Ramesh Thakur, one of the theorists behind 'Responsibility to Protect', thought Libya was a 'win'.
He wrote-
'Referring to the role of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power in arguing for limited military action in Libya against the non-interventionist inclinations of the male defence secretary, national security adviser and counterterrorism chief, Jacob Heibrunn derided Obama for effectively having been henpecked into interventionism by ''these Valkyries of foreign affairs''.Not to be outdone on misogyny, Mark Krikorian commented caustically that ''our commander-in-chief is an effete vacillator who is pushed around by his female subordinates''.
The jury is still out on whether international military action in Libya will promote consolidation or softening of the R2P norm. The Libyan people's euphoria and NATO's relief over the successful military campaign to remove Gaddafi is likely to temper criticisms of the manner in which NATO rode roughshod over UN authorisation to protect civilians.
That said, we should not be naive about what may be required in particular circumstances. Already in 2003, as Commissioner for the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, I wrote that ''If defeat of a non-compliant state or regime is the only way to achieve the human protection goals, then so be it.'' In Libya, the West's strategic interests coincided with UN values. This does not mean that the latter was subordinated to the former. It does mean, as was the case with Australia vis--vis East Timor in 1999, that there was a better prospect of sustained NATO engagement in an operation on its borders than if Western interests were not affected. Paris, London and Washington - and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - did not waver in their resolve, despite critics from the left pushing for diplomacy and critics from the right calling for boots on the ground. Too many seemed to expect and demand instant military gratification. Six months to overthrow an entrenched and determined dictator is not bad.
The outcome is a triumph first and foremost for the citizen soldiers who refused to let fear of Gaddafi determine their destiny any longer. It is a triumph secondly for R2P. NATO military muscle deployed on behalf of UN political will helped to level the killing field between citizens and a tyrant. It is possible for the international community, working through the authenticated, UN-centred structures and procedures of organised multilateralism, to deploy international force to neutralise the military might of a thug and intervene between him and his victims with reduced civilian casualties and little risk of military casualties.
Ramesh wrote this 6 years ago. Since then much has changed. Libya is now considered an own goal for NATO. Syria was even worse. Last year, Putin started to look like the good guy and Trump was happy to endorse this view. It appears that R2P can indeed bring about 'regime change'- but in Washington, not Damascus. Indeed, things may not stop there. The E.U is already looking very different. If Merkel loses, Syria will be the main reason. Elsewhere we see that Turkey and Iran have realigned. Even the two Wahhabi Kingdoms are at each other's throats.
R2P was about sterilizing the military complement to humanitarian intervention such that no Balance of Power perturbation obtains. This is feasible where a narrow clique supporting a sociopathic dictator are the sole source and foundation of all evil in that polity. A multilateral military strike against the clique, in theory, could quickly lead to a benign regime change welcome to all parties. Not a tear was shed for Ceaucescu who was toppled by moderate Communist apparatchiks who realised that the factory workers had lost patience with the regime and that the Army would not shoot their own kin. Ceaucescu made some incredible blunders in his last days. He hoped to blame everything on the Hungarians. No doubt, he'd have been happy to sponsor some ethnic cleansing in Timisoara in the hope of provoking a military response which would have revived Romanian fears regarding the irredentism of their neighbors. This strategy unravelled in spectacular fashion on live TV as the crowd turned hostile to his speech and took up Timisoara as their own rallying cry.
In the Nineties, the dysfunctional character of Yeltsin's Russia created a power vacuum such that unilateral military action became possible. However, it also became obvious that nuclear weapons were an effective hedge against such intervention. Fortunately, these proved to be far more difficult to develop and deploy than had been previously envisaged. Still, 'W.M.Ds' emerged as a casus belli- one which militated for unilateral interventionism in an obviously dangerous and globally destabilising manner. It was in this context that R2P was envisaged and adopted by the U.N. The Brazilians have proposed a revision of this policy which privileges the older notion of 'humanitarian assistance' and which subordinates military intervention to a humanitarian calculus. There seems little appetite for this view. Why? One reason is that it creates a slippery slope for Military doctrine and rules of engagement such that both can be gamed by the adversary. Another more basic problem is that R2P isn't incentive compatible- there is no 'Revelation Principle' such that we can discover a correlated equilibrium. Previously, unilateral interventions- e.g. India's in the Bangladesh War- could be justified by the cost borne by the intervening party. India had received millions of refugees which it lacked the means to feed. Still, there was no broader Balance of Power ramification arising from the War. Arguably, America and China gained from having a revanchist Pakistani Army no longer involved in garrisoning a hostile and far off Province.
In that case, there was a 'correlated equilibrium' based on a self regarding calculus. With R2P no similar calculations can be made. After all every Ideology claims that some privileged subset of its exponents have a superior Responsibility to all beings- though this responsibility may consist entirely of euthanising or enslaving vast classes of people. Even if we could filter such ideologies on the basis of outcomes, there is no reason to believe that they can't mutate to defeat the filter. Indeed, Ideologies, unlike Rational Choice Theories, are founded upon the essentially contested nature of deontic concepts like 'Responsibility' as opposed to (at least potentially) alethic notions like 'Revealed Preference'. This does not mean that there can't be an evolutionary normative process in this field. There could- indeed there would, if Econ theory is correct- provided there are no 'income effects' or 'hedging'. In other words, the thing can be done iff doing it doesn't matter very much at all in the broader scheme of things. It is this assumption which has been shown to be wildly optimistic by Trump's triumph and Europe's current woes.
R2P failed not because it concerned itself with something trivial but rather that it ignorantly meddled in something far more complex than it could conceive.
It was clear that the UN's own 'peace enforcement' efforts had failed and there was no way it could build the required capacity on its own. But even the mighty U.S failed in Somalia. Clearly there were limits to what could be done. Still, the feeling was, at least Rwanda type situations should be properly tackled. It was in this context that 'R2P' was envisaged as a way of tying the hands of Western Super Powers intervening in client states. As such, it was quite successful at a normative level. Western countries now have a constituency ready to hold their own leaders to account for Humanitarian disasters caused by their military interventions abroad.
ReplyDeleteIt is unfair and foolish to describe R2P as a failure. It was part of a wider evolution in international norms and law. To blame it for Trump's election or Europe's problems is bizarre. Xenophobia and Racism are nothing new. Trump's very first foray into politics was as a 'Great White Hope' ready to inflict dire punishment on African American people who were pictured as murderous thugs high on drugs. More recently, he gained notoriety for supporting the 'birther' movement which was clearly Racist. Apparently, people with a dark skin were actually born in Africa even if their mother had never travelled to that continent!
It is false to say 'R2P is incentive incompatible.' Any doctrine, once promulgated by statute or under the terms of a Treaty, can, on the basis of Case Law, establish an incentive structure. Since there is a reputational pay-off for altruistic 'Responsibility', the conditions for a 'Revelation Principle' exist- indeed, there is a mechanism for it.
It is a different matter the outcomes of proper 'R2P' interventions can have catastrophic consequences because of 'income effects' (i.e. shifts in the Balance of Power) or 'hedging' (presumably you mean investment in deterrents which can spark an Arms Race). However, no blame can attach to R2P, because it does not directly cause the intervention. Some other mechanism does so. During the Second World War, both Stalin and Hitler and everybody else appealed to traditional patriotism- this does not mean patriotism caused the War.
Western countries already possess the tools necessary to impeach or prosecute leaders for failures of the sort you mention. Furthermore, there is a permanent constituency for any action against the leader of a rival party.
ReplyDeleteIt is not clear that R2P changed anything material in that respect. On the contrary, its association with the Libyan and Syrian quagmires has provided a defence for such statesmen. They can argue that whatever damage they themselves did, some greater catastrophe was thereby averted.
It may be, as you say, that Trump won because he was a Racist and that Hilary wasn't damaged by Libya at all. It may be that Merkel will be re-elected by a landslide and that the exit polls will reveal that her concern for Syrian refugees was the clinching factor. However, in that case, my error is the same as that of the vast majority of commentators. We didn't know that a lot of Americans suddenly became Racist at the same time as a lot of Germans suddenly turned out to be angels. A universe where such errors can occur is one where 'common knowledge' is occulted by some endogenous process such that 'Reputational payoffs' can't be computed in advance. This vitiates your argument that R2P can be incentive compatible rather than essentially contested.
I agree that it would be foolish, albeit viscerally satisfying, to attribute all our current evils to R2P or to the bien pensant Professors who established this availability cascade and the UN bureaucrats who jumped on the bandwagon. The real malaise arises from a false picture of general equilibrium theory which somehow established itself as received wisdom some twenty years after it had been thoroughly refuted by mathematical economists.
I am not aware of any such 'prosecutions or impeachments' having been successfully carried out with respect to any military intervention in the second half of the Twentieth Century or subsequently.
ReplyDeleteI am speaking of a different sort of constituency than the sort that gains representation in the Legislature. NGO's and activist groups can use R2P, where this has established as law by statute of treaty, to pierce the veil of sovereign immunity and hold irresponsible statesmen to account for humanitarian catastrophes incident on military interventions under this rubric.
I have no where suggested that 'a lot of Americans suddenly became racists' or that Germans could suddenly turn into angels. I don't understand your reference to 'occulted... endogenous processes'. Is it something to do with the latest Stephen King movie or Netflix series? I am sadly ill-acquainted with the relevant literature.
Had Hilary Clinton properly observed R2P norms (more especially re. 'reasonable prospect') in Libya- or ensured that the Brits and the French did so- then she would certainly have received a 'reputational pay off'. She'd have been able to save 'I saved millions of Libyans from the bombs and machine guns of the maniac Gaddaffi. He is now in prison awaiting trial. The Libyans have a democratically elected Government and a thriving economy. They have ordered billions of dollars worth of goods and services from the U.S. As a result ten thousand new well paid jobs have been created.'
I feel that 'reasonable prospect' is alethic, not 'essentially contested' at all. In any case, the Judiciary has no difficulty establishing bright line rules in even more contentious areas.
I am not aware that 'general equilibrium theory' has had any salience in this context. Professor Thakur's background is in Political Science, International Relations, and he also has an LLD. He is not some sort of 'neo-liberal' quack.
Western statesmen have access to good legal advise and thus can easily show that their actions were in good faith and satisfied the 'reasonable prospect'test. Blatant perjury or bad faith would still be indictable offenses. An unpopular ex Head of Govt. might well sent to jail for triggering a humanitarian catastrophe through a rash or corrupt 'humanitarian intervention'. R2P scarcely changes that picture. It would have had no currency had it the potential you claim for it.
ReplyDeletePreference Falsification can be endogenous. More generally, Preference Revelation might always have an occult, 'unhackable', structure for Evolutionary reasons. I have no doubt that, if not Stephen King's new blockbuster, then, certainly, some Amazon or Netflix series has explained all this.
Had Hillary been smart she wouldn't have been gung ho on Libya. She also wouldn't have lost the Presidency not once but twice to the unlikeliest of candidates- firstly, a black dude with a scary Muslim name, and secondly, a 'pussy grabber' with weird hair. It's no good saying 'if Hilary had observed R2P norms then such and such would have happened.' The only norm Hilary could observe was screwing up royally on every and any occasion.
General Equilibrium theory of the old fashioned Arrow-Debreu sort did bleed through into General Systems theory and I.R. However, as you say, Prof. Thakur is not guilty of that particular type of idiocy. I didn't know he has an LLD. I think he's a straight-shooter not a quack.
The truth is we all drank the Koolaid. The fact that Germany and Japan had done well out of American occupation led to the conjecture- immortalised by the film 'the Mouse that roared'- that losing a war with America was a short cut to prosperity. That film came out in '59. Vietnam showed the folly behind its central assumption. Still, a lot of people thought Iraq and Libya would be a 'win' for us. We'd turn a profit on the deal- as we did from the first Gulf War. That was foolish. Worse, it was a crime against humanity.
What is your view on the Rohingya crisis? I notice that the R2P report presents the Rohingyas as Muslims. The truth is some are Hindus. Burma has a long history of getting rid of Indian people- Bengali or Tamil or what ever. Religion only has salience when it comes to the Christian minority amongst the Karen (who are otherwise mainly Buddhist) who had done well in the Army under the British. Ultimately, R2P has to recognise that polities may want to get rid of 'migrants. Why is it licit to intervene in their favour by force of arms if it is not licit for them to take up arms themselves? But any military intervention under R2P could be more effectually carried out by arming the victims themselves. Indeed, in the past, Colonial powers coopted and armed minorities thus setting the stage for ethnic cleansing long after they departed.
I think you fail to understand the distinction between norms and laws. R2P was part of an evolving normative culture which the U.N endorsed for the noblest reasons.
ReplyDeleteSystems theory in I.R has experienced fluctuating fortunes but its central metaphors were never wholly or mainly Economic.
R2P has been critiqued along the lines you mention. The Rohingya issue is one where non-coercive means are being utilized. There is no 'reasonable prospect' of military intervention succeeding unless China changes its policy- in which case it would be unnecessary.
However, as the Bangladeshi Premier has said, the US under Trump won't and can't exercise 'moral suasion' and so it is not expected to play much of a role. Still, the Burmese themselves may come to appreciate that a small 'Indian' presence could serve a countervailing purpose with respect to Han Chinese domination in, for example, the Shan State. Burma seems set for economic takeoff- 'Tiger Economy' status. Integration into South Asian markets is in its own interests. It may even find it worthwhile to offer some token compensation to Indian business communities who were chased out long ago.
The law requires the observances of norms conducive to due care & diligence. As Posner pointed out some norms are obnoxious or otherwise unconstitutional and Courts can take the initiative in driving them out of a given Society.
ReplyDeleteIt may be the case that there is an evolving normative culture regulating competitive flatulence amongst Elvis impersonators. However, this has no positive impact on those vulnerable to ethnic cleansing. It may also be the case that there is an evolving normative culture regulating R2P academo-bureaucratic blathershites. Again, there is no evidence that this has a positive impact on poor and vulnerable people at risk of genocide or displacement.
The Burmese simply don't want Muslim Rohingyas. It was thought that the Bangladeshis wanted to replace Buddhists in the Chittagong Hills with the Rohingyas who are ethnically and linguistically closer to Bengalis. However, the present administration in Bangladesh is fearful that the Rohingyas have been radicalised by their Saudi diaspora (whose own legal standing has eroded) and the Indians too are making the case that these miserable refugees are actually hard core jihadis.
The Burmese Army is an efficient fighting force but it is expensive. I suppose some accommodation with ethnic Capitalism will be made. Perhaps some Chettiar will flourish there in the manner of the South African Guptas.