Humanitarian Intervention After Kosovo: Emergent Norm,Moral Duty or the Coming Anarchy?

In March 1999 NATO justified the use of force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on the grounds that it was necessary to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe. This action was so controversial because it was the first time since the founding of the United Nations that a group of states, acting without explicit Security Council authority, defended a breach of the sovereignty rule primarily on humanitarian grounds. This article reflects on the legality and legitimacy of humanitarian intervention in international society by reviewing five books that explore the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary legal and moral framework governing humanitarian intervention. The article identifies three broad positions: first, there is an emergent norm of humanitarian intervention; second, humanitarian intervention is seen as a moral duty; and finally, the claim that humanitarian intervention outside Security Council authority should not be legitimated because it threatens the principles of international order. Books reviewed: Danesh Sarooshi, The United Nations and the development of collective security: the delegation by the UN Security Council of its Chapter VII powers Francis Kofi Abiew, The evolution of the doctrine and practice of humanitarian inter‐vention Neal Riemer, (ed.) Protection against genocide: mission impossible? Stephen A. Garrett, Doing good and doing well: an examination of humanitarian inter‐vention Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur, (eds.) Kosovo and the challenge of humanitarian intervention: selective indignation, collective action, and international citizenship     

India's response to the 1971 East Pakistan crisis: hidden and open reasons for intervention

Based on recently declassified materials from the Indian government archives and on the private papers of the principal secretary to the Indian prime minister, this article investigates how India formulated its response to the 1971 East Pakistan genocidal crisis that culminated with the third Indo-Pakistani war. India's victory changed the balance of power in South Asia: Bangladesh emerged as a new independent state, while Pakistan was significantly reduced. The 1971 war is cited in the international literature as one of the first cases of humanitarian intervention in world history. The Indian official position, recently reinforced by a new major publication, highlights the ‘humanitarian’ character of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, depicting a reluctant India compelled to intervene by international inactivity towards the atrocity. This article contests this interpretation and argues that humanitarian considerations were only one side of the picture. Clear political interests drove the actions of New Delhi, which autonomously formulated a specific strategy aimed at making capital out of the dramatic humanitarian crisis. In advancing this argument, this article contributes to the complex debate about humanitarian intervention by observing that the inability of the UN system to intervene is bound to open the way to two possible outcomes: one is the continuation of the genocidal massacres; the other is the unauthorized humanitarian armed intervention by a regional power, which is likely to act according to its own interests. The specific case under review demonstrates that unauthorized armed intervention cannot per se always be branded as deplorable, since in certain cases such a scenario is better than no intervention at all.     

Innovation and precedent in the Kosovo war: the impact of Operation Allied Force on US foreign policy

The 1990s was a period of strategic innovation in US foreign policy. Operation Allied Force in particular represented an important step in the contorted evolution of America's attitude towards the use of force in the post-Cold War period. That operation demonstrated the growing influence of humanitarian concerns and the extent to which America was willing to reconsider Cold War criteria on the prudence and utility of force in support of its foreign policy. In its decision to intervene in Kosovo, the Clinton administration also divided opinion among the military. This, in effect, reduced the premium placed on the counsels of the armed forces and made it easier for the Bush administration subsequently to ignore their advice. Furthermore, having fought the war multilaterally through NATO, Operation Allied Force made America more wary of doing so again. In other words, the intervention set a number of precedents and left a significant legacy for the way in which US foreign policy was pursued in the decade that followed. This legacy is considered in two parts: the first analyses those issues associated with the use of force debate; the second considers how the Kosovo experience affected US attitudes to coalition warfare.     

Humanitarianism,genocide and liberalism

The international response to genocide and human rights violations has received increasing attention by scholars in the humanities and social sciences. This article explores the history of the response to mass atrocity by assessing recent work on humanitarianism as an idea and in practice in the West. It argues that the impulse to defend the rights of others historically has been tied up with geopolitical and imperial concerns that shaped European politics. The current embrace of the responsibility to protect, or ‘R2P’, and debates over whether or not to recognize and prosecute perpetrators of past atrocities from the Armenian genocide to Rwanda remain embedded in this longer history of humanitarianism and geopolitics. As recent work on humanitarian intervention, the anti-slavery movement and humanitarianism and foreign policy demonstrates, the pressing need to understand the response to atrocity has called scholars to more fully participate in the contemporary conversation over human rights by exploring its roots in humanitarian practices of the recent and not so recent past. Understanding the history of humanitarianism as it connects both with the history of human rights and liberal ideals offers an important way of reassessing the role of the nation-state and international institutions in responding to human rights crisis. The article concludes by suggesting that scholars move away from the question of the origin of human rights as an idea to focus on historicizing the response to humanitarian crisis in order to problematize the story of the rise of western-led human rights regimes.     

Russia,humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: the case of Syria

Western analysis perceives Russian approaches to issues of humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as running counter to western‐inspired international norms. This debate has surfaced with some vigour over Russia's policy in the Syria conflict where, in order to protect its strategic interests in Syria, an obstructionist Moscow has been accused of ignoring humanitarian considerations and allowing time for the Assad regime to crush the opposition by vetoing a resolution threatening to impose sanctions. While Russian approaches are undoubtedly explained by a desire to maximize its growing political influence and trade advantages to serve its legitimate foreign policy interests, and while Moscow's attitudes to intervention and R2P exhibit important differences from those of the major western liberal democracies, its arguments are in fact framed within a largely rational argument rooted in ‘traditional’ state‐centred international law. This article first highlights key arguments in the scholarly literature on intervention and R2P before going on to examine the evolution of Russian views on these issues. The analysis then focuses on the extent to which Moscow's arguments impact on international legal debates on the Libya and Syria conflicts. The article then seeks to explore how Russian approaches to intervention/R2P reflect fundamental trends in its foreign policy thinking and its quest for legitimacy in a negotiated international order. Finally, it attempts to raise some important questions regarding Russia's role in the future direction of the intervention/R2P debates.     

The future of NATO enlargement after the Ukraine crisis

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that his country's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 was partly in response to NATO enlargement. NATO leaders counter that eastern enlargement is not a cause of the Ukraine crisis, and they argue that enlargement does not threaten Russia, but rather it creates stability for all of Europe. This article examines the history of NATO–Russian tensions over enlargement, considers how NATO's enlargement policy factored into the Ukraine crisis, and reviews options for the future of enlargement. Drawing on diplomatic history and geopolitical theory, the article explains Russia's persistent hostility towards NATO's policy of eastward expansion and highlights NATO's failure to convert Russia to its liberal world‐view. The alliance's norm‐driven enlargement policy has hindered the creation of an enduring NATO–Russia cooperative relationship and helped fuel the outbreak of conflict in Georgia and Ukraine. In light of this, NATO should alter its current enlargement policy by infusing it with geopolitical rationales. This means downgrading the transformative and democratization elements of enlargement and, instead, focusing on how candidate countries add to NATO capabilities and impact overall alliance security. A geopolitically‐driven enlargement policy would prioritize countries in the Balkan and Scandinavian regions for membership and openly exclude Georgia and Ukraine from membership. Ultimately, this policy would have the effect of strengthening NATO while giving it more flexibility in dealing with Russia.     

Libya and the state of intervention

The international response to the crisis in Libya has been remarkably quick and decisive. Where many other cases of mass atrocity crimes have failed to generate sufficient and timely political will to protect civilians at risk, the early response to Libya in 2011 has shown that the United Nations Security Council is able to give effect to the ‘responsibility to protect’ norm. While not an implementing party in a legal sense, the Australian government has taken a forward-leaning diplomatic stance in helping to mobilise broad support for addressing this crisis. In light of the ongoing political controversy over armed humanitarian intervention, the Libya case shows that state-based advocacy for R2P matters, given the on-going need to bolster the legitimacy of the principle. A discussion of Canberra's diplomatic activity is a prelude to an examination of the proceedings of the UN Security Council and the two key resolutions, the second of which gave effect to the forcible action. The article then considers three dimensions of the Security Council's implementation of the responsibility to protect: the language of the resolutions and the intriguing absence of a textual reference to the international community's responsibility to act; the expansive mandate for civilian protection in Security Council resolution 1973; and the first unanimous referral to the International Criminal Court, with novel support from the United States of America.     

A normative case for pluralism: reassessing Vincent's views on humanitarian intervention

While R. J. Vincent's overall goal in Human rights and International Relations was to demonstrate how human rights might be promoted in international society, there was one area in which he was sceptical about allowing human rights to serve as the basis for international conduct: military intervention. This article begins by demonstrating that Vincent's greatest fear—that legitimizing humanitarian intervention would lead to countless wars—has proved largely unfounded. Nonintervention in the face of gross violations of human rights has marked the post‐Cold War period more than rampant interventionism. Moreover, while the use of force for humanitarian purposes has become acceptable in very exceptional circumstances, the manner in which it has been legitimized and the depth of the consensus around its appropriateness illustrate lingering scepticism among states about infringements of sovereignty. The article concludes by showing how Vincent's writings on humanitarian intervention, in particular his caution about an imperialist advance of cosmopolitanism, might provide a basis for a more robust normative defence of pluralism in contemporary international society.     

The Politics of Emergency

Military and humanitarian interventions have become commonplace in recent years, provoking some to suggest that the right to intervene in the face of an emergency has become a new global norm. Emergencies and interventions pose unique challenges for political and legal theories of sovereignty, legitimacy, and democracy. Political anthropologists and other social scientists have focused on critiques of sovereign power and military and humanitarian interventions, but more attention to the cultural aspects of how emergencies operate and to the positive and negative effects they might have on political and social life is needed.     

Human Rights Beyond Humanitarianism: The Radical Challenge to the Right to Asylum in the Mediterranean Zone

This article argues for a new centrality of the right to asylum within the Mediterranean zone and the necessity to defend and implement this right beyond the “humanitarian regime”. The first section describes the ways in which humanitarianism's logic has weakened the right to asylum through the implementation of specific EU migration policies since 2013. The second section focuses on the distinction between such a humanitarian regime and the human rights system, assessing the possibility of and necessity for a renewed defense of human rights, starting with the right to asylum. The third section focuses on the Charter of Lampedusa, a radical, alternative normative instrument developed through a grassroots process which involved activists and migrant rights groups and which represents a concrete illustration of how the horizon of human rights might be redefined.     

Why protect civilians? Innocence,immunity and enmity in war

The issue of civilians in war has risen to new heights in international political consciousness in recent years. The principle of civilian protection has been at once the justification for war and the main guide to the conduct of such wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan ands most recently in Iraq. The so-called new wars of the 1990s have seen a consistent pattern of massive civilian atrocity and the new policies of massive global terrorism are similarly intent on civilian attack. It remains to be seen how well those pursuing the war against terror will hold to the civilian ethic. In truth, the idea of the civilian is a deeply contested one and has more usually been rejected than embraced by those who pursue war, political violence and terror. The simple power of the idea itself and the humanitarian sentiment that accompanies it to produce the notion of 'innocent civilians' cannot be relied upon to make a reality of civilian protection. Instead, the case for civilian identity and civilian protection must be determinedly and continuously argued in war. This means recognizing the main sources of political, passionate and practical objection to the civilian idea and taking them on one by one as they arise. Repeatedly arguing the case for civilian rights must be at the very heart of political, military, humanitarian and religious endeavour. Arguments of prudence and self-interest must be made alongside much deeper and more difficult moral arguments about people's innocence, their identity and their relationship to war. Holding fast to the civilian ethic in the face of terror and war requires significant moral argument and moral leadership from politicians, military commanders and ordinary people alike.     

CANADIAN NOVELS FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS AND HISTORIANS

Most discussions about the impact of Afghanistan on the future of NATO focus on transatlantic relations between the United States and the European Union. But for Canada, which is one of the few NATO allies that voluntarily deployed into the south, facing heavy resistance and fighting from Taliban insurgents, the Afghanistan operations have become the most salient dimension of its continued involvement in the Atlantic Alliance. While this may seem surprising, given the cutbacks in Canadian defense spending in the 1990s and the withdrawal of Canada's standing forces from Germany, it should not. For during that so-called dark decade, Canada continued to make major contributions to NATO and European security. This essay argues that Ottawa's multi-faceted military and political support of the “new” NATO of the post–Cold War era continued when the alliance undertook its involvement in Afghanistan. Indeed, in its efforts in support of NATO's mission in Afghanistan, Canada has demonstrated a dedication to the alliance that seems stronger than NATO's collective commitment to itself.     

‘Best Practice’ Options for the Legal Recognition of Customary Tenure

Is there a ‘best practice’ model for the legal recognition of customary tenure? If not, is it possible to identify the circumstances in which a particular model would be most appropriate? This article considers these questions in the light of economic theories of property rights, particularly as illustrated by the World Bank's 2003 land policy report. While these theories have their flaws, the underlying concept of tenure security allows a typological framework for developing legal responses to customary tenure. In particular, this article suggests that the nature and degree of State legal intervention in a customary land system should be determined by reference to the nature and causes of any tenure insecurity. This hypothesis is discussed by reference to a wide variety of legal examples from Africa, Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. The objective is not to suggest that law determines resource governance outcomes in pluralist normative environments, but to improve the quality of legal interventions in order to assist customary groups to negotiate better forms of tenure security and access to resources.     

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism

The fate of East Timor provides a barometer for how far the normative structure of international society has been transformed since the end of the Cold War. In 1975, the East Timorese were abandoned by a Western bloc that placed accommodating the Indonesian invasion of the island before the protection of human rights. Twenty‐five years later, it was the protection of the civilian population on the island that loomed large in the calculations of these same states. Australia, which had sacrificed the rights of the people of East Timor on the altar of good relations with Indonesia, found itself leading an intervention force that challenged the old certainties of its ‘Jakarta first’ policy. The article charts the interplay of domestic and international factors that made this normative transformation possible. The authors examine the political and economic factors that led to the agreement in May 1999 between Portugal, Indonesia and the UN to hold a referendum on the future political status of East Timor. A key question is whether the international community should have done more to assure the security of the ballot process. The authors argue that while more could have been done by Australia, the United States and officials in the UN Secretariat to place this issue on the Security Council's agenda, it is highly unlikely that the international community would have proved capable of mobilizing the political will necessary to coerce Indonesia into accepting a peacekeeping force. The second part of the article looks at how the outbreak of the violence in early September 1999 fundamentally changed these political assumptions. The authors argue that it became politically possible to employ coercion against Indonesian sovereignty in a context in which the Habibie government was viewed as having failed to exercise sovereignty with responsibility. By focusing on the economic and military sanctions employed by Western states, the pressures exerted by the international financial institutions and the intense diplomatic activity at the UN and in Jakarta, the authors show how Indonesian political and military leaders were prevailed upon to accept an international force. At the same time, Australian reporting of the atrocities and how this prompted the Howard government to an intervention that challenged traditional conceptionsof Australia's vital interests, is considered. The conclusion reflects on how thiscase supports the claim that traditional notions of sovereignty are increasinglyconstrained by norms of humanitarian responsibility.     

NATO contracting in Afghanistan: the problem of principal–agent networks

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) play a growing role in international military and peacekeeping operations. Very little is known, however, about the fact that not only the United States relies extensively on contractors, but so do international organizations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This article examines NATO's collaboration with PMSCs during its leadership of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF, 2001–2014). It argues that NATO's use of international prime contractors and holding PMSCs responsible for their own security contributed to the creation of a complex network of contractors and subcontractors with detrimental effects for control and accountability. In particular, this article focuses on the proliferation of local Armed Private Security Companies (APSCs) which were accused of a wide range of humanitarian and human rights abuses. Drawing on principal–agent theory, this article seeks to explain why NATO appeared unable to stop the ‘culture of impunity’ among these firms. It shows that multiple principals and long principal–agent chains undermined NATO oversight over armed security guards. In addition, some principals and agents avoided accountability for APSC misconduct through three strategies: blame‐shifting, back‐scratching and morphing. NATO contracting practices, thus, had serious negative implications for the security of the civilian population and the ability of ISAF to establish lasting peace in Afghanistan.     

Australia and the promise and the perils of humanitarian diplomacy

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian diplomacy has always been a crucial element of humanitarianism, however it is now becoming a more prominent element of states’ foreign policies. It holds many attractions and much promise. It provides states with a way of expressing important qualities of international empathy and solidarity and can also enhance a state’s international reputation and provide valuable means for building relationship of trust and cooperation. This can in turn can be conducive to a state’s broader foreign policy objectives. However, there are also perils to the incorporation of humanitarian diplomacy into a state’s foreign policy. It can generate ambiguity and even conflict within a state’s diplomatic endeavours due to tensions between humanitarian and broader national interests. In exploring these issues it is useful to distinguish between humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. This article explores these issues in relations to Australia’s diplomacy. It argues that Australia has actively engaged in humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. Whilst the two are often complementary, there are areas in which they have been in tension and even at odds. This has implications for Australia’s international reputation but also for its capacity to undertake genuine and effective humanitarian action.     

The Imperial War Relief Fund and the All British Appeal: Commonwealth,Conflict and Conservatism within the British Humanitarian Movement, 1920–25

This article explores the intersection of internationalist and imperial humanitarian ideals in the aftermath of the First World War via a case study of a hitherto overlooked humanitarian organisation—the Imperial War Relief Fund. In an era of increased international collaboration between humanitarian organisations, the Imperial War Relief Fund instead promoted an imperial approach, seeking to unite the ‘efforts of the dominions and mother country’ for the relief of Europeans suffering the effects of the First World War. The Fund was enthusiastically supported in Britain by a number of leading conservative public figures, who hoped that an empire-wide humanitarian campaign might guard against imperial disintegration and reverse Britain's perceived loss of prestige in the postwar order. Despite its initial successes, the Imperial Fund was subsequently usurped by British humanitarian organisations which were more internationalist in their outlook and rhetoric, most significantly the Save the Children Fund. This did not represent, however, a straightforward displacement of imperial co-ordination in favour of more internationally focused humanitarian action. Rather, the Save the Children Fund was able to draw support away from the Imperial Fund only by echoing its imperial rhetoric. This article argues, therefore, that, while the Imperial Fund was a relatively short-lived venture, its lasting legacy was to ensure that the British humanitarian movement was a space in which notions of Britain's imperial status, and its concomitant duties, would survive within an humanitarian landscape in which internationalist ideals were increasingly prevalent.     

Invisible Children fades away: What it means for the future of youth activism

The global reach of Invisible Children's viral video KONY 2012 supposedly established the efficacy of ‘spectacular humanitarianism’: sympathetic spectatorship of suffering others through the mediatization, commodification, and depoliticization of Western humanitarian action. However, their ‘brand’ of activism ultimately proved unsustainable, as Invisible Children announced in late 2014 that it was phasing out operations. Here I consider how Invisible Children, as a quintessential spectacular humanitarian movement, has shaped youth activists' subjectivities in the global North. Drawing on activism, media, and humanitarian studies critiques, as well as interviews with recent Invisible Children interns, I argue that though Invisible Children's approach can attract and launch young people into social activism, it can also hinder growth beyond the problematic confines of a spectacular humanitarian approach which reproduces, rather than transforms, global power relations. However, young activists can and do go on to cultivate a more critical and self‐reflexive approach to global social activism.     

Realist Thought and Humanitarian Intervention

This article seeks to test the assumption that realism is completely hostile to the ethical and political notions of humanitarian intervention. The popular understanding of realism states that the national interest and international order will always trump the moral impulse to assist those suffering gross human-rights abuses at the hands of their government. The article makes the argument that this understanding of realism emerged from a particular period of history and under the pens of specific individuals reacting to these conditions. By affording a much deeper historical scope to the term ‘realism’, this article shows how realism cannot be damned uniformly by those writing and thinking about humanitarian intervention in the present period, and the role it holds in contemporary debates on humanitarian intervention.     

The strategic culture of the European Union: a progress report

This article re‐examines the EU's character and potential as a strategic actor, setting that analysis in the context of the debate on strategic culture. The definition of strategic culture as the political and institutional confidence and processes to manage and deploy military force, coupled with external recognition of the EU as a legitimate actor in the military sphere, lends itself to a reappraisal around four core questions. First, military capabilities: establishing a European strategic culture is vital in order to rationalize the acquisition of capabilities necessary for the range of humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks envisaged. Equally, without military capabilities, all talk of a strategic culture would ring hollow. This article discusses how much closer the EU has come to acquiring those essential capabilities. Second, while the EU has gained significant experience of, albeit limited, military/policing experiences and established a growing reputation and some credibility for ad hoc action, to what extent and in what quarters have these experiences engendered a sense of reliability and legitimacy for autonomous EU action? Third, given that so far operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Balkans have depended on an integrated civil–military effort, do the policy‐making processes of the EU now ensure the appropriate level and depth of civil–military integration? Finally, considering that EU operations have been limited in time and scope, and that much of the EU's work in the Balkans has depended upon cooperation with NATO, what can be said of the evolving relationship between the EU and NATO?