are not Western-style democracies (though Russia has some democratic forms), one line of thought holds that an increasingly multipolar world will also be one in which basic values become bones of contention, so to speak, as the standard-bearers of authoritarianism become more assertive not just about their geopolitical and economic interests but also about the supposed merits of their domestic arrangements. A contrary line holds that because no country can escape the 'liberal' international economic system, increasing integration into the world economy, plus economic growth and development in general, should lead eventually to a softening of authoritarianism and perhaps, even more eventually, to indigenously-driven, gradual 'democratization'. Sophisticated new versions of modernization theory, based on work by Ronald Inglehart and others, maintain that there is indeed a connection, however qualified and contingent, between development (in the sense of rising incomes, rising consumption, rising urbanization, growth of a middle class, etc.) and democracy. If this view is even partly correct, then multipolarity will mean not a fiercer fight over values, at least among states, but on the contrary a growing agreement on values (the 'normative convergence' of this post's title). The new multipolar world, on this view, will be closer to what Raymond Aron many years ago called a 'homogeneous system' as opposed to a 'heterogeneous system', or at least we can expect it to move slowly in the direction of the former.

The question just raised is more descriptive or predictive (what might happen?) than prescriptive (what should policymakers, say in the U.S., do?). In an article last fall in Foreign Affairs ("Not Ready for Prime Time," Sept./Oct. 2010), Jorge Castañeda argued that Brazil, China, India, and South Africa should not be brought into the inner sanctums of global governance because they are not sufficiently committed to "the notion that a strong international regime should govern human rights, democracy, nonproliferation, trade liberalization, the environment, international criminal justice, and global health." They remain too tied to outworn notions of 'noninterference in internal affairs,' Castañeda suggested, and until that changes, they should not be invited to assume positions of greater responsibility in international institutions.

I'm not sure Castañeda got it right. How do we know that increased commitment to international regimes will not be a consequence of more responsibility? Countries that remain shut out of positions commensurate with their growing material power are likely to become resentful and may look for opportunities to disrupt rather than strengthen the international regimes that exist (except, perhaps, on particular issues such as piracy and maybe terrorism where all states' interests 'naturally' converge).

In this context, does Hu's statement about China and human rights mean something? Very possibly. As one data point, it doesn't count for much, to be sure, but if it is followed by actions it may form one piece of evidence that the 'not ready for prime time' prescription has it backwards. I'll fall back here on that old friend of pundits: it's too soon to tell.

Rhetorics of empire

The calendar tells me that today is United Nations Day: a fitting day for this post (for reasons that will become clear).

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In Cosmopolitanism (Norton pb., 2007), Kwame Anthony Appiah writes:

The independence movements of the post-1945 world that led to the end of Europe’s African and Asian empires were driven by the rhetoric that had guided the Allies’ own struggle against Germany and Japan: democracy, freedom, equality. This [i.e., the conflict between colonial powers and independence movements] wasn’t a conflict between values. It was a conflict of interests couched in terms of the same values. (p. 80)

According to this view, the colonizers and the colonized framed their positions in the same language: both sides argued that they were upholding liberal principles. If so, did the colonizers genuinely believe that they were acting on behalf of such principles? No doubt some of them did, but that issue is beyond the scope of this post. The above-quoted passage from Appiah does, however, raise questions about the relation of words to concepts. Someone’s use of a word such as “freedom” does not necessarily indicate a commitment to anything that most people would recognize as freedom. A slaveholder in the act of beating a slave does not become a promoter of freedom simply by uttering the words “I am doing this because I believe in freedom.”

Admittedly this example is an exaggeration. In the conflict between colonial powers and independence movements, rhetoric was used in somewhat, but only somewhat, more subtle ways. The career of Jan Smuts (1870-1950) is instructive in this connection. In No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton University Press, 2009), Mark Mazower devotes a lot of attention to Smuts, who was the leading South African politician of the first half of the twentieth century. Smuts viewed membership in the British Empire as a means to ensure the preservation and spread of white rule in southern Africa. During the first of his two terms as prime minister of South Africa (1919-1924), “the foundations of the future apartheid regime were being laid by eroding the last remnants of the native suffrage and introducing segregationist settlement restrictions.” (p. 51)

Smuts was also a believer in international organization. Among other things, he was a main drafter of the preamble to the UN Charter, which listed among the organization’s purposes the reaffirmation of “faith in fundamental human rights, …the dignity and worth of the human person, …the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small….” Mazower asks: “How could the new world body’s commitment to universal rights owe more than a little to the participation of a man whose segregationist policies back home paved the way for the apartheid state?” (No Enchanted Palace, p. 19) The answer – or at least an answer – is that for Smuts, and for some others involved in the UN’s founding, “fundamental human rights” did not in fact mean universal rights. Adhering to an “evolutionist paradigm of cosmic harmony under beneficent white guidance” (p. 57), Smuts saw “differential degrees of freedom and differential treatment of groups by the state [as] not merely reasonable but necessary for human progress.” (p. 64) As a young man, Smuts “had talked easily about the mission of ‘half a million whites’ to lift up ‘the vast dead weight of immemorial barbarism and animal savagery to the light and blessing of ordered civilisation,’” and he hoped the UN would be “a force for world order, under whose umbrella the British Empire – with South Africa as its principal dynamic agent on the continent – could continue to carry out its civilizing work.” (p. 65)

The UN Charter itself, as Mazower observes, did not specifically condemn colonialism, and few people of any prominence, except for W.E.B. Du Bois, objected to this omission at the time. Indeed an African journalist predicted that a new “scramble for coloured territories and spheres of influence” was in the offing, adding that “new life has been infused into predatory imperialism.” (quoted, p. 63)

However, the UN did not, as things turned out, conform to Smuts’s vision, nor did a new scramble for colonies occur. On the contrary, what Harold Macmillan called a wind of change (in his famous 1960 speech) was running strongly against the continuation of formal empire. This soon became evident within the UN itself. A complaint to the General Assembly about the treatment of Indians in South Africa, spearheaded by Nehru and first brought in 1946, presaged “the emergence in the General Assembly of an entirely new conception of world order – one premised on the breakup of empire rather than its continuation.” (Mazower, p. 185) The General Assembly’s December 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples called for quick independence for the remaining colonies, rejecting the argument that an alleged lack of readiness for self-government could justify delay.

The end of colonialism, an epochal change in world politics, represented an unusual case of a modern international institution becoming obsolete (cf. K.J. Holsti, Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics [Cambridge U.P., 2004], p. 274). But although the institution became obsolete, the rhetoric associated with it has proven to be longer lived. Although virtually no one in authority extols, in Smutsian fashion, the superior wisdom of the “white race,” more nuanced versions of what Mazower calls imperial internationalism are still extant. In the context of the “war on terror,” references to “civilization” and “barbarism” have become common (see Mark Salter’s work on this); these words have overtones, whether intended or not, that cannot be fully grasped unless one remembers the once-widespread view that colonized peoples were “uncivilized.” The trope (to use a fashionable word) of civilization versus barbarism should not have been resurrected in recent years, no matter that the context is different. These words carry too many reminders of the old rhetorics of empire.

Note: For more on Smuts, see the sources listed in Mazower's notes. Also, Richard Toye's Churchill's Empire (Henry Holt, 2010) contains a couple of references to Smuts from a somewhat different perspective.

The UN water rights resolution

The UN General Assembly today declared access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation a human right, in a resolution that no country opposed but on which 41, including the U.S., abstained. The abstainers raised various objections, one of which had to do with the status of an ongoing 'process' on the subject at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, another with the alleged absence of a basis in international law for declaring the right to water a "free-standing" right (as the British delegate put it).

2.6 billion people, or roughly 40 percent of the world's population, lack access to sanitation, and nearly a billion people lack access to clean water. This resolution, like all General Assembly resolutions, is non-binding and must be seen as aspirational. It apparently does not commit states to any specific actions, though it does call on them to "scale up" efforts to transfer technology and expertise that would improve the situation. Aspirational resolutions are not meaningless, and abstaining on this particular one makes little sense. It only makes the abstainers look small-minded and mean-spirited. Moreover, pronouncements about the "existing state of international law" merely reinforce the accurate perception that international law in this respect is in need of renovation.

Update: S. Carvin at Duck of Minerva has a longer post about this here.

Wherein the break is briefly interrupted

The local PBS station just aired Daniel Goldhagen's film about genocide, Worse than War (made to accompany his book of the same name). It has some powerful and emotional moments.

It also has an argument and a set of policy recommendations, none of which I have the time or inclination to go into, at least not now. But one or two reactions may be worth noting. Most of Goldhagen's scholarship (including his prize-winning undergraduate thesis and his Ph.D. dissertation, which became the famous and controversial book Hitler's Willing Executioners) deals with the Nazi genocide of the Jews. This film however deals with genocide in general, focusing on various instances of it, especially fairly recent ones (e.g., Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s; Guatemala in the '80s; Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge; and Darfur).

Goldhagen argues in the film that genocidal political leaders are not "crazy" but are "rational calculators" (his phrase) who weigh costs and benefits; if they are made to realize that genocide will not 'pay' because they will be punished swiftly, then they will not order it. This description may very well apply to Slobodan Milosevic or Omar al-Bashir. Goldhagen does not say explicitly, however, that this description applies to Hitler. And whether the "rational calculator" label applies to perpetrators, as opposed to leaders, is less clear still. (As Goldhagen mentions at one point, surviving concentration camp inmates were sent on forced death marches in the very last days of Nazi Germany, even after officials in the Nazi hierarchy had ordered killings to stop; the organizers of the death marches ignored those orders.) Goldhagen also observes that genocidal leaders mobilize and play on prejudices that people already have; of course, since such prejudices are usually irrational, "rational calculators" have to know how to mobilize and harness irrationality. In the process, however, isn't it possible that these "rational calculators" may come to believe the myths that they start out by exploiting? If so, does that make them less rational? These questions were not really addressed in the film; perhaps they are addressed in the book.

[The break from posting will now resume.]

African Union Convention on Displaced Persons

The African Union recently adopted a Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Displaced Persons, the first legal instrument to define states' obligations toward their own displaced citizens. There are roughly 12 million internally displaced people in Africa. The convention needs to be ratified by a minimum of 15 countries before coming into force. More details here and/or by googling "convention on displaced persons."

You might ask whether conventions like this have any practical effect. The safe, albeit perhaps unsatisfying, answer is that it varies: some have more impact than others. But at a minimum they can help focus attention on a problem, and that in itself can be useful.

Frank Rich on equal rights

Here.

On Britain, France, and border controls

Ten of the twelve suspected terror plotters arrested in the U.K. in the recent raids were in the country on student visas (and were Pakistani nationals), leading to calls to reform the visa system, among other things. Border and immigration controls continue to be contentious, even when the threat of terrorism is not the main issue. In 2003, Britain and France reached an agreement giving each country's border police some limited jurisdiction in the other country: France in a zone in Dover, Britain in a zone in Calais. Now the two countries are working on a controversial plan to build a new center in Calais with the aim of making it easier to deport undocumented asylum-seekers, particularly Afghanis, Iraqis, and migrants from the horn of Africa, who seek entry into Britain by getting on trucks that will cross the Channel (via the tunnel).

15th anniversary of Rwandan genocide

Rwandans have held vigils and other ceremonies on the fifteenth anniversary of the 1994 genocide. The Rwandan genocide, tragic in itself, aggravated a simmering war in eastern Congo, helping to turn it into a full-fledged civil and regional conflict. Despite a number of books on the genocide, the full history of its intersection with the conflicts in Congo and the broader region probably has yet to be written.

Update: Gérard Prunier, Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford UP, 2008), may be what I had in mind.

60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration

Today (Dec. 10) marks the sixtieth anniversary of the passage by the UN General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, championed most prominently by Eleanor Roosevelt. This has prompted a few random reflections but nothing coherent enough for a post. Perhaps later.

Humanitarian intervention, social science, and "the new aid imperialism"

In a review of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, William Easterly criticizes what he calls "the new aid imperialism," i.e., "the willingness to combine foreign military intervention with traditional aid work" in developing countries ("Foreign Aid Goes Military!" The New York Review of Books, 12/4/08).

Easterly notes, among other things, that the "share of U.S. foreign aid distributed by the Pentagon increased from 6 percent in 2002 to 22 percent in 2005." What Easterly does not note, however, is that the overall amount of U.S. foreign aid increased from 2002 to 2005, so the Pentagon was distributing 22 percent of an expanded pie, not a shrinking one, which thus still left more in absolute terms for civilian agencies, such as the Millennium Challenge Corp. and AID, to distribute. Nonetheless, it's true that the line between military activity and foreign aid, as far as the U.S. is concerned, has been blurring in recent years.

Is this a good or a bad thing? Easterly thinks it's bad, and he does have a case to make. In using a review of Collier's book to make it, however, he runs into some difficulties. I'll mention a couple of them.

1) The basic argument of Collier's book, according to Easterly, is that the poorest countries in the world "are trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, civil war, military coups, looting of natural resources, and failed states. They need outside rescue by the rich nations." Easterly questions this argument on several grounds, accusing Collier's book of failing adequately to distinguish correlation from causation and of engaging in selection bias. Among other things, Easterly notes that poor countries have experienced "growth reversals...in both directions."

"Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, and Zimbabwe had good growth between 1960 and 1980, before falling prey to economic decline -- brought on by political disasters and other factors -- from 1980 to the present. Conversely, Bangladesh, India, Uganda and Vietnam [my emphasis] had mediocre to negative growth between 1960 and 1980, before registering impressive growth from 1980 to the present. If there is so much movement into and out of success and failure, it is hard to argue looking forward that the Bottom Billion are trapped in failure."

Vietnam? Why do you suppose Vietnam might have had "mediocre to negative growth between 1960 and 1980"? Might it have had something to do with the facts that virtually the entire able-bodied adult male population, at least of N. Vietnam, was mobilized for military service, and that the U.S., from 1965 to the early 1970s, dropped more bombs on N. Vietnam than were dropped during the entirety of World War II? These count as extraordinary circumstances that give the case of Vietnam no probative weight at all, in my opinion, on the point Easterly is adducing it to support.

2) Easterly writes:

"...[B]oth statistical exercises and case study analysis give ambiguous direction on military intervention [for humanitarian or ostensibly humanitarian ends]. I think the moral of the story is that, as tragic as poverty and violence are, social science does not have much to offer as a guide to using military force to stop them. This is not so surprising: why should social scientists have any strategic expertise on whether a contingent of foreign or international troops will pacify a country easily (Sierra Leone) or with great difficulty, or not at all (Somalia)? It is regrettable if social science is used to give spurious cover to military intervention."

Easterly is right to strike a note of caution, I think, but he may go a bit too far in dismissing social-scientific expertise: surely there are scholarly experts on Sierra Leone and Somalia who might have provided insights about the relative likelihood or unlikelihood of successful intervention in the two countries.

In making his case, Easterly himself draws on social science, namely the research of political scientist Alan Kuperman, who has written about "the moral hazard" of humanitarian intervention. In Easterly's words, Kuperman "argues that the hope of international intervention may embolden rebels to undertake military action that will inevitably catch many civilians in the crossfire between the rebels and the government before the interveners arrive. This is exactly what happened with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose members admitted in interviews with Kuperman that their violence against Serbs starting in 1997 was motivated by hopes of foreign intervention." (Although Easterly does not give a footnote citation to an article by Kuperman, I assume he is drawing on Kuperman's "The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans," International Studies Quarterly 52:1, March 2008, pp.49-80. Full disclosure: I have not read the article, only the abstract.)

Political judgments about whether, when and how to intervene in humanitarian crises such as genocide or ethnic cleansing must be recognized as political and not masquerade as purely scientific, neutral decisions: on this point Easterly is unquestionably correct. But in his concern to reveal the weaknesses of what he takes to be unduly optimistic and pro-intervention standpoints, Easterly may be in danger of condemning, by implication if not explicitly, all social-scientific efforts to understand the consequences of intervention and the possible conditions of its success or failure. Careful case studies backed up, where appropriate, by statistical analysis that does not claim too much for itself may still have a role to play in helping politicians reach defensible, intelligent, and practical judgments on these matters.

But you can read the Easterly piece for yourself (see link above) and reach your own conclusions.

Kalahari Bushmen in appeal to the Pope

A commenter at a Crooked Timber thread refers to this brief item (in French) about the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Pope. The government of Botswana apparently has denied the Bushmen hunting licenses on their traditional lands and granted Gem Diamonds permission to open a diamond mine on a piece of the lands. The Bushmen have asked Pope Benedict, following the recent establishment of diplomatic relations between Botswana and the Vatican, for his support.

Selective outrage?

A recent post at Elected Swineherd quotes Amitai Etzioni's musings about why Western "public intellectuals" do not display more outrage about atrocities committed by extremist Muslims, e.g., Taliban beheadings or the stoning to death, for "adultery," of a thirteen-year-old Somali girl who had been raped. These occurrences are indeed appalling, and I agree that often they are not denounced forcefully enough by Western voices.

On the other hand, of course, there are Western voices who would use the Muslim extremists to tar all Muslims, or Islam in general. Glance at some of what goes on at a site like Gates of Vienna for an example of this.

Congo and MONUC

A UN Security Council team recently met with Congo's president Joseph Kabila, who said he hoped UN peacekeepers could leave by the next presidential election in 2011, according to the BBC. The UN peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC by its French acronym) is the largest one in the world, and its record is mixed. On the one hand, violence in the eastern Congo between government and various militia forces, including some Hutu militias from neighboring Rwanda, probably would have been worse without the UN's presence. On the other hand, during its mission MONUC has not been able to prevent mass population displacements or what the New York Times in October 2007 called an "epidemic" of rape and sexual violence (see Jeffrey Gettleman, "Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War," NYT, 10/7/07, link). (One hopes this problem is less acute now than it was in 2006-07.) Maybe conditions will allow MONUC to leave by 2011, but if you're a betting person, don't lay odds on it.

ICC prosecutor out on a limb?

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has accused the "whole state apparatus" of Sudan of complicity in crimes against humanity in Darfur, despite the fact that the ICC has jurisdiction only over individuals.

"Ali Kushayb, a leader of the Janjaweed militia, and Ahmad Harun, Sudan's current Humanitarian Affairs Minister [sic], are both charged [by the ICC] with 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including acts of murder, persecution, torture, rape and forcible displacement," according to this June 4 BBC story.

Does Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the ICC, really think that accusing the entire Sudanese government of complicity in crimes will increase the chances of its turning over the two men? Or has he concluded that it's hopeless, so he might as well go ahead and denounce the whole government?