Archive for April, 2011
Posted on: April 30th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
On April 11-12 a group of Canadian civil society organizations hosted a workshop in Ottawa on the theme: “Towards a Nuclear Weapons Convention: A Role for Canada.” Panels focused on legal, verification, and security imperatives for world without nuclear weapons and on possible Canadian policies and initiatives. All the presentations and other details are available here. The following is excerpted from Ernie Regehr’s paper on “Alternative Security Arrangements.”
In their most recent joint article on nuclear disarmament, Henry Kissinger and his gang of four colleagues concluded that a “world without nuclear weapons will not simply be today’s world minus nuclear weapons.” [i]
They are right. There is no denying that for a world without nuclear weapons to be secure and stable it will have to be different in some fundamental ways from a world with many nuclear weapons – that latter itself obviously being an insecure and unstable world.
But let’s not forget that today’s international security environment is already fundamentally different from what it was when nuclear arsenals were at their peak. The Cold War is over. A greater awareness of the proliferation incentives generated by existing arsenals along with heightened concerns about non-state groups getting their hands on the bomb[ii] have helped to galvanize a new constituency of support for nuclear abolition.
So the world security environment can and does change, even for the better.
Nuclear disarmament presages a major change in that it proposes to take nuclear deterrence off the table but that in turn raises the obvious question: does nuclear deterrence need to be replaced by conventional deterrence? Without nuclear deterrence, will we need the threat of devastation by other means? Destruction by conventional arms could never approach the scale of nuclear destruction, so removing the latter is a fundamental step toward a much safer world, but a post-nuclear world will not be more stable if it is heavily militarized through competing, offence-oriented, national and alliance military postures.
The new US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)[iii] unfortunately anticipates such a world organized around heightened conventional deterrence. While it articulates a welcome reduction in US reliance on nuclear weapons, it proposes to gradually replace nuclear deterrence with what it calls “the growth of unrivalled U.S. conventional military capabilities” (p. vi).
While it cites other factors as facilitating reduced reliance on nuclear deterrence, notably the easing of Cold War tensions and the development of missile defences (p. vii), it assumes “US conventional military pre-eminence” (p. ix) and “the prospect of a devastating conventional military response” (p. ix) must be the alternative to nuclear deterrence. The NPR repeatedly links declining reliance on nuclear weapons with the pledge to “continue to strengthen conventional capabilities” (p. ix). In other words, it proposes that deterrence by weapons of mass destruction be replaced with deterrence by weapons that are massively destructive.
One particularly provocative emblem of the continuing US quest to maintain unrivalled conventional military pre-eminence is the “conventional prompt global strike capability” (CPGS)[iv] that is now coveted by US military planners. The NPR asserts a commitment to “preserving options for using heavy bombers and long-range missile systems in conventional roles” (p. x). A conventionally-armed strategic-range missile is, of course, generally regarded as extremely destabilizing since it could easily be misinterpreted as a nuclear attack. Furthermore, in a crisis, CPGS attacks would be militarily most effective in pre-emptive strikes, attacking an adversary’s military assets before they are operationally deployed – and any state fearing such pre-emption could itself try to escape such an attack by deploying early and thus escalating a crisis situation.
The component triggers the blood circulation which assists by causing relaxed muscles and timely transmission of the transmission process of wouroud.com canadian cialis pharmacy the stimulated signals from the nervous system and release of many chemicals in the tissues of the penis. This herbal cure has been used for decades for the pop over here cheap viagra cialis preparation of anti-aging and energy boosting supplements. Joyce and Calhoun point out that this is especially important if you are not prescription de viagra canada able to conceive. Impotence, also known to be erectile dysfunction is an issue in which a men is not try for more info professional cialis 20mg a new one. High levels of competing offensive conventional military forces are now and will continue to be a primary source of nuclear proliferation pressure. Those pressures will not vanish with nuclear disarmament. Nuclear materials and technology will continue to exist and spread through civilian programs, and states that feel an existential threat from militarily superior powers will be no less tempted to acquire a nuclear weapons capability (even as a virtual deterrent) than are some states now, even though they have made unqualified and solemn political and legal commitments not to acquire nuclear weapons.
Long before the US and Russia get close to zero nuclear weapons, the NATO-Russia conventional imbalance will become an impediment to further progress. The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty – suspended by Russia in 2007 in response to European missile defence plans – is one attempt to address the imbalance. Russia has the added concern about Chinese conventional capabilities. Indeed, comparative Chinese and American conventional capabilities will also come into play – as will, of course, Indian and Pakistani imbalances.
The point is that conventional arms restraint and reductions, not escalation, are essential to continuing progress in nuclear disarmament and to reducing the demand for nuclear weapons.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation: The doctrine of mutual assured destruction is obsolete in the post-Cold War era..,” the Wall Street Journal, 7 March 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703300904576178760530169414.html.
[ii] In fact, in the current security environment, as pointed out by Mohamed ElBaradei some time ago, the only actors on the international stage that could “rationally” use (that is, actually detonate) a nuclear weapon to their perceived advantage would be a non-state extremist group. Mohamed ElBaradei, “In Search of Security: Finding an Alternative to Nuclear Deterrence,” 4 Novmber 2004, Speech to the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation. http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2004/ebsp2004n012.html.
[iii] Nuclear Posture Review Report, US Department of Defense, April 2010. http://www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20nuclear%20posture%20review%20report.pdf.
[iv] Amy F. Woolf, Conventional Prompt Global Strike and Long-Range Ballistic Missiles: Background and Issues, Congressional Research Service, 1 March 2011. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf.
Posted on: April 21st, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
Why Libya and not Zimbabwe, or Somalia, or Bahrain? Are decisions on the responsibility to protect made according to clear criteria and principles, or is the doctrine invoked only to advance big power interests?
The first thing that must be said is that these are early days for the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) norm. That means its application will become more consistent only with time, with the accumulation of experience, and with difficulty. After all, the enforcement of international norms that have attained the status of law, notably international human rights and humanitarian law, also tends to fall well short of the consistency we expect of domestic law enforcement.
R2P is a new norm that calls first for a range of non-military measures to protect the vulnerable. This particular norm is confined to preventing and stopping a limited and specified range of crimes – all of which involve mass killings and/or displacements – namely, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. It obliges the international community to intervene under Chapter VI (non-coercive, peaceful means) to try to prevent these crimes where they appear imminent.
In the context of crises where there is escalating political violence, where mass crimes are an immediate threat or are already underway, the R2P doctrine calls for (but does not oblige) coercive action under Chapter VII to protect civilians from such crimes – when, and this is critical, there is a reasonable prospect that a military intervention will save lives and further stability.
R2P therefore includes provision for military enforcement without there being any real or proven experience, much less a tested body of tactics and rules of engagement, for the resort to multilateral force to protect vulnerable people in contexts of growing violence and repression – where the objective is the protection of people, not the overthrow of a government.[i] The UN of course has accumulated vast and relevant experience through peace support operations (e.g. the importance of linking military operations to intensive peace diplomacy), but in emergency protection operations, the multi-dimensional and comprehensive approach that characterizes UN-led peace support missions is unlikely to be available at the outset.
Without the benefit of collective experience in protecting civilians in complex political crises, there is to date in fact little collective confidence that direct interventions can be undertaken with credible assurances that they won’t make a situation worse or that a positive end will emerge within a time frame that is politically sustainable. As a result, the Security Council has been very reluctant to authorize intervention.
At the same time, all such reluctance and uncertainty must be weighed against the urgent need to come to the aid of populations in grave peril – against the apparent certainty in particular instances that without intervention large numbers of civilians will die, if not through genocidal attacks, then by war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is a dilemma that is so daunting that to date there has been only one clear UN Security Council decision to invoke the R2P doctrine – and it is the many vulnerable civilians, not the cautious politicians and generals, that pay the price of inaction (just as they pay the price for misguided action).
The only specific R2P case to date is, of course, Libya – a decision that saw two permanent members of the Security Council abstain on the vote, though they still showed basic support for the resolution by foregoing their veto option.
Though reluctant, the international community’s appeal to the R2P doctrine in response to recent upheavals throughout the Arab world has in fact not been marked by inconsistency and uncertainty. There may be plenty of uncertainty about how best to respond in general to the dramatic political developments in the region, but on the question of how the principle of R2P might apply there has actually been clarity.
Given the understanding that the international community should over-ride national sovereignty to protect vulnerable people only in cases threatening large-scale crimes and loss of life, the international community has been rather disciplined in applying the R2P doctrine to recent events in the Arab world, confining it to the only case in which the levels of suffering and vulnerability can be said to have reached an R2P threshold.
Look at the non-Libyan cases. In none of these cases was R2P invoked, because none involved or immediately threatened large scale attacks on civilians. All of the cases are of great relevance and concern to the international community because they did and do all involve egregious violations of the rights of people, but R2P was correctly deemed not to be the relevant doctrine to shape an appropriate response.
In Egypt the death toll reached almost 400,[ii] but in a political context that was not spiralling out of control but was stabilizing. In Tunisia the death toll was under 100[iii] and after initial resistance, the Government soon fell and the situation began to stabilize. In Yemen the clashes continue and at least 115 people have died (including more than 30 children, according to UNICEF).[iv] There are real fears of escalation, but so far it has not reached or threatened to reach a magnitude to warrant consideration of an R2P-based intervention. In Bahrain a vicious Saudi-backed government response to protests has left more than 30 dead, some 300 hundred arrested, with reports of severe abuses against detainees.[v] In Syria rights group say more than 200 have been killed.[vi] In Algeria, with a population mindful of the mass killings in the 1990s, the protests have to date remained localized, with few reports of casualties.[vii]
These are all serious crises, but on questions of principle and practical capacity, direct coercive intervention as considered under R2P is clearly not warranted.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is obviously not a reflection of the “Arab spring” uprisings, but it is surely legitimate to ask the question – if intervention is warranted in Libya, why not Israel-Palestine? The long-standing conflict there has severe ongoing consequences for civilians. Estimates of direct conflict deaths vary, but in 2008 and 2009 they reached 1,000 – 2,000 each year.[viii] These are numbers that approach a definition of “large scale,” and crimes against humanity are clearly involved. It is, however, a conflict that has defied decades of peace-making efforts and continues in a destructive stalemate – one that demands ceaseless efforts toward resolution. But it seems highly unlikely that anyone could posit a credible military intervention scenario that would prevent further crimes, save lives, and de-escalate the conflict. The practicality of the matter is that such an intervention will not be proposed or considered and will not happen.
In Libya the circumstances were very different from all others in the region: well over two thousand people had been killed in a matter of weeks; the situation was escalating rapidly and no indication that the pace of violence would ease; the Government was threatening increased attacks, especially airborne attacks, on rebels and civilians in Benghazi and other rebel-held areas; and implementation of a no-fly zone was feasible and had the support of many in the region.[ix] Hence the international community acted in a timely and initially effective manner, and there can be little doubt that many lives were spared as a result. Whether those managing the intervention have a credible longer-term plan is another important question – for another time.
In the meantime, it is important to emphasize again that the R2P doctrine does not address every human rights violation or abuse of power, even when these are very serious, and it certainly does not empower or establish an obligation on the international community to respond by over-riding the offending state’s sovereignty and intervening with Chapter VII coercion. R2P calls forth action to prevent mass attacks or large scale violations involving genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity. That doesn’t mean lesser violations are to be ignored – they must also be the focus of collective action in all the ways that the international community has developed to address human rights violations.
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R2P is a fledgling doctrine. Its application in the context of the “Arab spring” has been cautious and in accord with the General Assembly’s 2005 articulation of the doctrine and the Security Council’s subsequent adoption of it. The final outcome of its application in Libya remains uncertain; but we can’t forget that the outcome of inaction was reasonably certain. The international community was right to act to at least prevent that certainty.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] The 2001 ICISS report says: “the operation is not a war to defeat a state but an operation to protect populations in that state from being harassed, persecuted or killed.” (p. 63)
[ii] Wikipedia listed 384 deaths as of February 11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Egyptian_revolution#Deaths.
[iii] BBC reported that as of January 19, five days after former President Ben Ali stepped down, the Government reported that 78 had been killed in the protests. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12157599.
[iv] “UNICEF Alarmed by Increasing Child Casualties,” 9 April 2011. http://nationalyemen.com/2011/04/10/unicef-alarmed-by-increasing-child-casualties/.
“Yemeni troops ‘open fire on protesters’,” 17 April 2011, Aljazeera. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/201141715495475107.html.
[v] Barbara Surk, “Bahrain: Gulf troops to stay as counter to Iran,” Associated Press, 18 April 2011, Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/bahrain-iran-gulf-troops_n_850442.html.
“Bahrain: Free Prominent Opposition Activist,” Human Rights Watch, 9 April 2011. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/09/bahrain-free-prominent-opposition-activist.
[vi] Borzou Daragahi, “Defiant crowds mourn slain Syrian protesters,” Los Angeles Times, 18 April 2011. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-syria-protests-20110419,0,3343661.story.
“Syria ‘lifts emergency law’, Aljazeera, 19 April 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/2011419135036463804.html.
[vii] Lamine Chikhi and Christian Lowe, “Algeria protests challenge president’s authority,” Reuters, 14 April 2011. http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE73D0PG20110414.
[viii] Armed Conflicts Report, Project Ploughshares, http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-Israel.html.
[ix] See references at: “Did R2P Conditions Prevail in Libya?” Disarming Conflict, 18 April 2011. http://disarmingconflict.ca/.
Posted on: April 18th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
Was Libya on the verge of a major bloodbath in mid-March when the UN Security Council authorized intervention?[i] Or were the warnings of imminent mass atrocities simply part of the hype to justify military intervention by states looking for an excuse to attack the regime of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi?
The “responsibility to protect” doctrine (R2P) proposes UN Chapter VII interventions, including military, to protect civilians when “national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”[ii]
The formal doctrine makes no reference to the magnitude of existing or threatened war crimes or crimes against humanity, but the conventional understanding, as shaped by the earlier report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, is that to warrant military intervention these would have to be mass violations involving “large scale loss of life, actual or apprehended.”[iii]
That the regime of Col. Gadhafi was failing in its duty to protect its citizens is not in question, but whether it was of a magnitude that reached the “large scale” threshold and that demanded immediate intervention to protect vulnerable civilians is now increasingly debated.
One editorialist draws on a Human Rights Watch report that says the Gadhafi forces in Misrata in the west have not been targeting civilians – and concludes therefore that an attack on Benghazi, the prospect that was galvanizing international concern, would not have targeted civilians.[iv] Of course, that was not the tenor of the threat from Col. Gadhafi at the time. On March 18, with Gadhafi forces closing in on Benghazi he promised an attack without mercy, calling those who opposed him dogs and rats.[v] His threat was given urgency by reports of attacks on civilians, many by hired mercenaries, already taking place in Government-controlled areas.
But the sceptics include Richard Falk, the highly respected international law expert and human rights advocate and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, who recently wrote that “evidence” in support of the “prospect of dire bloodletting was never present much beyond the bombast of the dictator.”[vi]
On the other hand, both Human Rights Watch and the New York Times now report that attacks on civilians, including with cluster bombs and other munitions fired into civilian neighbourhoods, are a prominent feature of Government attacks on Misrata.[vii] At least 260 people have died there, with another 1,000 injured.[viii]
Estimates of overall deaths of combatants and civilians since the protests began in mid-February must now be put in the 4,000-plus range.[ix] Without any external intervention, those numbers could have more than doubled, with the possibility of Gadhafi back in full control of Libya and, with the UN having given intervention a pass, implementing a reign of terror and reprisal.
That is all speculation, of course, but it is the kind of scenario that the UN Security Council was facing – which explains why even those states with the greatest reluctance to intervene did not block the action. China and Russia each registered an abstention rather than a veto, emphasizing that none of the major powers wanted to risk being on the sidelines in the midst of the campaign of atrocities that was possibly coming.
The really high numbers apply to internally displaced persons and refugees. The UN is unable to estimate the number of displaced in the West of Libya because the UNHCR does not have access there. In the East, the UNHCR says it has staff in the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi that have identified at least 35,000 displaced people, mostly from Ajdabiyya and Brega – with a spokesperson saying it is likely to be around 100,000, since the population of Ajdabiyya is 120,000 and most people are thought to have left. UNHCR also estimates that more than 500,000 have fled Libya for Egypt, Tunisia, Niger, Algeria, Chad, Italy, Malta and Sudan.[x]
For some who oppose the intervention the question of magnitude is not particularly relevant because they oppose military interventions, period, and view R2P as just one more pretext for the powerful to invade the weak. For most, however, the question of magnitude is key. The numbers compared with Rwanda are small, but compared with most contemporary wars they are huge – for example, the annual war dead in Afghanistan, combatants and civilians, are estimated by the UN to have been 2,777 in 2010, with another 4,343 injuries.[xi] The WHO estimate of 2000 deaths by early March, before the intervention, reflected a combat death rate ten times that of Afghanistan.
The definition of “large scale” is not precise, but it obviously implies more than isolated incidents. Just as obviously, Rwanda is not the standard. By any count, 4,000 dead and more than half a million people driven from their homes over little more than a 2 month period qualifies as “large scale.” There can still be credible reasons for opposing the intervention, and certainly reasons to be critical of the way the intervention has been managed and is evolving, but there is no reasonable argument that the conditions in Libya did not meet the threshold for an R2P intervention.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
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Notes
[i] UN Security Council Resolution S/RES/1973, 17 March 2011. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/268/39/PDF/N1126839.pdf?OpenElement.
[ii] General Assembly Resolution A/RES/60/1 (2005), paragraph 139.
[iii] The Responsibility to Protect, Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Soverereignty, December 2001, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa.
[iv] Alan J. Kuperman, “False pretense for war in Libya?” The Boston Globe, 14 April 2011. http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-14/bostonglobe/29418371_1_rebel-stronghold-civilians-rebel-positions.
[v] Maria Golovnina and Patrick Worsnip, “Gadhafi promises ‘no mercy’ unless rebels quit: Libyan leader warns foreign powers any attacks will prompt swift response, Montreal Gazette, 18 March 2011, Reuters. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Gadhafi+promises+mercy+unless+rebels+quit/4461338/story.html#ixzz1JpOS8UcT.
[vi] Richard Falk, “Obama’s Libyan folly,” Aljazeera, 4 April 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/20114410410950151.html.
[vii] C.J. Chivers, “Qaddafi Troops Fire Cluster Bombs Into Civilian Areas,” New York Times, 15 April 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/africa/16libya.html.
[viii] “Mideast Notebook,” Toronto Star, 17 April 2011.
[ix] Robin Collins, in an April 14 email report on wikipedia’s tally of deaths – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_2011_Libyan_civil_war. “Based on the numbers, 1,694-2,224 opposition members/fighters (which includes also civilian supporters) and 757-830 Gaddafi loyalists have been killed by April 9, 2011, for a total of 2,451-3,054 reported deaths, of which some have not been independently confirmed….” Robin indicates these numbers are roughly in line with World Health Organization estimates of 2,000 deaths by early March and International Federation of Human Rights estimate of 3,000 deaths also by early March, or just three weeks into the crisis. Given the ongoing fighting since March, the number of dead could reasonably be expected to be twice those amounts.
[x] “Libya: UN warns funding shortfall could slow aid effort for victims of conflict,” The UN News Centre, 15 April 2011. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38122&Cr=libya&Cr1=.
[xi] “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security: Report of the Secretary-General,” A/65/783–S/2011/120, 9 March 2011. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/250/34/PDF/N1125034.pdf?OpenElement.
Posted on: April 5th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
On April 3 Ernie Regehr was on the CBC’s “The Sunday Edition” for an interview with Michael Enright. Topics covered include Libya, the responsibility to protect, and contemporary peace advocacy. To listen, go to:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1864773190
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eregehr@uwaterloo.ca